The rumors are flying, hastened by Mary Hodder's claim on her site. I'll have much more to say on this later….
MediaPost reminds us (reg req'd) that thanks to some early deals via AOL (hey, smart acquisition), Time Warner now owns 8% of Google, making it the third largest outside owner. Strategic? Nope, say TW brass. TIME WARNER NOW HOLDS AN 8 percent stake in Google, according to information filed…
TIME WARNER NOW HOLDS AN 8 percent stake in Google, according to information filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. In Time Warner’s fourth quarter 2004 earnings report released this morning, the company said it “does not consider its remaining interest in Google to be a strategic investment,” but the position makes Time Warner the third largest outside investor in Google after two big fund managers.
The NYT canonizes that which we knew to be true: Online advertising, in particular search, has taken its place as a major force in all of marketing….
It's now on the home page. In other news, Ask now has a blog (where the feed, Jeeves? – Update – here it is), keyword prices drop for the first time month to month in quite a while, Rivlin has a nice piece on the "half bubble" in today's…
It’s now on the home page.
In other news, Ask now has a blog (where the feed, Jeeves? – Update – here it is), keyword prices drop for the first time month to month in quite a while, Rivlin has a nice piece on the “half bubble” in today’s Times, and there’s been a lot of interest in Google’s job posting for a strategic partner development manager (as I’ve said again and again, it seems obvious to me that Google will eventually get into the content middleman business.)
More than half a year ago Jeff Weiner, head of search at Yahoo, took me aside and showed me something he was personally passionate about. He called it Search Spots – and the idea was really cool. It's been done before in various contexts, but the idea was very…
More than half a year ago Jeff Weiner, head of search at Yahoo, took me aside and showed me something he was personally passionate about. He called it Search Spots – and the idea was really cool. It’s been done before in various contexts, but the idea was very well implemented and totally integrated with Yahoo and your browser in general – basically, anything you might be reading can become fodder for an inline search. From the email I received from Yahoo PR:
Last Christmas Jeff saw a news headline for the #1 single in the UK and wanted to learn more about the artist, watch the video, maybe buy the CD. It took him about 20 minutes to search for all this information. In a staff meeting he addressed this issue and asked folks around the table how long they felt it should take to access this type of related information – the consensus was it should only take seconds – but the current search experience was so linear it was prohibitive.
In parallel, one of our top engineers (and top search innovators) was off in his spare time creating a prototype to address the exact same pain point that Jeff was sharing with his staff. Y! Q. This product was not on the roadmap for product development but demonstrated such tremendous value to the user experience that it was greenlighted and set into production. With limited resources, he and his team went to work to create what is going to be pushed live late tonight on (next.yahoo.com) as a test product.
Read MoreThanks to Rich, founder of Topix, for this heads up, and congrats!…
This story over at Netimperative is a good read for anyone who wants to grok clickfraud, and it includes a good tick tock of several advertisers' travails. Let's face it, click fraud is bad news for the advertiser, but it’s still pouring millions into search engine bank accounts. So,…
Let’s face it, click fraud is bad news for the advertiser, but it’s still pouring millions into search engine bank accounts.
So, is it feasible that they really would want to put such a concerted effort into something, which effectively, helps them make less money?
Read MoreStill writing, so I'll just note this, link to coverage, (here's Technorati on Google Earnings) and say: Holy shit. A billion dollar quarter (not including TAC – traffic acquisition costs – of about $378 million). Release in extended entry. And…in 2004, the company created a billion in net cash….
Still writing, so I’ll just note this, link to coverage, (here’s Technorati on Google Earnings) and say: Holy shit. A billion dollar quarter (not including TAC – traffic acquisition costs – of about $378 million). Release in extended entry. And…in 2004, the company created a billion in net cash. Yow. How’s the company doing in the markets? Check here. It’s up nearly 12 points in after hours trading – in the first few minutes.
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Sigh. The problem with doing a book is that you hold stuff back, hoping it'll stay fresh for the book, and then suffer death by a thousand little cuts. Such is the case of today's NYT story on Google's Founders Awards, which I discussed with Sergey a while back….
The idea is neat: reserve millions of dollars in value for teams of people within Google who make major contributions to the success of the company. Basically, Google wanted to create a culture within the company that rewards people on par with the returns someone receives when they start a successful company, then sell it – to a company like Google, for example. I think it’s innovative and rather bold – an acknowledgment that Google is maturing, but still committed to the kind of upsides that Valley startups are all about.
BTW, Google reports earnings today.
Read MoreGoogle is a minority owner of Baidu, the #2 search engine in China. Today the FT reported that it will seek a listing on the US market….
