Category: Of Note in Search Biz

Google’s Video Purchase Experiment Kaput

Sergey must have been serious about cutting back products (thanks KK): As a valued Google user, we're contacting you with some important information about the videos you've purchased or rented from Google Video. In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the ability to…

Sergey must have been serious about cutting back products (thanks KK):



As a valued Google user, we’re contacting you with some important

information about the videos you’ve purchased or rented from Google Video.

In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the

ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the

DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective

August 15, 2007.

As a valued Google user, we’re contacting you with some important

information about the videos you’ve purchased or rented from Google Video.

In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the

ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the

DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective

August 15, 2007.

4 Comments on Google’s Video Purchase Experiment Kaput

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Accoona IPO

Accoona, a search engine and, apparently, an ecommerce business, has filed for an IPO, Paid Content alerts us. To my mind, this smells like opportunism, after all, the search engine has gotten very little traction and the company has no profits. That's the kind of IPO that got us…

Accoona, a search engine and, apparently, an ecommerce business, has filed for an IPO, Paid Content alerts us.

To my mind, this smells like opportunism, after all, the search engine has gotten very little traction and the company has no profits. That’s the kind of IPO that got us into trouble last time. The offering is dressed in a Google like auction process to boot. So I took a quick look at the S1. It’s clear from first blush, this is not a search company. Sure, they have a search engine, but what revenues they have they seem to have purchased – and they are all ecommerce sites. And while the S1 speaks of six sites that provide its revenues, I can’t find them listed anywhere. I’ll keep looking, but if you all can find em, let us know.

Accoona Finances

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Hypertext Solutions

Apparently Paul Allen is throwing his hat into the next generation semantic search game. From this blog posting (thanks reader Charles), we learn that Hypertext Solutions, a Seattle startup in stealth mode (they are hiring), has purchased the assets of a search technology called InFact (original page is dead,…

Hypertextsolution

Apparently Paul Allen is throwing his hat into the next generation semantic search game. From this blog posting (thanks reader Charles), we learn that

Hypertext Solutions, a Seattle startup in stealth mode (they are hiring), has purchased the assets of a search technology called InFact (original page is dead, here is a Google cache) from Insightful Corp. The release is here.

Paul Allen is reportedly behind Hypertext Solutions. I am not finding it easy to confirm that. However, the blog posting, from a fellow involved in the tranasction, says Hypertext Solutions is “building upon the world’s best NLP based text analysis and search platform”. I’ve got some feelers out…

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BeetTV: Google Video Search Expanding to “All the World’s Video”

Google spokeperson Gabriel Sticker gives a short interview on BeetTV about Google's approach to video search. Worth a quick watch……

Gabriel

Google spokeperson Gabriel Sticker gives a short interview on BeetTV about Google’s approach to video search. Worth a quick watch…

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Former CTO of AOL: Stop Copying Google, AOL Search

Again, typing is tough so I'll let John McKinley do the talking, the entire thing is really worth a read: The challenge with this approach is fourfold: 1. We lost the impact of some of the tips and techniques we had developed as a “veneer” player that maximized the…

Again, typing is tough so I’ll let John McKinley do the talking, the entire thing is really worth a read:

The challenge with this approach is fourfold:

1. We lost the impact of some of the tips and techniques we had developed as a “veneer” player that maximized the revenue we could get from high-value searches – maybe that will be offset by the private label adwords, but maybe not…

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Google Promotions

The ever watchful Philipp has found another example of a promotion on Google's main search index. This one is in the products section, and it promotes Checkout….

The ever watchful Philipp has found another example of a promotion on Google’s main search index. This one is in the products section, and it promotes Checkout.

Google-Watch-Promotion

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Face First: LiveSearch Adds Face, Portrait Filtering

Kinda neat: Three new features in Live Search Images We know you love searching for people with our image search engine—we’ve worked hard to make it easy and fun. Now we’ve made it even better. Today we shipped three new features that help you find faces, portraits and black…

Kinda neat: Three new features in Live Search Images

We know you love searching for people with our image search engine—we’ve worked hard to make it easy and fun. Now we’ve made it even better. Today we shipped three new features that help you find faces, portraits and black and white images.

Jimi Face

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Wales, Wikia, Search, Grub

Jimmy Wales' Wikia has bought Grub and open sourced it. Om has a good write up that includes this quote: “Search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. And, it is currently broken,” Wales said back in December 2006, when Wikia launched Search Wikia effort. “Why is…

Jimmy Wales’ Wikia has bought Grub and open sourced it. Om has a good write up that includes this quote:

“Search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. And, it is currently broken,” Wales said back in December 2006, when Wikia launched Search Wikia effort. “Why is it broken? It is broken for the same reason that proprietary software is always broken: lack of freedom, lack of community, lack of accountability, lack of transparency.”

Remember my early coverage of Nutch? This reminds me of those themes…

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Games Work

At least, that's what Microsoft learned with its recent search share increase. Covered by SEL here….

At least, that’s what Microsoft learned with its recent search share increase. Covered by SEL here.

833085547 B34B073Aa2

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Femtocell

What? This. About Femtocells Poor indoor coverage often prevents mobile customers using cell phone services at home and is impeding take-up of multimedia 3G offerings. Ubiquisys was formed in 2004 to address this challenge by bringing its innovative ZoneGate femtocell technology to market. The ZoneGate femtocell is a small…

What?

This.

About Femtocells

Poor indoor coverage often prevents mobile customers using cell phone services at home and is impeding take-up of multimedia 3G offerings. Ubiquisys was formed in 2004 to address this challenge by bringing its innovative ZoneGate femtocell technology to market. The ZoneGate femtocell is a small ‘zero-touch’ plug-and-play device that plugs into a home broadband connection and provides high-quality 3G coverage in the home. Unlike WiFi, ZoneGate allows people to use their usual 3G cell phones to access services. ZoneGate means excellent mobile coverage at landline rates and allows mobile carriers to deliver innovative new services right where their customers need them – in their homes.

The ZoneGate system is unique in applying a standards-based approach to network integration by supporting both UMA and SIP/IMS protocols.

For more information, please visit www.ubiquisys.com.

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