Links for Today

Every so often there's just too much stuff:

Searchfox, a personalized RSS reader, is going into private beta. You can ask for an account here.

Yahoo is improving its Mail search. Wonder why?

Doc on blog and RSS spam (which is search spam by another name...)

MSFT to launch Skype killer (via Slashdot). Is there any hope left for old line telcos?!

Reply gets funded. I like the idea of this service. Does it work for anyone?

French President Chirac says he'll fund a European search engine to thwart Anglo Saxon cultural imperialism. Good Lord.

You want a good roundup of RSS search? SEW has it.

SEW also has good reporting on the ongoing Google Print saga.

Om says: Watch yer Google Wallet, it's coming. eBay, ho!

Only 11% of blog readers use RSS (but more than half of Searchblog's, I think).

New mobile search features from Google.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:30 AM
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A Blogging Case to Watch

Aaron Wall, who writes the SEOBook search optimization blog, has been sued by Traffic Power (I am not giving them any link love) over comments on his blog. On its face, this seems outlandish - free and open commenting on blogs should be protected - but there are complications regarding trade secrets and SEOBook's competition with Traffic Power, which is much maligned in the search world, to judge by its Google results. Slashdot has a thread on it here. The WSJ has a good overview and free link here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:21 AM
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QOOP Does Deal with Flickr, Buzznet

Remember QOOP, that web-to-print play that does Searchblog's print edition? They just cut a deal to do photo books with Flickr and Buzznet. Imagine what happens when they, or someone like them, does a deal with Google Print? Oh wait, the book industry can't possibly want that, it'd cut them out of a new sales channel: once a book goes out of print, all the money would go to the Author and to Google. But the Print edition is based on a copy scanned by Google - a first serial copy, no doubt.

Hmmm, this is a sticky wicket. That *can't* be good....or...could it? If you're an author, why, that sounds pretty good. After all, thanks to Search and QOOP, your book all of sudden has a new life, and might even generate a few dollars. Question for readers more versed than I in this stuff: Would an out of print reprint of a book found via Google search and printed and sold in a one-off fashion via something like QOOP be first serial still, or would it be second serial? See why those publishers are up in arms? They make their hay in hits, sure, but the backlist is where the reliable margins are....is Google Print just an extension of the backlist, or is it a new beast, one that needs to be added to the Author's contract with the publisher?

If you are a publisher, seems it's time to rework those first serial North American contracts to consider this new wrinkle.....stat.... if you're an Author, read those contracts closely...I've pinged my agent, to see what her take is...

(Caveat - the founder is a pal, and I have a deal with QOOP for Searchblog, as I mentioned.)

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:53 AM
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Blodget on Boom and Bust

In today's Times, Henry hits it, I think.

TEN years ago this month, the initial public offering of the Internet pioneer Netscape set off a dot-com boom that today is usually viewed as a sort of financial kindergarten recess, a regrettable free-for-all of idiocy and greed. Although this view does capture an aspect of the period - the arrogance and punch-drunk frivolity that come with easy money - it misses the big picture. It also implies that had we only been smarter and more disciplined in the late 1990's, we could have spared ourselves the pain and embarrassment that followed. History suggests otherwise.

The growth of the Internet has paralleled that of most industries based on revolutionary technology. Canals, railroads, telegraphs, telephones, cars, radios, personal computers - all progressed (or are progressing) through four phases of development: boom, bust, mature growth and decay.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:19 AM
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Searchblog Makes the Onion: Google Purge

I can now retire happy.

Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index.

This piece is just too funny to even quote. Go read it.

I have to say, the speed with which Google has become The Target is rather breathtaking.

Thanks, John.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:09 AM
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Google Injects AdWords Into Magazine Market. Q: Why? A: Money.

This scoop from Cnet sure caught my eye:

Google is expanding its lucrative Internet advertising network into the print world in a bold attempt to capture traditional ad dollars.

The search king, which makes 99 percent of its revenue from Internet ads, is quietly testing the waters of print advertising sales, according to executives at several companies that have bought the ads. Google recently began buying ad pages in technology magazines, including PC Magazine and Maximum PC, and reselling those pages--cut into quarters or fifths--to small advertisers that already belong to its online ad network, dubbed AdWords.

This certainly has nothing to do with search. An image of the ads is here.

This feels like a revenue diversification play, to be sure - selling directories and marketplace ads is always the next step once a publisher exhausts the low hanging fruit of its core offerings - but I wonder what the real agenda is here. Does Google see an opportunity to, in essence, become the middleman for anywhere from one to ten pages of directory/marketplace ads in nearly every B2B and niche magazine in the world?

Of course it does. And why not? It has the infrastructure in place (as I said in my previous excerpt, the most valuable asset it has after their tech is its network of advertisers). Let's see. The Cnet piece said that the advertisers paid Google $1000 for their ads in PCMagazine. There were five of these advertisers - so $5K. The manufacturing/distribution cost of that page is probably no more than a grand, so that's $4K in profit to split between Google and the publishers of PC Magazine. Let's say the split is 70/30. That's $1200 to Google, and $2800 to the publisher. As with the online world, this is free money for the publisher, and they probably love it.

Now, $1200 a page, say an average of five pages per B2B magazine, at least 1500 viable B2B mags in the country (probably more, but....), so do the math, that's $1200 times 5 times 1500, that's, er, $9 million, and that's one issue. Say the average B2B magazine comes out 18 times a year (some are monthly, some weekly, some biweekly etc.), that's $162 million in revenue a year, the vast majority of that pure profit. And that's just to start.

Yeah, I see how that might be interesting to Google. And to publishers who, in the end, are never very good at monetizing the back of their book.

For now, this feels like a test. But this sure as heck doesn't feel like a groovy, engineering-driven, throw-it-against-the-wall kind of test. This is a test of a very real opportunity.

Update: Google sent me a statement, thin soup, but here you go:

Google is testing a program to place ads from our advertising network
into U.S. print publications. This limited test is part of Google's
continuing effort to develop new ways to provide effective and useful
advertising to advertisers, publishers and users.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:44 AM
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Google Print: More to Come

This Infoweek piece rounds up recent and continuing resistance to Google Print, portions of which are currently on pause, from publishing and library organizations. Some strong language and saber rattling, inasmuch as these folks have sabers to rattle.

"Google, an enormously successful company, claims a sweeping right to appropriate the property of others for its own commercial use, unless it is told, case by case and instance by instance, not to," the AAUP board said in a statement. "In our view this contradicts both law and common sense."

The ALPSP was the first of the three groups to indicate publicly that it was ready to go to court.

"We call on Google to hold an urgent meeting with representatives of all major publishing organizations, in order to work out an acceptable pragmatic way forward and to avoid legal action," Morris said.

I've asked to speak to someone at Google about this, because this sure sounds like a lawsuit is the next step, if Google does not do more to appease them.

I've said in the past that I think this ain't Napster. Let's hope the book industry thinks so too.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:20 AM
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Time on Search

Time magazine tackles search in this week's issue. I spoke to a Time reporter last week, and you never know where it's going to go - Time tends to talk to a lot of folks, and then boil it all down to the least common denominator.

The piece starts with a "search in the future scene" which pretty much summed up the conversation I had with the reporter (without of course saying we had it), then rounds up the conventional wisdom, numbers and all[1], and then goes into an overview of "next generation search," beginning with AOL's SingingFish (a Time Warner property), on to futuristic image search Viisage, mobile search (4INFO), an interesting app called Mobot (pattern matching via cel phone camera images), question answering (KnowItAll), tagging (Flickr), audio/video (Blinkx, Nexidia), maps (A9) and personalized (Greg's Findory gets a nod).

Why did I do all these links? Because Time's website doesn't link out. How 1996 is that?! I can only imagine all the folks who were not mentioned in this roundup are feeling blue - for a startup, a mention in Time is a Very Big Deal. But thank goodness for all of us Time did not put this package on the cover, as the reporter told me they might - that always marks the beginning of the end of any trendy story. Maybe next week....

[1]So the battle is on for the next generation of search, which will be smarter and more tailored to the individual, embrace video and music--and be accessible from any device with a chip. By 2010, search-engine advertising will be a $22 billion industry worldwide, up from an estimated $8 billion today, according to Safa Rashtchy, a senior analyst with Piper Jaffray in San Francisco. It's the reason search has become the most hotly contested field in the world of technology.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:51 AM
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Book Excerpt: Expanding Beyond Search

The recent news from Google on Talk, Maps, Earth, Desktop, et al reminded me of a couple of pivot points in the company's history. For this week's excerpt (I'm just back from time off, and digging out...) I'm going to post excerpts from two. First is the purchase of the assets of Deja and the move into new markets in 2001, next is AdSense in 2003. This is culled from two separate chapters so it may not flow perfectly.... Net net: the idea of Google expanding beyond search is not new – it’s been happening for years.

The book stuff is really starting to heat up. I did my first reading/talk at the Bunch of Grapes in Vineyard Haven, MA last Friday, and the first reviews are in as well, for more, see the Amazon page. Yikes.....

(And by the way, thanks to your pre-orders, the book is first on the list of "Popular Pre-orders" for Business on Amazon. THANK YOU!)

By the time Schmidt joined, Google was handling more than 100 million searches a day. Early in the year, the company began a raft of significant improvements to its search service, starting with the purchase of DejaNews, a failed attempt at making money from Usenet, a public messaging system composed of more than 500 mil- lion discrete postings on nearly every subject imaginable. While the acquisition of such a data-rich asset went largely unnoticed, the move marked a significant departure for the company. By acquiring Usenet and adding it to the index, Google was actively seeking out new information, as opposed to passively spidering the Web.

The move was consistent with what would become the company’s new mission statement: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Google would continue this trend through 2003 and 2004 with the acquisition of Blogger, Picasa (a photo-sharing service), and Keyhole (a massive satellite imaging company), and the launch of Google Print.

But it was during 2001 that Google’s appetite for data began in earnest. The service added public phone-book information to its index as well asa new image search tool, complete with 250 million images. By the end of the year, Google’s burgeoning index comprised more than 3 billion documents. At the same time, the company aggressively expanded internationally—by early 2002, it was serving search queries in more than forty languages. And 2001 saw Google’s aggressive entry into the mobile market through partnerships with major players like Cingular, AT&T, and Handspring.

Clearly, Google was metastatizing—everywhere there was op- portunity, it seemed the company was expanding. Google soon had more than one hundred engineers in the company, but no focused approach to managing how their time was spent. Unsure of the best way to handle such growth, the triumvirate set up a traditional management structure based on hierarchy—teams of engineers reporting to more than a dozen engineering managers, who in turn reported to Brin and Page. But the approach began to feel top-heavy and bureaucratic—it was slowing down innovation. In September 2001, Brin and Page gathered all the engineering managers together at a companywide meeting—then informed them they were out of a job. Most got jobs in other places in the company, but the founders had made a declaration—not only were they in charge, but things would be done differently at Google.

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By the end of 2002, Google stopped publicly discussing its key internal metrics, claiming that it had “more than 1,000”employees and “more than 10,000” computers in its vaunted infrastructure. The company did still boast about the size of its Web index, which passed 4 billion documents in December 2002. But it guarded its revenue numbers jealously— perhaps because they were so good: in 2002, the company made nearly $100 million on gross revenues of about $440 million. That’s some serious cash, and the longer people like Bill Gates stayed in the dark about it, the longer Google could remain free from additional competition.

As compared with Google the service, it has always been difficult to extract information from Google the company—clearly this trait was inherited from its founders, Page in particular. But in late 2002 and early 2003, it seemed the company was circling its wagons even more, perhaps for competitive advantage, but perhaps also in preparation for a possible IPO.

In December 2002, the company launched Froogle, an e-commerce search engine. To most, it was increasingly clear that Google planned to play, and big, in the world of e-commerce. Through the next year, the company continued its aggressive expansion and its rather disingenuous practice of avoiding hard numbers. In mid-2003, the company announced it served “more than 250 million queries a day,” and as of early 2005, it has not updated the figure. In early 2003, Google acquired Blogger, the wildly popular weblog hosting company, prompting many to speculate that Google was becoming a portal along the lines of Yahoo or AOL. But Google for the most part left Blogger alone.

Why? The answer most likely lies in the company’s next major innovation, a new advertising program called AdSense. Launched in March 2003 and rolled out to the world that June, Google’s AdSense program marked a departure in the company’s business model—this was not a pure search business; it was something else. AdSense allowed third-party publishers large and small to access Google’s massive network of advertisers on a self-serve basis—in minutes, publishers could sign up for AdSense, and AdSense would then scan the publishers’ Web sites and place contextually relevant ads next to the content, much as AdWords did for Google’s own site. But there was a significant difference to AdSense—it was driven not by the intent-based queries of consumers, as search is, but rather by the content of a site. The presumption was that if a reader was visiting a site written about, say, flowers, advertisements about flowers from Google’s networks would be a good fit.

By nearly any measure AdSense was a hit—thousands of publishers signed up for the service, most of them tiny sites that previously had no way to monetize the small amount of traffic they had garnered. This was particularly true for blogs—the connection to Blogger now became obvious. For many, AdSense was the equivalent of magic—they added a few lines of code to their sites, and in a month or so checks from Google started showing up in the mail.

But while AdSense as a revenue stream has grown steadily—by Early 2005 it accounted for an estimated 15 percent of Google’s over- all revenues—many advertisers complained that AdSense didn’t work nearly as well as AdWords. Potential customers are in a very dif- ferent frame of mind when they are reading about flowers from when they are typing “flowers” into a search engine. Google acquiesced to advertiser feedback and in 2004, allowed them to opt out of the Ad- Sense network. Regardless, AdSense was a major new distribution Network for what can be considered Google’s second most impressive asset, after its core infrastructure: its network of advertisers.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:30 AM
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Link Selling: A Case Study

From time to time advertisers pop up over at Boing Boing who want to do nothing but buy a hard coded text link. The advertisers are not in any way interested in conversing with BB readers, all they want is to grab some Googlejuice by having a link on a high PageRank site. We always say no, as the intent is so evident. But here is an interesting case (at publisher O'Reilly, which is a partner of mine in Web 2) where a more sophisticated approach - via Google ads - to basically the same idea was not caught, at least initially. BB and SEW have good overviews.

From Tim's post:

So there's the heart of the question: is it appropriate for a site to monetize its page rank as well as its page impressions?

It's pretty clear that the practice of "cloaking" -- that is, hiding links so that you're selling only the page rank -- is illegitimate. But what if someone pays you for a real ad, even if you know that they are paying you primarily because of your page rank rather than your targeted audience? As long as there's no deception as to the nature of the sponsored link, and a legitimate opportunity for click through, isn't this still an ad?

That leads to a whole nest of hard questions: Where are the boundaries between legitimate "search engine optimization" to help people find stuff that they will appreciate, and "search engine gaming", to inflate the rank of sites that are less useful? Whose responsibility is it to solve this problem? Should web sites turn away advertisers just because they are performing arbitrage on Google and other search engines? Or is it the search engine's responsibility to adjust their heuristics to counteract any attempts to game the system? Or both? Is it legitimate for a site to improve its own user experience by hosting small, well-paid and relatively inobtrusive text ads rather than the large banners and popups demanded by many advertisers if those ads lead to a worse user experience on search engines?

Long term, I'm pretty sure that supporting people who game search engines is not a good thing.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:17 AM
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Alan Murray Groks The Google Stock Sale

A free link in the Journal. The guts of the piece:

In recent months, the top Googlers have sold off nearly $3 billion of their own holdings. These insider sales all have been on the up and up, conducted under a so-called 10b5-1 plan that allows them to sell a predetermined number of shares over a given period. Diversifying their riches in this way would be a wise strategy for the Google boys under any circumstances. But it is particularly wise if you suspect your stock has a touch of hot air.

They also have been changing their compensation plans, moving away from reliance on stock options, which become worthless if the stock drops. Instead, they have started using Google stock units, or GSUs. That is Googlespeak for restricted stock that takes four years to vest, but will continue to hold value even if the share price swoons. The company issued 61 million GSUs in its second quarter.

If that isn't evidence enough that Google is preparing for the bubble to burst -- or at least deflate a bit -- then the new stock offering should be. The company says it has no specific plans for the cash. "The principal purpose of this offering is to obtain additional capital," Google lawyers wrote in their registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "We have no current agreements or commitments with respect to any material acquisitions."

Like George Mallory and Mount Everest, they are taking the money "because it's there."

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:37 AM
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Kottke Hits the Web OS Memebar Again....

And it's another fun read. Jason ties together the Google Desktop (which he reminds us was launched as "Desktop Search" but is now just, well, your "Desktop....."), local web servers, and next generation web apps and browsers. In short, he is saying, the Web OS is nearly here. It's why Yahoo bought Konfabulator, and why MSFT is integrating the web into Vista, it's Apple's strategy too. A good overview....

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:42 AM
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Other Shoe on Google Talk

It's here, it's Windows only (so far), and it's got folks talking (just not me, cuz I'm A Mac Guy.) And it comes with its own Adwords campaign, natch....

Businessweek: Georges Harik, Google's director of product management, says the company has opened communications with AOL and Yahoo, offering them interoperability on the Google Talk network free, and it will soon contact Microsoft. It remains to be seen whether these big players, especially AOL, which runs both its AOL Instant Messenger service and the globally popular ICQ service, will take Google up on its offer.

"WE'RE WORKING ON IT." "Our network will be open. We want to make all instant messaging networks interoperable," Harik says. Users of other IM clients would be able to connect friends to Google Talk just by adding their Gmail user names. No agreements have been struck yet. "We don't know what their reaction will be," Harik says.

Oh really? I mean, really!!!?

This issue has been a hot potato for, what, five years? And Google is claiming to not know what happens when you poke a stick into a beehive? Please!

SEW: The entry sees Google directly competing against the much more mature clients and established user bases of competitors Yahoo and MSN, not to mention its own partner AOL. The move also opens Google up to accusations that it is way off its mission of "to organize the world's information." Heck, Google Talk doesn't even feature a box to let you search for things, as rival products from AOL, MSN and Yahoo do.

Of course, the failure to launch an instant messaging product would leave Google at a competitive disadvantage. In the end, while the company may not like the P word, but a portal Google effectively is.

Downloadsquad review: Another big feature they're working on is "joint search," which would allow two or more Google Talk buddies using Google and surfing the web together. This would be a natural segue to the fabled Google Browser, but there is as yet no confirmation from Google.

Google also tells us that they don't yet have solid plans on making money with the service, but plan on using it to drive users to Gmail.

Slashdot - nearly 700 comments so far.

Press release is in the extended entry.

Update: Of course, readers remind me, Mac folk can use this via a Jabber app like iChat....

GOOGLE LAUNCHES OPEN, INSTANT COMMUNICATIONS SERVICE
Google Talk Enables Free Calling and IM for Gmail Users

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - August 24, 2005 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today
launched Google Talk, a downloadable Windows application from Google that
enables Gmail users to quickly and easily talk or IM with their friends for
free. Google is focused on developing innovative technologies that enhance
people's lives, and Google Talk encourages and simplifies instant
communication across the web.

"At Google, we're continually investing in areas where we can make
technological change, and we recognize the importance of efficient instant
communications and information exchange," said Georges Harik, director,
Product Management, Google Inc. "Google Talk further enriches our users'
communications experience, whether they choose to communicate via email, IM,
or a call."

Google Talk
Google Talk was developed to make it faster and easier for people to connect
to the information they need. Key features include:

. Superior voice quality through just a computer microphone and
speaker
. Simple and intuitive user interface - no clutter, pop-ups or ads
. Shared Gmail contacts list so there's no need to maintain different
contacts lists

Gmail users can download Google Talk by visiting
http://www.google.com/talk/. Once they download the application, they can
begin inviting others by clicking "Add friend" from the Google Talk
interface. Those invited to Google Talk will also receive a free Gmail
account, if they do not currently have one.

Open Communications Model
Google believes that users should have a choice in what applications they
use for communication. Built to support industry standards, Google Talk
enables Google users to connect to the Google Talk service and exchange IMs
using any client that does the same, including Trillian, Adium, iChat, GAIM,
and Psi.

The company is also committed to working with other service providers to
create a federation model that enables users on any member network to talk
to users on any other member network in a secure and abuse-free manner.
Google is currently working with EarthLink to federate with their Vling
communications service and with Sipphone on federating their Gizmo Project.

Greater Availability of Gmail
Google Talk requires a Gmail username and password, and starting today,
Google is making it easier for anyone in the U.S. with access to a mobile
phone to sign up for a Gmail account. When users visit http://gmail.com and
enter their mobile phone number, they will receive an invitation code via a
text message. This code enables them to open an account. With a Gmail
account, users can try both Gmail and Google Talk, and begin inviting their
friends and family to talk with them for free over email, IM or a voice
call.

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 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 the Americas, Europe, and Asia. For more information,
visit www.google.com.

###

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:29 AM
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The Times Does the Google Backlash Story

It's nearly as predictable as rain in November (at least, in Marin...): the Backlash story. It's my sense that the Google backlash had its peak strength back in 2004, after Google hired its first 1000 new folks and everyone who did not get hired, or who did not get in on the IPO in some way, or did not see any viable competitors on the horizon, or never got a freaking phone call back from the Adsense group, started grousing about how Google was getting too big for its britches.

Now, Google has serious competition, can't hire whoever they want, and its founders have learned to say the right things in public about past practices (Sergey, for example, told me he regrets the seemingly haphazard way his company hired in the past few years, and Omid told me he is 100% focused on Adsense service issues).

But this is Gary Rivlin's story, so he got some interesting folks to talk on the record, including Joe Kraus, Reid Hoffman, and Craig Donato. To wit:

Google, Mr. Hoffman said, has caused "across the board a 25 to 50 percent salary inflation for engineers in Silicon Valley" - or at least those in a position to weigh competing offers. A sought-after computer programmer can now expect to make more than $150,000 a year.

and:

"When I meet with venture capitalists, or if I'm engaged in a conversation about going into partnership with someone, inevitably the question is, 'Why couldn't Google do what you're doing?' " said Craig Donato, the founder and chief executive of Oodle, a site for searching online classified listings more quickly.

In any case, the Times piece marks the top of a sine wave of coverage, in my estimation. It'll get worse from here, then get better again. The cycle of spin....

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:11 AM
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Google Talk

Is leaking out...audio and IM...more to come

"I'm on Google Talk Right Now" reports smashsworld.com.

Apparently all you need is a Jabber-compatible IM client (like iChat) and a gmail account. Now folks, tell me this is not a major community play. Just tell me.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:30 PM
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JetEye Launches

David Hayden, of Critical Path and Magellan reknown, today launched a new search engine called JetEye. The concept is interesting - you can create your own set of search results ("jetpaks"), which you can share with others and make searchable. This combines the idea of the architecture of participation and the force of many with the currently in vogue concept of social search.

David gave me a tour of Jeteye late last week, and as with many of these ideas, it really all depends on whether or not folks pick up the habit (the Wondir QA engine comes to mind, for example.) For now, it's a promising start up, and the key will be whether it reaches critical mass.

MediaPost coverage.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:17 AM
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What Will Google Talk Be?

Dirson (he found talk.google.com is live, but not responding) and many others, including the NYT yesterday, have been speculating about a new communications tool promised out of the Googleplex for tomorrow. I've heard it's anything from an IM client to full blown free WiFi for the masses. I have no special insight into this, but I do believe IM is a no brainer. MSFT, Yahoo, and AOL all have IM clients. IM ties folks to a platform, and that's what Google is building with Desktop et al. VOIP is another possibility. Om and others have found that Google is running a Jabber client, for example, and speculate that Google is about to introduce a VOIP/IM meta client that works with multiple IM clients. That would certainly be cool.

In any case, stay tuned. The other shoe will drop Weds.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:47 AM
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Who Doesn't Want to Buy This Company?

From a Times (UK) article:

Now Google and Yahoo!, two of the internet’s most important pioneers, are to do battle over a deal that would see them embracing the world of “old” media for the first time.

The two US-listed companies, which between them had a market value of more than $126 billion (£70.2 billion) at close on Friday, are understood to have each approached Trader Classified Media, the Euronext-listed owner of 575 print titles, ranging from Canada’s Auto Trader magazine to Buy & Sell Chinese in the US, about a possible corporate tie-up.

Sources familiar with the discussions say that other firms, possibly including Ebay, the online auctioneer, have also made approaches.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:30 AM
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New Google Desktop

Google rev'd its Desktop application today. Again, I can't run it as I'm a Mac guy, but I'm told the new features include:

- A customizable "Sidebar" interface for easier results viewing (in other words, Google floating on top of Windows, all the time. Gates is really happy about this...)
- Email (Outlook) integration and offline Gmail searching
- More API support
- Better encryption
- "QuickFind" which sounds a lot like a UI hack on top of Windows to make it easier to launch applications.

What does this sound like to me? Sounds like Google acting like a software developer, strengthening a product in anticipation of it becoming a standard interface to your data. But that's just me.

My first post on Desktop is here. SEW/Gary on the app here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:26 AM
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More on NCSA Study

I am still percolating on a mountain of input about the Yahoo Google size matters debate, but in the meantime, several readers have pointed me to the fact that the NCSA has distanced itself from the "study" done last week which concluded that Yahoo's claims were possibly false. From the new disclaimer:

The following study was completed by two of Professor Vernon Burton's students at the University of Illinois. Though one of the students previously worked with Professor Burton at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the study was done outside the scope of any NCSA core projects. When first published online, staff at the NCSA noted several issues with the study, and some revisions have been made to the document to reflect several of these concerns. Changes are detailed at the bottom of this page.

Please note again that this study is not an NCSA publication and was not conducted as part of any NCSA project or under the supervision of NCSA.

Many folks have contacted me pointing out the possible pitfalls of the study's approach. This does not mean, however, that there are not conclusions which can be drawn from it.

There is much more to this issue (of size, bragging rights, etc.) than meets the eye, and I do intend to write a longer piece, as I said before. I've spoken to senior folks at both companies, and also am tracking down third parties. But as I am supposed to be on vacation early this week, I'm going to not rush this one. Stay tuned.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:09 AM
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Friday Book Excerpt: More on Perfect Search

Long time readers may recall when I posted a thread on perfect search a year or so ago. I got so many wonderful answers, and I wove much of what I learned into my final chapter. This is a short excerpt from that chapter. Again, please send or post comments, corrections, clarifications - I already see a few things here that I would like to tweak...as usual...a book on topics like search is a never ending work...like a blog!

Search Everywhere

In the near future, search will metastasize from its origins on the PC-centric Web and be let loose on all manner of devices. This has already begun with mobile phones and PDAs; expect it to continue, viruslike, until search is built into every digital device touching our lives. The telephone, the automobile, the television, the stereo, the lowliest object with a chip and the ability to connect—all will incorporate network-aware search.

This is no fantasy; this is simple logic. As more and more of our lives become connected, digitized, and computed, we will need navigation and context interfaces to cope. What is TiVo, after all, but a search interface for television? ITunes? Search for music. That box of photographs under your bed and the pile of CDs teetering next to your stereo? Analog artifacts, awaiting their digital rebirth. How might you find that photo of you and your lover on the beach in Greece from fifteen years ago? Either you scan it in, or you lose it to the moldering embrace of analog obscurity. But your children will have no such problems; their photographs are already entirely digital and searchable—complete with metadata tagged right in (date, time, and soon, context).1

But let’s not stop our digital fantasy train yet. It may sound farfetched, but in the future, your luggage will be searchable. Within two decades, nearly everything of value to someone will be tagged with tiny computing devices, devices capable of saying, upon radiowave-based query, “I’m here, right here, and here’s what I’ve been doing while you were away.” Instead of the ubiquitous bar codes airport officials now slap onto your luggage, there’ll simply be an RFID (radio frequency ID) chip. Lost your luggage? I don’t think so. Not when you can Google your Louis Vuitton in real time.

Think about that—Google your dog, your kid, your purse, your cell phone, your car. (Do you have an E-ZPass or OnStar yet? You will.) The list quickly stretches toward the infinite. Anywhere there might be a chip, there can and most likely will be search. But for perfect search to happen, search needs to be everywhere, attached to everything.

This means that among many other things, search needs to solve what so far has been a rather intractable problem: that of the invisible Web. As Gary Price and Chris Sherman point out in their book of that name,2 the invisible Web comprises everything that is available via the Web, but has yet to be found by search engines. Deep databases of knowledge, like the University of California’s library system or the LexisNexis news and legal citation service, are walled off from search for commercial or technological reasons. And while the contents of your hard drive may be digital, they most likely have not been indexed and offered up to a search application—yet. As I pointed out earlier, all the major search engines have launched desktop search tools which index your hard drive and serve up the results much as you might see Web results. Prior to the advent of desktop search, your PC was part of the invisible Web. No longer.

Also mostly invisible, and mainly still stuck in the analog world, is what might be called the content Web. There are nearly 100 million books extant, but only several hundred thousand online as of this writing. Add to that unsearchable pile humanity’s analog archives of film, television, and periodicals.

Thanks to Napster, we’ve already got the music nut partially cracked. When Napster launched, millions of people ripped copies of their favorite music to the Web. And therein most likely lies the solution to the rest of our previously unsearchable media. For nearly every book, film, and television show, someone, somewhere, will come up with a reason to put it on the Web, assuming we can get out of our own way with regard to intellectual property issues.3 Massive archiving projects, such as Google Print, the Internet Archive, and Amazon’s Search Inside the Book, have gone a long way toward solving a piece of this problem, but they have a long, long way to go, and simple logic tells us that no one entity can (or should) archive the sum total of humankind’s information. No, when it comes to making the world searchable, the best way is to simply let the world do it.

This phenomenon has many casual monikers, but I like to call it the Force of the Many. Eventually, everything of value—including your luggage—will be connected to the Web, because to be connected is definitional to the concept of value in a wired world. As the Force of the Many weaves humanity’s belongings into the Web, search engines will weave this new content into their indexes, moving the world ever closer to the possibility of perfect search.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:25 AM
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Google Testing New Results

A related query results play. IE, search for "On Demand" and get results with "Comcast" related pages. Readers had been telling me this, but I could not confirm it. Now it appears Mediapost has. This has some interesting business model implications, when you think about it - certainly Google would never do paid inclusion, but this is the kind of thing that might allow for such a move should the company fall into the hands of the Dark Side.

Update: Google PR has given me a statement on this:

Google is testing an automated technique for detecting when an alternate
query might help users find what they are looking for more quickly. For
these searches, which are both commercial and non-commercial in nature,
Google displays one or more alternate queries together with a preview of
their top results.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:01 AM
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Another Google IPO?

Nah, just a secondary offering:

UPDATE: Astute reader notes that the offering amount is Pi without the three....
'

Google Inc. Files Registration Statement with the SEC for a Proposed
Public Offering

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - August 18, 2005 - Google Inc. (Nasdaq:
GOOG) announced today that it has filed a registration statement with
the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed public offering
by the company of 14,159,265 shares of Class A common stock.

The managing underwriters of the proposed offering are Morgan Stanley &
Co. Incorporated and Credit Suisse First Boston LLC, acting as joint
book-running managers, and Allen & Company LLC, acting as co-manager.
The underwriters have an option to purchase up to 600,000 additional
shares of Class A common stock from Google solely to cover
over-allotments, if any.

A copy of the prospectus relating to these securities may be obtained,
when available, from: Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated, Prospectus
Department, 1585 Broadway, New York, NY 10036 or Credit Suisse First
Boston LLC, Prospectus Department, One Madison Avenue, New York, NY
10010.

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed
with the Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become
effective. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be
accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes
effective. This release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the
solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of these
securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would
be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities
laws of any such state.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:40 AM
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Google Ad Tweaks, Mobile Purchase

I've gotten a lot of mail on this, which tells me it's worth noting: Google is tweaking its ad placements and putting more ads up, and it bought a mobile company. Silicon Beat covers it well.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:28 AM
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Yahoo Debuts New Rev of Local

Yahoo Local has been getting better and better of late, and today Yahoo launched another rev of the service which I think comes close to redefining the idea of local from that of a search based application to that of a destination - no small feat, given all the mojo and investment inherent in the "local search" terminology.

I spoke with Paul Levine, head of Yahoo Local Search, earlier in the week and he gave me a tour through the site's new features. What did I see that led me to this conclusion? Two things. One, a major commitment to the architecture of participation - Levine and Yahoo are committed to surfacing user-generated content wherever they can. And two, integration into the recombinant web - at one point Levine called Yahoo Local an emergent "collective wiki for local."

I really like this idea - that of creating a platform based on a need (in this case local) - then letting the users build the service over time. While it clearly controls the dials and levers for now, Yahoo seems to be watching how folks are using the content and services they have integrated into local, then building (or rebuilding) the site as paths are laid down and choices are made by the users.

Levine said he noticed that local searches were frustrating to many because they were often too broad - a search for "San Francisco pizza" or somesuch gave too many results. So Yahoo Local is now driven by the idea of "neighborhoods" for larger cities, a concept which informs and allows all sorts of new interface executions. It also has automatically generated "city pages" which surface the most popular content based on actions of local users. The whole deal is RSS friendly.

Yahoo is leveraging its "buzz" technology in part to create these city pages, and it's also tying in the tagging inherent to its MyWeb social search platform (which does have its problems, as SEW notes). There are many other features, like wizzy rollover stuff and expandable maps, but I've never really been that strong on product reviews...

A couple of thoughts on where it seems this might be heading. First, I've written a lot in the past about the idea of clickstreams, search history, and the like. As I was touring through Yahoo Local, it struck me that what the service was starting to do was, in effect, *not waste my time and investment* as I interacted with it.

Said another way, as a user I get the sense that the more I put into Yahoo Local (or any number of other well considered sites), the more I get out. I'm motivated to use it not simply because I get some information, find a phone number, get driving directions, but also because I sense I am contributing, through my clickstream, to the creation of a smarter service which will serve be better in the future. Also, I am participating in a community that I am part of. That, in the end, is what will drive loyalty and usage in a Web 2 world.

Secondly, and germane to where Yahoo sits strategically in a Google dominated world, Yahoo's embrace of user-generated content sets the company apart. Yahoo is clearly pursuing a strategy of hosting content - every merchant can build a page describing its wares, every user can comment on those wares, for example. Borrowing content from the Yellow Pages (or integrating related - but not connected - content from the broader web) can only take local web search so far. The architecture of participation is what's next.

Google's local offering has been growing significantly of late, even though Yahoo holds a commanding lead in overall usage (one it its only such leads in a search related offering). Given how rich this area is in advertising dollars and consumer demand, expect more announcements soon...

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:53 AM
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Veronis Suhler Makes the Leap

From the beginning of my career in media I would watch the Veronis Suhler forecast on media, it was not only pretty considered, it was also used by most entrepreneurs to justify their next magazine launch or cable channel. At times I could not get my hands on it, but I recall early in the Wired years we used it to justify how big the technology/culture space was going to get.

This year's report is out and apparently it delineates, for the first time, between "new" and "traditional" forms of media, and furthermore pegs the new media percentage of dollars at about 17% of all ad spending last year, growing to more than 26% by 2009. MediaPost has a report here.

The MediaPost report notes that others view Veronis' numbers as too conservative, ad agency Carat, for example, thinks digital spending will hit 50% in two years. This all depends on what comprises "digital spending." Digital TV? Then the 50% is an easy target. No digital TV? Then perhaps Veronis is more in line....As with every year, I'd sure love to see the full report. It runs nearly two thousand bucks though, so I'll have to watch from the cheap seats.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:08 AM
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Danny: Screw Size

A fine piece of Jesus Not Again writing from Danny. I'm deep in this as well, as those of you who've read my previous posts know. And more is coming, but I promise, I will be brief as can be. I'm waiting to talk with a couple more folks. Danny notes he and Gary will also be posting more later in the week. I agree with Danny that relevance is key, but think it's nearly impossible to set a standard for relevance - it's too subjective. I disagree that size is not important. Once we can figure out how to audit and count size, it's important, as important as UI, speed, or algorithms. It's also important in a business sense - it's a number that folks pay attention to and that marketers know works, and that the mainstream press will parrot. Even if you disagree with the tactics, and I do, it's still important....

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:58 AM
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Google Earth A Threat To National Security?

Some in the Dutch govt. worry about Google Earth (but not IBM or MSFT?) in this article.

Both politicians and police are concerned that certain locations in the Netherlands, such as the port of Rotterdam, the royal palace in the Hague and Amsterdam Airport, already potential terrorist targets, could be made more vulnerable to terrorists thanks to the detailed images created from satellites and aircrafts within the last three years available via Google Earth.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:42 AM
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A9 Launches Maps

Udi and his team have formally tossed their hat into the mapping ring with A9 Maps. Udi has shown this at a few industry conferences, but now it's live. It's an interesting and pretty cool interface, you use a magnifying lens icon to scroll A9's Block View on the right side of the page. Very You Are There. It breaks down when there are no Block View images - becomes a standard maps interface. But as usual for A9, it points out what's possible and what might be coming....

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:55 AM
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Update on NewsCorp.: LA Times Says It's Blinkx

If this is true, then Rupert probably is reading Om Malik's blog, as he's owned the Blinkx story.

PS - Om also has a story up on Biz 2 that speculates Google may be building a hugely scaled ISP/Wifi net.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:08 AM
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