Welcome VentureBeat

Matt Marshall, long of the SJMN and SiliconBeat, has launched his own site, VentureBeat. Congrats on going solo, Matt! Matt is working with FM, and I'm proud to be associated with him and his work.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:12 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)

One Last Travel Complaint

The man hours devoted to separating me from my Kiehls face lotion. I mean, my goodness. If I wanted to destroy a plane with two ounces of face lotion, why, I might just figure out a way to add water later while in the air.

At SFO, there were at least ten full-time lotion swipers at work when I went through. I wonder, did they hire new staff? Repurpose others? There are at least ten more security screening sites like the one I was at in SFO, so that means 100 full time lotion swipers. At SFO alone. All day.

Are they doing this at all major airports? They took my toothpaste, my Carmex, my 4'n'1 sinus medicine (I forgot I had THAT in my bag).

More than one thousand TSA agents, dumping toiletries into the garbage. Something tells me there has to be a better use of manpower in the War on Terror (TM).

Or...maybe there's not. Maybe this is all for show. Maybe in fact if we gave the government thousands of foot soldiers to work on this War (TM), they'd have no idea what to do.

End of rant.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:58 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (21)

MSFT In The Search News....

Not only is Live Search in advanced stages of testing, some influential folks like its video search. And MSFT is making the inevitable noises about launching an AdSense competitor (hello, about time...).

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:07 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)

The Power of Search

I was in the Austin airport today and a clip on CNN caught my ear. It was a piece on the "secret Senator" who had held up a bill, otherwise supported by a majority, which would require the creation of a database of government spending, in particular contracts, loans, and the like. What stopped me in my tracks was the anchor's use of the term "a Google-like search function" as the reason the bill was being held up. In other words, this bill was clearly threatening to bring transparency and ease of use to information about government spending, and someone was using the secret Senator, who turned out to be our pal Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens, to try to kill the bill.

Bloggers, however, made a huge fuss, CNN and its ilk caught onto the story. But, well, will the bill pass or not?

My money is on not.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:40 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (4)

round up

Growing Google library
Google is now permitting free PDF downloading and printing of classic and obscure books---in addition to out-of-copyright books. However, Google will still only provide snippets around search terms for materials under copyright, unless permission is extended by the publisher. link (Gary Price timely points out other sources for free book printing.)

AT&T hack exposes 19,000 ids
A hack on one of AT&T's systems has exposed the personal data, including the credit card numbers, of 19,000 identities. link

Geotagging Flickr, more like an explosion
Flickr added a geotagging feature that in its first day gained more than 1.2 million geotagged photos. As you might guess, they're thinking very hard about how to scale "over a million new photos being added on a good day... [and the] billions of bits of data that go into the search (more than half a billion tags alone), along with privacy controls, group membership, and so on."

WikiPatents
WikiPatents is a new community site where the public can contribute commentary and organize around U.S. patent issues---including reviewing pending applications and voting on their merits. The first site of this kind, it's the brainchild of the US Patent Office own efforts to improve the technical merits and legal backing of patents. The user-base is now composed of "examiners, law firms, future litigants, licensees, potential investors, inventors, and patent owners."

Search driven charity drive
The local search engine iBegin, now servicing Toronto -- is donating 50 cents to charity for every new review and picture uploaded by users through September 15. link (This caught my eye because at first I thought it was a search engine for charity giving-- someone make that! Update: http://www.goodtree.com, thanks Alberto.)

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 5:30 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (3)

The Web 2.0 Expo

My partner Tim today announces a new event in the Web 2 world - the Web 2.0 Expo. From his post:

...there's a long way between the big framing ideas of web 2.0 and their practical application. What's more, the Web 2.0 Conference sold out last year and is on an invitation-only basis this year, with far greater demand than the event can accommodate. And that's why O'Reilly and CMP have today announced a second, companion conference, the Web 2.0 Expo, to be held April 15-18, 2007 at the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco. The Expo will include a four-day hands-on technical conference and tutorials as well as a trade show floor.

Every big idea needs implementation. We saw the need for a second event that focuses on how to actually build effective Web 2.0 applications. We're tackling not just Web 2.0 as strategy but also design, programming, operations, and viral marketing -- the elements of execution that will ultimately separate the winners from the me-too companies in the space.

I'm really looking forward to this event, I think it'll be where the rubber meets the road. (Disclosure-As Program Chair for Web 2.0, I'm a partner in the Web 2.0 conference business with O'Reilly and CMP, though I am not directly involved in the Expo business itself.)

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:08 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)

Schmidt Joins Apple Board

Google CEO Eric Schimdt has joined Apple's board. Given the way the Valley hovers over every possible implication of both companies' actions, there's plenty of conspiracies to be theorized here.

I covered Apple as a cub reporter, and learned how to deal with a company populated by brilliant, odd, and flabbergasting folks. In corporate history, logo color choice, and brand values, Apple shares much in common with Google, that is for sure. But I'm not sure there's too much to be made of this connection - yet.

Of course, Apple has a history with Microsoft, a long and storied one....

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:48 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)

Danny leaves SEW

Man, do I know the pain he went through to make this decision. It's very hard to watch something you really love and worked so hard to build continue without you, but when you are not an owner in some way, it's harder still to understand why someone else is taking all the profits, and control, while you do all the work. I know Danny is a very reasonable guy, and the fact that he could not get the new owners of SEW to cut him in on the fruits of all his hard work means the folks running his ex-company are really not paying attention to where value is created in the media world these days.

Best of luck, Danny, I am certain you will do screamingly well in whatever you do next!

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:49 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (4)

We Don't Make Content

Marissa Mayer speaking in Scotland over the weekend:

"We're computer scientists," she said. "We're not brilliant storytellers or content creators."

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:29 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (7)

Google and eBay

Yahoo made news when it nabbed eBay's business in the US, but today Google announced it had secured eBay's international business, for both text ads as well as click for call. Tit, meet tat.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:24 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)

News: Google Apps Targeting the Enterprise

Question: Where's the big money in the IT business?

Answer: The enterprise.

Question: Who owns the enterprise desktop?

Answer: Microsoft.

Question: What should Google do about it?

Answer: Here's a start, an email forwarded to me about a new Google service which is clearly the start of a targeted offering for the enterprise:

On Monday August 28th we are announcing Google Apps for Your Domain. This brand new Google service allows everyone in an organization to collaborate and stay up-to-date through e-mail, calendar and instant messaging - anywhere, anytime.

Everything is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware to buy and maintain or software to manage, deploy and patch. The applications are fast, reliable, work from anywhere, anytime and have the elegant simplicity everyone has come to expect from Google. And they're free. The applications we're releasing at this time represent only the beginning; we're working hard to add more. We know you'll be pleasantly surprised!

We thought that as a Google Mini customer you'd be interested in taking a look at this exciting new service from Google. You can read more about this service and sign up at http://www.google.com/a. We are also working on an Enterprise version of Google Apps for Your Domain that will include features, integration options, capacity and support offerings designed to meet the needs of larger organizations.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:34 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (9)

Damn, Too Much Liquidity, Google

Bloomberg reports that because Google has so much cash (more than $10 billion and growing very quickly), it's subject to SEC regulations as a mutual fund. Why? More than 40% of its assets are liquid, and Google wants to invest those funds in high yielding instruments, just like a mutual fund might.

Time to buy someone, Google...

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:04 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (3)

round up

Flickr images enter Yahoo
Yahoo begins to integrate Flickr images into search results. A corresponding new tool in Flickr allows users to remove their pictures from search listings. Everyone is asking: how are the images in results ranked? and how is Yahoo determining which keywords to use? Instead of all tags, only queries like "interesting photos" will return Flickr thumbnails. link

Checkout Affliates
Google Checkout launches an affiliate program with integration incentives for "e-commerce providers." Checkout is also running back-to-school promotional, accompanied by themed reasons to shop, like: "Jockey.com: Extra Underwear, Starbucks Store: All-Nighters."

Ask's new hire
Ask announces their new VP of Technology and Engineering, Chuch Geiger, former CTO at PayPal.

Comcast search
Comcast's Google-based search gets a new look, and is possibly a new deal. Tail Rank follows the trail, more

"A high class problem"
Google seeks an exception to invest in R&D, rather than securities, as its investments grow so large it risks regulation as a mutual fund-- a bid which Microsoft successfully secured in 1988. link

When it's good for all, who pays?
A viral AdWords ad for Honda in MySpace displays in Gmail, sparking Garret French's curiosity as he asks: Who is paying whom here? link

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 3:57 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (0)

The Theme Here Is Humans, Editorial Opinion Parameters Be Damned

The recent news that Google has been granted a patent on "System and method for supporting editorial opinion in the ranking of search results " has been taken generally as a sign that Google may delve deeper into the world of social search, which was a hot topic of conversation at the recent Search Engine Strategies Conference (the one I missed due to my shoulder surgery).

But what I find interesting about it is the core: editorial opinion. At some point, algorithms have mothers, and those mothers have opinions. In the related art section, the patent application notes that Ask uses real editors to help it determine results, but that those humans don't scale:

AskJeeves (www.ask.com) generalizes the application of editorial opinion to a collection of pages. Their editors identify a set of pages that share a common theme (e.g., home pages of airports) and associate this set of pages with specific trigger words (e.g., the word "airport"). When one of the trigger words appears in the query, they present the user with a concise representation of the associated set of pages, allowing the user to choose one. Again, the scope of this technique is restricted to the set of pages that were reviewed by the editors, which tends to be many orders of magnitude smaller than the set of useful pages on the World Wide Web.

Yet this patent very clearly keeps the door wide open for samesaid humans. Quoting from the patent again:

Query themes refer to topics found to be commonly occurring in search queries deployed by users in the network ... Editors may, in an implementation consistent with the present invention, develop these query themes based on an examination of search query logs and determining categories of information for which people are entering queries. Exemplary query themes may be "sites that provide free software downloads" or "sites that help people find an accommodation."

Also critical to the patent is the development of "favored" and "non-favored" sources of information and "editorial opinion parameters": "the editorial opinion parameter causes the rank of those objects corresponding to favored sources to be increased and a rank of those objects corresponding to non-favored sources to be decreased."

In short, this is a patent for an algorithm of editorial judgement. It turns on human input, and will, if implemented, but tuned by humans as its shortcomings are exposed.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:52 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (5)

Fanpop!

Another social site with web 2.0 goodness? Yes. Fanpop may standout, however, by picking the best qualities from a number of leading social sites and bringing them together in a neat integration. As they say, "We're a little bit of Digg, MySpace, Yahoo! Groups, del.icio.us and Yelp all mixed into one."

Users can create topical federations on just about anything, giving it a resemblance to Tribe's flexibility. With 24 broad 'channels', Fanpop leaves room for communities to cluster around a long tail of interests. In the Fanpop spots, users can add links to relevant websites or news links, like Delicious. But in addition, submitted websites gain momentum from user voting--- giving Fanpop the interactive push of Digg and Reddit.

For search fans, there's the built-in "more on the web" option of out-bound searches keyword tied to the Fanpop title page you're on, to Google, Delicious, Wikipedia, eBay, Amazon, Flickr, YouTube---probably a list that will grow.

Fanpop also offers forums--- which delicious lacks, and presents them in a more central way than Digg. It also has an internal messaging system -- a feature not offered on Digg and in a more developed version than in Delicious or MySpace.

Rewarding the active members is key for maintaining a loyal membership base, and Fanpop looks like it's learned that lesson. Fanpop rewards the most active members as "top fans" on the mainpage. It also features fans in a permanent way, versus the epherma of Digg, building communities more like MySpace, Tribe or Facebook. The main page also highlights recently updated pages, and displays a recurrently refreshed flip through existing fan bases.

What is this missing? Music and video, which are doing well on Digg and MySpace.

There are many social sites out there, too much to all survive, but aggregating the best features from specialized social sites may help this start-up rise to face the the largest player(s).
Fanpop brings together features I don't remember having seen aggregated elsewhere: If anyone has seen this all before---please let me know---because I'd be interested in comparing. (And yes, there is a Search Engines spot.)

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:01 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (10)

Google search market share: up, side, down?

Compete says up, alongside conflicting data from Hitwise (reporting a fractionally smaller boost) and NetRatings, recording a slight slip down. By Hitwise's measure, Google search share grew .4%, to 60.2%, in June. Neilsen-NetRatings shows a tiny dip of .2% in July. Tracking different metric sources, Compete reports that Google’s market share actually increased by .5% in July.

As mentioned earlier, Danny Sullivan is sharing some thoughts as he carefully picks through the details in a skeptical survey of all this. In response, ComScore wrote: "We agree with your assessment that a single-month decline does not constitute a trend. In fact, comScore also observed a similar seasonal decline for Google during the same period last year," before ascribing it to seasonal fluctuation.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 6:33 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)

Search/Ad Landgrab:MSFT gets Facebook

From Cnet:

Microsoft failed to sign MySpace to an advertising deal, so the software giant went out and landed Facebook, the second-largest social networking site.

Late Tuesday evening, Microsoft announced that Facebook had agreed to allow the software company to provide search and advertising listings to Facebook's 9 million users. The Wall Street Journal reported that the arrangement was for three years.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:12 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (4)

round up

SalesForce for AdWords
Today Salesforce launched AdWords campaign management technology. The new service allows users to directly buy keywords, place ads, and create performance reports in realtime. link

Spreadsheets makes the cut
In the wake of Video's upgraded status on Google's search page, Spreadsheets beta becomes an option for services in Google Mail.

Music Trends in GTalk
Google is releasing new data on Talk users' music listening tastes in the Labs. Within the Google Talk client, users can activate Google to mine and categorize their music habits. Other Talk upgrades, here.

A dip in Google's search share
Danny Sullivan discusses the first dip in Google's market share in search in nearly a year, based on data from comScore and NetRatings: a fluctuation does not a downfall make. Sullivan agrees with comScore's assessment that Google may have a greater seasonal tie, adding that it may be due to a larger academic audience. Tomorrow he makes sense of a conflicting Hitwise report that Google gained share between June and July 2006.

Gauging Google's investment in India
"Rumor has it" Google plans to invest $1 billion into expanded R&D in Bangalore, India, in addition to Hyderabad. link

Yahoo Answers API
Yahoo releases an API for Yahoo! Answers that doesn't require proxy. Answers also adds additional search fields to access content, including by user, topic, and category.

Google Base API
Google Base releases an API for new applications that could create, edit and delete data, or specify queries.

Orkut's souring relationship with Brazil
Brazil may close Google's Orkut offices in Sao Paulo in regards to a federal injunction to release user information, reports Search Engine Watch.

Checkout back-ups
Google Checkout glitches caused an unintended sharing of discounts and delays for users. "For a short period last night [Tuesday], the Google Checkout icon was inadvertently assigned to ads for U.S. AdWords clients who are not Checkout users," Google tells ComptuerWorld. more

AOL cleans house
Following the privacy violation debacle regarding the release of users' search histories, AOL cleans house by firing the CTO Maureen Govern and two employees. link, Cnet follow-up

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 10:57 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (1)

Failure to Fail

"The strangest and least economically rational technology bubble I've ever seen."

Those are Paul Kedrosky's words, discussing what now nearly everyone agrees is, well, some kind of bubble in the Web 2.0 space. I'm hearing it everywhere, and even more to the point, I feel it as well, in some odd and uncomfortable way.

Hold on, Battelle! Aren't you the guy who wrote an Op Ed in the New York Times claiming we're NOT in a bubble? Yeah, that'd be me, and I still hold to my arguments in that piece. We don't have a bubble in IPO markets, and despite a few questionable deals, the major companies aren't on a nutty buying spree either, so there's no bubble in M&A exits infecting large company stock prices. The only folks who might lose thanks to the current Web 2 funding rush are the VCs - and, well, they can afford it.

And yet....as I think about this a bit more, I realize that perhaps we are losing in a way - all of us in this Internet/Web 2.0-related market. We may be losing the lessons a healthy market teaches us when companies fail quickly. Allow me to explain.

First, I am noticing an uptick in the kind of behavior that got us into trouble last time - specifically, spending untethered to value by companies with unproven models. Also, I'm noticing companies out there that have the veneer of success, but to my mind are riding a wave of short-term infatuation buoyed by easy money and near-term enthusiasm, rather than long-term value creation bolstered by valuable customer relationships. As Paul noted, we have a bubble in company creation - there are far too many companies with very similar models and market niches. Now, at first blush should not be a problem. After all, I've argued that one of the really cool things about Web 2 is that you can keep making new companies, see if they work, then disassemble them and try again.

Only, that won't happen if the companies are kept falsely alive by a preponderance of venture capital and VC-related spending. And it doubly won't work if those companies have an average burn rate of a million or less a year. A million bucks is nothing to most VCs. A VC pal recently told me that there were more than 200 funded companies in the video search space, for example.

In short, we don't have a company creation crisis. But we might have a company destruction crisis. Something is off in our ecosystem - there's simply not enough failure out there right now. For an ecosystem to be truly healthy, bad ideas (or good ideas poorly executed) need to fail, so we can all learn from the failure, incorporate the lessons, and move on.

This failure to fail can't last forever. VCs, even the ones that funded video startup #200 and 201, won't keep funding non-performing companies over and over again (wait, well, maybe they will). But at some point, reason will creep back into the ecosystem. Right?

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:28 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (40)
• TrackBacks (1)

Help Us Find The Companies That Will Launch at Web 2.0 2006

Last year marked the debut of a new feature at the Web 2.0 Conference, an event I have chaired since its inception in 2004. Called the Launch Pad, it highlighted a baker's dozen of companies that either launched a major new service, or their entire company, at the annual Fall event.

Earlier this year we announced the opening of the submission process for the 2006 event. And just like last year, I ask for your help (last year more than 50 submission streamed in after my post). But unlike last year, this year I am getting some help. Instead of me making all the decisions, this year I've recruited a stellar group of Launch Pad advisors, who will be helping me find the next group of companies to launch this November. The Launch Pad Advisory Board is comprised of:

Jim Bankoff, AOL
Ross Levinsohn, Fox Interactive
Megan Smith, Google
Shana Fisher, IAC
Allen Morgan, Mayfield
Bryce Roberts/Marc Jacobsen, O'Reilly Ventures
Chris Albinson/Mike Jung, Panorama Capital
Michael Hirshland, Polaris
Mike Arrington, Techcrunch
Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures
Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo

Jim Lussier, Norwest Venture Partners

I'm honored to have such an august group of folks helping us find the best companies to highlight at Web 2 this year. Some of the members are venture capital partners (partners of mine in FM, or at O'Reilly, or pals), others are responsible for charting the M&A strategies for the major platform companies, and still others (like Mike Arrington and I) are entrepreneurs and publishers. All are very experienced at grokking a new company's potential.

We're in the final stages of reviewing submissions (more than 100 have already come in), and I'd like to ask all of you to help us. If you or someone (or someone you know) are running a company that might want to launch a major product or service this November, please let us know!

Update: Submissions for the Launch Pad will close August 28!

Full disclosure: There is a fee if you are chosen, but we've kept it commensurate with the costs of producing the Launch Pad session. There is no fee to enter!

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:58 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (6)

Farecast Goes National

Quick: What post on Searchblog elicited the most comments of any post ever? Answer: My post inviting you all to join the limited beta of Farecast, the airline pricing search engine with a twist. So, it's worth noting that Monday, Farecast goes national. More here at Siliconbeat.

Update: No need to ask me for invites, folks - it's not a closed beta anymore!

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:52 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (0)

Is Google Today's Microsoft?

I've written about this before, the deja vu of covering Google now, and Microsoft back in the early 90s, when MSFT ruled the (less large but no less self absorbed) IT roost. Paul Graham, one of my favorite occasional Google commentators, notes the sad case of Kiko, a Google Calendar competitor which seems to have lost its way since Google integrated Gmail with Google Calendar (Kiko is up for sale on eBay - current bid is around 50K, includes free shipping!). Reminds me of all those little app developers who got killed by MSFT back in the day....when MSFT decided a particular app was neat, and needed to be integrated into Office and/or Windows.

What I love about Paul's conclusions:

There's another encouraging point here for the new generation of web startups. Failure is not a disaster when you're very light. The total amount raised by Kiko in its existence would be about six months' salary for a first-rate developer. There's a good chance they'll recover most of it by selling their code. They only had one employee besides themselves. So this is not an expensive, acrimonious flameout like used to happen during the Bubble. They tried hard; they made something good; they just happened to get hit by a stray bullet. Ok, so try again. Y Combinator funded their new idea yesterday.

(thanks to Andre for pointing this out)

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:42 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (7)

Advertising Is Content

I've said that over and over, and the implications are very, very large. I'd love to see a study which tells us how much stuff on YouTube is commercial content produced for YouTube. Stuff like this, for example.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:42 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (5)

Seven Point Four Billion

That's how much Google stock Google execs have sold. I really don't think much more needs to be said. It's quite a figure.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:21 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)

Innaresting. Yahoo Aims at Google's Cultural Grammar

Google is a verb in our culture, in fact, it's more than that, it's a representation of a new way of understanding our relationship to knowledge. That's A Pretty Big Deal, and it's also got to be insanely frustrating to a company like, well, Yahoo, which had the chance to own the very same thing back in the late 90s. (It's also frustrating to the poor sods in Google legal, see here).

So I found this announcement interesting - Yahoo is asking its users to remix its brand, in what seems a clear attempt to nudge the Yahoo brand next to Google's in our cultural reference set. In fact, the blog entry announcing the contest acknowledges Google's dominance in the field:

There's been some reports about how Google is trying to stop people from using the term, googling. When I heard about it, I was like, "Hello, gift horse, mouth!"....People don’t often do what you want them to do, and brands are more about what consumers think, than what companies want. We're ok with that. You want the yodel? Have it anytime you want (just mouse over the ! on the front page and click). Is Yahoo! a verb, noun or exclamation? Maybe it's all of them.

So Yahoo is open sourcing its brand (and its yodel to boot.) Not a bad idea, but ... to quote another famous brand campaign: where's the beef? The only thing that will get culture to form a lasting impression around a brand, one that matters as much as A New Relationship To Knowledge, anyway, is, well, a new relationship to knowledge. That doesn't come around very often. Though, I must admit, I'm eager to see another one soon. It has been more than ten years since Alta Vista and Overture, after all.
(image credit)

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:00 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (6)

Reader JG Writes...

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:14 PM
• Permalink

WSJ Hosts Search History/Privacy Debate

This is really worth reading if you're at all interested in the issues I've been on about for so long...some tidbits:

...The Wall Street Journal Online invited Kevin Bankston, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights group, to debate the issue with Markham Erickson, executive director of NetCoalition, a lobby group for Internet firms including Google and Yahoo. Their conversation, carried out over email, is below....

Bankston: ...the DOJ's position is that ECPA doesn't apply to the search engines and search terms, the search engines themselves refuse to say what they think, and it hasn't been litigated yet. In the meantime, how the law does or does not apply is being hashed out secretly between DOJ investigators and search engines' compliance counsel; the public has no idea how the law is being applied, just as they have no real idea of what the search engines are doing with their data.

Which leads to the question, do you think that ECPA applies -- or should be amended to apply -- to search engines' disclosure of search logs? And shouldn't we have a federal law like the California Online Privacy Protection Act, establishing national minimum standards for privacy policies?....

The answer, from a fellow who represents leaders like Yahoo and Google, is pretty damn anemic. I've always criticized search engines for failing to take a leadership position in this discussion, and I very much believe that whoever does first, will win big in the hearts and minds of consumers.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:16 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (9)

round up

Finding pictures in Picasa
Google acquires Neven Vision, a mobile photo search company, to bolster Picasa. Though there aren't any special features to show off yet, Google says "one day" image search could be "as complex as recognizing people, places, and objects."

Blinkx becomes a studybuddy

Blinkx moves its business model towards direct-paid services. In a recent partnership with AOL, Blinkx will provide an education-focused subset of its index to StudyBuddy.com. Blinkx founder and CTO said, "You are going to see us do more of these kinds of deals where we power video search on other sites and either get paid for it or share in the ad revenue that's generated by it."

Blotter
Dapper unveils a new service that gauges blog popularity. Blotter graphs link stats over time based on Technorati data.

Exalead: preview of new beta
ResourceShelf summaries the key features. Try it for yourself here (pw: beta).

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 6:52 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (3)

Google Wifi Nationwide? Nope

If you have deja vu, then, yes, this story was first discussed by Vint Cerf in his Searchblog interview....Google is - for now anyway - not claiming to have plans for a national Wifi network, even as it launched its Mountain View Wifi net officially today.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:52 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (5)

Move Over, Online Giants, Here Comes...Comcast?

According to AdAge:

The cable operator has bulked up its online-sales team and plans to open its Comcast.net portal to all its customers -- increasing the potential audience from its 10 million high-speed-data subscribers to its 23 million video subscribers. And that's just for starters.

According to TV network executives familiar with Comcast's plans through content-carriage negotiations, the cable operator has Yahoo-size ambitions and sees the internet as key to raising its profile, and share of ad budgets.

..."For us to be successful online, you have to believe that people will still want to come to a single source for much of their online-video entertainment," said Warren Schlichting, VP-new business strategies at Comcast. "That's the basic underlying philosophy. We think there's a role for somebody to work with many content providers."

Sounds like a familiar strategy....

But...I'm not optimistic that Comcast understands the genetics of making an online service. Just my two cents...

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:21 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (4)

EFF: How to Avoid the Database of Intentions

Reader Cyrus passed this link on to me from the EFF: How To Keep Your Search History Private.

This was posted yesterday in the wake of the AOL search data debacle.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:33 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)

IAC Buys Into Content

I had a very intersting meeting last week with Michael Jackson, the man Barry Diller has appointed as the head of interactive programming for IAC. He'd been in New York, the Valley, and LA trolling for new ideas. Seems he's found one - this morning IAC announced they had bought a controlling interest in Connected Ventures, which runs CollegeHumor.com, among many other things. I've known and worked with Josh Abramson, one of the founders, at Boing Boing and FM. Congrats to him, and to IAC, which seems primed to do more deals like this one.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:38 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (5)

Google's New Video Tab - What Does It All mean?

Just off the phone with an AP reporter (Jessica Mintz, sharp reporter from the Journal who moved over) who was grokking the fact that Google has added Video to its hallowed first tier of search options on the home page, and relegated Froogle to a pop up window off the "more" link. Does this mean Google is reacting to YouTube? Well, yes, of course, but also, Google is following the users, who told Google via YouTube's popularity that video means a lot to them, and that Google was failing to give the users what they want. And Google is also reacting to the market, which is saying it wants as much video advertising as it can buy. Will moving Video to better real estate mean Google Video will overtake YouTube? That is the billion dollar question. Google's recent moves with Viacom and MySpace may position the company as the "safe" alternative to YouTube, one could presume - and the company does have one hell of a network to work with AdWords/sense. But do the consumers want Google video? Despite the initial hit of traffic, it all comes down to community, methinks, and that's what Google so far has not done as well as others.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:11 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (13)

Google As Napoleon

Remember when I posted about that Haas School of Business Study that I was interviewed for? Well, the Economist has read it now, and has an article keyed off both the study and the recent Google/MTV/MySpace deals here. The piece compares Google with Napoleon. Really.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:50 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (7)

Slow....

Hey esteemed readers -
I'm a bit loopy after my shoulder surgery, and won't be posting much till the Percocet wears off. Meanwhile, how is it that the damn spammers always know when I'm offline?

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:54 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (8)

round up

Web 2.0 short doc
TechCrunch's Arrington delivers a 24 min. documentary, asking Silicon Valley leaders and start-up founders to define and discuss Web 2.0--what is it, and for how long? link

Two blogs born per second
Technorati's latest state of the blogosphere, from David Sifry. Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days, or about once every 6 and a half months. link

Google...the musical
The Minnesota Fringe Festival is putting on an electronic musical about Google. A dark-comedic fable, the musical depicts what would happen if Google disappeared one day---after taking over the world, one thought at a time." Philipp has a detailed synopsis and review. link

Google Checkout expands
Google Checkout has now acquired more than 180 retailers and adds new categories---including Arts & Crafts, Beauty, Clothing, Home & Garden, Kids, Sports, Shoes, and Health. As Comparison Engines notes, there's no integration with Froogle yet--but that must be on the way.

• Posted by Melanie Colburn at 4:25 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (2)