Most Yahoo employees will be off next week due to mandatory office closings--though they've had since April to figure out what to do.
It will be quiet on First Avenue next week, as Yahoo shuts down for the holidays.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Yahoo is shutting down everything except for certain "essential functions" during the week between Friday, December 25, and Friday, January 1.
A Yahoo representative confirmed the Journal report Tuesday--however, according to the representative, Yahoo employees were informed of this plan in April, a detail lacking from several reports about the shutdown, although Reuters had pointed it out at the time.
Yahoo has certainly looked to cut costs this year, its first with CEO Carol Bartz and CFO Tim Morse. Layoffs, a search-outsourcing deal with Microsoft, and a reassessment of business priorities were high on the company's to-do list in 2009.
The shutdown, which requires employees to take unpaid leave or vacation days, would be the first ever in Yahoo's history, though other tech companies, notably Hewlett-Packard and Adobe Systems, also shut down for the holidays.
Yahoo will have customer support people working over the break, and it obviously plans to keep its Web site up and running, the representative said. Outside the United States, employees will either have paid time off or unpaid time, depending on local laws.
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.
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.
Sex, porn, and Michael Jackson were among the most popular items kids searched for online in 2009, as tracked by Symantec's OnlineFamily.Norton.
Symantec on Thursday revealed the top 100 favorite search terms among children 18 and under found by its free OnlineFamily.Norton service, which helps parents monitor their kids' online searches. Though innocuous terms like Sesame Street and "New Moon"--a popular movie in the Twilight vampire series--made the cut, sex showed up fourth on the list for boys and fifth for girls, following YouTube, Google, and Facebook as the three top terms.
For boys, the top 25 search terms focused on social-networking sites, shopping sites, and certain adult terms. Girls seemed to favor subjects related to music, TV shows and movies, and celebrities.
Speaking of celebrities, to no one's surprise, the late Michael Jackson was the most searched for celebrity, coming in at number 12, followed by pop singer Taylor Swift at No. 13. Other hot stars that made the list included Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Beyonce, the Black Eyed Peas, the Jonas Brothers, Eminem, Rihanna, and Chris Brown (who was in the news this year after admitting that he assaulted ex-girlfriend Rihanna).
Searching for celebrities online, however, may be hazardous to your PC's health. Symantec has found found that these searches sometimes draw people to dangerous Web sites, which spew out viruses, spam, and other malware.
Kids seven and under searched for items related to video games, while older kids were heavy into music, with 34 percent of teens and 27 percent of tweens searching for music-related topics. The Miley Cyrus song "Party in the USA" was the most-searched for tune among kids, while "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eye Peas took the No. 2 spot.
Tech terms that popped up on the list included MySpace at No. 8, MSN at No. 33, the iPod Touch at No. 98, and Bing last at No. 100.
To compile its top 100 list, Symantec tracked 14.6 million searches run by users of its OnlineFamily.Norton service and ranked the terms according to ones submitted most frequently to those submitted the least. The terms were collected anonymously, so none could be associated with any specific children or families.
(Credit:
Microsoft)
Snigger as you will over Microsoft's decision to call Bing, its overhauled search engine, a "decision engine," but those giggles should dissolve when you start up Microsoft's brand-new Bing for iPhone (and iPod Touch). As a search app goes, Bing, which debuted Tuesday in the iTunes App Store, is the real thing.
The Bing app has a slew of expected features, including voice search, maps, directions, search suggestions, and location-awareness. That's no surprise. Besides these being features common to Bing.com and to the Bing application on other mobile platforms, they're also necessary to compete with Google Mobile App for iPhone.
Bing's stylish layout is a pleasant surprise, and one that adds up, screen by screen, to a cohesive search experience. Opening Bing, you see the image of the day as your background (this doesn't appear to be customizable,) with the search field and voice search button at the top of the app. A rounded, six-panel grid of buttons jumps you to Bing's image collection, movie listings, maps, directions, business look-up, and a news feed. A drop-down menu on the search bar lets you filter your searches in all those categories, save directions. The semitransparent navigation strip below has a Home button and back and forward arrows, plus a button to hide the button panel, and an icon that pops up settings to clear your search history, set your search filter, and so on.
Bing gives you directions for your car and for navigating on foot, but it doesn't yet include directions using public transit, as the Google Mobile App does. Bing, however, has a neat feature that lets you swipe a transparent ribbon to advance through each direction, which moves the satellite, hybrid, road, or shaded map along in turn. We like that tapping a search result on the map brings up a tag with ratings and with icons to call the business or launch into directions.
Another difference to keep in mind between Bing and its Google rival is that Bing smashes a map and search app into one, whereas Google's mapping program is also the iPhone's default map app. When you access maps from Google Mobile App, you'll wind up opening up the Maps app for the actual search.
The Bing app for iPhone still isn't complete. As far as we can tell so far, it lacks some of the extras of other mobile Bing apps, like the capability to lay down pushpins on the map and save locations, and the capability to view multiple locations on the map. The absent features in the iPhone app indicate the direction of Microsoft's plans for Bing's growth on iPhone.
While Bing's performance during our initial testing was good, individuals may notice fluctuations based on their data and Wi-Fi connections. There may be other areas where Bing might not match up: for instance, Google claims its iPhone app can detect British and Australian pronunciation in addition to U.S. and Canadian accents. Do our international friends notice parity with Bing's voice search?
Although Bing may not match every bell and whistle that Google Mobile App and Maps apps do combined, Bing 1.0 for iPhone does offer a viable alternative to Google's searching and mapping dominance.
Mark Zuckerberg should be proud: The top search term of 2009, according to Experian Hitwise, was not "porn," "poker," or "Britney Spears." It was, for the first time, "Facebook."
In 2008, Facebook had been the tenth most searched term on the Web, according to the traffic company's annual survey of search queries.
The rest of the list for 2009 is also made up of "navigational" searches, which Hitwise reps say actually always dominate top search queries despite the common wisdom that top searches tend to be for online gambling or racy pictures. In spot No. 2 is last year's leader, "myspace," followed by "craigslist," "youtube," "yahoo mail," "google," "yahoo," "ebay," "facebook login," and "myspace.com." If you add up all four Facebook-related terms in Hitwise's top 300 search terms, they make up slightly over a percent of all searches on the Web. The #1 term alone accounts for 0.67 percent.
Meanwhile, searches for "porn" came in at No. 16. Britney, unfortunately, didn't crack Hitwise's top 300, but the most searched for celebrity was Michael Jackson at No. 95, and "Twilight" hottie Robert Pattinson came in at #221. (Hitwise representatives say that they are currently reevaluating the data to see if recently beleaguered golfer Tiger Woods has moved up in the rankings, too.)
Update at 2:10 p.m. PST: So where's "Twitter" on Hitwise's list? It's hanging in there at #56, the company says.
Twitter-centric photo sharing service Yfrog released its top 10 searches of 2009 on Monday, and the results are not all that shocking; It appears most of its users are hunting for tween-heartthrob vampires, and/or famous singers. Below is the full list. I've linked each query with a search on Yfrog:
1. New Moon / Twilight
2. Jonas Brothers
3. Tiger Woods
4. Michael Jackson
5. Halloween / costume
6. iPhone
7. Adam Lambert
8. Kanye West / RIP Kanye West
9. Iran election
10. Miley Cyrus
To put this in perspective, Yfrog's list shares only the terms "new moon" and "Michael Jackson" with Google image's top 10 results of 2009, at least according to the recently-released zeitgeist. Also worth noting, is that Imageshack launched Yfrog in late February of 2009, meaning this list is more like the top 10 search results during the last 10 months.
Honestly, I'm just happy that image searches for the Iran elections beat out those for Miley Cyrus.
Previously: Yfrog gets Webcam recording for photos and video
Google introduced two search features Friday that focus on delivering search results without having to visit the search results page.
The weather information at the bottom of the Google Suggest list used to only be found on search results pages.
(Credit: Google)Universal search features such as weather, time, and flight-tracking information can now be found in the Google Suggest drop-down list of possible results for relevant queries, such as "weather San Francisco." In addition, Google has released an extension for its Chrome browser called Quick Scroll that is essentially Google's take on the Control-F (or Command-F for you other folks) basic search function.
Google has offered image-based answers to simple questions such as "What time is it in New York?" or "How many kilograms are in 2 pounds?" for some time. Of course, you had to click through to the search results page to get that answer. The company apparently felt that was two seconds of your life it was unfairly robbing from you, and so has added those types of results directly in the list of suggestions that appears below the search box on many queries.
Quick Scroll, on the other hand, provides a bit more search horsepower on a given Web page than the old-fashioned "Find" command. Google provided the example of someone wondering whether or not Belgian street vendors sell waffles, searching on that query, and clicking through to a Wikipedia page on waffles. At that point, Quick Scroll will pop up in a small window with your original search query and a link to the text where that information can be found on the page.
These features are all outgrowths of Google's obsession with speed, highlighted by its announcement of real-time search results earlier this week. Ordinary users might not care, but speed junkies are taking over the Web and could very well find something else to do with those spare two seconds: such as conduct another search on Google that brings up (contextual and relevant, of course) ads.
Yahoo is ready to integrate real-time results from Twitter directly onto its search pages.
(Credit: Yahoo)Not to be outdone by its rivals, Yahoo is getting into the real-time search business as well.
Days after Google announced its plan for integrating content from sources such as Twitter and blogs, Yahoo on Thursday plans to launch its own feature to integrate tweets into search results. Microsoft already displays Twitter results for queries placed on its Bing search engine, although they displayed on a separate page that is not directly integrated into the main search results.
Yahoo will join Google witih integrated results as of Thursday, said Larry Cornett, vice president of product management and design at the company. But in a crucial difference between the two approaches, Yahoo has not cut a deal with Twitter for access to the "firehose," an automated feed of data from Twitter. Instead, it's using Twitter's public API and adding its own algorithms to figure out which tweets are most relevant to the query.
The thorniest problem with real-time search is relevancy. So much content is created every second on the Internet--from tweets to status updates to new blogs to new news stories such as this one--that it's a challenge to simply capture that data, let alone decide which sources of data are more relevant and authoritative than others.
Yet there's clear demand for answers to the question, "What is happening right this second?" And search engines are presumably in the best position to deliver those answers, but unless they are able to find a way to harness the flood of real-time information and make sense of it, these services are unlikely to be very useful.
For hot topics, such as Obama or Tiger Woods, Yahoo plans to use the Twitter tab it added to the News Shortcut feature already found in Yahoo search results. For other topics that are gaining traction but don't necessarily have a huge amount of news, photos or videos already associated with that query, Yahoo will surface three tweets related to the topic and chosen by its algorithms, Cornett said.
The main problem with Yahoo's approach is that it's not exactly real-time: the most recent results surfaced during a demonstration were 15 to 20 minutes old, and the user must manually refresh the page to get new results. Google's approach not only refreshes automatically due to its use of Twitter's firehose feed, but it also brings in content from sources other than Twitter.
The other major problem for Yahoo, of course, is that its search share is dropping, something Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz blamed on expiring toolbar deals during an investor conference Tuesday. While Yahoo says it is committed to remaining a player in the search market by coming up with new ideas for search presentation, this week shows just how easy it is for Google to take a similar idea (real-time search) and put out a similar-if-not-better take on the same idea.
Google Mobile App receiving search from voice.
(Credit: Google)A new version of Google Mobile for the iPhone is now available in Apple's App Store, the search giant announced in a blog post Wednesday.
According to the company, the improved application features a redesigned search results page, with more results than in the previous version. The app also opens Web pages from those results within the program, which Google says should help users get where they want to go sooner.
To make the app more customized to the user, Google has also made its Bells and Whistles feature more prominent in the new Google Mobile version. Users can change the color of Google Mobile and turn on a moving waveform when users search by voice.
