It’s a fine line between freedom on the web and piracy when it comes to torrents. The little files help exchange movies, music, software and much more. Sometimes it is a bit shady whether or not this is right or wrong, sometimes its obvious.
Google is now, starting today, actively censoring torrent terms. This is also aimed on sites and terms like BitTorrent, utorrent, RapidShare and Megaupload. (more…)
There has been a lot of discussion over the past few months about cookies. Yes, the cookies on the computer. Those that register what you do online. And those that provide you with content which is much more personal then it was in the past.
But not everybody likes that. In fact, it has been the debate in the European Union for the past year whether or not we should all be opting in for the cookies, meaning we would be accepting (or not) cookies by clicking on an acceptance button every time we visit a webpage. This debate ran not only in Europe, but also in the US where the FTC looked into a mechanism that could help to easily opt out of the cookies.
One of the biggest ‘targets’ in the discussion has been Google. The search giant has been aimed at by privacy commissioners all over the world. And now that company announces a new extension on Google Chrome which does exactly what the FTC wants: opt out of ad tracking cookies. They launch the “Keep My Opt-Outs” extension. (more…)
Google has come in for a lot of criticism over the last year or so, some of it justified, some of it not so. Whilst it is unrealistic to expect and assume that Google is and potentially can be a perfect entity, I for one would certainly suggest there is some room for improvement within the current resultset both in terms of quality of results and support for existing products.
Sometimes struggles to focus
There isn’t a day that goes by where we don’t see something new in our search index, whether that change be algorithmic or increasingly structural within the search index. From the addition of comparison ads to new layout to cater for local searches to the integration of local – 2010 was certainly a bumper year for changes. (more…)
Let’s face it: Google rules search. With a market share in most European countries of well over 90%, Google is as close to a search engine monopoly as you can get.
When it comes to potential threats of Google’s dominance, everyone seems to be looking towards Bing. This seems perfectly logical, as Bing is a product of one of the world’s biggest and most experienced technology companies. If anyone can threaten the dominance of Google, surely it’s the financial and technological might of Microsoft?
Maybe so. But I don’t agree with that. Sure, Bing has some great search properties. Their image search is very solid, their maps are great, and I quite fancy their Visual Search system. (more…)
It seems as if Google is making some more changes to Google Maps at the moment. Either that or I haven’t been paying attention lately 
.
I noticed two different things in the past two days. First I noticed Android continuing my Google Maps query where I left it at my computer and then this morning I noticed the checkin / check out options on Google Maps.
This morning I was looking on Google Maps for the Parking I had to go to for my meeting a bit later on. I then noticed that on top of the results there was the possibility to fill in check in and check out dates. Not for the Parking off course, but for the hotels nearby to the Parking. A quick check on Twitter and with some friends learned me they hadn’t seen it before either. So it might be something new, or we have looked over it.
(more…)
Mediabeat had the chance to sit down and talk to Marissa Mayer. And they got her to actually talk and give straight answers.
In the first part Marissa talks about Places where she highlights Hotpot as the competitive product from Google towards Foursquare. She is also asked how Google will get people to embrace this technology which pushes local. She indicates that everybody, including Google, is trying out what works and what doesn’t. Marissa also discusses missing the Groupon deal and how Google these days leaves a company intact when they buy that company and leave them the autonomy.
In the second part Marissa answers more questions about the different products she has been working on. She also claims: Search is about education. Facebook also gets a small sneer when it comes to opens. When asked about Buzz she admits Google hasn’t gotten social yet. But they are working on it. And as usual privacy is named as something they are very careful with. (more…)
First of all: Happy New Year! I hope 2011 will be the best year we have all ever seen.
2011 has started. It’s the first Monday of the New Year and many of us are starting the New Year fresh with good resolutions. And a new year also means you can get yourself (mentally) ready for a lot, and I mean a lot, posts on almost every site predicting the future of search and social in 2011. After all, every self-respecting blog is making these predictions.
Why? Well for one because its ‘easy’ content, secondly it might be a link worthy article (I’m linking to many of them in this post) and third, it’s always fun to look into a Crystal Ball and predict the future.
The thing is with these posts, hardly anyone dares to look at them again 12 months after they were published. How did we do in the predictions? Did we really have an idea of what was going to happen? Or did the industry caught us by surprise? Time to take a look. Note: I can’t talk about every prediction made out there, there were too many, but I collected some interesting ones. (more…)
There was a lot of rumor this week about an extensive article in the New York Times which told the story of a merchant who seemed to be “winning” in the Google algorithms with a rather unusual marketing strategy: being mean to customers. Yesterday Google responded. And guess what, they went full force and called in the special forces and changed the algorithm…
Many sites picked up and analyzed the story. We also talked about it on the State of Search radioshow this Tuesday and Jeroen wrote a post “Bad publicity as fuel for your rankings” about it. Probably the best analysis of the article was given by Danny Sullivan on Searchengineland. (more…)
Its not very often that search marketing makes the likes of the BBC news, however it was interesting to see the BBC website run a story this week stating the future of search is social.
The search engine landscape is such an interesting environment at this present moment in time for a number of reasons – for example:
As such this has led to a hugely different landscape for search marketeers of which the vast majority of readers of this blog are. The continuing evolution of the engines not only affects marketeers, one can’t help thinking traditional users of the search engines have had a lot to take in over the course of the last 12 months – without the benefit of industry knowledge. (more…)
We can go on and on about Streetview and Google issues so it seems. We reported last week Google got a slap on the wrist in the UK and this morning that it might be in trouble over data gathering in the US. Meanwhile the next issue pops up in Germany. There many houses are blurred because of privacy regulations. But it turns out that if you are using an iPad or iPhone the blurring isn’t going too well.
PC World tells us some properties to be visible rather than blurred in a preview of the service launched last week. (more…)
Digg has found an interesting format of interviewing: Digg Dialogue, getting their audience to send in the questions and then ask them to a ‘web-celebrity’. This time Marissa Mayer came back to Digg to answer questions. Mayer answered questions in all ranges, from the ‘disaster’ which was Google Wave up to Google TV, a Google Car and more.
A nice one: the one gadget she can’t live without: her Verizon card to get on the web and her smart phones.
See the entire interview below:
Just last week we told you that Google might face charges in the UK for taking e-mails, e-mail passwords, addresses and other data when collecting Streetview data in the UK. After Google admitted that it had taken that data The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said they would now re-investigate after previous investigations had finished already.
The UK information commissioner, Christopher Graham, now confirms Google committed a “significant breach” of the UK’s Data Protection Act. He however does not feel that Google needs to pay a fine. Google however has been ordered to delete the data it collected and sign an undertaking that it won’t happen again. Plus they want Google to further train their employees. (more…)
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