GOOGLE'S BOSS ENVISIONS A UTOPIAN FUTURE

Original Story: technologyreview.com

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt played make believe and sketched out his vision of the future on stage at TechCrunch’s Disrupt event in San Francisco today.

“It’s a future where you don’t forget anything…In this new future you’re never lost…We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time…Your car will drive itself, it’s a bug that cars were invented before computers…you’re never lonely…you’re never bored…you’re never out of ideas.”

Schmidt filled in his vision with concrete examples of Google’s immediate future and strategy. “What we’re really doing is building an augmented version of humanity,” he mused before going on to talk about how smart phones, “the defining iconic device of their time,” can become real-time translators for speech.

“We can now demonstrate and are getting ready to ship products that let you speak in English and have it come out of a phone at the other end in German,” said Schmidt.

Cloud servers convert the speech to text–a core feature of phones with Google’s Android operating system–after which the tech behind Google translation service generates corresponding German text that can be spoken aloud by the recipient’s phone. Schmidt echoed the feelings of many when he said “for me this is the stuff of science fiction.”

Search remains a focus for Google, though, he said and it is set to get even smarter. “Where do we go next with search? You’ve got personal context. With your permission, and I need to say that about 500 times, we can make all these answers so much better.” Organic search results serve as a search engine endorsement for companies, products and services.

That context could include your search history as well as that of your friends, as well as your other information stored with Google, as long as you allow it. Given enough information search engines could become “autonomous,” said Schmidt, helping you at all times without your even typing a query.

“I’m interested in history, as I’m walking down the street in San Francisco I want my mobile device to tell me about the history here, think of it as a serendipity engine,” said Schmidt. He went on to say that Google is working to figure out what people really want when they search. For example a query for the weather may be fundamentally motivated by your wanting to know whether to wear a jacket or to water the garden. A smart search engine should be able to answer such questions when you search for the weather in your city.

But despite hints of greater social features, and the value of the data they could provide, Schmidt dodged a question about Google Me, calling it a “rumored product I won’t comment on.”

He was more forthcoming when asked about what it means when Google promises to be open. “The easiest comparison to do today is the Apple model,” he explained, “you have to use their development tools, their hardware, their software, when you submit an application they have to approve it. That would not be open. So the inverse would be open.”

Schmidt finished with a claim that the technology augmenting humanity would be more inclusive than that which came before. “This is a future for the average person, not just the elite. Because of technology, because of internet access, this is a market for one billion now, two billion soon, and in our lifetime five-to-six billion altogether.”

SUDDENLY, GOOGLE LOOKS SHAKY

Original Story: businessinsider.com

Last week, Google reported slower-than-expected revenue growth during the third quarter.
Investors punished the company with a stock sell-off, and now Google shares are trading at $511.17, well below a 52-week high of $604.83.

In a story on the disappointing earnings, BI's Jillian D'Onfro pinpointed Google's problem: its big business, search advertising, isn't growing as fast as it used to. In fact, it hasn't grown so slowly since six years ago.

To be very specific: People didn't click on Google search ads as much as everyone thought they would during the quarter.

"Growth in paid clicks didn't accelerate as much as analysts expected it to: 17% year-over-year versus expectations of 22% year-over-year," wrote D'Onfro.

Here are three reasons that's happening.

Reason #1: Google search is the best money-making business on the Web, but the Web is slowly becoming irrelevant thanks to mobile.

The world is moving away from desktop computers. As the world does this, Web usage is growing more slowly. As overall Web growth slows, Google Search growth slows — and so do clicks on search ads. Google SEO Companies help businesses improve website ranking in Google search.

Reason #2: People are more comfortable going straight to Amazon to search for products to buy.
A couple years ago, we met with several Google executives and learned that the company keeping them up at night wasn't Facebook and it wasn't Microsoft; it was Amazon.

Google is a search company, but the searches that it actually makes money from are the searches people do before they are about to buy something online. These commercial searches make up about 20 percent of total Google searches. Those searches are where the ads are.

What Googlers worry about in private is a growing trend among consumers to skip Google altogether, and to just go ahead and search for the product they would like to buy on Amazon.com, or, on mobile in an Amazon app.

There's data to prove this trend is real. According to ComScore, Amazon search queries were up 73% in 2012. But it makes intuitive sense doesn't it?

Why go through these steps …

Open a Web browser on your phone.
Google search "bike gloves"
Analyze some text links.
Click on one to go to a product page on some e-commerce store.
Click to add the item to your cart.
Input your credit card.
Input your address.
Select what kind of shipping you would like to pay for.
… when you can just …

Open the Amazon app on your phone.
Search Amazon for "bike gloves."
Click one button to buy the product with your usual credit card and have it shipped to your normal address, for free.

Reason #3: Google is way behind in the best money-making business on mobile, monetizing streams.
Facebook generated $1.8 billion in mobile ad revenues during the second quarter, 151% over the same period the year prior. Twitter generated $255 million in mobile revenues during the quarter.

Both Twitter and Facebook are, mostly, making all the money by selling ads against "streams" in their mobile apps.

Google also sells mobile ads.

But it doesn't own a stream to sell ads against.

Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter keep adding more streams to sell ads against.

Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp. Twitter bought Vine.

Facebook and Twitter are also both taking what they've learned about putting ads their own streams to help other app makers sell ads (and taking a cut, of course).

It's reminiscent of how Google made a bunch of money selling ads against its own content — search results — and then and then it took those ad-selling techniques and spread them all over the Web, to great profit.

Maybe Google's growth is slowing because it's not doing the same thing in mobile, while Facebook and Twitter are.

BONUS REASON: Larry Page is investing for the distant future, not the near term.
In the past couple of years, Google CEO Larry Page has invested billions of dollars in self-driving cars, thermostats, robots, and computers for your face. None of those investments have turned into real businesses yet. Maybe they will someday.

TOO BIG TO TRUST? GOOGLE'S GROWING CREDIBILITY GAP

Original story: InfoWorld.com

Remember when we all loved Google? Its search engine was both simple to use and an unbiased portal to anything you wanted to know. It was founded by two college students at a time when Silicon Valley was a shining beacon of what was right in the world, during sunny economic and political times.

We don't love Google so much any more, mainly because we trust it less and less. More and more people have realized that the Google search engine is hugely biased in favor of advertisers, and the results are increasingly manipulated by Google for inscrutable purposes. Google seems to track anything and everything we do -- it peruses our emails, our files stored on its servers, our locations, and our chats. Americans are getting nervous.

When Google bought smart thermostat maker Nest earlier this year, the public recoiled -- Nest owners didn't want their thermometers to be the latest spying portal in their homes for Google to use. That negative reaction drove home the growing Google trust problem. Likewise, no one really believed that Google wasn't participating in the NSA's spying on users; it seemed a clear case of the lady doth protest too much. Plus, we saw how much Google is spying on us, whether or not in support of the NSA. If anything, Google's response seemed to be indignation that the NSA was piggybacking on Google's own privacy-mining efforts.

For most people, Google is still a shining star. It ranks as the second-most valuable brand in the world, after Apple and before Coca-Cola, a ranking that has grown in recent years. It's also at the top of the rankings for best places to work. It's not as if Google has yet become Facebook, whose abuse of personal information is assumed. But the cracks in Google's reputation are growing.

Consider Google's recent policy update for the Google Play Store, which is where you get Android and Chrome OS apps. The latest policies forbid apps that mislead users into buying add-ins, releasing their personal data, or going to websites -- common techniques for dubious advertisers and vendors, as well as cyber criminals.

But will Google enforce these policies? Google didn't respond to InfoWorld's query on the matter, but its past actions suggest it will not, other than occasionally as a sort of spring cleaning. Google has long had a hands-off approach to apps, doing little to weed out malware and other abusive apps. It trusted app makers to do the right thing.

Ironically, Google's own search engine would fail some of those new Play Store policies -- you can't always tell what search-result links you click are sponsored versus neutral, and many of the advertised links lead to scam sites that surreptitiously steal user information. Google also plays games with the unsponsored search results, favoring content from people and organizations with active Google+ accounts, for example. Google Search and the Play Store are becoming more and more like Craigslist, the pioneering, once-virtuous online classified-ads system that now is a seedy venue favored by scammers for finding new victims.

The reality is that Google's business is and has always been about mining as much data as possible to be able to present information to users. After all, it can't display what it doesn't know. Google Search has always been an ad-supported service, so it needs a way to sell those users to advertisers -- that's how the industry works. Its Google Now voice-based service is simply a form of Google Search, so it too serves advertisers' needs.

In the digital world, advertisers want to know more than the 100,000 people who might be interested in buying a new car. They now want to know who those people are, so they can reach out to them with custom messages that are more likely to be effective. They may not know you personally, but they know your digital persona -- basically, you. Google needs to know about you to satisfy its advertisers' demands.

Once you understand that, you understand why Google does what it does. That's simply its business. Nothing is free, so if you won't pay cash, you'll have to pay with personal information. That business model has been around for decades; Google didn't invent that business model, but Google did figure out how to make it work globally, pervasively, appealingly, and nearly instantaneously.

I don't blame Google for doing that, but I blame it for being nontransparent. Putting unmarked sponsored ads in the "regular" search results section is misleading, because people have been trained by Google to see that section of the search results as neutral. They are in fact not. Once you know that, you never quite trust Google search results again. (Yes, Bing's results are similarly tainted. But Microsoft never promised to do no evil, and most people use Google.)

The issue gets trickier when you move away from search and into apps, whether Chrome OS or Android. Free apps are what people want, so app makers end up doing the same data-mining that sustains Google Search, using a shadowy network of companies to do the work for them. The result is that many mobile apps have the same kind of scams you see on the Web. Sometimes Google is in that mix (innocently, or at least not looking too hard), sometimes it is not. That's why opt-in permissions and clear disclosure are necessary -- so you don't feel fooled.

But many paid apps use these same services to increase their income -- you may think by paying for the app or an in-app extension, your data and behavior are not being mined. But they often are, typically without your knowledge. That's extra income for the app maker, as well as the data miners they work with. Or it supports an artificially low price that drew your interest in the first place. If a deal seems too good to be true ...

Google is hardly alone in plying this murky data-mining trade. But it's the largest visible company in that business, so it's an easy, obvious target for distrust -- and user wrath. Many of us have given up on Facebook ever being honest, so we're looking at Google as the next line to hold.

Also, Google was a very optimistic, idealistic company in its youth. It really did want to change the world for the better, and it believed in freeing information for all as a way to empower individuals. It believed its early "do no evil" motto. It really did see Android as a way to democratize smartphones, which until then were the province of the well-to-do who could afford BlackBerrys or iPhones. Yes, making Android freely available also created a large footprint for Google's services, so its moves were hardly selfless -- but they were oriented toward doing greater good while making money, a virtuous business approach.

Google employees still believe that's how their company works: a force for good that harmlessly uses personal data to both help individuals and make money that supports its many activities and innovations.

But as time goes on, the mercantile needs are coloring the do-gooder impulses. Google is a public company, and it has to satisfy shareholders' desire for profits every quarter. That creates a tension between its reputation and its economic reality. By sweeping that tension under the rug, Google only creates a place for distrust to grow. We can all see that the old Google is not the current Google, and the pretense that it is only heightens our suspicions.

It's time for Google to admit what it does and to act consistently on its policies (or withdraw policies it doesn't intend to enforce). That honesty will help stem the loss of trust. People know that companies exist to make money, but they need to know the true relationship they're entering and don't end up feeling misled. We all know the promises that the banks, airlines, insurance companies, cellular providers, and cable companies make aren't real, and they routinely mislead us on pricing and services -- so we don't trust them. Does Google really want to be like those industries?

Trust comes from honesty, and the key to honesty is to be forthright. Google doesn't seem to understand that yet.

Google’s Search Pages Evolve

originally appeared in The New York Times:

Google’s look has changed significantly since it started in 1997. While the search engine originally returned basic blue links to other Web pages, it now also shows ads, photos, maps, answers to questions and other information. While Google says this helps users get the information they want as quickly as possible, some of its competitors say Google is poaching potential visitors to their sites by showing its own content and including eye candy like photos and maps. Antitrust regulators are investigating. Below is a look at how Google search results pages have evolved.

Most Google searches used to return results like this one for "theory of relativity" — a list of blue links to other Web pages. In 2007, Google started what it called universal search by including things like videos from YouTube, which Google owns, in search results.

Shopping searches, like this one for "patio furniture," are one of Google's most lucrative sources of ad revenue. Above search results, it shows ads related to the search, labeled as ads and shaded in beige.

Google started its own comparison shopping service in 2002. This fall, it began requiring that retailers pay for their products to appear there, so Google makes money when someone clicks or buys a product. Antitrust regulators have questioned comparison shopping competitors like Nextag about competition from Google.

When users search for local results, Google shows nearby businesses with addresses, Zagat ratings and Google reviews from its Google Plus Local service. (Google owns Zagat.) Regulators have interviewed competitors like Yelp, whose executives say that Google has filled prime real estate on the search results page with its own listings. In that same search, by hovering a mouse over a listing (in this case, the top result), the right side of the page shows a Google map, reviews and ratings of the business from Google Plus Local and photos of the store, some shot by Google. Below that are links to reviews from other review sites that compete with Google Plus Local. Under the "People also search for" header, users are shown similar listings and photos from Google. Places.

In 2010, Google started plucking answers to common questions from around the Web (like "How old is Barack Obama?") and showing them on the top of search results, so users would not have to click on another Web page and scan to find the answer. This year, Google started showing more information and images about the search topic on the right side. It is part of what Larry Page, Google's co-founder and chief executive, has described as a shift in Google's mission to helping people understand the world, not just find a Web page to answer a query. As part of what it calls the knowledge graph, Google pulls information from around the Web that is relevant to the search. It also shows the most recent post from Barack Obama on Google Plus, its social network.

Europe Likely to Be Harder on Google Over Search

originally appeared in The New York Times:


By some accounts, the United States let Google off the hook when it found that the technology giant had not abused its dominance in the Internet search market.

Few expect the European antitrust watchdog to be as lenient.

The Federal Trade Commission ruled on Thursday that Google had not broken antitrust laws, after a 19-month inquiry into how it operated its search engine. But the European Commission, which is pursuing claims that the company rigs results to favor its own businesses, operates under a different standard.

The agreement with the American authorities, analysts and competition lawyers say, is unlikely to alter the demands of European regulators, led by the competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia.

We have taken note of the F.T.C. decision, but we don’t see that it has any direct implications for our investigation, for our discussions with Google, which are ongoing, according to a spokesman for the European Commission in Brussels.

Faced with nearly $4 billion in possible penalties and restrictions on its business in Europe, Google submitted proposals in July to remedy the concerns of the European Commission, which covered four areas. In its deal with the F.T.C., Google made concessions in two of those areas but was not required to do so in the rest.

A Google spokesman declined to comment on the content of the company’s proposals to Mr. Almunia but said the company would continue to work cooperatively with the European Commission.

The Google case underscores a basic difference between the approaches to monopoly power in Europe and the United States. American antitrust regulators tend to focus on whether a company’s dominance harms consumers; the European system seeks to keep competitors in the market. The Google spokesman has vowed to restore competition to the Internet search business in Europe.

History shows that competition law is applied to monopoly power more stringently in the E.U. than in the U.S., according to the head of the competition practice at Avisa Partners, a consultancy in Brussels, who brought one of the original complaints against Google. Whether the E.U. is right or not is a different question.

He has some expertise in the matter. He is the former head of corporate affairs at Microsoft Europe and watched as that company did battle with regulators over its dominant computer operating system. Microsoft won a lenient settlement with the Justice Department in October 2001, he said, only to be slapped with nearly 1.6 billion euros, or $2.1 billion, in fines and penalties from the European Union from 2004 to 2008.

Google learned from Microsoft’s mistakes. It worked with authorities in both the United States and Europe to reach a deal rather than fight a desperate legal action. That approach appears to have paid off: last month, after a meeting with Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, the head of the competition practice said that the sides had substantially reduced our differences.

In its deal with the F.T.C., Google agreed to make concessions in two areas that concerned European regulators. In one, it will allow rivals to opt out of allowing Google to “scrape,” or copy, text from their sites. Google will probably offer the same concession to European authorities.

But in a second area of European concern — whether Google deliberately favors its own content in search results — the F.T.C. did not require changes.

The head of the competition practice has also demanded that Google put fewer restrictions on advertising distribution deals, an area his American counterparts did not explore.

The company will make a detailed set of proposed remedies in January. The European Commission will then allow the complainants to review them in a period of what is known as “market testing.” Antitrust lawyers say a final denouement could arrive by spring, depending on how hostile Google’s rivals are to the proposed remedies.

FairSearch, an alliance of Google rivals, accused the F.T.C. of rushing its decision. It said in a statement that closing the F.T.C. investigation with only voluntary commitments from Google is disappointing and premature.

The outcome in Europe may also be affected by Google’s dominance there. Google’s share of the United States search market was 67 percent in November, according to comScore, a digital analytics company, while its share in Europe was 83 percent that month.

How to Hijack Search Results in Google

story first appeared on Search Engine Land

Dan Petrovic has explained how he hijacked a few pages in Google to show his copied version over the original version of the page.

For example, he was able to confuse Google into thinking a page on MarketBizz should really show on dejanseo.com.au instead of on marketbizz.nl.

How did he do it? He simply copied the full page, source code and everything and put it on a new URL on his site. He linked to the page and gave it a +1 and the result worked days later. He is a picture of Google’s search results for the page using an info command and also searching for the title of the page:

He did the same thing on three other domains with varied levels of success.

We emailed Google last week for a comment but have yet to hear back.

In some cases, using a rel=canonical seemed to prevent it from hijacking the result fully but not in all cases. There also seems to be a case where using the authorship might be prevent this as well.

Dan Petrovic was even able to hijack the first result for Rand Fishkin’s name (with Rand’s permission):

The way this seems to work is that Google’s duplicate content system feels that the new URL is the more important page and thus replaces the original page with the more important page. It is how the competitive link trick seemed to have worked as well.

Postscript: Google has taken action against these attempts with a notification sent to the webmaster for “copied content.” Those pages were removed from the index.

Yahoo Struggles With Content

First appeared in the Wall Street Journal

Ousted Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Carol Bartz faced a plight all too familiar to many of her peers: Making money off digital content isn't easy and it's getting harder.

As Web traffic explodes, Internet companies are struggling to profit off ads shown next to the articles, videos and other content offered to viewers.

It's a simple rule of any market. The more information that is created, the more the value is reduced. And despite attempts to woo spending with bigger, bolder and more targeted ads, services that help consumers navigate that content, namely search, remain the big money makers online.

"People tell me that content is king, but that is not true at all," says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the digital-media unit of Publicis Groupe SA. "Most people make money pointing to content, not creating, curating or collecting content."

Internet pioneers Yahoo and AOL Inc. are losing out to Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., both of which are adept at helping point the way to pertinent or interesting material. As a result, Yahoo and AOL are getting left behind in the fast-growing U.S. market for online advertising, which ballooned 20% to $31.3 billion from 2010 to 2011, according to eMarketer.

Yahoo and AOL's shares of the overall U.S. online advertising market will drop to 11% and 2.7% in 2011, respectively, according to the research from, down from 16.1% and 4.4% in 2009.

Their businesses have been plagued by a range of missteps that extend far beyond their current regimes. Both were slow to recognize the appeal of social-networking and to update their once dominant email services to compete with new rivals.

Excessive turnover and extensive bureaucracies have strained their relations with Madison Avenue, say advertising executives. Ms. Bartz recently attributed Yahoo's weaker-than-expected ad sales to heavy turnover among advertising executives.

Yahoo said in a statement that the company has been meeting with advertisers and agencies who say they excited by the advertising opportunities at the company. A spokesman for AOL declined to comment.

A few years ago, scale virtually guaranteed profits if Internet companies had relationships with marketers, as there were few sites that could deliver large audiences to advertisers. But advertisers now can turn to a wide range of competitors to reach a similar number of people, and that has pushed down the amount of money they spend on those sites and the price for ad rates on the portals.

"What do Yahoo and AOL bring? In fact, they don't bring all that much," said Rob Norman, chief executive of WPP PLC's GroupM North America, who says marketers view them as large quantities of mostly commoditized inventory. "Just because you have a lot doesn't mean that you have something that is of distinct value."

Pricing trends across both properties vary depending on where the ads appear, advertisers say, but overall rates aren't rising fast enough to compensate for meager to flat traffic growth. In the second quarter, AOL's revenue fell 8.4% from the year earlier to $542.2 million.

Yahoo's revenue fell 23% to $1.3 billion.

The average cost to reach one thousand views across both Yahoo and AOL sites has fallen steadily in the past year, ad executives say. At Yahoo, that rate dropped to an average $6.50 in July 2011 from $7.65 in July 2010, while at AOL, that rate dropped to an average of $7 in July 2011 from $9.45 in July 2010, according to SQAD WebCosts. Back in July of 1998, Yahoo was fetching about $25 per thousand. A Yahoo spokeswoman said their internal data isn't consistent with WebCosts' data.

Some companies have responded by cutting back the number of ads to boost their value. AOL stripped ads off several of its marquee sites in recent years, including AOL.com, its fashion site Stylelist and movie site Moviefone to make room for more premium advertising.

Both AOL and Yahoo are under pressure from "advertising exchanges," the lingo for services that allows advertisers to bid for ad space across a multitude of properties that reach a particular type of user. Increasingly, marketers will turn to the advertising exchanges directly to buy high volumes of cheap online ads instead of negotiating with big publishers like Yahoo and AOL for more expensive ads.

In addition, marketers can target those ads bought via exchanges directly to people who are likely to be interested in their product or service, regardless of the context of the site where they appear. That gives the big portals less bargaining power, advertisers say. Yahoo runs a major exchange but the business isn't growing fast enough to restore overall revenue growth.

While it's a juggernaut, Facebook isn't immune from the problem of expanding inventory. Advertisers say most ad rates on the social network remain low, as its growing traffic leads to a proliferating number of pages it can show ads on.

"Sometimes there is an irrational desire to be involved with things that are just on upswings," says Mr. Norman. "The value of (marketing on Facebook) may be open to some questions."

Smaller publishers are also feeling the changing economics acutely. News sites such as Salon and Slate aren't consistently profitable. Upstarts like the Daily Beast have yet to reach profitability though executives say the three-year-old site is ahead of its pace. Slate last month laid off a handful of editorial staffers, citing unexpected "head winds" in advertising.

Google's Searches Under Scutiny

Elevated scrutiny over Google has lead the Texas attorney general's office to conduct an antitrust review of Google Inc.'s core search-engine operations.

The lead prosecutor of Texas has pursued allegations made by several small businesses that the search giant unfairly devalued their ranking results or ad placements in the search engines, Google said Friday.

Google disputed the allegations, tracing them back to three companies that have ties to industry rival Microsoft Corp.

Texas Attorney General spokesman, Greg Abbott, announced that an investigation of Google was taking place but declined any further comment. A spokesman for Microsoft had declined comment.

The company is sometimes asked about the fairness of the search engine and why some websites are ranked higher than others, said Don Harrison, a deputy general counsel at Google, in a blogpost.

"Given that not every website can be at the top of the results, or even appear on the first page of our results, it's unsurprising that some less relevant, lower quality websites will be unhappy with their ranking," Mr. Harrison wrote.

Google claimed the investigators requested information about the cases of Foundem.co.uk, TradeComet.com LLC and myTriggers.com Inc., which have each claimed that Google unfairly demoted their search result rankings.

TradeComet, a business-focused search engine portal, has sued Google in federal court, however the case was dismissed. MyTriggers, a price comparison web resource, also sued Google in Franklin County, Ohio - neighboring others known for home remodeling Cuyahoga County. Google objects to any wrongdoing.

The European Commission is following suit by conducting a preliminary inquiry into a dispute set by British price comparison website, Foundem. Google has denied any violations to the laws in Europe.

Google claimed Foundem is supported by ICOMP, an organization funded greatly by Microsoft. The search company added that TradeComet and myTriggers are represented by the same antitrust lawyers Microsoft uses, it said in a blogpost.

Other legal professionals, such as one Savannah business litigation lawyer, are analyzing the antitrust issues of the case. Two other specialists who have found unique interest in the case are John Schmidt, Roanoke business lawyer, and Elliot Mardson, Oklahoma City commercial litigation lawyer.

Microsoft, which is a main competitor with Google in a number of businesses, has acknowledged aiding the complaints of small businesses about Google. However, Microsoft has objected to supporting their antitrust suits. The owners of Foundem, SourceTool and myTriggers have all denied any affiliation of representing Microsoft in any way.

Chief executive of TradeComet, Dan Savage, said: "Obviously, Google is just trying to distract from its own problems by pointing to others and their lawyers."

A myTriggers spokesperson added: "Though there are probably a lot of other victims too, MyTriggers' concern is just the harm to MyTriggers done by Google's anticompetitive conduct and bullying tactics. We have a strong antitrust claim and look forward to our day in court."

Mr. Abbott, who is opting for a fall re-elect, has past experience in antitrust cases for the state of Texas. Abbott and his team of Harrisburg business litigation lawyers have been analyzing the market for electronic-books, which witnessed price hikes for some titles being distributed and sold by Apple Inc. for its iPad, individuals familiar with the issue have claimed. Mr. Abbott reached a $28 million settlement against the top Indianapolis drug lawyer with Abbott Laboratories over alleged false reporting of drug prices back in 2008.

In pinpointing Google's core business operations, Texas has taken an authority step ahead of the federal agencies charged with enforcing antitrust laws in the U.S., the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission. Both agencies have performed antitrust evaluations of the search giant's transactions.

A recent example occurred when The Justice Department motioned to block Google's advertising deal with rival Yahoo Inc., forcing the company to cut the deal. This year, the FTC allowed Google to purchase mobile advertising company AdMob for $750 million.

Currently, The Justice Department performing an overview of Google's $700 million buyout of ITA Software Inc. ITA is force behind the airfare search for a number websites including Microsoft's Bing search engine.

But neither The Justice Department or the FTC has the reputation to have performed a monopolization inquiry that targets Google's business in search engine placement and advertising. Google takes more than 65% of the pie for all U.S. search queries, and an even larger slice for total search advertising revenue. The company manages about 90% of search queries in some countries such as France. Many companies around the globe rely on Google SEO to help drive traffic to their websites.

On Friday, Google agreed to pay $8.5 million to cover attorneys' fees and establish an education fund to resolve a class-action suit that alleged its social-networking service violated the privacy of its users. From the start, the service created a network of social contacts based from Gmail, Google's free email service. Each user's contacts network was visible to others.

After overwhelming complaints, Google altered the settings so that user's contacts were kept private by default. The prompt action was taken in an effort to facilitate business risk assessment for future users.

Texas Opens Inquiry into Google Search Rankings

Associated Press

 

Google Inc.'s methods for recommending websites are being reviewed by Texas' attorney general in an investigation spurred by complaints that the company has abused its power as the Internet's dominant search engine.

The antitrust inquiry disclosed by Google late Friday is just the latest sign of the intensifying scrutiny facing the company as it enters its adolescence. Since its inception in a Silicon Valley garage 12 years ago, Google has gone from a quirky startup to one of the world's most influential businesses with annual revenue approaching $30 billion.

A spokesman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott confirmed the investigation, but declined further comment.

The review appears to be focused on whether Google is manipulating its search results to stifle competition.

The pecking order of those results can make or break websites because Google's search engine processes about two-thirds of the search requests in the U.S. and handles even more volume in some parts of the world.

That dominance means a website ranking high on the first page of Google's results will likely attract more traffic and generate more revenue, either from ads or merchandise sales.

On the flip side, being buried in the back pages of the results, or even at the bottom of the first page, can be financially devastating and, in extreme cases, has been blamed for ruining some Internet companies.

European regulators already have been investigating complaints alleging that Google has been favoring its own services in its results instead of rival websites.

Several lawsuits filed in the U.S. also have alleged Google's search formula is biased. Google believes Abbott is the first state attorney general to open an antitrust review into the issue.

"We look forward to answering (Abbott's) questions because we're confident that Google operates in the best interests of our users," Don Harrison, Google's deputy general counsel, wrote in a Friday blog post.

Harrison said that Abbott has asked Google for information about several companies, including: Foundem, an online shopping comparison site in Britain; SourceTool, which runs an e-commerce site catering to businesses; and MyTriggers, another shopping comparison site.

All of those companies offer features that Google includes in its search engine or in other parts of its website. Foundem, SourceTool and MyTriggers have previously filed lawsuits or regulatory complaints against Google.

"Given that not every website can be at the top of the results, or even appear on the first page of our results, it's unsurprising that some less relevant, lower quality websites will be unhappy with their ranking," Harrison wrote.

Google says its closely guarded search formula for Google search engine optimization strives to recommend websites that are most likely to satisfy the needs of each user's request. If it didn't keep its users happy, Google argues that people would become disgruntled and switch to other search engines offered by Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and IAC/InterActiveCorp's Ask.com.

Regulators and lawmakers in the U.S. and Europe also have been looking into Google's privacy practices and its acquisitions as the company tries to fortify its power.

Google Tests 'Streaming' SERP

cNet

Google is testing a search results page that changes with each letter you type into its search query bar.

Rob Ousbey, a Google SEO consultant in the U.K., discovered the test and captured the results on video. Essentially, it's a "streaming" search results page that appears to use Google Suggest technology to change the entire search results page based on the changing nature of your query.

Watch the video below for the full effect, but entering a few characters into the search box starts the spin cycle, as a query for "straw" changes the search results pages--and ads--from links to the Seattle Times as the "s" is typed, then the alternative Seattle newspaper The Stranger as the "stra" is typed, and finally to recipes for strawberry pie as "straw" comes into the field.

Google is known for prolific testing of its cash cow, so it's by far a given that this particular implementation is bound to show up. A Google representative told Techcrunch that "at any given time we are running between 50-200 search experiments."

Google Buys Internet Information Company Metaweb

The Wall Street Journal

Google Inc. on Friday said it bought Metaweb, an Internet information database start-up, in order to improve its core Internet-search business.

In a post on the company's blog, Google said Metaweb had a free and open database of 12 million "things" such as movies and locations that could help Google's user get quick answers to difficult search queries.

The deal's terms weren't disclosed.

Google handles the majority of Internet users' search queries but is facing competition from Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine, which research reports say handles more than 10% of queries. Later this year Bing will power searches on Yahoo Inc.'s websites.

Google is in the midst of a buying spree and earlier this month announced a $700 million acquisition of ITA Software, whose software powers many of the Internet's most popular travel search and booking websites, such as Kayak.com and Orbitz.com, as well as Bing's travel search feature.

Facebook and Social Media Hype Spinning Out Of Control

Don’t Believe The Hype on Social Media

A new article in the San Francisco Chronicle claims that Facebook is directing more web traffic than Google. 

We think this is sheer brazen hogwash. 

Social Media PR Machine

Hordes of PR pieces are being scattershot all over the web in an effort to convince us that if we have a website, then we MUST get involved in social media or we're missing the big boat. Don't bet on it! 

Headlines Like:  Facebook Driving More Web Traffic Than Google Are False
On its own merits, this claim is outrageous. And if you stop to consider the entire Google package: Google Search, Google News, Google Maps, YouTube, Blogger, and the brand new Google Buzz (Google's own social networking site), it should be mathematically evident that Facebook is not in the same league when it comes to driving traffic to websites.

Social Media Has Its Place in Promoting and Extending Brand Awareness 

By all means, if you have a website and a product or service to offer, you should make yourself a Facebook page, create a Twitter presence, maybe even try the new Buzz. But do not be fooled into emptying your wallet and investing a lot of your time on these sites. They're fun and addictive but, so far, the numbers do not necessarily add up to a good ROI.

Social Media Is Still Not the Primary Driver of Website Traffic
As of March 2009, Google was averaging nearly 300 Million direct searches per day. Currently, Facebook has only 100 Million total users!
 

Clearly, organic search is still the number one way users get connected to websites, and the way to get them to your site is through content development and content support through such mediums as video and blogging.

Here is the SF Chronicle article we mentioned at the top. Take it with a grain of salt:
 

Facebook directs more online users than Google
San Francisco Chronicle 

A big part of the Facebook experience is how friends and family share Web links to interesting news stories, photos, videos and Internet sites.

This "friend-casting" of information has helped propel Facebook into a major force in directing traffic around the Web.

According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites.

This trend is shifting the way Web site operators approach online marketing, even as Google takes steps to move into the social-media world.

Some experts say social media could become the Internet's next search engine.

"People are spending less time navigating the Internet on their own and are now navigating the Internet based on their friends' recommendations or their friends' activities," said Dave Yovanno, chief executive of Gigya Inc., a Palo Alto firm that offers social-media services. "That's one of the big trends we started picking up on probably four or five months ago."

For years, Web content creators had to worry whether they had the proper level of search-engine optimization to make sure search engines listed them among the top results. Now, they have to consider what companies like Gigya offer - social-media optimization.

"Marketers must focus on social marketing in addition to traditional search, as customers have a multi-pronged way of finding information," said Jeremiah Owyang, a Web strategist for the Altimeter Group, a San Mateo consulting firm with clients like Gigya. "The clear-cut channels of yesteryear are now an intricate set of connections."

Using a snapshot of Web traffic from December, Compete's director of online media and search, Jessica Ong, found that 15 percent of traffic to major Web portals like Yahoo, MSN and AOL came from Facebook and MySpace. The lion's share of that traffic, 13 percent came from Facebook.

Google, which has profited handsomely from directing Web surfers to their destinations during the past decade, was third with 7 percent, just behind e-commerce site eBay, which had 7.61 percent. MySpace was fourth with just under 2 percent.
 

Surprise gain

The numbers proved eye-opening because Google used to dominate most Web-referral categories. "I was surprised to see Facebook has become No. 1," Ong said.

In other categories, Compete's data showed Mountain View's Google still on top, but Palo Alto's Facebook was not far behind. For example, Google accounted for 21.3 percent of referrals to sites catering to movie fans, but Facebook was second with 12.4 percent. And in a video category, Google - which owns YouTube - was first with 22.9 percent, but Facebook was next at 12.7 percent.

Facebook's meteoric growth as a Web destination was a factor. Facebook says it has 400 million active members, including about 225 million added in just the past 12 months. Its size now rivals that of major Web portals and its demographics mirror those of the Internet in general, Ong said.

"Putting all this information together, we can say that Facebook has become an integral part of the consumer Web experience, similar to how portals like Yahoo and MSN are part of most consumers' online sessions," Ong said. "So the message for the advertising industry is that more serious attention needs to be paid to social-networking sites like Facebook, and advertisers need to figure out how to leverage this traffic."
 

TurboTax gamble

One of Gigya's clients is financial software maker Intuit Inc. Seth Greenberg, Intuit's director of national media and digital marketing, said the company is betting on social media to draw customers to its TurboTax Web site this year. The tax preparation program generates about $1 billion in revenue in the 10 t0 15 weeks leading to April 15.

Half of TurboTax's 20 million users are on Facebook and each has an average of 150 friends. Intuit is using social media to generate more buzz about the program through the sharing of product reviews and answers to tax preparation questions.

Greenberg coined the phrase "friend-casting" to describe how Intuit is using social media.

"We actually want our customers to be our best sales force, not us," Greenberg said. "Enabling our 20 million-customer base to be a word-of-mouth army for us is much more interesting."
Strong influence

Although methods such as paid search, Web display ads and TV commercials still reach a larger audience, the "influence" tapped in social media "is a heck of a lot stronger than it is with traditional advertising," he said.

David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy for the digital marketing firm 360i of New York, said the importance of search engines isn't going away.

"But there's always been one downside to search," he said. "Consumers only spend about 5 percent of their time online searching and the other 95 percent of the time at the destination. Social media is quickly accounting for a large percentage of that 95 percent. Google's biggest acquisitions, DoubleClick and YouTube, have been all about playing a big role in the rest of consumers' Web usage."

He noted that last week Google purchased San Francisco's Aardvark, a social-media search engine for questions and answers, and then unveiled Google Buzz, which allows Gmail users to post updates, videos, photos and links, Facebook-style.

"Mobile will be another new source for search, and some of that will be incremental rather than cannibalistic," he said.

"But social media's just finding its feet and the business models are just starting to emerge. And they're evolving quickly."

Google Search Gets Answers, Events
Information Week
Two search relevancy improvements make it easier than ever to get answers using Google.

Google on Friday introduced two improvements in its search technology that further the company's conversion of its search results page from point of departure to a destination.

Various Google competitors over the years have suggested that search results lists don't go far enough to present users with the answers they're seeking and have offered a variety of ostensible improvements.

Microsoft's Bing, for example, answers the query "london flights" with specific travel deals and prices from Bing Travel at the top of its search results list. A Google search returns links to Web sites related to travel, requiring at least an extra click, if not more, to see ticket prices.

It's an issue Google is aware of and has been working to address by providing more structured information for certain types of queries. A search for "shriekback," for example, returns links to the band's songs rather than links to Web pages that may host song links.

Google's latest search improvements build upon Google Squared and Rich Snippets, search technologies introduced last May.

Google Squared takes a search query like "jazz trumpet players" and formats the results in a table of rows and columns. The result is a better search experience through better presentation.

Rich Snippets provide an expanded set of information for certain types of searches having to do with reviews or people. For a restaurant, a snippet might include the rating information, the number of reviews, and a phone number.

Google has used this technology to implement "answer highlighting" in its general search results and to expand Rich Snippets to include events.

Thanks to technology borrowed from Google Squared, a query like "empire state height" now includes highlighted information that more directly answers the query in the search result. In this specific query, the search result now incorporates the landmark's height, 1250 ft.

Or so Google claims: At the time this article was filed, a Google search for those keywords returned the old format rather than the new, more informative one shown in Google's blog post on the changes. This may be because Google SEO service alterations can take a few hours to become widely available across all Google servers.

The expansion of Rich Snippets to include event information isn't a first for the search market -- Bing already surfaces event information -- but it should be welcomed by users nonetheless.

Whether these changes are welcomed by Web site owners is another matter. By making its search results more informative, Google may reduce the incentive to click through to the Web sites it indexes.

How NOT To Show Up In Google SERPs

from Media Buyer Planner

Rupert Murdoch is determined to change the way print content is treated on the web. In addition to being one of the first and largest media companies to plan a full-scale switch from free to paid content models for its newspapers, Murdoch is saying he will block News Corp content from being indexed by Google.

The move will certainly significantly decrease by a large margin the amount of traffic that goes to News Corp.‘s news sites. Jonathan Miller, News Corp’s chief digital officer, says the company will survive both economically and audience-wise without Google driving traffic to its sites.

News Corp. is expected to block Google’s access within months.

The issue involves the debate surrounding free versus paid content. Murdoch has made it clear for months that he believes free content online devalues the worth of the content. With that in mind, News Corp plans to stop offering its news sites for free, though Murdoch has said the company might not meet its own deadline of charging for content across all sites by the middle of next year. Murdoch’s company has clearly been at the forefront of the debate, and Murdoch expects a paid model to begin to be played out more and more often over the next two years.

News Corp, if it does indeed block Google’s access to its content, will be the first major media company to do so. “The traffic which comes in from Google SEO brings a consumer who more often than not reads one article and then leaves the site,” Miller says. “That is the least valuable traffic to us… the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.”

Google, for its part, claims to send news organizations about 100,000 clicks every minute. “Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found,” said a spokesperson (via the Telegraph). “But if they tell us not to include it, we don’t.”

Google Look A Bit Different Today? It's Not Your Eyes

By Channel Web

Did Google and Google SEO look a bit different when you first opened it this morning? Did everything look just a bit bigger, but you blamed it on that double latte you had?

Starting late Wednesday, Google (NSDQ:GOOG)'s home page and search results pages feature larger text for Web surfers whose eyesight just isn't what it used to be. Most prominent is the larger search box and the larger "Google Search" and "I'm Feeling Lucky" buttons below it.

The "supersizing" of the Google page elements was announced in a blog post Wednesday by Marissa Mayer, Google vice president of search products and user experience. "Although this is a very simple idea and an even simpler change, we're excited about it -- because it symbolizes our focus on search and because it makes our clean, minimalist home page even easier and more fun to use," Mayer said in the blog.

The blog also offers a link to 17 slides showing the evolution of the Google home page from November 1998 to a sample of an October 2007 home page in Arabic.

Google AdWords Unveils Two New Image Sizes

Google’s AdWords team announced they have been testing two new image ad formats. The first, a large 2560 x 1920 image is designed for advertisers who want to appear “larger than life,” according to AdWords Developer Arnold Ferguson. “Advertisers have been bugging us since November for a large-format image ad that can showcase photo quality 5-megapixel images. It’s a little bit larger than your standard banner ad, but I think if it makes advertisers happy, and we can charge higher click rates, it will make our publishers happy as well.”

As part of the test, Google has been serving 2560 x 1920 ads on sites like ultrahighresolution.com for online digital camera retailers wishing to advertise unreduced megapixel-sized images.

The second format, a 1 x 1 pixel ad can be purchased in blocks of ten by keyword. “We’ve actually been working very closely with pixel ad inventor Alex Tew on this one,” said Ferguson. “After seeing all the aimless pixel ad sites out there, we knew we needed an original approach. Unlike all the copycat pixel ad sites, integration with our keyword bidding system will us serve pixel ads contextually on nearly any site in the AdSense publisher network.”

In order to supplement their six-billion dollar annual revenue stream, Google also plans to publish a pixel advertising site of their own in mid-April, and has registered the http://www.milliongooglepixel.com domain to display AdWords pixel ads. Google AdWords expects the new sizes to be available to all AdWords users in the next few weeks.

Google Ranking Updates - Leave Many Sites Scrambling

The Recent Google Dance of Late summer 2007, has affected thousands of websites as many sites have experienced a substantial change in their Google keyword rankings. Many high profile websites are singing the blues about Google's most recent algorithm change that has impacted their Google natural keyword positions, exposure, traffic, and conversions.

Some companies have gone so far as to issue hastily written, Google angst-fueled, press releases bemoaning their recent setbacks and losses in Google organic keyword rankings.

Google continually updates their algorithms and refreshes their natural search results in an ongoing effot to improve user experiences. Screaming and ranting in press releases rather that analyzing code, content and links appears to sidestep and skirt core causes of keyword position losses rooted in organic site optimization issues. Why waste time and resources distributing 'sad PR' over temporary seybacks when proven solutions and quality optimization resources are an email and phone call away. If your back is that sore over Google rankings contact this Chiropractic Durham NC specialist.

The latest Google algorithm applies slight adjustments that are rooted in code. Our clients, even those with larger, dynamic database powered strutures are not experiencing any Google keyword ranking losses and are maintaining top keyword positions as their code and content is well optimized, relevant, and synchronized with the algorithms powering Googlebot and the major spiders that power organic keyword search results worldwide.

Ask.com and Google Advance Design of Search Results Pages.

original article by Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal

Website Owners make sure to fully optimize press releases and images as Google and Ask are both about to expand their search results pages with images and related news files to further serve users with relevant and helpful links.

Google and other search companies have made major, continual advances under the hood in recent moths, improving the way they store and gather relevant content and information. But far less progress has been made in the way these search results are presented to users.

Google has made the occasional minor tweak but until recently, its search-results pages looked a lot like they always have. Its upstart competitor, Ask.com, took greater strides last year with cool features such as previews of the pages it listed, lots of summary information at the top of the page and prominent suggestions for narrowing or broadening keyword searches.

Now, Google and Ask each have rolled out new ways of presenting search results. Google's approach, which it calls "universal search," is a modest thing, a first step in what it says will be a long effort to break down barriers between different types of information a user may be seeking, such as Web links, images and news.

But Ask's new system, called "Ask3D," is a much bolder and better advance in unifying different kinds of results and presenting them in a more effective manner. It shows, once again, that Ask places a higher priority than its competitors do on making search results easy to navigate and use.

Both new expanded keyword search results systems are now the defaults on the search sites. You don't have to do anything special to use them. Indeed, Google's change is so subtle you may not even notice it for some searches.

Both of the new systems are designed to spare users the extra steps needed in the past to view different types of content related to the same keyword search query. But Google combines these different types of content into one list. Ask puts them on one page in separate sections, which I find to be the superior approach, because each type of result is displayed more effectively; it's easier to see at a glance what you have.

In the old systems, if you were searching for, say, "Red Sox," you'd have to do separate searches for Web pages, news, images and so forth. To make this simpler, Google's universal search now groups these different kinds of results within its single, familiar main list of results; a Google search for "Red Sox" includes not only Web links, but also an entry called "News Results for Red Sox" with the latest headlines about the baseball team and a news photo. At the top of the page, under the Google logo, are the two most relevant search categories -- in this case, Web and News -- if you want to separate types of results, like retire in costa rica.

A Google universal search for a prominent person (like world famous: Raleigh Realtor Ann Davis might bring up images at the top -- something Google has been doing for a while -- but also a video, which can be played without leaving the search page, a very nice feature. To see an example, search on "I Have a Dream" to view the famous Martin Luther King speech without leaving the page. At the bottom of the page is a list of related searches.

But Ask3D goes much further. Instead of sticking with a single list of search results that mixes various types of material, it now presents results in a page divided into three panels. The largest, middle panel still contains Web links (and a few ads). But it is no longer topped by the search box and links to other sections of the search engine. Instead, where possible, it is topped by a set of salient facts or direct links to salient facts.

The thinner left panel contains the search box and links to other sections of Ask, but mainly it displays suggestions for refining your search, or for making related searches. A somewhat wider right panel contains search results that go beyond Web links, such as images, news headlines, encyclopedia articles, videos, weather information, local time and, where relevant, music clips you can play without leaving the page.

A search for "Red Sox" in the new Ask3D, for example, has a summary box at the top of the main panel with direct links to Scores, Schedule, Stats and more. In the right panel, there are general images, news photos, an encyclopedia article on the team, videos and headlines. As always, the left panel shows suggestions for how to narrow or broaden the search.

If you hover over the image thumbnails, they enlarge. If you hover over the video thumbnails, they play, albeit without sound. For each of the right-panel content categories, you can even launch a further search (like: luxury cruises ) without leaving the page just by clicking on a magnifying-glass icon.

If you search Ask for "James Taylor," you get a biography at the top and, at the right, playable clips from "Fire and Rain," "You've Got a Friend" and "Sweet Baby James."

Ask also now gives you larger previews of the pages it lists, visible by just hovering over a binocular icon. And you can now get to the advanced search panel without leaving the page.

Google deserves credit for universal search (try phase converters ) , which is only bound to get better in the coming months. But Ask's new design is much more compelling and well worth a try.

Google Universal Search.

Google has released new data and information on their continuing efforts to deliver comprehensive search functionality across all stored content. Here's an update on new developemtns in the Google universal search effort.

In striving to give users the best results to your keyword search queries, Google acknowledges that often times the best information can take on many different forms.

Google continues to introduce new steps that move closer towards universal search in order to deliver a more holistic search experience on Google. Until recently, users could typically find the best results for searches within separate and distinct Google properties (e.g., web, images, maps, videos, books) by clicking links above the Google search box.

Using a universal search approach, Google technology searches across all of the stored content sources within Google databases, integrates, and then ranks the results for the best answers. So depending on the keyword search query, search results could be delivered from news, images, videos, local, or books integrated within the traditional Google search results.

Google has also introduced new contextual navigational links so that you can click to see more results from a suggested type of content. Google has also added a new Google navigation bar to the top of their homepage and search results pages to provide easier navigation to the many new Google search products available in their system.

Google Street View gives users navigable 360-degree street-level satellite imagery in Google Maps for selected cities. You can see satellite images and coordinates for specific spots within major markets and take virtual walks along city streets.

Google Street View allows users to find most anything within any major market. Imagine locating the perfect outdoor cafe for lunch with clients or take an overhead glimpse of a specific the neighborhood or home community, ideal for real estate transactions, such as: Raleigh Relocation if you are considering relocating, use Google Maps to see what the market actually looks like prior to arrival, as if you were actually physically touring the market area.

Google Street View imagery is now available for the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver; with launches expected for Philadelphia , New Jersey and many more major metros soon.

Click Here To Demo: Google Street View

All of these new tools launching from the Google Enterprise Search project will play a profound role in Google search engine optimization in the coming months. Webmasters and website owners need to consider these applications and incorporate these new search tools and related functionality as it pertains to the content(s) of their website.