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Microsoft, Viacom ink $500 million ad deal

As part of a wide-ranging deal announced Wednesday, Microsoft has licensed TV and movie content from Viacom, which in turn will let Redmond serve up ads on its U.S. Web sites.

The arrangement means that Viacom will use Microsoft's Atlas technology to deliver ads to those sites. Microsoft acquired Atlas as part of its $6 billion Aquantive purchase. Additionally, Microsoft will have the exclusive right to market Viacom's unsold display advertising space.

Microsoft, meanwhile, will be able to put shows from MTV and Comedy Central and movies from Paramount Pictures onto various products, such as MSN and … Read more

Google improves flight search, kills referral traffic to travel sites

Google has improved its search results for flight tracking. Previously, when you searched for an airline and flight number in Google (for example, AA 28), you got links to services that would tell you if your plane was on time or not. Now, you don't need the link: you get that data on the search result page.

This is a time-saver for Google users, but Travelocity, Expedia, and FBOWeb, which offer flight tracking services, will suffer since they no longer get the links. Instead, the data is provided by Conducive Technology's FlightStats. It's a decent service, but … Read more

Yahoo Maps gets drag-and-drop rerouting, enhanced business listings

Yahoo's mapping service has been tweaked today to include a rerouting feature similar to the one Google's had since June. The new addition lets you pick up and drag your directions at any point to get the service to reroute according to the guidelines you give it. Once you've made changes, the service will pop up with a small comparison to show you how many miles have been added (or taken away) and how the change affects the time on your original commute recommendation.

Rerouting is a handy feature, and if you've given Google's implementation … Read more

Episode 626: Fnord

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Privacy groups ramp up Google-DoubleClick attacks

In the seemingly waning days of the U.S. government's antitrust review of the Google-DoubleClick union, consumer groups are lodging a last-minute plea: don't forget about privacy.

That was the message during a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning hosted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.

The directors of those groups, who predicted a decision by the Federal Trade Commission is "imminent," voiced concern that the FTC may overlook the potential privacy implications raised by the combined user massive data stores of the two prominent companies. (The two Washington-based groups, … Read more

Predictions for 2008: Sharepoint will disappoint, Google will seek omnipotence

CMS Watch makes 12 predictions for 2008, two of which stand out based on things I've covered on this blog. The first has to do with Sharepoint, that lightweight Microsoft portal and content repository that seeks to lock enterprises once and for all into Microsoft. CMS Watch predicts a backlash:

The backlash will be two-fold. First larger enterprises will exhibit major compliance and litigation discovery issues across numerous unmanaged and unaccountable SharePoint locations. You will also see a backlash against sizable development costs and times to build maintainable applications in the MOSS environment. With the more complex SharePoint projects struggling to launch, customers are realizing a disconnect between Redmond's heavy promotion and the realities of a product that is significantly less out-of-the-box than most expect.

But we expect this from Microsoft and eventually from its customers. The more frightening prediction concerns Google, the data-hungry "do no evil" company that CMS Watch predicts will find new ways to pull users into its cloud:… Read more

Ten games for search marketers

Games always seem to capture a lot of attention this time of year, in part because of kids and toys for Christmas or adults and getting together for the holidays. It would seem that search marketers enjoy games, too. While this often revolves around contests or challenges to get a site to rank No. 1 in the SERPs, at PubCon this year, SEOmoz even got some search marketers to unplug long enough to play an SEO version of Werewolf.

With only a week before Christmas, I couldn't help but wonder what games might be dancing around in search marketer'… Read more

Episode 625: Whither StarTrek.com?

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Europeans to hold hearings on Google-DoubleClick and privacy

Update Dec. 18 with exact date of hearing

Update 1:10 p.m. PT with Google comment

European lawmakers plan to hold a hearing next month to scrutinize the privacy implications of the proposed Google acquisition of online-ad firm DoubleClick, according to the Associated Press.

The proposed $3.1 billion deal has provoked complaints that it would give Google an unprecedented amount of information about consumers' online activities, with a view into not only what people search for, but exactly where on the Internet they go and what ads they click on.

The hearing will be held either Jan. 21, … Read more