round up

Fun with Google

– E4! on Google Earth.

Techkwondo is developing a game of Battleship for Google Earth that interacts for the drop with players’ cell phone GPS signals. (via Blogscoped)

– Painting with Google.

Also via Philipp, a fan creates a working mock-up of what Google Paint might look like.

I’ve been messing around with Phillipp’s new book, 55 Ways to Have Fun with Google— and it is just that.

Keyword price down-tick

The average bid for search marketing keywords went down 8.6 ($1.27) in Q2, reports the research firm Fathom.

Search Zoom

Become.com introduces Search Zoom, which aims to capitalize on its vertical advantage with categories: buying guides, product reviews, discussion forums and product details. Become’s Sr. Director of Product Search, Jon Glick notes in Comparison Engines:

“If you’re a general purpose search engine, you can’t have 30 buttons across the top. As a vertical search engine, we just wanted to limit the choices to the decisions that people who need to make a buying decision need. We have a more constrained problem. We can help people in ways that Google as a general search engine can’t.”