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As a year winds down in which criticism of Google was perhaps never louder, the company used a quiet preholiday afternoon to post a manifesto on what it means to be "open."

Google's Jonathan Rosenberg

(Credit: Google)

Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president of product management, originally wrote the "The meaning of open" as a memo to employees, but posted it on Google's official blog Monday. In the essay, Rosenberg lays out Google's belief that the use of open technologies and open information are two of Google's most important core values, although reasonable people can disagree on the meaning of "open" in various contexts.

"This [disagreement] is happening often enough for me to conclude that we need to lay out our definition of open in clear terms that we can all understand and support," Rosenberg wrote. "What follows is that definition based on my experiences at Google and the input of several colleagues. We run the company and make our product decisions based on these principles, so I encourage you to carefully read, review, and debate them," he told Google employees in the memo.

Much of what Rosenberg has to say should not be new to anyone who follows Google. The company believes in open-source projects and use of open standards on the technology side of its operation, although that still doesn't mean it plans to open-source the famous search algorithm any time soon, as "opening up these systems would allow people to 'game' our algorithms to manipulate search and ads quality rankings, reducing our quality for everyone," he wrote.

Most of the backlash against Google in recent years has come as the company has amassed a treasure trove of data on those who use its services. That means Google has to be open about what type of information it stores, how users can delete it, and whether or not gathering that information truly adds value to the product, Rosenberg wrote.

Google's supporters and detractors will likely find something in the memo with which to make their case either in favor of or against the company. For example, Rosenberg argues that those concerned about how big Google has become in such a short period of time should pay equal attention to how much Google has contributed to the world with things like Street View, Gmail, and Android.

"We can do these things because they are information problems and we have the computer scientists, technology, and computational power to solve them. When we do, we make numerous platforms--video, maps, mobile, PCs, voice, enterprise--better, more competitive, and more innovative. We are often attacked for being too big, but sometimes being bigger allows us to take on the impossible," Rosenberg wrote.

But just earlier, he perhaps unwittingly described why Google's love of open information makes so many people so nervous.

"On the Web, the new form of commerce is the exchange of personal information for something of value. This is a transaction that millions of us participate in every day, and it has potentially great benefits. An auto insurer could monitor a customer's driving habits in real time and give a discount for good driving--or charge a premium for speeding--powered by information (GPS tracking) that wasn't available only a few years ago," Rosenberg wrote.

It's safe to say that a sizable contingent of people do not share his belief that allowing real-time tracking of your movements by private companies--especially ones who sell a product that almost all U.S. residents who drive a car are legally obligated to purchase--is a good idea.

The memo makes it clear that Google--one of the largest technology companies on the planet--still sees itself as a force for good in the world, one that must continually fight off the old guard's desire to keep things just the way they are.

"There are forces aligned against the open Internet--governments who control access, companies who fight in their own self-interests to preserve the status quo. They are powerful, and if they succeed we will find ourselves inhabiting an Internet of fragmentation, stagnation, higher prices, and less competition," Rosenberg wrote.

His words are not likely to change anyone's impression of Google, but they do show how Google continues to experience growing pains as it navigates the tricky transition from plucky start-up to global megacorporation.

Google doesn't ever want to give up on its belief of itself as an exceptional company. But should it ever stop producing financial returns that give it cover from investors, it might be putting itself in an impossible position between those investors who demand returns and users who demand privacy and transparency.

This one's a surprise. Twitter will have turned a profit in 2009, a BusinessWeek report claims, citing sources. What happened? Search deals with Google and Microsoft brought in a nice chunk of cash for the company, which has raised well over $100 million in venture capital and has a paper valuation floating somewhere around $1 billion.

Considering the company has not yet put forth a long-term revenue strategy, this would be one of those Christmas miracles along the lines of a neurotic mom getting home to her stranded 8-year-old by fortuitously hitching a ride with a polka band fronted by John Candy.

So let's look at the details. Sources told BusinessWeek's Spencer Ante that Twitter's search deals with Google and Microsoft's Bing brought in $15 million and $10 million respectively, and that Twitter has managed to cut some of the high costs related to text-message functionality. (These costs were so exorbitant that Twitter temporarily had to restrict some international SMS codes.) OK, cool. Those numbers are decently plausible, and Twitter's strategic hire of a mobile business-development dude early this year likely had something to do with it. And Ante's article makes it clear that while sources have told him that Twitter will end 2009 on a profitable note, that doesn't mean it's going to be profitable next year.

But there's a difference between being cash-flow positive and being profitable, and it's also not totally clear as to what Twitter's other expenses are, or what they will be next year.

Ante writes:

Now that Twitter has become so popular, it has gained bargaining power with telecom companies and has managed to renegotiate so many deals with carriers that the company pays far less for the services. "Those used to be the biggest line item," says one source. "Generally speaking, those costs have gone away. Now people are the biggest line item."

People. Yes. Like the new office space they just moved into, and their still-expanding payroll, and stuff like that. Also: hardware, and other forms of defensive weaponry against evil whale attacks. The company also sometimes buys stuff, and continues to develop new features--like the current test of "contributors" accounts that it may end up charging for. So even with costs cut via a savvier mobile strategy, there are plenty of other costs that could be escalating simultaneously.

What's good news for Twitter is that getting $25 million out of search deals (if that's indeed true) shows that the company could expand that into a stronger long-term revenue strategy. Critics have been lukewarm on the possibility of Twitter attempting to support itself with advertisements or paid accounts, and nobody's really gone into depth on the question of whether the businesses currently raving about Twitter's power of "conversation" will cough up for more in-depth analytics.

Maybe they read the Yelp review that says Google's headquarters is infested with skunks and raccoons.

Just a few days after reporting that Google was about 80 percent likely to be acquiring business reviews site Yelp for a totally sweet $500 million, TechCrunch has backtracked. Late Sunday, TechCrunch reported that Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman personally walked away from the deal and that company representatives informed Google over the weekend they aren't selling.

Or it might have been the skunks.

(Credit: CC Out at Bob's/Flickr)

That's odd. People seemed to think it was generally a good deal. TechCrunch isn't exactly sure what went wrong but speculates that Yelp may have gotten a better offer for a potential acquisition or strategic partnership that caused it to bail.

What could also have something to do with it: Google does a lot of things very, very well, but one thing it's never nailed is community. (Knol most certainly didn't kill Wikipedia, Orkut was big in Brazil but then faded in the wake of Facebook's growth, and YouTube's commenters seem to come from a very special place somewhere between the sixth and seventh circles of hell.) That's evident from looking at what Yelpers had to say about the potential deal last week. Proudly opinionated and devoted to the Yelp brand, many Yelpers were concerned that a Google buyout would degrade the site's sense of community--something that could, effectively, kill it.

Perhaps Yelp's execs thought the same and figured that strategic partnerships might be a better route for now.

YouTube is pushing its Facebook Connect integration further by allowing its users to see the videos that their friends share on Facebook. YouTube users had previously been able to find their Facebook friends on YouTube as well as update their Facebook profile with their various actions from the site.

While it's nice to see YouTube embracing Facebook more and more, it stops a bit short of being an impressive Connect implementation. YouTube is getting there, but seems to be lagging behind a little in this department. An implementation that shares, on Facebook, what you are watching, on YouTube, would certainly make sense, although it might clutter up users' Facebook profiles if they are a prolific YouTube watcher. For now, the addition of this new feature is a welcome inclusion and serves as a great way of getting trusted recommendations for videos to watch on YouTube.

YouTube's new Facebook Connect feature.

(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)

YouTube said this feature is in "test mode" for the time being. In my testing, I was not able to get this feature to actually work. This can be sometimes be expected while YouTube irons out the kinks with new features that aren't quite ready for prime time. If anyone has better luck, let us know in the comments.

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.