The case arose from the termination of a contract between Yahoo de Mexico and Ideas Interactivas. In roughly 2002, the companies agreed to jointly produce online and print directories: “Yahoo! Paginas Utiles.” The project was initially successful and the parties sought to expand the deal to other countries and regions, including Central America, Australia and Japan.

In 2005, however, Yahoo decided to end the deal. The contract was supposed to run through 2009. As a result of the termination of the contract Ideas Interactivas said it was forced into bankruptcy.

The lower court (49th Civil Court of Mexico) entered a preliminary judgment in favor of plaintiffs for $2.75 billion. The judgment represented a substantial chunk of Yahoo’s cash-on-hand. It was also more than Yahoo’s Q4 revenue.

Thus the legal victory is a significant one for Yahoo as it seeks to use its cash for operations and acquisitions, especially as it proposes to spend $1 billion on Tumblr.

The ”ancillary copyright” rule was proposed in August of 2012. In its initial form it would have required Google and others that indexed or aggregated news to pay for links or excerpts from those news items — essentially a “link tax.”

The law was pushed by German magazine and newspaper publishers that see the Internet and Google, in particular, as the cause of many of their subscription, readership and revenue challenges.

The original law did pass the German parliament, but a compromise was later negotiated to allow search engines and news aggregators to display “single words or very small text excerpts” at no cost. Anything beyond this would be subject to the publishers’ “exclusive right to commercialize” their content.

There is no “fair use doctrine” in Germany. Fair use is effectively what allows Google to exist and withstand copyright claims in the US.

Using this law as its basis, German publishers hope to establish a licensing marketplace for their content. When the law initially passed the European Publishers Council issued a statement saying the following:

The European Publishers Council (EPC) welcomes today’s decision by the German Bundestag to approve an ancillary copyright for news publishers in law that means that search engines and other aggregators who commercialise publishers’ content will no longer be able to do so without permission. The “Leistungsschutzrecht,” as it is know in German, will pave the way for commercial negotiations between the parties on the price for the commercial use of publishers’ content . . .

The new law will only apply to those companies who exploit commercially third party content such as content aggregators and search engines. The proposed provision signifies no change at all to possible uses by other users, or for consumers, bloggers or companies and associations who may use links or cite passages of published content.

News publishers can now demand that search engines and other providers of such services that aggregate their content, refrain from unauthorised forms of usage. These companies will need licences for such usage in the future.

The EPC believes that this law will help establish a market for aggregator content. New innovative business models can now be built based on legally licensed content.

While search engines and news aggregators in Germany will be able to show some third-party news content (“single words” and modest “text excerpts”) there hasn’t been any precise definition of how many words can be shown: a fragment? a sentence? more than a sentence?

As the statement above indicates, German publishers contend that even in its diluted form, the new law gives them near total control over their content. We can probably therefore assume there will be some initial litigation or attempted enforcement action by publishers to compel the narrowest possible interpretation of “text excerpts.”

Related Entries

• Google Avoids Link Tax But Ambiguous New “Ancillary Copyright” Law Sets Up Legal Battle To Come
• New German Law Will Allow Free “Snippets” By Search Engines, But Uncertainty Remains
• German Parliament Hears Experts On Proposed Law To Limit Search Engines From Using News Content
• Germany Wants To Force Google To Pay License Fees For Links

Already the leading digital and mobile mapping service, the various feature and UI improvements put more distance between Mountain View and its competitors. While Microsoft, Nokia and Apple offer some or even many of the same mapping capabilities, no one offers “the complete package” that Google does.

The new Google Maps offer a redesigned UI, though it’s not a radical departure from the existing Maps UI. The search box has been located in the upper left, and the map now fills the screen.

Though similar to the existing mapping experience, the page is less cluttered and “cleaner.”

In the lower left, users can easily switch between satellite and conventional map views. A search for “sushi” reveals a new presentation of search results on the map, with a new set of icons.

There are different views of search results. They can be sorted by “top reviewers,” Google+ social circles or “top results.” Notice the more prominent ad unit below the info window. That unit will potentially make a much larger impact than ads on the old Google Maps.

Users can access the familiar list of search results by clicking on “go to list of top results” in the info window. That list looks like this:

There currently don’t appear to be any sponsored results on this page, but I would imagine that will eventually change.

If you drill down to the level of an individual business, the info window in the upper left populates with a range of more detailed information. In the case of a sushi restaurant, that includes Zagat ratings information (with additional, enhanced Zagat information a click away) and whether anyone in my network liked the place.

Streets and other important information relevant to the business location are highlighted. This is dynamic and contingent on the particular location and degree of zoom. As you zoom out or shift to a nearby location, this level of detail disappears.

Street View and interior business photography are accessible from the info window, without the need to drag and drop or place the awkward “little man” on the map. By opening Street View or other imagery associated with the listing, you’re taken into an immersive experience, with some imagery drawn from Google Earth.

Google Earth View (3D imagery) is available on browsers that can accommodate WebGL (most recent versions of Chrome, Firefox).

As implied by the social filter, Google Maps is also now more personalized and places greater emphasis on discovery. This makes Google Maps a more formidable competitor for social sites such as Foursquare and Facebook.

A new “Explore” tab near the bottom of the map (lower right) opens a carousel of images and suggests popular sites and things to do in a particular location.

Individual user data, search history and social data influence local results. Google said today “the more you use it the better it will get,” taking the product out of the realm of “commodity mapping” and into the arena of Google Now and virtual assistants.

There’s also richer public transit information available in the new Google Maps. Users are able to get a broader view of their public transportation options and schedules. There’s also a comparison view (below), which is helpful if there are multiple options available.

This is not an exhaustive product tour. But, it provides a taste of the new UI and some of the new features, which are also available on mobile. It’s an impressive product and one that will be very hard for Google’s competitors to match.

The new Maps are available on Android, iOS devices (with a dedicated tablet experience) and the Web. Below is Google’s video tour of the new Maps.

The case and petition for injunction against Google were brought on behalf of third party publishers by the weather association. I obtained an English translation of the German court’s opinion. The translation is a bit awkward however, requiring a bit of interpretation on my part.

Below is the essence of the argument made by the petitioner against Google:

The Petitioner states that the Defendant [can] place its space-consuming weather forecast box featuring its own contents at the top in front of the list of organic search results. For a person who started a search request using the term “weather“, this means that it is no longer necessary to heed the links in the organic search list below because they can retrieve all the important information from the weather box at the top. Accordingly, the design of the search engine of the Defendant . . . results in the user being dissuaded from following the links of other providers. In consequence of the fact that these sites are less frequently visited, the providers lose advertising revenue resulting in the profitability of their business models being jeopardized.

The above, familiar argument distilled into bullets goes like this:

• Google can put its own “weather box” at the top of search results
• Third party weather sites become less visible (or effectively invisible in this case)
• Visiting third party weather sites becomes less necessary or even unnecessary
• The decline in organic traffic harms publishers and decreases revenue, jeopardizing their businesses

The court rejected these arguments entirely.

It spent some time addressing the challenges of defining the market for purposes of the competition analysis. It came to the preliminary conclusion that the entire internet (including Twitter and Facebook) should be used as the relevant context for analysis. However it didn’t dispose of the injunction petition on that basis.

The German court specifically rejected the notion that Google owed any obligation or duty to the weather sites (or by implication any set of vertical-content publishers) at the expense of doing what Google considered to be right for users:

It is not the objective of the ban on the abuse of a market-controlling position to safeguard traditional business models that can no longer withstand change. The ban sought by the Petitioner would amount to precisely this: the Defendant . . . would be prevented from enhancing its search approach in that, rather than making reference solely to links of other providers, it provides its own contents direct, the reason being that what the Petitioner is claiming for itself and its members should also apply to other search terms.

Put differently: the Defendant . . . should forgo the innovation it considers to be proper so that other companies such as the members of the Petitioner are included in the result list as usual and are thus able to continue generating revenue via this placement and the advertising space thus obtained . . .

Indeed the court argued that the weather association was essentially seeking to protect ad-revenue stability for its member publishers and shield them against the impact of market competition. It further asserted that Google was changing precisely in response to market forces and competition and that it had a right to do so, to provide what it regarded as the best overall user experience.

The plaintiff-petitioner Verband Deutscher Wetterdienstleister has two weeks to appeal the decision. They have not yet indicated whether they intend to do so.

The proposed antitrust settlement between Google and the European Commission (EC) is likely to happen. However, if it were for some reason to fail, the logic of this German case suggests the EC would face legal challenges were it to become involved in litigation against Google. Recognizing this, the EC will in all probability finalize the formal settlement proposal on the table after the one-month “market test” period is over.

According to the news out this morning:

The multi-faceted agreement with Yahoo! includes; off–network search syndication, monetization of Yahoo! owned and operated properties, and mobile ad serving and monetization. This deal allows Chitika to continue to provide world-class monetization solutions to its partners and helps Yahoo! extend its search marketplace.

What this means as a practical matter is the following:

• Off-network: Yahoo will “re-syndicate” search ads across the Chitika network in mobile (mirroring the distribution Chitika provides for Yahoo on the PC)
• In-network: Yahoo will use Chitika technology to serve and target search ads on its own mobile properties

The deal is a mix of licensing and revenue sharing.

I spoke yesterday with Chitika CEO Venkat Kolluri who was obviously enthusiastic about the expansion of his company’s deal with Yahoo. He discussed the challenges of translating search/text ads into effective mobile ads — essentially mobile display ads. Google also does this with mixed success.

Kolluri said the objective was to minimize or eliminate bad clicks in mobile. Chitika has apparently done this by generating ad-category icons and putting the text ad copy on a landing page.

The search marketer doesn’t get charged for the first click on the icon; the billable event happens when a user clicks on the link/text on the mobile landing page (there’s no click-to-call currently). Google and others have also addressed this “inadvertent click” issue, sometimes called the “fat finger” problem in different ways.

Below is an example of how these ads/icons appear in a mobile context. The screenshot was provided by Chitika:

This deal is noteworthy in a few respects. It reflects another semi-independent move by Yahoo to reap more revenue from search advertising. However, it also benefits Bing search advertisers because they gain additional mobile reach (it’s not clear how or whether Yahoo and Microsoft will communicate about this network syndication to advertisers).

The deal is also part of Yahoo’s new much more aggressive mobile strategy.

That’s the page previously dedicated to the “Palestinian Territories.” On May 1 Google dropped “territories” and now calls it “Google Palestine.”

This move follows UN recognition of the Palestinians last November as a “non-member state.” The name change was condemned by Israeli authorities immediately after it happened. According to the Jerusalem Post Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page and said the following:

“By [using 'Palestine'] Google is in essence recognizing the existence of a Palestinian state,” Elkin wrote in a letter to Google CEO Larry Page. 

“Such a decision is in my opinion not only mistaken but could also negatively impinge on the efforts of my government to bring about direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” Elkin wrote.

Google gave Reuters the following statement: “We are following the lead of the U.N. … and other international organizations.” A spokesman told the BBC last week:

“We’re changing the name ‘Palestinian Territories’ to ‘Palestine’ across our products. We consult a number of sources and authorities when naming countries.

“In this case, we are following the lead of the UN, Icann [the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers], ISO [International Organisation for Standardisation] and other international organisations.”

Because this is such a hot-button issue it does amount to a self-conscious “political statement” by Google and not simply a causal naming decision that follows the lead of other organizations. Google is lending its voice, rightly or wrongly, to the debate about Palestinian statehood.

The data argue that there has been zero-percent growth in PC Internet traffic since 2011. The PC Internet has plateaued (see our Marketing Land story: PC Free: 46% Used Only Mobile Devices In Purchase Process According To New Study.)

At the same time mobile is growing as a percentage of overall traffic to websites. As of Q4, on average, mobile traffic stood at 15 percent. However in particular categories it’s much higher: local for example. In its Q1 earnings call this week Yelp said that 55 percent of all its searches are now from mobile (45 percent from apps).

Traffic to local sites is growing faster than mobile traffic generally across the internet. The average percentage of mobile traffic (traffic from “non-PC” devices) to local sites grew to 27 percent in Q4 vs. the broader internet average of 15 percent.

As indicated above, particular local sites may be seeing even greater traffic from mobile devices. Another example: real estate site Zillow announced in January that more than half of its visits are now coming from mobile.

Consistent with other data, mobile apps are more often used to access local content than the mobile browser according to the report. However, as a practical matter, it really depends heavily on the category. In some categories the mobile browser may be used more often and in others apps dominate.

For example in the following slide based on data from Nielsen-xAd-Telmetrics’ 2012 mobile path to purchase study, apps were the primary way to access content in the travel category but not for automotive.

The report argues, quite correctly, that everyone operating in the local market needs to quickly shift budget and attention to mobile given how fast everything is changing.

Previous investors included Google, Greylock, Bessemer, IDG Ventures, KPG Ventures, Quest Venture Partners. The company has one product called MindMeld. It’s sort of a (video) chat app but really more of a technology demonstration. Expect Labs calls its technology an “Anticipatory Computing Engine,” which is as awkward a term as “predictive search” — though that equally applies.

Expect Labs and the challenge that CEO Tim Tuttle and his team are working on is building what amounts to a new type of search capability for a dynamic, mobilized world where information is flowing continuously and dynamically to and from users and devices. In layman’s terms Expect Labs is building technology with a wide range of consumer and enterprise applications but which operates a bit like a marriage of Siri and Google Now.

The company has the capacity to pull data from a traditional search index, proprietary databases (e.g., social data) and APIs and combine that with real-time, contextually aware information from the real world (e.g., location, time of day, etc.) to deliver content or “search results” in real time. MindMeld is a kind of persistent-search, intelligent assistant that “listens” to users’ conversations and offers relevant content and search results without any actual “searching” (see video below).

Here’s how Expects Labs describes what it does and its technology:

Founded in 2011, Expect Labs has pioneered the development of technology that enables our computing devices and applications to pay attention continuously and better anticipate the information that we need. Over the past two years, Expect Labs’ team of PhDs and research experts have developed a new class of technologies to understand the meaning of continuous conversations. Based on this understanding, Expect Labs’ platform can model the context of your interactions in real-time, and proactively find information you may want before you need to search for it. As part of this new strategic investment, Expect Labs will begin working to enable new types of context-aware, predictive intelligence in a wide variety of applications and devices.

This is the same type of language surrounding Google Now and it does represent one future of search (or the “intelligent assistant”). In the context of the above it’s not surprising then that Google has invested.

New investor Samsung expects Expect Labs’ technology “to enable new types of intelligent, voice-driven and context aware behavior across a wide range of devices including smartphones, tablets and smart TVs.” Telefónica says it “intends to utilize Expect Labs’ technology and expertise to enhance several product lines including next-generation communications applications and advertising initiatives.”

For its part Intel says that Expect Labs’ technology will become a part of “new types of user interfaces driven by voice, touch, and gesture.” the voice recognition part comes from Nuance, which is also the speech recognition provider behind Siri.

This is definitely a company to watch. Right now the company is trying to solve the “signal to noise” problem that it confronts with all the data and inputs that it’s processing. However CEO Tim Tuttle believes he’s well on the way toward doing that.

He describes the company’s methodology and what it’s building as “a new architecture for search.” With how promising it is and how many companies are circling Expect Labs, as investors and would-be users of its technology, it’s likely that there will be an early acquisition (Google, Apple, Samsung?).

Google Now for Android is only available on those devices that feature Jelly Bean 4.1 or 4.2 (4.3 is apparently coming). What that means as a practical matter is that fewer than 200 million people out of more than 750 million Android devices activated can use Google Now.

In March, Google CEO Larry Page said that there were 750 million Android activations (on their way to 1 billion this year). Jelly Bean 4.1 and above are only on 25 percent of Android devices, according to the Android developer site. The Android marketplace is highly fragmented.

What that means is Google Now for Android is only available to this 25 percent or roughly 187.5 million devices. By comparison, Google Now for iOS is available to all devices running iOS 5 and above.

According to statements in Q1 2013 from Apple CEO Tim Cook, there have been more than 500 million iOS devices sold to date. At least 300 million are running iOS 6. Fewer than 5 percent of iOS devices are running a version of the operating system that pre-dates iOS 5. That’s according to Chitika data released last year.

Accordingly, that means roughly 475 million iOS devices can potentially use the new Google Search app with Google Now. That marks a huge expansion of the audience for Google Now.

On a more technical level, Google Now for iOS won’t be continuously syncing in the background (except for location), and it won’t use the iOS notification center, as it does on Android (according to The Verge). However, Android Jelly Bean users who also have iPhones won’t really notice much of a difference between the two user experiences overall.

See our other Google Now on iOS stories from today:

• The Amazing “Google Now” — When Google Searches Before You Think To
• iPhone & iPad Users To Get Google Now, As It Comes To iOS

Previously Android-only, Google’s “predictive search” tool Google Now is now available for the iPhone and iPad. It’s part of an updated Google Search App for iOS.

Google Now for iOS had been anticipated since March, when Engadget discovered a promotional video suggesting it would make the leap. Until its release this morning, Google Now had been available exclusively on devices running Android 4.1 (“Jelly Bean”) or higher.

We’ve written multiple times about Google Now in the past. But, if for some reason you’re unfamiliar with it, Google Now is the company’s “search assistant,” offering “predictive” or “anticipatory” search by combining dynamic contextual information with structured data, presented on nicely formatted “cards.”

Danny Sullivan has written a companion article, The Amazing “Google Now” — When Google Searches Before You Think To, which provides additional background and a reintroduction to the service.

The images immediately below are screenshots provided by Google illustrating how Google Now results will look on the iPhone — essentially identical to the Android version.

Google Now cards offer information on traffic, weather, sports scores, nearby places, currency conversions, movie showtimes, package tracking and considerably more. It’s a growing list of categories and data sources. Google Now will even prompt you to continue searching on previous search topics (e.g., flights to Kona). The chart below shows the full range of content and information available via Google Now.

Because we didn’t get early access to the app, we don’t know whether Google Now will operate differently on iOS vs. the Android version. It’s a safe bet, however, that you won’t be able to “swipe up” from the bottom of the iPhone (or iPad) screen to launch Google Now. (But, see postscript below.)

As a general matter, in the iOS version, Google Now will provide essentially the same content and functionality that Android users have been enjoying. The major difference is that the full range of information “cards” won’t be immediately available for iOS. We understand they will eventually come over, however.

Source: Google

Google Now is a compelling product and has improved since its launch last year. It also illustrates how the future of search will be different from its past. The combination search/Web history, data and context enable Google Now to give users lots of personalized information about lots of things without having to ask for any of it.

Back in 2010, Marrisa Mayer (then at Google) was promoting the idea of “contextual discovery,” which would “push information to people” based on their location and what they are doing. Before that, in 2009, she was talking about “the perfect search engine” as one that would have a more holistic understanding of user needs and would be able to deliver data or content in an “informative and coherent way.”

Google Now embodies both of those sets of aspirations. However one question is whether iPad and iPhone owners will actually use it.

An online survey I conducted in June of last year (n=503 iPhone 4S owners) found that most people either searched from the Safari toolbar (using Google as the default engine) or went to Google.com on the mobile Web. Just under 20 percent of respondents said they used the search app.

Which of the following do you use MOST OFTEN to search the web on your phone?

• I visit Google.­com to search: 44.9 percent
• I use search in the Safari toolbar: 26.4 percent
• I use the Google mobile app: 19.3 percent
• I use Siri to search the web: 11.1 percent
• I use Bing and/or Yahoo: 6.6 percent

These survey responses shouldn’t be seen as definitive, but merely indicative, that most iOS users don’t currently use the search app as their primary way to access Google. In that context, Google Now for iOS can be seen partly as a bid to get iOS users to both sign in (which is a requirement) and search more.

Beyond all the “under the hood” capabilities, Google Now translates the otherwise basic mobile search experience into a richer and more dynamic app-based experience.

Postscript: Google Now on the iPhone does appear on first blush to be nearly identical (save the missing “cards” above) to the Android version. One accesses Google Now by swiping up from the Google Search app home page in the same way as on the Android version.

Postscript 2: See Potential iOS Market For Google Now Is 2.5X Larger Than Android “Now” Base for more side-by-side of Google Now on Android and iOS plus how today’s launch makes Google Now available to more iOS users than Android ones.

Related Entries

• Will Mobile Apps Be Google’s Undoing? (Hint: No)
• Google Now Gains More Content Categories & Info Cards
• “Google Now” Moving Well Beyond Search, Becoming Mobile Assistant
• Google Expands Gmail In Search Results With My Orders, My Events & My Reservations
• New Google Search App With Siri-Like Voice Responses Finally Approved For iOS
• How Google’s New Search App For The iPhone Might Steal Searchers Away From Siri
• Google Now Gains More Content Categories & Info Cards
• Google Expands Gmail In Search Results With My Orders, My Events & My Reservations
• The Amazing “Google Now” — When Google Searches Before You Think To