Knol Launch: Google's 'Units of Knowledge' May Raise Conflict of Interest
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Google announced that it is testing an encyclopedia-like feature called Knol. It may mark a shift in Google's strategy, to extend control not just over search results but also over content.
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Today's announcement from Facebook is the reason why Google announced OpenSocial last week. They must have gotten a leak from one of the companies that stood with Facebook, so they knew what was coming. They weren't scared of Facebook's technology, because they didn't respond with technology. They were scared because Facebook has a better advertising story than Google does. They are getting ready to offer some very premium web real estate that (pay attention now) Google can't compete with. And advertising is Google's bread and butter, advertising is to Google as operating systems are to Microsoft. They can't let somebody appear to be better than they are in advertising. Yet that's what Facebook is, better than Google in advertising. Here's what Facebook can do.  Let's say I bought a Wii and I like it. They can tell all my friends "Dave bought a Wii and he likes it." That's a lot more likely to result in a sale  than an intrusive ad like this one, that was displayed next to an email I sent to some friends about their New Networked Living Room. Google thinks I might want to buy Moroccan Lamps, or something called a Unique Shabby Chic (huh?) or Crate & Barrell bedroom furniture. Of course I tune that shit out, I don't even see it. It has zero impact.   Anyway, I was talking with Doc Searls a few minutes ago and he mentioned OpenSocial and I told him it was just a lot of noise meant to distract people from what Facebook was doing in advertising. He hadn't heard anything about it even though he was at a tech conference in Denver today and yesterday. I said there you go, Google's strategy worked. But to no effect, longterm, because Facebook has the momentum and Google, try as hard as they want to stop it, will not be able to, any more than Alta Vista or Infoseek were able to stop Google once they figured out that their lunch was eaten. Google will be around for a long time, I'm not saying they will go away, but Facebook will be around too. And Google will have a hard time catching up to them.  Long-term, however they both have problems because advertising is on its way to being obsolete. Facebook is just another step along the path. Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information. And that's good!  8/3/06: "Information is welcome, advertising is offensive."
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By Jefferson Graham  LOS ANGELES -- Internet search giant Google is under fire from Hollywood, mostly about the many unlicensed clips available on its YouTube video-sharing site.
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(InfoWorld) - Google is in damage control mode over a clause in the user agreements for its Google Docs and Spreadsheets applications that implies an inordinate degree of power over the content that runs over its services. The clause reads: "By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services." This matters more because it's Google, of course, but the issue may be an important one for other online software companies to watch as they seek to build credibility and support among business customers. Most of the controversy centers around the firm's use of the word "public." If you're posting it on Google Docs or in Google spreadsheets, the implication goes, it's up for grabs if the company needs some sample use cases for its next advertising campaign. You really have to stretch yourself to think about how this kind of scenario would play itself out. Might Google use various Docs and Spreadsheets customer's data as case study material? Or perhaps reproduce them in the kind of print magazine ads that it never, ever buys (and why would they, when we give the company this kind of constant media attention)? Maybe we should be paying more attention to the word "modify," in the clause, which might give Google the go-ahead to insert references to its services in the actual content ("Here's today's sales report. I finished it using Google SpreadsheetsÂ®!"). I can't think of a better way to lose customers. And whatever you think about the firm's market cap or long-term investment value, Google is still a bit player in the applications space. It can't afford to outrage users that way. We should also realize that legal mumbo-jumbo aside, we all take a huge leap of faith when we use online program like these. Google could easily "reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, and distribute" whatever it wants. That may be why few are entrusting it with highly sensitive company material. It's not that anything bad has happened, it's that nothing bad has happened yet. Docs and Speadsheets, and their many other budding online rivals, are allowing unprecedented degrees of collaboration, which is why our notion of "public" may be so confused. This is exacerbated by the fact that we often use the same online tools for both work and personal purposes. Both kinds of content have a "public," and there may even be some overlap between them, but the "public" of the wider world is another matter. In order for Web-based software to flourish, we need to engage in a more prolonged discussion with one another about the boundary lines between users, vendors, and everyday Internet surfers. It has to happen before content gets inadvertently (or advertently) misused. It's a discussion we have to make as public as possible.
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Do patents, white papers, and other publications authored by search engine employees provide clear guidance to how to optimize Web pages?  A panel of experts debated the issue at a recent Search Engine Strategies conference.
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As Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) nears the end of its first quarter as a public company, industry watchers say one of its emerging challenges is
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Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia once said, &#8220;Search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. And, it is currently broken.&#8221; And while he&#8217;s dabbling with the concept of an open-source search engine, Dr. Riza C Berkan of Hakia.com believes the fix is in the semantics.  The CEO and founder of the &#8220;meanings&#8221; [...]
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Privacy groups are raising new concerns about an apparent conflict of interest in the FTC's investigation of Google's acquisition of DoubleClick.
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Out Googling Google on bespoke scale Comment Should Microsoft's bid for Yahoo! go through, the combined company would face one very major infrastructure question - how far is it willing to go in the war against Google?â¦Learn &amp; Contribute, Live &amp; Online - The Register Debates Green Computing
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Aaron Stanton's effort to make a business proposition to Google Inc. attracts interest around the Web.
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Google executives are taking a proactive stance when it comes to issues under consideration by U.S. lawmakers that could affect the Internet search engine.
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The newest addition to the Google Book Search Project, which aims to index the world&#8217;s books, is Tokyo&#8217;s Keio University and its library of over 120,000 books, all in Japanese. &#8220;The Google project allows us to make our collections visible worldwide, allowing us to contribute to research and education on a global scale. Our university was [...]
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Written by Net 4 Nowt As part of its effort to make offline information searchable online, Google Inc. has announced that it is working with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and
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A controversial practice enables some domain name registrars to make short-term gains from registering domains that others might want. Now Google -- the vehicle for their revenue -- says it wants to do something about that.
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Google responded on Friday to a lawsuit filed against it by Northeastern University, denying claims that its search service infringes on patented technology.Google denied all charges in the suit, which was&#160;filed jointly by Northeastern, of Boston, and a search technology company called Jarg, of Waltham, Mass. Google also filed a counterclaim asking the court to dismiss the patent as invalid.The&#160;suit was filed in November&#160;in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. It seeks an injunction preventing Google from further infringement, as well as royalty payments and damages.The patent in question describes a distributed database system that breaks queries into fragments and distributes them to multiple computers in a network to get faster search results.The plaintiffs say that Google uses this system to run its search engine, and that the system was invented by Kenneth Baclawski, an associate professor at Northeastern and one of Jarg&#39;s founders. Northeastern was awarded a patent for the system, which it has licensed exclusively to Jarg.In its response Friday, Google argued that the patent is invalid and should not have been awarded in the first place. It cites various sections of U.S. patent law, including those that deal with the novelty of an invention and prior art. It also cites the doctrine of &quot;laches,&quot; which essentially requires plaintiffs to file lawsuits in a timely manner.Its counterclaim asks the court to declare the patent invalid and unenforceable.Both parties have requested a jury trial, and legal experts have said the case could be resolved in 18 months to two years.The U.S. patent, number 5,694,593, is dated Dec. 2, 1997, and can be viewed by searching the Web site of the U.S. Patent &amp; Trademark Office. U.S. patent law is also described on the USPTO Web site in this PDF file. Google&#39;s reply cites sections 101, 102, 103, and 112.
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Google and Nokia this week announced a search partnership, surprising some who thought the two are at war with one another. So is this just another example of industry "coopetition?" Or are these two companies truly making friends?
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MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- Google Inc. and NASA A