< ![CDATA[Rich wrote: How many articles do we need about Craig and his pedometer and how he rides the bus?]]>
Craig…
Rich wrote: How many articles do we need about Craig and his pedometer and how he rides the bus?…
Month: February 2006
Turn’s Been Outed
I met with the CEO of Turn.com a couple of weeks ago, but on the downlow – it wasn't ready for public consumption quite yet. Why? Well, it's a rather audacious startup – Jim Barnett, former head of AltaVista, is running it, and it's got some heavy backing. The…
I met with the CEO of Turn.com a couple of weeks ago, but on the downlow – it wasn’t ready for public consumption quite yet. Why? Well, it’s a rather audacious startup – Jim Barnett, former head of AltaVista, is running it, and it’s got some heavy backing. The plan? To compete directly with AdSense. How? We’ll seen soon enough, Jim tells me. BizWeek’s blog has outed the new company, however, so now you know as well….
Skrenta on the Craigslist Hullabaloo
Craigslist got a dressing down in a local paper recently. Rich Skrenta disagrees with the premise. Well said! But the the real problem with these sour-grapes articles is that they don't shed any real light on why Craigslist has succeeded, where so many other similar efforts have not. Over-analyzing…
Craigslist got a dressing down in a local paper recently. Rich Skrenta disagrees with the premise. Well said!
But the the real problem with these sour-grapes articles is that they don’t shed any real light on why Craigslist has succeeded, where so many other similar efforts have not. Over-analyzing Craig’s personal habits makes for catty reading but isn’t going to help us understand his takeoff curve in new markets.
To understand how and why something works, study the thing itself, not the maker.
AT&T/SBC Plays Hardball
All the recent talk about net neutrality and how the telcos are planning to leverage their pipes against the threats of Google et al reminded me of a story I heard recently about AT&T/SBC and our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle. According to sources that are very well…
All the recent talk about net neutrality and how the telcos are planning to leverage their pipes against the threats of Google et al reminded me of a story I heard recently about AT&T/SBC and our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle.
According to sources that are very well informed inside the paper, SBC (now AT&T after the merger) is quite upset with the way a Chronicle columnist has been covering the company. Now SBC is pretty much the top Old School corporation around here (the SF Giants ballpark is named after it, for example), and it spreads its advertising budget around like oxygen in an intensive care ward. I’m told that annually, SBC spends around $5 million with the Chronicle.
But recently, SBC has turned off the spigot. Seems Chronicle columnist David Lazarus pissed them off one time too many, and for whatever reason the paper would not muzzle the recalcitrant journalist. In what appears to be retribution, SBC has pulled its ads.
Read MoreUniversity of Michigan President Defends Google Book Search
Here is Mary Sue Coleman's speech (pdf download from Searchblog), given right in the lion's den of the annual AAP meeting (they are suing Google, you will recall.) Kevin Kelly, who sent the speech to me, calls it eloquent. I have to agree. From it: It is this criticism…
Here is Mary Sue Coleman’s speech (pdf download from Searchblog), given right in the lion’s den of the annual AAP meeting (they are suing Google, you will recall.) Kevin Kelly, who sent the speech to me, calls it eloquent. I have to agree.
From it:
It is this criticism of the project that prompted me to accept your invitation to speak — and explain why we believe this is a legal, ethical, and noble endeavor that will transform our society.
Hey BMW: You Ain’t Street Legal, Google Says
From Yahoo news: In a move that analysts say indicates a problem that still needs a solution, Google has removed BMW's German Web site from its index for violating Google's guidelines against trying to manipulate search results. The move was first reported by Google employee Matt Cutts in a…
From Yahoo news:
In a move that analysts say indicates a problem that still needs a solution, Google has removed BMW’s German Web site from its index for violating Google’s guidelines against trying to manipulate search results.
The move was first reported by Google employee Matt Cutts in a posting to his blog on Saturday. He said BMW.de had been removed last week because certain pages on the site would show up one way when the search engine visited the page but when a Web user opened the page, a redirect mechanism would display a completely different page.
Read MoreAmazonSense?
From Chris Beasley's post: Amazon is apparently looking into the feasibility of starting their own ad network like Adsense. They’ve been contacting select members of their associates programs, including myself, asking if we’d like to be beta testers. The way they want the beta test to work is to…
From Chris Beasley’s post:
Amazon is apparently looking into the feasibility of starting their own ad network like Adsense. They’ve been contacting select members of their associates programs, including myself, asking if we’d like to be beta testers. The way they want the beta test to work is to give you a special code for Amazon’s Keywords Recommends banners (the banners that you feed a keyword to and they show related products) and have this special code then show these new ads 50% of the time.
Amazon is apparently looking into the feasibility of starting their own ad network like Adsense. They’ve been contacting select members of their associates programs, including myself, asking if we’d like to be beta testers. The way they want the beta test to work is to give you a special code for Amazon’s Keywords Recommends banners (the banners that you feed a keyword to and they show related products) and have this special code then show these new ads 50% of the time.
When I first heard about this I thought it’d be Amazon product listings displayed in an Adsense-like way and I figured it’d analyze your content for for products to serve, but they’d be Amazon products. Turns out I was wrong, they want their own contextual advertising network.
Exalead Goes to 4 Billion Pages
Not that this counting thing is a big deal, of course. For those keeping score in the Google v. Europe battles, Exalead is involved in Quaero. Exalead's press contact claims the engine will be at 8 billion docs by July….
Not that this counting thing is a big deal, of course. For those keeping score in the Google v. Europe battles, Exalead is involved in Quaero. Exalead’s press contact claims the engine will be at 8 billion docs by July.
Krugle Launches
A search engine for code and code related information, another domain specific search play. Launching today at the DEMO show. As commentor Gary noted, there is already Koders.com (covered here), but Krugle CEO Steve Larsen told me that he feels his new engine is more robust……
A search engine for code and code related information, another domain specific search play. Launching today at the DEMO show.
As commentor Gary noted, there is already Koders.com (covered here), but Krugle CEO Steve Larsen told me that he feels his new engine is more robust…
PayPal v Google(Buy), WSJ Reports
The WSJ tossed this tidbit outside its paywall, so I'll link to it…From the article: While Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt confirmed in press accounts (see here) that the company was building a payment service, Mr. Schmidt also denied it would directly compete with PayPal. Mr. Schmidt said Google…
The WSJ tossed this tidbit outside its paywall, so I’ll link to it…From the article:
While Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt confirmed in press accounts (see here) that the company was building a payment service, Mr. Schmidt also denied it would directly compete with PayPal. Mr. Schmidt said Google didn’t intend to offer a “person-to-person, stored-value payments system,” which many people consider a description of PayPal’s service.
Mr. Jordan (PayPal chief) says he and his team immediately “dissected the wording” of Google’s statements. He says he doesn’t believe Mr. Schmidt….
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