Google

From The Inquirer - England Footballer Ashley Cole wants to know why Google thinks he’s gay. Lawyers acting for the crocked Arsenal and England defender have asked the web searching outfit why, when you run a search for Ashley Cole on its ubiquitous engine, it suggests: “See results for: ashley cole gay”.

The answer can be found on Matt Cutts’ blog post from August of last year: the answer is: it’s all algorithmic. The algorithms pick the queries where this could be helpful. Of course money isn’t involved at all. We’re always running experiments to improve Google–sometimes it’s noticeable, and sometimes it’s not.

This is one of those cases where the results are very noticeable. Honestly, I think he has every reason to be angry. The question is, should, or even could Google be liable?

I’m sure everyone will be talking about this tommorow, both webmasters & the mainstream press. From the AFP - US District Judge Howard Matz has ruled that Google infringed on Perfect 10’s copyright by indexing images with Google Images. This is of particular note:

Matz’s ruling also notes that because Perfect 10 sells similar-size versions of its images to cell phone users through a separate company, Fonestarz Media, Perfect 10 stands to lose revenue if its request for a court order blocking Google’s use of the thumbnails is not granted.

I’m aware of more than a few sites out there that have relied on fair use for mobile content. That does not establish a good case history if they ever ended up in court!

Google has been sued by AFP over Google News and also won a copyright lawsuit involving its website caching.

Wonder why your not being indexed by Google? The answer might be something that even I couldn’t guess. I’ve never heard this one before, but at least one host is blocking Google bot access, by default.

Straight from MarketingSherpa’s ContentBiz:

“By ContentBiz estimates, online publishers who placed Google’s AdSense contextual ads on their sites in return for a cut of the revenues, made about $1 billion last year.”

The cats out of the bag, web publishing is a legitimate business. And that $1 billion from Google is just one slice of a much larger pie; it doesn’t include the other ad networks or affiliate marketing. Together, those added billions more onto publishers revenues in 2005.

From Chris Beasly’s blog on Sitepoint.

On the phone last night it was explained to me that this is more or less an Adsense clone, meaning third party sponsored links, not Amazon links. It is known that Amazon currently get’s sponsored links for their own sites from Google, but apparently they wish to take out the middleman and break out on their own.

I wonder what percentage of Google’s ads are served up over at Amazon? I don’t think Google’s stock is going back up anytime soon.

From Reuters UK:

A group representing global newspaper publishers has launched a lobbying campaign to challenge search engines like Google that aggregate news content…The Paris-based World Association of Newspapers, whose members include dozens of national newspaper trade bodies, said it is exploring ways to “challenge the exploitation of content by search engines without fair compensation to copyright owners.” Web sites like Google and its specialised Google News service automatically pull in headlines, photos and short excerpts of articles from thousands of news sources, linking back to the publishers’ own site. Google News does not currently carry advertising.

I guess free traffic isn’t good enough compensation?

When Microsoft and Yahoo complied with the DoJ’s request for search data they did not turn over any personally identifiable data, so they claim.

“Google’s acceding to the request would suggest it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services,” Ashok Ramani, a lawyer representing Google, said in a letter to the Justice Department. “This is not a perception that Google can accept.”

The move to web-based applications and centralised information storage has raised many concerns not only with privacy advocates, but those concerned with security. Phising and hacking are already big threats to online users. Un-warrented Government intrusions simply add to the mess.

Forget search history, Google is already storing massive levels of e-mail data on their servers. Its not inconceivable that every e-mail you send and recieve in your whole life could be stored in a centralized location. Thats a goldmine not only for criminal investigators but also civil suits and hackers.

I believe the solution is a user-side encryption key, perhaps a USB stick, that allow users to store their online data using high-level encryption. Yet even this raises problems. Google likes to read their data. Terabytes upon terabytes of information allows for deep data mining and the ability to extract all kinds of statistics to help make their company more profitable.

Whatever the future holds for Google and the other search engines, consumers are going to demand security as we move to a global desktop. Too bad there are probably hundreds of patent holders ready to sue the first company that actually brings a workable solution to consumers.

As you might have guessed from my last post, I’m going to be out of town for a while.

Today I suddenly discovered that I could not purchase an item I need locally, so I headed over to Google.

In my search for the out of season item I used both Google’s natural results, and Adwords. I searched both last night and this afternoon. Last night I clicked a couple ads, and looked at a few sites, but couldn’t find what I was looking for. Earlier today I went shopping and realised my only option was to purchase the item online.

After spending about 5 minutes looking around Google I finally found a site that had a big inventory. It didn’t have exactly what I was looking for, but after a little reading I realised I what I really needed was something a little different. A few clicks later and that sites had an order from me for over $100.

As an internet marketer, I ask myself, what did the other sites do wrong? Number one, limited selection. While one site had roughly what I was looking for, all their inventory was low cost. This made me skeptical of the quality. I wasn’t looking for a bargain, I was looking for something that works. Other sites sent me to a landing page where I had to re-enter my search term, and then it send me to a very ineffective search results page that was even more confusing. Finally, the site I landed on had a very inventory of items. Each item had user ratings and a very comprehensive description. Minutes later, they had my order.

Whether you are an internet publisher or an internet marketer its critical you look at things from the eyes of your customers. How can your visitors buy your product if they can’t even find it? How can visitors register for your message board if they never see the register button? The list goes on and on.

A successful website is a machine. If you want it to work it has to be well engineered. It has to function in a way web users are familiar with.

If you understand this, along with the other fundamentals ofbusiness, success online is virtually guaranteed. It may take time, but if you work hard and smart, you’ll make it.

I’ve been covering China and India recently, and for a good reason. ContentSutra reports that the Indian government has demanded Google India hand over cash for selling advertisements — in other words, tax money.

Interestingly over Christmas I watched an interview with Milton Friedman on PBS where he was asked to compare China and India. Both are rapdily growing & developing countries. One is communist, the other is a “federal republic.” Friedman said that while China lacks personal freedoms it has great economic freedoms — while India operates the other way around. These economic issues, such as taxation and other government intervention could prove to be a large wall to India’s internet development just as it has to its economic development over the last 50 years.

Thats not to say that the Communist government hasn’t held a heavy hand of censorship over its own internet development either. Both countries have much room for improvement which will only occur if they open the gates of both personal and economic freedom.

From the NYTimes:

If a user searches on Google for a topic for which AOL has content - like information about Madonna - there will be a special section on the bottom right corner of the search results page with links to AOL.com. Technically, AOL will pay for those links, which will be identified as advertising, but Google will give AOL credits to pay for them as part of the deal. They will also carry AOL’s logo, the first time Google has agreed to place graphic ads on its search result pages.

Doesn’t graphic ads fall under Google’s deefinition of “evil?”