google

In the seemingly waning days of the U.S. government's antitrust review of the Google-DoubleClick union, consumer groups are lodging a last-minute plea: don't forget about privacy.

That was the message during a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning hosted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.

The directors of those groups, who predicted a decision by the Federal Trade Commission is "imminent," voiced concern that the FTC may overlook the potential privacy implications raised by the combined user massive data stores of the two prominent companies. (The two Washington-based groups, … Read more

Predictions for 2008: Sharepoint will disappoint, Google will seek omnipotence

CMS Watch makes 12 predictions for 2008, two of which stand out based on things I've covered on this blog. The first has to do with Sharepoint, that lightweight Microsoft portal and content repository that seeks to lock enterprises once and for all into Microsoft. CMS Watch predicts a backlash:

The backlash will be two-fold. First larger enterprises will exhibit major compliance and litigation discovery issues across numerous unmanaged and unaccountable SharePoint locations. You will also see a backlash against sizable development costs and times to build maintainable applications in the MOSS environment. With the more complex SharePoint projects struggling to launch, customers are realizing a disconnect between Redmond's heavy promotion and the realities of a product that is significantly less out-of-the-box than most expect.

But we expect this from Microsoft and eventually from its customers. The more frightening prediction concerns Google, the data-hungry "do no evil" company that CMS Watch predicts will find new ways to pull users into its cloud:… Read more

Ten games for search marketers

Games always seem to capture a lot of attention this time of year, in part because of kids and toys for Christmas or adults and getting together for the holidays. It would seem that search marketers enjoy games, too. While this often revolves around contests or challenges to get a site to rank No. 1 in the SERPs, at PubCon this year, SEOmoz even got some search marketers to unplug long enough to play an SEO version of Werewolf.

With only a week before Christmas, I couldn't help but wonder what games might be dancing around in search marketer'… Read more

Episode 625: Whither StarTrek.com?

Europeans to hold hearings on Google-DoubleClick and privacy

Update Dec. 18 with exact date of hearing

Update 1:10 p.m. PT with Google comment

European lawmakers plan to hold a hearing next month to scrutinize the privacy implications of the proposed Google acquisition of online-ad firm DoubleClick, according to the Associated Press.

The proposed $3.1 billion deal has provoked complaints that it would give Google an unprecedented amount of information about consumers' online activities, with a view into not only what people search for, but exactly where on the Internet they go and what ads they click on.

The hearing will be held either Jan. 21, … Read more

Beyond Binary Bits - Dec. 17, 2007

For those looking to get back into the swing of things, here are some interesting links from today and over the weekend. The 15 biggest tech disappointments of 2007--PC World lists the top tech letdowns of the year and, not surprisingly Vista tops the list. Zune was No. 11 and Office 2007 was No. 9. Ouch! If it makes Redmond feel any better. Apple's Leopard came in at No. 8.

Google gets ready to rumble with Microsoft--Another in-depth look at the battle between the two software giants. It's a good read with some revealing anecdotes about … Read more

The looming battle between old economy (Microsoft) and new economy (Google)

For those who have spent years wringing their hands over Microsoft's desktop dominance, have no fear: competition is on its way. It's called Google, and it promises to dramatically shake up the computing market by shifting the battle to the Internet, as an article in The New York Times insightfully states.

We should have seen this coming. The cause of Microsoft's weakness is its overreliance on its strengths, a classic "innovator's dilemma." In other words, Microsoft's fetish for the desktop metaphor threatens to leave it with dominance of yesterday's kingdom just as … Read more

Ask.com's Top 10 has Google, but no Britney

Ask.com released its Top 10 list for Web search terms for 2007 on Friday and it was noteworthy as much for what made the list as for what didn't.

No. 1 is MySpace, followed in order by: Dictionary, Google, Themes, Area Codes, Cars, Weather, Games, Song Lyrics, and Movies.

Yes, Google is in the third spot. Now, why would anyone go to Ask.com and type in "google"? Weird!

The irony was not lost on Ask.com spokesman Nicholas Graham, who also insisted to this incredulous reporter that adult or sex terms were not among the … Read more

Google's Knol experiment to rival Wikipedia?

Last night on the official Google blog, Udi Manber, vice president of engineering, announced that Google is testing a publishing platform called Knol.

It's being compared to Wikipedia and Mahalo. While it's a somewhat different take on knowledge collection, these comparisons are apt.

From what we know so far, Knol is a wiki-like platform. Authors can create topics, and there are tools to interlink articles and content, but as Manber says, an article, or "knol," is "just a Web page." Where it differs from a wiki is its focus on the author. All knols … Read more