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Breaking: Microsoft Acquires Powerset Breaking news from Microsoft Were excited to announce that weve reached an agreement to acquire Powerset, a San Francisco-based search and natural language company.
Too Late, Google Android; Late Too!
Google to Charge $15 for First Search Query Checked If the above headline were true, Google would have found itself at the bottom of the annual Harris Interactive Reputation Quotient poll, along with all of the major airlines.
How Do You Save Yahoo When the Crew Abandons Ship? "Most who dont get the decision see Yahoo as an abbreviation on the NASDAQ ticker. People who have poured their blood sweat and tears into building that brand don't." Terry Howard.
Look at What Yahoo Could Have Won Growing up in England, I always enjoyed watching the darts game show Bullseye. Host Jim Bowen took great delight in showing losing contestants the prize they just missed out on.
Google to DOJ: Why You Should Approve Yahoo Deal Google is wasting no time trying to convince the Department of Justice that it should approve its deal with Yahoo. Here are reasons, just posted to the Google blog (emphasis is Googles)
Is Google Sick of Flash Web Sites? New Feature "Skip Intro" Theres long been a debate about the value of Flash, when it comes to search engine optimization. I have no problem using a small amount of Flash in any web site, its those pointless...
Building Google Takes Many Rocket Scientists With the ubiquity of new "Google killers" youd think that building a search engine wasnt exactly rocket science. Well, actually, it is. So Google has signed a 40-year lease for a 1.2mil...
Google Partnership an Act of Desperation Do desperate times really call for desperate measures? It does, if youre a company facing a hostile acquisition by Microsoft! Just one day before Microsoft made its bid for Yahoo, executives...
Google Site Search Now Includes Custom Indexing It appears Googles Custom Search Business Edition is undergoing a metamorphosis. Just announced, the hosted site search solution will be renamed Google Site Search. In addition...
Google "Right to Share Video" Argument? Is it just me, or does Googles attempt to defend YouTube from Viacoms copyright allegations sound like something the NRA would say? According to Reuters
Google's Radically Transparent About Its Search Algorithm Over at the Official Google Blog, search quality tzar Udi Manber peels back the curtain covering Googles coveted search engine technology, and provides us a peek of whats been...
AdSense Open to Anyone but "Yahoo" or "Microsoft" It appears Googles not taking any chances when it comes to a possible Microsoft/Yahoo deal. The combination of the two rivals would certainly add some pressure to Googles dominance...
Ask.com Grows Audience by 11% Overnight!
Google Falling Apart at the Seams; Doesn't Appear to Care Fortune magazine has one of the most comprehensive "Googles starting to fall apart" articles, Ive seen in a long time. Sure, its easy to suggest that Google has become too big...
Google Annual Shareholder Meeting - CliffsNotes Version
Five Reasons I'm Not Going Gaga Over Powerset Theres a buzz in the blogosphere over the launch of Powerset, a natural language processing search engine that uses Wikipedia for its index. Either Ive not had enough coffee this...
Third Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest Starts Today The best things in life are three! No, thats not a typo. Were excited to announced the return of the annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest"this being contest number three! If youre not familiar with the annual contest, heres the elevator pitch: We want to help find the brightest minds...
Google Officially Removes Link Building from "SEO"? The guys at the eCommerce & Entrepreneurship Blog would like to point out that Google is trying to redefine search engine optimization (SEO) so that we all focus on the "on page" ...
Reader Adds Features; Wants Your Del.icio.us/Twitter Habits If I were one of the stressed out digerati"constantly overwhelmed by the demands of social media"I could probably list out a dozen existing tools that Google Readers new sharing options...
Who Are the Winners & Losers in the Yahoo/Microsoft Battle? With this weekends news that Microsoft has withdrawn its offer to purchase Yahoo, the news media is having a field day analyzing the "if," "ands", and "buts." Instead of regurgitating the...
Rumor: Google to Offer "Recommended" Sponsored Links UPDATE: It looks like its the work of a third party app. See Annes comment. Now heres something strange spotted by the eagle-eyed Anne Hennegar. Is Google really getting ready...
Who's Bluffing? Microsoft or Yahoo?
Google Discovers Holy Grail of Image Search, But Will it Scale? Google has a lofty ambition when it comes to image search. The worlds largest search engine hopes to do for image search what it did for regular text search"make it a whole lot more reliable. How it plans to do this is outlined in a new research paper written by two Google scientists. According to the NYT:
You Will Embrace Mobile Advertising! Resistance is Futile Google must have a lot more confidence in the growth of mobile marketing than I do because it has just launched some new mobile image ads. According to the Google Mobile Blog
Sneak Peak: Test Visual Search Engine Viewzi
This is Broken: Google Site Links Theres no doubt that Googles site links help users find the most important links within a given web site. Sometimes though, those links are a little out of whack. How many of you search for...
Kapow! Microsoft Live Search News Wants a Piece of Google It appears Microsofts Live brand might actually have launched a service I may use"I know, right, who would have thunk it? CNET is reporting the quiet launch of Live Search News and...
Google's 2008 First Quarter Results - Hit or Miss? Mark your calendars for this Thursday. Thats when Google will reveal its Q1 numbers for 2008. This is normally a big day for investors anyway, but this time the stakes are higher than normal.
Google & Salesforce.com Lovefest Why doesnt Google just go ahead an make an honest woman out of Salesforce.com? After announcing a pretty significant commitment to each other last June, the two are back with another announcement. According to the announcement, Google and Salesforce.com
Does Microsoft Need Yahoo Before Its Windows Shatter? I almost titled this post "The Young & the Profitless Episode 2: Brads Trust Fund Drying Up" but realized you would have needed some background on what the heck I was talking about.
Dear Yahoo, Offer IndexTools for Free, K Thx Bye Googles acquisition of Urchin"and subsequent decision to offer Google Analytics for free"certainly changed the web analytics landscape. Measurement of traffic and ROI an important...
Google Site Links Broken? Anne Hennegar has noticed somethings not quite right about the Google Site Links for the San Jose Mercury News"one of the links points to an advertiser. Im sure Frys is delighted...
Google Admits to Gambling $4.6 Billion?
Microsoft ~ No Plans to Raise Yahoo Bid
Google Site Search Controversy a "Storm Teacup" I really dont know what to say about the New York Times A New Tool From Google Alarms Sites article. Has news been that slow this weekend? So, youll recall that Googles testing...
Gmail Captchas Hacked? Not L1kELy! Some spammers are claiming to have cracked Gmails captchas"the mix of letters and numbers that only humans are supposed to recognize. If true, email spammers could create thousands of Gmail accounts and use them to send those annoying Viagra and enlargement offers. Not so fast, says Google!
EU Approves Google's DoubleClick Purchase UPDATE: Google CEO Eric Schmidt has now confirmed the acquisition. His statement reads, in part: An immediate task well undertake over the next few weeks is matching and aligning DoubleClick employees with our organizational plan for the business. This will involve determining the right staffing levels...
Cable Companies Build a Canoe to Battle Google's Battleship Google TV Ads hasnt exactly gotten off to a flying start and things could look even more bleak with news the countrys six largest cable companies are joining forces to provide a competing service. According to the NYT executives from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Cox Communications...
If Yahoo & AOL Merge, Will They Turn to Google for Search? Theres lots of speculation and rumor today that Yahoo and AOL are in desperate merger talks (again). Yahoo is hoping to find some alternative suitor to the aggressive Microsoft, and AOL could certainly use the efficiencies that would come from a merger. To give the talks enough time, Yahoo has delayed a pending board nomination deadline.
Google Wifi Balloons? April Fools?
Video Publishers Get Access to AdSense Video Google will today announce the beta launch of AdSense for Video"allowing video publishers to run graphical and text ads alongside their video content. ClickZ has the details:
Worried About Google Health's Privacy? Following-up a story we first discussed in October, Google has announced the first patients to start testing Google Health. The pilot project to be announced Thursday will involve 1,500 to 10,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who volunteered to an electronic transfer of their personal health records...
Google.org + India = Master Plan Remember when we told you about Googles plans to pledge profits and stock to its philanthropic arm Google.org? Remember when we told you that Eric Schmidt saw huge opportunity in India? Remember when Google told us that Google.org was really a screen so that it could find talented workers in growing countries?
Yahoo's Shareholder Letter: Don't Sell or Hold-out? According to ClickZ, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has sent a letter to all stockholders reminding them of the many great accomplishments and future potential of the company. You can read...
Yahoo Loses New Product Chief as Part of Layoffs As we reported earlier, Yahoo today started laying off many of the 1,000 employees it plans to let go. Ive started hearing from those that have been given pink slips, but the most intriguing...
Yahoo and Apple Merger? Im not a financial analyst"so forgive my ignorance here"but why isnt anyone talking about a merger between Apple and Yahoo? I know that were all fixated on how Microsofts ...
Google's Profit Growth Declines to 17% After managing a 46% profit increase in Q3, Google could only manage a meager 17% growth in Q4 2007 (compared to Q4 2006). Wall Street rewarded Google with a 7%...
Polar Rose Has Big Plans! Polar Rose is not content to have its face recognition technology confined to a Firefox plugin. The company has announced its plans to make its service more publicly available.
Yahoo Adopts OpenID's Single Sign-in Platform I must admit, Im not a big user of the OpenID platform. In case youre not familiar, OpenID allows you to have a single login name that you can use across different...
Ask.com In Google's Grill With AskEraser Im not sure what is more impressive. Ask.coms official launch of its privacy protection called AskEraser, or all of the press coverage the company is getting from the announcement. Ill get to the details of AskEraser in a moment, but take a look at your RSS feeds, favorite online news source, or even your newspaper, and youll see mention of Ask.coms efforts to protect user privacy. What a piece of PR genius by Ask!
Ten Ways to Avoid a Google Rep Management Nightmare Google is no longer just a search engine. With your potential customers, future employers, and members of the media turning to Google...
Google Phone News: This Not Just in from the WSJ My feeds were buzzing this morning over a Wall Street Journal article discussing the infamous Google GPhone. At last"I thought"if the WSJ is talking about it...
Exclusive: Google Gears Now on Calendar I just saw an interesting pop-up message while opening-up Google Calendar. It said the application wanted to use Google Gears, did I approve? Google Gears is Googles offline reading application.
DIY Google Video Interview Transcript Search Engine Land points to a video of a recent Q&A with Googles Page and Brin. As part of Googles annual closed-doors partner conference, journalist James Fallows...
A-List Google Reader Back-Slapping Over the weekend, Google started displaying Google Reader subscriber numbers for blog RSS feeds. The number shows how many Google Reader...
Microsoft Offers Preview of Live Search Maps Improvements Im somewhat puzzled as to why Microsoft is happy to show us previews of changes to Live Search Maps, but theyre still weeks away from launching them.
Yahoo Launches New Search Interface Just last week Microsoft launched their new search interface, now Yahoo joins in with their rollout of Search Assist and a new results format.
Google Announcing New APIs? Michael Arrington seems pretty confident in his sources and is suggesting Google will open up on November 5th.
Go, Go, Google Gadget Ads! Google has just announced the limited launch of Google Gadget Ads, a new interactive ad format that will run on their content network. Unlike Google AdWords existing array of text, video and graphical ads, Google Gadget Ads are designed to be interactive, can be built using HTML or Flash, and support both cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) pricing models (more specs here).
Rumor Mill: Did Google Scrap Rumored GDrive? Google Blogoscoped helps us start off the week with some juicy speculation that Google may have scrapped plans to launch an online storage service.
Google Decides GrandCentral Number Isn't For Life After Google acquired GrandCentral, I decided to sign up for the service. It seemed like a smart move"a service that offers a central phone number and now owned by Google.
Google Has No Plans to Develop "Old Marratech" Its been four months since Google acquired web video conferencing technology Marratech.
Thought the US Ask.com Ads Were Strange! Weve covered Ask.coms strange US television commercials, but they cant compete with the utter weirdness of their UK cousins.
Google Offers Cheap Online File Storage With a Catch If youre a power user of Googles Gmail or Picasa Web Albums, Google wants to help you with your storage limit woes.
AdWords Go Wrong - Sexy Ads on Sexual Harassment Site For the most part Googles AdSense algorithm is pretty good at matching AdWords ads to relevant content.
The Google Loophole: They´ve Used it Before, Now They´re Using it for the GPhone Weve found the Google Loophole for their denials theyre building a Google branded mobile phone. Whats the Google Loophole?
More on Google's Wireless Spectrum Bid Bluff So, is Google really interested in winning the bid for the FCCs upcoming 700mhz wireless spectrum auction, or is it just a big bluff?
Google Investors Betting on Impossible Growth Here's a wake-up call for every investor that was disappointed in Google's recent financial numbers - you're expecting the impossible out of the company!
Ask Erases History SEL has a great overview of Ask.com's pending launch of AskEraser, which will allow users to delete their search history at any time. From the press release: With AskEraser, people can ensure that their search history will not be retained by Ask.com...
UK CEO Warns... "Never Allowing Your Programmers To Try Any Kind Of SEO At All". I 'm not sure which is worse...
15 of 18 Presidential Candidates Have Negative Search Listings With 16 months until the 2008 Presidential election, we thought it would be interesting to conduct a study of the search engine reputation of current candidates.
Ruling Could Force Search Engines to Hand Over Data A court ruling against TorrentSpy could create a dangerous precedent that would require other search engines and ISPs to create and store user data.
Google Upgrades Docs, Adds Folders Google's made some upgrades to Google Docs and Spreadsheets today, including the addition of folders.
Win a Free Pass to Next Week's Searchnomics Conference On June 27th WebGuild will bring together some expert search marketers for their Searchnomics conference at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
Google Asks Dell to Build Search Appliance Hardware Maybe we can believe Google when they say they're not interested in getting into the hardware business (such as cell phones).
Google Starts In-Stream Video AdSense Testing ClickZ is reporting on Google's limited test of in-stream video ads using AdSense. According to Google, participating sites within the network will test using each publisher's Flash player...
New Technorati Really is the Google of Social Media If you're a fan of Technorati, you're in for a treat this morning. David Sifry has announced a treasure-chest of updates, including a fresh new look and an integrated approach to displaying search results.
Google Adds "Hot Trends" Google has announced an upgrade to its Google Trends tool, adding a "Hot Trends" tracker for daily buzz. Similar to services such as Technorati's "top searches" and Yahoo's subscription-only Buzz Index (which also added new features today), Google's Hot Trends is designed to show what search phrases are the most popular on any given day.
Google Introduces Major Interface & Algorithm Update Google has just sent us details of a series of updates to their interface and algorithm, as they move towards what they call a "universal search model".
Ask.com to Spend $100m to Buy Market Share Can Ask.com buy additional market share for the sum of $100 million? That's what it hopes to do, with a marketing blitz this summer that will see the search engine try...
Google Helps Connect Advertisers w/ Video Ad Creators If you've not yet figured out how your company can create video ads for distribution on Google AdWords, you're not alone and Google wants to help.
Meet Me in Seattle for Sullivan's SMX Danny Sullivan's eagerly anticipated inaugural Search Marketing Expo conference takes place in less than a month.
Flickr Taking Over Yahoo Photos Michael Arrington has news that Yahoo will today announce the closure of Yahoo Photos, favoring Flickr, which they acquired in 2005.
Yahoo Allows Content Filtering for SEO Are there parts of your site that you wish you didnt have because they dilute your chances of getting a number 1 ranking on the search engines?
What is Google Hell? Ok, I have to admit that I didnt realize we had labeled Googles supplemental results as Google Hell
Google Loses Personalized Homepage Preferences Nathan Weinberg is reporting that hundreds of Google users have found their Personalized Homepages settings in a flux.
Google Facing Privacy Complaint According to CNET, three public interest groups will file a joint complaint with the Federal Trade Commission asking for an examination of the privacy threat posed by Googles acquisition of DoubleClick.
Yahoo Sued for Informing Chinese Government Yahoo is being sued by the wife of a Chinese dissident over the companys release of information to the Chinese government.
Google Builds Its Own Random Search If indeed Google did lose out on buying StumbleUpon to eBay, theyre moving quickly to prove they can simply build it themselves.
PayPal Buttons to Appear on Yahoo Sponsored Search Having watched Google Checkout add lots of little blue shopping cart symbols to AdWords listings, PayPal obviously decided that was a great idea, and tapped Yahoo to help them out.
Google Says Trust Us... Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, is working hard to convince traditional broadcasters that they are not a threat, but merely there to help grow their business.
Google Wants You to Disclose Paid Links UPDATE: Google now wants you to use the report spam form to snitch on any site that you feel might be selling links!
Ask.com Working on a New Algorithm SEL has word of a new algorithm in development at Ask.com; blending the best of Teoma and Direct Hit (remember them? they had the algo that looked at the number of clicks a listing received).
Blog Usability, Gmail Spammers and More While Ive not abandoned the link blog (youll find lots of great links there), here are some news items that need a little explanation.
Google Offers Free 411 Service We already suspected Google might enter the 411 arena, when they were granted a voice recognition patent last year. With Microsofts recent acquisition of Tellme, it seemed even more likely that Google would one day launch a mobile voice search service.
AdWords Display Changes Many eagle-eyed readers have spotted Googles testing of a new background color for AdWords shown above the main results, over the past few days.
Yahoo's Alpha With Customized Search Results I received an interesting email from our Yahoo friends in Australia. It appears that, as a result of a Hack Day project...
SEM Scholarship Reminder Hows your entry to our SEM Scholarship contest coming along? This Friday is the deadline for entries.
A Bunch of Google News In case you can't get enough Google news, here are few more news items for your consideration.
Yahoo Mobile News Trifecta Yahoo's had a busy start to the day, announcing three new mobile initiatives.
Second Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest Launches It's back! After the phenomenal success of last year's contest, the Marketing Pilgrim SEM Scholarship Contest is back and this time it's bigger, better and badder than before!
Yahoo Hopes to Gain #1 Mobile Search Spot With Expansion Despite many believing mobile marketing to be a "non starter", the search engines continue to invest heavily in mobile search. With $11.4 billion expected to be spent on mobile search advertising by 2011, Yahoo is at the top of the list of companies staking their future on the tiny web browser.
Google to Offer Skins for Personalized Users If I'm reading correctly, Google will today launch six landscape "skins" for the Google Personalized Homepage.
Do Google's Job Ads Reveal New Products? Forbes believes the easiest way to discove |