Category Archives: Google

Yahoo and Google BFF?

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Reuters reports that Yahoo really wants to find a way out of the MS deal, and Google is offering *something* though it’s not at all clear to any outsiders what that something is.    Probably a partnership to help Yahoo monetize all their traffic using Google tools and perhaps Google search, though I’m somewhat skeptical that Yahoo can come away from this with a valuation boost near the value of what MS has offered.

If Microsoft is smart they’ll let Yahoo be Yahoo, with contractual assurances that Yahoo can keep on innovating and doing what they have done well for some time in the overall internet and Web 2.0 space.  They’ll let Yahoo retain their brand and culture, and basically keep things the way they have been minus the crappy monetization.   In turn Yahoo will have a few years – with the newfound clout and help of MS – to turn around the crappy monetization, bad morale, and loss of search share.  

disclosure:  Got the Yahoo Stocks.  Loving the Yahoo stocks.  

Google to the YahooRescue?

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Google’s concerned that Microsoft could poison Yahoo and make it less open, a state of affairs Google feels created both Yahoo and Google.  I’m sympathetic to some degree to their points, though I think Google has more than enough internet opacity in their critical search ranking practices to make me skeptical of all the whining about how Microsoft won’t play fair and keep things “open”.   

Google has been more open than most, but far less responsive to ranking problems and search issues than they should be.   To the extent MS + Yahoo brings more competition to the space it might help Google see the light and practice more of what they preach about transparency.   Just a quick example of the lack of transparency – Google does not share with publishers the “revenue share” percentage for your own site.    This would be a totally unacceptable practice offline, but in Google land it’s just another example of the power of a virtual monopoly on search monetization.

Meanwhile, Henry Blodget has some  great advice for Yang and Balmer, but it’s clear to me that neither party will view things this broadly.  I think there is only small difference in the IT worldview of management at Yahoo and Google, but a world of difference with MS. As a shareholder I’m loving the Google overture to Yahoo which should boost the share price even more.  This is a fascinating situation because Google has been happy to watch Yahoo whither on the search vine.  Now Google needs to consider a powerful partnership as a defensive attack on the Microsoft search potential after an aquisition.  I think this in part relates to a key factor that is underreported: Yahoo’s search quality is now comparable to Google’s according to many objective measures.

Google’s reinclusion nightmare

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John Honeck has an excellent piece about the challenges with Google’s site reinclusion process, a virtual nightmare of inconsistency and confusion.     I’ve seen the benefits and pitfalls of good and bad Google rankings and indexing at many sites, and “inconsistency” is the only clear pattern.    On the one hand I don’t have enough information to fully “blame” Google for the problems.  They have their hands full deleting junk or deceptive sites created by extremely sophisticated spamming operations around the globe, but as I noted over at John’s blog:

This is an *excellent* set of observations, and with all due respect to my pal Matt I’ve always been totally unmoved by Google’s suggestion that making the reinclusion and webmaster information process more transparent would somehow jeopardize Google’s ability to kill spammers.

In fact from my observations over the years I think the lack of transparency, along with initally vague webmaster guidelines (now fixed), have caused many if not most of the spam problems as both spammers and regular web folks vie to push the limits of the rules while staying in Google’s good graces. The big problem now is the profound inconsistency in the way sites are indexed, and the fact that it’s very difficult for webmasters to get much feedback from Google.  Google would be well advised to consider better automated or customer pays routines to examine websites for problems and allow reinclusion, because the frustration is building more than they realize in the webmaster and small business community.

Your kids are not so smart after all

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A prevailing assumption of the past several years holds that young internet users are very computer and search savvy, but  recent study of children and internet in the UK suggests otherwise.    ARS Technica Reports

The study of young searchers found they preferred visual over text information, liked to cut and paste, and tended to do simple searches.

My own observations of how kids use computers lead me to think this study is correctly characterizing use and also offers some profound insights into the future of computing – a future that is *less*, not more intellectually sophisticated in terms of how people interact with the internet and with each other.

Several forces are conspiring to make the average internet user “dumber” than in the past:

* Entertainment usually trumps education, and as entertainment value of online environments becomes increasingly compelling kids (and adults) will increasingly spend time “playing” rather than “learning”.   

* Short attention spans now rule everywhere, and this trend is unlikely to see any reversal.    We are replacing contemplation and reflection about experiences with … more experiences.

* Human nature.   We are not designed for personal enlightenment and long term planning – rather for short term gain and satisfaction which until very recently was a better survival strategy.

So, strap in and watch out, because things are going to get a lot …. dumber!

Blodget: US Economy is Screwed

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Market watcher Henry Blodget is not optimistic about the US Economy.   He notes that advertising spending already appears to be threatened by the slowdown, and he seems to think this will hit everybody from mainstream media companies to technology/media stocks like Google.  As the subprime mortgage timebombs keep ticking away I think it makes sense that we are in for worse conditions before we see happy days again.   In fact I expect it will be at least 5 years before housing prices return to the highs of 1-2 years back.   It may be time to hunker down and settle in for a long and cold economic winter.

The Coming Crash of 2008?

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I hope Greg Linden, who is a sharp and experienced guy, was just in a bad mood when he wrote this ominous prediction about what he sees as a bleak dot com future:

 We will see a dot-com crash in 2008. It will be more prolonged and deeper than the crash of 2000.

I’d have to say I’m not as worried and although I’d agree there is likely to be an overall decline in the sky high valuations of companies like Google, it will be partly offset by the fact that internet advertising is still in an infancy period.   Most internet money comes from ads, and the total internet ad pool is still a tiny fraction of the 500 billion spent per year on all advertising.

What, me worry?

Firefox IPO? Blodget says to bet on it.

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Market watcher Henry Blodget’s bullish on the prospects of Firefox and for good reason.   Firefox has 15% of the potentially *extremely* lucrative browser market with most of the rest resting in the hands of Microsoft.

Blodget goes so far as to suggest a merger with Netscape, leading to a mega browser company that would then partner with many and build a more aggressive marketing plan.

It’s a very good idea and something to watch carefully.

Why not Flock?

I’ve wondered why Flock has flailed away in the browser market, so far without much success.  It’s  a great product with very sharp folks behind it, and it rests on a great idea – socializing the browser.   But I think Flock was ahead of it’s time.  In the meantime websites used mashups and widgets and such to socialize themselves, leaving Flock less valuable than it would be in a world where you could not easily get cross-website activity within your existing browser.    

 Even early adopters (well, maybe not Scoble, who seems to try a new application every 15 minutes) are pretty stubborn about changing applications.     Google’s been the biggest beneficiary of this tendency which many wrongly attribute to superior search results.     Results matter, but not as much as “momentum” which kept us all using MS Office products well past their prime.

But this factor probably won’t inhibit Firefox adoption any more than it already has – Firefox is a popular application and has enormous positive buzz, and as Blodget notes they’ve done little to hype or promote it yet.

When Targeted Advertising … ATTACKS…

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HEY!  I’m just sitting here minding my New Years’ business when suddenly this Google ad pops up in my face at Gmail.  Sometimes these targeted ads … hurt my feelings!

Are You Ugly? – Are-You-Ugly.com – Just an Average Joe? Find Out, Take the Quiz!

Google, I’m *proud* to be an average Joe.  Proud I say!

Weave -ing the twisted path to browser enlightenment?

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Mozilla is announcing Weave, an application that will enhance the browsing experience in various ways.   I’m somewhat confused about what this means to users, but my early understanding is that this is a Flock-like approach, trying to make the browser environment a better one for socializing,  multitasking, and customized uses.

Generally I think this is a positive thing.   For reasons I don’t understand few of us really take the time to use and configure the many applications that allow us to customize our desktops in more functional ways.    Google desktop, My Yahoo, Flock , and many more tools would allow us to build a great “control panel” for our online needs, but this appears to be a fairly low priority for most of us.    I think it is analogous to how rarely people use even the simplest extra commands at Google search to refine their search.    For reasons that escape me we don’t like to improve on design or functionality even when doing so is easy and does not take much time.     Some do, most don’t.  Why?

Joe Duck – Chinese Edition

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Click HERE for my Chinese Edition.    Cool?

Actually, any web page can be auto-translated in this fashion by Google.  It’s a really cool feature though I’m guessing the translations must leave something to be desired.    My understanding is that you still need humans to pull quality meaning from one language to another.    Still, this is a huge step forward and the advent of hand held translation units, online translation, and a lot more global travel is breaking down one of the barriers to international understanding – language.

China is expected to be the world’s top travel destination by 2020 and I don’t doubt that estimate.  It is one of the reasons I’m anxious to get over there to SES China in Xiamen, the Xianglu Grand Hotel (though I’m not clear if this is the SES China venue or not), The Great Wall of China, Beijing and the Forbidden City, Hong Kong Harbor, Hong Kong, Kowloon, and much more of the amazing China Travel landscape. I want to start exploring and understanding the nation and culture that may eventually eclipse the USA in terms of global influence  (I’m not predicting that – just noting it is a possibility.  What is a certainty is that China will continue to be one of the most influential nations for some time to come).      One of the most interesting graphs I have ever seen showed the global GDP of about 1850, noting that India+China were over half the global totals, and the USA was not even in the same league.    The USA’s remarkable industrial rise since that time led us to the global economic dominance we now enjoy, but things could change … again.   I don’t see this shift in Economic dominance as a negative, rather more an inevitable balancing and levelling of an increasingly globalized playing field – the world Tom Friedman has described so well in his book “The World is Flat”.