Webware

Reports that Google is considering an acquisition of Yelp fit right in with an increased focus on local search.

(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Online reviews powerhouse Yelp might just be what Google needs to help rid the world of 40-pound tomes with yellow pages.

Throughout the second half of 2009, Google has had its eyes squarely on one of the last remaining online advertising markets it does not dominate: local. With a series of moves, Google has shown a clear interest in combining Google Maps, search results, and its small-business-oriented advertising technology into its next big source of revenue growth as offline local businesses come online.

However, Google management seems to have decided to step up the pace. TechCrunch and the New York Times reported overnight that Google is in discussions to acquire Yelp for $500 million or more. Yelp has grown into a huge destination for those looking for new places to have fun, turning it into one of the more pervasive brands among the digerati.

And it's not just bars and restaurants anymore: dentists, churches, and top-notch local golf instructors can be found on Yelp. That makes the site a huge repository of locally sorted data on how people are spending money, and that's the kind of thing that gets Google and its advertisers excited.

"We want to make search a way to discover things that are interesting about a place. A big interest of ours is helping you get to a place and also helping you identify what is interesting about the place when you're choosing one," said Carter Maslan, director of product management at Google and overseer of all things local. Maslan declined to comment on the reports about Yelp (as did Yelp itself) but he was more than happy to talk about the huge opportunity that Google sees in local search.

Local business listings have been available on Google since 2005 through the Local Business Center, which allows business owners to essentially claim their establishment on Google and add basic information such as their phone number, hours of operation, and a link to their Web site.

That operation has been expanded in 2009. Over the summer Google asked a list of celebrities to name their "favorite places" as part of a promotion for a Google Maps feature that lets users identify local businesses they enjoy. For instance, Kerri Walsh, the gold-medal winning volleyball player, added her thoughts to listing pages for Lake Tahoe's Lone Eagle Grill and the Pump Room at Chicago's Ambassador East Hotel, spotlighting two local businesses that aren't necessarily on the national radar.

Google followed that up by launching Place Pages, which the company described as "a web page for every place in the world" when launching the service. Place Pages are very Yelp-like in their design. They feature reviews, photos, and, of course, ads--far more than could be crammed into a simple listing.

Location, location, location
Just last week Google unveiled plans to send local businesses decals declaring "We're a Favorite Place on Google!" That's a clear nod to Yelp's strategy of handing out similar decals to business owners, although Google took it a step further by adding unique codes that could be scanned by mobile phones to bring up additional information about the business.

The motivation behind Google's recent moves and its possible acquisition of Yelp is simple. The number is squishy, but Google estimates that anywhere from 15 percent of 40 percent of all search queries have some sort of local intent. A large number of those searches are also done from mobile phones, a number that will only grow larger as sales of the devices themselves continue to grow. And, of course, maps are required to find local businesses.

That gives Google three ways to target someone looking for local information. They'll see an ad on the search results page for a local query. They'll see an ad on the Place Page for that business, which might soon be more attractive with Yelp content. And they'll see listings and ads on Google Maps when they try to find directions to that business, which might alert them to nearby businesse--which starts the cycle anew.

And to top it all off, there are still a ton of small businesses that have yet to build out a presence on the Web, giving Google an opportunity to capture that content itself by providing listings and Place Pages for small-business owners that don't want to deal with maintaining their own Web site. This is true "long tail" content, in that demand for any one search result is relatively small but it's almost impossible to estimate how many results will exist over time.

Yelp's unique brand of user-generated content would fit very nicely into that equation. However, owning Yelp would also expose Google to some of the more controversial aspects of Yelp's strong local presence, such as allegations of intimidation and pay-for-play reviews. Yelp has denied the charges, but given Google's position under the antitrust microscope, any sort of extra scrutiny will not be appreciated.

At around $500 million, Yelp would be one of Google's largest acquisitions to date and its second major deal since CEO Eric Schmidt announced the company was once again in shopping mode. Even if the deal falls through, it's a clear sign of the company's interest in expanding its online advertising empire to the local market.

But it's perhaps also a sign that Google realized it needed a little help in getting there. After all, every decision about expanding a business comes down to build versus buy. Sometimes it's just easier to write a check.

If Google's rumored $500m acquisition of Yelp goes through, the search giant may finally get a solid lock on the "hyperlocal" Web. But it'll also be acquiring a big community site--and those are notoriously hard to wrangle.

Restaurant industry blog Eater might have put it best: "One can only assume that with Google's muscle behind the site, the millions of users who log on to complain about restaurants would be able to say stupid stuff faster, and with more efficiency," editor Amanda Kludt wrote on Friday.

All snark aside, it's the same sort of issue that arose a few years ago amid persistent rumors that Google was going to acquire Digg, another site reliant on heavy participation from a loyal and extremely vocal community. The questions are more or less similar: What would Google change, and how much would they change it? Does Google's massive scope make it untrustworthy?

Yelp's official word: "Yelp is approached frequently by numerous entities to discuss partnerships, investments and more, and the company does not comment on private discussions that may occur."

Truth be told, the state of Yelp's forums on Friday indicated that many were more interested in talking about "Why are NYC apartment brokers such d-bags?" and "The official 'Jersey Shore' on MTV thread" than about whether Yelp might get sucked up by the Google monster. But a few threads did emerge, and the gist seems to be pretty much the same: They better not change too much. And please keep throwing parties.

"I wonder how this will effect Elite parties as well as Yelp Talk?" one Yelper asked in a Bay Area-centric thread about the acquisition. Another said, "So long as it's not Rupert Murdoch buying it." Some Yelpers were optimistic, suggesting that maybe there would be better integration with Google maps or additional technical improvements.

But others were concerned about quality control. "It means more trolls and fake reviews," one Yelper griped.

"Anyone ever look at the comments on YouTube videos?" another asked. "That is what is gonna happen here."

There were a few threats of account deletion, like "If this happens, I'm deleting my profile" and "Yelp is big because of us. Let's demand money or delete our accounts en masse." Generally, those aren't any real indicator of community revolt, but they're a reminder that it's extremely possible for a big buyer of a community site to mess things up big-time. LiveJournal users weren't thrilled about its Six Apart ownership, which ultimately failed. Likewise, when News Corp. acquired social network MySpace, mismanagement and a lack of innovation were likely what led to a drop in traffic and the eventual dominance of Facebook.

Worth a read: Yelpers' reviews of Google HQ in Mountain View, Calif. Choice bits range from "Google has lots of yummy, organic snacks and drinks" to "They have way too many skunks after 7 p.m. nightly and raccoons living on the Google campus."

This post was updated at 10:48 a.m. PT with comment from Yelp.

Either side of this fight would be fun for Google's Dana Wagner.

After nearly a decade of slumber, the U.S. government went into 2009 turning over rocks for potential antitrust violations inside the technology industry. Perhaps no company has been affected by this move toward legal activism more than Google, and perhaps no one within Google has the unique perspective on antitrust law and corporate rights of Wagner, senior competition counsel at Google.

Dana Wagner, senior competition counsel at Google

(Credit: Google)

A former prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for San Francisco, Wagner's first job in the private sector arrived almost three years ago as he sought new challenges following a stint with a Justice Department that had grown boring: regulators like to regulate and litigate, and when that's not happening, the job is less fun.

While at the U.S. Attorney's Office for San Francisco in 2007, Wagner was approached about becoming Google's first full-time competition counsel, part of the company's decision to aggressively hire attorneys and lobbyists as it anticipated the pending clash with federal regulators. It sounded more interesting than other private sector gigs he had contemplated, and the money certainly didn't hurt: although Wagner pointed out you can make a boatload more with a private law firm if you're willing to sacrifice a bit of your mental health.

Since then, however, life for both antitrust regulators and lawyers at the world's most important Internet company has accelerated amid the intense scrutiny paid to Google's intentions during the last year. He's certainly not bored anymore.

"It's fun," Wagner said, speaking of his "intellectually challenging" role at Google over the last three years. Since arriving in Mountain View, Calif., Wagner has sought to improve Google's image among antitrust regulators and opinion makers by what he describes as directly engaging opponents, seeking out debate, and "trying to get ahead of the curve."

That involved reaching out to his former colleagues in government for a quick lesson on how AdWords works. It included lining up allies friendly to the cause, such as when Google assembled a roster of disability advocates to stump for approval of its Google Books settlement with authors and publishers. And it required a deft hand with the media, hoping to paint a picture of Google as a company that comes in peace, rather than one bent on destruction.

Google needed to do a better job explaining itself to those in government in particular, Wagner said. "Particularly as a west coast engineering company that still very much views itself as a start-up in a lot of ways, striking out against some Goliaths."

Google has long been a trendsetter in the Bay Area, but it found itself a little off guard in the nation's capital, probably because of how quickly the company rose to prominence. In 2006, the year before Wagner was hired, Google spent just $750,000 on political lobbying in Washington. Its current foes on the antitrust front--AT&T and Microsoft--spent a combined $35 million that year in political contributions.

That has changed. However, Google has certainly had its setbacks with the government: its proposal to strike a search deal with Yahoo was clearly not going to fly, CEO Eric Schmidt had to step down from Apple's board due in part to scrutiny regarding his overlapping roles, and Google was forced to amend its book search settlement at the last second after the Justice Department raised an eyebrow at several provisions. That included agreeing to limit the scope of the agreement and backing off some business models for book search.

Yet Google continues to introduce new products such as Chrome OS and expand existing ones like Android while keeping its gravy train--search advertising--intact from regulators. For now, at least: Google's increasing power over the Internet is troubling in many corners of the country, and although the company has not been accused of any wrongdoings it's safe to say that as the decade closes, a lot of people are starting to get freaked out by Google.

Despite that external perception, many people inside Google still think of the company as a unique force for good in the world. Wagner is a card-carrying member of the Google creed, with perhaps a lawyer's intuition of what "don't be evil" means.

"It's really important to people here; I can say something is perfectly legal but it's not good for users, and that would be taken seriously," he said. Earlier in the year, during a meeting with the tech press in San Francisco, Wagner blurted out "there's a lot of companies for which I wouldn't do this job. I would not be doing this at Halliburton."

Wagner, 34, has spent his whole adult life in government service before taking his current gig at Google, coming out of the University of California at Berkeley and Yale Law School. "As soon as he arrived here, you could tell he was destined for big things," Mark Siegel, Wagner's former supervisor at the Justice Department, said in an interview with Law.com earlier this year. "He was always the youngest guy in the room."

While those in the top jobs at government organizations change offices with the political winds, the people inside those organizations doing the brunt of the work--former colleagues now on the opposite side of the conference room table from Wagner--are for the most part career professionals.

"There is more consistency than people think. Ninety-five percent of the organization is the same people with the same values," he said, referring to the fact that despite the clear increase in antitrust activity inside the Obama administration--which Wagner concedes--the lawyers that are actually doing the work are the same people they were five years ago when the pace of antitrust scrutiny slowed during the Bush administration.

So will Wagner end up inside a courtroom in Washington, D.C. sometime in the next several years, defending Google's business practices against some of the same antitrust lawyers he once called friends?

While there's a part of Wagner that would likely relish the challenge, he has too keen a sense of antitrust history as it pertains to the tech sector to hope the situation gets that far.

"We don't want to repeat the mistakes of past companies," Wagner said. "Even when you are doing good things, you can end up suffering."

Have you ever wanted to type something in English and have the tool you're using spit that same message out in Hindi? What about Greek? With the help of Google's transliteration feature, you can.

The search giant's Bangalore office wrote that typing on Roman keyboards makes it "difficult to type in Indian languages." In an attempt to find a fix, the team in India released Google's Transliteration offering. And on Thursday it announced an update to the feature.

The new and improved Transliteration allows users to select from one of 17 different languages, including Arabic, Gujarati, Kannada, and Punjabi, to name a few. Once that's chosen, they can type a message in English and have it immediately transliterated to the selected language. Users can also look up word definitions in the included dictionary.

I took a few minutes to play around with the new Transliteration and it seems to work really well. I decided to type messages into Greek and Hindi and each time, it returned quick, accurate results.

Click here to try it out.

A look at Google Transliteration in action.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Google Browser Size shows how much of a Web page browsers can show on average.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Google published a tool Wednesday called Browser Size that lets Web developers gauge how much of their pages are visible in people's browsers.

With its own analysis, the search giant found that a lot of people couldn't see the download button for Google Earth because they had to scroll before it would show in their browser. Revamping the page increased download rates 10 percent, according to a blog post by Browser Size team member Arthur Blume.

The tool loads a Web page behind a pastel overlay that indicates what fraction of people can see a particular point on the Web page. The upper left is of course 100 percent, but when the point is farther down or toward the right, fewer and fewer can see it. The overlay statistics are based on a fraction of the people who visit the Google.com home page, said programmer Bruno Bowden.

"For example, if an important button is in the 80 percent region it means that 20 percent of users have to scroll in order to see it," Bowden said.

I'm intrigued by this sort of data. It's interesting to see the jump between old-style screens with a 4:3 aspect ratio and newer HD-style models that usually are in a wider 16:10 proportion. I'd be particularly curious to see how the overlay changes from one Web page to another--for example, I'd imagine gaming site visitors have bigger screens than mainstream Web pages.

Here's a hint if you're reading this on a laptop with a modest screen size: to see more of the Brower Size overlay, try pressing Ctrl-minus to zoom out.

I spend a lot of time looking at Web pages and have no particular fondness for scrolling. I therefore appreciate various efforts to maximize browser real estate devoted to actual Web content. Perhaps Google's tool will help on the Web design end, too, helping justify redesigns to put the good stuff in plain sight.

Google's browser has passed Safari in terms of worldwide browser usage--at least by one measurement.

NetApplications' measurements of browser usage share, which track which browsers individuals use based on visits to the company's network of Web sites, gave Chrome the third-place spot after No. 1 Internet Explorer and No. 2 Firefox for the week of December 6 through 12, according to a Computerworld story Tuesday. Chrome had 4.4 percent share to Safari's 4.37 percent.

Google released beta versions of Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux on December 8. Earlier, only developer channel versions had been available. Google plans to release the "stable" versions January 12, according to the Chromium development calendar.

Take these usage share numbers with a grain of salt. Even though 0.03 percentage points still is a lot of people in the real world, it is a small fraction, and a change in Net Applications' assumptions in August led to share changes two orders of magnitude more dramatic. Weekly statistics also vary: Although Firefox cleared 25 percent share in one week of November, it averaged only 24.72 percent for the overall month.

I've asked various browser makers about how trustworthy they view NetApplications' statistics to be. The answers generally are favorable but not ringing endorsements.

Regardless of the precise details, though, the Chrome trajectory is upward: its November usage share was 3.93 percent to Safari's 4.36 percent.

And although Google relied on word of mouth for promoting its original online search product, it's taking a more active role with Chrome. The latest example: a "Chrome for Christmas" site that lets people send invitations to download Chrome.

Firefox proved that a browser not bundled with an operating system can be successful, and Chrome could show the idea isn't a fluke if its growth continues.

Google is promoting its browser through this 'Chrome for Christmas' e-mail campaign.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Exchange virtual currency

(Credit: Currency Connect)

Beginning in the first quarter of 2010, social sites IMVU and MyYearbook will launch a virtual currency exchange allowing users from either service to exchange currency between the sites.

Currency Connect is billed as a "cross property virtual currency exchange" system similar to how you would change U.S. dollars into euros if you were traveling in Europe. Users simply swap their currencies depending on what site they are on. Overall this is not a bad idea as I still find it surprising that users pony up real money for virtual money that can never be taken out of a specific site.

But, it does make me wonder when a bigger payments vendor, like PayPal, will get into the game and offer more of a de facto universal virtual. It's all well and good that two large-ish sites have launched this effort, but it can't be long before other social sites like Facebook join the fray. And, ultimately the site or currency with the most users is likely to be the one with the most users.

This opens up an opportunity for other sites with large user bases such as Google and Yahoo to offer a currency program. If users are already joining multiple social-networking sites, there is no doubt that they are also using search engines and instant messaging.

On the technical side, the service uses a simple set of REST APIs that implement the various checks and balances of the system. Security is maintained through tracking methods and server-to-server connections, which will initially limit how many sites can participate in the service. Again, a larger online service might have an easier time deploying a fully distributed, trusted service that didn't require point-to-point connections.

It's clear that virtual currencies have become an important part of social networking and gaming infrastructure. But, sooner or later fickle users will change their allegiances. A currency exchange offers a palatable escape method but still doesn't ever let you turn your virtual currency back into real money.

(Via VentureBeat)

Google ventured into new territory on Monday with the launch of a new URL-shortening service it's calling Goo.gl.

Unlike some existing and high-profile shorteners such as TinyURL and Bit.ly, Goo.gl is not a general-purpose link shrinker that users can access by going to a standalone site. Instead, it's been built into Google products, beginning with Google's browser toolbar and its Feedburner RSS service. Both of those services can now create shortened Goo.gl URLs that link to the source content while using fewer characters. This is especially important for sharing on places like Twitter, where there are size limits.

The feature goes hand in hand with the launch of a share button for the Google toolbar that lets users share whatever page they're on with a number of social services. As for its integration with FeedBurner, Google now provides feed owners with a way to automatically publish certain posts directly to Twitter, which will again help keep the number of characters to a minimum.

Google says the shortening service is both fast and stable. The company has also placed the same security measures that go into its search index to block pages that may contain malware or phishing schemes.

In an introductory post on its official blog, Google said that it may eventually roll out the service as a standalone site, but that for now it's being built into Google products. Such a feature would likely allow third party sites to build Goo.gl link shortening into their own products. In the meantime, other Google properties that could certainly benefit from having link shortening built-in include YouTube, Maps, Reader, and Blogger--many of which have integrated sharing features.

Update 2 p.m. PST: As we should have mentioned before, .gl is the top-level domain for Greenland. Also, Google's launch comes on the heels of Facebook having quietly launched its own URL-shortening service called FB.me. Heading there in your browser simply takes you to Facebook's home page, whereas sharing links through Facebook's mobile site will shorten them for you using a shortened FB.me URL. More on that as soon as Facebook publicly acknowledges its existence.

Visitors of Goo.gl get this page, which tells them what the service does, although will not let just anyone create shortened URLs. Instead, Google is allowing use of its service through its own products.

(Credit: CNET)

As a company that has built a business model atop trust, Google is in a sticky position as it prepares to formally introduce the Nexus One phone.

Google's Nexus One phone could be a sea change in how Google works with Android partners who might turn into competitors.

(Credit: Cory O'Brien via Twitter)

Google employees were given free Nexus One phones at a company party Friday night, and the Internet went into a tizzy. Reports surfaced later in the weekend that this device was the long-awaited Google phone, the company's answer to Apple's strategy of controlling the hardware, software, and distribution model with the iPhone, rather than the partner-oriented strategy of developing the guts of the operating system and letting partners each put their own stamp on the finished product.

Just two months ago, Google's Andy Rubin rolled his eyes when asked about an analyst report picked up by TheStreet.com that said Google planned to pursue this exact strategy. He said Google had no plans to make its own hardware--which is one thing since smartphones are almost exclusively manufactured by contractors in China and Taiwan--but he took a further step in spending about 10 minutes arguing why it would be a bad idea for Google to design its own phone and sell it outside of carrier channels.

That line of thinking resonated with many who follow Google and the mobile industry. After all, Google's stated goal for Android ever since the project was revealed in November 2007 was to create an "ecosystem" of multiple phones that would help improve access to the mobile Internet. And Google seemed to finally reach that goal this year, with over a dozen phones in the wild and more promised from some of the world's leading phone makers and wireless carriers.

But if the reports are correct, Google is about to make a radical departure from that strategy. And Google's new course would take it down a path that could sow distrust among the company's Open Handset Alliance partners, who must now be wondering if they're about to get into a marketing war with one of the tech industry's richest companies.

Katie Watson, a Google representative, said on Sunday that the company has confirmed nothing about its plans for the Nexus One, described as a "dogfooding" experiment for internal testing by the company in a blog post Saturday.

In the rush to anoint the Nexus One as the Google Phone, it's quite possible that the tech industry glossed over the fact that Google already sells Android phones, albeit on a limited basis. For quite some time, registered Android developers have been able to buy completely unlocked versions of the G1 and the T-Mobile MyTouch3G (also known as the Google Ion) for $399.

Google does sell some phones, such as the Google Ion, but only to developers for Android testing purposes.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

So there is a solid chance that the Nexus One is merely the Android Dev Phone 3, following the Dev Phone 1 (G1) and Dev Phone 2 (MyTouch or Ion). Just this year, Google handed out Dev Phone 2 models branded as the Google Ion to attendees at Google I/O 2009, but if regular people want to buy that particular phone they have to get the MyTouch3G from T-Mobile with a two-year contract.

It does seem clear that Google has played the premier role in designing the software for the Nexus One. In the company's blog post over the weekend, it said "we recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe."

But the key unconfirmed detail is how Google plans to sell this phone. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google plans to sell this phone unsubsidized on its own, with consumers able to choose a wireless service provider after the fact. However, according to corporate sibling Peter Kafka at All Things D's MediaMemo and Reuters, Google has plans to hook up with longtime mobile partner T-Mobile to help sell the Nexus One through Google's Web site for $199.

How will Google market this phone? Anyone with a television set has likely seen an ad over the last month for the Motorola Droid, an Android phone sold for Verizon's network that has been billed as one of the best Android phones to date. It was also the launch pad for a long-term pact between Google and Verizon that will supposedly produce a family of devices based on Android.

If Google plans to sell the Nexus One directly to consumers, will it insist upon using its brand as the lead brand, rather than the "With Google" branding found on the back of many Android phones? Will it blast the airwaves during the NFL playoffs in January to trumpet the arrival of the Nexus One, perhaps just in time for the Super Bowl? And how will that affect partners such as Motorola and Verizon that have sunk so much money into promoting the Droid, only to see rumors of a Google Phone leak out at the worst possible time: the height of the holiday shopping season?

This could be a very telling moment in Google's history. At the moment, Google's mobile division does not seem to be completely in control of the message it wants to send consumers, partners, and competitors.

If Google really does plan to sell the Nexus One directly to consumers and compete with its customers, it has chosen an interesting way to announce it to the world, keeping the Google Phone rumor mill alive for months while publicly denying such plans. Apple has employed such a marketing strategy for years, insisting on near-silence regarding future product plans but benefiting enormously from the frenzy of interest in every little morsel that mysteriously pops up regarding those plans.

However, Google is not Apple. Google public-relations representatives will sheepishly admit that they have little control over how Google rolls out its products: Google is a company run by engineers, and engineers push the button when the product is ready to ship.

But when you're working in an environment with multiple partners that have competing interests, any confusion over your future plans--especially plans that would appear to yank the floor away--can breed distrust among those partners. One of Google's largest problems right now is that it has built a business model geared around the notion that it can be trusted with almost unprecedented control over the flow of information across the globe, and any cracks in that wall of trust will be exploited by its enemies.

With the way details have trickled out about the Nexus One, Google has either alienated current and future Android partners by muscling in on their turf, or set up thousands of eager smartphone consumers looking for an open alternative to the iPhone for disappointment when they realize Google merely plans to sell an expensive unlocked phone to a limited audience, if at all.

After all, Google essentially declared in its blog post that employees are testing a product with "new mobile features and capabilities" that presumably can't be found on the current crop of phones. It's almost the same language Google used to introduce Chrome OS ("our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be") while insisting that it had no competitive reasons for introducing that Netbook operating system.

Few believed that line with Chrome OS, and fewer still will believe that Google is creating Android for the betterment of humanity if it really plans to sell its own phone.