Google....Disappoints

Google is down to nearly 520 in afterhours trading after its earnings failed to surprise to the upside and/or meet higher expectations on Wall St. Ouch. From 750 to 520 in a few months...

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:05 PM
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Q&A With Marissa Mayer

Venturebeat has an interesting Q&A with Marissa up, in it she points toward social search as a major area of development for Google.

She hints Gmail may be used to identify your friends, using their search history to influence search results for you and those in your social network. While this network would likely first be built on Gmail contacts, Marissa wouldn’t rule out importing friends from third-party networks down the road.

I think Google is struggling to figure out its approach here. Should it build a "traditional social network" like Facebook or Orkut? Should it simply be a directory, and provide a platform instead (like Open Social)? What about indexing and crawling all this social content? Will it prefer its own content?

The plot thickens.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:17 AM
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It's Not Fair, But Google, You Are A Media Company

Sorry, it's just true. IWantMedia: David Eun: Google Won't Become a Media Company.

It's not fair in that I am on the road and can't write my full defense of this. But I understand why Google claims to not be a media company, in terms of not being, say, the New York Times. But...that doesn't mean it doesn't threaten the core underpinnings of what makes a great media company. Is that a bad thing? No. But it's not accurate to say Google isn't a threat.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:12 PM
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Yahoo Earnings

Overall, not bad on its O&O properties, but shakiness in its parnter programs, including ATT and YPN/Panama, where Wall St. hoped they'd hear strong upward guidance. Instead, they heard that Yahoo is going to have another "transition year" in 2008, which sent the stock down. PC coverage.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:44 AM
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More Travlin'

I am about 2/3rds of the way through what is one of the most brutal travel stretches I've had in quite some time, that's why posting is light, but the learning is great...

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:52 PM
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And the Interface Evolves

...toward conversational interfaces....news from Google acknowledging that ten blue links is getting old (we knew that, so did Google, but...):

There have been a lot of recent improvements to web search, but the appearance of results themselves has been pretty constant -- 10 or so web pages in a vertical list. Frequently this is exactly the right format, but for some searches you need more options and more control. That's why we've created our experimental search page to let you try out some of our newest ideas.
You may have noticed our "alternative views" experiment showcased last May. This lets you visualize your search results in new ways, and we'd like to highlight some of the features we've recently added.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:53 PM
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The Government Should Get Into the Payment Game

Do you have government-issued payment technology? A tracking device that is tied to your bank account or credit card, that allows you to pay for stuff without the hassle of transaction friction? Chances are, if you are a commuter, you do. I've got one in my car, an image of it is above.

I love my FasTrak. It lets me whiz through the numerous bridge toll booths dotting the Bay Area. But recently, FasTrak did something very important - it cut a deal with the San Francisco Airport, a deal that allows folks with FasTrak to pay for airport parking using their selfsame FasTrak device.

Pretty obvious, no? Well, no, in fact. I'm sure cuttting this deal was fraught with all the red tape and political hazards typical of local government.

But it got me thinking. I have a FasTrak device in my car. I have connected that device to a trusted payment service (a credit card, in my case). Why shouldn't the local government leverage that fact, and get into the payment biz? It's a great business (just ask MasterCard or Amex), it pays well, and it's a service I'd trust FasTrak to get right, because they've built significant brand equity with me over the past few years.

We have a major budget crisis here in California, and everyone is pointing fingers, arguing about which programs should get cut, and hoping that we can gamble our way out of the problem (no, really). What about the government *actually providing a valuable service,* one we'd all be willing to pay a bit for?

I know, I know, it'd cut into the credit card companies' business, but, jesus, tough shit, guys. California is in the pole position here, and should leverage it. Miniaturize the FasTrak, add a modal button (ie, when I press on it, it activates) and some security software, and then roll it out at grocery stores, gas stations, shit, everywhere you can buy a lottery ticket for that matter. The brilliant angle is this: while tons of retailers have tried this, no one wants a walled garden approach (ie, I can use this key fob for gas, that key fob for Safeway, etc.). The government can set an open standard, create a development platform...you all know the rest.

And take a 1-2.5% cut from retailers. I, for one, would love it.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:50 PM
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Chuck Norris Is Hiding

First result for Googling "find Chuck Norris" and hitting "I'm Feeling Lucky."

(thanks, David)

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:36 PM
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Respect Talent, No, Wait, Screw That, Talent Wins

Dave Winer has a good post about how talent - in particular, writers and "content creators" - have forever had a raw deal from corporations who profit on the back of the creators' work. Dave posits that this is about to change, thanks to many trends, including the commoditization of distribution, means of production, and audience aggregation (well, I may have added that last one).

I certainly agree change is in the wind, and started FM on the premise that independent creators of great sites on the web deserve not only the majority of the revenue fostered by their work, but complete control over their intellectual property to boot. Well said, Dave.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:49 PM
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Save eBay With Search?

That's Saul's take after a quick conversation with incoming CEO John Donahoe. But wait...we've seen this movie before...

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:19 PM
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I Disagree, Google

Google has come out with a policy around political ads on its sites, and I commend it for transparency and setting a level playing field. But I disagree with the policy. Why? Well, to quote a portion of its post on the policy:

No attacks on an individual's personal life. Stating disagreement with or campaigning against a candidate for public office, a political party, or public administration is generally permissible. However, political ads must not include accusations or attacks relating to an individual's personal life, nor can they advocate against a protected group. So, "Crime rates are up under Police Commissioner Gordon" is okay, but "Police Commissioner Gordon had an affair" is not.

I understand why Google took this course, but I have to say, it's part of an ongoing sanitization of our political life that, in the end, pushes all of politics toward whitewashing and dishonesty. It's far easier to say "no personal attacks" than it is to say "no false statements". But in my mind, accuracy is far more important in public debate than some subjective sense of what constitutes a personal attack. These are public figures, after all, and let's be honest: we vote for folks we feel we can trust. How will we know them if we don't know the truth? Sure, scandalous stuff is often scurrilous, but the first amendment is clear on speech: all speech, in particular, all public speech, must be allowed, so that the real truth can be assessed by an informed public. We don't need Google, or anyone else, sanitizing it for us.

Just my two cents.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:55 PM
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MapReduce

You know PageRank, you should know MapReduce. And as a side note, man, it's great to see a true geek write the way this fellow does. What a pleasure to read!

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:41 PM
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GOOG Makes a Comeback

The support for GOOG came out today, the stock clearly felt oversold yesterday. It closed today at 574, up nearly 5%. A commentor noted on my post from earlier in the week that Google has an unusual program that keeps its options in the clear despite being underwater. Wonder where that charge might show up in the SEC reporting?

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:38 PM
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Busy, Busy

I hope to post more this weekend, but I've been a bit underwater today and will be again Friday....

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:09 PM
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Early Look, Google Health

Thanks to Google Blogoscoped!

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:04 PM
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The Xooglers

Stefanie writes up the ex-Googlers. This is just part one...and I found this very interesting (I bolded it):

Like some of his peers, Harik is investing in small companies like Wi-Fi company Meraki, and he's helping to develop a Web-based video conferencing company called Imo.im with his brother. Harkening back to his college studies of mathematical models of genetic algorithms, he's also opening a yet-to-be-named research lab in Palo Alto to develop artificial-intelligence software for the fields of biotech and medicine. He plans to invest about $100,000 in the lab this year.

"The largest intelligence system at Google is in AdSense and the Gmail spam system, but I've always really wanted to see our work applied to medicine and biology, which is sort of hard to do at a company," said Harik, adding that the software will be open-source with access to the entire medical community. The nonprofit is partially funded by Google, Harik said.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:28 AM
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No, Google Won't Buy the NYT. But Google.Org Could

I've argued in the past that we need new models for quality journalism, and that it's the responsibility of companies like Google and Yahoo to help our culture get there. One might be to run our best journalistic enterprises as trusts, the way they do in the UK and elsewhere. There's been a lot of speculation over the years (including a piece in RealClearMarkets yesterday) that Google might buy the Times. I don't think that's a good idea. But if Google.org did, and then ran the paper as a trust, well, that'd buy a lot of brand burnish amongst a very important set of influential folks, just as massive privacy and monopoly issues are rearing their heads...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:35 AM
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Google Drops More Than 160 Points

That's not something we're used to hearing, but since its peak back in the Fall at nearly 750, Google has dropped to 584 currently, a 166 point drop (it's dropped more in after hours, all the way down to 568). It's on a steep decline in the past few days, perhaps due to the new search stats from Nielsen, as well as jitters about the economy at large.

I can only imagine what this is doing to the Google culture. Don't tell me no one watches the stock there. Anyone who's joined since September of 2007 - and that's a lot of folks - now find their options underwater.

The culture is taking its first deep breath. Recall my predictions from a few weeks ago: 2008 will be the year Wall Street gets frustrated with Google. The company has incredible numbers, and will continue to impress, but analysts, tired of bidding up the stock, will start to question the company's myriad ocean-boiling projects - after all, it's merely trying to reinvent Health, Energy, Telecom, IT (both consumer apps and OSes), and a few other major portions of the GDP. Look for a few querulous analyst reports and even a few downgrades by the end of the year, as Wall Street finally comes out of its honeymoon stage with Google and demands that the company consolidate its control in marketes where profits are secure: Search and Adsense.

Is this the start of it? It could be. Earnings are coming, and they will be the key to the story. Right now, Wall St. isn't in love with Google, or any other stock, to be sure. A great quarter - which Google consistently delivers, by the way, could change that.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:10 PM
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More Traveling

On the road today and Weds, seeing clients and such. Posting will be intermittent.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:46 AM
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Look, I Was Just Three Weeks Late...Ebay's Whitman to Retire

Remember my predictions last year? Remember when I said this?:

6. eBay will have a major change in executive leadership. This feels overdue.

Well, I was wrong, it didn't happen in 2007. But, it is happening three weeks into 2008:

TECHNOLOGY ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal.

Jan. 22, 2008

EBay CEO Meg Whitman is preparing to retire, and John Donahoe, president of eBay's auction business unit, has emerged as the leading candidate to succeed her.

A decision about her departure could come within weeks, though the situation remains fluid, say people familiar with the matter. It would mean the loss of one of Silicon Valley's highest-profile CEOs.

I think Meg waited just to spite me. (Kidding, really, I'm kidding...). But honestly, Meg is the longest running Internet CEO on record who was not a founder, and I can only imagine she's ready for something new. Or maybe, just a few months on the beach.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:27 PM
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HooooBoy, FaceBook Wants a Chef

Here we go again. (via SF Chron)

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:27 PM
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Google Losing Search Share? To ... Microsoft?

Wow! If only I trusted Nielsen's numbers, this would be a big story...

Google garnered a 56.3% share of the U.S. search market in December, compared with a 57.7% share in the previous month, according to Nielsen. Yahoo Inc., meanwhile, saw its share in December fall slightly to 17.7%, compared with 17.9% in November...Microsoft Corp. was the only company among the three largest search providers to see an increase in December, as its share rose to 13.8% of the U.S. market from 12% the previous month, according to Nielsen.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:14 AM
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Joel On AT&T's Filtering Plans

BB Gadget's Joel Johnson talks about AT&T's plans w/r/t internet filtering on an AT&T show. The other shoe has not dropped on this one yet, but I salute Joel for bringing up a very important issue.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:09 AM
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Mail That Baby, Baby

I was going to wait to post this till the start of a mobile posting campaign that Microsoft is very kindly launching, but I just can't let it wait (for those who might care, Microsoft is going to underwrite a bunch of FM authors, including me, posting mobile stuff like photos and maps and voice posts). Anyway, I was in JFK airport and I saw an arresting image in a Pitney Bowes ad.

Now, what does Pitney Bowes do? Well, turns out I have some knowledge in this area, as my father, ever the itinerant entrepreneur, tried to compete with Pitney in the 80s by creating a better postage meter. He didn't get very far. Pitney is the Microsoft of postage meter companies. They own the market.

So they are doing a corporate campaign, apparently, and somehow, they came to the conclusion that slapping postage on a newborn baby - wait, let me say it - a not very pretty newborn baby - is somehow a powerful statement of corporate purpose. (That bracelet is actually a postage label).

Now, am I off here, or does this simply offend at too many levels to really go into? Do they really want to be seen as "putting a stamp" on newborn babies? Are they out of their minds? Anyway, a funny ad, a funny photo, taken as I was, perhaps, a bit funny myself, given I was two beers in waiting for my delayed flight...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:40 PM
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Google's In House Brand Guy

Andy Berndt, a former Ogilvy star recently hired by Google, says Google's "Creative Lab" is an "internal creative and marketing resource at Google to manage the brand and our only client is Google." More in this Ad Age piece.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:52 AM
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Which Year Is It?

Name the year this was written:

Yahoo offered details of its long-awaited turnaround strategy... hinging its future on advertising, exclusive paid content and revenue-sharing deals with Internet access providers.....Yahoo executives gave some specifics regarding a long-expected corporate restructuring, saying that they will whittle down Yahoo's 44 business units to six: listings, commerce, communications, media, access and enterprise. In addition, the company will lay off 400 employees, or 13 percent of its work force.

That is from a November 2001 article in Cnet, and yes, it sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:03 AM
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Yahoo Integrates Delicious?

Techcrunch has shots of some tests...

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:02 AM
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More Pressure on Yahoo From Wall St.

Yahoo's Ripe for Shake-Up from the WSJ's "Breaking Views" column is quite a read. It argues that the sums of Yahoo's parts, in particular its holdings in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba, which combine for more than a third of Yahoo's overall market cap, should be spun off, as should its search business (I've argued that for some time now.) Interesting.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:36 PM
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What Percentage of Yahoo's (and Google's) Revenue Comes from Domainers?

I'm digging into the domain space for this talk next week. It's a fascinating, frustrating industry. I posted a general query last week, and got a ton of wonderful advice. But I did not get an answer to the question above.

Does anyone know?

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:10 PM
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Sorry Singapore, That's Not Enough Scratch

$100K as the prize for building a new search engine? Sorry, that's not gonna get it done...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:41 PM
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Yes, That's A Lot of Scratch

$50 Billion in online ads three years hence. Wow.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:38 PM
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What Is Private?

All Facebook discusses the story of a dust up between Facebook and blog publisher Gawker, which posted information and pictures found in a well known New York socialite's Facebook profile.

Is information found in a Facebook profile public? It seems to me to be pretty clear that it's not. Emily's public profile on Facebook has none of the information Gawker published. The real question seems to be whether Emily is a "public figure" and therefore subject to a different standard. The author at Gawker got access to Emily's "friends" profile, which had much more information, and published that. Is that so different than gaining access to, say, a private party where a reporter sees Emily, and reports on what she does? That's privileged information, but no one would have an issue with a gossip reporter covering a party full of socialites.

Regardless, it's clearly a violation of Facebook's terms of service. Will be interesting to see if Emily or Facebook pushes on this.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:45 AM
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Floating Datacenters

This story, from Ars, is really cool. Office space is expensive. Energy and cooling is expensive. Solution? Float your datacenter. Neat.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:19 AM
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Travelin' Blues

On the road this week, posting alas will be light.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:47 PM
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MSFT YHOO

I love Kara's take on Microsoft merging with Yahoo:

But that’s kind of like stitching together Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich and getting a potential front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Maybe with some Yankee determination, the two will make it happen. But I kind of doubt it. Microsoft has a lot on its plate just making aQuantive pay off this year...on the other hand, Microsoft kind of needs it...and so does Yahoo..

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:49 PM
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Zuckerberg Transcript

Thanks to Gary for pointing me to the transcript and video of Mark Zuckerberg's 60 Minutes appearance. So far the response (at least from comments here on Searchblog) is not overwhelming.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:26 AM
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Memo to the Writers Who Want To Start Their Own Company

Guys, it's a great idea. But don't make the same stupid mistakes your bosses made and claim you need $30 million to do it.
Did it cost $30mm for Ninja, RocketBoom, WebbAlert or Diggnation to make serious money? Nope, it did not. Don't take VC money and fail. Do it smart, lean and right on the web. In short, don't do it in a packaged goods way. Do it conversational.

Update: I know that these guys want to make traditional movies, but there are so many new ways to finance movies as well. You don't need to finance the company to the tune of $30mm to do it...

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:30 PM
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The Size of the Domain Market and Other Stats

I've always been marginally fascinated by the domain marketplace (key companies include Oversee.net, Name Media, Demand Media), it's not an area I've studied closely, but clearly, it's booming. I'd like to get to know it better, in particular as I prepare to give a talk to a massive gathering of folks in this industry later this month. So in the spirit of "my readers are smarter than I am" I'm asking for your help - where can I get good information on this market? I'd like to know its size, growth, issues, etc. I am already doing research on it, but figured if anyone knows, you all do...

A few things I'd love to know with some authority:

- Overall size of the market

- What percentage of traffic is "type in"?
- How do majors figure in the business - do they endorse, ignore, partner (I know Google partners...)
- How much of the domaining business revenue is Google Adsense?

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:50 AM
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Curtain Rasier on Zuckerberg's 60 Minutes Interview

Beacon will be a "really good thing." In so many words, I agree. If...If...If....

PS - note to CBS, make the videos easy to embed, please...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:45 AM
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Please, Don't Make Me Yell

Google has no reason to buy a Yellow Pages company. Does it? I've railed about this before, the sourcing at British newspapers is nearly as bad as second class blogs. Listen to this little bit of sourcing gymnastics:

The Independent newspaper in the U.K. reported today that a ``market source heard talk of a 500 pence-per-share bid'' for Yell by Google. Spokespeople for Yell and Google couldn't be reached immediately to comment.

Jesus. And I woke up and thought that Google might buy Circuit City out of Chapter 11, so I printed it.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:44 AM
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Computational Advertising

I think humans are required anytime you want to connect a brand with a person in any kind of meaningful way. But "computational advertising" is one way to optimize that connection, for sure. This talk by Yahoo's A. Broder does look interesting (via Greg).

PS - Greg is starting at MSFT next week. Great hire, and congrats Greg!

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:23 PM
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More on MSFT and Fast

Gary has a timeline on FAST deals, showing the companies reach into enterprise search. Recall my earlier posts on how I am seeing this as a very interesting area powering new search UIs for consumers (against structured databases like the NYT articles, for example.)

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:14 PM
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Facebook on Data Portability: Wait and See

It's a first step only, as expected. A comment send to me from Facebook:

We are committed to giving users control of their data on Facebook and, at the same time, safeguarding the privacy of users. Facebook joined the DataPortability Workgroup in order to actively participate in industry dialogue and to represent feedback from the Facebook community.

- Ben Ling, director of product marketing for Facebook Platform

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:32 PM
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Mahalo Stats

Hitwise has some interesting insights.

Mahalo receives most of its traffic from Search Engines (76% last week) and sends most of its traffic to Entertainment (37%) and News and Media (19%) websites. Visitors seem particularly interested in games websites such as GameSpot, IGN Cheats and Game FAQs and News and Media websites, in particular, Google News and other online news sources.

Mahalo is gaining momentum slowly but surely.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:11 PM
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New CEO At Ask

Jim Lanzone, who ran Ask since April 06, is stepping down and figuring out what's next while EIR at Redpoint. I'll be talking to him later today, update here soon.

Jim Safka has been named CEO of Ask.com. Effective immediately, he will oversee Ask.com's global operations. He will also continue in his role as CEO of Primal Ventures, a new-venture entity that identifies seeds and incubates business opportunities for IAC.

Mr. Safka, 39, served as CEO of Match.com from 2004 to 2006.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:06 PM
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Yikes. Old School Media Is Hurting

I read I Want Media each day, and these were the first four headlines:

Time Warner May Cut 1,000 Jobs Due to Strike
McGraw-Hill to Cut 611 Jobs; More May Come
Martha Stewart Said to Lay Off More Staff
Chicago Sun-Times Reduces Size, Cuts Jobs
Seattle Times Plans to Cut Its Work Force

Holy cow.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:25 AM
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TV Companies as Web Content Distributors: Don't Blow It, Guys

It's happening. While at CES today and yesterday, I spoke to two different manufacturers of HDTVs who plan to launch, or have already launched, televisions that are RSS enabled. In other words, the TV manufacturers are getting into the web content distribution business. Can you taste the convergence? I love the idea that my favorite RSS feeds might be running over traditional packaged goods content from the TV Networks, and there is nothing they can do to control it. I love the idea that we, as consumers, can take back control of the screen, and what is on it.

I only hope that the TV companies don't try to pick what content I want to watch FOR me. Oh, wait, that's what they are doing - Panasonic and Google are hooking up to connect Panasonic TVs with the Internet (Panasonic would be the third one, then, that is connected itself to the Web, and in essence, becoming a PC). Well, at least, YouTube and Picasa. I hope that's not ALL we can connect to....

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:00 PM
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Readburner

This looks really cool. Via Mashable, which has a good writeup:

Readburner is a site that has been playing at the edges of my feeds for several weeks now. I think I vaguely remember submitting my linkblog to a developer a month or so ago. He had said he needed a pile of linkblog submissions while he worked on an experimental aggregator based around Google’s Shared Item functionality. I saw a shared item in one or two of the linkblogs I subscribe to that ended up pointing back to a directory on an Amazon EC2 server.

Then Louis Gray wrote a couple articles, letting the cat out of the bag that there was indeed a project underway to finally fulfill the longstanding wishes of MG Siegler (and a great number of other folks like me who are avid Google Reader users). Yes, Virginia, there is a Google Shared Items memetracker, and its name is ReadBurner.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:34 PM
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Wow. Facebook Must Read Searchblog!

I'm kidding, but last week (and several times previously) I lectured Facebook to open up, and predicted it would. Today, Facebook (and Google, but we'd expect that) have joined the Data Portability group. What I cannot figure out yet is whether this really *means* anything other than, well, they joined a group. But it's a great first step.

From my post on January 4:

With one move, Facebook can change the face (sorry) of this debate by making it falling-down easy to export your social graph. And I predict that it will.

Why? Because I think in the end, Facebook will win based on the services it provides for that data. Set the data free, and it will come back to roost wherever it's best used. And if Facebook doesn't win that race, well, it'll lose over time anyway. Such a move is entirely in line with the company's nascent philosophy, and would be a massively popular move within the ouroborosphere (my name for all things Techmeme).

Compete on service, Facebook, it's where the world is headed anyway!

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:25 PM
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