John Battelle's Searchblog

Gary points me to this Stanford-originated startup, I'm ashamed to say this is the first I've heard of it: Tableau. The company was slashdotted about four hours ago and the site appears to be down. Ah, fame.

The Seattle PI has a write up here.

Started as a government research project on the Stanford campus seven years ago, the team behind Tableau worked down the hall from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In fact, the two companies share more than a common address, co-founder and CEO Christian Chabot said.

The difference is that Tableau's software creates a graphical interface for "old-fashioned" databases such as Oracle, SQL Server and Excel while Google's technology is built for unstructured data on the Internet, he said

Slashdot thread here.

A: Gary's post on the subject.

So I have been noodling with the idea of putting ads on Searchblog. Why? Well, I spend a fair amount of time working on the site, and a little beer money would be not a bad thing. Also, it helps me understand a market in a much more personal way. And thirdly, I'm genuinely interested in how various ad systems work. I've taken a look at a lot of ad systems over the past few months, many of which I have also reviewed in my role as "band manager" for boingboing.net.

I've looked at Henry's BlogAds, but find them too narrow - there's no real market of search related companies there, and I don't want to be in the business of building it up. Of course there's AdSense, but I prefer to not take checks from Google while I write about them. Then there's Kanoodle, which is getting some buzz lately. And the stealth MarketBanker, which I've found less than ideal to communicate with (they are in something of a quiet phase - no they are not going public, just...reworking some stuff, from what I hear). There are others, and if you loyal readers care to suggest from among them, or to comment on the choices I outlined above, I'm all ears.

Then there's the idea of simply selling sponsorships one by one, which is what Boing Boing decided to do, at least to start. But the problem with that is I don't get to learn what it's like to work with the ad networks. So this is my lazyweb request: What do you think I should do?

For all you Windows users out there, another search tool for your desktop. Sigh. When will the Mac crack 5% market share and merit a good desktop search tool?

Gary posts a review. Reuters runs a piece.

From his review:

I've been using a beta version of the product for the past few weeks and I'm very impressed with its ease of use and overall effectiveness finding material on my computer quickly and easily.

So says The Motley Fool's David Meier, roughly. Avoid the portal/diversification meme, he counsels.

I have to say, the more I stare at Google and the other players (and I'm doing a lot of staring lately), the more a strategy of differentiation-by-not-diversifying seems to make sense for Google. And in fact, Google's halting on-the-one hand, on-the-other-hand approach to portal-like apps (mail, orkut, froogle, commercial search integration) belie a persistent case of Strategic Indecisivitis. The problem: it makes no sense for a public company to focus only on Search, as it hitches your revenue wagon to a one trick pony. No wonder the debate about going pubic was so contentious, and the ultimate framing around it so tortured.

(tip to Andy and IDentity and Greg Linden.)

Ever wondered what is going on with the wild, messy, wonderful world of search-engine optimization/marketing? This piece, posted last week in Media Post, does a fine job of providing a concise first person overview.

Suddenly, venture capital firms are looking at search marketing technology with stars in their eyes. It's beginning to seem that a few people are going to make a lot of money in this industry. And we've even got internal politics. All signs of an industry that's finally ready for a run at the main stage. All of the signs became more apparent at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose this month.

Jeremy points out that the new GmailFS hack makes it possible to turn Gmail into a giant hard drive, Slashdot chews through the implications....

On the Ephemeral to Eternal Beat: a listing of what Google Knows. I'd add that it ain't just Google that knows this, and, what they know, the government can know, with a simple court order. (Via Phillip)

Reader Thomas Hawk points me to googleguy.de, which compares Yahoo and Google results side by side. Meanwhile, Aaref's Jux2 has implemented my suggestions and will soon add a "what am I missing" button. From his email: Say you do a search on Google for "happy mutants". If you then click our browser button, it would take you to a jux2 page showing you the unique results from Yahoo and Jeeves (ie, the non-Google results).

I've been reviewing a lot of data lately for a chapter in the book I'm calling "Who What Where Why When, How, and How Much." (OK, it's a working title.) And the folks at Majestic Research, who do investment-related analysis of the internet space based on data from Comscore and many other sources, have been particularly helpful. They've agreed to let me lay some of it on you, which is quite kind. Here's some of their findings in the search space - it's pretty interesting. The data is based on Comscore's tracking methodology.

* More than 80 percent of all searches on the internet are based on 4 or less search terms. The average search term is three words.
* Total number of paid search clicks trended flat to marginally up in Q2.
* Average Price Per Click on Google and Yahoo has trended slightly down over the past two quarters.
* Across the Google Network in Q1 of this year, approximately 50% of results included a sponsored ad, and 53% of all searches resulted in a click of some kind. Of those, 13% were a sponsored click. For Overture, the numbers were 36%, 66%, and 14%. Net net, Overture had more sponsored clicks (about 160mm) compared to Google's roughly 135mm.
* MSN was one of Overture's highest performing network partners in Q1. One wonders how MSN's recent moves to clean up its act will change this.
* For Q2, about 73% of bids on Overture were for less than 20 cents. Ag. PPC however is hovering at 41 cents.
*Worldwide, Google received 28 searches per searcher while Yahoo received 18.5 searches per searcher in June. Within the US, Google received 23.5 searches per searcher while Yahoo received 19.5.

Thanks, Seth and Gian.....

Very interesting.

The full text of the patent.

The short of it: the patent describes a system whereby contextual ads are delivered on a user's computer using software that lives on that computer - ie a toolbar, a browser, an aggregator, etc.

While the patent is not filed by Google per se, many of the engineers named are employees of Google. This is sometimes done by companies who wish to obscure their intent. No idea if this is the case in this case, but seemingly, this patent covers a potential expansion of Google's advertising revenue model. It may be, though, simply a way of covering their current model as well. The timing, given the recent settlement with Overture, is interesting in any case.

Rich Skrenta, he of Topix and Web OS posting fame, is turning feed searches over in his mind. This is a neat conversation, referencing our pals Jeremy, Rafer, and others. In essence, why have all the majors punted on the presentweb - the fresh stuff that's being discussed *right now* via blogs, feeds, and pings?

He sets up the question: But still it seems odd, that with the biggies supposedly in cutthroat competition for search, that they've left the field for Feedster as the best resource for this class of searches. Why?

Then asks a bigger one: Feeds & Blogs: Fad or something big?

He points to usenet as the precursor to the current blogosphere, and notes that many are skeptical of the current "wild eyed enthusiasm" w/r/t same. (He also pokes two well known bloggers in the eye with the links he chooses, but I'll let him deal with that fight!) He wonders if Google is not just waiting and seeing - will this thing just be another search tab, like usenet became?

His conclusion: nope. Content is king, search is the king's phonebook (or index...). I certainly agree, but the two are entirely intertwingled. Google et al do well when content does well, otherwise, what is there to index? The big question, however, is whether Google wants to start playing in the content aggregation space - the new model of "search, find, subscribe" that Jeremy discusses. Yahoo has already decided it does (and the buzz is that more is coming...). So has MSN and AOL. But at the end of the day, the tail is far too big on this beast, and no one place can own the conversation.

A while ago I read Ross Mayfield's post on "Cost Per Influence" advertising and thought to myself "That feels important, but I don't get it." Something was missing, or, put another way, I was missing something. So I gave Ross a call last week and we hashed through it. What I realized during our talk was that the premise for how he got to the idea of CPI was, to my mind, far more interesting than CPI itself, at least in the near term.

Allow me to explain. Ross's musings on CPI turn on the concept of "transitive advertising" - a very interesting idea that flips current advertising models upside down. In essence, this new model for online ads reverses the relationship between publishers and advertisers.

In traditional advertising models, the advertiser holds all the cards. They decide what they want to spend, and most importantly, where they want to spend it. But the rise of pay-for-performance networks like Overture and AdWords/AdSense has changed this relationship in significant ways. First, advertisers are only paying when their ad performs - this alone is a huge shift in media. But as I've pointed out repeatedly, these networks also disaggregate advertisers from publishers. The advertisers are no longer choosing the publisher with whom they are doing business, they are instead choosing keywords, concepts, context. OK, but not very good for publishers nor for audiences, in my opinion.

But here's the heart of Ross's transitive advertising model, or what I'd like to call Sell Side Advertising. Instead of advertisers buying either PPC networks or specific publishers/sites, they simply release their ads to the net, perhaps on specified servers where they can easily be found, or on their own sites, and/or through seed buys on one or two exemplar sites. These ads are tagged with information supplied by the advertiser, for example, who they are attempting to reach, what kind of environments they want to be in (and environments they expressly forbid, like porn sites or affiliate sites), and how much money they are willing to spend on the ad.

Once the ads are let loose, here's the cool catch - ANYONE who sees those ads can cut and paste them, just like a link, into their own sites (providing their sites conform to the guidelines the ad explicates in its tags). The ads track their own progress, and through feeds they "talk" to their "owner" - the advertiser (or their agent/agency). These feeds report back on who has pasted the ad into what sites, how many clicks that publisher has delivered, and how much juice is left in the ad's bank account. The ad propagates until it runs out of money, then it... disappears! If the ad is working, the advertiser can fill up the tank with more money and let it ride.

I love this model because it's viral and it's publisher driven - it lets the publishers decide which ads fit on their sites. Publishers won't put ads on their site that don't perform, and they'll compete to put up ads that do. Now when I say "publisher" what I really mean is "blogger" - in particular the kind of blogger that uses AdSense - or would if it worked well enough. Bloggers like, well, me, and Rafat, and Om, and loads of others who provide a service that readers appreciate. This allows us to proactively vote for ads we think fit our site, that we think work for our readers. It's also a big win for advertisers, as their downside is protected by pay for performance, and upside is that the market is optimizing the ads through both the network effect, as with AdSense, as well as honoring the crucial endemic relationship between publisher/author/blogger and reader. Publishers are, in a very real sense, endorsing the advertiser, and that publisher's endorsement carries weight with the reader. (Publishers who endorse lame ads, or ads that take advantage of the reader, will be punished by the readers voting with their feet...)

Now, here's how CPI comes into play. The ad tracks not only where it is at any given time, but where it came from. So when I copy an ad from, say, Om's site to my site, Om gets a piece of the action for being the referring site. The ad reports that I got the ad from Om, and then if the ad performs on my site, he gets a bit of the juice for that. Presto - you are getting remunerated for your network of influence.

Certainly there are any number of major issues and problems with this model, and I Iook forward to hearing what you think they are. But in the end, this idea is no crazier than the PPC model itself, and, to my mind, worth figuring out how to implement. Thanks Ross, for propagating this neat meme. What do you all think?

Rafat notes that craigslist's execs are tempted by Adsense....a billion pages makes for a lot of beer money...

Customer complaints about the Green Google Lava Lamps....

The problem is that the liquid that the Green Lava Googlets float in is a murky, cloudy yellow
...as opposed to the Blue Google Lava Lamp, which is crisp and clear and really lets the Blue Lava Googlets flow freely.

Meanwhile....the Google Store announces a makeover...

Talk in the blog-o-sphere about a Google browser - Jason weighs in.

Joi finds someone who has created a belt buckle that displays streaming search queries. Now that's...odd.

Spent some time on the phone with Michael Yavonditte, the CEO of Quigo yesterday. I've been getting smart on many of the new innovators in the advertising space, both for my book, as well as for my other role as band manager of Boing Boing and whatever might come next. Man, there's a lot going on in the online marketing space right now - a lot of innnovation, a lot of cool new shit, and a lot of potential.

According to Yavonditte, Quigo has perfected a relevancy algorithm that does AdSense one better - far better, to paraphrase his words. Quigo is focusing on picking off the high-brand-value publishers who use AdSense but are looking for a network solution that pays them more for what they believe is significantly better inventory than the lowest common denominator AdSense approach. Great quote: "Advertisers are saying to me 'I don't want the Guadalupe Times, I want ESPN!'" He's already stolen some business - he's got USA Today, National Geographic, the New York Post, and several others signed up, and reportedly has some major equity-for-distribution deals in the works, akin to what Google and Yahoo did in their early days.

While I am sure his algorithms are good, in essence, Yavonditte's secret sauce is vertical categorization. He's come up with a handful of major categories - Travel, Health, etc. - that advertisers self select into. Then he applies his contextual algorithm within that category, yielding what he claims are major improvements in CTR and PPC.

I've always suspected that Google will build vertical categories into AdSense, so I asked Yavonditte, given how exciting his claims seem to be, why Google won't simply swoop in and verticalize AdSense. "I'm trying to build a $200 million business," he responded. "Google needs to focus on finding the next billion dollar one."

Yes, but...$200 million is a hell of a lot more revenue than, say, Orkut is providing at the moment...

Yavonditte is limiting his company's focus to big and/or high quality publishers and big categories, for now, but he didn't rule out scaling the business to AdSense like proportions. He's also got a killer product in the works that - without tipping his hand too much - uses his algorithm to aid marketers make decisions about the right keywords to use for any given URL. Cool.

Quigo is nearly breakeven and has 70 employees, most of them in New York. They are backed by Bob Davis, of Lycos fame, among many others.

Marketing Vox interview with Michael here.

Recently ran across this (a bit dated but still worthwhile) graph from Pew on broadband penetration for all your Powerpoint presos on why your (company, idea, marketing spend) is justified...

I was just interviewed on Search Engine Radio - who knew there was a Search Engine Radio!? I have no idea how I sounded, but here's the link...

Gary points to analyst Steve Harmon's musings: Google might well buy Monster.com and/or Doubleclick...

Google recently pulled its mandatory ads from Blogger, and the expected next step has arrived. From the announcement:

This may shock you at first so steel yourself for the idea. Ready? We are going to start paying bloggers. Soon you will be blogging for dollars. That's right people, chocolate is to peanut butter like AdSense is to blogs. Or is it the other way around? Either way, we've got something big here folks.

You may have noticed that we recently removed our ads from Blogger powered blogs. We were making money from those ads but you weren't getting any of it. Now, we're inviting you to set up your own Bloggerized AdSense account so that you make the money.

I think they are setting themselves up for a fall though, by pointing to Matt Haughey as the exemplar. His PVRblog is great, but it's in no way a typical blog. Nor is Metafilter for that matter.

In any case, this is clearly Google cleaning up its AdSense inventory. By letting bloggers self select, they are getting rid of the crap....

Seems Hef knows a good thing when he sees it. Given that the SEC ruined his Google interview scoop, he's posting outtakes from the interview on Playboy's site, the NY Post reports. And this time, the interview is in a pop up box, forcing you to the home page, (which is not worksafe):

Page: "We don't have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many," he said. "We want a thin structure. It could be too thin. The downside is that people don't get the attention they need, especially the more junior people. " ...

Page: We have pushed hard to automate many of the normal management tasks. For example, we have good systems for employee reviews. All of them are collected together so when our managers need them they have all the data written up. We also have systems that automate and track the management of all our projects. This allows an enormous amount of freedom. One time an engineer told me, "I'm not working on what you think I'm working on." He explained that his work had evolved into something extremely relevant and important, but there was no place to track it in our system. I said, "Why don't you enter it into the system?" "I can do that?" he said. I'm like, "Yeah, who else is going to do it?"

Update: Here's a direct link, thanks Gary...

Then read this thread over at Slashdot. "How Google Could Overthrow AIM."

Classic line: " I don't think that "Gim" is going to fly -- I failed it in high school, and don't want any more to do with it."

But seriously, there has been a fair amount of talk about what Google might do next. And IM is not exactly a bad idea. I'd wager it's made their Top 100 list.

Lycos has launched People Search and Discussion Search. For a full review I'll point you to Gary's post. Thank God for Gary - when I'm taking most of the day off trying to write, he actually is writing...

(Press release in extended entry)

Continue reading "Lycos Makes People Search Official, Launches Discussion Search" »

Via Om and Ross:Technorati and SocialText get some VC fuel...

Every once in a long while I'll use this space to baldly promote something I am involved in, and Web 2.0 certainly qualifies for that treatment. Back in May I announced I was going to be Program Chair for the event, which I am also co-hosting with Tim O'Reilly, but I've been pretty quiet since. But I'm way too proud of the lineup we've assembled not to plug it here.

Our theme is "Web As Platform," and we've built a program around the idea that we're in a far more robust second generation era of the web, one that has become a platform for innovation and business growth. We've got an incredible lineup of folks coming to discuss this theme and all its permutations. In addition, we'll have a ton of time for self-organized BOFs (birds of a feather meetings), workshops, and networking.

The conference is this October 5-7, in San Francisco at the Hotel Nikko.

Some highlights:

On the first day we're going to kickoff with a series of workshops focused on interesting trends/opportunities in the web platform space. These are going to be free form conversations moderated by an expert (or two) in the field. We will probably have two or three going at the same time, from 9 am till the main program starts in the late afternoon.

For example, Dick Costolo of FeedBurner is going to moderate a conversation on business models around RSS. Rafat Ali of paidcontent.org is going to do the same on the subject of, well, paid content. And Ross Mayfield of Socialtext will run a workshop on wikis and social software for business. In addition, we'll have workshops on search marketing, using eBay's developer platform for business, and much more.

This is where I want to solicit your advice and input. We have a limited number of these slots still open, and I'm very open to suggestions on topics and topic leaders. If you'd like to run a Web 2.0 Workshop, or co-lead one I mentioned above, let me know via email: jbat at battellemedia dot com.

Also, if you want to debut a new product or company at the event, ping me. We already have half a dozen new companies and/or products debuting for the first time at the event, but we're game for more!!

Once the program gets going, you won't want to miss a single session. We're limited the attendance to about 500 or so, first come first served. We kick off with a Q&A with Jeff Bezos, then move into my favorite element, the High Order Bit. These are short, solo presentation (between five and fifteen minutes) by an industry leader that compels, stuns, astounds, and/or baffles the audience. Often High Order Bit presentors will take a contrarian position on a major issue of the day, or will show extraordinary images or datasets. On day one, we'll have three HOBs, from Mitch Kapor (on politics), Bill Gross (introducing a new search company in real time on stage), and Gian Fulgoni (what Comscore knows).

If that's not enough, we'll then have an interview with John Doerr, who recently cemented his reputation as one of the world's most successful VCs (he invested in Google and sits on the company's board). Interviewing him is John Heilemann, who is perhaps the most accomplished interlocutor I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

JH is also going to interview Mark Cuban later that night at dinner. If you've never listened to Mark tell a story, watch your wine. His one liners will have you snorting it out your nose if you're not careful. After dinner, Google is sponsoring a late night party/lounge on the top floor of the hotel.

Highlights from Day Two include another new company introduction, this time from Excite co-founder Joe Kraus. We'll hear HOBs from Brewster Kahle, Mary Meeker, and James Currier, who runs Tickle and will give us some insights on what online dating profiles tell us about the human condition. We have sessions on the mobile internet, geolocation, and finance, as well as a killer discussion around music featuring Danger Mouse, Hank Barry, and Mike Weiss, the CEO of Streamcast/Morpheus (fresh off his big win for P2P in the 9th circuit...). Mike will also be showing/announcing his next generation P2P network at the event. And we're working on an absolutely killer evening event, but I can't talk about it quite yet.

We'll also have an interview with Marc Benioff, who couldn't be boring if we paid him to be.

Also, for you Searchbloggers, we're going to have a stupendous search session, with the heads of search at A9, eBay, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask. Where's Google, you ask? Well, they want to wait till the quiet period to announce who is speaking.

On Day Three, we'll have HOBs from Cory Doctorow (on Web 2.0 as AOL 1.0), Dale Dougherty (the book as a platform), Craig Newmark and his CEO, Jim Buckmaster (a billion pages a month and still not evil), Bill Gurley, and Larry Lessig. We'll also have some amazing sessions chaired by Tim, including the Architecture of Participation, a riff on the idea of having your customers build your business for you (think oFoto, Amazon, Six Apart. In fact, we have top execs from all those three in this session!). I'll chair a discussion about the future of media in a platform world, featuring Martin Nisenholtz of the NYT, George Conrades of Akamai, Mike Ramsay of Tivo, and Shelby of Cnet. And Om Malik is chairing a killer discussion on the telephone as platform. Not to mention the top research guys at IBM and MSFT will be there, showing off stuff directly from the labs.

We'll end with a conversation with Jerry Yang. Did you know Yahoo turns ten years old this year?

Well, those are some highlights. I have to say, I've been doing this conference thing for a while now, and this is the best lineup I've ever had the pleasure of assembling. There's a real energy this year, a sense that if we can keep our focus and remember what matters, we might just execute on some of those dreams we had back in the Web 1.0 days.

So take a look over at the site, and register to come. As readers of Searchblog, you're entitled to a special discount. If you didn't get the invitation the first time around, email me and I'll send you the code. Registration includes a booklet that Tim and I are putting together with pages and pages of metrics and highlights on the state of the internet industry. And you'll have access to the Web 2.0 Wiki, where we're taking input on every single session so as to incorporate your questions into the onstage dialogue.

Also, please give me feedback on the program and especially the workshops. We still have time to make last minute changes and additions. See you there!

Down here, we had a bit of a debate about what was going on with Blinx, Feedster, and Google. Seems the problem has been solved, Google Guy showed up in the comments with what seems to be an explanation. Thanks, Google Guy!

ZDnet: MoveOn.org subscriber-data leaked through search.

GOOG closed today at $108.31, thirty one cents above the low end of the range within which Google originally valued itself. (It was $108-$135). It was up nearly $8 from its first close yesterday.

I very much doubt this was intentional...at least, I hope it was not, but it seems Feedster and Blinx have been taken out of Google's results in one way or another. Read up on it here and here....

Dan has some advice to Google on its coming out day....

From Neilsen/NetRatings via Yahoo. More than 50% of US net users are now on bband. This is up from 38% last year. Of course, compared to Korea it's really just middleband, but this is a significant milestone nonetheless.

(Hat tip to Gary)

Latest quote shows it opened up 15% at nearly 100.

I can't get a price for it yet, but AP says soon.

UPDATE: CNBC claims the pre-open buzz is that the stock will trade up, FWIW.

The headlines sum it up:

Engine Trouble
How Miscalculations and Hubris
Hobbled Celebrated Google IPO
Euphoria Ebbed, Tech Stocks
Sagged, Till Firm Cut Size,
Priced at a Low $85 a Share
Blow to Dutch-Auction Method

I'd love to link to it, but it's paid sub. This is on the front cover of the Journal the morning the stock will open on the NASDAQ. Get the sense the banking community is pissed yet?

Highlights:

Google Inc. may have needed Wall Street after all.
The Web-search giant's quest to reform the Street through an unconventional initial public offering backfired, as Google yesterday sharply cut the size of its stock sale and then set an IPO price far lower than it had anticipated: $85 a share.
A combination of Google's own hubris, stubborn investors and a deteriorated technology market transformed what was billed as the hottest IPO of this short century into a rather messy affair....
...The price "says that a type of auction going out to the public like this is a failure because it raised uncertainties to such a level that people backed away," said Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, an auction theorist at Columbia University's business school in New York. By creating uncertainty, it "got Google a worse price than they could have gotten using a standard mechanism," he said...
...They managed to tee off the broader constituency of Wall Street, and it's obviously hurt them," said Brad Ruderman, head of Beverly Hills, Calif., hedge fund Ruderman Capital Partners, who was sitting out the Google auction. "Wall Street wins again."...
...In the end, Messrs. Page and Brin may have themselves to blame for setting expectations too high, in regard to both the pricing and their ability to avoid Wall Street's usual ways. The $85 price was about where many financial experts had pegged the shares' values early on....
...When Google executives, including Messrs. Brin and Page and CEO Eric Schmidt, met with mutual-fund and hedge-fund investors at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel the day after the pricing announcement, the presentation was light-hearted, and thin on details. Some investors sitting in the ballroom began speculating with each other whether the executives had spent any time practicing the presentation, or if they were winging it.
Glenn Krevlin, a New York hedge-fund manager who runs Glenhill Capital LLC, said he had no interest in the stock after attending the road show. "They didn't tell you anything. They came across as high and holy," he said...

Journalists read other journalist's stories with a different lens. So when I read Markoff's piece (reg required) in the Times today, I was thinking "OK, what does he have that is new - he never writes about Google unless he has a scooplet buried somewhere..."

I found it here:

According to several people close to Google, the company's reticence has drawn regulatory attention in the past. They say that a continuing informal inquiry by federal and state regulators about the way Google distributed shares to its employees in earlier years came about because the chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, wanted to avoid a public stock offering in 2002. The company did not register shares granted under the employee stock option plan, which it might have been required to do.

Well and good, but...we knew Google was agonizing over the decision to go public. The real kicker in the piece, for me anyway, came when Markoff gave the following meme the all important final word in his piece. Quoting Inktomi founder Eric Brewer, he pointed out that Google is now an advertising company, as opposed to a technology company, a meme that The Register among others has been banging on for months.

"Because Google arose after the Internet bubble, they were able to acquire a very strong technical team," Mr. Brewer said. "The irony is that they are really more of an advertising company than a search engine company today."

Youch.

WSJ:

Google Inc. priced its initial public shares at $85 each, at the low end of the search giant's downgraded estimates.

The approval came after Google, scrambling to complete one of the U.S. stock market's most eagerly anticipated stock deals, lowered both the number of shares it plans to sell in its initial public offering and the price estimates for the shares it will sell. The move sharply reduced the amount the California company will raise and thus the estimated valuation of the company.

But still and all, this is is the largest tech IPO in history, I believe. And at $85, there's a better chance it will open up....

The SEW thread on this is here...

Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. Our pal Jeremy pinged me today to let me know that Yahoo is launching the "Yahoo! Search Blog". OK, I won't sue (for now...).

From the first entry:

As Qi Lu, head of our engineering team likes to say, "search is like rocket science for the masses". It’s no wonder then that our search team has grown the ranks of our PhDs 10 fold during the last two years....
... The massively scalable infrastructure those world class engineers have built enables us to build applications that we couldn't even conceive of a few years ago....
...Be sure to check back here for news about new product introductions, updates and exclusive betas.
In addition, this blog is designed to provide a window into what our team is thinking and doing, in their own words (and maybe some guest bloggers as well).
Above all else we hope this blog enables you to share our excitement for the search industry and what the future holds.

For now, the site has comments wide open. Way to go!

Jeremy also has background on his site here including a FAQ. Highlights:

Q: Is this just going to turn into a lame PR blog?

A: Of course they are. Someone has to keep an eye on the wannabe bloggers. They're not going to be re-writing all the posts, if that's what you're worried about. They know that blogs are not press releases, and hopefully this will help them better understand this brave new world.

A reader points me to his own addition to the searchstream catalog: Recall Toolbar.

Recall Toolbar is a personal search engine that helps you instantly find that needle that you're trying to find again in the haystack of pages you've already visited.

Recall Toolbar contains no spyware.

Just released.

ShopLocal goes live. The company behind this is owned by Gannett, Knight Ridder, and Tribune - the major newspaper companies. The whole things smells driven by corporate and merchant interests, as opposed to user intent. (Check the "About" page as to why - notice how they say they deliver "More Shoppers. More Often." When I click the "About" button I prefer not to be told that I'm viewed as a fungible commodity.) I'd put my money on Yahoo and Google, if I were a betting man.

Thanks, Gary.

What's interesting to me in decoding Google's latest IPO twist is how the execs, VCs, and bankers made the decision to lower the price, and how they decided to cut the number of shares offered. Lowering the range happens all the time in iffy markets- often it's a sign that the offering is in trouble. In the past few weeks we've seen it over and over, most recently with Lindows and PlanetOut. But in Google's case, there was an additional actor: the nearly perfect window of market demand information. Armed with that information, Google's managers could more accurately predict what will happen in the aftermarket once the offering goes live, thereby allowing them to lay out scenarios for several potential chess moves, and make the decision they think best.

Perhaps Google could have gone out within their original range, but it seems obvious that had they attempted to do so, the stock would have dropped significantly thereafter. And the only people who really made hay would have been insiders and the company itself - the investors would have initially felt soaked.

In the release cutting its range and size, Google announced that insiders have decided to hold back selling shares, presumably because market demand will only support so many shares at the new range. From the WSJ coverage:

The company also said Wednesday that the number of shares available to the public will be lowered by 6.1 million as existing holders will now only sell 5.5 million shares, down from about 11.6 million shares, "in view of this new price range," the company said in its statement Wednesday. Company insiders, including co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, are reducing the number of shares they will sell in the IPO. Venture-capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers are now selling no shares at all in the actual IPO.

But this is worth thinking through a bit more. The release also noted that "In addition, the selling shareholders have granted the underwriters the right to purchase approximately 2.9 million additional shares of Class A common stock at the initial public offering price to cover over-allotments."

I have no idea if this means the banks will in fact buy those shares for "over-allotment", but it seems they are in the game in a much bigger way now. One could quite cynically claim that the price was lowered and the offering size cut so as to insure the "pop" so famously spurned by the auction process (if it were up to the banks alone, I'd call that a logical conclusion). But I can imagine that given lighter than expected demand, the banks, with their massive buying power (via institutional investors), might have gained the upper hand, and demanded that they get in on the action after being cut out of the deal for so long. Then again, I'm probably missing something insanely obvious here, so any of you investment banking types out there, please correct me if so.

I can also imagine all the parties involved wanted to make sure the stock would at least be stable in the aftermarket, and not drop precipitously. One can fairly assume that given the (more) perfect market data, the offering as it stands has a good chance of doing just that. Then again, going below 100 might just set off a speculative frenzy...running the stock up, providing the pop everyone was looking to avoid. Who knows?

That the VCs - John Doerr and Mike Moritz - are now selling no shares at all puts them back in a position of normalcy for most venture-backed IPOs. This is how it's usually done - the VCs wait for the stock to rise in the aftermarket, then they sell.

Should be interesting to watch it open. When might that happen? Still unsure, though Google asked the SEC to make their statement effective today. If the SEC does (and it's not clear they will, given they are still asking questions about the Playboy interview), the stock could trade on Thursday.

Google today announced that it will cut the price range from $108-$135 to $85-$95, and cut the number of shares it's offering from 26.7 million to 19.6 million. Here is the official Google announcement. More to come...

Thanks for all the posts on questions to ask Jerry and David. Turns out, we spent a lot of time on history and also on looking forward to the next ten years. We didn't focus so much on the present. When I reminded Yahoo's founders that they had ten years of experience running the site - they started in earnest in 1994 - both turned reflective. It's not like they didn't know it, of course, but there's something about taking the time to think about that - ten years - that makes for a good conversation. I asked if they still believed in the vision and hype of the mid 90s - about how the internet was going to change everything - and they both said they did, but that timing was everything. It takes a lot longer than we'd like for basic things to change. Then Filo came out with a great line about the early promise of the internet - that we'd all become creators and producers of content - and how long it takes to fulfill:

That was the promise of the internet from day one -when Mosaic came out the whole idea was that anybody could publish now, that was the new thing ...yet it took this long to get to simple blogging... If you said ten years ago that you could have blogging in ten years, and that will be the extent of it, people wouldn't have been that impressed.

Indeed. In 1994, anyone claiming that in ten years, we'd have a robust self-publishing movement like blogging would have been drummed out of the room for a lack of vision. Despite Geocities or Tripod, it takes time for the ship of culture to change course. Makes me rethink my own sense of what might come ten years from now...

But probably soon...

Heading down for the final book interviews today with two guys from Stanford who started a multi-billion dollar search-driven company that's now public. Nope, not them. These guys. Any questions you'd like to hear answered?

Help Sid Yadav out, take his survey on search .

I gotta check this out - full text search in an aggregator.... Jäger 1.4.0 for Windows and for Macintosh.

Google's filed a new S1-A incorporating their 10-Q (quarterly report). SEC/Edgar is not responding, but here is a link through SECInfo, which I recommend you join - it's a great service.

Separately, CBSMW is reporting that Google hopes to wrap up bidding Tuesday night and price Weds.

I was going through some of Safa's presentations on the search market (thanks, Safa!) and found this chart. We already know this, but it's compelling to see it laid so bare:

Neat tool that tracks overlap between major search engine results. Don' t miss the background page with stats...I've been in touch with the founder and he is working on making the unique results available with one click on the "Overlap" results to the right. Try the "What am I missing button" - a very cool tool.

eWeek:
Feedster Preps Paid RSS Links. Apparently working with Kanoodle (those guys are busy...) and have a bunch of community soothing features (CC license, $ to charity, etc.).

Hey Rafer, give us the real skinny...

Back when I went to see Craig Newmark of Craigslist (he's speaking at Web 2.0), I noted how amazingly successful his gem of a company was, and I asked, "Aren't you worried you're going to wake up eBay?"

Well, eBay just finished its cup of coffee, and went and bought 25% of Craig's company.

Here's Craig's take on it in his blog. A lot of comments. Apparently a person (not named) that owned equity in Craigslist was the impetus to the deal, not Craig himself.

More from Pew. I find it very hard to believe that "Americans conducted 3.9 million searches in June." I think *I* conducted that many in June. I'm checking into it.

Om rants about how bloggers are not given their due by mainstream media, pointing out that in many cases, the "mainstream media" is the "new media" - places like Cnet.com, et al. As he points out, this is as it ever was, blogs represent a new phase of breaking news. Rafat and others have long ranted about how "mainstream" journalists steal ideas and scoops from blogs, and it's certainly true (Rafat's example is my story on FareChase, in fact). But I rather enjoy the quiet knowledge that our memes are getting out there into the world, and figure credit comes as credit will come... with time. As more and more folks begin to take their writing and reporting seriously in this medium, blogs will break into various evolved forms, one of them being as a source for legitimate news. I have never really seen this blog as a newsmaking endeavor, I don't strive to break news. When I do, great, but that's not the point. I vastly prefer to write the Joints-After-Midnight rants based on analysis of the news....but that's just me. News-driven sites like Rafat's and Om's have a valid point.

(Inside Baseball Paragraph Follows:) Om suggests that T'rati or Feedster create a central clearinghouse for news that all of us can monitor, ideally as an RSS feed. I think that'd be great. Anytime any serious blogger is breaking a story, he or she can ping the service. Presto, we've got a record of the scoop. Often times a blogger will see an AP story or News.com story that seems to be the original newsbreaker, and link to that story as the originator. But if that blogger has the newscoop service as well, they'll know who was the real originator, and credit them. Problem solved. What say Scott, Dave?

Cnet and others have a policy of not linking outside of their own site when it comes to their news stories, instead breaking out external links into ghettoized special sections. This will probably not stand in the long term. The good news is that places like Cnet will evolve far faster than the last time we went round this maypole.

"There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things."
- V. Bush

We love stories. It's how we understand the world. Were I to tell a friend what happened in tonight's Giants game, I wouldn't send him a box score (though I might refer to one as I was talking to him). I'd say something like "Man, we looked terrible in the first two innings, our rookie pitcher was tight and we had back-to-back errors resulting in a three-run deficit by the second. But then AJ nailed a three-run homer that put us back in the game, and in the 5th we rang up three more (including Barry's 689th!). It was all Giants from then on, and JT Snow was on fire ...!" and so on. A story is our way of taking a journey and making it portable - we can give it to others, and we're wired to enjoy both hearing a good story, as well as telling it.

I was thinking about this as I was researching the phrase "tempting fate" this afternoon. I was sure there was some Greek mythology behind it, some base case proof that human beings have always struggled with the question of determinism, the Gods, free will, destiny. At the very least, there had to be a good story behind it, and hell, we love good stories. So what did I do? I fired up Google and started poking around. First it was a simple "tempting fate," but that was far too broad, not what I was looking for (though it was interesting to see a Google News story about the Athens Olympics). I called my mom, she of all knowledge mythological, and she reminded me that Shakespeare often used the Fates in his work. Armed with this new high order bit, I went back and Googled "The Fates" mythology. I was on to something. I started reading up on the three dieties of Fate, taking turns and twists through references both within Google and from links on the pages I found.

But then I realized I was treading familiar ground. I had searched before for the meaning of a phrase, during my Gilgamesh riff a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I recalled finding a great resource for quotations and literary references. But alas, I did not have the searchstream from that last Googleriff, and I had forgotten to Furl that one site I recalled seeing before. I had to start all over again. Damn, I muttered. When was A9 going to get a Mac version of its toolbar! That has the built in ability to capture and record your search history as well as the things you looked at, all in one package.

My previous searchstream was lost, alas, so I started over. Once again I found myself on a great journey, from early 20th century texts on philosophy and religion to scholarly interpretations of The Fates and their role in early Greek tragedy, Homeric epics, Shakespeare...it was great fun. And in the end I came to a much fuller understanding of my original question.

"Battelle!" those of you still reading this far down may well ask. "What the f*ck was your question, anyway?" Sorry about that. It was this: Why on earth launch the bidding process for Google shares on Friday the 13th, on the eve of a major news event shrouded in terrorist threat (the Athens Olympics), on a day the SEC has opened an investigation into you, in a week where dot com plays have abandoned ship and pulled their IPOs? I mean, what's the harm in waiting till Monday, at least?

What's the rush, I wondered. Why tempt fate?

Well, I think I found my answer, but for that you'll have to read the book, assuming I'm not tempting fate by noodling around here instead of actually writing it (really, is there a difference?). Suffice to say, I didn't find my answer in the first ten results of my initial Google search.

But what I really wish for, both to tell the story of my search, and to annotate my book, is the ability to take that searchstream and turn it into an object - a narrative thread of sorts, something I can hold and keep and refer to, a prop to aid in the telling and retelling of how I came to my answer. Tracks in the dust, so to speak, so others can follow and make their own, or follow mine and see (and question!) how I came to my conclusions. Imagine, I thought to myself, if instead of footnotes and citations, I could append searchstreams...

That's when I remembered As We May Think, Vannevar Bush's famous essay in The Atlantic. I had read it earlier in my research, and was struck not by the idea of the Memex, which is well understood, but by Bush's explication of the problem - that knowledge and learning has become so complicated, so layered, so inefficient, that it is near impossible for anyone to be a generalist, in the sense Aristotle was. Bush's answer to this problem was the Memex, of course, but what I find interesting is the mechanism by which the Memex is made potent - the mechanism for capturing the traces of a researcher's discovery through the Memex's corpus, and storing those traces as intelligence so the next researcher can learn from them and build upon them.

Searchstreams, I realized, are the DNA which will build the Memex from the flat soil of search as it's currently understood. Engines that leverage searchstreams will make link analysis-based search (ie, nearly all of commercial search today) look like something out of the pre-Cambrian era. The first fish with feet are all around us - A9, Furl, del.icio.us. We have yet to build the critical mass of searchstreams by which this next generation engine might be built (nor will it necessarily be built with our tacit consent). But I can sense it coming.

Here's to evolution....

Here's Playboy's online teaser for the interview. Funny, the boys' picture didn't make the cover. Huh.

The full text of the article is in the S-1A filed today (I bet Hef loves that...get a major scoop, then have the damn thing in a public document the day the magazine hits the newsstands). Scroll to the bottom. Highlights:

On Growth:
PAGE: I worry, but I've worried all along. I worried as we got bigger and there were new pressures on the company. It wasn't so long ago that we were all on one floor. Then we moved to a new, larger office building and were on two floors. We added salespeople. Each change was huge and happened over a very short period of time. I learned you have to pay a lot of attention to any company that's changing rapidly. When we had about 50 people, we initiated weekly TGIF meetings on Friday afternoons so everyone would know what had happened during the week. But those meetings have broken down because we now have too many people, about 1,000, including many who work in different time zones. We try to have a summation of the week's work via e-mail, but it's not the same. When you grow, you continually have to invent new processes. We've done a pretty good job keeping up, but it's an ongoing challenge.

On Stoney Stuff:
PLAYBOY: Is your goal to have the entire world's knowledge connected directly to our minds?
BRIN: To get closer to that -- as close as possible.
PLAYBOY: At some point doesn't the volume become overwhelming?
BRIN: Your mind is tremendously efficient at weighing an enormous amount of information. We want to make smarter search engines that do a lot of the work for us. The smarter we can make the search engine, the better. Where will it lead? Who knows? But it's credible to imagine a leap as great as that from hunting through library stacks to a Google session, when we leap from today's search engines to having the entirety of the world's information as just one of our thoughts.

...and wants to tell us all about it, leave a comment... On this Friday the 13th....Good luck!

Reuters: Bidding process is open.

In an amended offering document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission just hours before the auction opened, the company did not indicate whether the latest twist (the Playboy interview) would impede the deal, which has been beset by concerns over market conditions and a series of recent missteps....
...In the filing with the SEC, Google said it does not believe its involvement in the Playboy article constitutes a violation of the "quiet period" rules, but it could be required to buy back the shares sold to investors in the IPO at the original purchase price for a period of one year following the violation.

... get a pass in August?

When I first heard this interview was coming, last week, I thought "Hmmm...wonder why that's happening." But I did not post on it. Google is not known for doing anything press related without calculating the impact down to the last meme, so it struck me that they had thought through the implications of a Playboy piece - and the attendant coverage it would create from journalists angry *they* didn't get the interview. I figured the Playboy interview was given way before the quiet period ever started. I was wrong - it was given in early April - one week before Google filed. Now the SEC is investigating.

Could this be a case where Playboy ran with the interview against the wishes of the company? We may never know, but now the pundits are predicting this might delay the IPO, a la Benioff.

If it does, as Ross points out in an earlier comment here, it might be just what they need - a reprieve from the dog days of August, a delay that is rather harmless, as opposed to a painful postponement due to "adverse market conditions." Your move, Mr. SEC....

Nice post about how the various strands we've created in our digital life might be rewoven into a personal web space.

To put this another way, a distributed data storage system would take the place of a local storage system. And not just data storage, but data processing/filtering/formatting. Taking the weblog example to the extreme, you could use TypePad to write a weblog entry; Flickr to store your photos; store some mp3s (for an mp3 blog) on your ISP-hosted shell account; your events calendar on Upcoming; use iCal to update your personal calendar (which is then stored on your .Mac account); use GMail for email; use TypeKey or Flickr's authentication system to handle identity; outsource your storage/backups to Google or Akamai; you let Feedburner "listen" for new content from all those sources, transform/aggregate/filter it all, and publish it to your Web space; and you manage all this on the Web at each individual Web site or with a Watson-ish desktop client.

Think of it like Unix...small pieces loosely joined. Each specific service handles what it's good at.

Very Web 2.0.

Claria has pulled its IPO. I'm just waiting for the Lindows announcement (they already lowered the price range). This is pretty obvious now, but Google seems intent on going out in pretty much the worst IPO environment since early 2002.

What's new? Beats me, I don't have time to read it right now. It should be law that all changes from the previous document are highlighted. Sheesh.

PlanetOut has postponed their IPO. Perhaps what goes around, will come around again. Fred, I feel your pain.

PC World: National Archives Will Go Digital.

Update: Gary points out this project has been in the works for some time and is really focused on electronic records...

Remember when I predicted that there would be a company claiming to be the new Google every month or so this year? I was wrong. It's more like every two weeks, and it's either the new Google, or the "Google of" (insert vertical here - travel, shopping, etc.).

Latest to get the spin is Kozuru, which just got three million dollars and is based in Kansas. They plan to take the natural language approach to search and are basing their stuff on structured taxonomies in the English language - in other words, the dictionary and the encyclopedia. I dunno...

When I saw Jeff Weiner yesterday, he mentioned that he thought we'd see a lot more small companies getting snatched up by larger ones, once the small ones proved their merit (as Fare Chase has, by the way). I'm not going to get the quotes right, but he said something to the effect that "If you're a great chef, you need a great kitchen to cook in." Three million dollars ain't gonna buy a lot of Viking stoves, but it's a start.

(Thanks Gary and Tara)

I've always thought it'd be great, and ultimately very important, to have some kind of time axis in search - to be able to search not only the web as it is now, but as it was at some point in the past. The Internet Archive is a start toward that goal. Today I learned about "G-Metrics" - a Google hack which allows you to track the results for queries over time. Another small step...

(thanks, ResearchBuzz)

Today I took a break from writing and drove down US 101 60 or so miles to Yahoo, a trip I've made at least a dozen times in the past few years. The ostensible reason for the visit was a casual, no agenda lunch with Yahoo communications chief Chris Castro and Yahoo search chief Jeff Weiner. But it quickly turned into that wonderful digressive riffing which continues to make braving Bay area freeways a worthy endeavor.

I've found the folks at Yahoo to have an increasing appetite for new ideas, quite a switch from a few years ago when the company was hunkered down in protect mode, like much of the Valley. They want to grok RSS, blogs, mobile, desktop search - and beyond. Jeff is on fire about where his unit is going, and I have to admit the things he spoke of and showed me, much of which unfortunately I can't report on yet, were pretty damn cool. Suffice to say Yahoo is continuing and strengthening its approach of driving search results based on intent of the user, and in particular discerning what the "task" is the user is attempting to do, then helping complete that task. Such a focused goal has pretty significant implications for where the company is going next, and how it will handle platforms in general (beyond the web) and commerce in particular. Its integrated approach requires a lot of threading of disparate data feeds into one grand unified experience, and I think after so many years of banging on this problem, Yahoo's experience is starting to bear some fruit. One example is their recently debuted local search - which incorporates a platform approach that allows users to create reviews and such, another is their product search (which has cool narrowing features - doing that is not as easy as it looks), not to mention their shortcuts.

More to come when I can say more...

Google announced on its site that requests for a bidding ID will close Thursday, Aug 12. The auction will start "soon thereafter."

(Thanks, Gary)

A lot of talk lately about how to make money off RSS. And well there should be, it's more than half of most popular blogs' traffic, and so far it's avoided any pat approach to monetization. Scoble discusses the topic again over at his site, and points to a meme that I've been kicking around with a few folks, including Andrew over at Six Apart and some others. Scoble:

So, there's the condundrum. How do we serve the "users" and the "branders" at the same time?

Who will win? Well, here's the rub: users today have so many choices about where to get their content that they have a chance this time around.

The users are readers, the branders are advertisers and publishers (including some bloggers) who want you to come to their site instead of read full text in their RSS feeds. I think the affiliate model is interesting, and worthy of paying attention to. (Ross has posited a related "Cost Per Influence" but I don't really understand it yet, though we promised to talk about it as soon as we can...) But we still need good ol' fashioned ads in our RSS feeds if we are going to tap the market which is already in place to support content.

Earlier I pointed to RSSAds, but I've not heard anything new on this. And I know some companies, like Kanoodle or Industry Brains, are starting to support inserting ads into RSS feeds, but this can get irritating if not done with the reader in mind. And because most of these types of solutions are networks, sites can't be bought individually, which breaks my endemic model.

In the end, I sense that readers will be fine with ads and RSs comingling. Jarvis has done some work on this, but we're not there yet. Also, It's interesting how the design, branding, and control which publishers are so used to having is lost through RSS, and it's no wonder they refuse to allow anything more than headlines and excerpts out into the world. With RSS, at least in this early stage, it's all about the voice. I rather like that. Kind of like radio before TV.

Over at Boing Boing, we're thinking through this issue. I'd be interested in developments or further thoughts in this space, if anyone knows of any.

The ACLU has issued a report on a trend I often ping, that of corporate data gathering practices and how the government can bypass restrictions on domestic spying by requiring companies, in essence, to do the spying by proxy.

The ACLU report includes a suggested "No Spy Pledge" that they hope consumers will ask companies to take. The ACLU site includes a sample letter to send to companies which requests:

1. You will not turn individually identifiable data on your customers over
to the government for security purposes unless legally required to do so.

3. If the government serves you with a legally binding request to turn over
customer information, you will notify customers that our information has
been turned over (unless you are subject to a gag order prohibiting you
from doing so under the Patriot Act or other legislation). In addition, companies
called data aggregators are increasingly becoming a means by which the
government accesses information on individuals. I would also like to ask whether
you provide information about your customers to data aggregators or any other
companies that are in the business of consolidating customer information. If so,
which ones?

What I wonder is, will any search related companies be pledging?

Wired News covers this, and more here and here and here.

Way back in 1996, before I left Wired and started the Standard, my wife and I had a little brainstorming session. I thought it'd be really cool if we started a website where local merchants could list their wares, so folks could check to see if a local business had what they were looking for before going down to the store. We decided against the business, but I've remained fascinated by this concept. It just seems to make sense, that at some point you will be able to check into the inventory of your local stores to see if what you want is there, and even reserve it or have it delivered to you.

A new search engine is now launching that promises to bring part of this concept to the world. Called StepUp.com, it's "A unique new web tool that helps shoppers find products locally."

From their release: Now, for the first time, the Internet's 80 million web shoppers can easily find popular retail products near their current location and avoid waiting for online purchases to arrive by mail. In addition, StepUp.com offers merchants a simple and economical way (free, for a limited time) to easily list their products online, driving web shoppers to their physical locations. StepUp.com combines the benefits of online shopping with local commerce, providing consumers and local merchants a powerful new tool.

StepUp.com’s sales tools include a client that automatically uploads inventory information continually from QuickBooks, the leading financial management product from Intuit Inc., so businesses have a hands-off way to drive sales from Internet shoppers even if they do not currently have a web presence. Businesses can easily register as member stores and will be able to begin merchandising their products immediately. For a limited time, StepUp.com is allowing businesses to sign up as charter member stores for free, allowing them to merchandise their products without paying any product listing fees.

Tip o the hat: Gary.

UPDATE: Clickz has a review here.

Recall back in November, I wrote a column in Business 2.0 about "Why Blogs Mean Business"?

Businessweek now agrees.

Blogs, until recently almost exclusively the domain of geeks, alternative media, and celebrities, are turning into the cyber equivalent of the corner office.

I love it when a monthly beats a weekly to a story by nine months or so.

Cnet rounds it up, with pings to UCB, Brewster, MSFT Research (MyLifeBits), and WebFountain.

"Universal access to all human knowledge is within our grasp," Kahle said. "It could be one of the greatest achievements of all time."

Reuters has a short story here.

Under the settlement, which includes the dismissal of the patent suit, Google will license a patent held by Overture Services, which Yahoo acquired last year. The dispute over that patent had threatened Google's lucrative AdWords program, which serves up ads with search results linked to certain keywords.

Google will issue Class A stock for the patent license and to settle a dispute over a warrant issued to Yahoo to purchase Google shares. The companies did not elaborate.

And the Businesswire press release is here.

One of the most significant lawsuits standing in the way of Google's future is now gone, Google now has a license to Overture's IP, and Yahoo garnered another 2.7 million shares of its competitor's stock. Was it a good deal? Hard to say, but I'm looking forward to seeing the details of that license.

This just in from the Journal(sub required):

Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. settled disputes over patents and service agreements, with Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares to Yahoo.

Google agreed to license a patent held by Yahoo's Overture unit related to the way advertisements are attached to search results. Such advertising is a lucrative part of Google's business, and Yahoo had filed a patent lawsuit alleging that Google was inappropriately using a system developed by Overture. As part of Monday's agreement, Yahoo agreed to drop that lawsuit.

Yow. More to come.

Yahoo recently closed a deal to purchase a company in the Travel search space called FareChase. The acquisition was alluded to in a post on Yahoo Finance. I got the tip from competitor Sidestep. I have calls in to confirm (so far this has not been formally announced), but I think this is a done deal. I am told a news report has hit a registration only travel site called Travel Weekly, but I can't find it at the moment as I am not registered.

UPDATE: Update: Yahoo has confirmed they bought the company, more than a month ago. Why was this kept quiet? SEC rules did not require disclosure due to the small size of the deal...the statement they sent to me: "FareChase's travel expertise will help further Yahoo!'s goal to create the most comprehensive and relevant travel experience on the Web." Yahoo stressed this will not impact the Yahoo Travel! property in which Travelocity continues to be the exclusive partner. Well, maybe, but...I'm not sure about that long term!

Each year at SES, Google throws a party called The Google Dance, named after the "dance" that optimizers and marketers go through when dealing with Google's frequent updates to their index. Anyway, apparently this year they ran our of beer early. Yahoo took the opportunity to poke fun at Google for that fact. A Yahoo search for "ses party rule #1" yields a special hand coded top result: Never run out of beer.

Thanks to SEORoundtable for the tip.

There's blood in the water. WashPost (reg required) rounds up the scathing headlines and commentary here. The Merc, NYT, WSJ, the Post, the FT....the list goes on and on. The journos are piling on. And Google is in a quiet period, so it can't defend itself. But there are plenty of folks willing to say nasty things, especially those on Wall St. who felt snubbed by Google's middle finger of an S-1. As I wrote in April when the S-1 was first filed:

They've set themselves a very high long-term bar, claiming they will best the system, in essence. I think it will be very interesting to see how Wall Street responds. There is a chance, in the end, that the Street will feel slighted, and turn its back on the company.”

I've heard that the buzz on Wall St. is that there are not enough orders yet from institutional investors. I think this is hard to validate - sure, anyone can get two or three or four traders to tell you they do not plan to bid, but on the other hand, most who do plan to bid have no intention of telling anyone about it - by nature these traders are a secretive lot, and they don't want anyone asking the price they plan to bid. I asked a roomful of them the same question back in March, and not one hand went up. But I think that was because they don't want to tip thier hand...

However, if there were to be a draught of orders from big investors, who tend to buy and hold for a while, that would be a problem - Google could probably make it up with smaller investors, but the retail investors tend to be skittish and bolt at the first sign of trouble. Were that to happen, the stock would not be supported and could fall dramactically after its opening. That would be quite damaging to the company.

And if I recall correctly, all this hullabaloo about registering securities was reported by Google in the first S-1 way back in April. (I'm not saying it's not an issue, it certainly is.) Indeed, here is the text from the first version of the filing:

Shares issued, and option grants made, under our stock plans exceeded limitations in the federal and state securities laws.

Shares issued and options granted under our 1998 Stock Plan and our 2003 Stock Plan were not exempt from registration or qualification under federal and state securities laws and we did not obtain the required registrations or qualifications. Shares issued and options granted under our 2003 Stock Plan (No. 2) and our 2003 Stock Plan (No. 3) were not exempt from registration or qualification under federal securities laws and we did not obtain the required registrations or qualifications. As a result, we intend to make a rescission offer to the holders of these shares and options beginning approximately 30 days after the effective date of this registration statement. If this rescission is accepted, we could be required to make aggregate payments to the holders of these shares and options of up to $34 million plus statutory interest. Federal securities laws do not expressly provide that a rescission offer will terminate a purchaser’s right to rescind a sale of stock that was not registered as required. If any or all of the offerees reject the rescission offer, we may continue to be liable under federal and state securities laws for up to an aggregate amount of approximately $34 million plus statutory interest. See “Rescission Offer.”

I am not sure why this became a story late last week - though they did add another filing about the issue then, but it was not a new snag by then. Screwups like this are fairly common, from my limited experience. But there you have it.

Not to mention, it's a terrible time to be coming out, both seasonally - in the dog days of August - and given the state of the world: oil spikes, net stocks getting hammered, terrorism fears.

So the question now hangs in the air: might this thing be delayed, or even cancelled? Given the factors lined up against it, from the ones of their own creation to those external to the company, I certainly could see a delay in the cards. But a cancellation? Not likely in the long run.

UPDATE: Today the company filed the full rescission offer. In this document Google also notes that it mentioned this issue in its first filing, in April, and that this is not a new development.

WSJ (sub required) breaks the story with a hat tip to CNBC:

NEW YORK -- Google Inc. is delaying its IPO by a week because of logistical problems related to institutional investors registering to bid on the shares, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Officially, Google had never set a date for the deal, though people familiar with the matter had pegged the date for next week. What's more, Google had said it would be about a week from the time it activated the Web site on which investors can register until they priced. That site was activated last Friday.

Interesting that this is a one source story.

Update: The buzz on this is pretty negative, I sense folks want to believe the mighty has stumbled.

....is certainly flattery. I don't speak Chinese, but a former student pointed me to this new search site: Sogou - which means "search dog" in Chinese. This is the proprietary search offering from China net giant Sohu. Looks like Google meets Yahoo with Lycos' mascot. First covered at China Digital News, a Berkeley-based site I helped launch last year.

Now that it's official, the new owner of Lycos, Daum, gave an interview to the WSJ (sub required).

Daum is South Korea's biggest Internet-service provider, with more than 35 million registered members. It caters to a Korean audience with a vernacular Web portal that features shopping, games, chat rooms and job-hunting services.

In acquiring Lycos, Daum believes it can succeed in the U.S. market by introducing some of the hallmarks of its Korean service, such as features that allow users to build personalized multimedia Web sites. Daum also said it plans to upgrade Lycos's e-mail and search engine.

Hmmm...sounds familiar. Sounds just like another company with aspirations to enter the US market by buying a portal....oh yeah, Terra, former owner of Lycos. I dunno, but it seems like a rough time to be entering the portal wars in the US. Yahoo, Google and MSFT have fistfuls of cash and monster brands. Good luck Daum...but I smell another sale - maybe of component parts - in Lycos' future.

(thanks, Rafat)

Nanosys, the nanotech start up light on revenues but full of promises, canceled its IPO this week due to "adverse market conditions." I've seen this movie before, in 1996, and again in 2001. I've been wondering what's up with the IPO economy lately, a fragile place built on the tenuous foundation of investor psychology. And my gut says it's not a wonderful time to be going out. 2003 was a good year, overall, especially in the internet space. People started to believe again, interesting companies started making interesting products. And a slew of companies filed to go public, one right after the other.

For the most part, it's still true that great companies are still making great stuff, especially in the internet space. But right now, things look pretty grim in the world, and I sense as a society we're retreating once again into a somewhat grumpy, fearful place. As a result, IPOs leveraged over the future, like Nanosys, are being cancelled, IPOs that have narrow profit histories, like PlanetOut, are seeing their price range cut, and blockbusters, like Google, are being savaged by the pundits. Certainly it's a good thing that there's no appetite for hype in the world. But if I had my druthers, we'd still have a taste for hope.

Cnet bought search.com a long time ago, and had big plans for it back in the Snap days. When I visited with Halsey (the founding CEO) a while back, he told me a story of how he got tons of guff for thinking that search was going to be a big deal. Now Cnet has updated search.com, now a metasearch site, with various bells and whistles. Gary, though, is not impressed...in a brief review, he concludes there's not too much that's really new in the update.

Former ML analyst Henry Blodget, the high flyer who fell from grace, is finding his voice over at Slate. He's got a barn burner up right now on the Google IPO:

If we were acting rationally, we would just decide to invest in Google (or not) after the stock started trading, when we knew what we could buy it for, rather than now, when we have to guess. Because one goal of the auction is to reduce or eliminate the first-day pop, "winning" the auction won't likely lead to the instant bonanza that usually makes people salivate about getting IPO shares. But, then again, other forms of entertainment—dinner and a show, say, or a visit to the circus—also waste money and time, and they're wildly popular....

...As for what other bidders will do, I suspect that many will play the Google auction game for the same reasons I plan to: out of curiosity and fun and/or the remote possibility of getting shares at a reasonable price. Some others, unfortunately, will probably participate because they "like the company" or "want to make money" or some other idiotic reason, and regardless of the outcome, some percentage of this group will probably sue.

My favorite quote? Plays off the "Don't touch the Google IPO" meme we've all seen in the press lately:

For the sake of balance, it bears noting that we will have the best odds of winning (making money, not just getting shares) if most potential bidders are so terrified of losing that they don't bid: This will allow us to aim low, get stock, and then benefit when the great prudent majority—which refrained from bidding on the auction—piles on in the aftermarket. To maximize our chances, therefore, we should preach (preferably on national television) that participating in the auction is a terrible idea. In the months since Google announced the auction, scores of experts have done this. Many of them are probably now formulating bids.

Tip o' the hat to JH....

Check out this new survey from Harris Interactive and MSN...39 percent of us have done a vanity search for their own name. Immortality, ho....

This week is SES San Jose, a monster of an event that I usually attend. But I'm denying myself all sorts of things in order to focus on the book, so unfortunately I won't be there. However, Beal's site is doing a fine job covering the event, including this interesting summary of "Inside the Searcher's Mind" session featuring Google's Marissa Mayer.

Update: Very comprehensive coverage can be found at SEORoundTable.com as well....

I'm slow to report the news here (the embargo lifted last night at 9 pm) but today Yahoo launched its local search product. I was on an informal "advisory board" for this product, but I have to admit that my focus on the book did not allow me to be very engaged. However I did get to play with it early, and found it pretty damn good.

Chris Sherman of SEW agrees, his write up is here. He notes the major features, the clean interface, and the elegant "refine" features that let you zero in on lists of search results. He quotes Jeff Weiner on the goal:

"Our mission is to understand intention of user, to help them complete tasks as quickly as possible," said Jeff Weiner, senior vice president, search and marketplace, sharply contrasting Yahoo's approach with Google's mission "to make the world's information universally accessible and useful."

You know what a sucker I am for intent-based media. Net net: I like Yahoo Local, and plan to use it, at least for now.

Udpate: I should have pointed out that Ask has a new local search product as well, clearly timed to Yahoo's news as it's a partnership with Citysearch, which Yahoo used to use...CNET coverage...

(full release for Yahoo Local in "continue reading" link...)

Continue reading "Yahoo Launches Yahoo Local Beta" »

Mark Cuban is banging the drum for IceRocket, the latest metasearch tool to challenge the Google/Yahoo hegemony. In his post "Watch Out Google...Here We Come!": Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, founder of Broadcast.com, soon to be TV star (The Benefactor, this Fall), and Web 2.0 speaker, claims any number of innovative features in the new site:

Im not involved in the day to day, Ive offered to help come up with some unique features that hopefully can allow them to seperate from the pack. To me, this is a unique way to “design my own search engine”. The features that are and will be included, are the things I look for when Im doing my searches.

Web Search
- Thumbnail photos of results homepages…..- one of the things i hate about all search engines is that you click on a site hoping for a quality site, and you get an empty or shell website. The photos of the site give a quick look so you can see before you click. This can be turned on or off
- Quick View….Without leaving the results of search page, you can see the top 40 pct of the destination page as a short cut to deciding if the site is what you are looking for. If its what you want, a quick click and the page opens up completely
- Info - This is the traffic ranking from Alexa. It lets you know before you click whether anyone else goes to the site according to Alexa.

The site also offers news and picture search, and "Find a Friend" - which searches personals, far as I can tell. My quick take: nothing really unique here, but it's great to see yet another player in the field. And yes, Mark invested in Mamma.com just a year or so ago...he offered no comment on why he's all over IceRocket now....If you want a quick take on the service, read the comments on Mark's post, they are mixed...

Rich emails me to say that his baby Topix has gotten even better. Gary has a review of it here. New features from his mail are listed in the "continue reading" link...

Continue reading "Topix Gets Better" »

For your IPO grokking pleasure, CNBC correspondent Cory Johnson has sent along an updated Excel-based model of Google's financials. (Cory also interviewed me for his ongoing coverage of Google, rumor has it he even used some of it....) He's uploaded the income statement and balance sheet, and added some valuation, share count, TAC, and revenue growth metrics as well. Yahoo is used as a comp. The TAC metrics/gross revenues are new since the last amended S1. Change forward revenues and margins and see for yourself what happens to the stock price!

Click here to download it.

WashPost (reg required) today:

TiVo, the company that makes the digital-video-recorder boxes that inspire such strange idolatry among their users, is in a weird spot. It's asking the Federal Communications Commission for permission to add a new feature -- the option for a TiVo user to send recorded digital TV programs via the Internet to nine other people. ...
...For this, the company has drawn the ire of the National Football League and the Motion Picture Association of America, which have asked the FCC to deny TiVo's proposal.
The NFL says that TiVo's Internet-sharing feature will allow people to send game broadcasts to blacked-out viewers in real time (a team's home game can be aired locally only if it sells out beforehand).

I don't know about you, but sending multi-gigabyte three-hour files around the net is not my idea of fun, at least until the Koreans show up with fiber to the home.

What I *do* want to do is cut and paste clips from shows I'm watching that I find interesting, illuminating, or funny and send them as email or IM or cel clips to my friends, and I may well want to send more than *nine*, for chrissakes. The ability to comment upon, promote, append, adapt, and tinker with my media is what I want. I have NO INTEREST in hijacking re-runs of "Friends" and sharing them with my real friends. Hey TiVo and the content cabal: You want to put in technology that stops me from doing that? Be my guest. But don't kill the ability to cut and paste, comment, collaborate, edit, append, amend - you know, all the things that we can do right now with text and images. That's what built the web, you dunderheads, and it's what will ultimately save your business, if you could simply stop driving by looking over your shoulder. Grrrrrrr.

More from the Post:

(Tivo's) proposed system is thoroughly hobbled. The people to whom you'd send recordings online would need you to add them to a "secure viewing group" by ordering special security keys for their Windows computers, associated with your TiVo bill. Each viewer would need to plug one such key into a PC to receive, watch or edit your recordings.

Hobbled? More like insidious, stupid, dumb as a sack of hammers. Jesus.

Hat tip to loonyblog for the image.