If you visit Google.com today, you will see a special logo for Veterans Day. The logo is less complex when compared to last years, where Google had to fix their Veterans Day logo. Last year, Google placed hats on top of each letter on the Google logo, the hats included Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. But they forgot one, the U.S. Coast Guard, which they added later.

Google also has a logo on Google.co.uk for Remembrance Day:

Bing has a Veterans Day Theme:

Yahoo typically skips adding a special logo for today, which is what they have done today. But you can see more logos, from Ask.com, AOL and others at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Today is Halloween and the search engines have logos up for the special day. Before I post the logos, here are some posts from others in the community on Halloween.

Matt Cutts of Google had a holy costume. Google Blogoscoped noticed Google added trick or treat to their robots.txt file. Bing has a special visual search edition for today. Bruce Clay’s team dressed up and PPC Heros added some funk. Finally, the logos you see below is reposted from the Search Engine Roundtable.

Google has four Doodles:

Yahoo (Flash):

AOL (Flash):

YouTube:

Bing:

Ask.com:

Dogpile:

BruceClay’s design:

Search Engine Roundtable:

For the past logos, see 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004 logos.

AOL announced today that it’s hired former Google employee Shashi Seth as its Senior VP of Global Advertising Products. While with Google, Seth was head of monetization for YouTube. Most recently he was the Chief Revenue Officer for Cooliris.

AOL’s addition of Seth is the latest in a series of hirings from the search industry — and Google in particular — going back to March when Tim Armstrong left Google to become AOL’s Chairman and CEO. Armstrong was one of Google’s longest serving executives, and AOL credited him for helping to “build one of the most successful media teams in the history of the Internet” at Google.

More recently, Google VP Jeff Levick left to become AOL’s President of Global Advertising and Strategy. PaidContent points out that AOL has also hired ex-Googlers Caroline Campbell and Erin Clift. (It’s worth mentioning that AOL also recently hired former Yahoo SVP Brad Garlinghouse, as well.)

There’s more discussion on Techmeme.

The Six Revisions blog complied an excellent list of the classic search engines, some dating back to the 1990s. His list includes screen shots of both the old and current (if available) versions of HotBot, Excite, WebCrawler, Ask Jeeves, Ask.com, Yahoo, Google, Dogpile, AltaVista, Lycos, MSN Search, Bing, AOL Search, Infoseek, Go.com, Netscape, MetaCrawler, and All The Web.

Scrolling down the list and looking at some of those old screen shots bring back fun memories. Of course, there are many search engines missing, too many to list there or even here. But looking at the old screen captures of Google, Ask Jeeves and AltaVista reminds me of the simpler days in search.

Which was your favorite old search engine?

Brad Garlinghouse, who was previously an SVP at Yahoo, and the author of the now famous “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” is joining AOL as president of Internet and Mobile communications. What this means is that he’ll be responsibile for email, IM and other communications tools, which implicates a range of properties including Bebo.

According to the press release out this morning Garlinghouse will also be “heading up AOL’s Silicon Valley operations from its Mountain View campus and serving as the West Coast lead for AOL Ventures, the company`s venture capital arm headed globally by Jon Brod.”

AOL’s email, once dominant, is now number four after Gmail, Microsoft Hotmail and Yahoo Mail (in order). Garlinghouse oversaw Yahoo mail during his six-year tenure in Sunnyvale and was reportedly instrumental in the acquisitions of Oddpost (part of Yahoo Mail) and Flickr. However, his new position in Silicon Valley and with AOL Ventures indicates that Garlinghouse, who will report directly to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, will have a more strategic role in the company.

Quoted in the NY Times, Garlinghouse says that AOL doesn’t have the kinds of problems that Yahoo did when he penned his Peanut Butter memo:

In an interview on Monday, Mr. Garlinghouse acknowledged that AOL also faced significant challenges, but suggested that it did not have the kinds of systemic problems that Yahoo was confronting in 2006.

“There is a clarity of vision and strategy,” he said.

AOL is often dismissed explicitly or implicitly by tech writers and bloggers as a company whose time has passed. However AOL remains the number four US Internet company with some category leading properties, such as MapQuest. It also is the top ad network according to comScore.

The question is how to reinvigorate the brand (depending on the property). That’s the chief problem with AOL Mail; it feels a little like driving an old car to many people: it works but it’s a little embarrassing. Indeed it’s not about functionality as much as the “@aol” address itself– and that may be a metaphor for the problem the company as a whole faces. Beyond this, there have also been lots of attempts to do new and interesting things with AOL IM over the past few years, to use it as a kind of platform but none of those have really taken hold.

As West Coast lead for AOL Ventures Garlinghouse may be tempted to grab hot new companies as a way to add sizzle and buzz to AOL. Yahoo suffered from that problem, as Garlinghouse pointed out in his “manifesto.” And AOL has made some problem acquisitions in the past. The poster child for ill-conceived acquisitions at AOL is Bebo, for which the company paid roughly $850 million. At the time AOL said “Together with its AIM and ICQ personal communications network, the acquisition will give AOL a premier position in the fast growing world of social media with a network of approximately 80 million unique users.” That didn’t exactly come to pass.

If there is in fact a “clarity of vision and strategy” at AOL any new acquisitions will need to clearly support that vision to be effective. There are opportunities for AOL in a range of categories but the company will need creative thinking and execution if it’s to capitalize on them. And while AOL has definitely assembled a strong team, that team has major work cut out for it.

In anticipation of a spin off/IPO for AOL, TimeWarner bought back Google’s 5 percent interest in the company for $283 million dollars. Google originally purchased the equity stake in AOL in 2005 to preserve its search relationship with its largest partner and fend of Microsoft, which was seeking a potential deal with or acquisition of AOL.

The original Google investment was $1 billion, which valued the TimeWarner AOL unit at $20 billion. The current valuation of AOL, based on the share buy back, would be roughly $5.6 billion.

Here’s what Google said, before it wrote down most of the value of its AOL investment last year, in its 10-Q filing (9/08) with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

We review our investment in AOL for impairment in accordance with FSP SFAS 115-1, The Meaning of Other-Than-Temporary Impairment and Its Application to Certain Investments (“FSP 115-1”). Based on our review, we believe our investment in AOL is impaired. After consideration of the duration of the impairment, as well as the reasons for any decline in value and the potential recovery period, we do not believe that such impairment is “other-than-temporary” at September 30, 2008 as defined under FSP 115-1. As a result, our investment in this non-marketable equity security is carried at cost on our Consolidated Balance Sheets. We will continue to review this investment for impairment on a quarterly basis. There can be no assurance that impairment charges will not be required in the future, and any such amounts could be material to our Consolidated Statements of Income.

These developments are quite far removed from the day when AOL acquired TimeWarner in an all-stock deal valued at $160 billion — then the largest merger/acquisition in US history. The combined company was supposed to marry the strengths of both businesses. That really never materialized and TimeWarner (and investors) soured on AOL to the point that it became perceived as a liability and is now being effectively unloaded by the media giant.

It’s been roughly 100 days since Tim Armstrong was named CEO of AOL in anticipation of a spin-off/IPO of the company from corporate parent TimeWarner later this year. There are a slew of interviews out this morning in which Armstrong assesses his first 100 days, the state of the business and gives some indications of where AOL is headed.

Among the highlights:

• AOL sees content and its display ad network reach as its primary strengths
• It will have many brands built on more unified platforms that simplify the back end
• The new AOL will be divided into the following areas (per AdAge): content production, the display-ad network, local information and services, communications and AOL Ventures
• Armstrong gives mixed signals but suggests that when the Google search partnership deal is up next year, he’ll shop it to others (read: Microsoft/Bing).
• The ISP business won’t be separated from AOL after all
• Bebo is “in a very competitive space” (read: AOL paid too much, it’s struggling and must find a more effective strategy)

The following are excerpts from several of the interviews and articles that appeared this morning:

The Wall Street Journal:

AOL’s new strategy to compete in display ads has three parts, says Jeff Levick, a former Google executive whom Mr. Armstrong hired as AOL’s president of global advertising and strategy. The first is building a global self-service system that lets markers buy ads across thousands of Web sites. To accomplish this, AOL is building on a technology it introduced last fall, called BidPlace, that lets advertisers place bids to buy ads across a network of sites AOL represents as middleman. In May, that network reached 91% of the 193.8 million Americans online, according to Web-measurement firm comScore.

The system is similar to the one advertisers use to buy search ads, the largest category of digital advertising by spending. The idea is that to quickly increase display-ad revenue, AOL needs to make it easy for marketers across the globe to buy the ads, Mr. Levick says.

AOL says the second part of its ad strategy involves developing a stronger sales force that would concentrate on selling ads to major marketers on AOL’s premium Web properties, such as the AOL.com home page or its MapQuest site . . .

Financial Times:

AOL is one of the internet’s most prolific producers of text content through some 75 properties including Asylum, the most popular men’s site, and women’s site Lemondrop.

Executives said they planned an expansion into niche areas and would boost video production.

Combined, traffic to AOL-owned MediaGlow, which houses all its content sites, rose 5 per cent in June from a year ago to 75.4m, according to comScore, and 22 of its sites ranked in the top five in their categories.

AdAge:

Ad Age: What does AOL stand for?

Mr. Armstrong: A safe environment, very entertaining, a great content company. As a consumer, you will see this as a company that delights you. The model is Disney. We are both buying content and producing content today. The question is how does this company become great at scaling that content and providing value to advertisers?

BoomTown:

A: Over the years, for example, there were so many acquisitions. But, a lot of them became businesses that we were not fully committed to and we have to start making clear choices and letting the rest go.

B: Such as?

A: Well, we are going to be focused on scaling content, advertising, email, messaging and local, but making it easier and less complicated.

In the ad business, for example, we have 100 products. I think we can be much more successful with less.

And we have different publishing platforms all over the world, just as the Web has become about having centralized technology. We have been missing the core characteristic of the Internet, which is about one platform.

PaidContent:

Can AOL have too many brands?

I would say only if they don’t work.

By having all these different brands, are you getting past that image some people have of not wanting to have anything that says AOL on it?

No, no, no. First of all, I think we have a basic philosophy here, which is the web is going to get more fragmented over time. People are going to figure out how to serve unique audiences in faster, better, more concrete informational ways and that is a strategy that fits very well with what we have been looking at with Media Glow properties and other things. Fragmentation on the internet is good for us. We believe in it and we’re riding that trend.

It’s striking that most of the pieces on AOL out today don’t talk at all about search except in the context of the potential renewal of the Google deal, even then only a couple of them mention it in passing. AOL still is a top-5 search site. The fact that Armstrong apparently didn’t bring it up himself is also interesting. Before there was “Universal Search,” there was AOL’s Full View, an innovative approach to multi-media content presentation in search that was killed by AOL managers afraid of getting ahead of the market and doing something different.

Will there be any innovation on the consumer side of search or is that totally on autopilot now?  Has Armstrong decided that AOL can’t compete and grow share? No one asked.

It does sound like Armstrong has a good grasp on the strengths and weaknesses of the company overall, and is focused on some things that need to be immediately remedied. It’s interesting to me that he’s moved from a company where technology (not content) was the focus and there was a single brand to a company where content is a major area of focus across dozens of brands.

Armstrong and Yahoo’s Carol Bartz are both charged with renewing their companies and rebuilding confidence. And the two portals are similarly situated in many respects: both rely heavily on display ads and verticals. Both are “content companies” and both have similar coverage and assets. Bartz is under more scrutiny and has gotten far more attention. But Armstrong could surprise everyone and turn out to be the more successful of the two executives in the end.

According to comScore the average watcher of online video in the US took in 385 minutes-worth in April. And according to Nielsen, in May, “year-over-year, unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer and time per viewer were up, led by a 49 percent growth in time per viewer.” The leading video site is Google/YouTube by a large margin with almost double the unique users of Fox Interactive Media, the next ranking US online video provider. After that it becomes much more competitive.

Against that backdrop of intense competition and increasing consumer demand for online video, AOL’s video search engine Truveo has relaunched on a global basis (17 countries).

Truveo began as a video search technology platform and was acquired by AOL in January, 2006. In August of 2007 it became a consumer destination site. The previous version of the site had a number of virtues (depth, global scope, organization) but also serious problems with usability. I wrote at the time:

The single biggest drawback to the site (esp. vs. YouTube) is the fact that many (though not all) of Truveo’s content partners contractually require that videos be served on their sites rather than on Truveo. Consequently a pop-up appears and you watch the desired video (and pre-rolls ads) on the partner sites (about 50% of the time in my quick testing). That creates a variable experience, which YouTube avoids by having everything play in a single, uniform player on its site.

Those problems have largely remedied with the new user experience though there’s still some unevenness. Yet one can watch many more videos on the Truveo site itself today; and where the engine is compelled to link to third party sites (i.e., no video embed code) Truveo frames the experience. Here are two viewing modes:

Among the improvements, there are also new user controls and filters to search or browse video by source or sort by popularity, ranking and recency:

There are also myriad full-length shows on the site. Overall this is a dramatically improved user experience and Truveo should see its traffic increase accordingly.

Truveo itself says that its global reach and the comprehensiveness of its video index — all the video is being crawled, there are no feeds or deals here — are what differentiate the site from competitors. AOL video remains a separate site with a different look and feel, though they share technology.

As part of the announcement this morning Truveo announced a deal to power video search on Univision Interactive Media’s online portal.

We wanted to wish all the fathers out there a happy Father’s Day from all of us at Search Engine Land. To celebrate, below is a collection of some of the logos from Google and the rest of the industry. Happy Father’s Day!

Google:

Yahoo:

AOL:

DogPile:

Bing:

Ask.com:

Cre8asite Forums:

Search Engine Roundtable:

AOL’s MapQuest has been in mobile mapping longer than any of its rivals, but it’s playing catch up when it comes to the iPhone, which remains the most important smartphone platform for the time being. This morning, MapQuest launched the iPhone version of its MapQuest4Mobile app (launches iTunes). Prior to this app the company has offered an optimized browser-based version for both the iPhone and Android. MapQuest4Mobile as an app has been available for BlackBerry for some time.

The new iPhone MapQuest4Mobile app offers a rich environment with innovative new features. There’s a great deal of personalization available and the app integrates the online and mobile experiences very nicely. The strategy here involves getting people invested in MapQuest4Mobile through personalization (MyPlaces) and customization (place widgets), as well as PC-mobile integration.

Directions, including multipoint routing, are well executed. Users can easily change the order of several stops on a multipoint trip by dragging one or more of those stops to a different position in the order. The route is recalculated accordingly.

When viewing directions in a list form, users can turn the phone (landscape) and see what MapQuest is calling “max maneuver” mode. Each step in the route occupies the full screen (second image below). This is helpful if the iPhone is on the seat next to you and you’re driving.

Users are also able to access routes and directions initiated on the desktop through the app, providing a high level of integration between the mobile and PC experiences. This isn’t “send to mobile;” it offers a deeper level of integration. Another example of this integration, registered users who have saved locations or directions via “MyPlaces” online can access all that information by signing in on the iPhone app.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the new app is the icon-based “one tap” local search capability. This capability isn’t unique to MapQuest (see Google’s Places Directory, AroundMe, ManGo, etc.). However the execution and associated customization is unique. It’s also an example of how companies are leveraging the phone’s location-awareness to make mobile searching somewhat less challenging.

Located on a carousel at the base of the map are graphical icons that pertain to different categories of businesses (i.e., hotels, theaters, restaurants, cafes, gas stations, etc.). Tapping one or more of these icons shows users all those locations near them. One can then get directions to or from any location accordingly.

Christian Dwyer, Senior Vice President and General Manager, MapQuest told me that the existing roster of “place widgets,” as MapQuest calls these icons, would be expanding and will include more branded widgets as well. Users can customize the carousel by dragging icons on or off:

A disappointment for me was the absence of any rich content or reviews at the level of business profiles (you get contact details and links to external websites). However, a very nice feature of the app is the way activated place widgets populate dynamically on the map as you drag it to new areas. That eliminates the need to do subsequent searches for the same types of businesses in adjacent neighborhoods or nearby towns.

Dwyer hinted to me that a future version of the app might allow users to create customized place widgets as well. The addition of more branded icons, the capacity to create customized place widgets and the addition of reviews would make this already strong app even more compelling.