Google Blogoscoped

Monday, September 18, 2006

Free Coffee From Yahoo?

Michael Liedtk of AP says that “Yahoo will offer coupons for a free cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts to anyone who sets Yahoo.com as their home page this Friday.” This is part of a multimillion dollar, cross-media ad campaign Yahoo is about to launch (compare this to Google Inc, which relies on word-of-mouth mostly). [Via Micro Persuasion.]

Defining Web 3.0

I bet this Wikipedia article will radically change over time:

Web 3.0 is a term that has been coined to describe the Semantic Web which aims to “organize the world’s information” using a declarative ontological language such as OWL.

Trynt: Misc. APIs

Trynt technologies has a list of public REST APIs, including one that will tell you the Google PageRank of a given URL, one that will detect nudity in color images, and another one that will return Captchas. Nice. [Via Waxy.]

Google Losing Market Share in China?

According to the China Internet Network Information Centre, CNNIC, Google’s market share in China dropped from 33% last year to 25.3% currently. Most people in China search using Baidu, with growing numbers. However, I don’t know how trustworthy the CNNIC survey is; while supposedly 4,500 users were asked, they were of only 3 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou), and – as LinuxWorld adds – “CNNIC rarely releases its methodology.”

Picasa’s Easter Egg

Google’s desktop photo management software Picasa has an Easter Egg; hit Ctrl + Shift + Y, and a teddy bear will pop up. Awww... [Thanks David Hetfield in the forum.]

Google’s Salar Kamangar Interviewed

BusinessWeek interviewed Google’s Salar Kamangar, who joined Google back in 1999 and is now Vice President Product Management. Almost more interesting than the very short Q&A is the first comment to it by someone who claims to be a former Google employee:

Don’t work at Google, especially as a new grad. At this point, your chances for advancement are the same as they are at a more mature company, like Intel. On top of that, they hired a bunch of young, inexperienced people when they were a much younger company that have now been promoted into positions they shouldn’t be in. As a former employee and current stockholder, I want to see them clean house and weed out all these employees that still like to think of Google as their own little college geek frat where they can throw around buzz words and phrases like “thinking outside the box” because they came up with one money maker that runs itself rather than coming up with new products that will add diversification and revenue.

[Thanks Corsin Camichel. Original photo by Google Press.]

Google Political Committee

From SFGate.com:

Under fire on Capitol Hill, Google Inc. has boosted its political muscle by creating its first political action committee while taking steps to reach out to Republicans.

[Thanks Gary Price.]

Google Removing Ignored Ads?

According to Google Watch (who quotes WebmasterWorld), Google is playing around with removing certain search result ads for those searchers who never click on the ads anyway (more specifically, when you don’t click on the top ad for a couple of times, it’ll be moved to the right side).

I want the same for spam mails – they should only be sent to those people who have a track record of clicking on the links in them...

[Thanks TonyB in the forum.]

Google Future Proof?

While Google’s search history feature is Y5.8M proof – Andrew Hitchcock could go as far in the future as Jan 1, 5800000 (see screenshot) – I can’t even successfully add and search Google Calendar events for 2009.

Google Syndicated Search?

Garett Rogers reports Google has registered lots of domains related to a product named “Google Syndicated Search.”

I don’t think Google is rebranding their blog search, though of course that’s a possibility (Google Blog Search covers not only blogs, but any kind of RSS/ syndication feed, so its current title is a bit of a misnomer).

The discussion started in the forum.

[Thanks Sohil.]

Worst of the Web

PC World lists the 25 worst websites ever. Even Hotmail made the list:

In the mid to late nineties, Hotmail was a virtual Switzerland for spammers, who operated with impunity across the free e-mail service. Hotmail account holders were routinely buried in a blizzard of junk – in part because new subscribers were automatically added to a public directory of e-mail addresses, making them easy pickings for spam harvesters. A massive “dictionary attack” on the site’s user base in August 2002 didn’t help matters. Later that year Microsoft finally began implementing serious antispam measures, but by then many subscribers had already had their fill of canned luncheon meat.

And let’s remember: when Gmail launched with 1 GB storage in April 2004, Hotmail only had a tiny 2 MB (which were quickly filled with spam if you didn’t check your inbox for some days).

[Thanks Brinke Guthrie.]

Matt Cutts’ SEO Tips

SEO Egghead summarized 21 search engine optimization tips straight from the horse’s mouth... Google’s Matt Cutts, that is. [Thanks Siggi Becker.]

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