Peter Black's Freedom to Differ

Search engine neutrality

A great deal of the debate on the regulation of the internet over the past decade has focused on net neutrality.  So it seems appropriate that on the eve of a new decade, there is a provocative op-ed piece in the New York Times on search engine neutrality:

AS we become increasingly dependent on the Internet, we need to be increasingly concerned about how it is regulated. The Federal Communications Commission has proposed “network neutrality” rules, which would prohibit Internet service providers from discriminating against or charging premiums for certain services or applications on the Web. The commission is correct that ensuring equal access to the infrastructure of the Internet is vital, but it errs in directing its regulations only at service providers like AT&T and Comcast.

Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing have become the Internet’s gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include “search neutrality”: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance.

The need for search neutrality is particularly pressing because so much market power lies in the hands of one company: Google.

...

Without search neutrality rules to constrain Google’s competitive advantage, we may be heading toward a bleakly uniform world of Google Everything — Google Travel, Google Finance, Google Insurance, Google Real Estate, Google Telecoms and, of course, Google Books.

Some will argue that Google is itself so innovative that we needn’t worry. But the company isn’t as innovative as it is regularly given credit for. Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Groups, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Android and many other Google products are all based on technology that Google has acquired rather than invented.

Even AdWords and AdSense, the phenomenally efficient economic engines behind Google’s meteoric success, are essentially borrowed inventions: Google acquired AdSense by purchasing Applied Semantics in 2003; and AdWords, though developed by Google, is used under license from its inventors, Overture.

Google was quick to recognize the threat to openness and innovation posed by the market power of Internet service providers, and has long been a leading proponent of net neutrality. But it now faces a difficult choice. Will it embrace search neutrality as the logical extension to net neutrality that truly protects equal access to the Internet? Or will it try to argue that discriminatory market power is somehow dangerous in the hands of a cable or telecommunications company but harmless in the hands of an overwhelmingly dominant search engine?

Read the full op-ed here. 

An unusual way to protect your privacy in the age of Google

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr has an unusual way to protect your privacy in the age of Google:

Many wonder how much privacy you can have when a simple Google query reveals so many details of your life. I think there’s an easy answer to this problem. Just change your name to something that already pulls up a lot of Google hits. 

If your name is Jernicky Washington, for example, just change your first name to “George.” Is your name Sallisan Poppins? Change your first name to “Mary.” Maybe you’ve had the misfortune of being Yasmarine Table? Change your first name to “Oak.” With a name like George Washington, Mary Poppins, or Oak Table, it will be really hard for people to find out much information about you. 

I realize there’s a downside. Every time you meet someone new, they’ll ask, “Wait, is your name really ____?” Plus, everyone will assume your parents had a terrible sense of humor. That’s unfortunate. But hey, just let them try to Google you.

Read it here.

Newspapers are what?

I laughed out loud when I read this on TechCrunch, "Newspapers Are What? Google’s Got Some Suggestions":

 

Google Wave

Like most nerds, the highlight of this week was the beta release of Google Wave.  After having spent a little time playing around with it yesterday and today, I thought I'd post a short Audioboo with my initial impressions:

If you still don't know what Google Wave is, check out this useful introductory video:

And if you want to message me on Google Wave, my address is pete.black@googlewave.com. 

(Unfortunately I do not have any more invites to give away, so there is no point in asking.  Sorry.)

12 January 2009: a decisive day in the history of intellectual property?

Three days ago, YouTube permanently disabled the account of critic and commentator Kevin B. Lee, suggesting that YouTube is cracking down on critical video essays posted to the site:

Kevin’s video essays wed critical commentary or conversation to clips from copyright films in a “teaching” context, and most of them were created as part of his project to “view every film on the list of 1000 greatest films of all time, as compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don�t They?.” Kevin says he received a copyright warning earlier today in regards to his video essay on …And God Created Woman. It was the first time YouTube had ever slapped his wrist over one of the video essays, although they had contacted him about two unaltered clips in the past, one from The Sorrow and Pity and one from Dames. Three strikes, and Kevin’s out — YouTube has removed all 70 of his videos, including 40 original video essays. If you’ve embedded one of these in your own blog, that embed will now be unplayable.

Kevin has his own personal archive and can potentially re-upload the clips; he says he’ll investigate other online video sharing options. But YouTube is still the biggest game in town, and Kevin says he’ll miss it. “I’ll miss not only the unparalleled audience reach, but the cool stats that YouTube had to offer (like learning that viewers would rewind repeatedly to watch Bardot’s bare ass in my video essay for …And God Created Woman),” he noted in an email. “But that’s nothing compared to having the right to share my work in the first place.”

Kevin is one of a number of people producing film criticism via online video who have had trouble with YouTube of late. These videos represent the first real advance in film criticism as an art form in, at least, decades; other video sharing platforms may remain more friendly to copyright borrowers for awhile, but ultimately this practice may have to either move underground or disappear.

Read more here (from SpoutBlog).  In a passionate (and lengthy) post on The House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz thinks 12 January 2009 might be a decisive day in the history of intellectual property:

Kevin has copies of all his work, and I'm sure it will show up again somewhere, sometime. But the obliteration of YouTube as a global platform for his voice is a crime of greater magnitude than anything he did to create the video essays in the first place. YouTube is the town square of the 21st century—rather like a gigantic virtual mall that is, technically speaking, a private space, but which operates as a public sphere: a gathering spot, a cultural and political crossroads. By scourging Kevin's work from this crossroads and banning his video essays—and, potentially, all similar work—from YouTube, the company is allowing the powerful to muzzle the near-powerless. And it is endorsing the idea that in cases involving intellectual property law and the Internet, filmmakers can be deemed guilty, silenced, then made to plead for their right to speak.

There's also an unspoken class bias at work here, a bully mentality that chooses its targets based on who's likely to fight back and win. Consider commercial TV, which is filled with programs that routinely air copyrighted material without permission for purposes of journalism, satire or simple entertainment. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report don't ask permission to air any of the news clips they slice and dice each night for yuks; they consider a network's onscreen logo to be acknowledgment enough, and their assumption is almost never challenged. Talk shows don't think twice about airing a rival network's news footage or clips from a popular or notorious TV program in order to spark a discussion or anchor a satirical montage. Infotainment shows compile film clips for use in movie star obituaries—not just electronic presskit snippets meant for PR purposes, but clips from older movies that predate EPKs and that might have originally aired on some corporate competitor's channel—and the movie's copyright holders don't object. The shows that feature such clips are routinely repurposed on the parent company's websites, often with ads and sometimes with embedding functions that allow the clip to be reproduced by bloggers, and there are not currently, to the best of my knowledge, any lawsuits seeking to stop the practice. Kings wink at each other. Peasants get the axe.

Kevin B. Lee is not Napster; he's not some guy uploading every frame of every Bette Davis movie for kicks; he's not even Goldentusk. He's a critic and scholar doing work that could be considered, at worst, compelling free ads for essential pop art. YouTube, by reflexively siding with whichever party has more money and power, has renounced its founding spirit.

There should be a way to distinguish between piracy-for-profit (or unauthorized, free redistribution) and creative, interpretive, critical or political work that happens to use copyrighted material. And there must be an alternative to unilateral takedowns. The issues aren't just legal, they're practical. History has demonstrated that there's no copyright protection that can't be defeated, no corporate edict that can't be subverted. And given the technological sophistication that permits digital watermarking, there ought to be a way to make sampling of any sort, authorized or not, scaled to suit the filmmakers' means, profitable for the rights holders, and as fully automated as the copyright-infringement-scouring that's currently happening all over the Internet.

Whatever the solutions, they should be something other than one-size-fits-all. Digital watermarking abusers are engaged in an unwinnable war—one that, in its present state, will only produce collateral damage and make them increasingly unsympathetic, and therefore more likely to be demonized and resisted. The entertainment industry's unwillingness to recognize the plain fact that people have complex, idiosyncratic and yes, possessive relationships to songs, films and TV shows—relationships that are qualitatively different from their relationships to cars, hats, shoes and beer—contributes to a culture of calcified mutual resentment, and a public mindset (manifested most vividly in generations that cannot remember life before the Internet) that sees big entertainment companies as lead-footed dopes—Elmer Fudd blasting every rabbit hole in sight hoping to hit Bugs Bunny.

The situation as it stands is immoral, untenable and, I believe, a violation of fundamental rights. Almost nobody taking part in the early phases of digital media has the money to fight the Googles and Viacoms of the world, and of course that's what the takedown gremlins are counting on; injustice not resisted eventually becomes tradition. I fervently hope some brave, knowledgeable lawyer will see that there's more at stake here than the ethics of ripping and posting scenes from movies, and make a test case of Kevin's unconscionable treatment. The circumstances may seem mundane, but the implications are grim as can be. When individuals and governments permit corporations to dictate the terms by which their culture may be examined, the First Amendment becomes just another pile of words.

Read more here.

Anonymous defamation

The New York Daily News reports on a lawsuit against Google, as host of Blogger.com:

A Vogue cover girl is suing Google in an attempt to unmask the blogger who trashed her as a "skank" and an "old hag."

Liskula Cohen, a blond beauty who has modeled for Giorgio Armani and Versace, made headlines last year when a doorman at a Manhattan hot spot was jailed after smashing her in the face with a vodka bottle.

Now she wants to force Google to reveal who slammed her online as the "#1 skanky superstar" on a blog hosted by the search engine's subsidiary.

"It's petty, it's stupid and it's pathetic," Cohen said of the sniping. "And when I do find out who did this, at least I'll know who my enemies are."

The defamation suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, seeks a court order compelling Google and its Blogger.com service to identify whoever led the vicious Internet assault against Cohen.

Her lawyer Steven Wagner conceded it's not easy to identify bloggers who lob insults anonymously, as New York courts have generally declined to force them into the light.

"We think we have a case," he said. "This is libelous, it's defamatory and you shouldn't just get away with this."

Read more here.  Ars Technica summarises in lay terms the legal hurdles presented by this case:

Since the blogger is anonymous, however, there is an extra legal hurdle between Cohen and whatever financial revenge she seeks.

That hurdle would be Google and its army of lawyers. Essentially, Cohen has to demonstrate defamation twice: once to show that she has a sufficient case that the identity of the blogger should be unmasked. At that point, the case could proceed against the actual author of the blog, at which point the defamation would have to be demonstrated all over again. None of this will be easy, as US courts generally set a high standard for defamation of public figures, and Cohen has made a name for herself in ways that go beyond modeling by getting hit in the face with a vodka bottle at a Manhattan club.

As a result, the case appears to be an uphill battle, which means both that nothing is likely to come of it and that, should something unexpected happen, the legal context makes it likely that the decision will further muddy the waters when it comes to determining the legal status of bloggers.

Read more here. 

It is interesting to consider what the legal position would be if this had occurred in Australia, as I think it would be easier for Cohen to obtain relief.  That is because Cohen would be able sue Google for defamation.  In the US, Google has immunity courtesy of s 230 of the Communications Decency Act, however no such immunity exists in Australia and Google would be unlikely to be able rely on the defence of innocent dissemination.  However, even if Cohen did not sue Google, she would be able to use the threat of a lawsuit as leverage to require Google to disclose the identity of the anonymous blogger.  And ultimately that is where these sorts of lawsuits should be fought - between the person alleging defamation and the party who posted it to the internet - without involving the intermediaries or platforms who should not be liable for what others post to that intermediary or platform.

"Embarrassment is only a math problem away"

I had a piece in The Courier Mail this morning on Google's ridiculous Mail Goggles application.  I'd suggested the headline for the piece should be "Embarrassment is only a math problem away", but instead they went for "Google math test will prove no barrier for the determined drunk" in the print version and "Drunks outsmart Google" in the online version.  Anyway, you can read my piece here.

Google Street View and privacy

I have a piece in today's Courier Mail that wonders what the privacy issue is with Google Street View.  You can read it here.

The end of the Patry Copyright Blog

William Patry has decided to end his blog, The Patry Copyright Blog.  This is a loss to the IP blogosphere and the blogosphere in general, but after reading his final post you will understand why.  For him, it came down to two things.  First, the refusal or inability of many people to accept that it was a personal blog where he expressed his opinions and his opinions alone (rather than those of his employer Google).  And second, because he finds the current state of copyright law too depressing.  What also disappointing for anyone who loves copyright law is that he also seems to have removed his rich archive of posts from the last four years.  Anyway, while I fully understand his position, it is still sad all the same.

Search 4.0

The Future of Search blog writes about wanting to put humans back in search:

Previously I’ve covered what I dubbed Search 3.0, how search engines have evolved toward blending vertical or specialized results into “regular” web listings. Today, the step beyond that: Search 4.0, how personal, social and human-edited data can be used to refine search results.

The Search Evolution So Far

Before going ahead, let me summarize what I covered in my past article, in  terms of how search engines have changed over time to create and rank the  results you get when doing a search:

• Search 1.0 (1996): Pages ranked using “on-the-page” criteria
• Search 2.0 (1998): Pages ranked using “off-the-page” criteria
• Search 3.0 (2007): Vertical search results blended into regular search    results

The evolution above is not perfect. For one thing, some “Search 3.0″ blending started to happen years before 2007. It’s just that in 2007, I felt all the major search engines made the leap into Search 3.0 in a significant way.

...

Search 4.0: The Human Factor

Onward to Search 4.0! As I said in my opening, to me this is the move for search engines to make use of human data as part of their ranking systems. In particular, it means human data generated by you, by those you know or by human editors.

Search engines already make use of some human data. All the major search engines, for example, monitor what we click on within the search results. This helps them determine if a particular listing is drawing more or less clicks than would be expected for the position it holds. For example, if the number two listing for a particular query is getting less clicks than “normal” for a listing in that spot, perhaps it’s a bad quality listing that should be replaced with another.

Another example: all the major search engines make heavy use of link data — and that link data is largely human data, humans both “voting” with their links and “tagging” pages by the words they use in the links. Google Now Reporting  Anchor Text Phrases and Google Kills Bush’s  Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs provide more about how links  are used in this fashion.

When I talk about putting human data into search results as part of Search 4.0, I mean things that are more aggressive or active than what I’ve covered above. I’ll start off with the most refined Search 4.0 implementation out there, Google’s personalized results.

Google: Search 4.0 Gets Personal

With Google Personalized Search, the web pages you visit, bookmark and things you click on within search results at Google are used to custom-tailor search results for you. The personalization is not as dramatic as with a place like Amazon, where if you purchase a book once, Amazon seems to continually push similar books like that at you forever. Shifts are far more subtle, mainly to help elevate results from sites you

Read more here.

Rethinking copyright law

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington comments on YouTube-Viacom copyright showdown (see my earlier post from today here) and offers some insightful observations on the need to rethink copyright law:

There was more posturing today in the big YouTube-Viacom copyright showdown that began around the time that Google acquired YouTube and started talking to big copyright holders about paying them to get their content legally onto the popular video site. It spun out of control from there until it became a billion dollar lawsuit.

Normally I’m on the side of whoever’s against the copyright holders and their agenda of ever-expanding rights on these types of issues. They will stop at nothing to preserve their expired business models.

In this case, though, I’m just as afraid of YouTube, which still aims to get rights to show all, or virtually all, professionally produced television and film content. Their goal is simple - copy the adsense model and get the same stranglehold on advertising around video that they have around search.

That may be more difficult for Google than sewing up search was, since there are so many players determined to stop them before they get a proper foothold. The music guys got hooked on the iTunes fees and still haven’t been able to get off the juice. Their tv and film cousins are fully aware of what happens if a single middleman gets too much power.

What’s Best For The Internet?

The front lines of the copyright war are the ISP and service provider skirmishes. The MPAA and RIAA continue to fight consumers directly, of course, but their only real chance of locking down the Internet and file trading/steaming is to go after the companies that allow it to happen. In 1998 the DMCA made copyright infringement even more illegal than it already was, but also gave service providers a safe harbor to protect them against infringement by their users.

Did/does YouTube properly comply with the DMCA? That’s pretty much irrelevant at this point. What matters is the law going forward. And since this case is likely to go to trial, there’s a good chance that new law will be created. Exactly what is decided, and how Congress reacts, will have a big impact on the Internet going forward.

My position is that it’s bad to criminalize natural behavior. And watching a clip of The Office, whether it’s legally on Hulu or illegally on YouTube is natural behavior. The only question is whether or not people are getting sued, or going to jail, for doing it.

It’s time to rethink copyright laws, and it’s time for copyright holders to rethink their business models. The winners won’t be the companies that win or lose billion dollar lawsuits. It’ll be the companies that throw out everything that’s come before, and build new businesses around the natural behavior of people. Remove friction and win.

Read it here.

Viacom "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression"

Google is arguing hard that there is something very important at stake in Viacom's action against YouTube:

Google's lawyers suggest that Viacom's strategy in its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube is to subvert the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's protection of websites and Internet service providers and "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression." The argument is set forth in a response to Viacom's amended complaint filed in April, which cited 150,000 examples of infringing content, which together had been viewed 1.5 billion times.

Google's response said that the company goes above and beyond to help rightsholders police the site, to answer Viacom's allegation that the company does "little or nothing." "To the contrary, the availability on the YouTube site of a vast library of the copyrighted works of plaintiffs and others is the cornerstone of defendants' business plan," argued the Viacom counsel. Google's response also demands a trial by jury, moving further away from any possibility for a settlement.

Read more here (from Valleywag).  Google may be overstating their case a little, but there is truth behind what they are arguing.

Google diminishing domain names

At WebProNews, Barry Welford asks is Google driving down the value of domain names?

Robin Cannon in Search Engine Journal asks the somewhat puzzling question, ‘Is Google Trumping The URL?‘ Apparently more and more people use Google to find websites than type in the URL in the address bar of their browser. As he says:

When there’s a simple box to fill in with your search term, and you know exactly what you’re looking, why bother to use the address bar? If statistics on popular searches are anything to go by, it looks like many people aren’t bothering with that inconvenient “www” and “.com” and are just going straight through Google.

Hitwise UK just published its most searched for brands 2007 statistics, and the fastest rising US search terms are widely available. Both suggest that Google users know exactly where they want to browse to, and just use the search box to give them the link to click.

It’s certainly an intriguing finding. It brings with it a very important downgrading of the value of a dot-com domain name ...

Using the Google search box instead of the address bar opens up a whole new world. Typing in only the domain name without the dot-com may or may not bring you to the dot-com website. It all depends what Google feels is the most relevant result for the word you have typed in. If you can get your dot-net, dot-org or dot-ca website to be #1 in Google, then you’ll win the searcher’s click. Dot-com domains are no longer invincible on the web. As so often happens, the Internet with Google’s help is levelling the playing field

Read more here.

Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle

TechCrunch looks at some of the domain names owned by Google:

Uptime monitoring service Pingdom has put together a list of thousands of .com domain names owned by Google, based on an analysis of the root zone file. They then verified the most interesting ones with WHOIS information. Does GoogleWarnerbros.com represent a future partnership, or a failed tryout? Googlereligion.com? Why not. Googlepoo.com? Sure.

View the list here.  But these are some of the more interesting ones:

• 30dayfitness.com
• bayareaburritos.com
• donationcard.com
• essentialmommy.com
• google4kids.com
• googlebackups.com
• googleauction.com
• googlebroadband.com
• googlefamily.com
• googlelovers.com
• googlepersonals.com
• googlereligion.com
• googlefaith.com
• googlegym.com
• googledaycare.com
• bankgoogle.com
• fuckengoogle.com
• gmailblows.com
• gmailsucks.com
• googlefools.com
• googlemotherfucker.com
• googlepoo.com
• googlesucks.com

Google Me

CNET News.com reports on an unusual new film:

You know you've done it. Like just almost anyone who knows how to use a computer, I'm willing to bet you've googled your own name to see what's out there about you, and to see who else has the same name.

In the case of a sometimes actor from Los Angeles named Jim Killeen, that search instinct not only led to at least 24 namesakes, but also to a documentary about his experiences tracking some of them down and visiting them around the world.

Killeen's film, Google Me, which he is debuting on Friday on YouTube, is an exploration of identity, modern technology, the human soul and, among other things, chili.

Along the way, Killeen tracked down six fellow Jim Killeens: a priest from Cobh, Ireland; a traffic engineer from Edinburgh, Scotland; a CEO from Melbourne, Australia; a "sexual swinger" from Denver; a retired police detective from New York City; and a father of eight from St. Louis.

The goal? To find out who Jim Killeen is, in all his shapes and sizes, and to try to pin down what, exactly, is in a name.

Read more here.

Googolopoly

Box.net presents Googolopoly:

At Box, we obviously spend a lot of time talking about what’s going on on the internet. With such a high quantity of real and rumored products and acquisitions announcements, Google obviously gets a lot of attention in our animated discussions. In the last few months, Google Health, AppEngine, Knol, Android, OpenSocial, Sites, and the rumored Skype acquisition (is that even real or just propaganda?) were some of the most talked-about topics. We often come to the conclusion that Google’s way to do business with other companies and interest in controling the information age makes the company look more and more like the software monopoly of yesteryears. Overall, it’s questionable whether such a powerful position made the world better or worse…

One day we got tired of being serious about the situation and came up with Googolopoly, a game where you can take part of ruling the internet even if you don’t work in Mountain View. The goal of the game is to use Google shares to buy as many properties as you can without landing in the deadpool and losing your stock. As with any great board game, there’s a very real metaphor to what’s going on…. What happens when the Google monster gobbles up all that is left in the web world, is present on your cell phone, desktop, and even controls your health information? For all their product excellence, the threat of amassing this much data is too serious to ignore. Anyway, at Box.net, we’ll work to continue to build superior products and keep those mountain-viewers honest.

To download the game in its entirety (including instructions, google shares, googleplex pieces, and more), visit here: http://www.box.net/shared/dguu2bfy88

Play the game here.

"Boring" couple sues

A fun find by The Wall Street Journal Law Blog:

The Law Blog had never heard of Google Street Views until we came across this Smoking Gun story about Aaron and Christine Boring. To be honest, we’re a bit unhappy with Google “Street Views” because we can’t seem to find our home using the program. The Borings are unhappy because they can.

The Borings, a Pittsburgh couple, are suing Google for “intentional and/or grossly reckless invasion” of privacy because Google’s “Street View” feature has made their home viewable on the Internet.

According to the suit, filed this week in Allegheny County’s Court of Common Pleas and viewable on the Smoking Gun, the Borings bought their house (complete with two garages and a swimming pool) in 2006 “for a considerable sum of money” ($163,000, reports the Smoking Gun). The Borings note that a “major component of their purchase decision was a desire for privacy,” demonstrated by a sign on their street that reads ‘Private Road.’” But when Pittsburgh was added to the cities covered by Google’s “Street View” feature, the Borings allege, their “private information” became known “to the public at large with the commensurate risks that this entails,” causing them “mental suffering” and diminishing the value of their home. The Borings request $25,000 in damages.

According to the Smoking Gun, the Boring property (pictured) is now even easier to locate via Google Maps because the Borings included their home address on the lawsuit’s first page.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

UPDATE:

A Google spokeswoman issued the following statement:

There is no merit to this action. It is unfortunate litigation was chosen to address the concern because we have visible tools, such as a YouTube video, to help people learn about imagery removal and an easy-to-use process to facilitate image removal.

As a matter of policy, imagery for Street View is taken in public streets and what any person can readily capture or see in the public domain. Street View is a popular, engaging feature that allows people to easily find, discover, and plan activities relevant to a location.

Read more here.

Trademark trouble for Google

Media Post's Just an Online Minute considers a series of trademark lawsuits against Google:

When Google decided four years ago to allow trademarked names to trigger paid search ads, the company had to have anticipated that litigation would result.

And it has. American Airlines, insurance giant Geico and computer services company Rescuecom are among those that have sued Google for trademark infringement. They’ve all complained that Google allows their rivals to bid to appear as a sponsored link when users type their names into the query box.

They tend to argue that they’ve built goodwill in their brand names and that it isn’t fair for rivals to capitalize on that by using those brands to trigger ads. Rescuecom went even further than that in a federal appellate court this week. In an argument before the Second Circuit, Rescuecom’s lawyer said that consumers who search on the company’s name expect to see the company — and only the company — in the sponsored results.

But that argument doesn’t appear to be supported by any empirical evidence. In fact, Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, told MediaPost that studies show the contrary: People use brand names as shorthand for broad categories. Certainly in the offline world, people have long done so, using “xerox,” for example, synonymously with “copy.”

Another factor that Rescuecom — and American Airlines and the other litigants — aren’t considering is that people conduct searches for companies for a variety of reasons beyond simply wanting to navigate to retail sites. For instance, if people want to know about Rescuecom’s reputation, they probably don’t want to get that information from the company itself but from more objective sources. That’s one of the reasons why the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in on the case, arguing that allowing companies the opportunity to bid on a trademarked term can help protect free speech.

Read more here.

Resisting YouTube's lure

MediaWeek reports on the growing trend of saying "no" to YouTube:

Based on the recent slew of online video distribution deals, media’s biggest companies are sending YouTube a clear message: We don’t need you.

At least that’s the stance of companies like Viacom and NBC Universal, which continue to resist placing their content on the Web’s largest video site (the site reached 75 million people in December, according to comScore).

Indeed, a year after Viacom and YouTube began their staring contest—starting with video clips being pulled off the site and, soon after, leading to a lawsuit—neither company has blinked.

Since then, save for CBS, few major broadcasters have signed syndication deals with YouTube even as they put more video all over the Web ...

Acquired by Google in October 2006, YouTube has yet to establish itself as a legitimate, comprehensive hub for professionally produced content. And perhaps as an indirect result, it remains a minor player in the booming online video ad market, according to digital buyers and sellers.

Theories abound as to why media conglomerates won’t work with YouTube: They don’t want to give Google more power; YouTube only pays lips service to protecting copyrights; Google’s terms are just too rigid.

Some also point to YouTube’s user-gen sensibility and lack of ad-friendly professional content as holding the site back. “Not a lot of advertisers are willing to throw their brand into that environment,” said Kristen Fergason, vp, marketing at Maven Networks, which powers Web video for Fox News and Scripps.

Read more here.

Real estate, Google and defamation

From The Age:

'So sue me' taunt to agents over 'defamatory' web articles

Peter Gregory

CONSUMER advocate Neil Jenman has called on two South Yarra real estate agents to sue him for defamation after they launched legal action to stop internet access to two of his articles.

Paul Castran, managing director of the firm Castran Gilbert, and the company's sales director Mark Forytarz say they have been defamed by allegations of improper or illegal behaviour.

The allegations are contained in two articles from Mr Jenman's website, which could be seen when the agents' names were entered on internet search engine Google.

A Supreme Court statement of claim lodged in December said they sought action by Google to remove access to the articles, but it was not done.

The claim said the first article depicted Mr Forytarz as an unscrupulous and unethical real estate agent.

It said the article suggested he bullied and badgered a severely brain damaged man into selling his house to earn commission — for himself and his agency — of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"(Mr) Forytarz has been gravely injured in his reputation and feelings, and has suffered distress, embarrassment and humiliation, and has thereby suffered and will continue to suffer loss and damage," the document said.

The claim said the second article suggested Mr Castran repeatedly, deliberately and knowingly flouted the law by employing others to act as dummy bidders, and was guilty of a crime.

It said he was also gravely injured in his reputation, and suffered damage through distress, embarrassment and humiliation.

Outside court yesterday, Mr Jenman said he was bemused that he was not sued. "Why wouldn't they attack the person who is making the comments about them?" he said.

"My (comment) is: 'Here's my chest. Come on, take a shot at me.' "

Yesterday in court, Justin Quill, for the two men, said they were respected real estate agents whose names, when "Googled", produced very offensive material from the stories.

He said the items were defamatory, without doubt.

Matthew Stirling, for the company, said Google Inc, not Google Australia, operated the search engine.

He said Google Australia did not have access to the data, and could not remove what was said to be the offending material.

Mr Stirling said the plaintiffs had indicated legal action might not be necessary if the articles were removed.

Justice Stephen Kaye adjourned the hearing to March 7. He also made orders adding Google's international arm to the court action.

Read more here.

"Rumor: Plaxo Sold to Google for $200M?"

From Wired's Epicenter blog:

We're hearing rumors that online contact management service Plaxo has accepted a sub-$200 million offer and that the purchasing company is most likely search engine Google.

Plaxo has been in the news recently, reportedly hiring a bank to shepherd a sale. A representative for Plaxo declined to confirm or deny the deal, saying that the company has a policy of not commenting on M&A rumors.

Read more here.  If true, this would certainly help the Google sync problems Plaxo has, but I hope Google doesn't neglect it like it did Jaiku.

What to expect from Google Book Search

Campus Technology  presents the "Google Book Search: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly":

Yes, Google is opening up whole new worlds for internet surfers and researchers everywhere-even before the model is ready.

FORGET EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVE about Google's book digitization project. Once you get past the freakishly high numbers bandied about, the two-dozen-plus distinguished institutions that have signed on, the legal paranoia and the ultra-ultra-secret processes and technologies involved-you'll find that Book Search (from the fifth most valuable company in America) is simply another high-cost effort that is simultaneously visionary and crude. It doesn't even have to succeed in order to impact the transformation of scholarship activities.

Read more here.

      

Need more Facebook friends?

The unofficial Facebook blog allfacebook has drawn my attention to a new Facebook feature - Facebook will now suggest friends for you.  This is a screenshot of the new option, which you can find under "Account" and then "Email Notifications":

Unless you have no friends I'm not sure how useful this feature will be.  That said, I've now turned this feature "On" just to see how Facebook might suggest ...

Google on Microsoft and Yahoo; Microsoft responds

Google has come out in a blog post on the Official Google Blog by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, and stated that:

Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

Read the full post here.  Microsoft, of course, rejects Google's arguments.  The New York Times has a good summary of Google's and Microsoft's position:

Google said in a blog post on its Web site that given Microsoft’s anti-competitive conduct in the past and its continued dominance in the technology industry, the proposed transaction could pose threats to “innovation and openness” on the Internet. But Google’s broadly worded concerns lacked detailed claims about the anticompetitive effects of the deal, and the company did not ask federal regulators to take any specific actions at this time.

“Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?” asked David Drummond, Google senior vice president and chief legal officer, writing on the company’s blog. “While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.”

Yahoo declined to comment. Yahoo has said it is weighing Microsoft’s hostile offer and alternatives.

Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said in a statement on Sunday that the deal would create more, not less, competition “by establishing a compelling No. 2 competitor for Internet search and online advertising.” Mr. Smith noted that Yahoo and Microsoft combined would have 30 percent of the United States search market, far less than Google’s 65 percent share.

But Google appears to want to focus the debate, at least in part, on issues other than advertising, where it is dominant. Mr. Drummond noted that the combination of Yahoo and Microsoft would create a company with an “overwhelming share” of the instant messaging and e-mail markets.

“Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ e-mail, IM, and Web-based services?” Mr. Drummond asked. Yahoo and Microsoft also run two of the most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet, Mr. Drummond noted.

Google’s reaction suggests the Internet search giant may be preparing to do its best to derail or delay any merger. If so, the strategy would mirror Microsoft’s own actions with respect to Google’s proposed acquisition of online advertising specialist DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.

Read more here.  Read more about this at Google Watch here, GigaOM here, Mashable here and here, Eight Black here, ReadWriteWeb here, and Ars Technica here.  But my favourite commentary came from TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, whose clearly not feeling the love from Google on this:

Google finally went on the record today regarding the proposed Microsoft/Yahoo deal.

In short, they don’t like the idea of Microsoft and Yahoo being one company. They think it raises “troubling questions” and threatens “the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.” Microsoft is also vilified as engaging in “inappropriate and illegal influence” and having “legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses.” They mention, among other things, the overwhelming market share in instant messaging and email, and the large number of page views their respective portals generate.

But 2008 may be the year Google can no longer hide behind the “David v. Goliath” defense with Microsoft. Google is the reason that Yahoo has stumbled so badly, and may be Microsoft’s last hope to be a meaningful player on the Internet over the long run. To put it bluntly, the roles are reversed. Google is now the Goliath, and they’re public whimpering on the acquisition makes them look petty and scared.

The fact is that this deal isn’t about email, IM or even page views. In the places that matter - search share and advertising dollars, Google is slaying everyone. 2007 Google search share: 64%. Percentage of all online ad dollars going to Google in 2007: 40% and growing.

The truth is that Google has become the new Microsoft, and if we want to avoid a repeat of history, we need to allow the formation of a real competitor to keep them honest. Otherwise, all the ills perpetrated on the world by Microsoft in the nineties will likely be repeated again, this time by Google.

When it comes to Google standing up to the FCC and the incumbent wireless carriers to make our life better, I’m behind them 100%. But when the complain about the formation of a new entity that can provide them real competition in the search and online advertising space, I’m not feeling the love.

Read more here.

Google to kill domain tasting

Good news from Google, according to the Domain Tools Blog:

A confidential informant says Google will stop monetizing all domains if they are less then five days old. This potential new policy change by Google could stop all Domain Tasting in its tracks. The Add Grace Period (AGP) is a time period when registrars can delete a domain at no cost, but in this time frame a registrant could register millions of these temporary domains and place Google Adsense for Domains on them. The result is the ability to produce millions of temporary websites that literally generate millions of dollars in income per week for Google. It was disclosed in court that one partner that Google had was generating as much as $3 million dollars a month from the practice and that was after Google’s revenue share. Oversee.net and other companies have been using this practice for years and it will have a direct impact on them. The gravy train of free money might be coming to a halt very fast. This policy change at Google should be announced to the channel partners soon and it will have a huge echoing impact on the Industry.

The Good news is that the Quantity of advertising will be spread among fewer domains now and so those domain owners that actually own real full domains should receive more money if bid prices start to rise as a result of this. However some advocates of Domain Tasting say that perhaps no one will be able to serve the niche for some ads and no one will make money on the unserved ads.

I think this is a return of the “Be Good” motto Google had a few years ago.

Read more here.

Widget watch

Clint Boulton at Google Watch says the world is warming to widgets:

This just in: Google doesn't lead every market it's in. No, it's true. According to the latest November 2007 widget stats from comScore, Google has the sixth widest widget-viewing audience with more than 19 million viewers.

MySpace.com widgets had the widest audience, reaching more than 57 million Internet users. Slide.com, which just banked $50 million in investment funds, ranked second with 39.2 million viewers. Nearly 148 million U.S. Internet users viewed widgets, confirming that the public is wild about widgets.

What is a widget? Widgets are lightweight applications that can be embedded or downloaded onto another site and can update content on the fly or be interactive. Widgets have been created for news feeds, weather reports and rolling stock quotes. They can also be interactive games requiring multiple players.

Google calls its widgets Gadgets, while Facebook, which facilitated the widget craze when it opened up its platform to third-party developers last May, calls its widgets applications.

Because Facebook apps require users to interact with the applications (other widgets, such as Gadgets, are measured in terms of views or exposures) Facebook now gets its own reporting metrics at comScore.

Facebook apps are also doing quite well; more than 20 million Facebook visitors, most of whom were between the ages of 18 and 24, engaged with an application in November.

Slide, which owes its latest investment round in part to its immense popularity on Facebook, saw three of its apps notch in Facebook's top 10 apps. Slides' Top Friends application was the leading Facebook application for the month, with more than 6.2 million engaged viewers. Slide's Superpoke! and FunWall garnered 3.6 million and 2.1 million users, respectively.

All of this is well and good, but what does it really mean for the market? After all, most of these are silly games that promote little more than entertainment. Well, yeah, but users of social sites that offer widgets are going to stay on longer.

Widgets promote stickiness, and should Facebook, Google, MySpace and the others continue to create innovative widget ads that interact with people in a non-intrusive way, widgets will became major revenue mechanisms. At the least, they provide another weapon in these vendors' arsenals as they fight for ad dollars.

That's in the near term. Longer term, I expect widgets, like the broader social network technologies, to bleed over into the enterprise. I believe you'll increasingly see widgets pop up in enterprise social networks.

Read more here.

AFP is not a fan of Web 2.0

On Tuesday I blogged about how a UK lecturer had banned their students from using Google and Wikipedia (see here), but it seems as though academia is not the only sector to be concerned about using Wikipedia and other new media:

It’s one thing for Agence France Presse to ban its workforce from using Wikipedia content as reference material. It’s a whole other level of ridiculous to put the kibosh on Facebook citations. If reporters can’t tap the Web’s social networking space for fodder, what will the 24-hour news cycle come to? Madness, we say. Madness.

Okay, perhaps the tone of that intro there wasn’t exactly a just portrayal of the steps the AFP has taken recently in an effort to tighten up that journalistic integrity thing news critics have been carping on about for…a long, long, long time. It’s certainly true that both Wikipedia and Facebook have their respective problems concerning facts and falsities.

But for the AFP to prevent its foot soldiers from “relying on many new ‘virtual’ sources for news” seems a tad too generalistic a move. Rather, journalists – as well as their editors – should take it upon themselves to learn the ways of Web 2.0, and adapt their investigative methods to encompass modern Internet services. Shunning Facebook outright does neither the AFP or its readership any good.

Yes, errors have been made by journalists concerning authentication of Web-based sources, and they should be addressed. But there has never been a time when reporters ever relayed truths – and nothing but truths. Mistakes have continually been made since the genesis of the Gutenberg. So the issues raised over the need to clamp down on any referencing of digital material are really nothing to worry extensively over. As long as repairs to news records are made in a timely fashion, journalists should be open to explore most all noteworthy facets of the Web.

Read more here (from Mashable).

Google to host open source scientific data

Wired reports that Google is to host terabytes of open-source scientific datasets:

Sources at Google have disclosed that the humble domain, http://research.google.com, will soon provide a home for terabytes of open-source scientific datasets. The storage will be free to scientists and access to the data will be free for all. The project, known as Palimpsest and first previewed to the scientific community at the Science Foo camp at the Googleplex last August, missed its original launch date this week, but will debut soon.

Building on the company's acquisition of the data visualization technology, Trendalyzer, from the oft-lauded, TED presenting Gapminder team, Google will also be offering algorithms for the examination and probing of the information. The new site will have YouTube-style annotating and commenting features.

The storage would fill a major need for scientists who want to openly share their data, and would allow citizen scientists access to an unprecedented amount of data to explore. For example, two planned datasets are all 120 terabytes of Hubble Space Telescope data and the images from the Archimedes Palimpsest, the 10th century manuscript that inspired the Google dataset storage project.

UPDATE (12:01pm): Attila Csordas of Pimm has a lot more details on the project, including a set of slides that Jon Trowbridge of Google gave at a presentation in Paris last year.

Read more here.  See also Mashable's coverage here.

Generation Google

Ars Technica summarises an interesting British report on how young people use the internet:

A new UK report on the habits of the "Google Generation" finds that kids born since 1993 aren't quite the Internet super-sleuths they're sometimes made out to be. For instance, are teens better with technology than older adults? Perhaps, but they also "tend to use much simpler applications and fewer facilities than many imagine."

The report (PDF), sponsored by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee, tries to get beyond the stereotypes to find out just how good young people are with information technology, and what the implications are for schools and libraries.

...

It's true that young people prefer interactive systems to passive ones and that they are generally competent with technology, but it's not true that students today are "expert searchers." In fact, the report calls this "a dangerous myth." Knowing how to use Facebook doesn't make one an Internet search god, and the report concludes that a literature review shows no movement (either good or bad) in young people's information skills over the last several decades. Choosing good search terms is a special problem for younger users.

...

Another common trope is that respect for authority on the Web is dead (with Wikipedia usually cited as an example) and that there are no more "experts" on the Internet; it's all about peer knowledge. The report calls this a "myth" as well, saying that "research in the specific context of the information resources that children prefer and value in a secondary school setting shows that teachers, relatives, and textbooks are consistently valued above the Internet."

...

So what's true about the Google generation?

• They like to cut-and-paste. "There is a lot of anecdotal evidence and plagiarism is a serious issue."
• They prefer visual information over text. "But text is still important... For library interfaces, there is evidence that multimedia can quickly lose its appeal, providing short-term novelty."
• They multitask all the time. "It is likely that being exposed to online media early in life may help to develop good parallel processing skills."

But libraries, generally headed by members of "the greatest generation" rather than the Google generation, need to be careful about how they try to meet the needs of the next generation. Jumping headfirst into hot new technologies like social networking can easily backfire. The report notes that some librarians are opening MySpace and Facebook pages, trying to make their services hipper to students, but that "there is a considerable danger that younger users will resent the library invading what they regard as their space."

Read more here.

Lecturer bans Google and Wikipedia

I must admit I was really surprised to see that this story - Lecturer bans students from using Google and Wikipedia - made news in the UK (via The Argus) in the first place, and was stunned to see it pick up internationally (see, for example, here).  I was surprised because I would have though almost all academics would prefer it if students used more rigorous academic and intellectual research methodologies than a few internet searches.  That is not to say that Google and Wikipedia can't be a part of research (indeed it is worth noting that both Google and Wikipedia may reveal to a researcher valid and interesting sources that more traditional searches may not), but simply that they should not be the beginning and the end of research.  While there is no doubt that to simply ban Google and Wikipedia is silly, it is equally silly that a sound-bite from one UK lecturer has made news all around the world.

Google and Facebook Join DataPortability.org

Exciting news via ReadWriteWeb (even if I am almost 24 hours late):

The DataPortability Workgroup announced this morning that representatives from both Google and Facebook are joining its ranks. The group is working on a variety of projects to foster an era of Data Portability - where users can take their data from the websites they use to reuse elsewhere and where vendors can leverage safe cross-site data exchange for a whole new level of innovation. Good bye customer lock-in, hello to new privacy challenges. If things go right, today could be a very important day in the history of the internet.

The non-participation of Google and Facebook, two companies that hold more user data and do more with it than almost any other consumer service on the market, was the biggest stumbling block to the viability of the project. These are two of the most important companies in recent history - what's being decided now is whether they will be walled-garden, data-horders or truly open platforms tied into a larger ecosystem of innovation with respect for user rights and sensible policies about data.

Read more here.

Update: Plaxo is also in.  (Hat tip: TechCrunch.)

Update II: Clint Boulton at Google Watch has a good summary of the issues and, in particular, about the significance of Facebook joining:

That Google and Plaxo joined is pretty much an afterthought for me. The ability to move data between social networks is what OpenSocial is supposed to be about, and Plaxo's Pulse is the epitome of such a phenomenon, so much so that data needs be portable if Pulse is going to work and Plaxo is to stay viable long enough for Yahoo or someone else to buy it.

Seriously though, folks in the blogosphere are making a big deal about Facebook joining because, well, companies such as Plaxo have been complaining that Facebook is a closed entity composed of two distinct sides: people who get the data portability thing and want to be open and those who set policy and want to keep control.

Plaxo's John McCrea told me recently Facebook believes there is only one social graph, and that exists within Facebook's walled garden.

Surely, no one can really believe the social graph should exist in one company. The notion is absurd and goes against the very notion of a social structure. My question for Facebook: Is it user privacy you're so concerned about, or just keeping the walled garden intact?

That sense of control you feel is false; the people own the social graph, so get used to it. Look how many people flocked to Robert Scoble's aid when it was perceived that he was booted for yanking out data.

It was more than the people who complained that Scoble was stealing their data, though their cries were heard loud and clear and underscore the privacy and security challenges that will face any entity trying to free data from social silos.

The participation of Facebook's Benjamin Ling in DataPortability shows the company gets the openness ideal, or at least pretends like it does. His joining Dataportability.org shows a thawing in Facebook's stance, at least from the outside world's perspective. Only the folks inside know what the climate is really like.

Read more here.

Wikia Search gets the thumbs down from critics

The San Jose Mercury News has a useful summary of the generally negative response to Wikia Search:

Jimmy Wales, the famous founder of Wikipedia, on Monday unveiled his new project with an unusual caveat. He warned that the quality of Wikia Search, a new open-source search engine edited by ordinary people, was "terrible."

Across the blogosphere, pundits pounced. But technologists at leading search companies defended Wales and said his efforts could benefit the entire industry.

Michael Arrington, founder of Techcrunch, which specializes in reviews of new technology, said Wikia Search "may be one of the biggest disappointments I've had the displeasure of reviewing."

"We need 'human powered search' like a fish needs a bicycle," wrote Andrew Heenan, who publishes an Internet marketing blog called Seo2seo.

For Wales the negative reaction was all too familiar. His first project, an online encyclopedia co-written by anonymous volunteers across the Internet, was also scornfully dismissed - until it became a wildly successful digital reference currently boasting more than 9 million articles in 253 languages.

In an interview, Wales said critics of Wikia Search are missing the point. "This is a project to build a search engine, not a search engine," he explained. (The project is located at www.wikia.com.) Wales said it will take a minimum of two years before Wikia Search produces results as good as the major search engines.

Read more here.  So I suppose we'll just have to wait and see ...

Google versus Capital Hill

A fascinating piece in The New Yorker looks at Google's relationship with US lawmakers:

In response to prodding by consumer activists, some government officials—notably Senator Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat—have begun to ask: Does Google, which today is among America’s ten richest corporations, with a market value of just over two hundred billion dollars, have too much power? (ExxonMobil, valued at just under five hundred billion, is No. 1.) Unlike Microsoft, which in 2000 was found guilty of anti-competitive behavior, a finding upheld in a federal appellate court, Google has not been charged with violating any laws. But there has never been a company whose influence extended so far over the media landscape, and which had the ability to disrupt so many existing business models. And its competitors share a vague worry that Google is more or less out to rule the world.

Read the whole piece here.

Google search tricks

Lifehacker lists ten obscure Google search tricks.  Read them here.

Google and Santa

From the Official Google Blog:

Now Dasher! Now Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen!

We're counting down the hours until Santa's flight around the world. On Monday, December 24th, starting at 1 am PST, visit noradsanta.org to track Santa with NORAD on his annual trip.

NORAD will use Google Maps to track several hundred of Santa's stops in over 200 countries and territories, and will embed videos of Santa's stops captured on their Santa Cams on the Google Map and post the videos on the NORAD Tracks Santa YouTube channel.

Want to see more of Santa? NORAD will also provide a downloadable Santa Tracker file to track several thousand of Santa's stops in Google Earth. Santa's visits are only a few seconds long, and then -- poof, he's off to the next location. Click on the gift icons in Google Maps or Google Earth to learn more about the cities that Santa visits.

Happy holidays from all of us at Google!

Read it here.

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.