Month: March 2004

Listening to Eric speak here at PC Forum. He’s already made a few interesting comments. First, he dodged the IPO question. Then, in response to a question about Google’s business model, he made an interesting declaration: He went on a practiced riff about the media business, how large it is, and how many “platform players” can thrive and no one approach will win. In other words, Eric views Google as a media company, or at least that’s the take I came away with. That is new, last time we spoke, Google was a technology company driven by media revenues…

Eric also told an anecdotal story about the “Don’t Be Evil” mandate at Google. Early in his tenure, when he still felt it was a bit odd for a company to be run by such a rule, he was in a meeting where a (unspecified) idea was tossed out, and one of the employees yelled out “That’s Evil!!” A lengthy debate ensued. Eric pointed out that Google’s culture has built in DNA around what is and is not evil, and when something comes up that might be evil, employees bring up an “evil alert.” I dunno. I still think it’s potentially dangerous for this kind of ad hoc, socially driven morality to drive cultures within large media companies.

This just in, from the folks at MSFT PR: Today MSN will announce that beginning July 1, MSN Search will clearly delineate paid ads from organic search results, with the result being that organic (or algorithmic) results will be above the fold (the top half of the page) for the first time since…well since recent memory.

This is clearly an opportunistic announcement (timed as it is in the wake of the Yahoo CAP dust up), but I must say, it’s a welcome one. Bravo, Microsoft, and I hope the execution lives up to the context and timing of this release. I’ve complained over and over about how crappy MSN search is, mainly due to the fact that you can’t see the organic forest for the commercialized trees. According to an email I received from MSFT PR informing me of this, “The changes are being made to allow better positioning of sponsored links based on relevancy. These changes are a result of a series of consumer testing to determine user satisfaction and search relevancy with various UIs.”

If I’m reading this right, MSN tested the idea that clearly labeling ads equates to more ads being clicked on and a better overall experience for the consumer, and found out – Holy Shit! – the hypothesis proves out.

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Launched: “Ask A Librarian” – a new service in Florida that puts the reference librarian online. Cool. ResearchBuzz reports.

Viewpoint launched today. Beal reports a cool feature is the thumbnails in the bar itself…