John Battelle's Searchblog

For those who love info porn. Take it with a grain of salt, as no stats company has the market cornered on reality so far.

Liveside has a nice roundup of recent buzz.

Via Digg, three sites that are just worth wasting some time on.

Live action hamster video game

Via Lost Remote:

A new study found that 54 percent of adult internet users are shooting video but only 11 percent upload it to the internet. Interactive agency Sharpe Partners says the study illustrates the opportunity for companies to facilitate the migration of consumer video to the web. (Hint hint!)

So it's fun to note that Fred is an authority on Borat, and Tom on porn. We love search!

Best of luck, Danny, and for sure, watch this feed.

Yahoo says non to Google in its court case over Google Library/Book Search. I'm late to the game on this one and running to a meeting, so read what the AP says here:

Yahoo has rebuffed Google’s attempt to learn more about its efforts to create digital copies of books, dealing Google another setback as it prepares to fight a copyright infringement suit.

In rejecting Google’s request, Yahoo adopted the same stance taken last month by the Internet retailer Amazon.com, and called Google’s request a brazen attempt to pry into its trade secrets.

Google says it believes it can defend its plans to provide online access to millions of library books by obtaining more details about similar projects involving rivals.

As one might expect with an abrupt change of control, a lot of senior folks are leaving (or plan to leave) AOL since the new boss (Randy Falco from NBC) came on board. And they are talking - off the record - about what happened to former AOL CEO Jon Miller. Now, clearly this is sourced by folks who were Miller lieutenants, but they say Falco's unexpected appointment means one thing: AOL is going to be stripped down and sold off within the next year. They don't believe that Falco has any intention of really focusing on building new products and being a software/services kind of CEO, as Miller was starting to become, and as AOL clearly needs to be if it is going to compete with Yahoo and Google.

They add that the real story behind Falco's rise to power comes down to a standoff between Miller and Falco - apparently Falco was supposed to be brought in as Miller's #2, but each man didn't think the other was right for the job, and when push came to shove, Falco won. He was reportedly helped by a push from his former #2 at NBC, David Zaslav, who apparently needed Falco to leave so as to get out of a contract at NBC and join Discovery as its new CEO. Rumor has it that someone leaked word to the press that Miller was on the outs and Falco was coming in at AOL (Miller learned he was going to be fired from a journalist, OUCH), and that rumor was sourced at NBC. Intriguing. How the Titans play....

The leader in B2B publishing is turning to search as a means to bring its business online. Reed Business is dedicating effort to a new division called RB Search, led by Stephen Baker, formerly of FAST, as CEO. Zibb, a beta search engine for global business information, is their first product.

Yahoo has had some hard knocks lately, but when Google Answers went down, Yahoo's PR dept. couldn't help themselves. And you know what, sure, what the hell, they have a fine story here, so to quote from the email:

I’m sure you’ve heard that Google Answers is closing down. Wanted to make sure you had the latest Yahoo! Answers stats:

- Worldwide numbers for Yahoo! Answers and Knowledge Search (18 countries and 8 languages): Yahoo! Answers has 60 million unique users worldwide and 160 million answers.

- US/English-speaking countries numbers for Yahoo! Answers: Yahoo! Answers has 14.4 million unique users (comScore October) and 60 million answers.

I await the posthumous email from Jeeves, and the angle Microsoft might take. ....

From the Google Blog:

Google is a company fueled by innovation, which to us means trying lots of new things all the time -- and sometimes it means reconsidering our goals for a product. Later this week, we will stop accepting new questions in Google Answers, the very first project we worked on here. The project started with a rough idea from Larry Page, and a small 4-person team turned it into reality in less than 4 months. For two new grads, it was a crash course in building a scalable product, responding to customer requests, and discovering what questions are on people's minds.

The post eulogizes Google Answers, but doesn't really explain why Google discontinued it....

I've got a post brewing in me about this, as it clearly is in my realm of interest, but I plan to get smarter on it first. However, John Chow, who runs the Tech Zone, spills the news that Google is deadly serious about selling direct to the Fortune 1000, and working direct with selected publishers on a CPM basis. Interesting. I knew Google was doing this already, but did not know it had a name!

Google Display Advertising Network was created so Google can go after Fortune 1000 companies, which buy advertising to build a brand more than to sell a product. Google already dominates text and CPC ads so going after display and video ads is the next logical step. Google offers display and video ads to AdSense publishers on CPC and CPM format already. However, the formation of the Display Advertising Network is a clear signal that Google really want to push this forward.

How do you join the Google Display Advertising Network? You can’t. Google won’t even acknowledge it exists. You won’t find anything written about it in any of Google’s web properties. The only way to get into the display network is if Google invites you, which is how I found out about it.

Hat tip to Andy.

Update: Google's PR has responded to my query about this thusly:

We are not testing or developing a new ad network. The existing display advertising network has been available for over 2 years, and most recently we introduced click-to-play video ads. We are always exploring ways to offer advertisers and publishers more flexibility and control over ad inventory.

I have a lot to say about this. In fact, I have a big brain dump brewing on this very subject - well, on the shift in media and what it means for marketing and audience and authors. It's coming. I plan to take a day out of my crazed work life and simply write again. Oh, to do that all day long. What joy.

A New Approach to Social News

Google's Effective CPM

Web 2.0 Business Models

Portable Rating System for Blogs with Authority-Weighted Tags

Google Adds AJAX to Booksearch

I'm flying to LA for some meetings today, and we're transitioning Searchblog to a bigger, faster server to boot. My mail and this site may be cranky for most of the day....Forgive any blips as we work on it...thanks.

"The idea of having only one company control the library of human knowledge is a nightmare." That's Brewster Kahle, commenting on Google's contracts with libraries in its controversial book scanning/search service. I have asked many times on this site whether Google would ever share its scans with the world, and I've presumed the answer is no. Kahle confirms that, and comments on the implications.

More from Philipp over at Google Blogoscoped.

Herewith the story of my attempts to buy a Dora the Explorer Mr. Face Plush Backpack from ToysRUs using Google Checkout. In short, Google now has my credit card number. (It's one I use for testing, however). It feels kind of odd, to be honest.

It seems Google is obviating the merchant entirely vis the ongoing data relationship with the buyer. The registration screen states: ""Google" will appear by the charge on your credit card statement. Your card number will not be shared with the seller."

Why on earth would anyone want this to be the case? To lose your relationship with the buyer? What information *is* passed back to ToysRUs? What rights do I have to that information, and to know how it's used between Google and the merchant?

I clicked on the TOS, which is here. What I found noteworthy (GPC is Google Payment Company, the company Google created to drive Checkout):

You acknowledge and agree that your purchases of Products are transactions between you and the Seller, and not with GPC, Google or any of GPC’s affiliates. GPC is not a party to your purchase of Products, and GPC, Google, or other GPC affiliates are not a buyer or a seller in connection with any Payment Transaction, unless expressly designated as such in the listing of the Product on a Google Web Site.

Also, found this:

You agree that you will not use the Service to process Payment Transactions for any Products that violate this Terms of Service, other policies or rules applicable to the Service, or applicable law. The current policy that establishes the Products and other transactions that may not be paid for with the Service is provided here. Failure to comply with these limitations may result in suspension or termination of your use of the Service.

A quick check of what Google finds not worth selling shows expected stuff, like porn and drugs, but also this:

Offensive goods

Literature, products or other materials that:

* Defame or slander any person or groups of people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, or other factors
* Encourage or incite violent acts
* Promote intolerance or hatred

Which I suppose means that you cannot use Google Checkout to buy a DVD of this or this.

In section 7, they get to a privacy policy, which I read with interest, given my questions above. I wonder if any more than a handful of folks ever read this policy, as it's a link inside a link inside a link, but here it is. Noteworthy:

Google clearly states that its master privacy policy applies. That can be found here. (Now that's a link inside a link inside a link inside a link...). So to recap what Google can do with your information under that policy:

* Providing our products and services to users, including the display of customized content and advertising;
* Auditing, research and analysis in order to maintain, protect and improve our services;
* Ensuring the technical functioning of our network; and
* Developing new services.

....We may process personal information to provide our own services. In some cases, we may process personal information on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third party, such as our advertising partners.

....We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.

Whew. OK, back to the Checkout specific policy terms:

They collect a lot of data on you, and they keep it in one place - your Google Account. That's pretty much what I expected. All your reg info goes there (credit card, address, etc) and then Google reserves the right to add third party data (credit reporting agencies, for example) and - here's the nub:

...Transaction information - When you use Google Checkout to conduct a transaction, we collect information about each transaction, including the transaction amount, a description provided by the seller of the goods or services being purchased, the names of the seller and buyer, and the type of payment used.

Nowhere does it say that this information is shared back to the merchants. Were I a merchant, I'd be very wary of this.

Now, here's the thing that might make you think. Once you start a data trail in Checkout, it stays for good, at least, it stays as long as Google wants it to:

You can disable Google Checkout by contacting us. If you do so, your payment information and transaction history will no longer be viewable through Google Checkout. However, in order to meet our reporting and auditing obligations, and to detect, deter, and prevent fraud or other misconduct on our systems, the information will be retained in our systems. If you disable Google Checkout, your personally identifiable information will not be used by Google or shared with third parties except for these purposes. We may delete these records over time if permitted or required by law.

Disabling Google Checkout does not close or cancel your Google Account. For more information about how to manage your Google Account preferences, please click here. This Privacy Policy continues to apply to the personal information we maintain after you disable Google Checkout or close or cancel your Google Account.

Put another way, don't step in the mud if you don't want the tracks to stay forever.

Lastly, federal law does interfere with Google using your info in certain marketing-related ways, and the privacy policy allows you to opt out. Details:

We operate the Google Checkout service through a company called Google Payment Corporation (“GPC”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google. The information we collect, including information obtained from third parties, is shared between GPC and Google to operate the service. Neither GPC nor Google will share your information with others except as described in this Privacy Policy.

Under federal law, you have the right to opt out of certain sharing between affiliated companies such as GPC and Google. Specifically, you may choose to opt out of:

* The sharing between GPC and Google of information that does not pertain to your transactions or experiences with Google Checkout (also called “non-transactional information”, e.g., information we may obtain from third parties to verify your identity), and
* The use by Google of information shared between GPC and Google to promote Google products and services.

Please remember, regardless of whether you choose to opt out of this sharing or not, we will never sell or rent your personal information, and we will not share your personal information with anyone outside of GPC and Google except as described in this Privacy Policy.

If you don’t want us to share non-transactional data between GPC and Google, please click here (this is a email address).

If you don’t want us to use any information shared between GPC and Google to promote Google products and services to you, please click here. (also an email, I sent both of them mail and asked to opt out).

OK, so I have now read (or re-read) three separate privacy policies, and it's time to complete my purchase. I hit "agree" and, still on Google's servers, get the confirmation page, hit "sign in" again and...shit, it's not working!

What did I do wrong?

I head over to where they tell me to go - https://www.google.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd - and give them the email I use for my Google account. (It worked before, to log me in in the first place, very odd!). I reset my password, and now...where do I go? There's not a screen inviting me back to complete my purchase! There's no way to get back to my order! My daughter's beloved Dora the Explorer Mr. Face Plush Backpack from ToysRUs is totally MIA!

Hmmm. I sign into my Google Checkout account, maybe that will have the purchase history. After all, they had all the information - but no. While Google did manage to capture and save my credit card info, there's no history of my attempt to purchase the Dora backpack.

Hmmm. How about I use my Firefox history to go back to the original page where my account did not work in the first place! (Not that this is something most shoppers would ever do, but...). Hey, that should work!

Nope. "Oops! Your shopping cart has expired."

Shit. So I'm starting over. No, wait, this has been way too much of a trial. I'll get back to it later. Or, I'll just go to Amazon.

Sorry Google, but mark this one in your metadata as "abandoned cart."

From a release just mailed to me:

Google Checkout Adds New Merchants, Charity Donations and Promotions to New Holiday Site

Looking for the perfect holiday gift this past weekend might have been enough to send most shoppers over the edge. That's why Cyber Monday, November 27, is expected to attract a crowd of online shoppers for the holiday season this year. And now, Google Checkout is working with even more merchants to help gift givers quickly and easily buy exactly what they want.

Just in time for the holidays, Toys "R" Us, Babies "R" Us, Golfsmith, Linens 'n Things, PETCO, J&R Music and Computer World have joined the thousands of merchants who have already added Google Checkout to their sites. Shoppers can buy directly from these merchants' sites and use their Google Checkout login to speed their purchase process. On average, Google Checkout eliminates an average of 15 steps from the online checkout process, in many cases making checking out as simple as entering a single login.

For those who like to give back (in addition to giving gifts) during the holidays, donations to eight international charities can be made with a Google Checkout login. Google will add $10 to every user's first donation of $30 or more.

I plan to go use the service today, will report back.
More here.

But it's really worth watching.

The program’s designers say existing anticensorship programs are too complicated for everyday computer users, leave evidence on the user’s computer and lack security in part because they have to be advertised publicly, making it easy for censors to detect and block access to them.

“Now you will have potentially thousands, even tens of thousands, of private proxies that are almost impossible for censors to follow one by one,” said Qiang Xiao, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley.

Instead of publicly advertising the required login and password information, psiphon is designed to be shared within trusted social circles of friends, family and co-workers. This feature is meant to keep the program away from censors but is also the largest drawback because it limits efforts to get the program to as many people as possible. The program’s designers say existing anticensorship programs are too complicated for everyday computer users, leave evidence on the user’s computer and lack security in part because they have to be advertised publicly, making it easy for censors to detect and block access to them.

I remain deeply concerned about the erosion of press freedoms in this country. A Times case regarding confidentiality of sources is coming to a head, more here. Key quote:

“If the government is permitted to proceed to scrutinize the telephone records of The New York Times and its journalists,” Mr. Abrams said, “it will be in a position to identify literally scores of confidential sources, thus imperiling both the ability of the press to gather the news and of the public to learn it.”

Google has settled with Sofam and Scam, two news organizations in Belguim that had been disputing Google's right to index and summarize their work in Google News. The most interesting bit of this story? Right here:

“We reached an agreement with Sofam and Scam that will help us make extensive use of their content,” Jessica Powell, a spokeswoman for Google, said in a phone interview yesterday. She declined to give details of the agreement or say whether it involved paying the groups for the content, and declined to say whether Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., was considering similar accords with the newspapers.

What do you think? Did Google pay up?

Interesting tidbit from Reuters:

ROME (Reuters) - Italian prosecutors on Friday put two Google Italy representatives under investigation as part of an inquiry into how a video of teenagers harassing an autistic classmate surfaced on its Video site, a judicial source said.

The two are being investigated for allegedly failing to check on the content of the video posted on the Internet search engine's Web site.

The video, which sparked outrage in the country, showed four teenagers beating and poking fun at a 17-year old disabled boy in a classroom in the northern Italian city of Turin.

What really struck me is this part:

"I've said repeatedly that there can't be double standards, one for the press and television and another for the Internet," (Italy's Education Minister Giuseppe Fioroni ) told ANSA news agency.

The Internet search engine shared the same duty as other forms of media in distributing "responsible" content, he said.

Huh.

It's called search. Search *is* the new OS. Just most of the world hasn't figured it out yet. All this speculation, it's just folks noticing what's already true.

On the Economist coverage. The site is behind a paywall, of course, but here's the link anyway.

Happy Thanksgiving, Searchbloggers. I'm very grateful that you are part of this community. Have a great holiday.

I've been meaning to point to these all week, but with the holiday, and all the catch up work after Web 2 and being sick as a dog last week, well. Anyway, this is kind of fun. The subject: Google's search share (natch). The stats: well, Comscore says Google gained share, and Nielsen says it lost. I say, when can we get a stat provider we can trust? SEW does a nice job of wrapping it all up here.

Meanwhile, Hitwise (whose data feels most suspect of the three given the results Danny tabulated in the pic to the left) has a nifty chart where you can chart Yahoo v Google for overall audience here.

Thanks to Intel, which sponsored them, the podcasts of Web 2 are already up. Check them out here.

Imagine that.

Baidu, China's largest search engine, just cleared a hurdle on copyright infringement with the music industry. The Chinese courts ruled that directing users to illegally downloadable material from third party sites did not constitute a violation, overturning an earlier favorable ruling for EMI.

From the BBC:
"If the music companies had won, the whole search engine sector would have ground to a halt," Xinhua news agency quoted a Baidu spokesman as saying.
The report said the music companies would appeal against the ruling.

Always a pleasure to see a pal get ink. B2 groks Mary Hodder's Dabble.

Skype Early Investor Finds Quintura

The Woman Who Pushed Microsoft into Online Advertising

Tracking Arbitrary Websites with Google Analytics

Father of Search Engine Link Technology Gets Nobel Equivalent of Math Award

Which Company Originated the Idea of Web 2.0?

From the AP:

Google Inc. has set aside more than $200 million in its just-completed takeover of YouTube Inc. to cover possible losses on the deal, creating a financial cushion that might protect the Internet search leader it it's hit with legal bills for the frequent copyright violations on YouTube's video-sharing site.

Without elaborating in a late Monday statement, Google said it is withholding 12.5 percent of the stock owed to YouTube for one year 'to secure certain indemnification obligations.'

Prior:

I asked about the YouTube acquisition and whether a portion of the $1.65 billion sum was reserved to pay settlements with various media companies, as Mark Cuban asserted on his site. Eric flatly denied it.

The Times has the story, PaidContent had the curtain raiser...

From the NYT:

A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology, another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once saw as a threat.

In the first phase of the deal, the newspaper companies will begin posting their employment classified ads on Yahoo’s classified jobs site, HotJobs, and start using HotJobs technology to run their own online career ads.

But the long-term goal of the alliance with Yahoo, according to one senior executive at a participating newspaper company, is to be able to have the content of these newspapers tagged and optimized for searching and indexing by Yahoo.

For the past few quarters, many of us have sensed something of a malaise brewing inside Yahoo. (My first question to David Filo at Web 2, for example, was centered on Yahoo's sliding image as an innovator, and how it's languished compared to Google in terms of search and monetization). Now Paul Kedrosky has posted an internal memo (and WSJ does too) that puts that malaise into words. Written by SVP Brad Garlinghouse, it's a pretty thrilling manifesto - the kind of internal document that gains power when it becomes public.

Now the question is, what will Semel do with it? The public airing of such a damming memo certainly demands some kind of response. Wow.

...all is not well. Last Thursday's NY Times article was a blessing in the disguise of a painful public flogging. While it lacked accurate details, its conclusions rang true, and thus was a much needed wake up call. But also a call to action. A clear statement with which I, and far too many Yahoo's, agreed. And thankfully a reminder. A reminder that the measure of any person is not in how many times he or she falls down - but rather the spirit and resolve used to get back up. The same is now true of our Company.

It's time for us to get back up.

I believe we must embrace our problems and challenges and that we must take decisive action. We have the opportunity - in fact the invitation - to send a strong, clear and powerful message to our shareholders and Wall Street, to our advertisers and our partners, to our employees (both current and future), and to our users. They are all begging for a signal that we recognize and understand our problems, and that we are charting a course for fundamental change, Our current course and speed simply will not get us there. Short-term band-aids will not get us there.

Specific points Brad makes:

We lack clarity of ownership and accountability. The most painful manifestation of this is the massive redundancy that exists throughout the organization.

We lack decisiveness. Combine a lack of focus with unclear ownership, and the result is that decisions are either not made or are made when it is already too late.

We have lost our passion to win. Far too many employees are "phoning" it in, lacking the passion and commitment to be a part of the solution. We sit idly by while -- at all levels -- employees are enabled to "hang around". Where is the accountability?

Garlinghouse goes on to make specific recommendations about how the company should be organized (way flatter), staffed (cut 15-20%) and run (kill redundant businesses, etc.).

I can only imagine the fire drill going on at Yahoo right now over this. But my two cents is this: Accept this criticism as heartfelt, and assuming the leak was not malicious, don't go on a witch hunt. Don't circle the wagons, and - this would be risky but right - if you truly believe that Garlinghouse has valid points, take the memo to heart and address the points it raises.

No one wants to see what happened to DEC, Xerox, IBM, or Microsoft happen to Yahoo. Maybe this is the wake up call it needed? (Of course, having the leak on the weekend before Thanksgiving does minimize the impact...)

Update: From the Journal: Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig has asked Mr. Garlinghouse to head a group of Yahoo staff looking into the issues in the memo over two months, say people familiar with the matter.

(pic) I knew this was coming, but Lord, it sucks. Now our industry is making money, and hitting the big times, it's going to be all about lawyers and posturing, right? From the Journal (not public link, check here):

Universal Music Group, the world's largest recorded-music company, sued News Corp.'s MySpace for copyright infringement, alleging that the social-networking giant traffics in "user-stolen" content, including music, videos and other material.

At issue is the widespread presence of copyrighted music and video content on MySpace. In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court for California's Central District, Vivendi SA's Universal dismisses the frequently-used label "user-generated content" -- alleging that much of the material on MySpace is stolen from copyright holders.

I guess Ross got out of there right before managing this monster turns into one big poo-flinging goat rodeo. Also, filing on a Friday afternoon, right before Thanksgiving...nice...

Yahoo also picked up blog stats and blog social network MyBlogLog today. Let's hope they scale it and make it freely available....congrats to the folks behind it, many of them are pals.

Update: A Yahoo PR rep says this is not true.

Yahoo keeps up the pace of buying young Web 2 companies with its acquisition of Bix, which is run by a pal, Mike Spieser. Mike will take charge of community media at Yahoo (including photos and 360). Bix is a sort of "America's Got Talent" writ across the web. You don't think this stuff plays? Poke around a bit. It's amazing how badly America wants to be Discovered. It's quite something. It might not play in the Valley, but there's a reason Idol and its kin do so well.

Many others have noted this already, so I'll just toss in my red cent - with Ross Levinsohn leaving Fox Interactive (as with Miller, he's credited with success), and being replaced by a "seasoned television executive," just as Miller was, it's clear major media companies are in the mood to consolidate and leverage the investments they've made in online, now that they are certain the properties can make money. While one can quibble with MySpace's ability to make money on traditional advertising, you can't argue with $900 million from Google over the next few years. And AOL's advertising business has been growing nicely in the past few quarters.

But putting traditional media execs in charge of these properties may not be the wisest move. First, it will take at least a year for them to grok what is going on and figure out the lay of the land. That's a long time to wait, while more nimble natives like Google and Yahoo eat your lunch. And second, well, these are not folks who took risks and lived the space early, and when forced to make decisions, they might make the wrong ones. On the other hand, maybe this is a sign our industry is maturing. We'll know in a year or so.

I am sure there is far more to this than meets the press, with stories on both sides. Both Miller and Levinsohn were kind enough to wait until the week *after* Web 2 to leave their posts, so I could unwittingly interview lame ducks on stage. So far, my first interview on stage - Eric Schmidt - still has his job, as do Ray Ozzie, David Filo, and Barry Diller. But watch out, guys. These things do come in threes....

Matt, a Searchblog reader, noticed something interesting in his Google search results today:

"I was just doing some searches on Google and noticed something I've never seen or heard about before. One of the links in the main search results had two feedback buttons (see screenshot)."

Matt also notes that the user satisfaction question is appearing in results both with and without AdSense.

Elsewhere, Google has said it will remove an ad for a given user if it receives sufficient negative feedback though these tests. Though it's not clear to me how that feedback translates to AdWords scores or ad removal for other users. This seems to be an extension of that for the natural results.

YouTube Emails TechCrunch Cease & Desist Order

JumpTap Adds Travel, News & Weather to Its Mobile Search

Toading, the Technology for Generating Dynamic Search Engine Advertisements, Is Now Available for Ya

Highlights from Webmaster & SEO Sessions at Webmaster World

Google Calendar Adds Public Events Search

All I can say is, please, keep up the competition. I'd love a chance to select from three different Wifi carriers in every major city, each of them free/advertising based. Wifi these days sucks. I mean, ten bucks for a one time connection in the airport? And there's never a consistent interface - I have like ten accounts on five different services, and sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. No single carrier has coverage around the country, so there's no point in getting one service plan. I very much hope Microsoft and Google push this world toward a better place.

This just announced at the WMW conference....

Las Vegas, November 16, 2006 - In the first joint and open initiative to improve the Web crawl process for search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft today announced support for Sitemaps 0.90 (www.sitemaps.org), a free and easy way for webmasters to notify search engines about their websites and be indexed more comprehensively and efficiently, resulting in better representation in search indices. For users, Sitemaps enables higher quality, fresher search results. An initiative initially driven by Yahoo! and Google, Sitemaps builds upon the pioneering Sitemaps 0.84, released by Google in June of 2005, which is now being adopted by Yahoo! and Microsoft to offer a single protocol to enhance Web crawling efforts.

Together, the sponsoring companies will continue to collaborate on the Sitemaps protocol and publish enhancements on a jointly maintained website www.sitemaps.org, which provides all of the details about the Sitemaps protocol.

Jonathan Miller, who only last week came out to Web 2 and sat for an interview, is out at AOL. He's being replaced by an NBC executive, Randy Falco. The Washington Post has a source who says Miller was pushed out, and that his replacement is more focused on sales and operations.

The timing is rather odd on this one. Miller is generally credited with turning AOL around, and sales were starting to grow faster than the market. Why replace the CEO now? Hmmmmm.

Light posting as I'll be talking at Webmasterworld in Vegas....Baby.

Snap Anywhere, announced today, is a smooth scroll-over widget that allows readers to visually preview external sites from in situ links. SPA is available free to site owners, by pasting a short snippet of code in their page. Snap hopes the tool will save readers some "wasted outbound trips," as well as grow their own database of web images.

Online revenues hit $4.2 billion in Q3, up 2 percent over Q2 earlier this year ($4.1 b), Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP announced today. This quarter is also 33 percent higher than $3.1 billion in Q3 2005.

Sheryl Draizen, SVP and General Manager of IAB, notes, "Marketers are experiencing how this medium enhances their ability to target and engage the audience that matters to their brand and then measure its effectiveness in ways no other medium provides."

It's official; the knot is tied between Google and the social video search darling, YouTube. Now people will really start looking for 'that YouTube thing'.

Details, from the pre-nup press release:

In connection with the acquisition Google issued an aggregate of 3,217,560 shares, and restricted stock units, options and a warrant exercisable for or convertible into an aggregate of 442,210 shares, of Google's Class A common stock. The number of shares of Class A common stock issued and issuable by Google was calculated by dividing $1.65 billion less certain amounts (approximately $15 million) funded to YouTube by Google between signing and closing by the average closing price for the 30 trading days ending on November 9, 2006. 12.5% of the equity issued and issuable in the transaction will be subject to escrow for one year to secure certain indemnification obligations.

Chad Hurley, CEO and co-founder of YouTube, added they plan to "roll out many new exciting features and programs to benefit the creativity and participation of our community" over the next few months.

Lifted from embargo today by InfoSpace, Inc., Zoo.com offers a child-proof search engine for web research and news. With over 50,000 'adult words and phrases' blocked, the Zoo.com search engine promises to be a kid-safe online research space, and a headache-free solution for parents. With a bit of category and content filtering Zoo pulls results from Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Fox New, Yahoo News, and ABC News.

Despite the wildlife in the playful safari motif, as the name reminds us, the contents of this savannah are meant to be tamed. In the spirit of testing the limits (as children are wont to do), however, it took but one guess for Zoo to bring me to a result that Wikipedia describes as 'sexual'. Admittedly, the youngins probably aren't that sophisticated, but then-- with kids these days, you never know. And that's the point. But overall, Zoo provides a decent tool for making the worldwide web a safe place to play.

One of the sessions I was most proud of at Web 2 was "The Pirate and the Suit." Somehow I got the CEO of EMI North America, David Munns, to sit down with Eric Kleptone and have a real conversation about the issues involved in making new forms of music like "A Night at the Hip Hopera", which starts with a very big "FU" to EMI (I even played the intro before we started talking). It was a thoughtful conversation, and at times it was clear that David was less than comfortable - he was in front of what might at any time turn into a hostile audience, and he was representing "the man." So when it was over, I went into the green room and thanked him for showing up. After all, many others in his position - the CEO of Verizon, for example - begged off.

Turns out, not only did he show up, he had a colleague record the session, and they posted it on their site. I'd never expect that kind of transparency from a label. Kudos.

Remember my 2006 predictions? In them, I said:

"Web 2.0" will make the cover of Time Magazine, and thus its moment in the sun will have passed. However, the story that drives "Web 2.0" will only strengthen, and folks will cast about for the next best name for the phenomenon.

While there is still time for Time to create a cover on Web 2, the fact is, the Times has already declared "Web 3.0". And I have to say, now that the conference is over, that all this nomenclature debate is deeply boring. Fact is, the web matters now, and it will never, ever, not matter again. Before "web 2", one could argue that the web was a trend. But now, the web is us - everyone, not just the folks debating it. When we don't matter, well, then we can end the discussion.

This is a major question, and it's unanswered. Why, if I had nothing but time, I'd be digging into this, and deeply. The amount of rumors, speculation, and backstory that's crossed my desk - involving Hollywood agents, rising videoblogging stars, quarantined inventory on major tech sites, and the like - is enough to fuel at least a front page NYT story. At the very least. Start here, and stay tuned.

Tim posts on fellow editor Sarah Milstein's observations. Sarah wrote (and updates) Google: The Missing Manual. From her thoughts:

As the Web gets bigger, search results contain more irrelevant stuff. In many cases, it's getting harder to find what you want. Appreciably harder.

What do you all think? Yes or no?

and

Other search companies are doing some cool stuff with their main results. For many searches, Microsoft Live presents a super-useful list of related searches; also, somebody hit them with the clean-interface stick. Ask.com does a nice job with simple natural-language questions. Clusty has been offering very handy clustered search results since at least 2004. Daylife (still in alpha) does what is essentially clustering with a thoughtful interface.

My thoughts: It's about a year away, but in one year, there will be precious little difference between results on Google, MSFT, and Yahoo. But will it matter? Yes or no...

and

I wonder when/if search is going to be real-time (i.e. live Web) rather than index-based. And I wonder if the main barrier to it now is hardware or software (to the degree you can separate them). At Web2, I met a woman from Intel R&D who's working on a continuous refresh data system that would allow real-time searching but for which you need multi-core processors that aren't yet ready for primetime. Still, an interesting glimpse of the possible future.

This is exciting, but what I want is even more is a web time axis....

and

During the two-year period from one edition of Google TMM to the next, Google began adding features and services at such an increasingly quick clip that while the second edition was at the printer, we missed out on eight new tools. That was in a 10-day period. (Some of those new tools are search-related; many are not.)

Tell me about it. I missed about 100 from the hardback to the paperback, and now I'm hopelessly behind. No, wait...that's why we have Searchblog....

How much do you think it'll set me back to own this? What a moron I am. Sheesh.

Here's an ajax timeline of acquisitions by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft over the last six years. By Shamula.

Sun Debuts Open Source JAVA with GPL

Microsoft Debuts I.T. Social Networking Site

LYCOS Seeks Rebirth with LYCOS Cinema

Microsoft Virtual Earth Debuts Optional 3-D Map

Duno.com Better than Microsoft QnA and Yahoo

Ted Leonsis, who helped build up AOL and recently left day to day operations there, is given WaPo love here. The topic: How Ted figured a way to look better in a vanity search for his name on Google. The answer: Hey! Get a blog!

The Times continues it's fascination with all things Google in this Richard Siklos piece entitled "A Struggle Over Dominance and Definition." (image cropped from full image at Times site)

It features this broadside from Microsoft's CEO Steve "I did not throw a chair at f*ing Google" Ballmer: "The truth is, what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google. So media companies around the world are all threatened by Google."

What's the nub of the story? Well, it's this: Is Google a media company? Er....YES. YES! YEEEEESSSSSSS!!

But what this also shows me is that Microsoft is taking a new tack in the ongoing battle with Google - Hey media companies, Google is not your friend. Now Microsoft, on the other hand....

(photo credit) Dan Farber has a good writeup of my interview with Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask, and his former boss, Steve Berkowitz, who left Ask to run MSN. Best line: "Google is the Model T of search." Well, Ford didn't stop innovating, of course, and it dominated the market for a good long time....

Does anyone know who actually filed this suit? This WaPo piece says it came from France. Trying to grok if this is a Big Deal or not. Given the lack of second beat stories, perhaps it's not...

This is a pretty funny find from Jeremy over at Yahoo, w/r/t Gmail and the "related links" ads at the top.

There's been a lot of coverage of my interview with Eric Schmidt at Web 2, but this angle (Guardian) was not that well covered. Till now. It's funny, while I was talking to him, I did not perceive Eric to have made such a strong statement, but the Guardian reporter certainly did. My question, from my notes, was this (I paraphrased from my notes when asking, as I usually do):

You stood up to the DOJ. And you also, in your own way, stood up to the traditional approaches of Wall St. Let me give you a scenario. If the government makes a request of Google that you and your management team believes is Evil, but it is legal under Patriot, will you stand up as you have before?

I'll link to the podcast once it's up so you can hear his response.

From the Guardian story:

The head of the internet search engine Google has vowed to protect the privacy of web surfers against the US government.
As Americans delivered a sweeping midterm election defeat for the Republican administration, Eric Schmidt strongly criticised the White House's attitude towards privacy at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco...

Update: Another part of the interview that has made news was when I asked about the YouTube acquisition and whether a portion of the $1.65 billion sum was reserved to pay settlements with various media companies, as Mark Cuban asserted on his site. Eric flatly denied it. But Paid Content has found amended SEC filings which may infer the opposite:

“We entered into an Agreement and Plan of Merger with YouTube, Inc. (YouTube) in October 2006 which we amended in November 2006. Under the terms of this agreement, as amended, we will acquire all of the outstanding equity interests of YouTube, a privately held company, for aggregate consideration of $1.65 billion. The consideration will be payable in shares of our common stock, which will be reduced to the extent we lend certain amounts of cash to YouTube prior to the closing of the acquisition."

Feels to me like Eric might have been fudging it onstage, if any of that money is used to pay settlements....

Update 2: More headlines from the conversation came from Eric's defense of user data portability. I think this is a big issue and I'm pleased Eric supported it.

Over at GigaOm, Robert Young posits an interesting and clarifying concept: That Google is developing a universal OS for advertising. It's a tempting idea - a unifying metaphor that helps us grok Google's advertising ambitions - but I think the meme needs a perspective from outside the Valley distortion field.

Certainly all of *us* may want a clarifying metaphor that helps us grok Google's relentless push into nearly every advertising market on earth, the real question is whether *advertisers* want it as well. And I think in the end, the answer to that question is most likely a qualified no (qualified because they'll always be happy to push a portion of their budget through automated and efficient channels). But in the end advertisers are not computer programmers, they are marketers, and while it's true that the approach of AdWords and AdSense pushes remarkable efficiencies and opportunities into the practice of marketing, I posit that the practice of marketing is about more than efficiency. It's also about emotion, passion, and conversation. And no matter how hard you try, you can't automate conversations. At least, not until Google (or someone else) pushes computing past the Turing test. And once that happens, what's the point of marketing in the first place?

As Beth Comstock (president of NBC Interactive and at left) said to me on stage at Web 2 earlier this week (I'll paraphrase here): Google is great at pushing efficiencies into the advertising market. But that only serves to highlight and increase the value of truly unique and well produced content (like GigaOm, for example). That kind of content needs to be served by marketing that is part of an ongoing conversation, a conversation that, for now anyway, simply cannot be automated.

Hey Searchbloggers -

I'm back from a week long dive into the Web 2 conference, and will post my thoughts on that event shortly. Meanwhile, the comments here seem to be broken, and we are working on fixing it. Turns out that my human detector is having fits with Akismet, and we're trying to track down a fix. Sorry about that...

UPDATE: TinyTuring (the human detector) and Akismet were warring, so we turned Akismet off for a bit. Seems to have cleared up the problem...for now.

Marissa Mayer, at Web 2.0 today, shared insights into some lessons Google has learned in trying to serve users. The take-away is that Speed is just about the most important concern of users---more than the ability to get a longer list of results, and more valuable than highly interactive ajax features. And they didn't learn that from asking users, just the opposite. The ideal number of results on the first page was an area where self-reported user interests were at odds with their ultimate desires. Though they did want more results, they weren't willing to pay the price for the trade, the extra time in receiving and reviewing the data. In experiments, each run for about 8 weeks, results pages with 30 (rather than 10) results lowered search traffic (and proportionally ad revenues) by 20 percent.

In other notes from today's web 2.0... EMI Chairman, David Munns and the Pirate-in-a-suit, Eric Keltone, just took the stage together, and responded to Battelle's request that they envision the idealized conditions that would allow music mash-ups to be created and shared online, while allowing the corporate bastions of the music industry to continue to prosper. Eh...it'll happen they both say, but after revisiting the Beatles mashup debacle they weren't hugging as they walked off stage... to the beat of 'Strawberry Fields'.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox suggested on Friday that the SEC will consider allowing companies to push their financial information to the public via blogs ---- and he did so by posting himself on a blog on Friday. That's the first time an SEC Chairman has posted on a blog, but moreover, if the SEC approves blogs as a medium for disseminating financial disclosures it will be a recognition that blogs meet the criteria to reach a 'broad public audience through non-exclusionary means.'
Chairman Cox also invited the opinion Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun, on the viability of relying on blogs for this federal financial regulation. Schwartz, one of the few executives who blog for their company, earlier requested to use blogs for this mechanism. (NYT, Post)

Today, AOL announced the purchase of Relegence, a New York-based search engine specializing in financial news and information, for an undisclosed price.

More from CNet:
Relegence, a subscription-based service, aims to deliver relevant information to users' desktops as soon as it's published, regardless of the medium used. The notification and delivery technology draws from such sources as local and international newswires, television and cable networks, regulatory filings, Internet bulletin boards and Web sites and is designed to be integrated with internal streaming content.

Collarity CompassT, launched Monday, is a search engine that automatically ranks search results based on an individual's interests. By tracking the search terms, url choices, and selections of users and visitors, Collarity responds to a user's 'hot spot of interest' (i.e. query) with sites visited by expert-users in that area.

Levy Cohen, CEO and founder of Collarity, was nice to answer some of my questions; but as to how Collarity determines which results are considered successful for a given expert-user's search (versus sites they visit to evaluate, but decide are not useful/credible), he says that would dip into the secret sauce.

UPDATE: For some reason, some readers are having trouble posting comments to this post. Among them Mr. Cohen. So I've posted what he'd like to, below. From Levy Cohen, CEO of Collarity:
I certainly didn't mean to be evasive or dismissive regarding your question above. The issue is that there is no short concise answer to the question, but I'm happy to attempt one.

I think your question was, in essence, how Collarity recognizes a "good or right" choice vs. a "bad or wrong" choice when developing a personal relevancy formula for a user.

Collarity is a learning process that eventually converges, after a number of samples, to what best fits a registered user's contextual relationship with a given keyword. There are many dimensions of learning (single event, session level, personal history, community membership, and global) that are brought to bear in the process of distilling personal relevance. All of these dimensions audit the process in real-time. They determine what has "fit" in the past but, more importantly, they determine how a user's tastes might be changing over time.

It is not so much a "what is right" thing. It is more of a "what is MORE right today" thing - there really is no wrong. Some things are just "more right" statistically over time. The interaction score is based on the confluence of those micro events (all supporting and testing each other), and the system basically "course corrects" with each event.

The search company Riya today launches its visual search engine Like.com, based on appearance in addition to text. The Like engine is particularly apt at finding consumer products that provide, as ZDNet describes, "visual similarity shopping." Riya found product hunting was a more popular application of their technology among users than facial recognition search, which they tested on MySpace.

TechCrunch, which illustrates the ease of finding a similar watch to Ms. Paris Hilton simply by searching with a cropped image of her watch, hails Like.com as the 'first real visual search engine.' It's a direction that can only grow-- according to Riya, current keyword-based image search accounts for only 8% of queries. Though a number of big players have expressed research interest in visual search, the going has been hard, and Like.com is in many ways 'the first' to pull together an engine ready for prime time.

The Rimm-Kaufman Group offers some very interesting results in a study of paid search ads in the swing Senate races of 2006. A few highlights from the study results:

* Political pay-per-click advertisers use Google. Few political advertisers use Yahoo Paid Search.
* There are few political advertisers: the average search results page for queries in this study returned only 3.7 ads.
* The most prevalent advertisers within this query set were Accoona (search engine), Gather.com (social networking), CafePress (retailer), and GOPSenators.com (National Republican Senatorial Committee).
* "Red" ads (pro-Republican or anti-Democrat) outnumbered "blue ads" (pro-Democrat or anti-Republican) two-to-one.
* No campaign ads referenced President Bush.

RKG focused on Google AdWords, in part because they found that the vast majority of political online ads went through AdWords. Their findings fuel the study's conclusion that paid search is still in its infancy--despite providing similar reach at a fraction of a cost. And they're likely quite right in predicting that online search ads will become increasingly important in the American political campaigns.

Plus: This week Battelle is busy on stage at Web 2.0. But though away from Searchblog on election day, he put the question to a few prominent business leaders, asking how their companies handle freedom of speech and privacy issues when federal law stands in opposition--- interviewing Eric Schmidt, Arthur Sulzberger, and Barry Diller. There was a spontaneous round of applause for Google's refusal to respect a federal demand for users' search histories, and for The New York Times' decision to disclose evidence of the government's stealth spy program on its own citizens. Diller and Sulzberger also intoned on the multiplied difficulty of operating globally, where they face a variegated array of laws and cultures of government control. That was a point underlined when Jack Ma of Yahoo China/Alibaba said that, for him, abiding by the Chinese government's censorship was simply a decision of ensuring that the areas where his company could improve peoples' lives would continue to thrive.

Citizen Journalism Site Launch

Yahoo Debuts Own American Idol Competition - Winner Gets Own Show

Netscape Announces Changes in Homepage, Strategies & Focus

Google to Start Selling Ads in 50 Major Newspapers

Yahoo Redesigns & Updates Shopping with New Features

Chris Sacca opines:

I have worked with engineers from a variety of household-name big companies. Like some universal truth that transcends language, national borders, industries, or even market cycles, I hear the same two things from those in organizations that are no longer innovating: 1) They never get to work on teams smaller than 200 people and 2) They haven’t launched anything in years. Why? They are suffocated by myriad processes, hierarchies, templates, forms, and flow charts.

The leaders of Google have realized...that the company’s own growth would be the biggest challenge and have toiled unflinchingly to build scalable and transparent systems for encouraging the freedom to innovate and collaborate without jumping through some of the unnecessary traditional company hoops. ...

...Nevertheless, the potential big company pitfalls are always looming. As the size grows, I see colleagues, particularly those who join Google from other companies, tempted to carve out fiefdoms and mandate SWOT analyses and extensive Excel spreadsheets littered with three letter acronyms. I have seen a few mid-level bosses evoke the traditions of Japanese management and schedule “pre-meetings” to plan, discuss, and approve what will be planned, discussed and approved at the actual meeting itself. MBA-speak creeps into the parlance and these new managers require the filing of more and more TPS reports.

Dr. Peter Jacso, of the University of Hawaii, has a good analysis of the interruptions in logic of Google Book Search. Among others, the dear beast has trouble conforming to the Boolean OR operation: with keywords searches on arrogant OR arrogance producing more results than the combined number for each phrase alone. Some of these results, in his ongoing analysis of GBS stand, in bleak contrast to the sophistication of the main search engine. This is perhaps because Google is attempting to use its web index algorithms to retrieve the data, as Battelle suggests, against the grain of typical information retrieval and structured search systems. Perhaps these are bugs in designing that system?

Jasco also compares GBS to Amazon's book search, with devastating results. Bottom-line:
"Beyond simple keyword searching, Google’s software seems to be cognitively challenged, to put it nicely, and hinders access to the content, which would deserve at least a functional and half as smart software as Amazon has."
Gary Price, who always appreciates the proper acknowledgment that book digitization began before Google, has more.

Turn, a well-backed search service run by the former CEO of Alta Vista, is set to launch at the Web 2 conference Tuesday. But AdWeek has the story a bit early...

San Mateo, Calif.-based Turn in recent months has attracted $18 million in venture backing from Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital and Shasta Ventures. Turn has about 1,000 advertisers in its system, which displays ads on approximately 30 sites.

Unlike Google, which charges advertisers on a per-click basis, Turn relies on a cost-per-action scheme. It charges advertisers only if users take desired actions, such as filling out registration forms or closing on sales.

Posting will be light, as I am running the Web 2.0 conference this week. Should be a lot of fun, but tiring - nearly 100 speakers over three days!

David Sifry gives his bi-annual report here.

You all know I was bullish on Google's ads for magazines. Philosophically, I feel the same way about this newspaper test. The Times coverage does nail the big issue - "it might make Google stronger." The newspapers worry that Google treats them as just so much unsold backfill inventory. And that's not what "content" really should be, eh?

I think the issue here for Google really comes down to scale and context. Print advertising is a maddeningly "human" business, driven by passion, emotion, and gut feeling. I'm not sure that's ever going to go away. Ads for a specific, community driven audience need to be part of a conversation, not an algorithm. However, I can see this working well for remnant/backfill, as well as classifieds, where I'm guessing the system will really excel.

Fred picks up the ongoing thread, which I agree (here and here) is an issue that will come back to be big in the coming years.

Yahoo! Slurp announces additional sophistication that allows webmasters greater control in directing a bot's path with the robots.txt file.

Product manager Priyank Garg writes, "I was going through my notes from Danny Sullivan's Open Feedback sessions during the ‘Meet the Crawlers’ panels at Search Engine Strategies conferences. One of the items on my list was a request for enhanced syntax in robots.txt to make it easier for webmasters to manage how search crawlers, including Slurp, access your content."

The two new variations are '*' --which will identify a sequential string of characters, and '$' --which will denote pages with a given ending in their file name. These can be used to tell the Slurp bot, for example, to follow (or ignore) any pages in the directory with the phrase '_print' ('/*_print*.html'). As well, their combinations work--for example, to disallow '.gif' files ('/*.gif$').

A great dialog has been occurring in the comments of this followup post on Google and the CIA (Original post here). Google's official response was brief (along the lines of 'oh puhhhlleeease!'), and one of the commentators asked if I would shoot Google a follow up question, to wit:

"Has Google released search-related information to any branch of the government, or government subcontractors?"

I sent this query to the fellow who works on these issues for Google communications. I expected his reply to be predictable - Google has to follow the law after all - but here it is for your benefit:

As you know, we comply with valid legal processes such as subpoenas but do not discuss the details of these requests publicly. Related to Steele's assertions, we provide our enterprise systems to government agencies but there is no data sharing. These relationships are the same as with our customers in the private sector - they plug the appliance in and it provides search for their Intranet or website. The point of the statement we provided was to convey that neither responding to valid legal processes or selling search appliances are anything that could even be remotely interpreted as being "in bed with the CIA."

What can we take away from all this? Well, I think it's a good bet that Google is getting plenty of "valid legal requests," but it won't verify that it does. In fact, under Patriot, it would break the law to do so. This is the shit I have been on about for a very, very long time.

Matt breaks the news:

Alibaba, the large Chinese company that owns Yahoo China, is preparing to file another hard-hitting suit against competitor Qihoo and its leader, Zhou Hongyi (pictured above).

Yahoo China has already filed one suit against Qihoo, saying the search engine start-up’s software notifies users that Yahoo’s toolbar is malware and prompts deinstallation, and that it’s hurt Yahoo’s market share.

comScore Ranks Top Web Properties by Global Unique Visitors 15&up

UTube Sues YouTube -- Guess Why?

MSN Adlabs Debuts 'Tracked Keyword Search Archives' Tool

Top SEO Bloggers - How Many Visits Do They Get - Revealed!

Quintura launches its Visual Find Engine

This has been boiling in me for a long, long time, and I need to get it out. Why? Well, last night the power went out at my house, not uncommon here in Marin, where the homes are old and the weather rainy. It came back on in about five minutes, and nothing much changed in our world.

Until my wife and I got upstairs and snuggled up in bed, ready to watch our sacred 45 minutes or so of Tivo'd television.

Now, allow me to explain. I got Tivo back in the Series 1 days. I love Tivo. I have written about it here many times. I love its approach to user interface, I love its corporate attitude (I know it can't keep it up given the reality of the market), and I even love its shortcomings. It's the Macintosh of television.

And Comcast, Lord knows, is the Windows. And not Windows 3.1. Windows 1.0. Or worse, if there is such a thing. But back to the narrative. Or rather, the backstory.

A few months ago my spiffy Series 2 Tivo (my kids use the Series 1 downstairs) started sputtering and blacking out. It got so bad that I had to retire it to the guest room, never to be used regularly again. (I thought. But it turns out it was not working because I had turned it on its side, and the hard disk did not appreciate my realignment of its gravitational kharma. But I get ahead of myself).

Well, having put my second Tivo out to pasture, I thought I'd splurge. After all, I was having a good year - The Search was a bestseller! - so I bought my very first HD television set (on credit, natch, it takes years to see any royalties, and hell, who knows it they ever really come). And since I'm no fool (I thought), I ordered up Comcast HD service to go along with it. Even I know you need HD service to enjoy an HD set.

That's when the trouble started. First of all, it took weeks to get the service hooked up, but as you are surely quite familiar with how hopelessly lame cable companies are when it comes to customer service, I won't attempt to add to the literature in this post. The truly evil portion of the install process came when the cable guy unwrapped a new cable box for me - a box that I had to use in order to enjoy Comcast HD. It included Comcast's very own DVR, their HD version of a Tivo. (That link, by the way, is to Comcast's website. For a preview of just how lame Comcast is, try to use that site for more than two minutes.)

Now, I had read about Comcast and its ilk getting into the DVR game, and what I had read was not pretty. But I figured there was no point in buying another Tivo till I give this a test drive.

Good Lord, it doth suck. The interface is simply abominable. Unintuitive and careless, it copies the major features of Tivo's approach but fails at every single detail - and in UI design, everything is in the details. No surprisingly, it utterly misses the core purpose of a DVR: to treat television as a conversation instead of a dictation. Without a doubt, this is an interface built either by Machiavelli's cohorts, or by graceless bureaucrats, or both. No, wait, it's worse. This is a product built by people who fundamentally don't understand the computing paradigm. That's it - they really don't get television as a database. Imagine the folks at DEC trying to build a Macintosh. That's Comcast's DVR.

Not to mention, the damn thing is slow - beyond unresponsive. There's no way you can accurately predict where and when the thing might stop and start when you are fast forwarding or rewinding. The Tivo is like an Audi, but the Comcast drives like a 1972 Gran Torino Station wagon. And the remote? My God, what a piece of sh*t!

But that's not where the crappiness ends. No, not by a long shot. Turns out, the f*cking Comcast HD DVR *does not have a hard drive.* That's right, when the power goes out, the f*cking box loses ALL OF THE SAVED PROGRAMS!!!! Are you KIDDING ME? The damn thing uses RAM instead of a hard drive!?

Yup. To close the loop on last night's experience, that's what my wife and I discovered when we turned on the television last night. Our entire lineup of shows was wiped out.

Those cheap bastards. Those unholy blasphemers! It took me about ten times as long as Tivo to use their crappy search to figure out how to program the damn thing to record my favorite shows, and in one five-minute power outage, I lost every single episode of Battlestar Galatica! Every Rescue Me! Every goddamn Daily Show, every Gray's Anatomy, every random movie I thought "hey, I'd like to watch that sometime." (I was halfway through The Guns of Navarone, for God's sake! Oh, the humanity!!!!)

And when those programs were lost, Comcast, you lost me. I will never, ever use your box again. Tivo HD, here I come. And not a minute too soon.

There, I feel better already. Thanks for listening. Now, back to watching TV the old fashioned way...shiver. At least until I get my new Tivo HD....

Update: Hey guys, I NOW KNOW IT HAS A HARD DRIVE. I was wrong about that, I thought maybe it was some kind of client server thing with a bit of RAM inbetween. Still and all, it blows....thanks for all your great comments, and your helpful advice.

Due to the spam issues I reported on earlier, we've added a "human detector" to comments. This is a test, please do let me know what you think. I hope it won't mean fewer comments...but I do hope it will mean fewer shiny trans gender fetish spams....

"The statements related to Google are completely untrue." That's Google's response to the assertions from this story, which I posted about here.

Yahoo has learned, and is taking corrective measures. The only difference is that they inherited Overture's antiquated infrastructure. Panama is their ticket to a higher yield.

Continue reading "Reader Bryan Writes..." »

And the monetization ideas keep coming. This from A9, which we thought was on death's door...

What is Clickriver Ads?

Clickriver Ads is an advertising program — currently in beta — that allows businesses to place sponsored links on Amazon.com®, next to search results and on product detail pages. Clickriver Ads presents a unique opportunity to advertise services and products that complement the selection on Amazon.com, an online marketplace with tens of millions of active customer accounts.

From Resourceshelf.

A trusted source pointed me to this tidbit, which I did not know. It's dated 2 August, 2006:

FAST signs contract with YouTube, Inc

Fast Search & Transfer ASA (FAST) today announced that YouTube, Inc. signed an agreement to deploy FAST for Site Search, based on the FAST Enterprise Search Platform (FAST ESP) to power the search for YouTube.com.

Clearly YouTube was focusing on how to scale its service and deal with its rather limited search capabilities. FAST, which I have covered here, is well known for powering large, database- and structured-search-driven sites.

According to folks who would know, the FAST deal has not yet been implemented. I wonder, will Google use FAST for YouTube? Will it just pay out FAST? Can it do what FAST can do for YouTube?

I have notes in to folks asking...will let you know when/if I do.

Eric speculates on a Wall St. analyst's speculation. Man, I could not see this happening.

Now here’s an idea I hadn’t heard before: Rob Sanderson, an analyst with American Technology Research, asserted in a research note today that there’s an easy fix for Yahoo (YHOO) if its Panama search platform doesn’t succeed: revert to being a Google (GOOG) affiliate, as it was before the company bought Overture. Throwing in the towel on Panama and becoming a Google affiliate could allow the company to capture at least a portion of the 66% gap in search query monetization begtween Google and Yahoo, Sanderson asserts.

He contends that, while a black eye for management, such a move could be a “financial boom” to Yahoo investors. He says EBITDA could be at least 35% higher that current forecasts at Google’s rate of monetization, especially given lower costs.

Update: Doh. Of course I knew this and should have noted it, but Yahoo did not get its paid search results from Google, it got organic results. Overture, which it bought, provided paid search results. The analyst got that wrong.

Matt reports on Spock, a search engine for people. From his post:

From a demo we’ve seen, we think it could be a powerful addition. Spock could take this in some interesting directions. Its main challenge will be to wean users from Google as a first stop, though more on that in a sec.

When Spock launches, it will have 100 million profiles of people in its database, by far the largest open repository of profiles anywhere. Spock delivers a mixture of facts and research on a people, but also opens a profile to social input, giving it a touch of Wikipedia.

Man, this is getting interesting. Now the clips are back up, Viacom and Google (er, YouTube) have negotiated a license. I wonder if Viacom got to feast on some of that escrow account? Mmmmmmmmmm, the milk of commerce!