round up

Google settlement
The judge in the Google click-fraud case approved the $90m settlement---in credits, Google is pleased but 500 drop-out from the class-action. (Battelle talked earlier about this. ) AP: By settling claims made in the plaintiffs' class-action lawsuit, Google will give advertising credits that are the equivalent of a $4.50 refund on every $1,000 spent in its ad network during the past 4 1/4 years.

AOL Video
Time Warner introduces AOL Video search (with upload and sharing capabilities) that will offer on-demand video and TV shows like South Park, in addition to free content. TechWeb writes that the technology backbone is from Truevo and Singingfish, which AOL purchased last Dec. and in 2003 respectively. Planned to launch Aug. 4.

Hot eye-tracker study
A web navigation study finds the upper left of the search results screen attracts the majority of attention, with about 45% of user clicks within the slightly larger F-shaped area. Research at the University of Hamburg finds: the Web moving from static hypertext information to dynamic interactive services. Clickstream heatmaps and web page statistics show rapid interaction over smaller areas of the screen.
About 33% of searches contain 2 keywords, over 88% contain only 2-3. (from SEW)

False names
A loophole in ICANN's registration policy is abused in "a growing practice dubbed Domain Name Kiting," reports Kuro5hin: Of more than 35 million domain names registered in May 2006, less than 3 million were legitimate! The remaining 92% were dropped within five days without incurring registration fees...ICANN regulations permit domain registrars to delete a registration within five days a receive a full refund.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 5:15 PM
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Cutts' instruction video

SEO guru Googler, Matt Cutts posts a few short vlogs on best and worst SEO practices, on Google Video of course. (Hmm, any YouTube users thinking the same thing?) In a few short segments Cutts answers some questions sent in by hats of all colors, discussing what really matters to a crawler and how to optimize, dispels some SEO myths, and champions user experience.

Is this the new Cutts vlog? Perhaps not, his ever SE-orientated audience quips it's not crawlable, "It’s also bad for your SEO, Matt!"

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:03 PM
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Thoughtful Discussion

My coverage of Paul's post has prompted some very thoughtful discussion in the comments, and I wanted to point it out. An employee from Google and one from Yahoo are discussing the value and approach of R&D, with some great comments thrown in by other readers. Excerpts:

(JG@Yahoo)"Google treats research as an engineering task. And thus really only comes up with engineering solutions. They see some problem that's slightly broken, so they engineer a slightly better solution. With MS on the other hand, they've allowed funding for more pie-in-the-sky, long term projects, such as those that used to happen at PARC and Bell Labs."

(Random Googler) "I work at Google, and I see an amazing amount of research going on. The entire company is staffed with people with academic backgrounds in disciplines like computer science, computer engineering, mathematics, and so on. To imagine that we're not doing research constantly seems bizarre to me. The question of "yes, but how much basic research" you're doing also seems weird to me. When running your company involves solving fundamental problems in computer science and mathematics, that's what you do as your bread and butter."

(JG) "You mention the hordes of academics who have joined Google. I know, they're there. But if they're all busy launching products, who is creating the seeds for the next generation?"

Update: My bad. JG has a Yahoo mail address, but is not at Yahoo, he's a researcher at another Valley firm.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:56 AM
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Random Googler Writes

Reader Random Googler writes: So, I work at Google, and ...to imagine that we're not doing research constantly seems bizarre to me. The question of "yes, but how much basic research" you're doing also seems weird to me. When running your company involves solving fundamental problems in computer science and mathematics, that's what you do as your bread and butter....If Microsoft is really going to throw up charts and graphs, it'd be interesting to see their cumulative spending on R&D in their sixth year of existence as compared to Google's...it appears ... that Microsoft has spent nearly 40 billion dollars on R&D (cumulative) to produce a business that has about 40 billion a year in revenue.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:14 PM
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The Net of R&D

Paul Kedrosky points to an interesting slide in Microsoft CTO Craig Mundie's recent analyst day presentation. The subject is R&D, the point Craig is making is that Microsoft is way outspending Google and others.

Paul points out:

Compelling, right? Microsoft's spending heavily on the Next Big Thing, while its layabout competitors, you know, aren't.

Well, I'm not so sure. Google has added over a $100-billion in market capitalization during the period, while Microsoft has shed around $30-billion in market cap. Similarly, Apple has added around 30-billion in market cap, while IBM has shed around $20-billion.

If you were of a grouchy frame of mind as a long-suffering shareholder, you could use this slide to argue that Microsoft overspends on R&D and investors would be better off off if it spent way, way less.

To which I'd add: I wonder how MSFT got these figures. Given that Google pretty much runs its engineering department as an R&D lab (ie, you can work on whatever you want at least 20% of the time), I'm guessing these figures are a bit off.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:03 AM
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Less Than Two Weeks Old, and This Kid's A Black Hat

My pal Steven Johnson, he of wonderful books, had a third child recently. To celebrate, Steven asked his pals to link to his birth announcement post. For a brief moment, Steven's new son Dean was one of the top results in Google for "Dean". Then, abruptly, Dean was gone from Google's index.

Steven wonders, why?

Has Dean been labeled a black hat spammer by Google? Matt, can you help us?!

UPDATE: Matt says it was just the usual, er, burps.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:14 PM
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Dig into Sandbox.Google.com

A curious guy, named Tony Ruscoe, was digging though one of Google's many latent registered domains and found some interesting stuff. On the Sandbox subdomain (recently serving Checkout), Google is running experimental services. Although existing user names don't permit log-in, Ruscoe says he was able to create a new account on Sandbox and add new services, currently unavailable to regular users.

In the experimental bin sandbox.google.com, added 14 services to his "sandbox" account. Some of these are already disclosed, so only the surprises are listed here: Google Events, Google Guess, Google Online Assessment, Google Real Estate Search, Mobile Marketplace, New Service (AKA Workplace), and New Services.
Highlights: * Google Guess, as Ruscoe writes, "How many guesses do we get? This really could be anything!" * Google Online Assessment, he speculates is an internal tool--again, pretty vague. * Google Real Estate Search. * New Services has "code names like cf, gmt and voice."

* Mobile Marketplace: Maybe number 13 in John Battelle’s Predictions 2006 post will come true. Maybe Google will finally plug mobile “into the web in a way that makes sense for the average user” and maybe they’ll also be the ones to create “a major mobile innovation - the kind that makes us all say - Jeez that was obvious.” But we’ll see...

* New Service (AKA Workplace): Maybe this is the big one people have been waiting for; the one that will really kill Microsoft Office. At least, if it’s at all related to IBM Workplace it could be. I don’t know an awful lot about this, so if anyone else feels more qualified to talk about it, please go ahead. All I know is that it’s got something to do with OpenOffice.org – so that’s why it could be the killer...

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 1:53 PM
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privacy protection in search

If you have a healthy paranoia about one (or any) search engine caching every detail (date/time/IP/terms) of your search history, ixquick may have the answer. Icquick acts as an unretentive buffer to search with eleven top engines. Particularly interesting given the government's repeated irreverence for constitutional privacy protections, much less respect for well-maintained corporate safeguards.
Ixquick's Meta Search feature enables the user to simultaneously search 11 of the best search engines. However, Ixquick does not share the user's personal data with these individual search engines in any circumstances. In addition, as of this week, Ixquick will delete the users' IP addresses and 'unique user IDs' from its own 'Log Files'.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 1:30 PM
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If You're A Parent...

...then check this out. (A bit off topic, but I have three kids - four if you count FM, which I'm pretty proud of as well...)

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:36 AM
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Interview: BIll Gross

A while back I posted a note asking you all who you'd like to see interviewed here on Searchblog. The top vote getter was Bill Gross, of Goto/Overture, Picasa, Knowledge Adventure, and Snap fame. (He also starred in Chapter 5 of my book). Bill was gracious enough to agree to an email interview, and even more gracious to agree to answer some of your questions in the comments section, when time permits.

As those of who who've read The Search know, I'm a fan of Bill and his work. From Chapter 5:

By his own account, Gross has been starting companies since he was
thirteen. His problem was never ideas. No, he, in fact, has way too
many of those. His problem was scale—how could he possibly start
companies as quickly as he could dream them up?
Gross started in a linear fashion, building companies one at a
time. He’d grow them till he got bored or distracted (or both); then
he’d sell them. He funded his first year of college by selling solar en-
ergy conversion kits through ads in the back of Popular Mechanics.
While still an undergraduate (at the California Institute of Technol-
ogy in Pasadena), Gross hacked up a new high-fidelity speaker de-
sign and launched GNP, Inc., to sell his creations (GNP stood for
Gross National Products—an indication of Gross’s sense of humor
as well as an underdeveloped sense of modesty).
But Gross had reason to boast: GNP, Inc., grew to claim number
seventy-five on Inc. magazine’s 1985 list of the 500 Fastest-Growing
Companies. When he graduated, he sold the speaker business to his
college partners and started a software company that presaged much
of the rest of his life’s work. The company, GNP Development, al-
lowed computer users to type natural language commands that the
computer would translate into the arcane code needed to execute spe-
cific tasks. In other words, Gross’s company created a program that
in essence let you “talk” to the computer in plain English, as opposed
to computer code. Gross’s program was a small step toward Silver-
stein’s Star Trekinterface (as discussed in Chapter 1)—the holy grail
of nearly everyone in search today.

Searchblog: You've had tremendous success over your career, and in particular with search (Magellan, Goto/Overture, Picasa, etc.). But the world has woken up to search - and Google seems to gain market share monthly. Yet you are trying to once again take on the world with Snap. What makes you feel like there's still an opportunity there?

Grosss: I've always thought that search is extremely important, but my interest in it has always been very personal in that I've always been trying to make things that "I" would really want. With Magellan, I wanted to be able to view my files faster than DOS allowed back then. With Goto, I wanted a way to remove the spam at that time from the Top 10 listings at the search results I was seeing. The pay model seemed like the best way to do it, and although ridiculed at first, really took off. And then again with Picasa, we really wanted a way to browse and organize our photos better than the PC-based tools allowed at that time.

Snap is very similar, in that a team of us at Idealab just brainstormed about what things we would like to have that would make search more productive for us. It might not be for everybody, but we feel there is a lot of room for innovation in particular areas, and we're extremely excited to pursue that. I absolutely agree with you that the world has woken up to search, but that is far from saying that every idea in search has been done, and thus it is very exciting to us.

What do you make of Google? When folks ask you for your unvarnished opinion of the company, what do you say? What is its biggest weakness? Strength?

I think Google is an amazing company. They have a money machine, and they continue to introduce a broad array of new advertising offerings. I think they are turning out to be one of the best competitors in the history of business -- and they have shown that with their ability to go up against MSFT and stay ahead. That's a very impressive feat.

I think their biggest strengths in order, are their profit margins, their brand, their core relevance algorithm, their number of advertiser relationships, and their many smart mathematicians and developers. I think their only weakness, and it's small, is the increasing challenge they will have to keep up their rate of innovation now that they are becoming such a large company.

I have to ask, given that you starred in a chapter in my book, what you thought of that chapter, and if perhaps you disagree with my characterization of you as a bit wistful that perhaps GoTo could have become Google, so to speak?

I don't recall how it came across in your book, but I am certainly not wistful. I think Goto "did" become Google <smile> as I think 99% of Google's revenues come from pay per click. Seriously, Google did an amazing job of building upon Goto's early success.
Seriously also, we're honored to have played a part in causing such a fundamental and profitable shift in the internet advertising space over the last 10 years.

Do you have any ideas about what search might look like in five or ten years? Do you think pure search sites will continue to prosper? How might they be different from today?

I do think pure search sites will continue to prosper, but I also think that there will be many new kinds of specialized search that continue to surprise us. I just made up a little table of the searches I do per day over the last 20 years, looking at some key milestones, like when I started using email heavily, and then when Netscape took off, and then when the first search engine companies went public, and then again when new tools came out, like X1 for searching email, iTunes for searching music, my TomTom for searching for locations.

Overall, I find myself increasing my searching from a few searches per day at the beginning of the 90's to probably 40-50 searches per day now, but that includes my daily email and file searches with X1, searches with Snap and Google, patent searches, music searches, and so on.

So I think that search in the future is going to continue this march, impacting our lives with, say 25% compound annual growth in our usage. And I think search will continue to find a greater and greater place in our daily lives, where it's just embedded in nearly everything we do, to find information, entertainment, friends, places, and 10 more things that are as hard to imagine now as it would have been 10 years ago that I would type 3 characters, then see some album art, and then click play.

Would you be open to answering a couple of questions from the Searchblog readers when we post this?

Yes, I'd be happy to answer some questions as long as it's not overwhelming in time.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:41 AM
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Another Database of Intentions Story

Thanks to Xeni at BB, this story of a Federal search warrant to search, well, Google, to find the clickstream of a fellow who threatened the NAACP.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:17 PM
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Google Radio Finally Coming

Cnet covers it (this is old news from last week's earnings call)

Google-powered ads, which have become a mainstay on Web sites, are now being played on at least one radio station in Detroit. And like so many other Motor City radio products, it won't be long before they go global. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a conference call with analysts last week that the search giant plans to make its radio-ad business generally available within three months.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:47 PM
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Re-Aggregating: What I Missed Last Week

You probably hate these posts? Why doesn't Battelle just use Delicious, for goodness sakes? I dunno, call me old school, but here are stories I find noteworthy that happened while I was away last week on vacation:

Microsoft says folks can use Google in Vista.

Google moves the ball on "invalid click" tracking - a report out of the Lanes click fraud case says Google is taking reasonable steps to control it.

Google killed its earnings again, Yahoo had less than happy news (delays on YPN, for starters). MSN, meanwhile, reports revenues are down. But Google's stock didn't pop. Some folks say the reason is increasing costs. Fred says buy YHOO.

Hitwise breaks down Google properties.

YouTube hits 100mm a day (I hope to have a new post on YT soon, pending response from them about this post, which I can understand they didn't take kindly to).

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:36 PM
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Warms Your Heart, Don't It

Read this lede from Cnet:

The heads of the nation's two major spy agencies on Wednesday told Congress that it's impractical to seek warrants before tracking the global phone and Internet activities of groups like al-Qaida and terrorist sympathizers.

Yep, that pesky Constitution: Impractical. Oh, by the way: are you a "sympathizer"? You sure?

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:21 PM
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Google News: What Responsibility?

Sean Bonner of Metroblogging (an FM affiliated site) vents his frustration about how Google choses which sites to include in Google News. He even mentions Searchblog, which is not in the index.

Another great example of their weird acceptance policy, if they even have one that is, is the fact that the Search Engine Watch Blog is included, while John Battelle's Searchblog isn't - even though they cover a good deal of the same news.

We've seen this discrimination (don't really know what else to call it) first hand with Metroblogging. Google News includes our Los Angeles art specific blog art.blogging.la, but declined to include the main site www.blogging.la. They claimed it wasn't original news, but rather covered news reported elsewhere. They specifically asked if we could create a section of the site which highlighted the original news which they could then include in their index. We created the section and then they turned it down again without reason.

I have in fact asked Google why Searchblog isn't in the Google News index, and the answer is not specific, it's general - along the lines of "we prefer sites that are run by institutions, not individuals."

I think this points to a larger issue. Like the original Google index, Google News started pretty quietly, without a lot of concern about the impact it might have on sites it indexed. But as its grown and started to really matter as a source of traffic, the very same concerns which webmasters had about the Google index are surfacing. What do I need to do to be in the index? Why are my competitors there, but not me? How do you rank my stuff? Is Google singling me out?

It's clear that there is not, as of yet, a well communicated set of policies with regard to how Google makes decisions about what is and isn't news. And that's Google's prerogative. There is no question, however, that the company is making editorial decisions by including or excluding sites. If and when Google begins to make money from the site, however, those policies will have to be clarified. Given how long it's been around without a business model, it's fair to say that day may never come.

Update: A posting by Jon Udell of InfoWorld on this topic is worth reading.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:16 AM
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round up

G-Maps mobile traffic tracker
Google Maps adds a mobile traffic tracker, as well as allowing users to save routes. Currently only for mobile users (in 30 metro areas, on 100 types of devices), plans are in the works to expand services to online users.

Digg Labs
Digg Labs goes live, unveiling new infosthetic (data visualization) tools: Swarm and Stack---previewed earlier, in the version 3 launch.

Giants don't do 'niche'
A great post on BuzzMachine talks about the need for specialized search, and why that means the burgeoning "Google is not invincible."

Microformats
An interview with microformat thought leaders, Tantek Çelik and Rohit Khare, at Wharton.

Diigo
An addition to the social bookmarking bandwagon. Diigo's standout feature is that its a sticky-note and highlighter apps. run as an overlay, in situ on webpages.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 7:14 PM
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Famous Corporate Logos, Web 2.0 Style

David P of BB pointed me to this hilarious site where folks are busy "Web 2'ing" well known corporate logos. Very funny. There are literally hundreds of them, most are really well done. A total send up of the design grammar that has come to say "hip, cutting edge web company."

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:52 PM
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Google In The Culture, Yet Another Example

Though I'm not sure Google will use this one for external PR, it's pretty funny, and includes a tour of many Google features (Calendar, Base, Maps, Alerts etc) in the pursuit of one goal:

This article is about using the many Google sites and applications to get yourself a girl and get yourself laid. In it we’re going to use a guy called Johnny McCool. Johnny is a 22 year old Internet nerd. He works as a programmer with some megacorp, went straight from the computer labs in college to the cubicle farm. He needs to get out more and he needs a girlfriend.

(Thanks to Cory J.)

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:59 AM
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NewAssignment.Net (the concept) Launches

Jay Rosen, a leading thinker w/r/t new media and journalism, has launched the idea of NewAssignment.net. Launched an idea? Yup, he's postulated a new approach to covering the news, and wants to see if his audience can take it to fruition. Craig Newmark likes what he's hearing, and has offered to fund the first few stories. From Jay's post:

In simplest terms, a way to fund high-quality, original reporting, in any medium, through donations to a non-profit called NewAssignment.Net.

The site uses open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion; it employs professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards so the work holds up. There are accountability and reputation systems built in that should make the system reliable. The betting is that (some) people will donate to works they can see are going to be great because the open source methods allow for that glimpse ahead.

In this sense it’s not like donating to your local NPR station, because your local NPR station says, “thank you very much, our professionals will take it from here.” And they do that very well. New Assignment says: here’s the story so far. We’ve collected a lot of good information. Add your knowledge and make it better. Add money and make it happen. Work with us if you know things we don’t.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:51 AM
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Technorati's New Groove

A major release for the venerable blog search engine. Why describe all the new features, when they've make a really watchable screencast? Congrats, guys.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:56 PM
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Dabbling in Video

Dabble video search launches today. It accesses over 240 video hosting sites, including small independent sites alongside YouTube, Revver, Bilp.tv, Google Video, etc.

Its 120 partnerships (and growing) are more necessary in video search because active, direct collaboration is necessary where spidering is blocked. In the long run, this may help Dabble position itself as an axis for video content.

Dabble is working to systemize the varied permission methodologies of hosts to create their video database. Mary Hodder, CEO says, they're working on creating RSS feed standards with several sites, including Photobucket, as well on mirrorplay, a tag-sharing standard built on xFolk, with bilp.tv, mefeedia, and others.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 5:37 PM
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YouTube Worth $1 BIllion? But Who Will Buy It?

This NY Post item caught my eye - YouTube was the toast of Herb Allen's Sun Valley conference, and therefore is now worth $1 billion. I don't buy it. I don't think the founders are smoking this shit, I think the media is - at least I hope that's how it is. Why? Simple really. While YouTube is an amazing service, with extraordinary uptake, I've been told (and it seems obvious on first glance) that its core content is mostly copyrighted material. (I make this statement after being told as much by two very senior folks at major media companies who have studied content patterns on YouTube.)

Now, folks who own copyrights are waking up to the power of letting their copyrighted content flourish on YouTube, but that particular worm has not turned - content companies are very, very wary of letting this genie out of the bottle.

So who might buy YouTube? A major entertainment company, like the ones mentioned in the Post piece? No way. That's buying a lawsuit or ten - if Time Warner bought YouTube, how long do you think it'd be before competitors sued to get their copyrighted stuff off TW's new service? And once that stuff is cleared off (YouTube does make a point of taking down copyrighted material when asked, but policing that massive service is not exactly a hand-rolled affair), what is YouTube worth then?

It's something of a catch 22, and augurs a waiting period of sorts. I personally believe YouTube proves that our culture wants desparately out of the traditional model of force fed television, and wants to move to a model where we participate in it - indeed, where we remix and share it. But change takes time, and Big Media Companies With Alot To Lose don't change that quick.

What about a new media giant buying YouTube - Yahoo, say, or Google? Or Microsoft? Nope, nope, nope. Yahoo is a media company, and acts like one. Google doesn't have it in its DNA to run a service like YouTube (though Google, with its Switzerland like approach to content, is the best fit, in my opinion). And Microsoft? They don't need any more legal headaches over in Redmond right now.

It should be an interesting Fall season, that's for sure. I'll be watching.

(While I was out, there was news about YouTube updating its Terms of Use. Boing Boing has coverage here).

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:31 AM
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to play a part, pretend

Publishing 2.0 charges 'Hypocrisy in Google's User Experience Policies', after juxtaposing Google's penalization of AdWords advertisers for low quality landing pages and its simultaneous advocation of parked pages among AdSense users.

Publishing 2.0: Explain this — Google is penalizing AdWords advertisers “who are providing a low quality user experience on their landing pages,” and yet Google just signed a deal with GoDaddy.com to run AdSense on parked domains (via JenSense):
The program is called CashParking. And the monthly fee is scaled depending on what percentage of GoDaddy’s revenue you want to keep. It is worth noting that GoDaddy is sharing the revenue they earn from Google, so Google will still be earning money from each click on a parked domain page.

Google AdSense for Domains: "allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory. AdSense for domains delivers targeted, conceptually related advertisements to parked domain pages by using Google’s semantic technology to analyze and understand the meaning of the domain names."

True enough, if Google assumes that parked pages are ill-advised search results and yet encourages their proliferation it would seem they are hypocrites. But then Google is only thinking of 'Google user experience', right? So this would assume Google intends to permit these pages to appear anywhere near the top results. (Most users only view the first page of results.) How likely is that?

To be a hypocrite is to elicit a false positive of good intentions. By that standard Google probably isn't hypocritical about its commitment to user experience, but just aiming to plug-up someone else's engine to their own profit. (Although there are adjectives to characterize that too.)

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 6:25 PM
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round up

Fun with Google
- E4! on Google Earth.
Techkwondo is developing a game of Battleship for Google Earth that interacts for the drop with players' cell phone GPS signals. (via Blogscoped)
- Painting with Google.
Also via Philipp, a fan creates a working mock-up of what Google Paint might look like.
I've been messing around with Phillipp's new book, 55 Ways to Have Fun with Google-- and it is just that.

Keyword price down-tick
The average bid for search marketing keywords went down 8.6 ($1.27) in Q2, reports the research firm Fathom.

Search Zoom
Become.com introduces Search Zoom, which aims to capitalize on its vertical advantage with categories: buying guides, product reviews, discussion forums and product details. Become’s Sr. Director of Product Search, Jon Glick notes in Comparison Engines:

“If you’re a general purpose search engine, you can’t have 30 buttons across the top. As a vertical search engine, we just wanted to limit the choices to the decisions that people who need to make a buying decision need. We have a more constrained problem. We can help people in ways that Google as a general search engine can’t.”

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 5:19 PM
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YouTube, your tube?

Apparently not anymore. YouTube altered their Terms and Conditions to claim ownership a broad, sweeping license of all and parts of uploaded content---visual, audio, and all.

"…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business… in any media formats and through any media channels."

Will this give leverage the bumper crop of other collaborative community video site blossoming out in that fresh start-up air?
(Wired Music talks more. And, thanks Eric.)

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 6:55 PM
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Not from our plate

This is a few days old, but it's worth the note whilst channeling some vintage Battelle circa 2004 (without consent in his hiatus, of course) ...Microsoft is marking the ground in enterprise search.

"Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off our plate, because that is what they are intending to do." Microsoft's Kevin Turner at a company conference.

The "people" that Turner was referring to was Google, and the "food" was corporate search customers...Turner, who joined Microsoft from Wal-Mart Stores 11 months ago, was adamant that corporate search is "our house." "Enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business," he told 7,000 delegates in Boston. (From Forbes)

In 2004 Battelle wrote of Enterprise, after some yawning:
When Google goes public, and it seems that this is most certainly a when, rather than an if, it will have to grow. And once it's hit the plateau of consumer facing businesses, it will turn to the corporate IT market (it's already focused on the problem and is cranking up that focus). That market is still nascent, and there are buckets of money there (just ask Microsoft or FAST.) Mark my words, boring as it might seem, corporate search will be a big deal.

Whereas MSFT seeks MSN to miraculously overtake googlebot, GOOG aims to release a free beta for every office app. in Microsoft's toolkit---plus Enterprise. (Isn't this ripe for parody of 'I'm a Mac and I'm a PC' ads?)

Meanwhile, Microsoft announces Vista will allow users to use Google. Why, thank you for the permission and likely avoiding stacking the headlines with another grueling trust lawsuit. ...All right then, maybe not.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 6:35 PM
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Adding at the margin

Google burps, we listen. In this case, Google Finance is registering hiccups from user feedback and has added some initial improvements:

- a stock-market module on the business section of Google News and support for multiple portfolios.
- auto-suggest feature to the search box.
- reverse chronological order for message boards.
- adding links to SeekingAlpha, which offers free transcripts on many earnings calls.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 5:56 PM
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round up

Yahoo plop
Yahoo share dropped "nearly 22 percent on Wednesday," reports the WashPost. "The wipeout erased about $10.4 billion in shareholder wealth," although the Q2 revenue is up 26%. (Thread Watch mumbles, 'because they can't keep up with pushing out more beta products like Google.')

India blocks ISPs for security
The block on blogging sties in India is reportedly due to a government security blackout aimed at derailing "terror units (read SIMI)" by physically locating IP addresses. According to Mutiny, India asked ISPs to suspend access to blogspot, typepad, and geosites. This may clear up the lack of explanation since Sunday, but it is unofficial and meanwhile Indians are fuming.

Estimating MySpace search
Whether or not the mega social site generates proportional ad revenue, it certainly is making a dent on search referrals. An interesting Business Week article suggests MySpace search is powered by RevenueSource (the auction specualtion continues) and parses stats on MySpace's generation of search traffic, but SEW says the numbers don't add up. Was that 5% of search traffic on the web, .06% in the US, or 8% of Google's search?

Post secrets
According to a new PEW study (PDF): Bloggers largely post about their personal lives (37%)---rather than general topics such as technology, politics, business or other news. Also, authors are generally young (54% under 30) and evenly divided between genders. (via Resource Shelf)

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 5:32 PM
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dealspl.us

It's probably a good sign when the first response to a new service is, Why hasn't this happened before? dealspl.us (uncapitalized) users contribute posts on shopping deals they find and community votes determine the importance of a bargain, bringing it to the front page.

It's self-billed as a combination of Digg and BensBargains.net, for which one of the DP co-founders also serves as President. From the press release: "dealspl.us... is the first and only [community shopping] site [that] combines social bookmarking, user level, and non-editorial control over the posted content.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:44 PM
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disagreeing over more than semantics

An interesting exchange on the Semantic Web yesterday, when Peter Norvig responded to Tim Bereners-Lee's presentation on AI. Norvig commented at length (venting some frustration) that the semantic web would facilitate the interloping spam and PageRank manipulation Google faces.

"What I get a lot is: 'Why are you against the Semantic Web?' I am not against the Semantic Web. But from Google's point of view, there are a few things you need to overcome, incompetence being the first," Norvig said. Norvig clarified that it was not Berners-Lee or his group that he was referring to as incompetent, but the general user.
(CNet story has full quotes, via Resource Shelf)

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:03 PM
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round up

Great net neutrality debate
Yesterday's conversation between Vint Cerf and David Farber on "What is Net Neutrality?" is available via podcast from the Center for American Progress: feed (mp3).

Bix
If American Idol is any indication, there's a ripe market to serve the hopes of aspiring stars as well as their entertainment to a wide audience. Launched today, Bix hopes to answer with a platform to run home-grown talent contests in video, music, and other media.

The farthest hub from hip
Meet Wal-Mart's miserable attempt to create a hip social video site: The Hub. Think MySpace stripped of content, striped with pending approval notices on what content is left, and emails sent to parents of teens who register.

Rank comparison
Fortune completes the first phase of research analyzing the comparative ranking methods of the Google, Yahoo!, and MSN engines. Amid differences, the three giant engines in common use the quality of incoming links as the most important off-page contribution to search ranking, and the quantity of those links as the least.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 10:13 AM
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Admitting mistakes, Schmidt

“So, yes we are IDIOTS — and please WRITE THAT DOWN," insisted CEO Eric Schmidt in an impromptu interview on Friday, referring to Google management between the IPO filing and going pubic.
From Reuters (the whole audio interview, here):

THE IDIOTS RUNNING GOOGLE
Google CEO Eric Schmidt tells reporters:
“(During the 2004 IPO process), between the time we filed and the time we went public, the press was among the most unpleasant I have ever experienced.
“We (Google management) were ‘idiots,’ we were ‘useless’… I thought ‘God.’…It is a terrible feeling of being on the other side of that (press coverage).
“So we looked at (Google’s Web site) traffic and revenue and they were exploding… We had a very, very strong quarter right after the worst possible press about ‘the idiots running the company.’
“I don’t know what that tells you.
Schmidt then paused and begged the reporters to create a new Google press frenzy:
“So, yes we are IDIOTS — and please WRITE THAT DOWN.”

WE HAVE EVERY PROBLEM YOU CAN IMAGINE… QUICKER
Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “We have every known problem that a growth company has — quicker…Write down all the obvious problems, we have every one of them. So we make a list of them (potential problems) and we anticipate them.”
Reporter: Are there any non-obvious problems?
Schmidt: “No. no.”
Reporter: Is it a list of 10-15?
Schmidt: “I would say it is about 20.”

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 5:21 PM
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Googling worms

Last week Websense, a security company, found a way to use Google search to identify and capture malware. The software exploits Google's binary functions to view .exe files on Windows computers.

"The most interesting thing about Google's binary search capability is not its security implications, but the fact that it shows that Google may be thinking about becoming a file searching service." Johnny Long, a security researcher with Computer Sciences told PC World.

Websense planned to limit the release its software and findings for security. But now there's Metsploit, a newly erected "hacker-friendly" malware engine, similarly piggybacking on Google's engine.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:50 PM
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