John Battelle's Searchblog

Compete.com launches Nov. 1. Just yesterday I asked if anyone can help us with an Alexa we can trust, this seems to be addressed at that market, and more. I do not have time to grok it, I am afraid (it *is* Halloween night after all) but check it out, and let us all know what you think here. And here's a t'rati link for coverage of the launch.

From the about page:

Today, search engines help us find sites, but they fall short of showing how safe, popular and valuable a site is. Through click-sharing, Compete extends search algorithms by tapping the collective online experiences of millions of people. By sharing our clicks, we create useful new information about the websites we visit that can help us answer questions like:

Is this website safe from spyware and other threats like phishing?
How many people visit this site and how does it compare to other sites?
Are there promotion codes for this site that can save me money?

Compete.com helps you personally benefit from click-sharing. Whether it's protecting you from a dangerous site, profiling each website you visit, or showing you promo codes that will save you money at check out, Compete wants to help create a more trusted, transparent, and valuable Internet.

Neat Ajax-y widget that shows Google's acquisitions. Goes back to 2001, and shows a few I had forgotten about, as well as investments like Baidu and AOL.

Thanks, Pete!

Innaresting!

I have asked Joe if he'd do an interview with us, we'll see. And meanwhile, this is the second company to debut at Web 2.0 that has been purchased by Google (the first was Writely). Hey, where's our commission!?

Yes, that's a sh*tload of spam you're seeing in my comments lately. Hard to keep up, apparently, Searchblog is at the leading edge of spam attacks - in other words, as spammers try new IP addresses and other tricks to beat Akismet, they have to strike somewhere first, and for whatever reason, a high percentage of new attacks seem to be starting off at our lovely site. Well, I'm fighting back by banning words using my publishing software. Sorry folks, but you will have to keep, er, certain words out of comments from now on...

Blog Maverick reports 'some intimate details of the Google YouTube deal', based on an anonymous source. Assertions, from the supposedly well-informed note, include:

* About $500 million of the 1.65 billion purchase price was earmarked to fight and settle copyright suits, as a large but not uncommon liabilities patch.
* As part of the Google courtship, YouTube massaged settlement negotiations with the largest potential DMCA stake-holders--far enough along to make it unlikely that their settlement claims would bite significantly into the margin of gain for Google.
* However, to appease the large media companies disinterest in sharing profits with the creative talent, the value was instead transfered as an equity investment in YouTube--sheltered from royalty burdens.
* Finally, to protect the value behind YouTube--its copious viewing audience addicted to pirated material---Google asked the media gatekeepers to 'look the other way' for a few months, as copyright violations continue to run rampant.
* And finally, according to this anonymous note, Google also asked the media powerhouses to belt competing video sites with lawsuits first--like "YouTube clones Blot and Grouper."

"There are some interesting chapters yet to unfold. One is how much of this will become public. Google is required by the SEC to disclose material financial developments at their company. Working in Google's advantage is their enormous market capitalization and revenues will give them considerable leeway to claim that a 50 million transaction is not significant to their business. If the other video sites have the wherewithal to put up a legal fight any decent attorney will demand access to Youtube acquisition documents. Expect a claim of collusion between Google and the media companies as a defense strategy."

Mark Cuban adds, as a note on this source, "I can't say this has been fact checked. It hasn't. I can't say its 100 pct accurate, I don't know. But it rings true, and as I said, I trust the source."

Google Debuting 'Current Time' in Location SERPs

Vulnpedia - Google Code Engineers Create Custom Security Search

Defamation Suit Against Google for Sudden PageRank 0 - Drama Continues

Yet Another Security Flaw Spotted in IE 7 Today

The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing

The ongoing charley horse on the booming online advertising marketplace, in particular with regard to community driven and blog sites, is the lack of any reliable third party traffic estimates. Alexa is a joke, but everyone uses it. Comscore can't measure these sites well, as Fred points out.

I've been at both Google and Yahoo in the past ten days, and privately, folks there both told me that they had the data and the wherewithal to blow Alexa out of the water. They have relationships with tens of millions of customers, and access to billions of clickstreams. Why not create, if only for the PR rub off, a solid estimator of web traffic? Lord knows we need it.

I do not see this happening. There, I said it. Now it'll go and happen, of course. Yahoo swallowing AOL might make for great headlines, and worthy speculation by folks in the know, but the plain truth is that buying mass won't fix Yahoo's woes. It has plenty of mass. Getting more doesn't address the main issue dogging the company: its lack of a monetization engine as efficient as Google's. At the end of the day, that's the biggest issue. Panama, which is rolling out to advertisers now, is the company's most important project in years. If Yahoo is going to compete against Google - in everything from deals like YouTube to partnerships like MySpace - it has to get search monetization up to snuff. The rest will follow.

Arrested Due to a Database Error, Techdirt.

This might be filed in the Tin Foil Hat category, or it might be something we look back on and wonder how we ever missed it. I don't have any idea which. That alone sort of scares me.

The story says that Google is working with the Govt. in the war on terror. It depends a lot on ex CIA agent Robert Steele, who may or may not be a trustworthy source.

I've seen this story all over the place this weekend, and it strikes me as possibly accurate on at least one level: If the CIA/Dept. of Homeland Security was NOT trying to secretly work with Google, it's even lamer than we might imagine. After all, the company has just about the best infrastructure in the world to help them do their job. Is it legal? Moral? Right? Another question entirely....

More here and here.

Ms Dewey is a promotional search engine, Flash driven, from Microsoft. I've been in a hole, as it was Dugg 14 days ago. The kids likey. Microsoft hired this actress to, well, sexy up your searches. She has an attitude. It's well done. But clearly, search ain't the point.

Yowzer! YouTube pulls Comedy Central video clips to appease DMCA claims.

Google also recently made a pledge to play the straight man on copyright protections. BBC: Andrew Mclaughlin, Google's head of global public policy, told the Commons culture committee that if material infringed copyright on Google Video service, "we take it down". But he added: "I just can't say anything about YouTube since it's not our company."

The committee chairman John Whittingdale asked Mr Arora if Google had "put aside a very large pot of money to settle copyright infringement" when it took over YouTube. Mr Arora replied: "There is not a lot we can say about what we will do with YouTube because it is still in the process of due diligence and we haven't closed the acquisition." But he added: "We intend to uphold copyright. We believe it is very important as part the creative process. It's evident from our policy as part of Google Video, Google News or Google Books, and any acquisition in the future is not going to change Google's view on copyright."

All this despite that, in a Wired interview, Jon Stewart and Daily Show Producers previously encouraged fans to watch them on the internet. Daily Show and Colbert Report fans without cable, take to the streets across the nation, to mourn. (John adding commentary here) This feels a bit like Google taking the easy route. I wish it had stood up for the rights of fans to post their favorite clips, and I also wish it did the hard, but ultimately worthy work of convincing the major networks and Hollywood studios to follow their own customers and learn how to profit from their actions.

Google BlogSearch Adds Custom News Alerts

Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog Debuts

AOL Enhances Search With FullView Results

Pluck Kills Its Consumer RSS Reader--Updated Google Reader Too Much?

Search Applications: Search Startups Are Dead, Long Live Search Startups

Google's new Custom Search Engine: As Tom Evslin writes, "It’s possible that it will change the web forever. Or possible that it will have no impact whatsoever" ... And the only way to gauge which it will be is by trying to find out how useful it is to users, which ones, and how many. In the spirit of experimentation, Evslin tries a couple (experiment 1, experiment 2) and invites users to collaborate.

Speaking of which, here's a CSE of sites from Federated Media, which Justin Watt put together.

News hits the rumor mill, from well-trusted sources, that Google plans to both add additional dimensions to its advertising and unify management under one auspices. Giselle Abramovich from DM News writes, “there would be one global account director per account, that pulls in resources to sell as needed - PPC (pay-per-click), Print, Radio, Video, Display, etc.”

Read/Write Web posts that this possible reconfiguration of the advertising model by Google is similar to what Microsoft and IBM have already done:

One interesting sub-plot here is that Google needs more "inventory" to sell the different flavors of advertising. Jeff mentions adsense for podcasting in his post - and that is certain to be one way Google will increase their inventory. Also this puts the likes of Feedburner, Meebo, edgeio and Commission Junction squarely in Google's sights as potential acquisitions. All of those 'web 2.0' startups have no shortage of inventory!

In terms of Google's overall goals, as summarised at Google Blogoscoped, this rumored re-org falls under the "push their ad system" category. It really makes sense for Google and shows not only that they are innovating in technology - but maturing and expanding as a media/advertising entity. The benefit for Google's customers is that it enables them to target certain leads across different types of media. They can do that from one 'console' and they will work with 1 Google salesperson/account manager on their account.

Today Microsoft launched a campaign for Live Search with digital and print ads in major newspapers---New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times/PI, SF Chronicle, USA Today--- featuring its new capacities. You can tryout the future successor to MSN Search now, here. The campaign highlights the new mapping, local search and image search technology of Live, as well as targets some misunderstandings about the Live branding from the past year.

The Microsoft ad opens by quoting Battelle from The Search:
"Search is at best 5% solved--we're not even in the double digits of its potential."
By the demo that follows, in the digital copy, Microsoft is making a serious effort to push out beyond that five percent.

As the Live campaign copy states:
"Before we begin, let us state the obvious. We're late to the game. We admit it. But instead of shrugging our shoulders and becoming a footnote in search history, we've decided to write a few new chapters."

Microsoft has released Windows Live Messenger for Symbian before providing it to MSN Mobile. Microsoft is already receiving some flack for this release to Symbian, the Chinese language version of MSN mobile mainly controlled by Nokia, as a strategic error.

In overview, ZDNet delivers a sub par report card for the Microsoft Live initiative. The results: "A- for delivery, but a D- for presentation." The Live branding is widely considered confusing, as Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff told ZDNet, “It seems like end-users who don't particularly follow Microsoft have never heard of Live or confuse it with the next version of Windows, and customers, partners, and advertisers often express puzzlement over the difference between Windows Live, Live (e.g., Live Search), and MSN. The developer strategy for Live still hasn't seemed to gel very well, either.”

In other MSFT fowl-ups, an online tete-a-tete to alleviate security concerns about Vista among European partners went awry as the Microsoft Live Meeting software experienced 'technical difficulties' that dropped dozens of attendees from the conference and forced them to reschedule. Others reported problems with the video and audio performance of the Live Meeting system.

Update: Announced today, Windows Live Mobile is scheduled to be available by December to Orange customers in France, and in the UK and Spain by early next year. However, details on the technology and its compatibility remains vague. This from the Register:
The rollout will be limited by the availability of compatible software, on a range of handsets, and not limited to those running Windows Mobile or its derivatives. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said the software would differ from that already available on Windows Mobile, though the details aren't yet available. In fact, very few details are being provided at all. When pushed for information about the software, capabilities, handsets supported, or what is so new about the service, neither Orange nor Microsoft would be drawn.

For quite some time (possibly its entire history), Google famously required a 3.0 college GPA in order to qualify for employment. I've had many folks contact me over the years, indignant about this requirement, stunned that Google had asked its prospective employees for certified copies of their transcripts before even considering an offer.

Well, the times, they are a changing. Google is now a sales-driven company, and it's challenging (to say the least) to find thousands of salespeople who also managed to get good grades in college. As my head of sales, Chas Edwards (who in fact is one of the smartest folks I know) often quips: "It ain't rocket science, what I do." Not to mention, great sales people tend to be great socializers, which likely means the keg trumped the library when it came to late night pursuits.

So today comes word from a reliable source (who must remain anonymous) that Google has recently dropped its 3.0 GPA requirement, at least for sales. That, my friends, is the law of large numbers at work. And, while some might say this is the beginning of the end,

No f'ing way.

I'm off to the Blog Business Summit all day Friday (well, I'll admit I'm heading to Microsoft for some meetings in the morning). But if you're there in the afternoon, some say hello.

And yea, all this travel and preparation for the Web 2 conference has made it hard to write like I want to write here. After mid November, I intend to get back to this site with far more focus. It's by far my favorite thing to do.

Philipp over at Google Blogoscoped has documents which lay out key goals and objectives from Google. He is not publishing them, but has summarized some of their contents here.

Odd, but apparently true. A range of mountains in Canada--revealed by satellite images in Google Maps--looks like a Native American Indian----that, or someone has done some masterful hacking and photoshop work. Check it out.

Digg in Acquisition Talks With Several Giants

Yahoo Updates Yahoo Bookmarks With New Features

Firefox 2.0 Debuts

Google's Confidential Ethnographic Research on YouTube

InkyAnswers: A New Natural Language Search Engine (Beta)

Pandia honors Searchblog (and Searchmob!). Thanks guys! (Found via Searchmob!)

Breezy coverage of execs on stage in front of the magazine industry.

This is a clever twist on a very important emerging market of location based content, Outside.in. Check it out. Steven's announcement here.

...the site is ultimately about a new kind of experience. You sit at a computer and type in a street address, or a neighborhood name, or a zip code -- perhaps for your own home area, perhaps for a place you're visiting or interested in -- and within seconds the screen gives you a glimpse of all the textured, real-world issues and conversations and news unfolding in the location you've entered. Not just restaurant reviews or upcoming concerts, but the

I'm not really a politcal guy. Forgive me for harping on this. But honestly, that fact (if it is indeed true) that 35,000 human beings are in American secret prisons is simply astonishing. And according to Colin Powell's old chief of staff, only around 5% have anything to do with terrorism.

Why this is connected to the topic of this site here. In short, the data trails we all leave across the web can get us into some really serious shit, thanks to the current administration's view of habeas corpus and national security law.

Tim riffs on Larry Lessig's latest post about what makes for true sharing sites (he says YouTube is not), vs. "fake" sharing sites. He brings up a great question about Google Book Search which I asked some time ago, but had forgotten:

Now that Google has gone to the expense of creating an online book repository, will they have the courage to set that content loose, either licensing it back to publishers for use in other contexts, or in the case of public domain content, releasing not just the scanned images but also the text?

I interviewed author and Wired Editor Chris Anderson for the ecomExpo conference, which starts today. Our conversation runs tomorrow, but you can register today. Here's the full agenda, looks great.

As anticipated, Google Finance rolled-out an update, sidling up to Yahoo's popular standard bearer. New functionality includes the ability to chart comparisons to similar companies. Although, it still seems to still have some bugs (see pic); when I tried it out, the additional companies selected did not all display in the chart. In addition, some visual customization is now available. More at Zdnet.

IBM filed two infringement lawsuits for five patent violations against Amazon. The patents in question include online product recommendation schemes and other features Amazon uses at the foundation of its business, some of which IBM says it developed as early as the 1980s. IBM has approached Amazon since 2002 to reconcile the alleged infringement through licensing--which several other companies do.

From the WSJ:
The patents at the center of the dispute are broad, and IBM alleges they cover parts of Amazon's elaborate product-recommendation system. That system shows customers products related to the one they're looking at, and also shows them other products purchased by like-minded customers. The patents also cover the way Amazon displays advertising on its site to match customer preferences, and how the retailer stores shopping data to build customer profiles.

"Given that time frame, these are very fundamental inventions for e-commerce and how to do it on the network,'' said John E. Kelly, IBM's senior vice president for intellectual property. ``Much, if not all, of Amazon's business is built on top of this property.''

...IBM received 2,941 U.S. patents in 2005, for the 13th year more than any other company.

Amazon's relationship with patents has been more heavily contested; the company's patent of the ``one-click'' checkout method in 1999 was famously derided as overly broad and obvious. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is re-examining that patent.

From Krane's blog:

Maria uncovers this gem in a recent conversation with Dubya. Seriously.

BARTIROMO: I’m curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google?

BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgot the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.

Milestones often pass unnoticed. I missed Searchblog's 3000th post just yesterday. Fittingly, it was about geeking out on search. That means I've averaged 1000 posts a year, or nearly 3 a day for three years. Wow.

From BB today:

YouTube gave user data to Paramount lawyers
The video-sharing site recently purchased by Google for $1.65B in stock has been keeping tabs on users' personal data, and sharing some of that identifying info without users' awareness. Responding to a subpoena served in May by Viacom subsidiary Paramount Pictures, YouTube handed over data on at least one user to the movie studio's lawyers.

Roll your own search engine, folks, using Google (Cnet coverage). Dave Pell, I feel your pain....the (partial) release:

The Power of Google Search is Now Customizable

Today, Google is launching the Google Custom Search Engine, a new way to bring tailored search to websites and blogs.
Our clever engineers have found a way to open up the Google search platform to let anyone build their own search engine, without needing a Ph.D. in computer science. In just minutes, individuals, organizations and businesses can use the Google search platform to create their own search engines targeted toward their audience and focused on any content they like, from academic pursuits, to charitable causes, to Hollywood heartthrobs, and more.

When we say we're letting people build a custom search engine, we mean the whole thing: choosing which pages they want to include in their index, how the content should be prioritized, whether others can contribute to the index, and what the search results page will look like. Custom Search Engines are monetized through the Google AdSense program so they can even generate revenue with it. Universities, non-profits and government organizations can choose not to run ads on their search results if they'd rather not.

You can already see a few Custom Search Engines in action. Intuit's JumpUp.com site, which provides information and resources to small businesses, is combining a Custom Search Engine with its years of experience in small business to provide the most useful resources on the Web to its users. Or take RealClimate.org, a site that offers expert opinion on the science of climate change. They have created a searchable subset of the Web to provide reliable scientific information to its visitors.

Here's how a Custom Search Engine works: organizations or individuals simply go to www.google.com/coop/cse and select the websites or pages they'd like to include in their search index. Users can choose to restrict their search results to include only those pages and sites, or they can give those pages and sites higher priority and ranking within the larger Google index when people search their site. Users can then customize the look, feel and functionality of their search engine.

"Search and advertising is at the heart of all we do at Google, and we're constantly looking for ways to make both even more relevant for our users," said Shashi Seth, group product manager, Google Custom Search Engine. "Now, people can get the power of Google search, even when they're not on Google.com."

Google Custom Search Engine is available at www.google.com/coop/cse . We plan to expand the offering internationally in the coming weeks.

Recall also that Amazon had a version of this with A9.

UPDATE: More from the call today with Marissa Mayer and the product managers. The Custom Search is designed to extend the limited audience of Google Co-op, which they found stagnated as an early-adopter tool. It has improved ease of use, as showcased by the search engine on Justin Timberlake that a Product Manager's teenage daughter "rolled" in about 10 minutes. While similar to Rollyo's innovative custom roll, the Google CSE adds the benefit of allowing users to roll an unlimited number of sites together and display the results on their own site, with personalized presentation. Someone on the call described this as the fragmentation of search. The ability to build verticals will allow experts to build specialized engines. But while the engines will be individual, the collaborative element of tagging the domains encourages communities of knowledge to create together. So while each will stand apart from the amazing all-in-one answer box, the Custom Search will also allow a thickening or deepening of intelligent tags in Co-op, which feeds the one box that unites them all.

I was so happy with Akismet, Wordpress' spam fighting plugin, but lately, I have been deleting more than 50 spams a day. It's driving me out of my mind. I leave the blog for a few hours - like today, where I went down to spend the afternoon with Yahoo - and damned if there aren't the spam bots waiting to strike. Message to spammers: F*CK YOU.

Danny Sullivan Staying With SES Through 2007 (Breaking news)

Google is Not Invincible: 5 Reasons Why

Vital Google SEO Interview with Matt Cutts

Social Search: Decipho

More Walmart Flogs Written by Edelman Employees

Another major media story on click fraud this weekend, from the Washington Post. Nothing new that I can see, to be honest.

But I am left still scratching my head on this whole topic. There is no doubt that some folks take advantage of syndicated ad networks like Adsense and Overture to engage in fraudulent activities. But I spent a day down at Google recently, and among the meetings I had was a briefing with the folks responsible for leading Google's click fraud detection. I found them earnest, believable, and utterly frustrated with many players in the SEO/SEM industry.

Why? Recall the kerfluffle over click fraud at SES this past August - when Google issued a report essentially debunking approaches taken by most click fraud detection firms - the very firms whose data underpins a lot of the media coverage of clickfraud? The major point of the report was, in short, that the very methods used to count click fraud were technically inaccurate.

Well, that report did cause some headlines, but since then, apparently, the firms have not been very forthcoming to Google about whether or not they are fixing their approaches, or even if they accept Google's claims in the first place.

I was planning to get smarter on this before posting, but it seems the Post story has pushed the issue once again to the fore. My meeting was an initial overview, and I need to drill down and grok what I heard. More to come as I get it...

I won't bother linking to the original Cnet opinion piece eviscerated so well by TechDirt here. The topic is whether pointing to and summarizing content openly posted on the web is illegal and "immoral". It ain't.

Mike has discovered that Google has acquired a copy of SpaceShipOne, the plane which won the X Prize, and is installing it on their new campus. Odd. Is this just window dressing?

Brady spots and writes up Microsoft Live Search's "LinkfromDomain" macro.

Yesterday, Live Search released a cool, new operator that allows you search based on links from a domain. This has a lot of power and is not available on Yahoo! or Google. It's good for finding content that has been linked to from a blogger or social site.

A little birdy has tipped me to some updates on Google Finance. There are now comparison charts, new chart settings and features, more market data, and the ability to import portfolios from other sites. I like where this is going, and Yahoo Finance also has added new features as well...

Larry makes a good point - video is perhaps the most ephemeral of all media. Finding old clips is near impossible. I very much hope this will change.

If you're wealthy, you have options. You can put your money in a Swiss bank, for example, and your privacy and service levels increase significantly. Switzerland has set a level of regulations around financial transactions which protect the wealthy consumer from prying foreign governments, among other interested parties.

Those of you who've read this site for a while know I tend to go off from time to time on the issues implied by the Database of Intentions, and the clickstreams which comprise it. One of the trickiest issues if that of privacy and security: in my "Ephemeral to Eternal" riff I get into the implications of living online, and wonder when our culture will finally grapple with the implications of same.

In short, there's an awful lot of data about each of us available to third parties, and we have precious little knowledge of it, much less control, editing privileges, ownership, or permissions control. Want some proof points? Look to the DOJ's massive fishing expedition earlier this year, or AOL's huge data breach. Tip of the iceberg....

It strikes me that as our society wakes up to the potential abuses of this data, and our lack of any control over it, there will be an opportunity for the free market to respond. Root.net is one such response, but it does not solve the core issue of governance and jurisdiction - as long as the data is housed on US soil and with US corporations (or on your own computer), it will still be subject to US law, including PATRIOT and its kin. (Have you heard about the loss of habeas corpus, for example? Did you know that anyone can be classified as an "enemy combatant" by the President, and therefore lose habeas? Scary, indeed).

Anyway, one idea that's been bumping around my head a long time, and which I hope you all can help me think through, is the concept of what I'll call the "Data Switzerland." The concept is simple: why can't companies that hold massive amounts of our personally identifying information - companies like Yahoo, AOL, Google, Verizon, etc - simply warehouse that information in a country that has consumer-friendly data privacy laws? Why can't my search history, my particular entries in the database of intentions, my clickstreams, be housed in this Data Switzerland, if I so chose?

After all, Google and Microsoft both have selectively decided to house some of its data outside of China for quite similar reasons. Why not give those of us who fear abuse by third parties in the US the same option? Is it because such a move would anger US government too much? Might it even be illegal for some reason?

Those of you who are lawyers and policy experts, please chime in on this idea. It's certainly not new, and perhaps it's been considered and discarded for any number of reasons. But I, for one, would be happy to pay to have this peace of mind. As an inveterate Internet user, I'm data wealthy. I'd like to have options.

Update: Readers have pointed me to HavenCo, and this article in Wired (and of course, to Cryptonomicon). Good stuff, but my goal would be for major companies that own our data, like Google, to in fact act like HavenCo.

As for the issues of geographical disbursement and latency, I am sure they could be dealt with by storing copies of our datatrails in RAM, no?

Mark Glaser takes an interesting snapshot, on MediaShift, looking at how traditional media makers are beginning to discover Creative Commons' affect on digital photography. According to Glaser, the combination of Flickr and the CC has made 22 million searchable and sharable photos available online-- including print-ready grade photos. A close-up on how that changes business and resources for professional photo editors, journalists, and bloggers. Flickr: Creative Commons

Google has a new tool out that allows AdWords advertisers to track and analyze experimental changes in their landing page designed to boost conversion and ROI. The Website Optimizer measures success of grouped or singular altered elements, like copy or images, and compares their conversion percentage changes. Participation in the limited beta testing has some requirements.

CNN coverage here.

Forgive my low posting volume this week, folks, I am battling some airborne illness which hit me on my way back from NY. Back at it when I've fought the bugger off.

Why the Google Killer Will Be a Swarm of Verticals

How to Analyze Your Keyword List

Yahoo! Invests in Right Media

Weeding Out Click Fraud

What Are Para-sites?

This site automatically strips out a ton of affiliate spam from Google. The results are quite revealing.

How does affiliate spam make it into Google in the first place? Well, not everyone thinks it's spam. Via Matt Haughey.

Check out the BB coverage, cool!

Philipp has yet another Google GDrive teaser-- this is the most revealing yet. He's accessed "Google’s internal Gdrive client, named “Platypus", but notes that from the look of things it's intended to remain an internal system for Google employees to store and share files... (though, many more G products have been tested as internal projects before public exposure).

Says Philipp:
Google’s Platypus help, which I’ve mirrored here in its Windows and Linux version, says:
"We encourage you to keep all of your files with us, including your Office documents, photos, and personal notes, except for sensitive data (including electronic protected health information) and other files inconsistent with the internal user agreement."
...As one can expect, I can’t get past the login screen after installing Gdrive on my local machine. If I’d be able to do so, I could synchronize and share files with other Googlers who also installed Gdrive, and also access files with a web browser.
He's also uploaded the configuration files, for those who want to play around.

This deal (Lost Remote) shows that while Google is getting the YouTubian glory, Yahoo is still paying attention to things that, in the end, will also matter quite a bit. From the release:

CBS Television Stations, a division of CBS Corporation (NYSE:CBS) (NYSE:CBS.A), and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced an exclusive video syndication agreement in which local news video from 16 of CBS’s owned stations will be made available on Yahoo! to the Internet’s largest news audience. The relationship, which begins tomorrow, marks the first video agreement between a network-owned television station group and an Internet news provider. CBS and Yahoo will share revenue from advertising sold adjacent to CBS Stations’ content on the site.

Yahoo has moved a lot of chips to Local, and in time I expect that bet to payoff, at least in the marketplace - it remains to be seen if Yahoo wins the table.

(BTW, CBS also pushes feeds of its local videos into Google Maps. And that might be how we get our local news at some point. At some point....)

Google Blogoscoped notes the difference between Wikipedia, which is blocked in China (save some Chinese pages) and the new competitor from Baidu, which is monitored by the government, and, Philipp says, most likely to grow market share, just as Baidu's main service has. If Google or others want to beat Baidu in China, they'll have to join them more vigorously, it seems.

What? Battelle writing about the enterprise? Well, don't get used to it. But I do have to say, this example from Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun, is really, really instructive about how Big Business can learn from Web 2.0. He started with a question in an earlier post - whither the datacenter?, in short. Big companies and the entrenched CXOs within them change slowly, and only when pushed, shoved, and forced by trends too big to ignore. I think Jonathan has found an example of such a trend in this anecdote from his latest entry:

I was talking to the CIO of a large financial institution last week. He told me he was in the midst of building out two new datacenters, spending $250,000,000 (yes, a quarter of a billon) on one, more than that on the other. He was beyond frustrated (as I'm sure was his CFO).

I asked him how long it was going to take, he said nearly three years. Years.

And then Dave Douglas reminded me that two to three years is longer than it took for YouTube to incorporate, build out their infrastructure, scale their business to serve the entire planet - and get sold.

Companies are really spending a quarter BILLION dollars on datacenter implementations that take three YEARS to execute? My God. On what planet?

I know, I know, sometimes YouTube goes down, and if you are running the NYSE, that ain't an option. But man, one might hope you could figure out a way to failsafe with less than $250,000,000.....

John Battelle's Posse (John will surely be delighted to know he has a posse, but does anyone know what this is about?)

Endelman's Walmart Mess

The Web According to Ballmer

Split-screen Preview of Google Search (this is pretty cool)

5 Firefox Extensions for Your Search

Esteemed members of the Searchblog community:

The Web 2 conference is coming up in three short weeks, and I have one hell of a job to do: I am interviewing quite an assortment of Internet leaders on stage, in front of nearly 1,200 people, for three days straight (I'll be aided here and there by Tim O'Reilly, thankfully). The program of course has all sorts of other elements - presentations, panels, debates, and the like. But one of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 has been the one-on-one interviews, and this year, we have one hell of a lineup.

In the course of three days, among scores of others who will give presentations and speak on panels, we'll be interviewing on stage:

Eric Schmidt - CEO Google
Arthur Sulzberger - Chair/Publisher The New York Times Co
Barry Diller - CEO IAC
Jack Ma - CEO Alibaba (including Yahoo China)
Niklas Zennström - CEO Skype (his first ever interview on US soil since the settlement)
Jeff Bezos - CEO Amazon
Bruce Chizen - CEO Adobe
Ross Levinsohn - CEO Fox Interactive (Myspace/Newscorp)
Jonathan Miller - CEO AOL
Ray Ozzie - Chief Software Architect, Microsoft
Roger McNamee and Ram Shriram- Venture investors (Elevation Partners and Board member, Google)
Eric Nicoli - Chairman, EMI
David Filo - Founder, Yahoo

Crikey. I need your help.

Now, I know that the event is sold out, and therefore not everyone can come, and many of you wouldn't spend the dough (it ain't cheap) to come even if you could spare the time.

Nevertheless, we plan to make the sessions available on the web as soon as we are able, in a format that will make them quite accessible. And with nearly 100 press and bloggers in attendance, your questions will certainly get coverage in real time. So, if you have any interest at all, I beg you to help me question these leaders while we got 'em on the spot. I promise to report back to you once all is said and done.

Over the next few days (I'm traveling so it might be sporadic...) I'll be posting one entry per interview, and asking for your comments on the post - what do you want to hear from these leaders?

I've already started with Eric, I posted my request here late last month - please add your thoughts; clearly we need to ask about YouTube....

Next up will be Arthur of the Times, then Barry Diller, and so on.

Thanks for your feedback, it means a lot to me to hear what you want asked of these folks. And I am truly honored to be part of these dialogs. Onwards....

The Times does the Friendster tick tock. Biggest ouch:

Mr. Abrams spurned Google’s advances and charted his own course. In retrospect, he should have taken the $30 million. If Google had paid him in stock, Mr. Abrams would easily be worth $1 billion today, according to one person close to Google.

When a stock price declines, speculation increases that a company might be vulnerable to an acquisition. Yahoo's been beaten up lately, and Fred Wilson takes his readers through an exercise in who might be tempted to buy Yahoo. His speculation is that were anyone to move, the most logical suitor would be Microsoft.

Microsoft can afford Yahoo! and a combined MSN/Yahoo! would certainly be a stronger competitive player against Google, something that is clearly on Ballmer's mind right now. That seems the most likely deal to me.

It's surprising that Yahoo! finds themselves in this place. They made the right move to get into search with the Overture deal and are the only other viable competitor in search right now. Microsoft may get there, but they aren't yet. But Yahoo!'s user and page growth is slowing and their monetization efforts are slowing too. And the market doesn't like slowing.

Surprise: Time Warner is rattling copyright sabers (BoingBoing) over Google's acquisition of YouTube. Let's pull back and take a look at this, shall we? Time Warner not only owns a shitload of content that is now playing on YouTube, it also owns AOL, and with it the self-inflicted wounds which came from buying AOL, or rather, buying into the idea of AOL back when it had its mid-life crisis of confidence about its own ability to execute in that wooly digital world, that late 90s coke binge where it seemed everyone in California was poised to kick Time Warner's collective ass. Thank God, it turned out to be wrong....for a few years, anyway.

But now, the problem is back, and it's much more serious, at least, it's serious if you're committed to your old ways of doing business. And for those who are afraid of the future, its name is Google. Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons is in a tought spot - he knows that disparaging dismissals of the upstarts will no longer suffice. But damned if he won't "fire a shot across the bow" in any case.

From the Guardian coverage:

Dick Parsons, the chairman and chief executive of Time Warner, fired a shot across the bows of Google, saying his group would pursue its copyright complaints against the video sharing site YouTube.com.

Be careful, Dick, for a shot across the bow may bring a broadside from the other side. And the gorgeous fact of it is this: The other side isn't Google. It's everyone who uses Google (and now, YouTube.) Huh. Worth a pause, a drink, and a think.

Update: Apparently more companies are rattling sabers. From the Journal:

...lawyers for the group of media companies, which includes News Corp., General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and Viacom Inc., have concluded that YouTube could be liable to copyright penalties of $150,000 per unauthorized video, people familiar the matter say. Viacom believes that pirated versions of video clips from its cable channels -- including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon -- are watched 80,000 times a day via YouTube. At that rate, potential penalties could run into the billions of dollars.

Yahoo! Launches Internet Time Capsule

Is Amazon Throwing in the Towel on A9?

Shopping Feed Standards

Centric Software Unveils New Product Intelligence

GenieKnows.com Launches Vertical Search

That's a quote in this rather bleak piece on Yahoo in today's Times. The context? Google owns the table in the poker game that is online media. How about this excerpt from Saul's piece:

“Yahoo has lost the favor it enjoyed a year or two ago,” said David Cohen, a senior vice president of Universal McCann, a media buying agency of the Interpublic Group. He said his clients were reducing the share of their budgets they allocate to Yahoo in favor of newer sites, like MySpace, and sites developed by big media companies like Viacom.

“There are more players in town, and the others are closing the gap relative to the things Yahoo is good at,” Mr. Cohen said.

But the problems at Yahoo go beyond advertising. From video programming to social networking — areas of interest to users and advertisers alike — the company is losing its initiative. And each time a product fails in the market or is late, Yahoo loses some ability to do more deals and hire more talented employees. The shares are down 38 percent this year, sending some employees out the door in search of better shots at stock market wealth.

Google, in the meantime, is taking advantage of Yahoo’s problems to cement crucial deals that could make its rival’s recovery even more difficult.

Ouch. More when I can say more. But I have to say this: Fortunes rise, and fortunes fall. Yahoo's been here before. Google? Not so much. I've seen go go go - Apple in the mid 80s, Microsoft in the early 90s, Netscape in the mid 90s....and Google is on an extraordinary run - go go go for going on four years now. But that's hardly a dynasty...yet.

Does anyone find this ad (it's everywhere, for a mortgage broker) mesmerizing? It's a popunder, and I hate popunders. But there something in the way this couple moves....

That reminds me. I think all ads on the web should have permalinks so we can refer to them historically. Why not?!

Update: Jonathan at FM has found a site that has some of these ads!

Man. Google is such a cool name. This is such a lame one:

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a web-based word-processing and spreadsheet product that makes it easier for people to create, manage, and share documents and spreadsheets online. Google Docs & Spreadsheets integrates Writely and Google Spreadsheets into a single, easy-to-use product that takes an innovative approach to a very specific problem in the productivity-software space: enabling people to manage and collaborate on the documents and spreadsheets they rely on in their personal and professional lives, no matter where they are or when they need to access them.

With Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google is taking a set of important tasks and offering an online solution to completing them individually or with a broader group. With a Google Account, a compatible web browser, and an Internet connection, users will now easily be able to:

-- Create documents and spreadsheets, and then manage and access them in a single, secure location
-- Easily collaborate with others, online and in real time
-- Export to and import from a wide variety of file formats
-- Share them with others as view-only
-- Publish them to a blog or as an HTML page

Simply put, Google Docs & Spreadsheets is focused on providing users with an innovative and efficient way to create and share information on the Web.

But not a lame idea, certainly. I can't wait for my visit to Microsoft later this month!

While CNet heralds a triumph for social computing (and asks marketers to face the music and get comfortable with UGC videos), CNN Money augurs "the beginning of the end?"

Dalka points to a few good, unanswered questions on the deal: Will the unprecedented operational independence Google's giving YouTube provide enough distance to partially protect the buyer from copyright infringement lawsuits? And, will the users (now at over 20 million) stay if Google has to clean house?

Forever Geek discovers the zen in the new alliance: an alignment of cultures willing to fight against the copyright overlords, a similar knack for accumulating prized industry data, and the brand name.

A VC highlights, from an earlier post, how this startup landed the biggest acquisition offer Google has ever made--and in transit "kicked Google's ass (and everyone else's too)."

TechCrunch posted the original scoop on the rumor-- ahead of most major media outlets, including the NYT, as the blogosphere was quick to note.

Mark Cuban plays a singular devil's advocate in the dissent, on a count of the landslide of copyright violation suits to come. And in that prediction, of course, he's no lone cassandra. Copyright suit magnet? asks the Journal.

Business Week discusses YouTube's maneuvers to fend against suits, including a new 'copyright fingerprint' tag it will implement to allow owners of copyrighted materials to take part in the viral-sharing decision and subsequent ad revenue.

On the other side of the fence... Robert Scoble asks, what if was Microsoft that bought YouTube? In all fairness, Yahoo News runs an AP article entitled "Google eclipses rivals with YouTube." (now that is editorial restraint.)

The YouTube co-founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, have their celebratory clip joking, "The king of search and the king of video have gotten together--- we're going to have it our way."

But it's fair to say a YouTube user has created a more professional clip: a droll vid on what users can expect from the Google-YouTube honeymoon.

My first go to guy on all things DMCA, copyright, and digital law and policy is the EFF's Fred von Lohmann. I started an email interview with him prior to the GooTube deal, and it only seems more salient now. Read on for Fred's insights:

Is YouTube on safe legal ground, given all the recent press and buzz around copyright?

Well, virtually no one in the Internet industry is on "safe" legal ground. As any copyright lawyer will tell you, the legal standards governing all Internet businesses are still more uncertain than we'd like. Just witness all the litigation that companies like Google and eBay are involved with.

Of course, when most people think about potential legal liability for YouTube, they are thinking about potential copyright risks. And although nothing in the Internet legal realm is entirely certain, YouTube looks to be on relatively firm legal ground. Unlike some more aggressive companies (like the old Napster), YouTube has the benefit of a set of special "safe harbors" created for online service providers as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). If your activities fall within the safe harbors, as defined in Section 512 of the Copyright Act, you can't be liable for money damages for copyright infringement based on those activities. There is a different safe harbor for each of the following activities: providing network access (e.g., your ISP), caching, storing material on behalf of uses (e.g., web hosting), and providing information location tools (e.g., search engines and linking).

One of those DMCA safe harbors was designed to protect providers of hosting services. When it was passed, Congress had big web hosting services in mind, but the rules work just as well for video hosting services (like YouTube), blog hosting (like Blogger), and music lockering (like MP3Tunes). There are a number of requirements that a hosting provider must meet, but the most important one is the implementation of a "notice-and-takedown" policy. YouTube has such a policy in place, allowing copyright owners to notify it of infringing videos and taking them down promptly upon receiving such a notice. Other requirements include implementing a policy of terminating "repeat infringers," which YouTube also has, and registering a "copyright agent" with the Copyright Office, which YouTube has done.

The outer boundaries of the DMCA safe harbors are still being hammered out in court (porn vendor Perfect 10 has been leading the charge on behalf of copyright owners on this legal front). And it's not just YouTube that is interested in these legal fights -- because any legal precedents undermining the safe harbor would put Google, Yahoo, AOL, MySpace, eBay and others at risk--the biggest Internet players have a stake in the outcome.

But so far, so good for YouTube. It looks like YouTube is working hard to keep its boat in sheltered copyright waters.

Given what you just told me, why, do you think, the major media companies - potential acquirers of YouTube - are still wary of the company, as reported in many quarters (I reported as much on my blog)? Is it simply: "I don't want to be the test case for the DMCA?"

YouTube, like so many Internet pioneers before it, is in the disruptive innovation business, and thus sure to upset many incumbent players. So, despite the fact that YouTube is on reasonably firm legal footing, many media company suitors are probably going to be cautious here. They'll be wringing their hands, worried that maybe YouTube has gone "too far," will end up the legal "javelin catcher" out front, and the market will belong to a second-comer (see, e.g., ReplayTV and TiVo). And many incumbent media players are not eager to alienate their comrades (sometimes known as "competitors," but more frequently known as "deal partners" ) over some new upstart with an uncertain future. Remember what happened to Bertelsman when it invested in Napster?

In this regard, YouTube is nothing new -- disruptive innovators are never popular with the popular kids. Just think back on Sony in the days of the Betamax, or Diamond with its category-creating Rio MP3 player. Or, for that matter, Google today, attacked from all sides for disrupting comfy old markets (books, advertising, etc).

Let's talk about some of that disruption. Where do you come down on the Google books issue?

I'm a big supporter of Google's Library Project -- I predict its legacy will outlive that of Google's search products. I haven't bothered writing out my views because they have already been more eloquently put by others.

On the general topic, I couldn't have put it better than Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu:
http://www.slate.com/id/2128094/

On the copyright law details, Jonathan Band has done a better job than I could:
http://www.policybandwidth.com/doc/googleprint.pdf

And finally, on the importance of this effort to culture, I have nothing to add to the eloquent remarks of the President of the University of Michigan:
http://www.law.pitt.edu/madison/downloads/coleman.pdf

Now that we know who bought YouTube… do you think Google is going to get sued in any case?

YouTube has already been sued (by LA New Service), so Google is essentially buying that lawsuit. But I don't think that's a problem -- frankly, precedent set against YouTube will likely exert strong influence over the entire video hosting industry. So, in essence, Google is just getting more direct control over a lawsuit that is important for its existing and future business. And when it comes to lawsuits, Google has top-drawer talent (both in-house and in outside law firms), strategic vision, and a stellar track record. Google's executives (like AOL's and Yahoo's before them) understand that shaping the legal precedents is a critical part of their business.

And it's important to consider who are the people suing YouTube. I've thought for some time that the first lawsuits against YouTube (and other video hosting services) will be from small copyright owners (like LA News Service), not from major media companies. That's good news for YouTube (and Google). Small timers tend to lack the resources to bring top-drawer legal talent to bear in these fights. As a result, they often lose, creating useful precedents for the Google's of the world. In fact, Google has already been successful in securing good precedents against unsophisticated opponents who thought that they could squeeze a quick settlement out of Google (Field v. Google, Parker v. Google). What the small-timers don't appreciate is that Google would much rather spend money on setting a good precedent than on settling.

So I think the YouTube acquisition may well represent a legal opportunity for Google (and the Internet industry generally), rather than a vulnerability. After all, litigation to define the copyright rules for new online services is inevitable -- better to choose your battles and plan for them, rather than fleeing the fight and letting some other company create bad precedents that will haunt you later.

Thanks Fred!!!

Gary gives us a pause from YT madness....from his coverage:

Nexidia is a multimedia search company out of Georgia that creates a searchable corpus (words and phrases) but does it unlike other products that provide transcript (every word spoken) search.

Nexidia takes words and phrases and breaks them down into phonetic sounds (phonemes) and then indexes them. ....
About 40 phonemes exist in every language with about 400 in all spoken languages. ...To this point, it’s been difficult to demo Nexidia technology since there haven’t been any public demo sites. Most of their business is with private companies (recording call center chats, for example) and the government.

However, as of today, we have a publicly accessible demo to take a look at with Nexidia. It comes from Channel 11 (WXIA) in Atlanta and allows you to keyword search all of their news programming (no sports) plus some exclusive web footage. Look for the search box in the middle of the page. Of course, don’t forget that this is a beta release.

My pal John Heilemann has penned a B2 piece this week on the Hype Machine, which I have to admit I had heard of but not checked out. It's a very cool music site, a sort of structured search hack which takes as its inputs discussions and songs on popular music blogs, and gives as its outputs songs that are buzzworthy. There's a there there, and I'll give ten to one the fellow behind it (Anthony Volodkin, at left) is fielding job offers a la delicious right about now....

The markets like it - GOOG is up $8.50.

I'm listening to the conference call. Chad Hurley is talking about the integration of Google search into YouTube and also is talking about how YT is focused on helping media companies to monetize their content.

Why YouTube when you had Google VIdeo? Eric said Google Video was doing well, but YouTube was a clear winner in the social networking side of video...

Why stock, not cash? David Drummond of Google: So as to make it tax free for the shareholders.

How large are YouTube's costs? No comment save Eric: "they have been thrifty."

Monetizing YouTube: In the near term and mid term what is it coming from, search or video? Eric: We don't give guidance. We've come up with 20-30 places where Google tech can help. Most people believe this is just the beginning of the Internet video revolution.

What did you use to value this acquisition? We typically don't go into that. David: We modeled it this on a "synergistic model".

What role did copyright play in this acquisition and what steps are you taking there? YT: From the beginning we've always respected rights holders' rights. We now have the resources (at YT) to continue that. David: The YT vision and commitment to enforcing copyrights - relying on the safe harbor of the DMCA - is similar to ours.

What integration might be expected in the short term? Sergey: we care very much about search - we want to include YT's videos in that - and also we will work on the advertising solutions. There is a great deal more experimentation and trials to be done. Google Video doesn't go away ever (Eric).

Datamining: Sergey: We have no intention to do that.

Will you keep the brand separate: Eric: Yes. It has great value.

This is the next step in the evolution of the Internet. ...it's a natural next step. (End of call)

I am mixed on this. I think it's wise to frame this as "the companies will stay separate" kind of acquisition, even if in the end that's not the intent. But this marks Google's first significant "out of brand" acquisition, the company's first true brand-management challenge. I'm not counting Blogger in here because, well, it wasn't this big. More to come...

Done Deal - Google Buys YouTube

Walmart.com to Launch Digital Movie Downloads

Megalite Launches New Version

Subservient Chicken--Coming to an XBox Near You

Chris Seline's Searchles: Social Search Beyond the Limits of Collective Wisdom

The Journal reports:

Google Inc. agreed to buy closely-held YouTube Inc. in an all-stock deal worth about $1.65 billion, a transaction that will unite the popular video-sharing site with Google's online advertising system.

Under the terms of the deal, which was expected, YouTube will at least initially retain a significant measure of independence, keeping its brand and offices. YouTube will continue to be based in San Bruno, Calif., and all YouTube employees will remain with the company. The companies said they expect to close the transaction in the fourth quarter.

More when....etc.

From Reuters:

Internet search leader Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Monday said it signed distribution deals with Sony BMG and Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) to offer music videos.

Deals with two of the top global music labels follow on the heels of similar deals Universal Music Group signed with top online video service YouTube on Monday.

Meanwhile, we all await the landing, or fizzzling, of hurricane GooTube.

It has to deal with making judgements about what is right and wrong. See this piece from the Times:

YouTube users can flag any video as containing pornography, mature content or graphic violence, depicting illegal acts or being racially or ethnically offensive. A video is removed — as Ms. Malkin’s was on Sept. 28 — only if a review by the company’s customer support department agrees that it is inappropriate, or that the video is on its face in violation of the site’s terms of use.

But the incident raised some questions about the fine line YouTube’s administrators walk when they decide to respond to users’ complaints about contributions to the site — a mechanism that is fraught with the potential for vindictive shenanigans.

So says Sevin Rosen, which VentureBeat discovers will return the money it raised to investors. Is this a sign? From the story:

...in a letter sent to its investors Friday, a copy of which was obtained by VentureBeat, the firm made a surprising about-face. It told the investors it had decided there is “too much money,” “too many deals funded in almost every conceivable space,” and a “terribly weak exit environment.” Moreover, it sees no changes in the foreseeable future.

The story was broken by the Times (covered here by Stowe) and used as a peg to wonder aloud: is VC model working anymore?

This Google YouTube story is a true marvel of unsubstantiation. While the Journal said last week it had one (off the record) source, and TechCrunch gave it about a 40% chance based on its own anonymous sourcing, the UK papers, apparently trying to get ahead of a possible announcement Monday, are truly outdoing themselves.

The Times UK sources it thusly: "Google is expected early this week to announce a $1.6 billion (£850m) deal to acquire YouTube." In other words, there is no source.

Sky News posts it this way: "Online search engine giant Google is expected to agree a £850m deal to buy video sharing website YouTube." Yup, no source either. Oh wait, save for this gem: "The Sunday Times has suggested the site's owners would welcome financial help to support the cost of hosting the ever-growing number of clips - reported to be £800,000 each month."

While this may well happen, I have to ask, since when have stories with passive sourcing - ie, "is expected to" - passed for journalism?

Google seemed to be cancelling its click to call program, given an oddly worded blog post that appeared earlier today. The post has been removed, but as TechCrunch notes, it seems the Google Blog was hacked....

Continue reading "Reader Greg Says..." »

TechDirt points to a piece at The Technology Liberation Front about legislation considered in my home state of California:

...the California Initiative For Internet Privacy (CIFIP) is turning up the heat on Google and other search engine provides with threats of legislative campaigns or a push for a ballot initiative regulating data collection.

When it comes to the contentious issue of data retention, search companies are basically damned if they do and damned if they don't. That is, if they DO collect / retain search terms and records, the privacy zealots go crazy and run to Rep. Ed Markey (or, in this case, California legislators) and ask for new laws strictly limiting what can be collected / retained.

On the other hand, if they DO NOT collect / retain any of this info, then the "law and order" / "we must protect the children" crowd in Congress and state AG offices start breathing fire down their necks and demand *mandatory* data preservation / retention, potentially for lengthy periods of time (and for quite a bit of information).

Google holds a semi annual confab for its partners called Zeitgeist. The press is not invited, but a lof of folks I know end up going. The consensus from them is that the event has turned into a pretty traditional "make your clients happy" event. In other words, Google's acting like every other company in the world that sells advertising for a living.

Forbes rounds it up here. From it:

Schmidt said that more than 1,000 people will ultimately work on Google’s efforts in radio advertising, which will someday sell radio ads over a modified version of its current Adwords placement service. “We’re trying to get a simplified Adwords interface where the advertiser gets multiple channels,” Schmidt said. The idea: Let a marketer allocate an ad budget across multiple platforms, either in an automated manner or by targeting times and regions.

The initiative to put ads in newspapers, ongoing since January, now has almost 100 newspapers, Schmidt said. Television advertising, he added, is still a long way off, but is planned.

And note this kicker to the piece:

One area Google won’t be moving into, the three said, is actual content creation. That's a refrain the company has to constantly repeat in the face of concern by publishers and other media types who worry about the company's ambitions. “We see ourselves as the best way to get to content,” said Schmidt.

“…and monetize it,” Page added.

This is why I think Google and YouTube make sense: no one else can position themselves in this way to Big Media. Other Big Media companies will sue the shit out of whoever buys YouTube. But Google has one hell of a legal team, and it's entire business is based on the DMCA safe harbor. "We're not here to compete with you guys for content creation," Google says, "we're here to partner with you!"

Gary has a list of sites that are archiving the web. Cool...

Nice piece by LA Times' Chris Gaither on Brin's latest call to engineeers at the 'plex: Stop throwing so much pasta against the wall, I can't take it!

This may come from Sergey's inability to spend any more time in the Japanese shaking chair (see link for why).

From the piece:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — In another sign of Google Inc.'s growth from start-up to corporate behemoth, the company's top executives said Thursday that they had begun telling engineers to stop launching so many new services and instead focus on making existing ones work together better.

The shift is a major departure from Google's previous strategy of launching new services rapid-fire and highlights the 8-year-old company's struggle to stay focused during swift growth.

Co-founder Sergey Brin is leading a companywide initiative called "Features, not products." He said the campaign started this summer when Google executives realized that myriad product releases were confusing their users.

"It's worse than that," said Brin, Google's president of technology. "It's that I was getting lost in the sheer volume of the products that we were releasing."

Remember back in July when I said that the most logical candidate for acquiring YouTube was Google? Now the Journal agrees, or at least, has one source validating a rumor from TechCrunch....

Google Inc. is in talks to acquire online video site YouTube Inc. for roughly $1.6 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The discussions are still at a sensitive stage and could well break off, this person says.

A spokeswoman for closely held YouTube could not be reached for comment. A Google spokesman said, "We don't comment on rumors and speculation." Rumors of such talks were reported earlier on the TechCrunch blog.

Remember my predictions for 2006? Well, this one is getting close to number 1....

From IWantMedia:

Nickelodeon Lets Youngsters Make Own Cartoons

Viacom's Nickelodeon is making available on its Web site technology that allows young fans to make cartoon mashups of different scenes from favorites like "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "Avatar." Fans can post their creations on their own Web sites and e-mail them to friends.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061004/tv_personal_cartoons.html

Google Video is no match for YouTube

Become.com’s Search and Shopping Solution Beats Google

Eventful and Microsoft Launch New Event Search Plugin for Windows Live Writer Blogging Software

Yahoo! Creeps Into Bed With Current TV

GOOGLE Debuts * Public Source Code * Search Engine

So I had an hour just now, an HOUR!!!, to do whatever I wanted to. And what did I do? I read my feeds. In one sitting. How nice it was. And here's the highlights:

Haaaaaaaaahahahahaahaha....(via Danny)

Fred rants at the Times for putting important voices like Friedman behind the paywall. I agree.

Barrons and many others cover charges being filed against the HP folks.

Google does new AJAX search API, Gadgets, updated Groups, and a ton of other stuff (another post is coming on that...)

SearchMash - a "secret" place for Google to try new things.

Yesterday the Dow Jones hit a historical high. As I said to my wife - time to start squirreling money away, and perhaps we should consider moving money from those mutual funds to cash.

By the way, and totally random, but can anyone explain why oil prices have dropped so dramatically lately? I mean, really, besides just saying "Karl Rove made it happen"?

The winners of Yahoo Hack Day are here....

Paul likes stealth market research on Google, read more here....

I can't keep up. Google Movies?!

1500 Diggs and still counting, and I wonder why...

Bebo on the rise in the UK...

It's Ask sponsored listings news!

Life After Microsoft: Robert Scoble

vFlyer Distributes and Extends Classified Ads

Retailers Play Dirty With Local Search

PrefPass: Helping Surfers Sidestep Site Registration

Can Google Even Get Search Right?

Yahoo! China (operated by Alibaba.com) filed a lawsuit against Sanjiwuxian, the owner of a Chinese search engine called Qihoo, on the grounds of unfair competition. According to the allegations, Qihoo's 320safe software was alerting users that Yahoo's toolbar was malware and prompting deintallation, simultaneously taking a cut at Yahoo toolbar's market share in China, which is considerable, and slandering the company's brand image.
(Ironically, a search for "Qihoo" in Google produces the spelling correction "Did you mean: Yahoo?".)

Google launches The Literacy Project, a combination of its products framed to promote literacy and aid educators around the globe-- including Bollywood sing-along film Videos, educational Groups and academic Book Search. The project was unveiled at the world's largest book fair in Frankfurt, Germany today--in cooperation with UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning and Frankfurt Book Fair literacy campaign (LitCam).

Update: A reader made an interesting suggestion that this was dandy, but wouldn't it be better if Google allowed users to create their own custom pages per theme? I've asked Google and will post the reply here. But also note, some additional editorial choices, in coordination with UNESCO and LitCam, were weaved into the fabric of this project page--it looks like--beyond the work of algorithms certainly, but also with tools requiring discretion above what a typical user might be allowed.

Update Cont'd: Google replied that they are interested in expanding user control in this area, and would be back with more updates along this line. On the LitProject, they facilitated making more materials on literacy available and searchable online-- videos, in particular.

Eric Schmidt on blogs while speaking in England: "The average blog has one reader: the blogger". Damn, I'm caught out.

Update: Interesting response to Eric's talk here from Micah Sifry - Eric was giving a speech to the annual meeting of the conservative party in Britain, Micah covers all things digital democracy...

From a report just issued by Bear:

Following the international market share loss in July, 2006 where Google lost 230bps of international search market share, Google's position rebounded nicely in August, 2006 by regaining 140bps to reach a 70.7% of market share according to comScore's release yesterday. The results were consistent with the results on the domestic platform reported earlier. We note that this follows a similar pattern in the corresponding months of 2005 where Google lost share in July 05 but regained share in August 05. We view this as a positive for the company as Google was able to demonstrate its commanding position in the search market, and reaffirms our view that the company should report a solid 3Q.

· Google's share gain came largely at the expense of Yahoo, who lost 180bps in August 2006 after consistent market share gains in the past three months. Yahoo's market share came in at 16.7%. MSN also lost share moderately to 7%, down from 7.2% in July. AOL gained share slightly and came in at 1.7% in August, up from 1.6% in July while Ask stayed flat at 2.2%.

More as I get it...

Wink 2.0 Launches, Social Network

Bessed Search Encourages User Comments, Url Submission in Results

Google's SearchMash.com Testing

Google Base Store Connector

Google Buying Banner Ads for Checkout

Many have noted the apparent passing (at least in all but domain) of A9, a search site from Amazon that got me and a lot of others very excited when it debuted two years ago with then innovative features like roll your own search and search history. I recall the gleam in Udi Manber's eyes as he told me about it, and I believed him when he said he had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted in search from Bezos and Amazon. But Manber is at Google now, and A9, apparently, is nearly dead. Too bad.

This month's Wired has a long piece (not up, but will be soon) by George Gilder on the "information factories," the massive server farms that Google, Microsoft and others are building up in Oregon and in other places about the globe. I read it (and the rest of the magazine) on a trip to NY over the weekend, and found the piece singularly frustrating.

Gilder has always been a shiny eyed fetishist of the first order, and he keeps the breathless pace up with this piece, which does a good job of laying out they why of the plants (cheap power, "peta" processing efficiency, etc.), but fails utterly to even engage in the consequences of having the world's data stored in top secret high security locations owned by private companies with little if any transparency about how that data might be used. What about the social impact? Privacy, reconstruction of relationship of self to society, policy, data rights, etc.? Irrelevant in this blinkered paen to boundless techno utopianism. Even as I love blinkered paen to boundless techno utopianism, I'd expect more from Wired on an issue of this significance.

Gap Shoes to Launch Online

Google Reader-- Update in Labs

Ask Launches Storm Trackers and Enhances Weather Maps

Clusty Relaunches with Redesign and Cloud Creator

Investing in Keyword Research Tools

Cisco is trying something new in an ad campaign - they came up with a Wikia (the commercial version of Wikipedia) definition of "The Human Network", the catchline to their current campaign, and asked a bunch of authors to pen their own definitions. They also purchased advertising on those authors' sites. This was done in collaboration with FM, and I think it's a neat spin on what folks like Snap and Symantec have done. I contributed my own definition here. Obscure Jesuit priests? Yep, I did edit that piece in Wired so long ago....

(and thanks to Louis Rossetto for the inspiration!)

Google Inc. invests in a company landmark, the 18-by-12 foot garage in which Sergey Brin and Larry Page first developed the Google search engine. Google won't disclose the buying price for the house that incubated its corporation, now worth about $125 billion, but the AP reports that neighboring homes sell in the $1.1 to 1.3 million range.