Peter Black's Freedom to Differ

Vin Cerf on leveraging social media

Vin Cerf discussed how brands can leverage social media:

(Hat tip: Trevor Cook's Corporate Engagement.)

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.

Internet users getting more selfish

BBC News reports that we are getting more selfish when we hop online:

Web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online, reveals research.

The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online.

Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.

Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.

Search rules

Instead, many are "hot potato" driven and just want to get a specific task completed.

Success rates measuring whether people achieve what they set out to do online are now about 75%, said Dr Nielsen. In 1999 this figure stood at 60%.

There were two reasons for this, he said.

"The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment," Dr Nielsen told BBC News.

Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it, he said.

Read more here.

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.

What do people think this blog is?

I was looking at the Feedburner statistics for my blog this evening and was amused - and a little horrified - to discover in the past month that these were the top search terms that resulted in people visiting my blog:

Yes unfortunately my blog seems to be a magnet for people interested in sex (you porn, porn 2.0, weird sex positions) or want to access copyright infringing tv shows (freetube and peekvid).  I don't really know what to make of this list.  However, at the very least, I hope you don't think that my blog is as trashy as this list would suggest ...

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.

Some things never change

NewTeeVee reports that sex and hip hop are the most searched terms on YouTube:

"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.

They're saying what about me online?

In guest  Andy Beal, co-author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online and CEO of online reputation monitoring tool Trackur, Mashable offers ten tactics to save your online reputation.  Read them here.

Yahoo filters (censors?) the Pirate Bay

Torrent Freak blogs about Yahoo's decision to exclude the Pirate Bay from their search results:

Filtering or blocking the Pirate Bay is beginning to become a trend. Little over a week ago, a Danish court ordered the ISP “Tele2″ to block its customers access to The Pirate Bay. Soon after that the Kuwait government decided to do the same, and now Yahoo is also censoring the Internet.

In response to the news, Pirate Bay co-founder Brokep told TorrentFreak: “It’s dangerous to trust a company like Yahoo! when they filter the searches. It’s a new China, but this time Yahoo is the dictator. Yahoo should let the governments decide, not themselves. It’s dangerous when companies take the law into their own hands.”

It seems like The Pirate Bay is the only BitTorrent site that is filtered at the moment. Searches for Mininova and Isohunt are still working fine, Yahoo! even suggests you should try “mininova torrents”, “mininova downloads” and “mininova today downloads”, and more related searches.

It is not clear why Yahoo decided to filter The Pirate Bay, but seems unlikely that they did it because the site is often associated with copyright infringement. Perhaps Yahoo’s index is just screwed up? If we dig a little deeper, it turns out that not all Pirate Bay’s pages are gone.

Interestingly, Yahoo! was found guilty of infringing copyright themselves two months ago. During December last year, Yahoo China’s music search was confirmed illegal in a Beijing court ruling which stated that under new copyright laws it facilitates mass copyright infringement.

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.

Yahoo rejects Microsoft

From the Wall Street Journal:

Yahoo Inc.'s board plans to reject Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited $44.6 billion offer to acquire the Web giant, a person familiar with the situation says.

After a series of meetings over the past week, Yahoo's board determined that the $31 per share offer "massively undervalues" Yahoo, the person said. It also doesn't account for the risks Yahoo would be taking by entering into an agreement that might be overturned by regulators. The board plans to send a letter to Microsoft Monday, spelling out its position.

Yahoo's board believes that Microsoft's is trying to take advantage of the recent weakness in the company's share price to "steal" the company. The decision to reject the offer signals that Yahoo's board is digging in its heels for what could be a long takeover battle. The company is unlikely to consider any offer below $40 per share, the person said.

It's unclear whether Microsoft would be willing to pay such a premium, which would increase the value of its original cash and stock bid by more than $12 billion. The rejection comes as Yahoo's board has been considering various other scenarios, including a search advertising partnership Google Inc. Yahoo's directors are still considering that and other options that would safeguard the company's independence, people close the company say.

Read more here.

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.

      

Search engine law

There was a recent piece by Mark Anderson published by IEEE Spectrum, "The Gray Areas of Search-Engine Law" that raised a couple of interesting points:

The law is always playing catch-up with technology. But in the world of search-engine law, say some scholars, the courts have only begun to recognize the existence of a train leaving the station, let alone chase after it.  

The legal gray zones of Internet search are vast, says James Grimmelmann of New York Law School. But they still can be outlined and defined.

In an article in the November 2007 issue of the Iowa Law Review, Grimmelmann writes that four broad areas of law—intellectual property, free speech, antitrust, and the openness of search algorithms—are still very much up for grabs in Internet search. And the next few years could see rulings, settlements, or legislation that will put some of the key legal cornerstones in place.

“The biggest undefined area is how far fair use extends in copyright,” Grimmelmann says, referring to the doctrine that allows for use of copyrighted materials for the purposes of education, public interest, or parody. How broadly Google or Yahoo or any of their peers can claim fair use to index Web sites, databases, books, and other copyrighted content, he says, is the essential issue. And the pending lawsuits filed against Google’s new Book Search engine are where Grimmelmann says the biggest legal aftershocks could originate.

Read more here.  However, it also reminded me of a book chapter written by some of my colleagues at QUT: Fitzgerald, Brian F. and O'Brien, Damien S. and Fitzgerald, Anne M. (2007) "Search Engine Liability for Copyright Infringement".  It is available to download on QUT ePrints here.  This is the abstract:

The chapter provides a broad overview to the topic of search engine liability for copyright infringement. In doing so, the chapter examines some of the key copyright law principles and their application to search engines. The chapter also provides an import discussion of some of the most important cases to be decided within the courts of the United States, Australia, China and Europe regarding the liability of search engines for copyright infringement. Finally, the chapter will conclude with some thoughts for reform, including how copyright law can be amended in order to accommodate and realise the great informative power which search engines have to offer society.

More on Microsoft and Yahoo

Mark Cuban explains  Why Yahoo should say Yes to MicroSoft:

One thing about Jerry Yang that I always have admired is that he cares. He cares about his employees. He cares about his products. He cares about his shareholders. Most of all he cares about building a world class company that can be great at what it does.

If you look at Yahoo singularly, it is a great company. For he and David Filo to build a company with more than 6B in sales and more than 25B in market cap is an astounding feat . Unfortunately for Yahoo, it has had to weather both the Internet Bubble Bursting and the emergence of Google as a force in search and online advertising.

These are both issues because Wall Street has made them issues. The bubble speaks for itself. Google is a Wall Street issue for Yahoo because Wall Street wants Yahoo to keep up with the Googles.

That's a problem for Jerry. Building a world class Yahoo to be the best company it possibly can be using the management skills that Jerry and company have is a far different challenge than optimizing the stock price. Particularly when Google is your stock comp.

Which is exactly why Jerry and David should sell to MSFT.

If there is one thing Microsoft does well , its ignore Wall Street and invest in its corporate strategies. It has so many huge lines of business, that Wall Street has learned to just let those that need to germinate do so. XBox. MSN. Online. Microsoft gets more leash from Wall Street to develop businesses than any company on the planet.

So the question isn't whether Yahoo should sell. It should. The only question is what the structure of the deal should look like so that Jerry and David can achieve many of the goals they set out to accomplish on the net under the MSFT umbrella. Jerry definitely is about customers first. This is his chance to show it. This deal accelerates his opportunity to get customers where he wants to take them if he negotiates it right. Something I dint think would be that hard. There is too much upside for Microsoft to nitpick the non financial deal points.

...

So Yahoo should say yes. Its less about the money than about finally achieving the corporate goals set out more than a decade ago.

One time Jerry told me that Yahoo stood for You Always Have Other Options. This time Yahoo doesn't, but their customers options could improve exponentially if Yahoo says yes.

Read more here.

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.

The story of the week: Microsoft and Yahoo

Hundreds (possibly thousands) of articles and blog posts have been written this week about Microsoft's offer of $44.6 billion to acquire Yahoo, however I thought it may be useful to highlight a couple of particularly good or interesting articles on this very significant tech story.  For background, however, see the letter from Microsoft to the Yahoo board here and the internal e-mail from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Microsoft employees explaining the Yahoo acquisition offer here - both via TechCrunch.  And if you are after a shorter, punchier summary of the reaction from the blogosphere, then it is probably best to head over to The Lede here.  Anyway, here are some more detailed extracts and opinions on several aspects of the proposed acquisition ...

Would this be good for users?

ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick argues that Microhoo could be a positive move for users:

I think this acquisition could be very good news.

It's going to validate a lot of innovation at Yahoo! Many people, including Microsoft on the conference call early this morning about the news, are focusing on what this means for advertising and for search. Since when is Yahoo! particularly good at either of those things, though? Yahoo! has created a web presence with more traffic than almost anyone else on earth. That's what they are good at and the issue is that they haven't been able to make money off of it.

Yahoo! is great at content and online innovation, though. That's what Microsoft needs right now. Google is posing a threat to Microsoft not just because it is winning in advertising, where Microsoft is a relative beginner, but because Google is shifting the software world to online.

Microsoft is serious about innovation, they just haven't been doing much of it in house for awhile. The Live.com work and the Microsoft acquisitions in the health space indicate to me the company really is trying to do more than just catch up in search and advertising.

I think that this acquisition is going to mean a whole lot more energy put behind services like Flickr and Del.icio.us and innovative content sites like Yahoo! Sports and Finance. All of that will be good for Microsoft and it will be good for those of us who find those sites and services inspiring.

Read more here.  However, The Guardian's Bobbie Johnson isn't so sure, especially if you are an existing user of Microsoft's web services:

But what would it mean for ordinary users if the two were brought together?

The picture remains unclear at the moment, despite Microsoft saying it has created a detailed integration plan, but a deal would be likely to result in several popular products hitting the skids.

The email service Hotmail, for example, is one of Microsoft's flagship web products, but it remains second to Yahoo Mail, which has nearly half of the market. In the end, one system would probably end up overtaking the other, even if the names remain in place.

Elsewhere, closer integration of their competing instant messengers would make sense. With Microsoft the world's dominant software company thanks to the Windows platform, Yahoo messenger could eventually see the curtains come down.

It also appears likely the two would not be able to keep their search engines running separately. One of the main reasons to merge is the failure of their respective products – Yahoo search and Live search – to oust Google as the market leader. Recent figures suggest Yahoo search is more than twice the size of MSN at the moment.

Elsewhere, millions of people who use the pair's other services will be scratching their heads. What happens to your blog, photos or the music and video you have online?

Again, the news here could be better if you're an existing Yahoo user. Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, said these sorts of services are exactly what appeals in the deal. Yahoo is well placed, with a number of leading social web properties such as the photo-sharing website Flickr and the events site Upcoming. These would most likely replace some of Microsoft's less-used products.

Read more here.  In a similar vein, TechCrunch's Duncan Riley also looks at what components of the two companies are likely to stay or likely to go.  Read that here.  However, Rafe Needlemen does a similar thing for CNET News.com in his Web 2.0 cage match: Microsoft vs. Yahoo.  Read that here.  PC World's Mark Sullivan also tries to offer some historical perspective to this what will stay and what will go discussion:

The truth is, nobody really knows what Microsoft would do with all the Yahoo services if an acquisition takes place.

But history gives some hints. In the past, Microsoft has been far more likely to buy technology, user bases, and traffic, but not brands. In other words, Microsoft likes to promote its own homegrown brands  , like Microsoft Office or Windows Live, not brands that it has acquired.

Microsoft is likely to take that same approach to at least some of the Yahoo services, that is, subsume the people and technology behind the Yahoo services into its own MSN services. Microsoft says it can gain $1 billion in "synergies" from the deal. By that the software giant means the resources that can be saved as the two companies remove the redundancies from the combined business.

IDC's [Karsten] Weide says Microsoft should resist clinging to its own MSN-branded services,  if the acquisition takes place. "Microsoft would have a hard time doing that, because they are not a media company, they are an engineering company," IDC's Weide says. "Meanwhile, Yahoo has a lot of experience in media."

Read more here. 

By the numbers ...

ZDNet News has an interesting chart on Microsoft-Yahoo by the numbers, which includes the following facts:

• $59.09: the combined fiscal revenue of Microsoft and Yahoo in 2007;
• 1.2 billion: the combined unique monthly visitors to Microsoft's and Yahoo's websites;
• 83.1 million: the combined US email market share.

View the full chart here.

So why?  What does Microsoft want?  And is it a good business decision?

Quite a bit has been written on whether this is a good business move on Microsoft's part.  TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld looks at the business of the potential acquisition:

Yahoo represents a new growth opportunity for Microsoft in advertising revenues and online services. During the last four quarters, Microsoft’s revenues for its online services (MSN, Windows Live, aQuantive, etc.) were $2.8 billion and it lost $949 million. So just combining Yahoo with that business, you get revenues of $9.8 billion, but Microsoft would still be showing a net loss for that business of $289 million.

But this is an advertising play for Microsoft. It wants to combine the scale of its recently acquired advertising networks with that of Yahoo’s, along with Yahoo’s vast consumer reach (which is appealing to advertisers, who see all those eyeballs as valuable inventory).

Read more here.  Wired's Betsy Schiffman wonders if, when it comes to search, two losers are unlikely to make a winner:

Assuming the Microsoft-Yahoo merger goes through -- which is still a big "if" at this point -- the combined company would have roughly 18 percent market share of the search-based ad market, while Google still has 75 percent of the market, according to Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co.

"Both Microsoft and Yahoo have tried to expand their search marketing business with no notable success so far … Microsoft needs to close the deal with Yahoo, integrate the combined company, and show a higher level of traction in the online advertising ecosystem as a combined company," Aggarwal wrote in a report.

The only area where the combined company could dominate is in the market for display ads, or banner ads, where Aggarwal estimates the companies could have 30 percent market share, besting Google's 2 percent share in the market. Even there, though, analysts speculate that the combined companies' dominance could be short-lived, assuming Google's acquisition of DoubleClick wins approval.

And of course when it comes to search, neither Yahoo nor Microsoft come anywhere close to competing with Google, which has 58 percent market share for search, while Yahoo has 23 percent market share and Microsoft has a measly 10 percent market share.

"The big difference between their ad offerings is that Google just does so much more volume, in terms of search," Gordon says.

Read more here.  But Slate's Chris Wilson doesn't see it is as being about search, he sees it as being about something else:

Google vs. Microsoft + Yahoo!—let's call the new company Microsoft!—would be a clash of the titans, but they wouldn't be battling over search. Yahoo!'s strength as a company has never been its search engine but rather its role as a portal to a variety of Web-based applications. Acquiring Yahoo! would not help Microsoft topple Google search. But the good news for Microsoft, if its acquisition should succeed, is that search is not the Web's final frontier. The next big score will come to whoever captures the market for everything else—photo-sharing, word processing, calendar-building—that people do (and will do) on the Web. When it comes to all of those other applications, Microsoft! would be in great position to head Google off at the pass.

...

Yahoo!'s experience as a portal and Microsoft's position as the leading provider of offline software are the ingredients for a powerful Google alternative. A recent survey found that only 6 percent of respondents had tried Web-based office applications, and nearly three in four had never even heard of such a thing. By comparison, there are hundreds of millions of Microsoft Office users. Even though Google Docs has a head start on the Web, Microsoft is perhaps better positioned to win the race. The challenge that Steve Ballmer and co. are facing is how to make a dominant offline franchise just as dominant online. "The Google threat is enormous," says Jonathan Eunice, the principal IT advisor for Illuminata, a technology consulting firm. "Microsoft is very specific in what it wants. ... Yahoo! has the user community. It has built a revenue model around being a place that people go. [Microsoft is] buying a user base and a crew at Yahoo! that can keep people coming back."

Read more here.  Tim O'Reilly also doesn't think it is about search - he sees it as being about strategic assets in email:

The thing that jumps out at me is just how dominant the combination would be in web-based email. (Caveat: Hitwise doesn't count "in service email" on AOL and MySpace in these figures.) Add in Microsoft's incredible dominance in corporate email with Exchange and Outlook. Now think about all the possibilities that are starting to be explored in the area of email data as a source of information about users, and a locus for building new services for those users. (Of course, you might also think about the anti-trust implications of this combination....)

Email hasn't changed significantly in years.  As I've written previously, there's a huge opportunity in building a next generation address book.  (Doc Searls calls this Vendor Relationship Management. I prefer the term Personal Relationship Management.) I want tools that augment my ability to remember, manage, and communicate with all the people I deal with every day, in both personal and business contexts.

If Microsoft does consummate this merger (and I understand from the scuttlebutt that Yahoo! does consider it a hostile takeover), the surest way NOT to profit from it is by focusing on the areas where Google is already the strongest. Microsoft needs to invest in the future of applications where Microsoft and Yahoo! are strongest, and where there is significant opportunity for innovation. Email and other messaging platforms meet these criteria.

Read more here.

Who is unhappy with this proposed acquisition?

Some Yahoo employees are concerned about the cultural impact of the acquisition (see here), privacy groups oppose the deal (see here), News Corp also isn't a fan given they are also now seem to want to acquire Yahoo as well (see here), and it is appearing likely that the deal may struggle to get antitrust approval (see here).  But the unhappiest group appears to be a small community of Flickr users - there are now 92 photos in a pool called MICROSOFT:  KEEP YOUR EVlL GRUBBY HANDS OFF OF OUR FLICKR, including these two ...

First, this one from ososment:

Second, this one from jcrr, which I found particularly amusing:

Read more about the unhappy Flickr community here (from Wired).  And Mashable has a great collection of other photos here.

Finally, to try and end on some balance, PC World's Tom Spring acknowledges that when you put together two giants like these, there are bound to be some good results and some nasty ones. So he lists his 11 dreams and nightmares resulting from such an acquisition.  Read it here.

Delver: a new social search

TechCrunch reviews a promising social search engine, Delver:

What if a search engine knew who your friends were and delivered results based on their actions and content across the Web? Today at the DEMO conference, an Israeli startup called Delver (formerly Semingo) is coming out of stealth and announcing its upcoming launch as a semantic social graph search engine.

Delver is attempting to solve two key search-related problems. The first is that current search engines do not take into account the identity of the searcher. For example, a teenager and a senior citizen performing the same query will get exactly the same results. The second is that current search engines do not allow users to search for information created and referenced by their own social graph. This is an important point because, let’s face it, social networking doesn’t offer much functional value beyond allowing people to connect with one another. The fact that you have 300 friends on Facebook, 200 on MySpace and 100 connections on LinkedIn doesn’t actually help you locate information. This is where Delver comes in. Search for “New York,” and the results that will pop up will be blog posts from people you know that mention or are about New York, or Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Delicious bookmarks, and the like.

Read more here.

Delicious 2.0

TechCrunch asks Will We See Delicious 2.0 This Week?:

It’s been four and a half months since Yahoo first previewed Delicious 2.0. We’ve heard not a peep from them since as to when it might launch publicly and replace the existing, somewhat dated interface.

Well, ok, there was a peep last week. In a blog post titled “using delicious on your iphone” on the Delicious blog, they say “We know we haven’t updated the blog in a looong time but the team has been heads down working on the next version of Delicious. We’ll have an update to share with you guys next week.”

The update may be Delicious 2.0 itself, or simply for information on when we can expect it. The team has obviously been working on a number of other projects as well, like integrating Delicious results directly into Yahoo Search.

Read it here.  I'm certainly excited about seeing Delicious 2.0 soon ...

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.

Happy birthday Wikipedia

Yesterday - 15 January - Wikipedia turned seven:

In the 7 years since Wikipedia was publicly launched on January 15, 2001, the online encyclopedia has put up some impressive numbers. The flagship English language version now has 2,174,371 articles (as I write this), is the 9th most popular site on the Internet (according to Alexa), and has spawned 6 side projects (Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikisource, and Wikiversity).

Wikipedia's projects span over 250 languages, with 9.4 million articles, 1.5 million images, and 10.3 million registered users (75,000 of whom are active contributors). All in the public domain.

WikiCharts, which keeps track of the top 100 Wikipedia pages in terms of page views (the main page gets 53 million of those per day), shows that the most popular thing Wikipedia does these days is define itself.

...

Another fun Wikipedia tool to check out in honor of the site's birthday is Wikirage (which we reviewed in August). Wikirage keeps track of edits to determine the most popular (or most disputed) entries on the site. Not surprisingly, the most edited page today is that of the MacBook Air.

Read more here (from ReadWriteWeb).

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.

Spock You

After reading a post this morning on Spock, which is a people search engine, I once again visited my old Spock page, added some links and sent out some invites that some people will no doubt consider to be annoying spam to join the site.  Anyway, here is part of the blog post I read (from Media Post's Search Insider blog), and I would encourage people to visit the site have a look around:

Spock: The People Search Wiki

The most common reaction I hear when I invite a friend to Spock is, “Not another!” That’s understandable; 2007 was the year that accepting online invites went from exciting to burdensome.

Yet Spock brings new approaches to search engine optimization that I anticipate will become a model for other sites, and it offers its own benefits for users to manage their online reputations, so it’s one invite worth accepting, if just to see how it stands out.

  Spock’s core is a people search engine. Search for Guy Kawasaki, for instance, and the first listing that comes up provides information and links about him culled from various sources like his blog and LinkedIn profile. There are three hooks for what makes Spock different, even if the elements themselves aren’t unique on their own: tags, profile aggregation, and reputation ranking. We’ll explore how they work together to make Spock one of the more exciting sites to watch early this year.

Read more here and visit Spock here.