Month: March 2004

Again (AGAIN!) The NYT on Google

This story may as well have been published two years ago, it's a complete retread of every story you've ever read about Google (Vanity Googling! Date Googling! Google is really big and cool and new and important! Google has a chef who worked for the Dead! Google's not the answer…

This story may as well have been published two years ago, it’s a complete retread of every story you’ve ever read about Google (Vanity Googling! Date Googling! Google is really big and cool and new and important! Google has a chef who worked for the Dead! Google’s not the answer to everything, but it sure seems like it is!). At least this time they are talking to some interesting folks, including Larry Lessig and Brewster Kahle. I know I’m way too inside baseball to have a clear view of this, but…this story has run in the Times before. I guess now we know, it will run again, and again, and again.

2 Comments on Again (AGAIN!) The NYT on Google

SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date on the latest from BattelleMedia.com

Jerry Yang Interviewed In Taiwan

Jerry visits his hometown (Taipei) and sits for an interview with the Taipei Times. Interesting to hear Jerry, who is not often in the press, talk about competition with Google, Yahoo's strategy, etc. Excerpts (sounds a bit like it's been translated from English to Chinese to English, though I have…

Jerry visits his hometown (Taipei) and sits for an interview with the Taipei Times. Interesting to hear Jerry, who is not often in the press, talk about competition with Google, Yahoo’s strategy, etc. Excerpts (sounds a bit like it’s been translated from English to Chinese to English, though I have no idea…):

As Microsoft also uses our technology, it means that nearly 50 percent of all searches in the world use Yahoo technology. This coverage gives us the advantage of learning more about consumer behavior and what they want to find, which is a foundation for us to improve ourselves on…

I think I will be a Yahoo lifer, since I still have a lot of passion for it. The Internet is becoming the most important medium, because it is unrestricted from time and space. The Internet revolution has, and will continue, to bring profound influence on people’s life and culture, making it more potential than the time I established Yahoo. Therefore, I will keep contributing to this field to explore the potential of this technology, as well as my own brainchild, until I’m too old to move.

1 Comment on Jerry Yang Interviewed In Taiwan

Psst…Wanna Buy Some Pre-IPO Google Shares?

Good cocktail party tidbit from the Register: Dutch fellow posed as a Kleiner partner and scammed folks into "investing" in pre-IPO Google shares. He took in half a million before he got caught… Among the victims were several financially successful and sophisticated members of the international technology and business community,…

Good cocktail party tidbit from the Register: Dutch fellow posed as a Kleiner partner and scammed folks into “investing” in pre-IPO Google shares. He took in half a million before he got caught…

Among the victims were several financially successful and sophisticated members of the international technology and business community, the FBI says. These include a New York investment banker, the chairman of a global telecom company, a brokerage firm executive and counsel for a telecommunications company.

I’d like to see that list…

3 Comments on Psst…Wanna Buy Some Pre-IPO Google Shares?

Yahoo Updates Battelle

Had a nice chat earlier in the week with Yahoo's Tim Cadogan, who in the face of the paid inclusion dust up has been given, or perhaps even has willingly taken, the role of Explain It, Then Explain It Again Yahoo. Tim knows from controversy and market overreaction, he was…

Had a nice chat earlier in the week with Yahoo’s Tim Cadogan, who in the face of the paid inclusion dust up has been given, or perhaps even has willingly taken, the role of Explain It, Then Explain It Again Yahoo. Tim knows from controversy and market overreaction, he was at Overture before paid search was cool, and there are some similarities to how the market is reacting to Yahoo’s CAP program. Namely, he believes, the whole content acquisition program, misunderstood now, will eventually be seen as a rational approach to the market, and, ultimately will lead to a much more robust search experience.

Now, I stand by what I wrote earlier, that CAP forces the issue of trust and transparency to the fore, and most small business owners (arguably those most affected by this program) are not yet ready to trust a big company like Yahoo. They feel coerced to pay up, mainly by fear of missing something if they don’t. Tim said he understood these sentiments, and said that only time will prove that CAP has no influence over ranking. He also points out that CAP is entirely optional, and that Yahoo’s goal is to crawl the entire web as throughly as possible, regardless of paid inclusion.

I pointed out to him that if Yahoo could simply state that its organic crawl and resultant index was as comprehensive and fresh as Google’s, then perhaps folks would see that CAP is simply an added value service for URL submission, reports, and the like. Tim responded that indeed, Yahoo stands by its index and results as the equal of Google, and again time will tell.

Read More
3 Comments on Yahoo Updates Battelle

Bray Is Happy

As I wrote a last Fall, there's flowers poking through the Silicon Valley snows. Latest case in point: Tim Bray posts that he's got a Big Idea, and this has made him Happy. Oh, do, please tell. Is it this?…

As I wrote a last Fall, there’s flowers poking through the Silicon Valley snows. Latest case in point: Tim Bray posts that he’s got a Big Idea, and this has made him Happy. Oh, do, please tell. Is it this?

Leave a comment on Bray Is Happy

CEO of Northern Light on Future of Search

Gary points us to this speech by the CEO of Northern Light, David Seuss. (Gary also links to Suess' ppt slides). Interesting, Suess says the future of search is intelligent, human edited databases that are subject specific. The Google approach will stop scaling, if it hasnt' already, he predicts. (Recall…

Gary points us to this speech by the CEO of Northern Light, David Seuss. (Gary also links to Suess’ ppt slides). Interesting, Suess says the future of search is intelligent, human edited databases that are subject specific. The Google approach will stop scaling, if it hasnt’ already, he predicts. (Recall that Northern Light was an early innovator in search which Suess bought out of bankruptcy last year).

Leave a comment on CEO of Northern Light on Future of Search

Email Search, Cont: Bloomba

Stata Labs' Bloomba gets a rave, of sorts, in Fast Company. The company Demo'd at Demo last month. Demo guru Chris Shipley called it "the Google of email." The bottom line: Bloomba 1.0 is an incredibly innovative product that turns the way we think about email entirely on its head….

Stata Labs’ Bloomba gets a rave, of sorts, in Fast Company. The company Demo’d at Demo last month. Demo guru Chris Shipley called it “the Google of email.”


The bottom line: Bloomba 1.0 is an incredibly innovative product that turns the way we think about email entirely on its head. Searching, not power-foldering, is probably the wave of the future for serious email communicators. But it’s not yet ready for prime time

(thanks, Hylton)

1 Comment on Email Search, Cont: Bloomba

iPhrase

Another roundup on the search landscape over at the Herring (registration required). Most interesting find: iPhrase, which provides intelligent "self service" search for corporate clients interested in creating better experiences for their customers online. Schwab apparently is using it to good end. And Gary points out ha tif you want…

Another roundup on the search landscape over at the Herring (registration required). Most interesting find: iPhrase, which provides intelligent “self service” search for corporate clients interested in creating better experiences for their customers online. Schwab apparently is using it to good end. And Gary points out ha tif you want to demo the tech, head over to Lycos’s stock screener application…

1 Comment on iPhrase

Times On Online Video Advertising

The NYT has caught onto web video ads. (For my initial report on this, read my column in 2.0 from last year). The news: The ads seem to be working….The caption from the Times piece says it all, in terms of how Big Media views this: "Such ads have annoyed…

The NYT has caught onto web video ads. (For my initial report on this, read my column in 2.0 from last year). The news: The ads seem to be working….The caption from the Times piece says it all, in terms of how Big Media views this: “Such ads have annoyed far fewer viewers than expected.” What do you know!

An online survey of 1,700 Internet users who saw the full-motion commercials, which ran from late January until late February, showed that viewers found them less annoying than some marketers had expected. Indeed, just 28 percent found them annoying – compared with 38 percent of TV viewers, on average, who found commercials annoying in three separate studies. The survey on Web commercials was paid for by the advertisers.

Leave a comment on Times On Online Video Advertising