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Google’s link policies raise hell for simple bloggers

I get a bunch of emails like this: We have recently received a notification from Google stating that our website has unnatural links pointing towards it. This has affected our rankings on Google and as a result, we’re trying to clear things up. Our website URL is www.builddirect.com. We noticed the following links are pointing […] » about 300 words

Organizational Vanity, Google Alerts, and Social Engineering

As more and more organizations become aware of the need to track their online reputation, more people in those organizations are following Google alerts for their organization’s name. That creates a perfect opportunity for scammers to play on that organizational vanity to infect computers used by officers of the organization with malware that can reveal […] » about 300 words

Even If They Don’t Click

Ethan Zuckerman’s recent post, What if they stop clicking? points out the difficulty of building a business on ad revenue. He points to statistics that show fewer readers are clicking banner and arguments from the web advertising industry about how un-clicked ads still build brand awareness. It’s not really central to Zuckerman’s point, but I […] » about 300 words

Google Minus Google

From The Register: Inspired by a recent New York Times piece that questioned whether the Mountain View search monopoly is morphing into a media company — which it is — Finnish blogger Timo Paloheimo promptly unveiled Google minus Google. Key in the word “YouTube,” and the first result is Wikipedia. » about 100 words

Google’s Own Satellite

It’s not truly “Google’s own,” but the internet giant will get exclusive use of the images for mapping purposes, according to Reuters: GeoEye Inc said it successfully launched into space on Saturday its new GeoEye-1 satellite, which will provide the U.S. government, Google Earth users and others the highest-resolution commercial color satellite imagery on the […] » about 100 words

Evil Google

Aaron Swartz‘s Bubble City, Chapter 8:

He sent the report to his superior and wandered off for a bit to dwell on the power he had as a faceless person deep inside an office park in Mountain View to know every detail of another person’s life. He wondered what it would be like if he came across that person on the street, he would know every detail of his life, his household budget, the secrets he confided over IM, even what he looked like naked.

Google Pumps OpenID Too

Following news that Yahoo! is joining the OpenID fray, it appears Google is dipping a toe in too. While those two giants work out their implementations, others are raising the temperature of the debate on IDM solutions. Stefan Brands is among the OpenID naysayers (<a href=“http://daveman692.livejournal.com/310578.html" title=“David Recordon’s Blog - Stefan Chooses to Take the “Fox News” Approach to OpenID Blogging”>David Recordon’s response), while Scott Gillbertson sees a bright future. Let’s watch the OpenID Directory to see how fast it grows now (count on January 19 2008: 446).

Memory, Intimacy, And The Web

I’ve been thinking about it since Troy mentioned to me that he thought Google was ruining his memory. And I thought I found confirmation of it when I read Gladwell’s description of Daniel Wegner, et al’s Transactive Memory in Close Relationships: When we talk about memory, we aren’t just talking about ideas and impressions and […] » about 400 words

Google To Psyc Profile Users!?!

There it is in The Guardian: Internet giant Google has drawn up plans to compile psychological profiles of millions of web users by covertly monitoring the way they play online games. Yep, “do no evil” Google has filed a patent on the process of building psychological profiles of its users for sale to advertisers. Details […] » about 400 words

Google MyMaps and GeoRSS

O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference isn’t until the end of May, but Google just released two sweet new map-related features: GeoRSS support and MyMaps. The GeoRSS support means that any application that can output it’s geocoding — as simple as <georss:point>45.256 -71.92</georss:point> — can now be linked to a live map with no more effort than […] » about 300 words

GoogleSmacked

At a time when people are still wowing over the Google-YouTube deal (and wondering why their 2.0 company didn’t get bought for $1.6 billion), it’s good to know that Marc Cantor is dead down on it. Not because of the copyright issues or “limited” advertising potential of YouTube that others cite, but apparently because he […] » about 300 words

I Want URL Addressable Spreadsheet Cells (and cell-ranges)

When I heard news that Google was to release a spreadsheet companion to their freshly bought Writely web-based word processing app, I got excited about all the things they could do to make it more than just a copy of Numsum. Let’s face it, Google’s the Gorilla in the room here and they’re gonna squash […] » about 300 words

Will Google Eat Itself?

Once upon a time Microsoft was the gorilla to beat. Once upon a time we thought Google could do it.

Perhaps not any more. Amazon has dropped Google’s search results from their A9 search aggregator in favor of Microsoft’s Live search, and while Yahoo!’s on again, off again partnership talks with Microsoft appear dead after Y!’s announcement Thursday of a partnership with eBay, Microsoft still hasn’t given up on the notion.

The Yahoo! news may dull my argument, but look how quickly the board changed, how easily these companies switched allegiances or considered partnering with Microsoft, a company known for swallowing its partners.

Google may or may not truly depend on the goodwill of its customers, but the moment its image turns from all-knowing and happy to big and evil could rearrange the chess board.

Information Behavior

| It was more than a year ago that <a href="http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/000540.html" title="Lorcan Dempsey's weblog: Eat your spinach, it's good for you ...">Lorcan Dempsey</a> pointed out this bit from <a href="http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i18/18b01301.htm">The Chronicle</a>: <blockquote>Librarians should not assume that college students welcome their help in doing research online. The typical freshman assumes that she is already an expert user of the Internet, and her daily experience leads her to believe that she can get what she wants online without having to undergo a training program. Indeed, if she were to use her library's Web site, with its dozens of user interfaces, search protocols, and limitations, she might with some justification conclude that it is the library, not her, that needs help understanding the nature of electronic information retrieval.</blockquote> » about 300 words

OCLC Report: Libraries vs. Search Engines

So, the report was released Monday, and it’s actually titled Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources (2005), but the part I’m highlighting here is the results of the question that asked users to compare their experiences with search engines against their experiences with libraries. Here’s the quesiton: Satisfaction with the Librarian and the Search Engine […] » about 200 words

Pew Internet Report: Search Engines Gain Ground

According to the recently released Pew Internet report on online activities: On an average day, about 94 million American adults use the internet; 77% will use email, 63% will use a search engine. Among all the online activities tracked, including chatting and IMing, reading blogs or news, banking, and buying, not one of them includes […] » about 100 words