John Battelle's Searchblog

Google has posted the transcript here. Thanks Gary!

And the video is here and below, thanks Soren!

Google Blogoscoped live blogged Google's personalization presentations today. Find it here.

Via /.:

"I'm an (extremely) small shareholder in Google, and I looked at their proxy statement today. Most of the time, shareholders' meetings don't deal with anything other than rubber-stamping the board of directors, but Google's upcoming meeting has a interesting shareholder proposal dealing with free speech and censorship to be voted on at the May 10 meeting."

The proposal:

The Office of the Comptroller of New York City has advised us that it intends to submit the proposal set forth below for consideration at our annual meeting. It is the custodian and trustee of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, the New York City Teachers’ Retirement System, the New York City Police Pension Fund, and the New York City Fire Department Pension Fund, and custodian of the New York City Board of Education Retirement System (the “Funds”), which beneficially own 486,617 shares of Google’s Class A common stock. The proposal, along with the Funds’ supporting statement, is included verbatim below. The Funds’ request was submitted by Patrick Doherty, The City of New York Office of the Comptroller, 1 Centre Street, New York, New York, 1007-2341.

The Funds’ Stockholder Proposal

Internet Censorship

Whereas, freedom of speech and freedom of the press are fundamental human rights, and free use of the Internet is protected in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers”, and

Whereas, the rapid provision of full and uncensored information through the Internet has become a major industry in the United States, and one of its major exports, and

Whereas, political censorship of the Internet degrades the quality of that service and ultimately threatens the integrity and viability of the industry itself, both in the United States and abroad, and

Whereas, some authoritarian foreign governments such as the Governments of Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam block, restrict, and monitor the information their citizens attempt to obtain, and

Whereas, technology companies in the United States such as Google, that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian governments have an obligation to comply with the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and

Whereas, technology companies in the United States have failed to develop adequate standards by which they can conduct business with authoritarian governments while protecting human rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression,

Therefore, be it resolved, that shareholders request that management institute policies to help protect freedom of access to the Internet which would include the following minimum standards:

1) Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system.

2) The company will not engage in pro-active censorship.

3) The company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures

4) Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access.

5) Users should be informed about the company’s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties.

6) The company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available.

Innaresting. These are the same folks that brought you the Patriot Act resolution.

The info giant has named Gerry Campbell head of a new search unit and bought a text analysis/search company. PaidContent has more...

And Google is working with four states to expose govt. data. This is a very, very important issue.

Matt has the story here.

Andrew Braccia quietly quit as Yahoo’s vice president of consumer web search earlier this month, and begins tomorrow (Monday) with Accel Partners, a well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm.

The European press is speculating that FAST will launch AdMomentum today (it was announced back in Feb), a kind of OEM Adsense for publishers. I've seen a demo and it's impressive.

That's Chief Culture Officer. Interview at Cnet here.

Yahoo, which late last year made an investment in the ad media exchange company Right Media, last night announced it has bought the rest, and for quite a price: $680 million. Given the Doubleclick news, this is not surprising.

FM uses Right Media and we've started to see traction with the service. From Terry Semel's blog post (I know, that sounds a bit funny doesn't it?):

We hope to revolutionize the way ads are bought and sold on the Internet and, in turn, drive more value for advertisers, publishers, and partners.

As new forms of content continue to increase on the Web, so do the opportunities for advertisers to get their message across. This growing inventory is driving a significant transition in the online ad world, with third-party ad networks and exchanges gaining share of the total online ad dollars....

Terry then takes a non-too-subtle jab at Google:

...We think supply and demand should be regulated by the marketplace, not a closed platform. Right Media provides a democratic model that empowers advertisers with all of these benefits. We think our open approach is a clear differentiator from others in the industry and will provide significant benefits to publishers and advertisers.

The Times covers Targetspot:

AS more people listen to the radio over the Internet, radio stations have been looking to generate new advertising revenue from the medium. A start-up company, TargetSpot, is trying to turn this nascent field into a viable business, and CBS Radio is its first customer.

TargetSpot is planning a service that will let advertisers of any size — from a local restaurant to a national chain — create commercials for their desired audience and buy ads that will be slipped into online radio programming. The service, which CBS Radio in part financed, will debut June 28.

I love Geek humor, and that this is in SF! Oh, by the way, the Giants have won 8 IN A ROW and SWEPT THE HATED DODGERS!

Some buzz from Wall St: Analysts are saying that there is no "synergy" between NBC, a GE Unit, and the conglomerates' other units. So the analysts suggest selling it. That is nothing new, this kind of stuff is tossed around all the time on Wall St. But what is new is the suggestion that the best buyer might be Google.

Such a move would be a monumental error. Google is not a company that wants to or probably even knows how to own a major media company. Also, it has outlined a strategy that positions the company as a Switzerland of sorts with regard to major media companies. Buying one of them would kill that strategy.

And lastly, I think the coporate cultures would clash so deeply, AOL/Time Warner would look like a love match in comparison.

Google is now the #1 brand and the #1 website. Welcome to the top, Google. Lonely yet?

Those of you who've read my book may recall I go a tear around the epic of Gilgamesh, and it's meaning in a search-driven world. I was thrilled to see this Salon review of a new book that tells the story of the oldest known story. The review itself is a worthy read.

On the launch of the All Things Digital site. These guys are pals of mine, pros for sure, and I can't wait to start reading...

During the conversation yesterday I mentioned something that I've been meaning to talk to you all about - the idea of different "grammars" for search indexes. Last week I changed my default engine from Google to Yahoo for a while. Now, Yahoo has a very good engine, and I know its results are, by some objective measures, as good if not better than Google's results. But what I did not realize, given how long I've defaulted to Google, how significant an "accent" Yahoo has compared to the idiom I was used to by using Google. In short, I'm very fluent in navigating through the mass of unstructured results that Google offers me after I enter my two or three word keyword phrase. But with Yahoo, I often find myself conversing in a foreign tongue. Not that the language is better or worse, just....different. Interesting....

SEW reports on Ask's long awaited contextual ad network:

Advertisers buying search ads in Ask.com's Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) program will soon have the option of buying contextually-targeted ads on IAC-owned sites and third-party publishers.

The program will launch at the end of May on several IAC-owned properties, such as Match.com, Ticketmaster, Evite and Citysearch. Ads will also appear on a few trusted publisher sites, most likely starting with some of the 90 publishers that syndicate Ask.com search results and search ads. Mid-sized publishers are able to sign up for the program now, and a self-service platform for smaller publishers is expected later this year.

Ask.com is trying to differentiate its offering from AdSense by offering more control and transparency to both advertisers and publishers.

That was a lot of fun! Many of you had more questions, post em here if you want and I'll get to them once I get off the plane I'm about to jump onto. Thanks to sponsor WebEx!

I've not really pulled all the stuff I've written about this in one place at one time. I realized this while talking to a researcher last night who is writing a paper on the implications of search and web history. In particular, I've not posted in one place about what I've started to call "The Data Bill of Rights." My first attempt was here.

I recall that the first time I wrote about Stewart Butterfield told me it'd be impossible to do what I was suggesting. Maybe so, but Eric, in the interview last week, said Google was committed to Data Portability, which is the key and most difficult piece of the pie.

So, I submit for your review, editing and clarification, a new draft of what rights we, as consumers, might demand from companies making hay off the data we create as we trip across the web:

- Data Transparency. We can identify and review the data that companies have about us. A sticky issue is whether we can also identify and review data that is made about us based on other data the company might have. (IE, based on your behavior, we at Amazon know you might also like....)
- Data Portability. We can take copies of that data out of the company's coffers and offer it to others or just keep copies for ourselves.
- Data Editing. We can request deletions, editing, clarifications of our data for accuracy and privacy.
- Data Anonymity. We can request that our data not be used, cognizant of the fact that that may mean services are unavailable to us.
- Data Use. We have rights to know how our data is being used inside a company.
- Data Value. The right to sell our data to the highest bidder.
- Data Permissions. The right to set permissions as to who might use/benefit from/have access to our data.

What am I missing?

1 PM PST...Register here, more on the fun here...

Love this.

I know I give Google it's (fair) ration of crap from day to day, regardless of those of you who feel I'm a Google apologist. Well, you can't win both sides of that argument, all you can do is be honest to what comes to mind. Right?

And when I read this from Paul, I have to say, I quite agree.

Our first ever interactive Web chat is happening this week, and in advance I'd like to ask what you guys want to talk about. The format is mostly questions and answers, and even has the ability to ask the audience surveys. A bunch of you have signed up already, but I'd love to hear from more of you. So in comments, tell me what you'd like to talk about. Ideas:

- What's the future interface for search?
- Can Yahoo pull even or ahead of Google?
- Will Microsoft buy its way in?
- The Doubleclick deal - good or bad or indifferent?
- Privacy and data use - discuss!

What do you think? Join the conversation by registering here. Thanks!

Sometimes, sounding arrogant isn't intentional. It's just in the bloodstream, or it's casually tossed off without thinking how it might sound. Read this excerpt from a very interesting Merc story on Google's internal communications regarding stock options:

Google is proud of the innovative products it regularly releases to the public, from the ever-more-targeted Internet search results to an automatic Web-based airport-ride finder.

But the coolest stuff is often reserved for Google employees. And they're about to get access to a killer tool, otherwise known as the "supersecret Google is about to buy Yahoo" alert.

Technically, this is an e-mail that informs all 12,230-plus Googlers that the in-house market for transferable stock options has been shut down.

In reality, it means something really, really big is about to happen to the company that could affect the stock price.

"For example, if Google decides it wants to buy Yahoo, that's a really big deal," said David Sobota, Google's senior corporate counsel. "We wouldn't want to disclose that to the world the first time Eric Schmidt comes to a handshake agreement with Terry Semel about it, because that could disrupt the negotiation process.

Read that last quote again. ""For example, if Google decides it wants to buy Yahoo,"....

I can't imagine how that sounds in the halls over at Yahoo. Youch.

Update: A source at Google set me straight on the context here: the line was delivered in an internal meeting at Google, the transcript of which had to be filed with the SEC. I thought it was a quote from the counsel to the reporter at the Merc, which would have sounded arrogant. In an internal meeting, it came across as a funny joke, a silly example to help employees understand the program described. Still, it wasn't "if Yahoo buys us," now, was it?!

More from Google's Steve Langdon in Communications:

Hey John. I thought I'd share a bit of context about your recent post. The TSO program (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/about-transferable-stock-options.html) we launched is complicated. To help employees understand how it works and how it affects them, we held internal meetings to answer questions. One of the things we wanted to explain in those sessions is why the program might occasionally shut down. To help explain what kinds of things would suspend the program, the attorney offered an imaginary illustration that would be easily understood -- it was intended to be humorous and the audience clearly understood that it was made tongue in cheek. (If the transcript was able to record the laughter in the room prompted by this illustration, this would be clear to anyone.) The audience was internal. These are not public meetings. Because of SEC regulations, however, we are required to file transcripts of these sessions and that's where this comes from. I think you've read far too much into this imaginary illustration that was offered as a way to help explain a complex program.

Story is here. The author even quotes the publisher of Searchblog. Thanks, Elinor!

Last week was a big day for news and posts, with several on Friday. I know how many of you actually read on Friday, so to review:

News Analysis: Microsoft General Counsel on DoubleClick and Antitrust

IAB to Measurement Agencies: Measure Up!

Lots to Talk About: Sponsored Chat For Searchblog

Thanks!

Matt has the news on the acquisition of Marratech's software, from the Google Blog:

As a company, we thrive on casual interactions and spontaneous collaboration. So we're excited about acquiring Marratech's video conferencing software, which will enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in videoconference meetings wherever there's an Internet connection.

We look forward to learning from the extraordinary ingenuity of Marratech's engineers as they focus on desktop conferencing research and development in Sweden, where they will continue to be located.

Update: To clarify some confusion, we acquired Marratech's software, not the company itself.

I want to believe the implication here, that all Google wants is an internal video conferencing solution. But I can't imagine they'd keep this all to themselves....

I covered this in my book and on this site, and it's an ongoing issue for Google and the whole keyword industry. From CNN:

A judge on Wednesday refused to dismiss a lawsuit against Google charging that the Web search leader's AdWords program abuses trademarks.

In making his decision that effectively allows the case to move forward, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Vogel ruled that the public has an interest in whether Google (Charts, Fortune 500) AdWords violates U.S. trademark law.

American Blind & Wallpaper Factory, the top U.S. reseller of window blinds, charged in its lawsuit that Google abuses trademarks by allowing rivals of a company to buy ads that appear when consumers search the Web for information on that business.

What a great time for Searchblog's first ever live chat. Next week, April 25th at 1 PM PDT, to be exact, Searchblog sponsor WebEx is offering us its platform for a live chat about all the stuff that is going on in search and media. Mark your calendars, I'm looking forward to this new way of continuing the conversation!

We'll be talking about all the hot button issues we discuss here at Searchblog - business models, future search interfaces, privacy, you name it.

All you have to do is register here to attend....hope to talk to you then!

I love it. Companies often create cute names for corporations they create to facilitate transactions. The one Google came up with for DoubleClick?

"WHOPPER ACQUISITION CORP"

Reviewing the merger agreement now...

I had an interesting call today with Brad Smith, the general counsel of Microsoft. I was eager to understand Microsoft's position on the Google/Doubleclick deal, and to parse the issues swirling around the companies decision to, via the press, declare that the deal should be scrutinized closely by antitrust regulators here in the US.

The conversation started with Smith explaining why Microsoft sees this as worthy of a serious review. At its heart, he contended, this is about how one might define the market in which the combined company will operate. Antitrust law, he explained, takes a dim view of companies who buy their way to market domination using cash alone. It's fine to gain market domination by having better products and service, but not by simply buying your way in. So, does buying Doubleclick mean market domination? That question turns on whether a market is narrowly defined - is the market in this case online display advertising and online contextual advertising, or is it more broadly defined - the entire advertising marketplace?

This is not a minor question. The former is a market in the tens of billions, the latter hovers at a trillion dollars. When I asked Eric Schmidt of Google this question onstage earlier this week, he was very clear in his interpretation. After rolling his eyes at the very idea of Microsoft - star of the antitrust stage in the late 90s - even playing the antitrust card, he very clearly stated that the combo of Google and Doubleclick was a tiny percent of the overall advertising world.

Smith, as one might imagine, doesn't ascribe to that interpretation. The market should be narrowly defined, he stated. He then went into how antitrust regulators actually view markets. "There is a defined methodology," Smith told me, for how antitrust review is done. "You look at who is participating in the market and ask if they will shift behaviors if prices change by five percent." Also, will one company have the ability to control pricing and, also importantly, will it be difficult or impossible for any other company to enter that market? Smith believes that GoogleClick will have such market dominance in online advertising as to be able to force higher prices upon the world - online advertisers will not easily move their budgets to offline media like TV or print, they are too dependent on online channels. Hence, one should not view the market broadly.

This raises a very important question - why didn't Microsoft match Google's $3.1 billion offer. Smith would not comment on this, but I can report from very good sources that in fact the company did offer to match it, and was willing to pay even more to insure that Google did not corner the online ad market. But for whatever reasons, the private equity firm that owned the majority of DoubleClick's shares decided to go with Google. I have more detail on how that deal went back and forth - it involves a no shop deal between Google and Doubleclick, for example, but I have heard strong assertions that the owners of DoubleClick did not get the highest and best price for their asset. But that is now history. In short, it's clear Microsoft has the cash to match or even beat Google at this game, but did not in the end win the asset. Why? That's for another post.

"The bigger question," Smith asserted, "is what is the market share and will it be easy for others to enter this market once this deal is done?" He continues: "There's a fixed cost to developing the technology, but that's not the hard part."

Indeed it is not. The hard part is getting the economies of scale and knowledge that come with having a massively scaled base of advertisers and publishers all using the system. That allows for maximum efficiencies in the market and maximum profits. Google already has this in the contextual advertising space. With DoubleClick, it will have it in the display ad space as well, Smith points out. That means it's very hard for anyone else to enter the market.

That may well be. It's hard to say what the government will do with this case, but under the HSR antitrust act, it has 30 days to decide. It will take one of three approaches, Smith told me. One, it will, after a 30 day review period, simply decline to investigate further and allow the transaction to continue. Two, it might decide early that this is not a material issue, and approve it before the 30 day period. Or three, it will make a "second request" for more data, which can take months for the companies to respond to. Once that response has come in, the government will make its final ruling - block or allow - in another 30 days.

Clearly, Microsoft wants to see a second request. I asked Smith about the irony of Microsoft asking the government to support it on antitrust. His response was interesting. He pointed out that Eric was never shy about asking for the government's help against Microsoft when he was at Sun, Novell, or even Google (remember the browser issues?) . "I think regulators take competitors (in this case, Microsoft's) views with a grain of salt, and they should," Smith said. "I would point out that over the years our competitors have been raising a number of antitrust issues that they want regulators to review, and I don't think it's ironic that we ask for the same thing."

In the end, the matter is in the government's hands. If the deal does go through, it will create an entirely new landscape for Google's competitors, one that will require, in my mind, that Yahoo, Microsoft, and other large players consider moves that previously were unsavory. To my mind, the most obvious of these moves is a strong partnership or even merger between Yahoo and Microsoft (remember Soverture?). To that end, what Yahoo's Jeff Weiner had to say on stage, at the end of our discussion at Web 2 this week, is both timely and very pertinent. I asked him about Yahoo's view of Microsoft, given the state of the chess match as it currently stands. His response was direct: Yahoo would be very open (scroll to bottom) to discussions with Redmond. After all, it wasn't that long ago that Microsoft was running Yahoo search (via Inktomi), and monetizing using Overture.

Wow, I love this business. It's such a great story. Happy Friday.....

Updated: I have not had time to review this, but Gary has the merger docs filed with the SEC. And I have a few more thoughts on this topic. The more I think about it, the more the fact that DBCLK went to Google strikes me as a seminal moment in the history of this industry. Microsoft could not win it, despite the cash it was willing to spend. Why?!

(Caveat: I am an IAB Board member, and Comscore is an FM partner)

Today the IAB released a strongly worded - for an industry coalition, anyway - letter asking that the twin pillars of measurement in the interactive advertising universe - Neilsen and Comscore - submit to audits of how they measure, and in general work with the IAB to better measure interactive audiences. This marks the first public move by new IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg, and it's sure to get some attention.

I'm both pleased with this move and hopeful that the response will be positive. I am a big fan of the folks at Comscore and we are working together diligently to come up with better measurement of the conversational media arena. But that's just one piece of a larger puzzle. We can and should do better.

From the IAB release:

The goal of the IAB and the entire Interactive industry is simple: to achieve transparency in audience counts and to revise out-of-date methodologies.

For the Interactive industry, one that is committed to delivering accountability, integrity in audience measurement is a fundamental necessity. But, despite a multiplicity of reported discrepancies in audience measurements, comScore and NNR each has resisted numerous requests for audits by the IAB and the Media Ratings Council since 1999.

In order to establish the source of these discrepancies, and to find the potential solutions, the IAB is asking that both comScore and NNR obtain audits of their technologies and processes by the Media Rating Council (MRC).

The discrepancies exist between the audience measurements of comScore and NNR and those of the server logs of the IAB's own members. Further compounding these differences are the disparities between comScore's and NNR's own measurement results. All measurement companies that report audience metrics have a material impact on interactive marketing and decision-making. Therefore, transparency into these methodologies is critical to maintaining advertisers' confidence in interactive, particularly now, as marketers allocate more budget to the platform.

Without these audits, the industry has no way of knowing whether these deviations in measurement result from inconsistent counting or from outdated measurement methodologies, such as the panels developed in the 1930s and still relied on today.

Full text of the letter is in the jump....

Continue reading "IAB to Measurement Agencies: Measure Up!" »

First there was search history. Then a ton of widgets and apps to help you as you, well, stumble around the web. Now Google, as I expected, has launched Web History. In other words, the rest of what you do online. This whole trend needs a name. Wait, OK, my name for it is the Database of Intentions. But the issue, the nub, the rub, the trade off between privacy, data, and benefits - that also needs a catchy name. Google gets better the more data it has about everything. It also gets scarier.

I asked Eric about this in our conversation and he was quite clear - Google will support data portability and transparency. I am thrilled to hear it. It's a non trivial thing to do. But it's essential, as Eric pointed out, to Google's brand that it be trusted.

From Google's Blog post:

Today, we're pleased to announce the launch of Web History, a new feature for Google Account users that makes it easy to view and search across the pages you've visited. If you remember seeing something online, you'll be able to find it faster and from any computer with Web History. Web History lets you look back in time, revisit the sites you've browsed, and search over the full text of pages you've seen. It's your slice of the web, at your fingertips.

How does Web History work? All you need is a Google Account and the Google Toolbar with PageRank enabled.

Does the idea of Google knowing everywhere you go on the web scare you? Or does it thrill you? It does both for me.

Again, I ask these questions: do we need a data Switzerland? Or at the very least, do we need a data Bill of Rights?

Cnet has the details:

Three public-interest groups are expected to file a joint complaint on Friday with the Federal Trade Commission calling for an investigation into the potential threat to consumer privacy posed by Google's planned acquisition of DoubleClick.

The Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), along with the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups (U.S. PIRG), are asking the FTC to stop the $3.1 billion merger until the trade commission investigates Google's data collection and storage practices, orders DoubleClick to sweep out its data storehouse and requires the search giant to offer a public plan for safeguarding consumer privacy.

Another very good quarter.

Well, despite several supporting voices, it's clear a large percentage of you, at least those who commented, would be quite unhappy if I turned my feed into excerpts. I hear you.

There were several good points and questions. First, yes, my feed does have ads, from Feedburner, an FM and Searchblog partner. But Feedburner does not approach marketing the way FM does, and while we are great partners, the marketers that FM works with are less interested in feeds and more in site-specific advertising. That's not to say Feedburner's approach is less valuable, not at all. It's just that on the site, brand marketers can do far more, and to be honest, many are more comfortable in that environment in terms of execution and such. FB sells categories and scale, FM sells specific sites, conversational marketing, and integrated programs. Both work, and most marketers do both.

Many of you noted that you'll click through from a full text feed and that drives a lot of site traffic. That's entirely true. The experiment was an attempt to see if excerpts would drive significantly more, while not alienating my readership. From the results of my very unscientific poll, I'd clearly be alienating at least a very vocal minority.

I'm not eager to do that. It's why I asked in the first place, after all. I may try this as an experiment in any case (or an A/B test, if I can find the time to set it up!), and those of you who swore you'd delete my feed - gimme a chance to learn something!

If I don't do that, I have another idea I might try....

When I interviewed Eric, several of you wondered why I didn't ask these two questions:

1.Will Google make Doubleclick free?
2. Several sources have told me that Google has built and tested a Doubleclick like platform, then decided to buy the company anyway. True, false, or no comment?

Well, I ran out of time, and we had a lot to cover. So I asked the folks at Google if they could respond, and they have. Here you go:

1. At this time we will continue to operate DoubleClick's services as they have been operated in the past. They have a proven and successful business model and we don't have immediate plans to change it.

2. We are always exploring technology solutions that solve user, advertiser and publisher issues. Currently our plan is to work w/DoubleClick to continue to support its existing customers and to develop more advanced versions of its current services that will ultimately benefit users and advertisers and publishers of all sizes.

Thanks, Google!

GigaOm posits a deal between Viacom and Google, which would make sense, but as we discussed yesterday during my talk with Jeff...Yahoo already has that deal...

Ouch. From the story:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A Chinese couple sued Yahoo and its Chinese affiliates on Wednesday, alleging the Internet firms provided information that helped the Chinese government prosecute the man for his Internet writings.

Wang Xiaoning was sentenced to ten years in prison last year for "incitement to subvert state power" after he e-mailed electronic journals advocating democratic reform and a multi-party system.

From the start, Searchblog has had a full text feed. I took my cue from my pals at Boing Boing - I believed in fully portable content, and I also believed in portable business models. But it's been two years since I started FM, and I have to say, the most important and valuable business model for a site like Searchblog remains bringing your attention to my site, where I can introduce you to marketers who buy ads there.

I know that folks, particularly our partners Feedburner, argue that feeds themselves should be monetizable (Lord, what a word). But the reality is, they are not nearly as valuable to a publisher, at present, as visitors to the site are. "We've seen no evidence that excerpts on their own drive higher clickthroughs," Feedburner posted recently.

Well, I'd like to test that assertion.

Now, I'm a practical guy. So, I figure, are most of you. I'm thinking of shifting my feed from full text to excerpts, for a week or a month, and seeing how pissed, or not, all of you get, and seeing if traffic increases to the site over time. There's nearly 70,000 of you now who read this feed. Some of you read excerpts because you're in crippled readers (ahem, MyYahoo). But many others read, like I do, in full text readers. I'm not switching sides here. I'm just curious.

Consider the comments section your chance to tell me what you think....

PS - I'm also very open to other approaches, like adding sponsors to the feed myself - the sponsors who buy on the site, that is.
After all, they want to reach you...not me!

Not us. Not with Google. SEL has a good overview of Google's news (referenced in the last post):

Google is rolling out two features today that subtly but meaningfully enhance the level of personalization offered to anyone with a Google account. And while they're tied to your search behavior, they don't directly alter the standard search results you see, even if you've enabled personalization by searching while signed in to Google account.

The first feature allows you to add a "recommendations" tab to a Google personalized home page....The second feature is a new button for the Google Toolbar called "picks for you." Clicking this button displays one of 50 new sites every day, chosen for you based on your search history and what others have searched for. Clicking the button successively displays each new pick in turn.

This is remarkably similar to the "Stumble" button on the StumbleUpon toolbar.

Uh huh.

Look guys. Let's not fools ourselves here. This timing is not coincidental. It rarely is.

But, I like where this is going, regardless of the temporary politics of acquisition. Let's push the search interface as far as it can go. It means one thing - the faster we go, the sooner the next Google breaks out....

Have something in the wings, in case you don't win the acquisition game. This case is small - StumbleUpon. But from sources I've talked to, Google had built an entire Doubleclick killer, in case it did not win there. Huh.

Google phones by year's end. Wait, Eric, aren't you on Apple's board?!

At some point tonight, Google is dropping the Froogle name, and getting realistic about the category: The new moniker for the service is - wait for it - Google Product Search. More to come once they post on it...

This is Google getting real about Froogle, a product, and a category, that never quite hit it with consumers. Why? Well, it might have something to do with the way we interact with search. We're still learning about how we interact with this beast. Froogle never made it as a destination, but then again, neither did any other product search categories, really. Sure, some of us use them religiously. But search, broadly, is where we all start, and product search is simply a place we drill down into. Why brand something which is, in the end, simply a feature of the larger engine? Hence...Google Product Search.

Again, one made far smarter by your input - about the same number of comments and questions as with Eric. Dave finds what might be the nut of the conversation - Jeff's openness to partnering (again) with Microsoft. Remember my "Soverture" post? (Grin)

We spoke of DoubleClick, and as we spoke, Jeff's boss, CEO Terry Semel, was predicting advertiser defections in a Reuters' piece.

DoubleClick could see defections by advertisers put off by Google's $3.1 billion deal to buy the online advertising market maker, Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Terry Semel predicted in an interview on Tuesday.

But Yahoo's (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) top executive stopped short of joining calls for antitrust regulators to scrutinize Google Inc.'s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) DoubleClick takeover...

Youch! Check out the Dodgeball founders on getting acquired by Google back in May 05:

"As a two-person team, Alex and I have taken Dodgeball about a far as we can alone," Dennis Crowley, founder of the New York-based text messaging service, wrote on the company's Web site. (that link is now down)

And today, on quitting:

It's no real secret that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us - especially as we couldn't convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space. And while it was a tough decision (and really disappointing) to walk away from dodgeball, I'm actually looking forward to getting to work on other projects again.

I've covered TellMe's mobile search elsewhere, but my ongoing commitments at Web2 Expo meant I could not cover its launch Monday. No worries...TC has it covered....

As I did with Cisco and Hakia, we're doing some conversational marketing on Searchblog with Microsoft. They've asked me to tell them when I felt my business was "people ready." Well, that was not an easy answer, but I've tackled it over here. As I do with all my partnerships with marketers, I post to let you know when I've agreed to work with a sponsor. So far, it's been a very enjoyable conversation.

Tomorrow I am interviewing Jeff Weiner, Executive Vice President, Network Division of Yahoo. Jeff and I have had a great relationship for years now, he was a key source for the book and a very smart guy to bounce just about anything off of. Today with Eric you all really made me much smarter, and I'd love your help with Jeff as well. Jeff ran the integration of all the Yahoo search properties and only recently left those duties to take a senior role in the entire Yahoo network - what is now known as the audience division. So, what do you want to know about Yahoo?

I can tell you what I want to know. First, because it's news, Yahoo announced earnings today (Google announces Thurs.). Now, folks were expecting a win, given what Terry Semel said earlier about the early lift of Panama (see here). In short, he said he was "all smiles." But....Wall St. gave Yahoo's earnings a frown today - it's down nearly 8% in after hours trading. Why? Because despite the Panama expectations, earnings dropped 11% year over year. Now, Yahoo warned the Street that the lift would not hit till Q2, but the Street wanted a surprise to the upside, and it did not get one.

So I will ask him about that.

Beyond the short term, and the Panama stuff, there's much to dig into about Yahoo, its position in the market, the whole Facebook/M&A thing, and some pretty interesting stats that Jeff reeled off to me when we spoke on the phone earlier this month.

So, what do you want to know about?
.

Just released.

Eric and I had a lively conversation earlier today onstage, many of the questions I asked came from your input, thanks a million. He announced onstage that Google has completed its apps suite with the addition of a presentation component, he told me earlier that they did not have a name for it because, in the end, it was a feature of a service, not a product like PowerPoint.

There's a lot of blog coverage, summarized here and here. More to come...

More: AP Story here.

Tuesday morning I am interviewing Eric Schmidt at the Web 2 Expo. Usually I obsess about these interviews, this time, I'm more than obsessing. Why? Today there were 4000 people in the audience, and that's quite something to look out over. And there's much news happening around Google - this will be Eric's first live interview in front of the industry since the DoubleClick deal, and I want to make sure it's good. So can you help me? I'm reading a lot of stuff on the deal, of course, and still formulating my own thoughts (I think I'll wait to post till after I talk to him), but here's what's on my reading list:

Alarm Clock: Google CEO Eric Schmidt called in on the announcement conference call and explained that Google did a strategic review this year and discovered that the scale of the display ad business was larger than the company had initially thought. To our ears this sounds like spin to justify the deal. Surely Google management knows that brand advertising is big business that Google has had problems with.

WatchMojo: ...since the next wave of growth is display/banners at the expense of video (and the one after that being video), Google did not apparently blink today, spending twice what it spent on YouTube to keep DCLK out of the hands of MSFT.

PaidContent: When I asked why display advertising had taken on greater importance in the last year, Sergey Brin said, “We’ve though display advertising has been important for several years.” He mentioned several Google efforts in display but—to paraphrase—nothing on the scale of DoubleClick. He said “we’ve had a lot to keep us busy in search and search advertising” ... that remains important but “we can now afford” to give more attention to display.

NYT (first story): The sale offers Google access to DoubleClick’s advertisement software and, more importantly, its relationships with Web publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies.
For months, Google has been trying to expand its foothold in online advertising into display ads, the area where DoubleClick is strongest. Google made its name and still generates most of its revenue from search and contextual text ads.

Charlene Li: There's been rational points made from some voices in the privacy advocacy community -- namely Lauren Weinstein from the California Initiative For Internet Privacy -- that Google would refrain from creating detailed user profiles, especially to stay in the good graces of its users. My point above is that Google can create user profiles only with the permission of the publishers and advertisers that it serves -- and can benefit from them only if those same parties participate. It's unlikely that anyone in that value chain will want to risk violating user privacy, so only minimal data -- if any -- will be passed between parties.

Chicago Trib: At a time when advertising dollars and readership are drifting to the Internet at an increasingly rapid pace, many newspaper industry executives share Curley's circumspection about the online giants.

Blogoscoped: Sergey Brin emphasized that user privacy will be handled as top priority among all the different integration challenges. Wonder what kind of potential privacy issues he had in mind? After all, DoubleClick is tracking a whole lot of web traffic with their cookies. Combine that with what Google can already track through all the sites running AdSense, and you got an even greater percentage of the web covered...(more)

The River: As Google moves to become more Madison Avenue -- becoming more entrenched in the advertising/marketing mainstream -- it takes the whole media world just a little more digital and technology-oriented. After all, Eric Schmidt has said he wants people to think of Google as an "operating system" for advertising, or some such. Can you imagine anyone even conceiving of an operating system for advertising, before Google?

Kedrosky: To borrow a phrase from Microsoft's past, this is a brazen attempt to cut off Microsoft's future air supply.

GoYaMi: In June of 2004 DoubleClick acquired Performics, an affiliate network and management company and search engine marketing agency in an all cash deal totaling between $58M and $65M.
Now, seemingly in an effort to acquire the DART ad technologies and publisher relationships, Google has also acquired an affiliate network and search engine marketing agency that consequently gets paid by their customers to help them perform better in Google.

Microsoft (via WaPo): Microsoft said yesterday that Google's proposed purchase of Internet advertising company DoubleClick raises antitrust and privacy concerns that deserve careful review by authorities.
Executives at the software giant said they talked over the weekend with AT&T, AOL and Yahoo about similar concerns. Microsoft had bid for DoubleClick but lost to Google. (more from the Journal)

Google: This new partnership represents a tremendous opportunity for us at Google to broaden and deepen our inventory of available ads and to better serve both our publishers and users. Together, Google and DoubleClick will empower agencies, advertisers, and publishers to collaborate more efficiently and effectively, which will, in turn, provide a better experience for our users.

The Search (written two years ago): There was always the fallback of simply running banners on Google’s prodigious traffic—one deal with DoubleClick, an ad network that specialized in serving graphical banners, would probably net the company millions of dollars. But that felt like a sellout—DoubleClick’s ads were often gaudy and irrelevant. They represented everything Page and Brin felt was wrong with the Internet. “They didn’t want to turn the Web site into the online version of Forty-second Street,” recalls investor and director Michael Moritz.

So...what would YOU ask him?

Jeff Bezos just gave out some first look data on his S3 web scale storage business. It's pretty impressive, if hard to fully grok. He said that S3 has scaled to 5 billion objects stored since inception. His presentation on how S3 and EC2 work together was pretty impressive....at FM we're scaling servers and dealing with spiky conditions and man, EC2 sure sounds good...

From a release:

SAN ANTONIO AND MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 16, 2007 -- Clear Channel
Radio and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), today announced a multi-year
agreement that enables Google to sell a guaranteed portion of 30-
second advertising inventory available on more than 675 of Clear
Channel's AM/FM stations. Specific financial terms are not being
disclosed.

Under the agreement, Google™ Audio Ads advertisers will have national
distribution, enabling them to reach specific audiences, at specific
times, in targeted geographies. For Clear Channel, this agreement
opens up an additional sales channel and provides supplemental revenue
by making Clear Channel inventory available to advertisers who
previously had not used radio.

More...

Is up. That'd be the site of Portfolio, Conde Nast's business magazine launch. Which cost $125 million, all in (for print and web.) Enjoy.

Back when I fancied myself a writer, but hadn't written a book and therefore had insecurities in calling myself by that moniker, I subscribed to A Word A Day, which sends you, well, a word a day. Most I've seen before (thanks, Mom), but today, wow, a word crossed my desk that has all kinds of wonderful possibilities. I love the definitions, but what I really love is the potential. It's one of those words that, well, shimmers like The Word.

albedo (al-BEE-doh) noun

1. The fraction of light reflected from a body or surface.
For example, earth's albedo is around 0.39.

2. The white, spongy inner lining of a citrus fruit rind.

[From Latin albedo (whiteness), Latin albus (white).]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=albedo

-Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)

"The more powerful magnetic fields generated by the Sun during maximum
activity are known to block many of the particles, which would
theoretically lead to less cloud cover and less reflection, or a lower
albedo."
James Glanz; Scientists Find Way to Gauge Earth's Glow; The New York Times;
Apr 21, 2001.

"We don't need to tell you that oranges are full of vitamin C. But did you
know that the white membrane under the skin, called the albedo, contains
almost as much C as the flesh of the fruit itself?
Myra Kornfeld; Giving Thanks; Vegetarian Times (Stamford, Connecticut);
Nov 2000.

Is getting closer....Infoweek:

Some people read tea leaves to predict the future. Stephen Arnold reads Google patents, and right now he's focusing his attention on United States Patent 7,027,987 voice interface for a search engine.

Arnold, a Google expert who has written a book on the search leader, believes the patent is a roadmap to Google's future in voice search applications. He said the patent reveals that the company has plans to use voice search across the board for a wide variety of devices big and small and for an equally wide swath of applications ranging from voice-to-text products to a variety of telecommunications uses.

"Google is optimizing voice search to run on Google's data centers," said Arnold in an interview Friday. "There's no limit to how they can scale it. They can embed the function on mobile phones, on browsers, on chips, and even on big mainframes. It's entirely device independent."

Article here...

Tim posits a theory as to why Google is building at 411 service; To get the data that TellMe and Nuance has. Indeed!

... it also seems to me that there's a hidden story here about the speech recognition itself. I was talking recently to Eckart Walther of Yahoo!, who used to be at Tellme, and he pointed out that speech recognition took a huge leap in capability when automated speech recognition started being used for directory assistance. All of a sudden, there were millions of voices, millions of accents to train speech recognition systems on, and much less need for the individual user to train the system.

This is reminiscent of a comment that Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, made to me last year about automated translation, and why it's getting better. "We don't have better algorithms. We just have more data."

In short, I'm speculating that the 1-800-GOOG-411 service is designed to harvest voice data to build Google's own speech database, rather than licensing from Nuance or another player.

And I will eat my post before where I said they would not. From the Journal:

Google Inc. said Friday that it would purchase Internet services company DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion, marking another big foray into the heart of the Web economy.

The price represents a stunning change in valuation for the company, given that it fetched $1.1 billion in 2005, and has since sold off parts of itself to other parties. Among others, Microsoft Corp., had been vying for control of New York-based DoubleClick, which is controlled by San Francisco private-equity firm Hellman & Friedman.

Even as the Internet economy enters its second decade, the price shows just how valuable important market positions can still be. In adding DoubleClick, Google pushes deeper into the business of placing, or "serving," the electronic advertisements that dot Web sites.

But it also complicates Google's already fraught relationships with Web publishers, who often rely on Google for advertising revenue and traffic, but worry that Google's ever-growing market power may somehow crimp their own growth plans.

This purchase requires a lot of thought. Will Google make the service free? Did it buy the service mainly for the data about display advertising - data it wants so it can drive efficiencies into that market? The price is way over the whisper number last week - did Google once again outbid its competition? Looks that way. The price is cash - not stock. Now Google has a major set of relationships with display advertisers.

But will they trust Google? My sources told me that Google was building its own, now it's clear it wanted the relationships which came via a market leader. And to force me to eat my post, which I will do Monday when I can get home to a printer (yum).

More to come.

Details are emerging on a new algorithm called Edison from Ask. The news broke at SES this week, here's a good overview post from SEO by The Sea.

From what I can grok quickly (I am supposed to offline, of course) this is an update/revision/combination/evolution of Ask's previous algos from Teoma and Direct Hit. Buzz is it's a strong step forward. More to come on this as it reveals....

From a statement from Ask found on SEL:

Edison is still in development, so we can't say too much at this juncture. I can tell you that it's a next generation algorithm that, among many other things, synthesizes modernized versions of Teoma and DirectHit technologies, as AG said this morning. It's much more complicated than saying we're just counting clicks, in the case of DirectHit. The technologies we have, and the patents we hold, go way beyond that. We're also taking a deeper look at communities and calculating the authorities in those communities. We were really inspired by looking into the universe of user behavior, and what that could tell us, and the social fabric of the Web itself, and what that tells us.

So says Kevin at GigaOm:

Demand for Google remained high in 2005 as the company blew away earnings in the third quarter ($1.51 a share vs. the Street’s estimate of $1.36) and Net stocks in general rallied toward the end of the year. But think about this: Google ended the first week of 2006 at $465.66. If you bought it 15 months ago, you haven’t made money.

The supply caught up with demand. If anyone was hot on Google, thinking it might fulfill the orgiastic fantasies of analysts who had a $2,000 price target on the stock, there was always someone more than happy to sell shares to them.

Bloomberg: Google's Acquisitions Chief Looking for `Really Crazy' Ideas.

``We look at everything very carefully,'' Salman Ullah, Google's director of corporate development, said yesterday in a speech at a meeting of the Los Angeles Venture Association. ``The really crazy ones do really well.''

Google, owner of the most-popular Internet search engine, has about 15 people working on acquisitions that meet with dozens of companies a week, Ullah said. Mountain View, California-based Google responds to every e-mail pitching a company, while phone calls have a 10 percent response rate, he said. ...

...In the past Google has also used a technique called Monte Carlo analysis to size up a deal, where computer algorithms are used to answer questions.

I agree with Om, Brian Roberts is making his move with Comcast. Watch that space.

Via Digg: John Edwards comes out for net neutrality.

From a Fortune blog:

The latest search market share numbers are in from Hitwise: in the four weeks ended March 31st, Google (GOOG) racked up fully 64.13% of all US searches. That’s up more than 10% since March 2006, and, if trends hold, Google’s share will pass the two thirds mark by August. In the same period, Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT), and Ask (IACI) all lost share. As the old Wall Street hands like to say: “Liquidity begets liquidity.”

Cory at BB has an obit.

I'll never forget the image he created in Cat's Cradle when the guy gives God the finger, then touches Ice Nine to his lips.

What a talent.

Update: Nice video tribute here.

Congrats to the Reprise team (see alarm clock here and release here), I know they are readers of Searchblog. And congrats to IPG, good move. Being good at what Reprise does (SEM) is critical to all large agencies. The next big step is integration of search, brand, and conversational marketing....

At the end of the day, no matter how cool the work is, it's still.....work.

Mike gets some early looks at Spock, the people search engine.

There are gremlins in our comments script, stand by...

As usual, Philippe is out ahead of what will probably be a PR kerfluffle for Google in China: Varying results around Olympic searches.

The motto of next year’s Olympic games in China is “one world, one dream.” Online, the world is actually split up into several countries, each with their own limited view, made possible through national censorship of the web.

Interesting research note in my mail today from Christa Quarles of Weisel. Highlights:

Headline risk, Checkout and other issues have weighed on Google's stock year-to-date: Google's stock is up just 2% year-to-date, compared to a 2% increase in the S&P 500, but nearly a 25% increase in Yahoo!'s stock over the same period. We believe the following issues have weighed on the stock: litigation with Viacom over YouTube; partnerships (such as with Fox) not being quite as robust as expected; expense creep related to Checkout; and a perceived lack of focus in trying to service traditional media.We believe Google's core search business remains strong, however, as query share continues to improve (Google gained over five points of global query market share over the past year and over 16 points over the last two years) and incremental dollars into search tend to follow the users (who then convert). We expect Google to garner nearly all of the incremental dollars into search in 1Q07, suggesting its core business remains strong. As such, we remain comfortable with our 1Q07 estimates that call for $2.5bn in net revenue (up 13% q/q; 64% y/y) and pro forma EPS of $3.35. Search growth is decelerating, however, and begs the question: what will the next big ad category be for Google? We believe the definitive answer is mobile....

...Valuation:In 4Q06, Google's organic net revenue increased 73%, compared to 21% for eBay and 14% for Yahoo!. Currently, Google trades at 18x FY07E EV/EBITDA, compared to 16x for eBay and 16x for Yahoo!. Given the high capital expenditure spending compared with eBay and Yahoo!, however, we believe EV/EBITDA less capital spending is a better metric for comparison. On this basis, Google trades at 27x, compared with 23x for Yahoo! and 20x for eBay. Our discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis, which assumes 25% annual 2007E-2012E gross revenue growth, a 12% weighted average cost of capital (WACC) and a 15x 2012E EBITDA exit multiple, suggests a current fair value of $570 on the shares. We rate the stock Overweight.

Does the phrase "sitemaps autodiscovery" get you excited? Then you'll love this: As reported on the Ask blog and elsewhere, the majors have all agreed to support sitemap autodiscovery via robot.txt.

I've been asked to give Hakia, a sponsor, a thought on the future of search. My thoughts, and those of others, can be found here.

This should not surprise you - Viacom, which is fighting Google on YouTube, has struck a search ad deal with Yahoo. This makes sense to keep competitive pressures balanced.

Clipmarks announces "ClipSearch, a people-powered search solution that makes it easy to find what you or others have already found on the Web."

Krugle and SourceForge unite, coders who search rejoice!

InfoWorld reminds MSFT: The deadline's past!

Google invests in a Chinese/Israeli browser company.

Now, I'm on vacation, so I trust y'all to figure this stuff out while I am offline. But...Utah making keyword advertising illegal? And citing me!!? Wow! I'm totally honored...er...wait. That's not exactly what I meant, but...er. Anyway. More on Eric Goldman's site.

There it was in black and white - Eric Schmidt calling his company an operating system for advertising (a Wired interview).

Wired: How should we think about Google today?

Schmidt: Think of it first as an advertising system. Then as an end-user system -- Google Apps. A third way to think of Google is as a giant supercomputer. And a fourth way is to think of it as a social phenomenon involving the company, the people, the brand, the mission, the values -- all that kind of stuff.

And that's exactly what Google has become, and wants to be - the foundation for advertising on the web. But I'd not stop at advertising. It's clear that the real goal isn't just advertising. It's commerce.

PS - I'll be interviewing Eric at the Web 2 Expo next week...

No, it won't be Ft. Lauderdale, but my family and I are heading down to the desert for a week of sun and pool time. I'll be online, and posting from time to time, but it will be light. Enjoy Spring!

Just a matter of time. From GigaOm.

This was embargo'd till Monday, but AOL just told me the embargo was broken so I can post it now. AOL has worked with Google to execute a white label version of AdWords that allows AOL advertisers to target only AOL audience members. The benefit to AOL is that they get to cross sell their Ads.com and display advertisers into AOL Search. This is the first such white label deal I've seen done, though there may be others (I have a mail into Ask to see if they are doing it.)

From a draft of the release:

AOL today announced the launch of the AOL Search Marketplace, which is available to select AOL advertisers giving them the chance to buy sponsored links specifically targeting the AOL search audience ( http://search.aol.com ). The service, built on Google AdWords™ advertising technology, extends the suite of advertising solutions AOL can offer to marketers.

“Our advertising clients have told us they wanted the ability to target their search advertising to users of AOL Search, and now with AOL Search Marketplace we can offer this service,” said Mike Kelly, President, AOL Media Networks. “We have found that there is a significant impact when search and display campaigns are coordinated. The addition of the AOL Search Marketplace enables us to offer advertisers end-to-end solutions, everything from AOL to our industry leading third-party display network to video advertising and performance ads. This will let marketers better coordinate their advertising, and build greater efficiencies into their campaigns, with AOL.”

AOL® Search Marketplace uses a white-label version of Google AdWords®, providing advertisers the ability to buy search advertising that solely targets the AOL Search audience on the AOL® Client applications and AOL.com®. This service uses the same best-of-breed functionality, features and reporting that advertisers have come to expect from Google AdWords. Until now, advertisers did not have the ability to segment and optimize traffic coming from AOL.

The new Search Marketplace is a result of the expanded five year strategic relationship AOL and Google entered into in December 2005. AOL test marketed AOL Search Marketplace with about 30 advertisers over the previous five months.

I spoke with Dariusz Paczuski, who manages AOL Search Marketplace. He told me that most of those beta advertisers have re-upped and increased their spend with AOL due to this new product.

Google tells me that the rev share between the two companies has not changed. They also issued this statement to me:
“As a valued partner we look forward to working closely with AOL as they roll out the AOL Search Marketplace to more advertisers. We believe this offering will enable AOL to present a more comprehensive advertising opportunity to their customers.”

AOL also announced two other related search products:

AOL Local Search ( http://local.aol.com ): Currently in beta, AOL Local Search incorporates technology from MapQuest – the Internet’s No. 1 mapping site, editorial from AOL’s CityGuide and geo-targeted advertising, to make it easy to find locations and reviews for local businesses, bars, restaurants, and more.
AOL Shopping and Commerce Search ( http://shopping.aol.com ): AOL teamed up with new shopping partner, PriceGrabber.com, to provide a highly relevant comparison search experience, giving consumers access to an extensive catalog of products and services.

Henry Blodget offers this interview Josh Wexler, founder of SoftWave Media Exchange, which competes with Google's nascent efforts in the radio and TV world. From Henry's summary of the interview:

* Despite investing heavily in its radio and TV placement efforts, Google is badly lagging SWMX, especially in radio.

* In radio, Google sells remnant inventory, but the real business is in regularly scheduled inventory. SWMX generates more than 80% of its revenue from this.

* Google's attitude--revolutionize the way advertisers buy advertising--has offended many traditional media owners and is hampering growth. SWMX is growing rapidly because it facilitates existing business practices.

* The current process by which radio and TV advertising is bought and sold is grossly inefficient. This creates an opportunity for electronic marketplaces.

* eBay's media-selling initiative was considered 'dead on arrival.'

* Companies like Spot Runner, which generate a lot of buzz, focus primarily on content creation and campaign planning. These companies are complementary to SWMX, which focuses on the back-end.

* SWMX expects to turn cash-flow positive later this year. Wexler believes the company's current cash position will support its near-term initiatives.

* If Google were to buy a company like SWMX, this would require a change of approach to the radio and TV markets.

* The Google-Echostar announcement is more style than substance.

Many of you have noted that my postings have been hurried and cursory lately, that will continue for some time. I've been dealing with some family issues (my father) and things have been unusually busy over at FM lately as well. That said, I don't want you to miss the stuff I've been reading simply because I don't have the time to lard it up with my trenchant analysis. Here's a summary from UBS's Ben Schachter, for example, on the Feb Comscore search numbers and Google's performance. Just wanted to pass it along.

Overview of comScore Search data
This report gives investors a monthly snapshot of internet search trends focusing on the 5 largest sites. We issue this report on a monthly basis, focusing on the same data points. We examine U.S.-only paid-search and world-wide search data as provided by comScore.

U.S. Sponsored Click Data for February
Google's sponsored clicks were down 3% m/m, up 45% y/y, and 6% q/q. Yahoo's were up 4% m/m, up 25% y/y, and 4% q/q. MSN's were down 5% m/m, up 95% y/y, and 14% q/q. AOL's were down 4% m/m, down 38% y/y, and down 10% q/q. Ask's were down 6% m/m, up 3% y/y, and down 7% q/q.

World-Wide qSearch Data for February
Google's total searches were up 50% y/y, 2% m/m, and 10% q/q. Yahoo's were up 34% y/y, 1% m/m, and 8% q/q. MSN's were up 19% y/y, 3% m/m, and 1% q/q. AOL's were down 35% y/y, -2% m/m, and -14% q/q. Ask's were down 4% y/y, flat m/m, and up 1% q/q.

Key Points
For U.S. sponsored clicks, GOOG showed 45% y/y growth vs. 54% y/y in Jan and 62% in Dec (2nd consecutive m/m decline, but was +6% q/q), while YHOO's grew 23% y/y in Feb vs. 23% in Jan and 28% in Dec. YHOO's click through rate increased 43bps m/m (Panama went live 2/5). GOOG's coverage ratio decreased 118bps m/m to 47.5% although the % of searches w/ a sponsored ad and a click was 27% vs. 22% y/y.

Bottom Line
If one were to trade on this news (and we do NOT advise doing so because we think this data is only directionally accurate), it was not a good month of data for Google. Sponsored clicks were down for the second consecutive month and year-over-year growth rates are decelerating at a faster pace than expected.

However, there is an interesting aspect of Google’s February data that we think might be misinterpreted: the coverage ratio is down significantly (118bps m/m and 522basis points y/y). Intuitively, one might think this is a negative for revenue, however, Google stated on its last call that it was proactively lowering the coverage ratio while increasing its RPS. This is possible because while it is showing fewer ads, we think the ads are more relevant and getting higher click-through-rates and most likely meaningfully higher costs-per-click. This is shown by looking at the percentage of sponsored clicks on search results that have an ad. This metric is up more than 400 basis points year over year. Unfortunately, all of this makes it that much harder to quantify how this data translates into revenue for Google.

We also note that, as shown in the charts below, toolbar searches continue to grow in importance, and are growing significantly faster than the overall search market.

Earlier this year I had a chance to spend some time with the head of AFP (Pierre Louette). He seemed to want to make it work with Google (background), and it's clear he finally has. From Yahoo News:

Agence France-Presse, a global news agency based in Paris, has settled its lawsuit against Google Inc. and will allow the Internet search leader to post news and photos from AFP journalists.

The deal, announced Friday, settles the copyright infringement lawsuit that AFP filed in March 2005 accusing Google of posting news summaries, headlines and photos without permission.

Financial details of the settlement weren't disclosed.

The deal will allow Google to use headlines and photos on Google News and other services that drive online traffic to sites displaying AFP news. The companies didn't disclose where else AFP's news would be used by Google.

The nut here: "Financial details of the settlement weren't disclosed." This has significant implications. More to come.

And honestly, it's been one hell of a week. So when a major artist makes fun of another major artist via YouTube, you have to just smile, and love the fact that the web lets all this happen. For your consideration:

With My Maps.

A public article, so I'll point to it, on Ask's campaign to differentiate from Google in the UK....

Autonomy, an enterprise search co out of the UK, is sure to add to all the hoo-ha about copyright technology in the Google/YouTube/Rest of World kerfluffle with this announcement on deep copyright search from its Virage subsidiary. The release, in part:

Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise and proponent of Meaning-Based Computing, today announced the release of Virage Automatic Copyright Infringement Detection (ACID). Virage ACID enables copyright owners such as broadcasters, production houses and publishers to maintain control of their Intellectual Property by automating the detection of illegal distribution of copyrighted material on the Internet.

Using Autonomy’s unique Meaning-Based Computing, which includes patented image and audio analysis technology, and powered by the Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL), ACID offers a fast, accurate and scalable method of detecting breaches of copyright, wherever they are located and whatever format they are in. By automatically detecting any rich media that infringes an organization’s copyright, Virage ACID eliminates the need for content owners to spend hours trawling through video sharing websites, or manually scanning p2p file contents.

More coverage at Internetnews.com here.

Local.com is a public company, so it has to be ready to defend its numbers. I just got a release which claims a $35 RPM for the site. That's pretty darn good. Not Google good (estimates say Google's at nearly twice that) but still, very good.

IRVINE, CA, Apr 04, 2007 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX News Network) -- Local.com (NASDAQ: LOCM), a leading local search engine, today announced that it has surpassed the $35 milestone for search traffic monetization during March 2007. This milestone reflects consistent monetization of over $35 in revenues per thousand pages viewed (RPM) on Local.com.

The company previously targeted a $35 RPM based on current ad partners, and expects RPM to increase as it adds direct advertisers, a major initiative for the company in 2007. For the fourth quarter 2006, Local.com achieved a $29 RPM.

Huh, what do you know, there are six jobs on the Searchblog jobs board. I expected maybe two. Hey, maybe I'll post a few more myself!

See Paid Content on the NYT:

DoubleClick, the online ad firm, which is in talks with Microsoft and Google for a possible sale, is in the process of launching an online ad auction exchange, reports NYT. In this online exchange, to be launched in Q3, publishers and ad buyers will participate in auctions for ad space. It has signed up 35 Web publishers, advertising networks, agencies and advertisers to test the system. Two of the testers are Advertising.com, a large ad network, and Media Contacts, an interactive media buyer that is part of Havas. DoubleClick will charge a commission for each ad impression traded on its exchange.

First, they finally gave me a Google Desktop for the Mac. But I will be honest with you. I am not eager to have Google scan my desktop and organize my information. It's not that I don't trust the folks at Google, the people I know there are all high integrity and I'm convinced their values pretty much mirror my own. It's that I don't trust Google, the corporation. Am I alone? Or a paranoid freak?

And in the spirit of helping the web be more efficient, and therefore make more money for everyone (including Google), the company announced Website Optimizer.

Website Optimizer, Google's free multivariate testing application, helps online marketers increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by continually testing different combinations of site content (text and images). Rather than sitting in a room and arguing over what will work better, you can save time and eliminate the guesswork by simply letting your visitors tell you what works best.
Free multivariate testing

Website Optimizer is a self-service application designed to give marketers full control over testing. Not only does Website Optimizer - integrated into AdWords - test messages on all site traffic (not just AdWords traffic), but it also works alongside Google Analytics and all third party site analytics packages.

This one I think I'll be testing!

The Enormous List of Linkbuilding Tips, Articles and Resources

Ask.com Launches Anti-Google Campaign on London Underground Trains

The ABC's of GBS: Part One, Google Book Search Explained

TripSync: Streamlines Travel Plans

Playing Nice With Google

From an email from Google:

Google Announces TV Ads Trial

At Google, we are constantly looking for ways to improve the user experience and bring value to advertisers, publishers and partners. Users spend a lot of time watching TV so improving the relevance of advertising information on that medium is important. That's why today we are excited to announce our trial to deliver Google TV ads. Working closely with our partners, EchoStar and Astound Cable, we are currently running a trial to deliver better ads to viewers and help advertisers, operators and programmers more efficiently buy, schedule, deliver and measure ads on television.

Deliver more relevant ads to viewers and provide better reporting for advertisers
Advances in set-top-box technologies make it possible to report aggregate statistics on how many times an ad was viewed and whether it was watched through to the end. As part of this trial, we will be working with partners to use aggregate, anonymized set-top-box metrics to deliver timely and accurate viewing reports. Advertisers can use this data to understand the effectiveness of their TV ad campaigns and use this information to provide more relevant ads to viewers.

Bring more advertisers to TV and help inventory owners
With our AdWords™ and AdSense™ advertising programs we have seen the benefits of the long tail and we think we can apply these principles to help grow the TV advertising industry. Our goal is to extend the reach and visual power of this medium to include more advertisers, large and small, and help monetize more TV programming with relevant ads.

Create efficiencies in the existing model
With Google TV ads, the entire process is automated – from planning the campaign to uploading and serving the ad to reporting on its effectiveness. Like our AdWords advertising program, Google TV ads are bought using an auction model and through a single online interface that is already familiar to agencies and advertisers. Advertisers can target by demographic, daypart and channel and pay only for actual impressions delivered. Pricing is on a CPM basis. Because the entire process is automated and online, advertisers can plan their TV ad campaigns efficiently all year long. The flexibility of this model also allows advertisers to make changes to their campaigns as often and as quickly as they like.

This is an early trial. We look forward to getting feedback and working closely with advertisers, agencies and partners to improve and expand our TV ads offering.

more from SEL

I'm traveling for family reasons today, a few stories worth noting:

Topix Does the Citizen Journo Thang

Facebook is growing. A lot.

Blogging Code? Here're FM's Mores.

Google might buy DoubleClick after all. But...why? Oh wait, now I know. To push Microsoft to spend even more for it. If Google buys DoubleClick, I'll eat this post.

Well done, EMI.

Yahoo is testing new approaches in search too.

New Orleans Google Maps kerfluffle.