Month: January 2005

More on the Book, Favorite Subtitles So Far…

As most of you know, last Friday I posted a plea for help on the subtitle for my book. I never imagined I’d get so many responses – 90 comments so far and still climbing, and more than 150 discrete suggestions. Thank you! So as to hone your subtitlin’…

Book Open

As most of you know, last Friday I posted a plea for help on the subtitle for my book. I never imagined I’d get so many responses – 90 comments so far and still climbing, and more than 150 discrete suggestions. Thank you!

So as to hone your subtitlin’ skills, many of you asked me what the hell the book was really about, and that certainly is a reasonable question. So let me attempt to outline the thing, given that I just sent chapter 9 of 10 to my editor, and I need a break from writing it. (Instead, of course, I’m writing about it, but there you have it.)

The book breaks into ten discrete chapters, and attempts to tell the story of search through any number of major narrative actors, as well as via a few key Big Ideas. One of them is the Database of Intentions, which was one of the first posts on Searchblog, but others include the idea of Intent over Content as well as the power of the Search Economy. As one might expect, Google plays a significant role in the book – I devote three chapters to the company.

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Dark Fiber?

Cnet investigates whether Google might be up to something. I dunno. This is starting to feel like overcoverage. But then again, we're all interested… UDATE: Doing some research on my last chapter, I re-read this interview in Fortune(sub required). Sheds some light on the subject of Google's interest in…

Fiber BlueCnet investigates whether Google might be up to something. I dunno. This is starting to feel like overcoverage. But then again, we’re all interested…

UDATE: Doing some research on my last chapter, I re-read this interview in Fortune(sub required). Sheds some light on the subject of Google’s interest in fiber:

SCHMIDT: Let me tell you some things about broadband. The first is that we see broadband users use Google a lot more. Now, we don’t know what is the causality. We don’t know whether it’s the broadband that allows it, or whether it’s a demographic profile or something, but we do know that broadband users use Google much more and they buy more things. They live on the Internet because of broadband.

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T’Rati Tags

Metadata addicts rejoice, Technorati has launched tag-based search and alerts. For more, read Dave's post here….

Metadata addicts rejoice, Technorati has launched tag-based search and alerts. For more, read Dave’s post here.

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Traffick: AdSense Teetering?

Interesting post on Traffick positing the theory that Google's AdSense "faces extinction" unless Google does something about it. The author notes that AdSense doesn't work so well for publishers with strong repeat audiences (I can attest to that), that click fraud is growing (I sure have proof of that…

Interesting post on Traffick positing the theory that Google’s AdSense “faces extinction” unless Google does something about it. The author notes that AdSense doesn’t work so well for publishers with strong repeat audiences (I can attest to that), that click fraud is growing (I sure have proof of that with folks I’ve spoken to lately), and that new options are threatening AdSense’s base (like AdBrite and BlogAds).
net net, I don’t think we’ll see AdSense going anywhere, but I agree that upgrades are due, and I sense they are coming shortly. First up might be verticalization – so you can buy in large consumer verticals like autos, travel, etc. Second might be opeing up the network to let developers build mini-networks of endemically related sites. Now that’d be nice, eh?

(Thanks, Bill!)

UPDATE: Slashdot picks up this Newsweek article on click fraud, and my post above as well. Welcome, slashdotters, if you want to know more about Searchblog, head here.

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Doing Business By Other Countries’ Rules

Phillipp Lenssen recently reviewed sites that are filtered out of Google's German and French indexes for reasons of internal national politics. This is not news – this has been so for some time, but it's very interesting nonetheless, and it reminds us that all search sites find themselves in…

BannedeuropePhillipp Lenssen recently reviewed sites that are filtered out of Google’s German and French indexes for reasons of internal national politics. This is not news – this has been so for some time, but it’s very interesting nonetheless, and it reminds us that all search sites find themselves in these kind of dilemmas, given they are in the business of human knowledge. In France and Germany it’s mainly hate sites which are filtered, but in China, it’s certainly going to be a lot more. Currently Google does not maintain a site based inside China, though it does serve Google in Chinese from outside the mainland. That will most likely change (the market is so large, and Google is now beholden to public shareholders who want profits), and when it does, the Don’t Be Evil motto will once more hang around Google’s neck, a length of rope that Microsoft and Yahoo have managed to avoid (though they are already in China in major ways).

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BitTorrent

Like many others, I find myself drawn to BitTorrent, but in my case, it's due to the implications of its distribution model on the rise of my video-as-grammar riff. (Quick refresher: I eagerly await the day our culture starts to cite and annotate video the way we do text.)…

Bittorrent LogoLike many others, I find myself drawn to BitTorrent, but in my case, it’s due to the implications of its distribution model on the rise of my video-as-grammar riff. (Quick refresher: I eagerly await the day our culture starts to cite and annotate video the way we do text.) A reader pointed me to his analysis of BitTorrent traffic given the whole SuprNova.com MPAA smackdown. His post is interesting – using data from a BitTorrent search engine (TowerSeek), he analyzed torrent file distribution across the web. The conclusions are not easily summarized, but two things jump out – one, there is a lot of centralization in torrents to date (hence the MPAA going after SuprNova and other large sites), but also, there is an *extremely* long tail – one that I would guess will only grow.

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Hacked!

Many of you may have noticed that last night Searchblog was hacked, apparently by someone in Albania (!). For a brief period of time my site redirected to a very odd page, and it appeared I had entirely lost my mind. All is well now, though we have some…

Many of you may have noticed that last night Searchblog was hacked, apparently by someone in Albania (!). For a brief period of time my site redirected to a very odd page, and it appeared I had entirely lost my mind. All is well now, though we have some backend housekeeping to do. Thanks to the many readers who alerted me.

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What Should the Subtitle Be?

Here's something to do instead of working on a Friday afternoon – help me come up with a good subtitle for my book! Up till now, the book I've been laboring over has had this title/subtitle combo: The Search: Business and Culture in the Age of Google A week…

BookHere’s something to do instead of working on a Friday afternoon – help me come up with a good subtitle for my book!

Up till now, the book I’ve been laboring over has had this title/subtitle combo:

The Search: Business and Culture in the Age of Google

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Filangy: PersonalWeb Search Engine

Thanks to Doug Cutting, news of Filangy, a Nutch-based personal search engine that watches where you go and creates your own web index of sites you've seen (and incorporates general web search as well). It's still in early beta, you have to sign up to use it….

FilangyThanks to Doug Cutting, news of Filangy, a Nutch-based personal search engine that watches where you go and creates your own web index of sites you’ve seen (and incorporates general web search as well). It’s still in early beta, you have to sign up to use it.

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An Evening with Google’s Marissa Mayer

Notes on a BayCHI/PARC talk given by Google's Marissa Mayer are posted here. Thanks, Rick!….

Notes on a BayCHI/PARC talk given by Google’s Marissa Mayer are posted here. Thanks, Rick!.

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