Google celebrates its thirteenth birthday today. And they do that like they have done it in the past 8 years: with a doodle. Google started using the birthday doodles in 2002 and has since every year created a special birthday doodle. To be honest, they are a lot less “breathtaking” than some of the doodles they have made in the recent past. Still it is a nice overview of doodles. (more…)
Today is the day Google hits puberty. Why? Simply because the search engine today turns 13. Thirteen years ago Sergey Brin and Larry Page decided to name their idea “Googol”, which turned into “Google”. Since then they have grown their company to be the leading company in Tech and a company which dominates how we behave on the web.
Google celebrates its thirteenth birthday with a special doodle, which surprisingly goes to Google.co.nz, to promote the fact that that is now available in Māori. (more…)
One of the most successful posts on State of Search ever is this one. It is a post I actually wrote on the plane, on my iPad, because I was so annoyed with a new feature which Google launched: the blue arrows.
Apparently many agree with me (and some disagree) that they are annoying for those using the arrows to scroll. Now when I’ve finally gotten used to them and a different way of scrolling (still not using the arrows though) Google decides enough is enough: they are gone.
Together with that change Google also added Instant Previews to the sitelinks. Now your sitelinks can be previewed. It also seems like Google has added some extra rich content to the previews. (more…)
The Germans have a long history of privacy matters, even outside of the Internet. They are especially keen on protecting their citizens from unwanted collection of data. That has lead to some strange situations, like for example people opting-out their houses from Streetview and then talking about that, with a picture in front of their houses, in the German newspapers.
One of the ‘targets’ of this privacy-sensitive policy has for a long time been Google Analytics. A few years ago it even looked like the Hamburg Data Protection Officer was going to get Analytics declared illegal in Germany. The Data Protection Officer has been working with several commissions and webmasters, as well as Google, to come to a solution. They have now declared officially that Google Analytics can be used in Germany without complaint from the German data protection authorities. (more…)
Like tools? Well, you are in for a treat! Today Marketing Optimization expert and well known speaker Bryan Eisenberg launches a website which will full fill many people’s needs and dreams. For the past few years Eisenberg, aka @thegrok, has been ‘collecting’ tools and writing about them. He has now put all these tools on one website: websitetestingtools.com.
The website gives us insight in many tools, currently already 150. And counting, because Bryan wants to keep extending the website with tools he finds on the web and uses. (more…)
Is Google a monopoly? And is Google deliberately pushing down competitors in their own search results? These are the main questions a US Senate subcommittee is trying to get answered in a special Google hearing this week.
With a market share of over 65 percent in the US and close or even over 90 percent in many European countries and with the enormous amount of acquisitions Google is doing these days this is not such a strange question to be asking. The hearing was triggered by complaints from Google competitors like Yelp.
One of the people being heard is Eric Schmidt. Now we all know he likes to throw around some quotes we all find either amusing or interesting. And at the hearing we were not disappointed. Schmidt claimed that Google had learned from mistakes that Microsoft made in the past, he also almost said that Google indeed was a monopoly (isn’t that like close to a confession?) but did not “cook anything” and while he was at it he kind of explained how Google tests algorithm changes. (more…)
When Google last week opened up its API’s I predicted that pretty soon we would also be seeing a search within Google+. Something which has strangely been missing from the start. If it wasn’t going to be Google itself, with the API surely a developer would come up with the search functionality pretty soon, after all we saw the same happening with the share functionality on Google Plus.
But this time Google didn’t let the developers beat them. The search box on top of Google Plus, which used to only search for people now searches through Google+. (more…)
This week Facebook has its famous F8 Conference. And the expectations are high as they always are. This year they might even be a bit higher. There are rumors that Facebook will be announcing quite some changes.
Next to a possible redesign and social music services, Facebook might be launching some new buttons: “Read”, “Listened”, “Watched” and “Want”. The buttons will be similar to the well known like button. (more…)
Many people have been complaining about the speed in which Google Plus is developing itself. No search, not many new features and most of all: no API. Maybe that will now change rapidly, as Google starting today is launching the first of the Google API’s.
With this move Google hopes to get developers to develop for Google+. Without a doubt we will now soon see applications which can search through Google+ and existing applications like Twitter clients can now start to incorporate Google Plus into their tools. (more…)
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