It was inevitable that someone would seriously consider taking Google's dare.
Rupert Murdoch is reportedly thinking about removing all of News Corp.'s content from Google and striking an exclusive deal with Microsoft's Bing.
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET)For years, Google has all but dared traditional media companies trying to develop online businesses to live without the traffic it sends their way. The folks at the Googleplex make it clear that content owners who believe Google is unfairly indexing (or stealing, depending on your point of view) their content can easily remove that content from Google's massive corner of the Internet.
There's a tradeoff for that independence, of course: Don't expect the advertisers that have signed deals based on site traffic to pay the same amount next year.
News Corp. might be getting ready to do what many think is unthinkable. Reports have surfaced over the last several months, most recently in the Financial Times, that News Corp. is in talks with Microsoft to enact a plan that would see News Corp. properties hiding their content from Google's search engine in return for exclusive listing with Bing.
Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.'s famously cantankerous leader, isn't stupid: Microsoft would also have to pay News Corp. for the privilege of exclusive access to that content. But as Microsoft continues to lose billions of dollars a year on its online business, can it afford to be successful with this strategy?
Even if Microsoft is willing to cough up a huge sum (which Kara Swisher at Boomtown thinks is unlikely) for News Corp. content, this plan would only have a chance of turning the tables on Google if News Corp. and Microsoft can convince other large media companies to follow their lead.
First off, the practice of actually removing News Corp. content from Google would be relatively simple. News stories from The Wall Street Journal, commentary from The New York Post, and videos from News Corp.'s myriad cable and satellite television organizations can be tagged with a "noindex" tag, and Google won't index those pages as they are published. This also applies to pages that have been previously indexed, since they will be crawled again, this time with the new tag attached.
However, News Corp. would then need a backup plan to compensate for the revenue it would lose from the precipitous drop in traffic. With 65 percent of the search market, Google is the largest Web site in the world as measured by traffic. And its stated goal is to be the best information kiosk ever created by fielding queries and sending searchers on their way as fast as possible.
Murdoch has proposed removing his Web sites from Google only after constructing pay walls like the one used at the Wall Street Journal to limit free access to content, which is a somewhat controversial notion in this media era.
What News Corp. and Microsoft are reportedly discussing, however, is slightly different. Under the scenario outlined by the Financial Times, it does not appear that News Corp. would erect pay walls for all its content upon removal from Google. Instead, it would continue to make that ad-supported content available for free exclusively through Bing, helping offset the decline in traffic with a cash payment.
The two companies would then presumably market the hell out of the arrangement, because it would require a sizable shift in consumer expectations for Internet search. Right now, people are used to the idea that DirecTV is the only television provider that can offer a full package of NFL games every week, or that Comcast's Versus channel isn't available on DirecTV because of a licensing spat.
But that's not what they expect when they search online for news or information about a certain topic, and it would take some effort to educate them that The Wall Street Journal or Fox News' content can only be found if you're searching on Bing. Microsoft has already invested $100 million into Bing advertising, and would need to increase that amount to drive home the point that Bing is the only place you can find Fox News stories.
So will enough people be interested in that content as to change their search behavior and dramatically increase Microsoft's search market share? It's hard to see News Corp. moving the needle by itself, but modest results could embolden Microsoft to cut similar deals with other news companies and start the ball rolling toward the idea of Bing 2.0 as "the world's news search engine." That would be an interesting product.
As with just about everything, however, such a deal will likely come down to the amount Microsoft is willing to invest in such a project. Microsoft's Online Services Division, which runs Bing, is currently hemorrhaging money to the tune of $480 million in losses during its first quarter alone. Setting up content deals with the media industry would increase short-term costs with an iffy notion of when that investment would pay off in terms of increased search market share. And while Microsoft continues to milk Windows and Office profits, it can't throw money down a rabbit hole forever.
That means there's a sizable chance that this whole operation is geared around News Corp. negotiating a search and technology services deal with Microsoft to replace its current one with Google, which expires next June. Installing Bing as the search provider on News Corp. sites would generate increased searches for Microsoft while denying a common enemy Google some revenue, without kick-starting a huge battle that would have wide-ranging effects.
Murdoch has been able to tap into a well of frustration among those in the traditional media business over the way they are unable to duplicate the profits they enjoyed in the offline world on the Internet. But does he really want to call Google's bluff?
If so, he's banking on the notion that while basic news is a commodity, opinion and analysis is not. And whatever you might think of the various News Corp. properties, it's hard to argue they haven't earned a reputation for themselves as a unique source of opinion and analysis.
The judge overseeing the Google Books case has laid out the schedule for the second round of the final approval process, at the same time granting preliminary approval of the revised deal.
Like before, opponents of Google's settlement with groups representing authors and publishers will have a comment period in which to file objections, and books rights holders who want to preserve their abilty to sue Google for scanning their books will have an opt-out deadline. The final hearing is set for February 18 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
After numerous interest groups and the Department of Justice objected to Google's original settlement over digital books scanning, the parties submitted a revised settlement late Friday night that amended the size of the class affected by the deal and wrote into the document explicit guarantees regarding access to the scanned material that were previously mere promises.
This wasn't enough to satisfy Google's most persistent critics, however, who will likely fill Judge Denny Chin's mailbox with objections to the revised settlement much the same way they did prior to the original September deadline. After the DOJ filed its own set of objections, final approval of the settlement was delayed until the parties could work out something more amenable to the government.
Opponents will have until January 28th to file objections with the court. That's also the same date for affected class members to decide whether or not they would like to opt out of the amended agreement.
Rights holders who opted out of the previous agreement also have until January to decide if they would like to opt into the revised agreement, otherwise the court will assume they still wish to opt out. Those who missed the deadline the first time around have a second chance to opt out by January 28th.
Google released a statement regarding the court filing. "The preliminary approval order sends a positive initial message; this agreement promises to benefit readers and researchers, and enhance the ability of authors and publishers to distribute their content in digital form. We remain hopeful that the agreement will receive final approval from the court and will realize the goal of significantly expanding online access to works through Google Book Search, an ambitious effort to make millions of books searchable via the Web."
The Open Books Alliance, which has vigorously opposed the settlement, weighed in a little later with a statement of their own.
"Today, in an expected procedural move, Judge Denny Chin granted preliminary approval to the revised Settlement of Google's copyright infringement lawsuit. This is not a surprising development and is not any indication that the court will or will not accept the terms of Settlement 2.0. The same procedural preliminary approval was given to Settlement 1.0, and now sets up a court process that will allow those opposed to the revised settlement to let their objections known to the court. The U.S. Department of Justice has until February 4th to weigh in with the court, as their investigation into the matter continues."
Blog platform company Six Apart is adding a free, miniaturized blogging service to its paid blog hosting service TypePad. The new TypePad Micro service is essentially a simplified template, called Chroma, for unpaid users on the TypePad service. It will likely be compared with Posterous and Tumblr.
The Chroma template is flexible and attractive, and most of the blogs I've seen using it look good. It's a great format for short posts and for sharing pictures and embedded videos.
But as a short-form blog authoring platform, TypePad Micro is still TypePad, a powerful and capable blogging system that may be overkill for people who just want a way to post quick items. The main Quick Compose interface is nice and light, but one level down, the options are overwhelming. In comparison, Tumblr's posting interface is light and clean all the way through. Posterous' Web interface is even leaner, and if that's still too much for you, you can start blogging on it via e-mail, without even setting up an account on the Web site. (To be fair, you can also post to TypePad Micro via e-mail.)
The new Chroma template is well-suited to short posts and images.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Still, what Six Apart is doing with TypePad Micro is probably good for Six Apart and it's definitely good for writing and writers. From the product perspective, CEO Chris Alden believes that there's a somewhat open space in the blogging world between full-on blogs like TypePad and micro-blogs like Twitter. He envisions TypePad Micro as a good starting point for people who want to say more than they can on Twitter and don't want to pay for it (thus putting TypePad Micro in competition with the free Wordpress.com). He also sees it as a supplementary blog template for paying TypePad customers who want a new outlet for quick posts.
There is a quick posting form for TypePad Micro, but the rest of the author's site is complex.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)And if you care about writing, as I do, you'll love the new micro formats like this one, since they encourage people to write shorter posts. Since you have to think more when you're writing for a small space, this is good.
The TypePad platform also integrates into the modern world of Twitter, Facebook, and the like: Every time you post, the platform can automatically send alerts out to dozens of other accounts. And stealing a feature from Twitter, Movable Type lets readers "follow" TypePad blogs.
TypePad Micro is live now.
When the long-expected development of smartphones and handheld devices into primary computers reaches maturity, Google wants to make sure it occupies just as strong a position on the small screen as it does on the big one.
Google set the stage for that future Monday when it announced a $750 million all-stock deal to acquire AdMob, which is considered one of the strongest ad network providers for the mobile-computing world. It's a familiar strategy; just as Google bought DoubleClick in 2007 to blend search ad expertise with display ad expertise, so it plans to add AdMob's network of partners to its own mobile search ad efforts.
For all the work Google does in other areas--Google Apps, Android, Google Voice--advertising has always been, and will likely remain, its most important source of cash. It dominates the most lucrative segment of online advertising (search) and wants to expand its efforts in display advertising as well with a revamped DoubleClick Ad Exchange and increased efforts to court the major advertisers of the world.
But unlike the PC-based Internet, the mobile Internet-advertising business is still very small and very fragmented, with dozens of companies claiming to play a leading role. AdMob founder and CEO Omar Hamoui said he had no idea how much market share his company had in the business of providing mobile ads to Web site publishers, although AdMob is considered by outsiders to be one of the strongest companies in this area due to its work with ad units for iPhone applications.
Google's AdMob deal is about blending the respective advertising strengths of the two companies in a fast-growing market.
(Credit: Google)Few doubt the staying power of mobile computing, however. Even with mobile advertising accounting for just a fraction of overall online advertising in 2009 ($416 million out of a total online spend of $24 billion according to eMarketer figures quoted by Google), AdMob has been cash-flow positive for about a year as advertisers show increasing interest in trying out mobile ads on smartphones like the iPhone and Android-based devices.
Google said it thought getting AdMob's 140-person team inside its company was "a pretty unique opportunity," said Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering at Google, in an interview following the announcement of the deal. Gundotra and Hamoui both cited the cultural fits between the two companies as helping to streamline a deal; San Mateo, Calif.-based AdMob counts three Google veterans among the 10 executives listed on its management page.
It's not clear yet how Google will integrate AdMob into its existing structure. Google already operates DoubleClick Mobile, an ad delivery service that allows publishers to sell mobile ads directly to advertisers through a variety of ad networks, including AdMob's. What it doesn't have is its own display ad network with the reach and heft of AdMob's 15,000 and growing name-brand advertisers, which allows mobile publishers to essentially outsource their ad sales.
AdMob's success with iPhone ad sales has gotten it to this point.
(Credit: AdMob)It's also not clear whether AdMob will now become "the" ad network for DoubleClick Mobile customers, but that might exclude a lot of business: Google lists its own AdSense, the MBrand and Decktrade networks from Millennial Media, and AdMob as just some of the ad networks if offers for DoubleClick Mobile customers.
In addition, Hamoui said AdMob would continue to sell ads across many different types of phones, rather than focusing on Google's Android. The whole reason AdMob has grown to the level it has was because it was able to separate its technology from specific phones like the iPhone or Android, which gives advertisers a much broader reach than if the ad network focused on any one phone, he said.
Google is now positioned to offer a one-stop shopping experience for companies interested in online advertising, combining search and display ad possibilities on both regular Web sites and mobile sites and applications. As has been the case for so many Google products and initiatives this year, that will likely raise an eyebrow among federal regulators.
As such, Google said while it doesn't expect to encounter significant regulatory issues with the AdMob purchase, "closer scrutiny has been one consequence of our success. On that basis, we wouldn't be surprised if there were some regulatory review before the deal closes." Google said it hoped to wrap up the deal "in the next several months."
Google took great pains Monday to point out how small a deal this was in the grand scheme of the advertising market. It created a Web site devoted to the deal where it quoted competitors in support of its point that mobile-ad budgets are tiny at the moment compared to the overall amount of money spent on online ads.
But Google's willingness to cough up $750 million in stock--making this its third-largest acquisition once it's finalized--shows just how important it thinks this market will become over the next decade.
When asked how quickly Google might see a return on this deal, Gundotra emphasized the future possibilities over short-term financial concerns.
"Getting that group of talented people into our company is an unbelievable return," he said. "It's likely lead to products and innovations we haven't even thought of yet."
(Credit:
IBM)
IBM on Wednesday announced a program designed to help educators and students pursue cloud-computing initiatives and better take advantage of collaboration technology in their studies.
The IBM Cloud Academy, announced at the Educause annual conference, includes a global roster of educational institutions as initial participants. Educause is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.
IBM will provide the cloud-based infrastructure for the program, with some basic collaboration tools available at the outset. IBM's LotusLive service provides the basis for the new offering. Participants will immediately be able to do some very basic tactical functions on the new system:
- Create working groups on areas of interest to the education industry
- "Jam" on new innovations for clouds in education-related areas with IBM developers
- Work jointly on technical projects across institutions
- Share research findings and exchange new research ideas
Shared research across universities and other higher-learning institutions remains a vital part of technological innovation, but many programs don't have formal tool sets in place. Cloud services are a logical place to run these types of programs, especially as international groups need immediate access to data from their partners.
... Read more
Web site publishers using Google Friend Connect can now allow users to connect through profiles, and serve them targeted ads based on those profiles.
(Credit: Google)Google Friend Connect is adding a few features that make it easier for Web site publishers to build their own social networks.
Visitors to Web sites that use Google Friend Connect will soon have the option of filling out a profile on that site that can connect them to like-minded individuals who frequent those sites. They can then search for other profiles on that site with matching tags, introduce themselves to those users through the site without having to post an e-mail address, and see content on the site tailored to their interests, said Mussie Shore, product manager for Google Friend Connect.
The whole idea behind the Google Friend Connect tool "is to make it easy for site owners to add social features to their site without having coding capabilities," Shore said. Google offers several services for Web publishers like this one, such as Google Web Elements.
The new features expand on ones unveiled last year. Site owners using the service will also be able to create and target newsletters based on the new profile information, and gather data about their interests as to make decisions about site content.
And, of course, it all comes back to the ads. Google Friend Connect publishers can now serve extremely targeted AdSense ads to individual visitors based on the preferences they declare on their profile page.
Hyper-local publishing company Examiner.com is set to launch its service in five Canadian cities.
According to the organization, Examiner will now provide localized content to those living in Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver. The company will also offer national content for all those not living in the five cities.
Examiner is growing up quickly since its launch in April 2008. Examiner now provides localized content in 162 U.S. cities, according to a company spokesperson. It plans to add 40 more markets in the coming months. With the expansion to Canada now under way, the spokesperson told me in a phone conversation on Wednesday that the company plans to bring its service to the U.K. and Australia by the first quarter of 2010.
Examiner's foray into the Canadian market follows its strategy in the U.S. market, the spokesperson said. When it launched in the U.S., only five cities were covered. Today, local "examiners" are posting more than 15,000 stories per week.
Examiner is currently looking for Canadians who are "passionate about their interests and areas of expertise" to join one of the markets' local sites. When Examiner chooses a writer, they provide training on how to write articles. All writers are paid based on performance and other metrics.
Yahoo continues to pull out all the stops in hopes of convincing investors and advertisers that even though it's a massive media and technology company today, it has a plan for the future.
"Today is the beginning of a journey back to respect," said Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz in a meeting with financial analysts at Yahoo's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. "Yahoo was the big shining star in the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, and then somehow we weren't so shiny anymore."
The all-day meeting, which is being Webcast, is designed to reconnect Yahoo with the financial community, something Bartz hinted earlier this year was long overdue in comments she made in New York. Ever since former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang turned down a $33 per share offer from Microsoft in 2008, Yahoo's stock has languished at about half that value, and with the economy taking a turn for the worse, even a tepid recovery has been seen as welcome news.
Bartz brought a team of Yahoo leaders up on stage to show off what they've been doing to take better advantage of Yahoo's enormous reach across the Internet. For example, Tapan Bhat, senior vice president for integrated consumer experience, talked about how Yahoo's redesigned home page has increased the amount of time spent on that page by 20 percent, and click-through has likewise improved on both ads and content on that page.
Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president for applications, pledged to improve spam filters and duplicate the Yahoo Mail experience on mobile phones. And Jimmy Pitaro, vice president of media, ran through all of the plans his group has to increase the number of people who come to Yahoo for news and entertainment.
Clearly, Yahoo already operates on a grand scale. "We are a broad-based Internet technology company that serves up the most interesting content on the Internet to 600 million people," Bartz said.
But advertisers "are looking for a safe neighborhood," Bartz said. She meant that in order to get high-quality advertisers to spend lots of money with Yahoo, they have to give them high-quality content that they can feel confident about putting their message beside. Perhaps Bartz could throw that lesson in for free as part of the search deal with Microsoft.
Throughout the revival story Yahoo has tried so hard to push this year, there's a sense that the company is a little defensive about being seen as a place where innovation no longer happens. Bartz admitted that "we had kind of lost your respect" over the past few years. "We are a 14-year-old Internet company that somehow got boring."
Analyst days are not exactly the most exciting events produced by public companies. But it's all part of Yahoo's attempt to re-insert itself in the conversation about the future of the Internet, and investors will need to be on board for the company to make any real progress: not to mention that employee retention could get easier if the stock starts to climb.
Corrected 3:35 p.m. PDT with the correct spelling of Bryan Lamkin's name.
It's official: GeoCities, once one of the most trafficked sites on the Web, has officially seen its last day. It's a sad time for many of us who cut our Web teeth on GeoCities.
GeoCities might have featured millions of sites that were ugly and poorly designed, but the site let us get on the Web for free. It was simple. And it brought value to millions of folks around the globe.
That's why I wanted to take a quick moment to send off GeoCities in, what I hope, is the right way. Let's use this space as a place to share our favorite memories of using GeoCities. Whether it's browsing its many sites or creating a site of our own, I think it might be neat to share at least one experience we had using the old site.
So, allow me to get that discussion started.
Back in the late 1990s (the exact year escapes me), I came across GeoCities. It seemed so revolutionary for its time. I didn't have the Web expertise to develop a site of my own, so I relied on GeoCities to do the job for me.
My site was ugly. There's no doubt about it. But for the time, it wasn't too bad.
I used my little corner of the Web to review video games. At that point in my life, video games meant (almost) everything to me. Every spare moment I had was used up by the digital characters I controlled on the screen in front of me.
Perhaps that's why the idea behind my GeoCities site made so much sense to me at the time: to offer reviews like those I had read in the many video game magazines I subscribed to. I had a scoring system, gave my take on everything from controls to gameplay, and ended each review with a "bottom line." It was fun.
But in the end, I slowly drifted away from my Geocities site. Ironically, I never thought a career in writing was for me. I moved on with my life. And, much like GeoCities, my small part of the Web was left to live out its final days alone, without much interaction.
Even so, that small site was my first foray into the online world. And although I would have liked to spend more time refining my GameSpot-wannabe, I have no regrets. It was fun while it lasted.
Now it's your turn. Tell us your own GeoCities stories or experiences in the comments below.
Imageshack's Yfrog, the image- and video-hosting service for Twitter, can now record videos from a user's Webcam. The recording tool also doubles as a way to take photo stills, either manually or with a five-second delay. These images are then attached to an outgoing tweet which can be penned right from the site.
The move differs from some recently released services like Twitcam and Camtweet which can record video as well as stream it out live for your followers to watch and interact with. On the plus side, Yfrog's implementation has very generous time limits, as my test video went well past the 40-minute mark.
For now, Webcam recording will remain a site-specific feature, and not a part of Yfrog's API, meaning third-party posting tools cannot take advantage of it. However a representative for the company told CNET News that that could change if developers are interested in integrating it into Flash-based video widgets. In the meantime, many developers have already integrated video into their apps using Yfrog's existing video uploading API.
Want to record a video of yourself to put on Twitter? You can now do that through Yfrog.
(Credit: CNET)
