Searchblog Takes a Vacation

I'm off early Saturday to Florida, visiting relatives, giving a talk, hanging with my family, and focusing on writing. So Searchblog is taking a week off, save the occasional drop in to clean up comment spam, or to note major news (like Google buying Microsoft, or something). I'll be back at it, sunburned, rested, and ready, next weekend. If you need me, drop a line at jbat at battellemedia dot com. (Yes, I've already voted, and I hope you all will as well!).

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:10 PM
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Joho Sez: Could Be a World Browser

Interesting speculation from David Weinberger on what Keyhole might mean if mixmashed with the Google Browser rumors.

It would not be a Web browser. It'd be a world browser. It would find pages on the Web, of course, but it'd also find the ones on my desktop (Google desktop). It would know about my email (Gmail). It would know that my own photos are categorically different from all the other jpgs on the planet (Picasa). It would let me browse the physical earth (Keyhole) and show on a map the documents that talk about any particular place (Keyhole + Google Local).

And it wouldn't be just a browser. It would let me work with the information I've found: Manage my photos (Picasa), manage my desktop files, translate documents (Google Languages), shop...

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:39 AM
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JotSpot Finds A Need

Pleased to report that Joe and Graham's JotSpot, which launched at Web 2.0, has nearly 3000 beta users since launch, and is really starting to take off.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:30 AM
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Ram Shriram on Google, Mistakes

Silicon Beat has an overview of a recent talk given by Ram Shriram, early Google investor and Board member.

-- It’s all in the grooming. Shriram set out to made sure Page & Brin hired only the very best, or “A” people. He cited the well-known Silicon Valley tenet: Hire only A people, and they’ll hire other A people. If you hire the B person, they’ll hire C or D people. Someone asked a good question: How did Shriram decide who are a so-called “A” people? Grooming is a part of it. “I try to find out who their mothers are,” he said. If they are raised well, they’re more likely to make good citizens, employees and entrepreneurs.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:26 AM
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One Man Decides To Forego The Google Gauntlet

Google is famous for their hiring practices, it's apparently not a picnic to get hired there, and they clearly are looking for very specific things. Russell Beattie, who is pretty well known for his chops in the mobile space, writes from the heart about his decision to bail on the whole Google hiring process. Interesting to see how Google is being viewed by those who might join it.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:07 PM
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Yang on Search

Jerry Yang on the future of search over in Yahoo's Search Blog. Nothing mind blowing here, save it's sure nice to see Jerry blogging.

Ten years ago, we were focused on a simple yet vast problem: finding better ways to aggregate and organize information so people can find it. Today, the challenge is different. On the one hand, there's a lot more information to aggregate and it's not just more in terms of quantity; there's a larger variety of content as well -- from products and images to news and business information. In addition, we're pulling content from more sources than ever before.

That's what is exciting about where we are today. Search as a problem is still far from being solved. The user is in the driver's seat: they want an experience that is increasingly personal, more relevant, and ties into their task more integrally. Search is just a way to get that integrated experience, but it's all about what the users want - when they want it, how they want it, and who they want it from.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:28 AM
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Search For Contributors In Your (Or Whoever's) Neighborhood

Fundrace: Now this is what I call geolocation search. Search for contributors in your area to either Democrats or Republicans. All based on public records. Powerful stuff.

Update: Gary posts and points to this site as well as others...

Hat tip: Metafilter.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:34 AM
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It's Hard to Sell Ads to Plumbers

For some odd reason I find the Yellow Pages interesting, always have. There's something about them that just reeks of...opportunity. Apparently Google agrees. They inked a deal with BellSouth's Yellow Pages unit, a deal which let's BellSouth resell AdWords. In other words, this is a new strategy for Google - BellSouth is the first ever company to have rights to resell Google's AdWords. If it works, it may have far reaching implications.

So why did they do it? Local, local, local. It's very hard to sell AdWords to plumbers. The Yellow Pages have reps who already sell ads to them. It's all about the trenches in the Local market.

I've covered the YP before, here and here and here.

Release in extended entry. Also, see SEW coverage.

BellSouth's Alliance with Google Connects RealPages.com Advertisers to Local
Consumers

RealSearch Customers Can Take Advantage of Google AdWords

ATLANTA & MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - October 28, 2004 - RealPages.comR from
BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) the Southeast's leading online yellow pages and
Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), developer of the award-winning GoogleR search
engine, today announced an agreement whereby RealPages.com will become the
first yellow pages publisher authorized to sell advertising through Google
AdWordsR to small and medium-sized local businesses.

Under the multi-year agreement, BellSouth will include Google AdWords as an
integral part of its RealSearch offering, a patent-pending search engine
marketing service designed for small and medium-sized local businesses. By
aligning with the BellSouth salesforce, Google can now reach more small and
medium-sized local businesses in the Southeast with Google AdWords. With
AdWords, Google's performance-based search advertising program, advertisers
present marketing messages to potential customers at the precise moment they
are looking for information related to the products and services the
advertiser offers. Google AdWords enables select RealSearch customers to
generate leads across the Google Network, which reaches more than 80 percent
of U.S. Internet users through sites such as Google.com, AOL, BellSouth.Net,
and Earthlink among others (source: MediaMetrix, September 2004).

"Helping our advertisers grow their businesses is at the core of The Real
Yellow Pages and RealPages.com's success," said Elmer Smith, president of
BellSouth Advertising & Publishing. "We believe this partnership will allow
RealSearch customers to take advantage of the extensive reach of the Google
Network, which will aid them in attracting more and more customers."

"Our relationship with BellSouth enables Google to leverage an established,
market-leading salesforce to reach small and medium-sized local businesses
across the Southeast," said Sukhinder Singh, general manager of Google Local
and Third Party Sales. "Google is excited to add a new way to reach
prospective advertisers, while continuing to provide users with relevant
local information and advertisements."

Google currently provides advertisers with the ability to reach customers in
local markets through a variety of AdWords targeting options including
regional and city level, as well as through an address-based radius feature
or by specifying latitude and longitude points.

With RealSearch Engine Solutions from BellSouth, advertisers reach potential
customers when consumers are actively looking for information about products
and services online. BellSouth offers a full-service solution that sends a
guaranteed number of targeted visitors from search engines directly to a
customer's website.

Smith said by managing the local search solution for advertisers, BellSouth
is saving its customers time and money and allowing them to benefit from
search engine marketing while maintaining focus on their day-to-day business
operations.
"The phenomenal growth of local search, combined with BellSouth's
one-of-a-kind RealSearch product incorporating Google's AdWords, positions
BellSouth as a primary partner for our online advertisers," Smith said.

According to The Kelsey Group, provider of strategic research, analysis,
data and competitive metrics on yellow pages, electronic directories and
local media, the local paid search advertising market generated $45 million
in 2003 and is expected to reach as high as $2.5 billion by 2008 in
advertising revenue.

Businesses interested in more information on RealSearch Engine Solutions
from BellSouth can visit www.advertising.realpages.com.

The agreement is the expansion of an alliance that was announced earlier
this year. In April, the two companies announced an agreement whereby
Google's search results and targeted advertisements were made available
through BellSouth's Internet services home page www.bellsouth.net for
Internet customers.

About BellSouth Advertising and Publishing BellSouth Advertising &
Publishing Corporation (BAPCO) is the leading provider of print and Internet
Yellow Pages products in the southeast. BAPCO and LM Berry Company, a wholly
owned subsidiary of BellSouth, publishes 63 million copies of the print
Yellow Pages in more than 500 editions in the nine-state BellSouth region.
Users referred to The Real Yellow PagesR from BellSouth nearly 2 billion
times last year and made nearly 160 million searches on RealPages.comR
(www.realpages.com). The Real Yellow Pages is a powerful information
resource, linking buyers and sellers, with approximately 85 percent of
consumers who reference the directories' most frequently used headings
making a purchase based on their findings.

About BellSouth Corporation
BellSouth Corporation is a Fortune 100 communications services company
headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth serves nearly 50 million local,
long distance, Internet and wireless customers in the United States and 12
other countries.

Consistently recognized for customer satisfaction, BellSouth provides
complete communications solutions to the residential and business markets.
In the residential market, BellSouth offers DSL high-speed Internet access
and long distance, advanced voice features and other services. The company's
BellSouth Answers package combines local and long distance service with an
array of calling features; wireless data, voice and e-mail services; and
high-speed DSL or dial-up Internet service and Cingular Wireless. In the
business market, BellSouth serves small, medium and large businesses
providing secure, reliable local and long distance voice and data networking
solutions. BellSouth also provides online and directory advertising services
through RealPages.comR and The Real Yellow Pages from BellSouthR. BellSouth
owns 40 percent of Cingular Wireless, the nation's second largest wireless
company, which provides innovative wireless voice and data services.

About Google Inc.
Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around
the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D.
students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in
all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program, which is
the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all
sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience
for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout
North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

# # #

Google and AdWords are registered trademarks of Google Inc. All other
company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with
which they are associated.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:59 AM
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Biz 2 Column: Dave Dorman

Dave Dorman is a hoot to talk with. Who else would call his competitors a "leper colony"?
This interview is in this month's Business 2.0.

TITANS OF TECH
Dorman's Calling
The CEO of AT&T is on a mission to restore his company to greatness. His plan: Use the Internet to unplug the competition.

By John Battelle, November 2004 Issue

Is David Dorman a telecom lifer or a startup survivor? In truth, he's both. He started out working at Sprint, then became CEO of Pacific Bell, where he created the first regional-phone-company Internet service provider. He then took a detour into the dotcom world, where he led PointCast, a much-hyped "push" technology company, until shortly before it went under. Chastened, he returned to the business he knew best: telecom.

But as it turned out, someone who'd tried out an untested new business model was exactly who Ma Bell would need. When Dorman joined AT&T (T) in late 2000, then-CEO Michael Armstrong held a grand vision for integrating what Dorman calls the "magic five" -- local, long distance, high-speed data, wireless, and video. But things didn't turn out as planned. Instead of reigning over a vast telecom empire, Dorman ended up leading AT&T through the most perilous period in its 127-year history. Teetering finances forced Armstrong to divest wireless and cable. Factor in a recent regulatory decision that Dorman claims left him no choice but to abandon AT&T's residential phone business -- which represents about 25 percent of the company's revenue -- and it's no wonder Wall Street is tepid about AT&T's prospects.

Dorman responds by pointing out that AT&T is the clear leader in providing networking to Fortune 500 companies, and, he says, his competitors are in shambles. More intriguing, he has a strategy to put AT&T back on top.

It's clear that Dorman grasps the disruptive nature of the Internet. Right now the Net is changing voice -- Dorman really lights up when you ask him about CallVantage, AT&T's voice-over-IP service. But at some point, it could lead to video-over-IP, a potential competitor to cable. Add it all up -- the old long-distance and high-speed data businesses, CallVantage, a new wireless play, maybe even video -- and Dorman may be rebuilding AT&T into the company he once thought he would lead, one magic-five application at a time.

When you announced you were leaving the residential telephone business, your share price dropped. Why do you think the markets reacted negatively?

We don't have to have residential telephone business to be a successful company. So many of the stories I've seen say, "They're going to go away. It's over."

That question's on my list here ...

This is a $30 billion company, and consumer is $8 billion of that. I've got the best business-services franchise in the world. And I've got a leper colony of competitors. We know what MCI's been through. Sprint -- they're a wireless company, just ask them. And you look at the rest of the guys -- Qwest (Q), XO Communications, Wiltel, Level 3. Is a major company like Citigroup (C) or J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) going to bet on someone like that vs. going with us?

Your industry has not covered itself in glory these past five years -- MCI, for starters.

You know something people didn't understand? A big part of Tyco's (TYC) value was TyCom -- an optical network. And Enron had $30 billion-plus of its market cap based on its broadband-trading business. So the three biggest frauds in American history had a direct impact on telecom. Add Qwest and Global Crossing, and we had five major catastrophes in the industry. AT&T didn't cause that; we just have to deal with the aftermath.

Must be fun to be a telecom CEO.

It was a great thing 10 years ago. We're in a cycle. The most frustrating, gut-wrenching thing for me is, I can't tell you how long the cycle's going to last. But the overcapacity will get reconciled. If we didn't have Qwest fighting for its life and MCI fighting for its life, prices would stabilize.

(more in extended entry...read on, it's a fun one)

You're leaving the residential business because the government let stand an FCC ruling that favored the Baby Bells. What do you wish the government would do?

The telecom industry for 14 years had no policy. AT&T wrote its own divestiture accord and came up with this idea to separate local and long distance -- in order for AT&T to compete with IBM (IBM) in the computer business. I mean, that was the thesis: "We want to keep Western Electric because the future is computers."

That didn't work out so well.

The way I look at it is, you can't keep changing your mind, right? Now I'm not even going to try to argue more regulation or less regulation. I'm not going to try to outguess the next sitting chairman of the FCC or the next president. I have to make decisions that last through administrations.

So what do you think of FCC chairman Michael Powell? He's prone to saying that regulation is not needed, as technology solves the market's problems.

Michael Powell is a smart guy, but he has an aspirational model for competition that most Americans can't take advantage of. If you really want to be just super-ass generous, 4 million people today buy local telephone service from a cable company or a VOIP provider. But 20 million people once bought service on phone lines leased from the Baby Bells.

So when you decided to stop marketing traditional residential service, those customers lost.

I have an amazing ability to produce long-distance minutes, but I don't own a local network. If I don't have access to the Bells' network on a cost-effective basis, how am I going to provide local service in the short term? Powell's answer is, Go do broadband over power line, or go do Wi-Max. I say, "OK, great, how much will it cost? Can I get the approvals? Can I relocate the ham-radio operators?"

If I went out tomorrow and said, "You know what, I'm going to be a real man. I'm wiring L.A. Tomorrow the backhoes are showing up; we're going to do it," how long do you think it would take me? Ten years!

Yet with CallVantage, your new VOIP product, and recent announcements about a new wireless business, it doesn't sound like you're leaving the consumer marketplace.

We have a great brand. The question is, Can that brand work for other people? Look at how Intel's (INTC) brand, for example, helps Dell (DELL). Today we carry more than 50 percent of the wireless industry's long-distance minutes, between T-Mobile, Verizon, Cingular, and guys like that. The consumer doesn't know he's using AT&T, but we carry the traffic. I think in VOIP we have the same kind of opportunity.

And while AT&T spun off its wireless business, you now have a deal where Sprint will be the network provider for a new AT&T-branded wireless service.

This is opportunism. Day one after the Cingular deal closes, I can start selling the AT&T Wireless (AWE) name again. There are 22 million consumers who made an affirmative decision to buy something from AT&T Wireless. Virgin Mobile is a reseller of Sprint's network. They pioneered the concept of taking a brand that works and applying it to wireless. We think there's a segment of the marketplace that will pick an AT&T-branded product.

Like Virgin, you can build a business on Sprint's network.

Eureka!

Are you getting credit for that plan yet in your stock price?

We're getting zero. We haven't given the Street details.

Let's step back a second and review how you ended up running AT&T. As I recall, you got this job by asking your board to shut down Concert, a joint venture between AT&T and British Telecom you were running.

They had committed to doing an IPO to finance the business. AT&T and BT were very distracted. My point was, "Look, if you're not going to do this, we're better off not going any further." I was prepared just to walk away. That's when Armstrong said, "I've got these other problems …"

But when you took the AT&T job, you had to believe you were going to be running a massive cable/telephone play. Now you've got less debt but also fewer companies.

Armstrong believed that he could accomplish a complete remake of AT&T. He had the right pieces, but it needed to be managed better. He largely kept wireless, cable, consumer, and business as separate operating entities. To me the great value was consolidating the consumer franchise, having one place where you sold it all. A bundled set of assets, the magic five: local, long distance, high-speed data, wireless, and video.

So do you wish the cable divestiture hadn't happened?

Well, I wish that wireless hadn't happened more, because wireless I think was more central to the core business. But I'd love to have had both of them.

Why, in the end, did AT&T sell off wireless and cable?

By the summer of 2000, Chuck Noski, the CFO, had pretty much pegged it: We cannot finance these three businesses with $65 billion in debt. We had $5 billion of interest expense. Coming up on 2001, MCI was starting to shudder, the whole bubble had burst. It was getting ugly. In October, AT&T said, "We're going to break the company up."

So you knew what you were getting into.

We were going to IPO the wireless business -- it wasn't clear that we were going to spin it off. And cable, we said, we will probably IPO in another year. I think in Armstrong's mind it meant that he could still keep it together. Then, of course, Brian Roberts did his bear hug.

What's your view of Comcast? You're partners now, right?

We have a marketing agreement selling cable voice-over-IP. It has proven to be a fairly good operator in an environment that is changing dramatically. The wild cards of Dish Network and Rupert Murdoch's DirecTV, the telcos overbuilding, downloads from the Internet, the DVR -- all of that is dramatically changing its core video business.

Why should I keep giving $115 a month to Comcast if I can download video to my TiVo over broadband, right?

I think you're right, in the long term. And Murdoch's launching more satellites and completely transforming the viewing experience with all kinds of camera angles. The cable guys fear Murdoch. He has an inverse model to theirs -- maximize content value, make others pay highly.

Cable has built its defensibility on a gatekeeper model: "We own the path video takes to the home."

Absolutely. And the cable model is forever altered by new distribution mechanisms for content owners who have every incentive to give you different ways to get to them.

The same goes for the Baby Bells as well, right?

Yes. Ultimately they have to own broadband to your house. When they lose it to cable, it's really tough to get it back, and that's the reason they're selling DSL cheaper and cheaper. If they don't win this, they lose it all.

And what about you? Will you go after cable's business again? When video-over-IP becomes a reality, perhaps?

We're an application-hosting business. We have giant servers and giant storage. We're clearly capable of delivering video over our network; we're doing it now.

To finish, let's do a little exercise. I'll say a word and you give me the first thought that comes to your head. OK?

Sure.

OK. Skype.

Disruptive technology.

Lucent.

Tough hand.

The government.

Impedance.

Baby Bells.

Monopolists.

The Internet.

The universe.

The telecom industry.

Perfect storm.

John Battelle is program chair of the Web 2.0 conference and author of "The Search" (Portfolio, 2005).

Find this article at http://www.business2.com/b2/subscribers/articles/0,17863,710051,00.html

©2004 Business 2.0 Media Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:16 PM
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KeyGoog Update: Hanke speaks

Just off the phone with John Hanke, former CEO of Keyhole, now GM of the Keyhole unit of Google. We spoke about the implications of Keyhole's acquisition. A few things stand out.

First and foremost, Keyhole is in the Holy Crap That's A Lot of Data business - that alone is reason for Google to be interested. Their database stands at 12 terabytes and growing. It covers more than 50 percent of the earth's population, and includes satellite imagery, mapping data, topographic overlays, and, pay attention here, geolocation-based content tags. In fact, in his presentation at Web 2.0, Hanke showed an application, which he called geoblogging, which allows folks to fly around Keyhole's data and annotate various things they see. "They identify a spot, then talk about it, upload pictures they took there, whatever," Hanke told me. "That then becomes an icon, a point in the Keyhole database" that others can view and comment upon. (Want to check it out? Head here.)

The idea is to bring the Force of the Many and the Architecture of Participation(caveat, PDF download) to a visualization of the earth. Jaw dropping yet? But wait, there's more. Hanke also showed the overlay of real time traffic information from third party sources, like the CalTrans traffic feed. Mapping data to geography will allow for multitudes of such applications. Imagine Google scaling Keyhole to all web surfers for free, and then opening up the APIs for all to develop on.

Yowza.

Hanke told me that when he started Keyhole he and his team had a dream of building a revolutionary product that "touched millions and millions of people." Reality intervened as the bubble burst and resources became dear. But with Google now in the picture, that dream is once again alive, Hanke says. "We could have remained an independent company," he told me. "But the power of the Google brand, the infrastructure..." Not to mention, Hanke added, Google's mission, which fits nicely with Keyhole's.

Will Google let Hanke realize his dream, and keep doing all the cools things Keyhole was attempting to do? I asked Hanke if it'd be a fair assumption to make that he'd only sell his company to someone who shared his passions and his dreams. His response? Yup, that's a fair assumption.

NB: Gary notes in his post that there are other players in this field, notably TerraFly. Take note, Yahoo....

Hat tip: Jeremy for blogging the conference, thanks.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:56 AM
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Yahoo Mobilizes

Yahoo announced a "new suite of services for the mobile user" today. More details, head here.
Release is in extended entry.

Yahoo! Search Goes Mobile

to Help Consumers Find Local Information, Images and Resources Whenever and Wherever They Want

Yahoo! is Combining its Leading Search Technology and Mobile Internet Expertise

to Deliver a Unique Search Solution for Consumers on the Go

San Francisco, CA – October 27, 2004 – Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), a leading global Internet company, announced the debut of a new suite of search services for mobile users at the CTIA conference today.  As part of Yahoo!’s commitment to extending its leading services beyond the desktop, this new search offering enables mobile consumers to search for local information, images and Web resources on mobile devices. The service launches today on Yahoo!’s wireless Internet portal on several major carriers across the United States.

“The launch of Yahoo! Search for Mobile is a crucial step in providing consumers with a new and powerful point of access to our search products,” said Dan Rosensweig, chief operating officer for Yahoo! Inc.  “With the launch of Yahoo! Search for Mobile devices, we’ve taken our expertise in providing mobile Internet services and our Yahoo! Search Technology, and combined that with our understanding of consumer’s wants and needs.  We are empowering consumers to get what they want, how they want it, when they want it and where they want it.”

Take Yahoo! Search with You
Yahoo! Search (search.yahoo.com) has created a new mobile Web search experience for consumers, on multiple devices and across multiple networks, that is easy to use, and presented in a full-color, graphical way. Yahoo! Search now brings relevant, comprehensive and useful information to the mobile environment for consumers on the go. Consumers can get started using the service on a data-enabled mobile device by going to Yahoo!’s Mobile Internet site or simply typing in mobile.yahoo.com. For more information on carrier and device availability from the desktop go to http://mobile.yahoo.com. Key features of the new mobile search include:

Yahoo! Local
▪ Local information about businesses across the country – from the Web’s the No. 1 destination for people looking for local information online
▪ Everything from restaurants to dry cleaners – including business name, address, phone number and a full-color map with driving directions.
▪ Access to saved and recently used locations from desktop and ability to directly place a call from the search results page
▪ Professional and community generated ratings

Yahoo! Image search
▪ Search for and view thumbnails of more than one billion images

Yahoo! Web search
▪ Access to relevant and comprehensive search results powered by Yahoo! Search Technology (available only on html capable mobile devices)
▪ “Search Shortcuts” that enable quick access to information, including weather, stock quotes, sport scores, flight information and more. For example, consumers can search for the latest score on a baseball game by typing in a team name and the word score, and the first result will be an updated score of the current game along with the time left in the game.

Extending Yahoo! Beyond the Desktop
Through Yahoo! Mobile, Yahoo! focuses on extending key Yahoo! services beyond the desktop, providing an integrated PC-to-Mobile experience and making the most of the mobile environment. As the number of mobile consumers continues to grow rapidly, Yahoo! Mobile has rolled out mobile extensions of key services in the past year such as Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Photos, across multiple carriers. Yahoo! continues to improve and innovate on its offerings for mobile consumers and works closely with the major mobile carrier partners to deliver these to the widest possible audience.

“Yahoo! is committed to partnering with carriers to give consumers the most robust and integrated Internet services across mobile devices,” said Doug Garland, senior vice president, Yahoo! Mobile. “By bringing together our strong consumer relationships and knowledge with our deep experience in successfully developing mobile services that integrate the desktop experience we have built truly differentiated and relevant mobile search experience.”

About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading provider of comprehensive online products and services to consumers and businesses worldwide. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and the most trafficked Internet destination worldwide. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo!'s global network includes 25 world properties and is available in 13 languages.

# # #

Yahoo! and the Yahoo! logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Yahoo! Inc.

All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners

Contacts:
Yahoo! Inc.
Nicole Leverich, 408-349-5583
nicolelw@yahoo-inc.com

Fleishman-Hillard for Yahoo! Inc.
Tara Kirchner, 415-318-4121
kirchnet@fleishman.com

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:03 AM
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Google Buys Keyhhole: Mapping Ho

One of the most jaw dropping presentations at Web 2.0 was by the folks at Keyhole, who have some amazing technology for manipulating satellite images of the earth. The images are incredible, but the implications of their tech is what makes your jaw drop. In short, the application seems to turn the world into a searchable visualization. Hmmm.

Today, Google purchased them. More soon. Release in extended entry.

Google Acquires Keyhole Corp

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - October 27, 2004 - Google Inc. (Nasdaq:
GOOG) today announced it acquired Keyhole Corp., a Mountain View,
Calif.-based digital mapping company.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"With Keyhole, you can fly like a superhero from your computer at
home to a street corner somewhere else in the world - or find a
local hospital, map a road trip or measure the distance between two
points," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president, Product
Management. "This acquisition gives Google users a powerful new
search tool, enabling users to view 3D images of any place on earth
as well as tap a rich database of roads, businesses and many other
points of interest. Keyhole is a valuable addition to Google's
efforts to organize the world's information and make it universally
accessible and useful."

With an Internet connection, users enter an address or other
location information and Keyhole's software accesses the database
and takes them to a digital image of that location on their computer
screen. The interactive software then gives users many options,
including the ability to zoom in from space-level to street-level,
tilt and rotate the view or search for other information such as
hotels, parks, ATMs or subways. Unlike traditional mapping
technologies, Keyhole creates a dynamic 3D interface for geographic
information.

Keyhole's technology combines a multi-terabyte database of mapping
information and images collected from satellites and airplanes with
easy-to-use software.

Google also announced, effective immediately, a price reduction for
Keyhole 2 LT from $69.95 to $29.95.

Keyhole was founded in 2001. Keyhole customers include consumers,
large and small businesses and public agencies. Current Keyhole
users will benefit from the expanded resources and operational scale
made possible by the integration into Google. Their service will
continue uninterrupted.

For a free, seven-day trial of Keyhole, please go to www.keyhole.com.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:50 AM
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Gary Finds MSN Interface

The inestimable Gary Price noodled around the MSN search preview site and found something he probably wasn't supposed to. The page has since been taken down, but Gary has screen shots (here and here too) and a summary of the MSN search interface he found there. Good work Gary!

...what I found most interesting, an option to use three "sliders" to manipulate the ranking of pages. In other words, add or reduce the weight of certain ranking factors. Some might even call it personalization since the results I see might be different than the ones someone else views for the identical search.
The sliders are labeled:
+ Updated recently--Static
+ Very popular--Less popular
+ Approximate match--Exact match

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:59 PM
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Meeker on Digital World: Blogs, Yahoo Are Winners

Sure, Mary Meeker raised her target on GOOG recently, which her company Morgan Stanley helped take public, but she's seen the future of search, and there's a lot of blogging in it. From her October "Update on the Digital World" (caveat: PDF download):

The Internet has become a leading source for news and information over the past decade, but we believe the emerging acceptance (by users and publishers) of Web content syndication services will drive even broader / deeper usage of the Internet as an increasingly relevant news and information medium. We see three factors that are combining to drive momentum: 1) rising usage of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) by content providers as a standard distribution platform for online content; 2) ramp in the creation of blogs and other user-generated content; and 3) Yahoo!’s easy-to-use integration of RSS feeds (including blogs) that was rolled out in beta to its distribution channel of 25MM+ My Yahoo! users in late September.

...And if there are hundreds or thousands of thought leaders and motivated, interested parties on the Internet with the ability to publish news or insights into any number of local or global issues, then it is safe to say that these blogs often become both the first source of news, a vital proving ground for authors and a source of potential community for other interested parties. For example, you’re probably going to get far more Boston Red Sox specific-content from a blog about the Red Sox made by a die-hard fan than you will from a random sports page, especially if you’re after opinions and community.

Mary then goes on to note that with blogs, the Power of the Tail comes into play (see Tim and my presentation regarding this and other trends at Web 2.0):

The mainstreaming of Web syndication technology such as RSS through easy-to-use and popular services such as My Yahoo! could create a new business model / revenue stream for companies such as Yahoo!, as well as independent freelance Web journalists / content providers. We believe that blogs represent the traditionally hard-tomonetize tail of content, and the barriers to monetization are slowly being overcome. ... By integrating blogs with search, and by making it easy for end-users to find and add blogs, Yahoo! is playing a key role in driving blog readership and RSS usage among endusers.

Meeker then shows us another chart, which makes the "more music, less Britney" point:

This is another way of saying that the internet lets thousands of "bands" flourish, each supported by their own economies of scale.

Which is why I'm interested in and excited by Feedburner, Kanoodle, AdBrite (recently renamed from MarketBanker), and the like. In her report, Mary talks a bit about the potential for all this to mean money to someone (after all, she's a Wall St. analyst) and she concludes:

We believe syndication technology is one of the tools that through a virtuous cycle should propel Internet leaders such as Yahoo! further into the forefront of all media, albeit slowly and steadily. High-quality, unique, and cutting-edge content is critical for the growth of any medium. We believe advertising and fees for syndicated content present a potential business opportunity for the Internet leaders and content providers.
...We would like to think that the popularization of syndicated content could further fulfill some promise of an engaging, useful and vibrant user-generated medium on the Internet. This does not suggest the endof mass media, either broadcast or narrowcast, but it could represent significant changes in consumption andmonetization. If the Internet is a marketplace of ideas, then the best ideas should float to the top, with traditional mass media perhaps serving as a tool for legitimizing/establishing discourse. The driver for Yahoo!, eBay, Google, Microsoft and Amazon.com’s Internet successes has been their never-ending quest tocreate the perfect, seamless user experience—in other words, they do right by their users. What open syndication shows is that by doing right by their users and independent publishers, they also have the potential ability to do right by investors, in our view.

I think Mary outlines trends in this space well, her report is a must read for all of you interested in the business implications of blogging. Her conclusion: This blogging thing, it got legs. And that's a fine way to end my 1,000th post here on Searchblog.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:34 AM
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The Rule of Ten

Caveat: Totally off topic (sort of).

For some reason, I grow uneasy if I have more than ten emails unanswered in my inbox. I'll stay at my computer late, I'll forego creature comforts, if it means I can get the message queue down to ten or less before I sleep.

Lately this has become difficult, as the number of fun and/or important time requests, or reads/groks/responds, or emails that force other actions have risen to the point where my inbox often demands more of me than I can reasonably give.

A quick spin through my inbox reveals: A great paper to read from a colleague; I can't respond to him till I read it, so it stays in my queue. There's an appointment to book when I next go to New York, and a Very Important Person who's emailed me wondering if we're on. But I can't confirm till I get an email from someone else, so...it stays in the queue. A voicemail from another New Yorker (I get vmail as email, thanks to VOIP), which I can't delete till I call them back, and it's too late to call, so the email stays in the queue. There's an invitation to a breakfast panel, but I am attempting to limit my time now, as it's All About the Book. Still, the person asking is great, and I would very much like to be in the company of smart people, it always proves fun and worth the time. I can't make up my mind, so ... the email stays in the queue. There are three comments from smart Searchbloggers, each with valid and interesting points which merit followup, but they require that I think, and think judiciously, and it's late, and my kids are home so... their email stays in the queue. And so on. I'm down to 15, but I can't seem to kill the last five....

Am I insane? Does anyone else manage their life this way? More to the point... does anyone have a better way?

PS - This is post #999 of Searchblog. Cool!

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:35 PM
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Is The Google IPO Rubbing Off?

Or is Shopping.com going to pop on its own accord? It priced at the top of the range today...and will trade shortly. Lead underwriter: Goldman. Ticker symbol: SHOP.

Shopping.com's IPO priced 6.87 million shares at $18 per share, the underwriter said. Earlier in the day, the company raised the expected price range of the offering to $16 to $18 per share from $14 to $16 per share.

Note that back in March, when they filed (wow, back in March!) I pegged this as a search IPO....

More on the IPO at IPOHome:

Shopping.com is the largest online comparison and consumer reviews shopping service in the U.S. with more than 20 million users per month. It is also the fourth largest online shopping destination behind only eBay (EBAY), Amazon (AMZN) and Yahoo!, and it now comes to market with a track record of growth and earnings. Over the last three years, annual revenue increased from $13 million in 2001 to $67 million in 2003. More importantly, losses have turned into earnings with 2003 marking its first full year of profitability both on a GAAP and proforma basis. For the twelve months ended June 30 2004, the company generated almost $16 million in operating cash flow (or EBITDA) on $84 million in total revenue.

Also: Hoovers and Gary.

It will be very interesting to see if this pops like GOOG did. If it does, I'd warrant it's frustrated wanna be GOOG investors, who didn't get in on that gravy train, jumping on this one... just in case. This does not feel right to me. On the other hand, it feels...familiar.

UPDATE: It popped, yup it did.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:20 PM
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The GooBrowser Won't Die

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, says they won't build a browser.

But still some Slashdotters see a browser under Google's bed, after grokking this Mozillanews.org story. What if...well...what if they don't build a browser, but rather, well, lease one from Mozilla?

The juicy bits:

...after weeks of analysis, this is where we think Gbrowser is headed.

There are other, extra-browser features that will most likely come with it, and tie into the browser, such as Google Desktop Search, Picasa (with links to the browser for web-related sharing, searching, etc.), and Google Toolbar features that IE users currently enjoy...

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:56 PM
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Yahacrobat

Yahoo and Adobe announced a partnership to incorporate Yahoo search into Adobe products. The most important part of this? What SEW Blog noted Tim Cadogan saying in the AP Story:

For San Jose-based Adobe, the partnership will add online features to one of the software maker's core products, Acrobat. The program is used by more than 500 million people and has become a common format for viewing documents over the Web and in e-mail attachments.

"We call it being available at the point of inspiration," said Tim Cadogan, Yahoo's vice president of search.

In other words, search is breaking out of its box, so to speak, and moving into applications far and wide. This will not be the last such announcement you hear in this vein.

Hat tip: SEWBlog.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:39 PM
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Hey Yahoo: Ours Is Bigger

CBSMW: Google market cap is now larger than Yahoo's.

Hat tip: Andy.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:33 PM
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Playing With Feedburner

Many of you may recall my comments in the past about RSS and business models, I've brought the topic up a lot over the past few months. More than half of many blogs' traffic comes from RSS, and most of that traffic is blind - we don't know who is reading or why, or how much. Also, unless you stick ad postings onto your site (a practice I'm not really into), none of that traffic sees your sponsors or advertising, should you have any. Net net, not a great business model for serious publishers.

Feedburner is an application that promises to change at least some of that. (Dick Costolo, the CEO, had been a prince helping me set it up. He's the guy who co-led our RSS Business Models workshop at Web 2.0). I'm playing with it starting this weekend. For every second post over 50 words, Feedburner will burn in an Amazon advertisement. If anyone actually buys something from clicking on those ads, I get a few coppers in my affiliate account. Loyal Searchblog RSS readers don't have do do anything to see this new feature, it happens automatically.

Again, as with the advertising on the upper right of the site itself, I am not doing this to get rich (any profits made will be given to schools), but to learn about the options and get smarter on the whole new ecosystem. It won't be long, I predict, before Feedburner and services like it start rolling Overture-like ads into feeds. Then, perhaps, we can change this lame "headlines and summaries only" RSS approach taken by most of the mainstream publishers.

So, feed on, and let me know what you think of the service, and if there are any problems with it. I think the approach of affiliate PPS (Pay Per Sale) is interesting, and we'll see if it pans out.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:07 PM
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MSFT: Oh No, You Don't...

MSFT will soon launch its own desktop search tool, thank you very much.

Hat tip: SEW Blog.

BTW: There's much afoot in the developer community, banging on the GDS. Very interesting.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:17 AM
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Friday Sketching: TV and Search Merge

As I've promised in the past, from time to time I will test your collective patience by running some sketches up the flagpole and seeing what you all have to say. So this post will be a bit longer than usual, but I'm trying to imagine a scenario where search's business model infects television, and for whatever reason the Google Desktop application gave me an idea as to how. So here goes (remember, this is a *future* scenario)....

Compared to the unpredictable and untraceable value of a magazine ad or television spot, search looks pretty damn compelling. But at the end of the day, three lines of text sitting next to a set of results is a pretty meager way to declare your brand or inform a consumer about your new products or services. Clearly, there is room for both kinds of advertising – intent-based (search), and content-based (TV). But what if the two were to merge?

Before you dismiss the idea as mere speculation, let me lay out a scenario in which such a beast exists. First, imagine that a majority of households have a digital video recorder of one kind or another (such an event is predicted to occur by the year 2009, according to Forrestor). Further, imagine that this DVR has a “search history” of everything you’ve watched and are planning to watch (this is already done by most DVRs). Further still, imagine that this history is – with your tacit approval - blended with an edited profile of your online searching habits, forging a marketing precise of your likes and dislikes, your wants and needs (doing this is a matter of a marketing deal between DVR providers and search engines). Perhaps you use Google Desktop Search, or A9, or Ask, or Yahoo - it matters little, all of them create a search history already.

Now, let’s set this scenario in motion. Let’s say you are a young father to be (as I’ve been a few times). It’s 9 pm and your wife has settled, uncomfortably, onto the living room couch. Clearing her throat, she politely reminds you that you’ve been a bit distant lately, that you haven’t done a hell of a lot to help her around the house. You cringe. She continues: she’s eight months pregnant, for God’s sake, and when are you going to get around to reading that copy of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” that she’s left none to subtly in your briefcase six months ago?

Now, you’re in your den, avoiding dealing with the sheer terror of becoming a father by checking your email for the tenth time in so many minutes, but a pang of guilt finally reaches your venal heart. So you start searching the web, trying to get smart quick. You Google “pregnancy baby” and head to the first link, Babycenter.com, where you read up on the eighth month. You then find a link to an article that lists ten things you can do to be a better husband. The fourth suggestions reminds you to read the books your wife has purchased, so you head to Amazon and buy another copy of What to Expect…, as you left the one your wife gave you next to the Gideon bible on your last business trip.

“I’ll read it, I promise,” you tell your wife, and then add – “I’m on Babycenter right now, in fact.” Pleasantly startled, your wife springs off the sofa – well, lumbers, perhaps – and peers over your shoulder. In a flash of inspiration, you intuit that there might be something you could watch together on TV that relates to the whole parenting thing. “Let’s see if there’s anything on TV that might be good,” you say.

You click over to your Tivo homepage, which lets you manage your television service much as you manage your weblog reading – through a search-based interface. You search on “parent childbirth newborn” or somesuch and find that there are five shows in the next week that focus on the course of pregnancy, three of which are on the Learning Channel. You tell Tivo to record them all, noting that the first one will be available to download tonight, in half an hour, no less.

In the background of your computer, as you jump from site to site and page to page, several marketing-related actions are occurring. A cookie previously set by your local cable company notes that you’ve visited several sites that trigger “marketing potentials” – Amazon.com, Tivo.com, and Babycenter.com, all sites that indicate significant intent to purchase products or services. You’ve also alerted the system that you intend to download five new programs, and the system takes note of content tags associated with those programs, cross referencing them with your recent search history.

The cable cookie shares this information with a marketing application running in the background of your computer, perhaps as part of that Google Desktop Search program you recently downloaded. Alerted by the marketing potential that your recent surfing has created, GDS instantly uploads these potentials as database entries in Google’s central advertising marketplace – a marketplace that looks and works an awful lot like AdWords works right now.

Up on Google’s ad marketplace, millions of similar entries are aggregated and presented to hundreds of thousands of advertisers for sale in a computer-mediated real time auction. Most of those advertisers have preset their spending levels, demographic preferences, and most importantly, intent-based targeting profiles. In the time it takes for an average Google search to complete – less than a second – three advertisements have already been sold against each of the five programs you’ve selected.

Half an hour later, you and your wife turn on your television to catch the Learning Channel show. As it starts, a small box appears on the bottom of the screen, alerting you to several advertisements that have appeared in your programming feed. You know that should you decide to watch them, your local cable bill will be reduced by a buck or so (or, alternatively, you’ve selected the programming option that gives you free cable, but requires that you review ads at preset intervals). No matter, that’s not really the reason you might want to pause the show and check out the ads. Turns out, you rather like watching them, as they are often extremely relevant to your wants and needs, not to mention informative, linked as they are to robust websites and interactive features. So you pause the show, hit the ads button, and scan the commercials. Only, they’re not just commercials, they’re offers as well. The first is from Gerber for a free month’s supply of formula (pass, you and your wife have agreed that breast feeding is the way to go). Next up is a Pampers ad offering a free box of diapers (sure, why not, you accept that one, click the box which allows the system to send your details to the Pampers marketing machine). Then comes the killer ad: “Click here for $50 off a Peg Perego Stroller. Ships in 24 hours!” Huh, you think to yourself. That’s the one my wife said was the “Mercedes of strollers.” Maybe I can afford one after all.

“Sweetheart,” you ask her, “What do you think, should we go for it?” Her eyes light up (you had said no to this exact request twice - $300 for a f*cking stroller?!! – were your exact words) and you click to accept the offer. Your wife snuggles into your side, pleased that for once, her husband actually gets it. You return to the program, and…scene!

Is such a scenario possible? While the details will inevitably vary, I honestly think this scenario is not only plausible, it’s inevitable. And it is the infrastructure of paid search as we understand it today, coupled with tiny desktop apps like GDS - that will make it happen.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:27 PM
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Google Opens In MSFT Backyard

Via Greg. Expect a MSFT search office in the Valley soon.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:54 AM
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