Peter Black's Freedom to Differ

Blogs versus the New York Times

And the winner is ...:

In 2002, blogging evangelist Dave Winer made a long bet with New York Times executive Martin Nisenholtz: "In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site."

Today, Associated Press editors and news directors chose the top 10 news stories of the year, which makes it possible to determine who won the bet.

...

So Winer wins the bet 3-2, but his premise of blog triumphalism is challenged by the fact that on all five stories, a major U.S. media outlet ranks above the leading weblog in Google search. Also, the results for the top story of the year reflect poorly on both sides.

In the five years since the bet was made, a clear winner did emerge, but it was neither blogs nor the Times.

Wikipedia, which was only one year old in 2002, ranks higher today on four of the five news stories: 12th for Chinese exports, fifth for oil prices, first for the Iraq war, fourth for the mortgage crisis and first for the Virginia Tech killings.

Winer predicted a news environment "changed so thoroughly that informed people will look to amateurs they trust for the information they want." Nisenholtz expected the professional media to remain the authoritative source for "unbiased, accurate, and coherent" information.

Instead, our most trusted source on the biggest news stories of 2007 is a horde of nameless, faceless amateurs who are not required to prove expertise in the subjects they cover.

Read more here (from Workbench).

Do you Google yourself?

Daniel J Solove (Concurring Opinions) has drawn out several fascinating trends from the recently released PEW Internet & American Life Project report on online privacy called Digital Footprints by Mary Madde, Susannah Fox, Aaron Smith, and Jessica Vitak:

1. People are starting to google themselves.  According to the survey:

Nearly half of all internet users (47%) have searched for information about themselves online, up from just 22%, as reported by the Pew Internet Project in 2002. Younger users (under the age of 50) are more prone to self-searching than those ages 50 and older. Men and women search for information about themselves in equal numbers, but those with higher levels of education and income are considerably more likely to monitor their online identities using a search engine.

2. Many people are not concerned about the amount of personal information about themselves online:

"Fully 60% of internet users say they are not worried about how much information is available about them online. . . . Similarly, the majority of online adults (61%) do not feel compelled to limit the amount of information that can be found about them online. Just 38% say they have taken steps to limit the amount of online information that is available about them.

3. Although most people are not surprised about the information that turns up in a google search under their name, a decent amount (21%) are:

Among those who have searched for their name online, 62% find that the amount of relevant information about them generally matches their expectations. One in five selfsearchers (21%) are surprised by how much information they find online about themselves, while 13% express disbelief at how little information comes up in their results.

4. Although teenagers are more likely to have online profiles than adults, a greater percentage of the adults with profiles make them publicly visible than do the teenagers:

The Pew Internet Project has reported extensively on teenagers’ use of social networking websites, finding that 55% of online teens have created an online profile and that most restrict access to them in some way. Looking at adults, their use of social networking profiles is much lower (just 20%), but those who use the sites appear to do so in a more transparent way. . . .

Among adult internet users who maintain an online profile, 82% say that their profile is currently visible compared with 77% of online teens who report this.

5. Most people search for contact information when googling another person, but a decent amount search for other information (photos, records, background):

72% of people searchers have sought contact information online. 37% of people searchers look to the Web for information about someone’s professional accomplishments or interests. 33% of people searchers have sought out someone’s profile on a social and professional networking site. 31% have searched for someone’s photo. 31% have searched for someone else’s public records, such as real estate transactions, divorce proceedings, bankruptcies, or other legal actions. 28% have searched for someone’s personal background information.

Read it here.

 

Who will Google buy or clone in 2008?

Who will Google buy or clone in 2008?  Amazon?  SixApart?  Ning?  Reuters?  TechCrunch's Duncan Riley ponders Google's next move here.

Google U

GoogleWatch's Clint Boulton ventures into the Google's Headquarters and is very impressed:

Google is as much a college university as it is a workplace. Google Corp. could be renamed Google University, though I'm certain there are some legal issues with that. Kind of like calling a dot-com that exists to make gobs of money an .org.

This might be heresy for folks who remember storming the gates of the dot-com heyday in 1998-99, only to crawl back out in 2000-01, defeated, or worse, unemployed. But Google is operating under the utopian creed that happy workers will be productive workers.

Read more about Boulton's experience here.

Google's 2007 Year-End Zeitgeist

Google's 2007 Year-End Zeitgeist is now online here.  The fastest rising terms for 2007 (globally) were:

1. iphone
2. badoo
3. facebook
4. dailymotion
5. webkinz
6. youtube
7. ebuddy
8. second life
9. hi5
10. club penguin

And the fastest falling terms for 2007 (globally) were:

1. world cup
2. mozart
3. fifa
4. rebelde
5. kazaa
6. xanga
7. webdetente
8. sudoku
9. shakira
10. mp3

There are more interesting lists and graphs here.

Web 2.0 wars

There are two Web 2.0 wars that have attracted some attention this week.  The first is Google versus Wikipedia:

Google is to go head-to head with Wikipedia, the web’s largest reference work, setting up a clash between two of the web’s biggest brands.

A new Google service, dubbed "knol", will invite individuals to write “authoritative articles” on their areas of expertise, the firm revealed yesterday.

As on Wikipedia, content on knol (the name comes from “knowledge”) will be free to access. In a departure from the non-profit Wikipedia model, however, knol's authors will be able to attach advertising to their work and take a share of revenues.

Google hopes that knol articles will cover “all topics, from scientific concepts ... to entertainment.”

Read more here (from The Times).  This is an interesting move from Google.  Although it is always hard to come from behind, if Google gives knol higher prominence in search rankings than Wikipedia it could very easily become as ubiquitous as Wikipedia is today.  The main advantage, however, that Wikipedia will have is its immediacy - as Wikipedia does not limit authorship, an entry can be updated almost immediately.  This will be a particular advantage for entertainment and technology entries.

The second such war is between Facebook application platform and OpenSocial (which can really be labeled Facebook versus Google):

Facebook is opening up the Facebook Platform Architecture,  "enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model". The social network site says:

In fact, we'll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms. Of course, Facebook Platform will continue to evolve, but by enabling other social sites to use what we've learned, everyone wins -- users get a better experience around the web, developers get access to new audiences, and social sites get more applications.

This is already more than theory. Bebo, which is popular in the UK, has just announced its own Open Application Platform. This is, not coincidentally, based on Facebook. Bebo says:

The Bebo Open Application Platform will be the first in the industry to implement the standards defined by the Facebook Platform, an open development system that enables companies and engineers to extend Facebook's more than 7,000 applications to other social websites.

In other words, there's now a Facebook system that can compete with Google's misleadingly-named OpenSocial, which Google developed in secret then presented as an alternative to Facebook's proprietary system.

Read more here (from The Guardian).  This is another interesting move - this time from Facebook - and it likely seems that Facebook will continue to dominate the social networking world.  However, the New York Times blog Bits is right when it reminds us that:

... this geeky little battle is not central to the fate of social networking, despite all the noise. For now, all these applications are the icing on the social network experience. The cake is still the core functions –- the database of friends, communications tools, the news feed. And so far, there are huge limitations on what application developers can actually do: They can’t bring data off of social networks onto their own sites, for example. And neither system actually connects networks, so a Facebook user cannot throw a sheep at her British friend who is on Bebo.

Read more here.

Google's Law

Greg Lastowka has published an interesting article titled "Google's Law":

Lastowka, Greg, "Google's Law" (September 2007). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1017536

Abstract: Google has become, for the majority of Americans, the index of choice for online information. Through dynamically generated results pages keyed to a near-infinite variety of search terms, Google steers our thoughts and our learning online. It tells us what words mean, what things look like, where to buy things, and who and what is most important to us. Google's control over results constitutes an awesome ability to set the course of human knowledge.

As this paper will explain, fortunes are won and lost based on Google's results pages, including the fortunes of Google itself. Because Google's results are so significant to e-commerce activities today, they have already been the subject of substantial litigation. Today's courtroom disputes over Google's results are based primarily, though not exclusively, in claims about the requirements of trademark law. This paper will argue that the most powerful trademark doctrines shaping these cases, initial interest confusion and trademark use, are not up to the task they have been given, but that trademark law must continue to stay engaged with Google's results.

The current application of initial interest confusion to search results represents a hyper-extension of trademark law past the point of its traditional basis in preventing consumer confusion. Courts should reject initial interest confusion doctrine due to its tendency to grant trademark owners rights over search results that could easily operate against the greater public interest. On the other hand, the recent innovation of trademark use doctrine improperly relieves trademark law of any role in the supervision of the shape of Google's search results. The absence of any state involvement in the shape Google's results will effectively cede the structure of our primary online index to Google's law. Google may enjoy substantial public goodwill, but what is best for Google will not always be what is best for society.

Part I of this article describes the history of Google and its business model. Google is not the only search engine today, but it is the leading search engine in terms of United States market share. Additionally, Google is playing the most important role today in search engine litigation. It is a unique search engine in many respects. During its evolution, Google followed a very different path than many of its competitors. Today its competitors are largely imitating its model, yet are unable to dethrone its centrality in search. Understanding how Google rose to prominence is essential to understanding its motives and how it might act in the future.

Part II of this article sets forth the contemporary law pertaining to search results. It begins with a short discussion of recent (failed) attempts to regulate Google's results through laws other than trademark. It then describes current theories of trademark law. It concludes by summarizing how trademark law has been applied to search engines, starting with early meta tag cases and concluding with Google's current attempts to insulate itself from liability under an expanded doctrine of trademark use.

Part III criticizes the current application of trademark law to search engines. It argues that the judicial innovations of both initial interest confusion and trademark use are inconsistent with the traditional purpose of trademark law and the new realities of the e-commerce marketplace. It concludes that a simple focus on the likelihood of confusion standard, which some courts have already supported, is overdue. It concludes by explaining why, despite the fact that trademark law today will likely permit Google's current practices, Google's bid for the carte blanche freedom permitted by trademark use doctrine should be rejected by courts. In its relatively new role as a protector of the social value of indices, trademark law must retain the ability to curb potential abuses of the commercial power enjoyed by Google.

Two significant decisions

There have been two significant decisions from the US this week - and both constitute bad news for Perfect 10. 

In the first, the US Supreme Court turned down Perfect 10's appeal of a decision holding that credit card companies were immune from liability for users' violations of state intellectual property laws.  From Media Post:

The Court let stand a ruling by the 9th Circuit which held that the federal Communications Decency Act shielded Web companies for users' violations of laws in California and other states. If that expansive opinion is followed by other federal courts, Web companies will be shielded from liability in a wide array of lawsuits stemming from state intellectual property laws, says Eric Goldman, an assistant professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and director of the High Tech Law Institute.

"This leaves on the books a very important 9th circuit ruling," Goldman says. "It wipes out a bunch of claims."

Perfect 10, which sells images of models to paid subscribers, sued credit card company CC Bill and Web hosting company CWIE for enabling piracy by doing business with sites that sold pirated images. Perfect 10's theory was that CC Bill and CWIE violated trademark law in California and other states by providing services to the infringing companies.

CC Bill and CWIE claimed immunity under the federal Communications Decency Act, which gives Web companies immunity from liability for information published by other content providers. That statute contains an exception for intellectual property claims, but the 9th Circuit held that the exception applies only to federal claims and not those brought under state law.

If other courts follow the 9th Circuit ruling, many state intellectual property laws could effectively be gutted, including Utah's recent Trademark Protection Act. Enacted earlier this year, that law attempts to ban marketers from bidding to appear as sponsored links when people conduct searches for the names of rival companies. Although that law was quietly passed in March, it hasn't yet gone into effect.

Read it here.

In the second, the 9th Circuit held that Google can display tiny photos in search results, even when the images are copyrighted, under the fair use doctrine.  From the Los Angeles Times:

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday reaffirmed its earlier support for the socially redeeming value of searching the Internet for nudie pictures.

The San Francisco court, in reviewing a case it initially considered in May, reiterated its finding that Google could display tiny versions of photographs by Perfect 10 Inc., a Beverly Hills-based adult publisher, in search results, even when those images were copyrighted.

The court focused on the legal question of which party holds the burden of proving whether Google's use of Perfect 10's images constituted a "fair use" under copyright law. Fair use is a defense that allows the use of copyrighted works, under certain circumstances, without the owner's consent.

The appeals court initially said Perfect 10 had the burden of proving that Google couldn't make its case. It corrected itself Monday, saying it was up to Google to articulate its defense, even in a case such as this one, which dealt with whether the courts could issue a preliminary injunction.

Nevertheless, the court said, Google met that test. The justices ruled that a larger public interest in searching for information -- or, in this case, images of partially clad women -- amounted to a "transformative use" that trumped Perfect 10's copyright claims.

The small legal tweak did not change the appeals court's original May decision.

The court overturned part of a ruling by the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, which had found that Google's thumbnail-sized images of Perfect 10's nude models constituted infringement. The lower court imposed an injunction barring the use of the images, but the appeals court invalidated that decision.

It also asked the district court to reconsider the question of whether Google or Amazon .com Inc., which also was named in the suit, could be held liable for damages because they linked to websites that displayed Perfect 10's copyrighted images without permission. The 9th Circuit judges wrote that the lower court erred and needed to consider whether the search engines knew of the infringement but failed to take simple steps to stop it.

Read more here.

Moma

Ever wondered what the Google intranet looks like?  Google Blogoscoped has the answer here.

GDrive

I first blogged about Google's GDrive in March last year (see here) and now Mashable says:

GDrive is Here; This Time We’re Not Kidding…

… at least we hope not. According to the Journal, Google is finally set to release the long rumored, never released GDrive. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on specific online storage plans aside from “storage is an important component of making Web [applications] fit easily into consumers’ and business users’ lives.”

As it has been noted before, Google already offers a number of online storage options within many of its current suite of online tools, allowing users to store email, photos, office documents and blog posts. The new storage service will end up tying together some of the services through a single search box, instead of having to switch between the different system interfaces (or download client side solutions such as Google Desktop).

Pricing on the tool is not yet announced, but WSJ indicates that there will be likely free and paid versions available.

There is no doubt that this is probably one of the most anticipated tools since the gPhone, so much so that it has prompted a number of hacks to the GMail system to simulate the imagined functionality of the system. It is far more likely, though, that when the GDrive system does come to fruition that it will end up working a lot more like an overlay to existing file management utilities, as opposed to an extension to the local file system on the client computer.

Read more here.

Strewth ... Aussie slang confuses search engines

From Australian IT:

THE tendency of Australians to type words into search engines much as they speak and think, with frequent use of colourful language and occasional misspellings, is giving advertisers a way to circumvent the rising cost of paid search engine advertising.

Instead of "cosmetic surgery" - relatively expensive to buy using keyword search - "boob job" might work just as efficiently, given its lower cost, while "computer geeks" could be substituted for "computer repair".

Figures released by research firm Frost & Sullivan show search engine advertising would grow by an average of 31.6 per cent each year from 2007 to 2011, driven by additional spend from existing advertisers, new entrants - particularly among small to medium businesses, and rising prices for generic search terms.

But a study of alternative keywords by ReachLocal, which helps businesses plan and track the results of paid search advertising campaigns, has found smaller businesses can avoid being priced out of the market if they take a more lateral approach to keyword search strategy.

"While some obvious search words will remain expensive, the art of search engine advertising lies in finding those alternative words that are just as effective but cost a lot less," Steven Power, CEO of ReachLocal, said.

"This is where an enormous opportunity lies for small-to-medium enterprises that cannot compete on word auction prices with their bigger competitors. "ReachLocal found that while 'cosmetic surgery' is an expensive search term, 'big boobs' is much more affordable and frequently searched."

...

Mr Power said Australians often used slang in their searches: "People might type in 'booze cruise' instead of 'harbour cruise'."

In several key small business search advertising categories, such as dentistry, hair removal and cosmetic surgery, ReachLocal identified alternatives it claimed offer a good return for their respective cost.

For example, someone seeking hair removal might type in "brazilian" instead of the more expensive "waxing"; meanwhile "veneers" and the misspelt "vaneers" also offered a cheaper way to find customers looking for a dentist.

Read more here.

Tim Wu: "Yes, Google Is Trying To Take Over the World"

In a piece for Slate, Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu looks at Google's wireless communications plans:

When Google conquered Internet search in the early 2000s, it was strictly a Web company and faced only Web competitors. Since then it has only rarely ventured out of the friendly confines of the Web world. The 2005 launch of its controversial "book search," which enraged the New York publishing industry, shows what can happen when Google leaves its comfort zone. Now, with its recently announced plans to enter wireless communications, Google is making its deepest foray yet into a foreign territory where its allies are few. It faces the challenge of not just entering the wireless world but also converting its inhabitants. Provided that Google has the nerve and resources to try to remake wireless in its image, it'll either prove its greatest triumph or its Waterloo.

Read more here.

Inbox 2.0

The New York Times blog Bits reports on Inbox 2.0:

Ignore Orkut, OpenSocial, Yahoo Mash and Yahoo 360. Google and Yahoo have come up with new and very similar plans to respond to the challenge from MySpace and Facebook: They hope to turn their e-mail systems and personalized home page services (iGoogle and MyYahoo) into social networks.

Web-based e-mail systems already contain much of what Facebook calls the social graph — the connections between people. That’s why the social networks offer to import the e-mail address books of new users to jump-start their list of friends. Yahoo and Google realize that they have this information and can use it to build their own services that connect people to their contacts.

I don’t have a lot of detail from Google, but I’ve heard  from several executives that this is their plan ...

Brad Garlinghouse, who runs the communication and community products for Yahoo, was a lot more forthcoming. He didn’t-have dates or specific product details either. But he did say that Yahoo was working on what he called “Inbox 2.0.”

...

This approach has a lot of potential and a few pitfalls. To start with, everyone who joins Facebook understands that what they do on the site is about sharing information with friends and sometimes strangers. People who use Yahoo Mail, or just exchange messages with someone using a Yahoo Mail account, have no such expectations. So the company will have to be very careful in how it explains what it is doing and ask for permission in the right places.

“This isn’t a separate product,” Mr. Garlinghouse said.  “This is an integration that has to be seamless to the user.”

What’s more, running social networks is like starting nightclubs. You need music and beer, of course, and some hard-to describe magic that draws people to the club. Yahoo and Google are so big that the most they could aspire to would be to create the online equivalent of a crowded bar at a train station, rather than a club for a particular sort of person.

But since Yahoo and Google already have hundreds of millions of people visiting each month, it may well be that they can get a fair number to stop and chat.

Read more here.  Mashable's Kristen Nicole is also somewhat concerned by the pitfalls of this approach:

Screwing with people’s existing schemas around email will ruffle a lot of feathers, require mind-altering concepts to be introduced, and a lot of people to question the driving motives. Not to mention options for preserving existing methods (to an extent), and permission for changing them in the first place. Would it feel like Yahoo’s spying on me if they know emails from Jenni are more important than that daily horoscope spam? Emails are extremely private sectors of our online life. One of the last spaces we can feel like we have privacy. I’m not entirely sure that Yahoo and Google should mess that up.

Read more here.  Approaching this move from a slightly different perspective, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington goes even further with "Inbox 2.0 Makes Me Sad":

It makes me sad because it is absurd for Yahoo to keep launching new social networking products, almost monthly, without what appears to be any sort of high level strategic vision.

A few months ago it was Mash, followed by a quiet closure of Yahoo 360. Earlier this month they let loose a new college/alumni network experiment called Kickstart.

And now Inbox 2.0, but without any statement about integration with Mash or any other Yahoo properties.

I mean, I follow these products for a living, and I can’t keep their strategies straight. Or even figure out if there is a strategy. If Inbox 2.0 is part of Yahoo’s big vision for the future, then tell us more than the bits about the news feed and profile pages. Tell us how it can change the entire company, as OpenSocial appears poised to do with Google. And if it’s just an experiment, why screw around with one of your biggest assets.

Read more here.

Rudd and Howard caught!

A reader sent me an email today with these instructions for Google's 2007 Australian Fedearl Election site:

See John and Kevin playing like they were best buddies in Google's election map.

Instructions:

- Sydney

1. Go to www.google.com.au/election2007

2. Click "View in Google Maps"

3. To the LEFT of the map (not above), in the "My postcode or address" field, type Queen Elizabeth Drive Bondi Beach

4. In the Map, click on the "Satellite" button (top right hand side of the map)

5. Grab the zoom level under the compass and drag it upwards to the second highest zoom level (you can turn off party shading if you like).

6. Scroll to the left to the second "30" sign painted on the road, and then head a few metres down to the beach.

7. What do you see?

- Canberra

8. In "My postcode or address" type "Parliament House"

9. In "satellite" view, go to the second closest zoom level

Google have said there are other 6 other eggs hidden around Seaworld on the Gold Coast, Tanunda, Barossa Valley, a well known Melbourne sporting venue, near Barrack St Jetty in Perth, near Mandorah in Darwin and near the Botanic Gardens in Hobart

Google won't censor anti-semitism

Mashable's Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins reports on Google's decision not to censor anti-semitism content from their search results:

Google Director for Israel Meir Brand today told the Associated Press that they would not step in and censor anti-Semitism from their search results for Israeli searchers. While allowing free speech is a good thing, there is an arbitrary manner in which Google has applied censorship as its organization grows.

“At Google, we have a bias in favor of people’s right to free expression,” Brand said. “Google is not and should not become the central arbiter of what does and does not appear on the Web. That’s for elected governments and courts to decide.”

Google in China, for instance, has censored itself to satisfy authorities in Beijing, restricting searcher access to “sensitive topics” like Taiwan and 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre. In Germany and Austria, Google removes Nazi content in order to comply with national censorship laws.

In America, censorship has often taken a more bizarre and muddled form, especially when outsiders try to define the policy that must be in place inside Google’s various ventures. In October of 2006, YouTube voluntarily censored all many videos containing depictions of Muhammed, as well as many videos that spoke negatively of Islamic-inspired terrorism. The most high profile example of those that were censored included conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, who noted after her videos were removed that many producers of Al-Qaeda propaganda videos were allowed to continue posting unabated.

Granted, these actions took place shortly before Google purchased YouTube, but analysts widely agreed the system-wide scrubbing was a quick effort to appear more palatable to the new Google overlords.

Self-censorship by international Internet mega-corporations is a very confusing and interesting issue that merits more exploration. Yahoo found that out last week, after their very public spanking given by Congress on Jerry Yang’s birthday. Talk of Internet privacy continues to reside front and center amongst bloggers and users alike. I, for one, am not sure on all the answers. To be sure, though, it is an issue threatening to spiral out of control for a number of companies, if not seriously addressed and solved soon.

Read more here.

Android demo

The software development kit for Google Android is now live.  Google's Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz discuss the availability of the SDK, that it will be open source in the future, and demo applications on the Android platform in this video:

Will Facebook take on Google ... in search?

Venture Beat considers the possibility of Facebook taking on Google:

Facebook has added a new option for its search bar, allowing users to search for advertising pages.

This continues a steady creep in search options, which already includes tabs to search for people, groups, events and applications.

It raises a new question about Facebook’s ambitions, as it finds itself the David against the Google Goliath. Will it pull out the ultimate slingshot: a full-fledged search engine for the web, not just the Facebook site?

This question is significant, because Facebook has so much data about people and preferences that it could potentially add quality to search results. If it were to duplicate a “good-enough” clone of Google search results — possibly by building on Microsoft’s search engine — and then add in its own data (all of the stuff that is password protected and which Google’s spiders can’t get to), Facebook could potentially provide a first class search engine that really rivals Google.

Read more here.

Is Google a tax evader?

Professor Paul Caron asks is Google a tax evader?  Read some of the supporting evidence here (from Tax Prof Blog).

"OpenSocial: It's the data, stupid"

Tim O'Reilly is disappointed with Google's OpenSocial:

While I'm a huge fan of the idea of an open social networking platform, I'm bemused by all the enthusiasm over Google OpenSocial. As I sit with what I learn, the mild skepticism I expressed the other day has turned into full blown disappointment.  This is nothing like the social network operating system that I got so excited about when I first heard Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon's thought's on the subject.

My disappointment with OpenSocial was crystallized by an exchange between Patrick Chanezon, Google's developer advocate for the program, and an audience member at the OpenSocial session at Web 2.0 Expo Berlin. The audience member asked something about building applications that can remix data from the participating social networking platforms. Patrick's answer was along the lines of: "No, you only have access to the data of the individual platform or application."

This is SO wrong.   And it shows a fundamental failure to understand two key principles of Web 2.0:

• It's the data, stupid.  (Formerly "Data is the Intel Inside")
• Small pieces loosely joined.

Let's start with the first one. If all OpenSocial does is allow developers to port their applications more easily from one social network to another, that's a big win for the developer, as they get to shop their application to users of every participating social network. But it provides little incremental value to the user, the real target. We don't want to have the same application on multiple social networks. We want applications that can use data from multiple social networks. 

And data mobility is a key to that. Syndication and mashups have been key elements of Web 2.0 -- the ability to take data from one place, and re-use it in another. Heck, even Google's core business depends on that ability -- they take data from every site on the web (except those that ask them not to via robots.txt) and give it new utility by aggregating, indexing, and ranking it.

Imagine what would have happened to Google maps if instead of supporting mashups, they had built a framework that allowed developers to create mapping applications across Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google as a way of competing with MapQuest. Boring! That's the equivalent of what they've announced here.

Would OpenSocial let developers build a personal CRM system, a console where I could manage my social network, exporting friends lists to various social networks? No. Would OpenSocial let developers build a social search application like the one that Mark Cuban was looking for?  No.

Set the data free! Allow social data mashups. That's what will be the trump card in building the winning social networking platform.

Read it here.

Search engine law

Techdirt considers whether search engines need to be regulated:

We've seen way too many lawsuits from people who get upset that Google doesn't rank them highly enough (or that Google has erased them from its index for gaming the search rankings). They often seem to think that it's a natural right that Google must rank them and must rank them highly. Of course, some of us feel that Google is a private company, and has the right to rank sites however it wants. If those rankings aren't very good, then that simply represents an opportunity for the other search engines to provide a better solution and steal away users. Law professor Eric Goldman, who tends to agree with us on that point, now points us to a new academic paper suggesting the opposite: that search engines should be regulated as their results represent a form of free speech.  Specifically, the paper argues four key points should be regulated into place:

1. Search engines should not be allowed to remove any sites from a search index unless required to remove it by law.
2. Search engines must reveal the basis of their ranking methodology and must continue to use the methodology they have made public
3. Search engines cannot manipulate search results except if there is a clear example of abuse that needs to be changed
4. Search engines should be required to clearly state which results are paid and which are organic

Read more here.

An OpenSocial.com cybersquatter?

Mashable makes an interesting point:

You may have noticed th awful URL for Google’s OpenSocial website:  http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial.   Looks like they didn’t get OpenSocial.com in time (or at all). 

The OpenSocial domain is actually owned by an Australia-based company called VastPark, which ironically (or not so much) has visions of a platform similar to Google’s. VastPark would actually operate in virtual worlds, including Second Life and There.com. VastPark CEO Bruce Joy started is company years ago with this in mind.

What VastPark does is let you join virtual worlds and connect with others in other places. It’s got a strong focus on 3D, which is more like Second Life than many other web-based virtual worlds that have grown in popularity. Nevertheless, Venturebeat reports that VastPark hasn’t quite gained much traction. 

Joy is planning on a trip to Silicon Valley to see if he can raise as much as $15 million, but now that his domain name has gained so much attention, could he be thinking of selling? Probably not. The notability of his domain name alone could get him the attention he’d like from the press and others. And selling his domain name could change much of what Joy’s already built up towards his own OpenSocial.

Read more here.

Facebook versus Google

Google Watch is keeping score:

Take that, Google.

In an industry where companies leapfrog each other constantly, Facebook has struck the latest blow by unveiling Facebook Ads.

The company's socially oriented advertising platform comes a day after Google announced its Android mobile phone software stack and the formation of the Open Handset Alliance, and less than a week after the search giant unveiled the OpenSocial platform.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his cohorts must be smiling, delighted that Facebook is giving Google a run for its big wad of money in the marketing and media hype arena.

Microsoft must have been eagerly awaiting this announcement ever since taking a $240 million stake in Facebook, the spunky little startup that boasts 50 million users.

You can't really compare the Android announcement to Facebook Ads, other than that they both offer new wrinkles to leveraging and monetizing the Internet. What they do have in common is that, if done right, both endeavors have the opportunity to alter their respective businesses as we know them.

Read more here.

YouTube in India

NewTeeVee reports that YouTube is in legal trouble in India:

Super Cassettes Industries, a.k.a. T-Series, has obtained a retraining order against YouTube and Google (GOOG), which according to ContentSutra, prevents them “from disseminating or displaying on their websites, or infringing in any manner, the copyright of any audio visual work in which the T-Series owns exclusive copyright. T-Series has filed a suit against Google and YouTube for a permanent injunction.”

The injunction essentially means that Google and YouTube will now have to actively police the content that is uploaded to YouTube. YouTube is also rumored to be launching an India-only site as well. The injunction is also going to impact other Indian video sites such as iShare, Dekhona and thebig.tv.

Read more here.

The Googlization of Everything

Siva Vaidhyanathan has a new blog to accompany his upcoming book, The Googlization of Everything:

This blog, the result of a collaboration between myself and the Institute for the Future of the Book, is dedicated to exploring the process of writing a critical interpretation of the actions and intentions behind the cultural behemoth that is Google, Inc. The book will answer three key questions: What does the world look like through the lens of Google?; How is Google's ubiquity affecting the production and dissemination of knowledge?; and how has the corporation altered the rules and practices that govern other companies, institutions, and states?

OpenSocial versus Facebook

CNET News.com analyses the numbers:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this graph from Hitwise is worth a thousand page views. The graph shows the market share of visits to all OpenSocial members combined versus Facebook. Clearly, Google's OpenSocial is a force to be reckoned with.

 

The question, however, is just what we're supposed to do with it. Thus far, I can't really understand what I'm supposed to do with Facebook. Google's OpenSocial has brought me no closer to grokking the nirvana that has apparently been unleashed. Jack Schofield in The Guardian gives two good reasons why:

First, as far as I can see, it's just a widget format, i.e. Google Gadgets. I'm sure there is value to having a common Google-sponsored widget format for mini-applications, because it reduces the amount of work needed to put Vampires or whatever on different social-networking sites. But really, who cares?

Second, I can't see what's open about it. Sure anybody can write apps for it, but anybody can write apps for Facebook, or, indeed, Windows. There's more to come, but at the moment, it looks just as proprietary as the Facebook system it more or less copies. The main difference being that Google appears to own and control the OpenSocial container/API in which the widgets run. But should it feel the need, Facebook can make its system just as "open" as Google's, simply by allowing other sites to host Facebook apps.

By Google's reasoning, Microsoft Windows is also "open." No one prevents me from writing applications to run on Windows--in fact, Microsoft bends over backward to help developers do just that. Why is it "open" when Google lets people lock themselves into its platform but it's closed when Facebook or Microsoft invites people to write to their platforms?

Hint: It's not.  Google is just better at marketing its "openness."

Regardless, by embracing disparate sites like Ning, MySpace, and others, Google has stolen the march on Facebook with numbers (see above) that suggest it will be very hard to beat Google on its own Web turf.

All of which should make us worry far more about Google than we ever did about Microsoft. Microsoft owned (and owns) the desktop. That's scary, but it's not nearly as bad as putting a lock on the Web, that network of networks of little Microsoft desktop fiefdoms.

Is Google evil? No, I don't think so. But it will become increasingly difficult for Google to grow without stepping on toes...and laws, just as Microsoft did before it.

Originally posted at The Open Road.        

               

Read more here.

What Obama wants ...

NewTeeVee reports on Barack Obama's strategy to get his appearance on Saturday Night Live on YouTube:

Last night Barack Obama made a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live as himself, dressed up as himself. Not exactly the funniest thing to ever hit the Internet, but definitely something I’d go look up on YouTube when someone mentioned it at the Internet watercooler. But with NBC (GE) having yanked its YouTube channel, where would I go to find such a thing?

NBC told us it pulled its content from YouTube in anticipation of Hulu’s debut, but over on Hulu, I can’t find anything from this week’s episode (maybe they’re waiting till midnight Hawaii time tomorrow?). And of course, a whole heck of a lot of people can’t even log into Hulu to look for the skit, because they don’t have invites yet, but it’s not on the open Hulu distribution partners MSN (MSFT) or AOL (TWX) either. If the clip’s on the official NBC.com Saturday Night Live video index I haven’t been able to find it.

Perhaps sensing the ridiculousness of this situation, the Obama campaign took matters into its own hands, and posted the video on its own YouTube channel, BarackObamadotcom. NBC lawyers, you better look deep within your heart before you send a takedown notice for this one.

Read more here.  And here is the "offending" clip (which is still online - unlike this SNL clip mocking the iPhone ads):

OpenSocial

Much has been made over the last few days of OpenSocial, Google's new social software platform that consists of a set of application programming interfaces that will allow programmers to write social applications that will work across social networking sites.  Here is some of the most interesting analysis:

• Bits (a New York Times blog) argues that OpenSocial will not be a Facebook killer.  Techdirt agrees.
• Erick Schonfeld (writing for TechCrunch) thinks that Facebook should join OpenSocial.
• Plaxo, online calendar and address book, had the honor of being the first to implement OpenSocial into a service and go live with it ... and it was apparently hacked within 45 minutes (read about it here from TechCrunch).
• And Mashable wonders whether Facebook has plans to abandon its open platform applications.

Finally, here is a (very long) Google video introducing OpenSocial:

g.cn

According to Valleyway, Google has purchased the shortest possible domain name to make it easier for Chinese users to find Google: g.cn:

Interestingly, "g.com," along with most other single-letter and single-digit domain names are reserved by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. The IANA is the master arbiter of domain names and addresses on the Internet. There are a few one-letter domain names out there, though: Z.com is owned by Nissan, Q.com by Qwest, and X.com is owned by PayPal. There was a proposal floated a few years ago to auction off the one-letter domain names, but nothing has come of it.

Read it here.

The future of social networking

Just as a report is released suggesting that social networking has an uncertain future (see here), it is reported that Google has seen "an overcrowded marketplace and said, 'Me too!'" (see here).  TechCrunch has some of the details of Google's plans:

Details emerged today on Google’s broad social networking ambitions, first reported here in late September, with a follow up earlier this week. The new project, called OpenSocial (URL will go live on Thursday), goes well beyond what we’ve previously reported. It is a set of common APIs that application developers can use to create applications that work on any social networks (called “hosts”) that choose to participate.

What they haven’t done is launch yet another social network platform. As more and more of these platforms launch, developers have difficult choices to make. There are costs associated with writing and maintaining applications for these social networks. Most developers will choose one or two platforms and ignore the rest, based on a simple cost/benefit analysis.

Google wants to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks. And if they pull it off, they’ll be in the center, controlling the network.

Read more here.  Against this backdrop, a report by UK-based Datamonitor, titled "The future of social networking: Understanding market strategic and technological developments," predicts that growth in the number of people signing up to be a part of the social networking phenomenon will peak by 2009 and plateau by 2012.  Read more here (from ZDNet News).

Defamation online

Eric Goldman has excellent summaries of two interesting online defamation cases in the US.  The first is BidZirk, LLC v. Smith, 2007 WL 3119445 (D.S.C. Oct. 22, 2007), a case where even though the blogger was ultimately successfully, the case serves as "a flagship example of how a pernicious and misguided plaintiff with a thin skin can ruin a blogger's life".  Read the post here.

The second is American Airlines, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 4:07-cv-00487 (W.D. Tex. Oct. 24, 2007), where according to Goldman "In an uninsightful one-page order, the court has denied Google's motion to dismiss American Airlines' lawsuit over Google's keyword advertising sales."  Read the post here.

Searching for search

Newsweek investigates the search for the best search engine and examines if Google may be vulnerable:

Despite spending billions trying to diversify beyond the straightforward search offered on its stripped-down, almost childlike home page, Google reaps about 60 percent of its outsize revenues and more than 80 percent of its profits from ads on that page, according to analysts' estimates. That means the company's success continues to hinge on the dominance of its simple search. There are no guarantees that its dominance will last. It is threatened by a massive worldwide effort to build a better search, involving giant high-tech rivals, governments in Europe and Asia, and hundreds of tiny start-ups founded by academic wunderkinders much like Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the Stanford graduate students who founded Google in 1998. And it's also dependent on an online public that may make up the most fickle market in history, an audience whose interests are already showing signs of wandering outside the search box.

Google may well be able to continue its charmed life by holding onto its search lead and getting its non-search businesses to kick in more profit, and Wall Street is certainly betting that way. But the computer world has a way of bringing seemingly golden brands down to earth with surprising speed, as Lotus, Novell, AOL and other firms have discovered. It's not farfetched that five years from now we may wonder why everyone thought Google was such a big deal. "Google has won the first stages of the Web-searching race," says Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research in San Francisco. "It won't win the next one."

History shows how quickly search leaders can lose their way.

Read the rest of this feature report here.

How much does Google know?

Omer Tene from College of Management - School of Law, Israel has an interesting piece on SSRN on what Google knows about you.  Here is the abstract:

Tene, Omer, "What Google Knows: Privacy and Internet Search Engines" (October 2007). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1021490

Abstract: Search engines are the most important phenomenon on the Internet today and Google is the gold standard of search. Google evokes ambivalent feelings. It is adored for its ingenuity, simple, modest-looking interface and superb services offered at no (evident) cost. Yet increasingly, it is feared by privacy advocates who view it as a private sector big brother posing perhaps the biggest privacy problem of all times. Google is an informational gatekeeper harboring previously unimaginable riches of personal data. Billions of search queries stream across Google's servers each month, the aggregate thoughtstream of humankind, online. Google compiles individual search logs, containing information about users' fears and expectations, interests and passions, and ripe with information that is financial, medical, sexual, political, in short – personal in nature. How did Google evolve from being a benevolent giant seeking to do no evil into a privacy menace reviled by human rights advocates worldwide? Are the fears of Google's omniscient presence justified or overstated? What personal data should Google be allowed to retain and for how long? What rules should govern access to Google's database? What are the legal protections currently in place and are they sufficient to quell the emerging privacy crisis? These are the main issues addressed in this article.

Who will Hulu hurt?

Nat Worden for TheStreet.com looks at the likely impact of Hulu on YouTube and cable/pay TV:

Hulu.com has been billed as a rival to YouTube, but Google's popular video site has nothing to worry about.

The real victim here will be cable TV.

Hulu, an online video site that went live with a test version on Monday, was developed in a partnership between General Electric-owned NBC Universal and Rupert Murdoch's media empire, News Corp. Unlike YouTube, Hulu offers free viewing of full-length films and TV shows from the media giants.

But Hulu has none of the grassroots, user-generated content that has made YouTube a global phenomenon. Instead, it merely provides a way for consumers to watch TV online, bypassing the headaches, limitations and costs of cable or satellite TV service.

Read more here.

Can Google kill PowerPoint?

Writing for Slate, Paul Boutin wonders whether Google can kill PowerPoint.  And the winner is ...:

I don't think Google will catch up with PowerPoint. The company's strength is in reinventing applications rather than beating competitors on features. Google's one advantage, feature-wise, might be short-lived: A Microsoft spokesman told me the company will launch its own free collaboration service in December. It will let up to 15 people group-edit a PowerPoint preso.

Google Preso rocks for easy, no-money-down collaboration, but its visually clumsy slides won't win you a Nobel Prize or help you close a million-dollar deal. For that, the winning app is actually ... Apple's Keynote. The Splunkers now use it. They say Keynote allows them finer control than PowerPoint over layout, fonts, colors, animation, and overall wow factor in front of tough audiences. Google Preso comes in a distant third. Instead of being a PowerPoint killer, it's a PowerPoint commercial—a half-baked app that shows how powerful Microsoft's program really is. To prove it, I've whipped up a PowerPoint preso that recaps the differences. Any questions?

Read more here.

The value of Facebook

For all the hype surrounding Facebook, TechCrunch reports that it is only the fifth most valuable internet company in the US:

Yesterday came news that Microsoft invested $240 million into Facebook, valuing the company at $15 billion.

How much is $15 billion? It’s hard to understand how much money that really is. But this evening a friend helped put it into perspective in a conversation about the deal: among the pure-play U.S. Internet companies, only Google, eBay, Yahoo and Amazon have larger market capitalizations. Their annual revenues range from $6 - $11 billion/year. IAC, Salesforce, Monster.com and all the rest trail significantly.

Read the list and Michael Arrington's analysis here.

Who Googles what?

ZDNet News reports on who Googles what?

Internet users in Egypt, India and Turkey are the world's most frequent searchers for Web sites using the keyword "sex" on Google search engines, according to statistics provided by Google.

Germany, Mexico and Austria were world's top three searchers of the word "Hitler" while "Nazi" scored the most hits in Chile, Australia and the United Kingdom, data from 2004 to the present retrievable on the "Google Trends" Web site showed.

Chile also came in first place searching for the word "gay", followed by Mexico and Colombia.

The top searchers for other keywords were as follows (in order from first to third place):

"Jihad"--Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan

...

"Hangover"--Ireland, United Kingdom, United States

...

"Tom Cruise"--Canada, United States, Australia

"Britney Spears"--Mexico, Venezuela, Canada

...

"Love"--Philippines, Australia, United States

 

"Botox"--Australia, United States, United Kingdom

...

"Car bomb"--Australia, United States, Canada

"Marijuana"--Canada, United States, Australia

Read more here.

Google Maps for social networking

Mashable has an intriguing idea:

Could Google Maps be turning into one of the major social initiatives at Google? Between integrating YouTube videos, user-generated local maps, and potential presence features from the recently acquired Jaiku, it seems like there might be something brewing here.

Read more here.

Google wins in blind search test

CNET News.com reports on an interesting (if unscientific) poll:

        In a blind "taste test" searchers chose Google, then Microsoft and Yahoo.

That's according to the results of a poll created last week by the Google Operating System blog. Participants could try out three unidentified search engines and vote which had the best results. The results are in and 51 percent of the more than 2,000 people who voted said Google had the best results. That was followed by 35 percent for Live Search and 30 percent for Yahoo. In comments to the blog post people said they were surprised Microsoft was ahead of Yahoo, but also surprised Google's percentage wasn't higher.

Read more here.

Google and social networking

One the same day Business Week writes about Google's ambition regarding their social networking purchase Orkut, comes the news that Google has made a new acquisition - Jaiku.  Jyri Engestrom and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku's founders, sent this email to all Jaiku users:

Wonderful Jaiku users,

Exciting news, Jaiku is joining Google!

While its too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you'll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together.

In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now. But fear not! All our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will continue to be able to invite your friends to Jaiku.

We have put together a quick Q&A about the acquisition at http://jaiku.com/help/google

Jyri Engestrom and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku Founders

Scroogled

Writing for Radar, Cory Doctorow wonders: "Google controls your e-mail, your videos, your calendar, your searches ... What if it controlled your life?"  Read it here.

The Simpsons Movie appears on YouTube

From Mashable:

Entire Simpsons Movie Appears On YouTube
It’s not the first time entire movies have appeared on the site, although Google Video is typically the more lenient of the pair. Fox is unlikely to be pleased.

Read more here.

Is Apple the new Microsoft?

PC World wonders if Apple is becoming the new Microsoft:

Ten years ago, Microsoft was the company everyone loved to hate.

The most vociferous Microsoft haters slammed the company for being a greedy industry bully that used its monopolistic, clunky, copycat operating system to force software on users and coerce partners into unfair licensing deals.

Don't look now, but the role of the industry's biggest bully is increasingly played by Apple, not Microsoft. Here's a look at how Apple has shoved Microsoft aside as the company with the worst reputation as a monopolist, copycat and a bully.

Read more here.  I thought it was Google that was becoming the new company everyone loved to hate ...

Gmail: Behind the Scenes (Final Cut)

A compilation of clips submitted by Gmail fans as part of Google's collaborative video project:

Defending gang videos on YouTube

From Media Guardian's Organ Grinder Blog:

Patrick Walker, head of content partnerships at Google, has defended the posting of clips on YouTube that glorify gun culture, arguing that the same images are used by the media in press and TV news stories.

Google-owned YouTube has been criticised in the last week after it was discovered youth gangs in the Croxteth area - where 11-year old Rhys Jones was murdered - had posted clips glorifying violent gang culture.

Mr Walker was asked about the issue during a panel session at MGEITF called Quite Interesting Technology.

Read more here.  I think Walker makes an interesting point, however the difference between the videos being on YouTube and what is reported on the news is that the news puts such images in their proper context, whereas on YouTube it is simply gang violence for the entertainment value of gang violence.  That's not say the videos shouldn't be available on YouTube, but I think Patrick Walker's argument is flawed.

Google Health?

Steve Bryant asks "Does anybody else feel like Google Health is just one more step towards Idiocracy-esque types of diagnosis?"

Surviving without Google

At CenterNetworks, James Thomas describes living without Google for two weeks:

How much did I use Google? Apparently a lot more often than even I could speculate. For the last two weeks, I've had google.com blocked at both work and home. The amount of data they're gathering on me is frightening. Not because of Google, but because I'm positive the government will legislate their way into Google's database sooner or later and start labeling people as suspicious. Political paranoia aside, let us look at the fact here; Life on the internet without using Google is hard.

Read more here.

Is Wikia a Google-killer?

Lost Remote asks, will Wikia be the meteor that strikes Google’s world?

Google has been the undisputed king of search for an online eternity, having risen from the bloody search engine wars of the early Web with only heavyweights like Yahoo and Microsoft left able to compete (remember HotBot? Dogpile? AltaVista?). Well look out Mountain View, here comes Jimmy Wales and a legion of open sourcers with the Wikia project, which seeks to build an organic search engine that may spawn hundreds of rivals for Google’s core service. Wikia may not be a the giant dinosaur-killing meteor, but rather a shower of meteors that blast the lids off of all the SEO jobs and little businesses who have carved niches for themselves on the single premise of gaming Google’s engine.

Read more here.

Stewart and Colbert to take to the stand for Viacom?

YouTube and Viacom have filed their witness deposition wish lists with judge Louis Stanton in New York’s Southern District Court, and YouTube's list includes Jon Stewart of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report, hosts of the two highly rated shows on Viacom’s Comedy Central, who’s clips have proved just as, if not more, popular online. 

Although it is unlikely they will actually take the stand, NewTeeVee wonders what if ...?  Read it here.

Working inside the Googleplex

The San Jose Mercury News goes inside the Googleplex with this report and this video:

"The Google"

George W Bush uses "The Google":