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Google’s Next Homepage Logo

by Jason Wilk on December 29, 2008

  • Every year around the holidays, Google has its “Doodle 4 Google” contest in the US, the UK, and Australia, inviting kids K-12 to submit a homepage doodle inspired by a particular theme. For each doodle submitted, Google donated to a non-profit that works to eradicate childhood malnutrition in Mexico. In total, more than 154,000 pounds of food and aid were donated. The winner is Ana Karen Villagómez, who’s design will take over the Google homepage on January 6th.

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Mozilla Relationship With Google On The Rocks

by Jason Wilk on December 22, 2008

  • Mozilla Corp, maker of the Firefox Web Browser is becoming displeased with their current relationship with Google.
  • John Lilly, Mozilla’s CEO, said in an interview last week, “We have a fine and reasonable relationship, but I’d be lying if I said that things weren’t more complicated than they used to be.” (CW)
  • What’s causing this animosity? Google’s own browser, Chrome, which is slowly gaining a share in the booming browser market. The interesting part of the newly competitive relationship is that Mozilla makes the bulk of their revenue from Google, not to mention brings in a nice chunk of change every year for the search giant. 88%, or about $60 million of Mozilla’s 2007 revenues came from Google. Google pays Mozilla for placement as the default search in Firefox as well as powers the search for Firefox’s homepage (they share the ad revenue)
  • What will Mozilla do? Well, even with the launch of Chrome, Firefox has seen a 24% increase in users since the beginning of the year. Currently 1 in 5 people are using the browser. Firefox only cooperates with Google so that it can provide its users with the best possible search experience and the most relevant ads. Looking towards the future and further competition from Google, Mozilla said they plan to explore other search revenue partners, starting with international country-specific firms first, such as Ramblr in Russia, Baidu in China, Yahooo in Japan, etc. When asked about searching for revenues outside of the standard web, Lilly said that 2009 will be the year which Firefox makes its strong entrance into the mobile browser market (Fennec is the name of the mobile browser).
  • Mozilla will do what it takes to compete with Google. There is no end in near sight to their relationship, but by no means will they retreat. Should Mozilla ditch Google sooner than later?

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People Are Fed Up With Google Finance

by Jason Wilk on December 18, 2008

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  • If you are a Google Finance user, then you more likely than not browse through the discussion forums related to the stock you’re researching. I myself am an avid user and I love sifting through the discussion forums to see what everyone has to say. As with most message boards and forums, there is always a considerable amount of spam coming from stock promoters, irrelevant info, etc. Google turns their back most of the time relying on users to report spam and even then, most posts will stay in the system. 
  • However, Google Finance has somehow become the center of racist discussion, and it is upsetting users all over who have had enough of Google’s lack of consideration when it comes to moderating their system. While researching my unstable Apple stock today, I had to deal with the same people using the N word in the title’s of their posts. Google’s algorithm in the message board works as it does on any other system by bumping a thread back to the homepage once someone makes a new comment; good or bad. I have been seeing more comments like the one below consistently popping up from disgruntled members on the Finance pages.

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  • Google can certainly add in a strip of code to immediately ban post titles that contain slurs to weave out the racism, and they can also get a moderator over to the message boards at least to take care of the blue-chip stocks receiving heavy discussion. It’s become a serious problem and Google needs to clean it up before they have a problem on their hands. The last thing they want is to be accused of allowing it. Digg this to have Google change the algorithm. 

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Google Takes The LIFE Photo Archive To The Mainsteam

by Jason Wilk on December 13, 2008

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  • Last monthly Google quietly announced a partnership with LIFE Magazine to bring their entire archive of offline photos to the web. Today they bring it to the masses by advertising it on the Google Images homepage. This is one of Google’s most prominent achievements as they continue to try and organize the offline web online. This last week Google announced that you will now be able to search magazine online, another big step for the grand mission that is Google Book Search.
  • The collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s. A majority of the images have never been published and most the ones that did have only been seen by few collectors and historians. In the process, Google searched (by hand) the dusty archives which contained negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints that needed to be converted. As of last month during the testing period, they had about 20 percent of the collection online or around 2 million photos. Now, they are nearing completion of the 10 million total photos.

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Why Microsoft’s Solution To Beat Google Is Yahoo And Kumo

by Jason Wilk on November 25, 2008

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  • Market share results in the search game came in yesterday.
  • Google’s growth rate slowed in October to 29.9 percent, while Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s came off the flat line.
  • Yahoo’ s U.S. search volume grew 7.7 percent (up 0.6) and Microsoft’s grew 4.2 percent (up 1.2).
  • Together they still only account for 29 percent of U.S. search market share, but what if Microsoft’s secret Kumo project were to be the project that would result out of a Yahoo acquisition).
  • Keep LiveSearch as a CashBack incentive search program and continue to increase lead generation money for shopping and travel destinations. Let Yahoo operate it’s search homepage and powerful content properties. Launch Kumo as a Google search competitor, sell ads across all three destinations, increase market share with another brand and slowly creep up on Google. Launch Kumo with LiveOffice products, better mail, and many Yahoo BOSS API elements. I’m not saying this will 100% work, I’m saying if I were doing business development for Microsoft, I would be pushing hard for this to happen.

TC

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