John Battelle's Searchblog

Well looky here, the WSJ has put Walt Mossberg outside the paywall, and it's a Valentine to Ask.com. Now that makes Steve, Jim and the folks at Ask happy, I'd warrant!

I've been testing the new Ask.com against the search champ, Google. I've found that in terms of relevant results and ease of use, Ask holds its own with Google, and even beats the champ on some searches. It has some very nice features Google lacks, including previews of the sites it finds, an easy way to narrow or broaden your search results, and frequent top-of-the-screen answers that lead you directly to core information.

The retired butler Jeeves is probably pissed he got canned right before the Journal gives his company props. But no, the stock (well parent IAC stock) did not pop...

It's this Saturday. All the major engines compete for the funniest prank. Keep yer eyes peeled....

(I still think the King of all these pranks was Google's Pigeon Rank...Prank for short, natch)

PS - Track all the pranks at new FM Site Museum of Hoaxes...

Just got this news:

Google Introduces Local Business Ads Through AdWords

In line with its commitment to add value to advertisers and users through local advertising, Google today announced local business ads, a new feature in AdWords that allows advertisers to promote location-based products and services. Local business ads appear with an enhanced map component on Google Local and in a text-only format on Google.com and other sites in the Google network. Currently, this service is available to any advertiser who targets locations in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

According to the Kelsey Group, 70% of U.S. households now use the Internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services (March 2005). With local business ads, businesses can promote location-based products and services to users at the precise moment when they seek local information.

Mix this with Base, add a few bells, whistles, and databases, and hey now, my wine fantasy ain't so far fetched.

From that:

As you slip your Naiman Ranch tri-tip into your basket and thank the butcher, you head to the wine aisle. What might go with that grilled tri tip? A nice cabernet, no doubt. Whole Foods' wine aisle, a testament to hierarchy and peer pressure, places the most expensive bottles on the top, and the cheap juice on the bottom. No self-respecting Whole Foods shopper wants to be seen bending down to check out a bottle of wine. Then again, those bottles staring out at you from eye level are exactly the kind that you suspect Whole Foods marks up with the glee of a five star sommelier.

What to do? Not to worry, you’ve got Google Mobile Shop installed on your phone. You whip out your Treo 950, the one with the infrared UPC reader installed, and you wand it over that bottle of 2001 Clos Du Val now lovingly cradled in your arms. In less than a second a set of options is presented on the phone’s screen. It reads:

Clos Du Val Merlot, Lot 21
Stags Leap District, Napa Valley
Average Retail Price: $38 (click here for more)
Price at your store: $52 (more on this)
Click here for a list of prices at nearby stores
Click here for stores selling similar items
Click here for reviews of 2001 Clos Du Val Merlot
Click here for more on this vendor (Ecological Impact, Vendor Labor Policies…etc.)

You’re pretty sure that Clos Du Val isn’t employing child laborers, and anyway you’re really only interested in price comparisons, and the first screen has confirmed your initial suspicion: Whole Foods is ripping you off.

Continue reading "CorpDevDude writes...." »

Good work, Tom. Turns out, the DOJ demanded records from 34 businesses. Check out the list. Wow.

In its effort to uphold the 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA), the U.S. Department of Justice is leaving no stone unturned. Its widely reported issuance of subpoenas to Internet search companies AOL, MSN, Google, and Yahoo is just the tip of the iceberg: The government has demanded information from at least 34 Internet service providers, search companies, and security software firms.

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by InformationWeek, the Department of Justice disclosed that it has issued to subpoenas to a broad range of companies that includes AT&T, Comcast Cable, Cox Communications, EarthLink, LookSmart, SBC Communications (then separate from AT&T), Symantec, and Verizon.

Asked which companies objected to, or sought to limit, these subpoenas, Department of Justice spokesperson Charles Miller declined to comment because the litigation is ongoing. He also declined to comment on utility of the information gathered by the government.

The list:

711Net (Mayberry USA), American Family Online, AOL, ATT, Authentium, Bell South, Cable Vision, Charter Communications, Comcast Cable Company, Computer Associates, ContentWatch, Cox Communications, EarthLink, Google, Internet4Families, LookSmart, McAfee, MSN, Qwest, RuleSpace, S4F (Advance Internet Management), SafeBrowse, SBC Communications, Secure Computing Corp., Security Software Systems, SoftForYou, Solid Oak Software, Surf Control, Symantec, Time Warner, Tucows (Mayberry USA), United Online, Verizon, and Yahoo.

From Bloomberg:

Google to Sell 5.3 Million Shares for S&P Index Funds

March 29 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., the most-used Internet search engine, plans to sell 5.3 million more shares to satisfy demand for the stock as the company joins the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

The sale would raise more than $2 billion at today's price and would bring to more than $6 billion the total Google has brought in from stock sales in the past year. These new shares primarily will be offered to funds that are based on the S&P 500, Google said today in a regulatory filing.

Om says: when offered $750 million for your company, well... Erhmmm. TAKE IT. Bizweek is reporting that the company turned that figure down and is looking for something more like $2 billion.

Is this going to be another Friendster tale of woe?

Well, perhaps. As I learned when similar sized offers came to the Standard's board table, selling the company is not always the entrepreneurs' decision. The investors usually have final word, though I have no idea if that is true or not in the case of Facebook. And the company does have a remarkable business, in terms of its nearly complete reach into one of the most sought after markets in America - college kids. I can certainly see why Facebook board members might pound the table and say "We're worth more, dammit!"

But, twenty years from now, I'm not sure anyone in the deal would argue that taking $750 million was such a bad move. Especially when the money in was about $13 million, and the damn worm of cool turns so fast in this business.

On the other hand, there is the Google problem. What's that, you might ask? Google going after Facebook with an Orkut-powered killer app? No. Not at all. The problem is that Sergey and Larry held out and refused a lowball offer from Excite (and others) early in Google's life, and they never looked back. Every set of young founders wants to do what they did - catch lightening in a bottle, change the world, make billions of dollars. Good luck, guys. I really do wish you well.

Me? I'd take the $750 million. But then, you all probably figured that one out by now!

The net neutrality debate is heating up, and this time billions are at stake. Back in the 1990s John Doerr and other tech luminaries created TechNet in an attempt to rally the tech world into realizing that the industry needed to play, and hard, on Capitol Hill. This time no rallying cry is needed. Case in point: Google's lobbying efforts (as outlined in this NYT piece), and this Cnet piece, outlining the NN debate. Also, see this Post article about the legislative angles.

I'm planning on focusing on this issue (among many others, of course) at the Web 2.0 conference this year (it'll be Nov. 7-9 in SF, at the Palace hotel.) If there are folks who you think can speak to this issue, or resources where I might go to get smart on the issues, please point me in the right direction. Thanks!

Continue reading "Ash Writes..." »

From a Bear Stearns report on comScore data, Google continues to gain ground in search share in the US. Given all that's going on in search and related media, that's impressive. From the report, which was emailed to me:

Google now has a 42.3% share of the domestic search market (the highest since comScore starting tracking market share data), up from 41.4% in Jan 06 and 39.8% in 4Q 05.
...Yahoo's share dropped 110 bps to 27.6%, MSN share dropped 20 bps to 13.5% while AOL's share increased slightly to 8.0% from 7.9% in Jan 06. Ask market share rose to 6.0% from 5.6% in Jan 06. The marketing push behind the Ask brand likely contributed to its share gains.
Year-over-year, Google and Ask showed strong search query gain of 29.4% and 27.9%, respectively, while the other search providers in the top five declined. On a sequential basis, Google and Ask also showed the highest growth at 8.3% and 14.6% respectively.
While Google's unique searcher market share remains flat at 59.1% level from Jan. 06 (Yahoo and MSN both declined in this metric), searches per search increased to 29 from 27 in Jan. 06 and from 26 in 4Q 05.

When you can read Gary's running commentary on it (via his Resourceshelf) instead?

Here's the Newsweek piece, but I felt much smarter after reading this.

Then do we have an interface for you! A search for "Google careers" returns this one box integration (thanks, SV.com):

Looking for a job at Yahoo? Sorry, no one box for "Yahoo Careers"!

...or near those parts, you have to go say hello to my pal Jonathan Weber, who was my Editor and partner at the Standard, and is one of the overall great folks in journalism. Last week he closed a series A financing for his wonderful regional blog/publishing company New West, and I'm thrilled that both he and I are still at it, even after fate (and a lot of other things) forced us apart five years ago. Congrats, Jonathan and the New West team! (caveat, I am an informal advisor for Jonathan's biz....)

I've spoken off and on over the years with Local Matters' CEO Perry Evans, and watched as he rolled up his company, formerly Aptas, into a major online Yellow Pages and directory play. I missed it due to all my travels, but last week Local Matters filed to go public. Perry was the founder of Jabber and always struck me as extremely thoughtful. Though he's in a quiet period now, I'll be pinging him to see if he'd like to speak with us...

Just found an interesting piece comparing the red hot Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings (ticker: CME) to Google's explosive stock price.

...Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings (CME), now trading at $435.25, more than 12 times its IPO price from December 2002. The price is at the same high altitude as GOOG, and people understandably wonder if there's a kind of dot-com fever infecting both issues. ....

Profit margin: 31.4 percent for CME, 23.9 percent for GOOG; return on equity, 31.8 percent for CME, 23.8 percent for GOOG; forward estimated price/earnings ratio: 32 for CME, 28.8 for GOOG. GOOG's revenue growth is greater, but CME has less competition. And both balance sheets have piles of cash with no debt.

CME, though, has one clear advantage over GOOG. Its progress is transparent. With more than 70 percent of its revenue coming from trading fees, all an investor has to do is check the daily volume reports. GOOG has been criticized for not being forthcoming about revenue sources. With CME, its an earnings "surprise" only if you haven't been paying attention.

Interesting point about that transparency...

I love lists like this. Recently updated highest paying keywords from Google. Top Ten:

$54.33 mesothelioma lawyers
$47.79 what is mesothelioma
$47.72 peritoneal mesothelioma
$47.25 consolidate loans
$47.16 refinancing mortgage
$45.55 tax attorney
$41.22 mesothelioma
$38.86 car accident lawyer
$38.68 ameriquest mortgage
$38.03 mortgage refinance

Found on Xooglers.

Or, vice versa? From Reuters:

Shares of leading Web search company Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) jumped 8 percent in after-hours trading after Standard & Poor's said the company's stock listing would be added to the S&P 500 Index on March 31.

Actually, now it's up more than 35 bucks. Fickle, fickle, fickle. Of course, when a company makes the S&P, it makes the index buyers, and that drives demand, and demand drives the stock up.

I've been thinking about television lately. It's not like I spend an inordinate amount of time watching TV - my relationship to the medium is mostly moderated by Tivo. The damn thing crashes every two to three days (I know, that's not normal, I need to figure out why, but WHY do I have to figure out why?!). But still, I love it. Never would give it up. It's like the Macintosh, you know? Finicky, but great in bed.

Anyway, I've been thinking about television. And here's why.

The other day I was at my gym, on my way back from a yoga class. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but don't bash it till you've tried it. OK, so I'm walking past the communal flat screen in the men's locker room, the screen that is usually tuned to CNBC or ESPN - both lowest common denominators of male communality. From time to time an old movie might be on, or a perhaps a rerun of Cheers, but 98 percent of the time it's sports or business. Given that the remote is shared among half-naked men who barely know each other, CNBC and ESPN are pretty much the safest bets to be found.

But that day, as I strolled past the screen in a post yoga haze (it's not unlike getting stoned, without the tendency to talk like a Berkeley sophomore), sports and business were nowhere to be found. Instead, the set was inexplicably tuned to Fox News.

Now, I will acknowledge a bias here. I don't like Fox News much. It strikes me as an intellectually dishonest form of news, but then again, one could argue that about any news outlet. Regardless, what the damn channel had on was simply impossible to ignore.

At first glance it was clear that Fox was covering a trial, and the coverage was live (that was declared in traditional cable news fashion - an unavoidable "LIVE" in the upper right hand corner of the screen, if I recall.) Fox had split the remaining real estate into three windows. In the lower right was a man, head down, clearly a beaten soul, clad in what appeared to be a prison jumpsuit. He had the demeanor of an admonished child, but this child had the countenance of an alcoholic, or an insomniac, or possibly both.

In the center was a live feed of a judge, a man who was, well.... struggling to explain his point. Watching him speak, it seemed he was attempting to justify a decision he didn't much like: he seemed to be praying for an eloquence that escaped him, some way to express the reasoning behind the decision he was about to impart. He had been speaking for some time, it seemed, and given he had not yet found his groove, he also seemed prepared to speak for some time to come. An air of impossibility encumbered his demeanor - this was a man grasping to explain something that, in the end, simply cannot be explained.

In the lower left corner were the victims. They were nameless, mute, anxious, determined. I recall the central figure was a motherly woman, but I could be wrong. For this telling, it matters little.

And in the center at the bottom, as is the practice of cable news, Fox had placed a headline, something along these lines: "Murderer To Be Sentenced For Killing 14 Year Old Girl." To the right of the headline was a thumbnail picture of an adolescent woman, clearly the victim. She was blond, as I recall.

In a second or less, Fox News had communicated this simple fact: A Man Will Be Condemned Today. Stay Tuned, And Watch It Live.

At that moment, in that locker room, there wasn't a man - clad or not, dripping wet or dressed and ready to leave - who didn't stop and stare at the screen. It was a captivating - and exploitative - moment. We were watching, "LIVE", mind you, a judge struggling with whether or not to sentence a man to die. How could you NOT watch?

So what happened? I have no idea. I turned away. I couldn't watch anymore. Maybe that's just me, but it felt, well, too intimate. But as I showered and got dressed, I thought about that moment. And it made me wonder - what might television be like if moments like that Fox News coverage became, well, instantly searchable? What if there was some kind of TelevisionRank that noticed, in real time, what people were paying attention to, right now? Where moments like the condemned man rose to the top of a television index in real time, so that at any time, anyone could ask of the web: What are people watching, right now?

Wow. Now that would be powerful. Is it possible? Oh hell yeah, it is. And it's coming in the next five years, I'll wager. It's pretty much Technorati mashed up with Neilsen, YouTube, and Comcast. And when it happens, we'll never see television in the same light again. I, for one, can't wait.

Everyone knows by now that MSFT has delayed Vista (I can only imagine the glee at the 'plex). But there's much more afoot lately, and since I've been running around having meetings all day in NY, I'm not posting about it as much as I'd like. The stuff I find notable:

Tim interviewed Bill Gates on Monday at Mix06. His questions are here, webcast here. The interesting thing is that Tim even got the chance to do this, given what an open source and web2 advocate he is. Cool.

Tempest in teapot about Blogger banning MSN Search bars turns out to be false.

Google does a deal with Nike for a soccer social networking site called Joga.com. Come on. Let's have a debate about whether Google is in the publishing business....

Philipp notices what folks are doing with "Google Page Creator." Sigh. Tragedy of the commons.

Xeni notes the wonderful world of the DOJ w/r/t teabagging and Google.

Claria is "exiting the adware business by Q2."

Podzinger (podcast search) has launched.

Google appears to be testing an interesting new approach to SERP layout in Italy, more here.

In the long run, we don't want to be in the retail web service business...

Continue reading "Jonathan Says..." »

So soon Sun is going to launch its utility computing grid, open to all for rent. In Jonathan's post covering the launch here, I wonder, really, truly - isn't Google the clear competitor here? Oh, wait, no, it's already Amazon. I'm pinging Jonathan to ask about this. Google is Sun's partner, but will they also be fundamental competitors? (Thanks, James)

This NYT story is getting some pickup across the mainstream mediasphere, it demonstrates how search and clickstream habits can create sticky political wickets. From the piece:

Amazon.com last week modified its search engine after an abortion rights organization complained that search results appeared skewed toward anti-abortion books.

Until a few days ago, a search of Amazon's catalog of books using the word "abortion" turned up pages with the question, "Did you mean adoption?" at the top, followed by a list of books related to abortion.

Amazon removed that question from the search results page after it received a complaint from a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a national organization based in Washington.

In short, it seemed to the pro-choice group that Amazon had an editorial opinion. I am quite sure this is not true (Amazon denies it), but it's yet another example of how we see ourselves reflected - at least how we wish to see ourselves reflected - in the cultural mirror that is search. Amazon decided to disable the search suggestion, which, to be honest, *is* an editorial decision.

(image credit) It may not be live for a bit, but I just got off the phone with the product manager for Google Finance. Today the site is finally launching. The UK sites already have the story. A few thoughts.

First, this marks a rolling shift at Google - the company is getting into publishing, whether or not it wants to admit it. The product manager, Katie Jacobs Stanton, admitted as much when we spoke - Google Finance will have a Groups section where stocks are discussed with paid moderators - that's editors to you and me. And that's a shift, a shift that is worth noting.

Second, Google is integrating its Finance section as the first link in its one box implementation, ahead of Yahoo and the others who previously got the free Google juice (see it in action HERE). Now the first results are going to...well...Google. That's obviously the right thing to do for the business, but it brings up the question - is Google in the pure unadulterated we don't mess with your results at all we're totally objective search business, or....is it in the Yahoo business of being a content company? Think about that on for a second. (For more, read my book on this tension.)

I'm looking forward to checking the site out. Katie - who is clearly proud of her work in an infectious way - said she's adding blogging voices, and interactive, news driven charting, and other neat features. "We're up to par," with the other services, she added. (Interestingly, Katie worked at Yahoo Finance, then took time to be with her kids, then went to Google.)

Apparently this started as a 20% project in Google's Bangalore office, after Google consumer testing showed that the product was wanted by Google users.

Well, OK then. I recall a fellow by the name of Jerry Yang and another by the name of Tim Koogle telling me that when they wanted to start a new publishing venture at Yahoo, they would watch what the users did after searching. Where the tracks were deepest - finance, sports, travel - they built a new section of the ....uh oh, here it comes...the PORTAL.

As Danny pointed out last week, this page (see #2) is getting really outta date. Not that I won't be looking forward to using Google Finance to track my non existent shares of GOOG, which, as you might recall, have been in the dog house of late. I had dinner with a Google analyst tonight in fact. Her price target is mid 400s. Can't a brother spare a good analyst a hundred points or so? One way or another, you'll see the stock move right here, at Google Finance.

NYC bound. Post a comment if the world changes in the next six hours...

Thanks to Bear Stearn's Robert Peck, for doing the work, in the summary of the 10K he finds:

Google also stated that they have substantially completed negotiations with Time Warner and AOL and expect the investment to close in 2Q06. One of the prior elements in the agreement, “making AOL content more accessible to Google web crawlers”, was removed, likely due to concerns that Google would give AOL’s content preferential treatment in its search results. AOL represented 9% of revenues in 05, down from 12% of revenues in 04.

So, it seems, Google and AOL have quietly dropped one of the most controversial elements of the deal. Remember the hubbub (I made a shark jumping comment, you may recall)?

Google was due some good news, and yesterday (sorry, was traveling to Spring Training with my son...) it got some. From the Google Blog:

Google will not have to hand over any user's search queries to the government. That's what a federal judge ruled today when he decided to drastically limit a subpoena issued to Google by the Department of Justice. (You can read the entire ruling here and the government's original subpoena here.)

The government's original request demanded billions of URLs and two month's worth of users' search queries. Google resisted the subpoena, prompting the judge's order today. In addition to excluding search queries from the subpoena, Judge James Ware also required the government to limit its demand for URLs to 50,000. We will fully comply with the judge's order.

Google PR also sent me over this response, from Nicole Wong, associate general counsel:

"This is a clear victory for our users. The subpoena has been drastically limited, most importantly the order excludes search queries."

I laud Google for going to the mat on this. It could have just rolled over, as did several others. My earlier converage on this, and speculation on why Google was so motivated to fight, here and here (What's the Big Deal?!).

If you're into some light reading, here's a copy of the Google annual report. (Gary tipped me to it, natch.)

Continue reading "These guys..." »

A neat project at the Indiana School of Infomatics compares Google US and China for the same search. Fascinating to see the results build on the fly. The site uses a variation of a tag map from the results, as opposed to just the results themselves. From the about page:

When you click the "Web Search" button, each side of the display will first show you an estimate of how many English-language results the search engine has for that national version. Our system will then begin downloading the top few pages that are unique to that country's results. As the pages are downloaded, you'll see a set of words of varying size in each half of the display.

We get those words by breaking the pages up into individual terms, throwing out some common noise words ("and", "the", etc.), and tallying up the results. We then find the 50 words that have the highest relative frequency of use on each side and draw them in a font size proportional to their frequency. For example, if you see that the word violin is very large on the Chinese side of the display, that means that the pages unique to the Chinese search results use the word violin much more often than the pages unique to the United States search results.

You can also see image searches. Unfortunately it does not support inline URL searches so I can't link to specific searches, but try Dali Lama, or Falun Gong, or Tiananmen (image results shown below).

(Thanks, Brent)

I've been thinking about Microsoft lately, maybe because I've been in an email dialog with Gary Flake, or because I just interviewed Ray Ozzie for my column, or because, perhaps, of silly speeches given by Gates like this one, which was summarized thusly by a news service I subscribe to:

"The cell phone will become a "digital wallet," able to receive e-mail and even scan business cards, while computers and TVs will merge, predicts Microsoft chief Bill Gates."

Now, I know it's Gates' job to make the world of tech seem approachable and understandable to the typical MS Office user - the same person who apparently has a dinosaur for a head and stopped paying attention to technology somewhere back in 1997. But g'damn, we've been hearing this speech for more than ten years now, and if Microsoft ever wants to get back out in front of the pack in technology, if it really wants to lead again, as it did in the mid 1990s, it needs to do one simple thing: Split the company up.

Everyone knows that Microsoft has one center of gravity that matters: The Office and Windows revenue line. Everything else pales in comparison. But where does Microsoft get judged, day in and day out? Not on Office, or even Windows. It's search, and innovation across the web generally. And there, it's clear, Microsoft's gravitational mass is getting in the way.

Gates needs to do to Microsoft what Jobs did to Apple when he launched the Mac team - give the new guys carte blanche, and get out of their way. There so so many smart, amazing minds at MSFT, but also so many stories of brilliant mediocrity. How can a company innovate against the likes of Google and a thousand Web 2.0 startups when it has to worry about Windows and Office integration? Short answer: It can't.

Microsoft is a middle aged company struggling to figure out how to dance with the teenagers, and its body simply can't keep up with its intentions, no matter how correct they may be. I'm not claiming "Microsoft doesn't get it" - in fact, I very much think it does. I'm saying that structurally, the company is not capable of executing on what it knows it must do. Major projects like Live, Search, and MSN need to compete in the same market ecosystem as Google, Yahoo, and the startups. As it stands now, they can't.

But that could be addressed. MSFT has already taken the first step, which is to reorganize into three distinct businesses - Platform and Products (Windows and MSN), Business (Software), and Entertainment/Devices (Xbox etc.). But really, what it needs to do is spin out a Google/Yahoo killer. Take Search, Live, and a good chunk of MSR (research) and make it a separately traded division of MSFT. Take the damn thing public. Imagine that IPO!

Let's call this new company LiveSoft. It spins out with exclusive licenses from MSFT for integration with Windows and Office. For infrastructure support and access to patents/IP/research/human capital. All the stuff it needs from Mommy Microsoft, it can have. But, it's kicked out of the nest, and run by a real madman/woman, someone who lives to run this shit. It finds its Terry Semel, Meg Whitman, Barry Diller, or Sergey Brin. (Paging Dan or Jeff from Yahoo...) And it runs from day one out of the gate.

If I were at Google, this development would scare the sh*t out of me. And if I were on Wall St, I'd have a reason to really love a MSFT related stock again.

Anyway. There you have it. I read one headline, and this rant comes out. So, what do you think?

For those of you keeping track of my other job, there's news today.....

Tom Evslin went way further than I did with the whole blogging/book thing, he literally wrote it online, and has now published it in hardcover. Congrats, Tom!

The Drum Major Institute, a local public policy group in New York, recently released a report grading New York state legislators' voting records with regard to middle class issues. Pretty traditional stuff, save for the way the group has decided to market it. For the next 30 days, if you Google any one of the state legislator's names, you will see a paid ad which shows that legislator's grade. The next step, of course, will be those legislators who got terrible grades fighting back with their own AdWord campaigns. My guess is Thomas F. Barraga will be first in line.

(Thanks, Tom).

It's late, I'm tired. But I have to say. Anyone who thinks Bezos and Google are not on a collision course is just not paying attention.

Love. Hate. From the guru of search about Google.

Vast, another classifieds play, launched today. (Edgeio launched last month.) TechDirt has coverage here. Gary has rounded em all up here.

From a WSJ story (paid reg):

A federal judge said he is likely to require Google Inc. to turn over some information about its users' searches to the Justice Department, after the government said it would scale back its request.

After a hearing in San Jose, Calif., U.S. District Court Judge James Ware said he will pay special attention to privacy concerns as he weighs the government's request for the information with the interests of a private company.

The legal showdown over how much of the Web's vast databases should be shared with the government has pitted the Bush administration against the Internet giant, which resisted a subpoena to turn over any information because of user privacy and trade secret concerns.

Update: Google has provided me this comment from counsel Nicole Wong:

"We're very encouraged by the judge's thoughtful questions and comments.
They reflected our concerns about user privacy and the scope of the
government's subpoena request. At a minimum we've come a long way from the
initial subpoena request, which was for billions of URLs and an entire
week's worth of search queries. When the government was asked to justify
their demand they conceded that they needed much less. Now the government
has on its own already reduced that to 50,000 URLs and 5,000 search queries
as a result of this process."

And Metaweb is its name. Danny isn't telling me much (but at least he did email me to tell me about it!), but here's what the site says:

Based in San Francisco, Metaweb Technologies, Inc. was spun out of Applied Minds, Inc. in July, 2005 to build a better infrastructure for the Web. Metaweb was founded by Danny Hillis and funded by Benchmark Capital, Millennium Technology Ventures, Omidyar Network and other prominent investors. It is led by battle-hardened alumni of Netscape, The Internet Archive, Alexa, Tellme, Intel and Broderbund.

The funding was announced today. Here's the release. From it:

Metaweb Technologies, Inc., announced today that it has received $15 million of funding. Led by Benchmark Capital, other investors in the round included Millennium Technology Ventures, Omidyar Network and prominent individuals. As part of the financing, Kevin Harvey from Benchmark Capital joined Metaweb's board of directors.
Danny Hillis, chairman of Metaweb, remarked, "We are delighted to receive financing from investors who share our long-term vision to fundamentally change how information is stored, organized and shared online." Mr. Harvey
noted, "My partners and I are very excited to be working with the Metaweb team. This is a disruptive technology that puts a lot of power into the hands of individuals." Doug Solomon, vice president at Omidyar Network, Pierre
Omidyar's mission-based investment group, said, "Metaweb enables individuals to pursue what matters most to them and dramatically expands their role in enhancing the value of online information."

When your *first round* is $15 million, you ain't messing around. One to watch, for sure. For more on what Danny has been up to, read my post on Applied Minds here.

That an article covering an analyst report would start this way (from Forbes): "Google Still Has Long-Term Potential."

Google goes shopping again.

Why is Battelle so ... quiet? As with prior dry spells, FM is taking most of my time. We're in a major growth stage, and much is afoot. It's cutting into my deep grok time, but I'm also close on bringing in help for Searchblog. So please bear with me...it won't be long before I'm back a grokkin....

* Search Billionaries. Whaddya know, search is making folks rich.
* TechCrunch is fast becoming *the* place to leak screenshots. Here's shots of a Google reputation system. This is a big deal, i think. Google is not one to get involved in the messy biz of human relationships. This would mark a turn.
* Keep in mind: Google v DOJ licks off Tuesday. SJMN curtain raiser here.
* More Xoogler insight into early hosting days. Fascinating.
* NYT: Where are all the new MySpaces to buy, dammit!?
* Also in the Times: How buyers search for brands online. Or not.
* New webified Lexis/Nexis. Plan to grok later this week.

I dunno. Cool and all. But.

Back in the day (OK, 18 months ago), Google was quite coy about whether or not it was going to get into the business of marketplace transactions. Since Video and Base came out, however, it's clear the company is looking to move in on eBay and Amazon, and now the company is in the bookselling business. Welcome to the merchandising business, Google!

Update: I should clarify, that Google as yet is not enabling the selling of physical books, but online access to books. I for one think it's only a matter of time...

Ever wonder about all those Diggs, Reddits, and Gathers? KK has too.

Woman Googles Date, Finds Him on Most Wanted List. (via Digg)

Israeli sites to Google: No Thanks.

Latest Google rumor (fantasy?): Google buying Sun. I don't buy it, and I don't think Google does either. On the other hand, I never thought they'd buy dMarc either.

Great Xoogler post on early hardware/crawler woes.

The site was down for a while this morning, due to a failure upstream at the hosting provider. Posting to resume shortly...

It's official, Google has purchased the company behind Writely...so can we please just stop pretending Google isn't interested in every portion of Microsoft's business? Om broke the news first...

Google has quietly (I think - no release sent out) rolled out a feature on its AdWords site that allows customers to guide their AdWords purchasing decisions using demographic data such as household income, age, and gender.

How has the company done this? It's working with Comscore/Media Metrix to stripe domains with Comscore's panel-based demographic data. I'll have more on this as I can (have to run to and Etech session) but I did speak with a SVP at Comscore about this, and find this move interesting given Microsoft AdCenter's demographic plays, and Google's ongoing tests of site specific targeting.

The Comscore deal is not exclusive - in other words, anyone else, IE Yahoo or MSFT, can cut a similar deal. (Hat tip to reader jboutros).

The company has posted on the topic here. My original posting is here. This is clearly not just about the Lane's suit, it's about Google rejiggering its policies with regard to click fraud.

From Google's post:

We’re very near a resolution in that case, so we thought we’d offer an update.

We’ve been discussing the case with the plaintiffs for some time and have recently come to an agreement with them which we believe is a good outcome for everyone involved. As a result, Google and the plaintiffs are going to ask the judge to approve the settlement, which would resolve the case.

Until the settlement is approved by the judge, it is not final. And the details are confidential, but will become public when it is formally filed for the judge’s consideration. However, we can share the major pieces of our proposed agreement.

Google currently allows advertisers to apply for reimbursement for clicks they believe are invalid. They can do this for clicks that happen during the 60 days prior to notifying Google. Under the agreement with the plaintiffs, we are going to open up that window for all advertisers, regardless of when the questionable clicks occurred. For all eligible invalid clicks, we will offer credits which can be used to purchase new advertising with Google. We do not know how many will apply and receive credits, but under the agreement, the total amount of credits, plus attorneys fees, will not exceed $90 million.

What I am not sure I grok is - is this $90 million set aside only for the plaintiffs in the Lanes' case, or is that the total Google is setting aside for all advertisers, period? I've asked Google for clarification. Seems to me, if they are changing their policy, the claims, and the costs, could go well above $90 million.

UPDATE: I have confirmation that indeed, this $90 million covers all US claims. In other words, this is a very small drop in the potential bucket. All US advertisers that have *ever* spent money with Google have the right to make a claim, but the total amount of those claims is capped at $90 million, a pittance compared to the billions that Google has made from AdWords/sense in the last five or so years.

On the one hand, this validates Google's claim that clickfraud is not that big a deal. On the other, Google settled, and relatively quickly, and probably with the knowledge that a quick settlement was far better than a drawn out, public trial that might make the company look, well, defensive at the best. At the worst, it could have meant a terrible PR nightmare, and a hell of a lot more damages than $90 million. My first take: This settlement is a major victory for Google. Was it good for advertisers? Not sure. But I think the folks at Google are pleased as punch with the deal.

I just bought The Search in audio format, and I wanted to encourage all of you to do the same. Why? Well, because it's my voice reading the book. It took me a long time, and it's very, very hard to do - the engineers are sticklers for pacing, inflection, pronunciation, and the like. I thought it would be easy - after all, I did play Nathan Detroit in my high school's production of Guys and Dolls - but I was in that damn studio for the better part of two weeks. It was hard work, yet I really wanted to do it - the idea of having a record of my work, in my own voice, where my inflections and nuances were preserved, well, that struck me as a neat idea.

This audio book has been available for some time - in fact, I'm told it's already a best seller for Audible (it don't take much, folks) - but I have not pushed it here because I was waiting for Audible to make a special landing page for Searchblog readers (yes, I get a small cut, like with Amazon). They've finally done it, and you can buy it here. If you become an Audible member ($9.95 a year), you get the book free. That's pretty cool. (You can also get the book on iTunes, if that's your method of choice.)

Many will ask why I went with Audible instead of streaming a home brewed podcast. In a word, professionalism. I don't have the time, money, or inclination to figure out how to execute the quality of work the engineers and producers did on this product. By the next product, I hope that will no longer be the case.

If you get the book and listen to it, please by all means tell me what you think. I'm working on a new chapter for the paperback now, stay tuned for more on that.

Hans Peter Brondmo is demoing Plum, a pretty cool application that mashes up, well, everything. The title of his talk is "First you Google, then what?"

Neat application. He's announcing APIs today. From his site: Plum is a young, little company (no, we're not afraid to admit we're still small) we started because we think collecting and sharing stuff on the web that you care about, stumble across or need is really fun and useful, but much too difficult to do. While we love blogging and think wikis are great too, we don't think either solves the problem of collecting the things you care about, and then remixing, annotating and sharing them for others to see and use.

Continue reading "Martin Writes.." »

At etech today. It's so fun to be here listening to smart folks building the web's future. Much is afoot in the search world, some of it launching here....

MSFT has launched Windows Live Search (SEW). More on this later. And Ray Ozzie has folks thinking with his idea of live cut and paste across the web. Anil has more.

Gary has a roundup of search, advertising, and personalization related GYM patents.

Tom wonders why The Search isn't in Google Book Search, and discovers why.

Yahoo launches commercial shopping APIs and a new Product Search, Photos, and Calendars APIs.

Scaling problems?

Blinkx launches pico, the "smallest search engine in the world."

Google tests search by date and calendar.

Jeremy notes that Firefox made out like a bandit ($72 million) in its deal with Google, which is true. Other things that are true:

- This is an unusual deal. No one else has Firefox reach (besides folks like Ask and AOL). This is Google paying Firefox for distribution, pure and simple.
- Yahoo is taking entirely too long to have an AdSense competitor. Come on, folks, get it outta early beta. We're eager. And, by the way, Microsoft, what's up with you guys? Have you done the math and decided to forego syndication?
- Google expects AdSense margins to be squeezed (WSJ).
- That's not stopping Ask, though it'd be nice to see more...

There's been too many (doooh! financial projections!) of these (dooh! product plans) at GOOG lately.

Any of you going to be at Etech this week? I'm looking forward to the event, I'll be traveling today, and there tonight.

No one study should be seen as definitive, but it's interesting nevertheless to see this study from French Professor Jean Veronis and his students, which shows a tie between Google and Yahoo in terms of relevance. What's even more interesting: the study found that *all* the engines failed, for the most part. From the post:

Google and Yahoo tied for first place, with a rating of 2.3, but the most striking result is undoubtedly the extremely low level of user satisfaction. None of the search engines even passed (2.5 out of 5) and some of the grades were extremely low...

Forever and a day, we've discussed the idea that the Google Grid is coming, and a slide which apparently slipped in (and has been purged from) last week's analyst day briefing has confirmed "GDrive." Greg found it here (I mentioned this in another post, but did not pick up on this till now), Philipp expounds here. From the slide notes, which has been pulled from the presentation:

“Store 100% of User Data
With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc).
We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today. (...) This theme will help us make the client less important (thin client, thick server model) which suits our strength vis-a-vis Microsoft and is also of great value to the user.
As we move toward the “Store 100%” reality, the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache.”

The more I think about this, the more I'm not comfortable with the idea of having all my data in one place. Any place. Google or otherwise. It simply makes abuse too easy.

Why do you think this is happening? Get ready for the second round of the Bell Oligarchy. With the peering and net neutrality issues once again at the fore, this should be interesting.

The Times has a good writeup of how Boing Boing has been classified as a "nudity site". Earlier coverage here.

Neil Holloway's comments on MSN and Google (reported here) got a lot of response around the web, so much so that Neil has taken the time to clarify his thoughts here in comments, and MSN has also clarified on its blog. Often quotes are taken out of context, and I'm certainly willing to take his clarification at face value. In fact, I've invited him to do an interview on Searchblog, if he's game.

From a Reuters story:

Sen. Ron Wyden on Thursday proposed legislation aimed at preventing high-speed Internet service providers from charging content companies extra so consumers have faster access to their Web sites or receive special treatment.

The Oregon Democrat said he was pushing the legislation to ensure smaller start-ups trying to do business on the Internet would not be outgunned by bigger companies.

Further thoughts at IPDemocracy: Would Wyden’s legislation prohibit a content provider from paying extra to the broadband provider for improved delivery? Wyden couldn’t easily answer these kinds of questions, but simply said that he opposes a world in which non-transparent deals inject latency into access web sites (where one site with a “sweetheart deal” might take five seconds to appear but another site with no such deal might take five minutes to appear).

Wyden seemed to say as long as the sweetheart deals are transparent, his legislation would not bar such relationships. “The heart and soul of this legislation are the transparency provisions – you get all those deals out there in the open.”

As much as I wish to be black and white on this issue, I sense there is much gray here. Fortunately an old hand from the telco/provisioning world just joined FM, and I'll be talking to him about it in the coming days to get smarter....

...we'll know we're close to cracking the Turing Test. For now, here's Tiltomo, another proof of concept visual engine, courtesy Silicon Beat.

Techcrunch breaks news that Newscorp is buying a company, in fact, one of the companies that was presenting at the very conference where the news broke. But no news on *which* company. Let the guessing begin! (My guess, SimplyHired or Eurekster).

I am still catching up from last week, and have scores of interesting things in my "Blog This" folder. Here's a sampling:

KK sends me this link to a headcount timeline from the big three (Google, Yahoo, MSFT).

The Kelsey Group's annual survey of the Yellow Pages industry shows one percent growth in print, 33 percent growth online.

Microsoft's newest trademark? Relerank, as found by Thomas Hawk.

"The Miva Principle." This is the old Findwhat, declaring in a while paper that Yahoo and Google are bad for publishers. You have to give them your email to get a PDF, I've done that, will report if its worth reading. From the release: “Today, Google and Yahoo! are clearly thriving, and it is our belief that their success comes at the expense of the very publishers that partner with them on online advertising initiatives,” said Craig Pisaris-Henderson, MIVA’s chairman and chief executive officer.

The new Advolution engine/ad solution launches, citing my book as inspiration. Cool!

RawSugar - "an annotated collection of tagged webpages, to service a community of shared interests" - launched last month too.

The Washington Post and Yahoo launch del.icio.us integration. But - a well placed reader asks - why does the release not mention Yahoo, focusing only on del.icio.us?!

Video engine and platform Veoh is now in beta.

AOL loses Jim Riesenbach to Autobytel.

Computerworld: Google moving search records out of China.

From it: The Mountain View, Calif., company has decided to store search records from the site outside of China in order to prevent that government from being able to access the data without Google's consent, said Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, speaking Monday at a panel discussion at Santa Clara University.

"We didn't want to be in the position of having to hand over these kinds of records to the government," he said.

I wonder if this matters at all. The records/data were created in China, and it seems to me that China could request them regardless. Of course, it would create an international conflict of law, which it seems Google is attempting to create. That, I think, will not go over well with the PRC. This one could get interesting.

Continue reading "George Is No Rookie..." »

Well now that was an interesting meeting. The stock rose yesterday and is up nearly 2% this morning. Coverage abounds. Here's the highlights:

Reader John K breaks it down on his blog. Best quote: "Schmidt pees on Microsoft's parade: Google is primarily focused on Microsoft as a competitor because of the software giant's history as a company, but Google hasn't seen an impact from Microsoft's search products yet."

Cnet has a story which breaks the event down minute by minute. I wonder how long that will be done. In any case, it's interesting tidbits: Google Local is now "number three in classifieds." More can be done with personalization. Click fraud is not material to the company (again). International growth is strong. Google plans to be in every single major ad marketplace, period. A chart was shown with five core goals this year, the only one I found interesting was "building new products and services for publishers of information." Google has tripled its Chinese index (Kai Fu Lee was at the meeting).

Kedrosky feels like he got a light lunch. "The day went fine, but there was really very little new here."

Linden posted the presentation PDF (Paul has them too), and "liked slide 19, 20, and 31, all of which makes it clear that Google isn't losing its wide-eyed optimism."

Analyst Ben Schachter of UBS said in an email note: "Google came out of the corner swinging, and didn't let up all day. The company clearly worked hard to dispel the post-4Q negative sentiment, as well as lingering concern over comments made earlier in the week by CFO, George Reyes. We think it succeeded on both fronts."

Analyst Robert Peck at Bear: "It was clear to us that Google's management made a concerted effort this year to provide more information to the Street on its core operations. One interesting tidbit we took to understand was the company's $100B revenue goal."

Thomas Weisel Partners' Christa Sober struck a bit more cautious note: "Should it be referring to the $100bn as revenue, we would note that the company would need to grow its gross revenues 27% annually over the next 10 years to hit the target."

But what is the most interesting quote I read? This one from Schmidt: "We want to be able to store everybody's information all the time."

From a recent Times piece on Publicis, a major ad agency:

"I think Google has overextended, like Napoleon opening up a Russian front," [said Rishad Tobaccowala, a top executive in the media-buying division of Publicis] last week in an interview in London. "I think they are a very amazing company that will take over nothing."

Tobaccowala is heading up a new think tank at Publicis "to spot new media and marketing technologies on behalf of clients."

This time, it's the company's European chief, saying MSFT will be better in the US. Huh? From the Reuters story:

Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) will introduce a search engine better than Google (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe, its European president said on Wednesday.

"What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google," said Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Call me thick, but what the hell is this guy talking about? A statement like this should be coming from Gates or Ballmer. It's a major gauntlet, and a significant timeline declaration (from a company not well known for meeting deadlines). No, wait, a statement like this simply shouldn't be made, period. DO, don't PROMISE. Sheesh.

Similar to A9's Block View, MSFT's Street Side is a more robust view of local photos incorporating its Virtual Earth technology. For now, limited to Seattle and SF, and sans business model. For now.

Also in MSFT land, the company launched the open beta of its classifieds play, Live Expo.