It’s back, the prospect that Microsoft might try to make Rupert Murdoch happy by offering a “get listed with Bing” exclusive deal. Later, I’ll revisit the topic in a coordinated fashion. But for now, I’ve collected a number of thoughts I’ve put out on Twitter, in blog comments and elsewhere.

First, I’ll point readers back to my post from earlier this month, Why An Exclusive Wall Street Journal (or News Corp) Deal Wouldn’t Help Bing.

I still suspect that News Corp’s most valuable news content of all its properties remains the Wall Street Journal. So what happens if the WSJ is out of Google? Nothing.

Seriously, nothing. Remember, for years the WSJ was NOT in Google, and yet Google grew just fine. Also, the WSJ seems to have been fine. Neither is crucial to each other.

What if all of News Corp goes? Well, what are we talking about? Shows like American Idol? I see a boon for unofficial sites with news about American Idol, if that happens. Just News Corp news organizations? I’ll quote from my recent interview with Josh Cohen from Google News, on that possibility of many papers pulling out of Google:

You have a number of different sources out there that are non-newspapers who are probably just ecstatic at the prospect of a lot of paywalls going up in a lot of different categories.

You know, pick a category. CNN, general interest news, for example, I’ve got to think, and I don’t know, I don’t know anything, I’ve got no insight into CNN’s thought process and maybe I’m wrong, but they probably get a ton of traffic and do a fairly healthy business on the online side of things.

Ideally, what the AP or Murdoch want is an OPEC for news. They want to control the flow of news through the pipelines they think their news cartels control. As far as they’re concerned, they (and only they) have tapped into news reservoirs that exist.

In reality, news is going to get out. Even if the cartel were solid and managed to all block Google (or another search engine), the news itself still flows.

That’s why you also hear noise from place like the AP that somehow, a damn needs to be built around those damn bloggers that are seen as hijacking the news shipments. As I explained in that same interview:

The other solution that gets floated out there, a sense that there needs to be either an improved “hot news” law or tighter restrictions on fair use, so that people cannot so easily summarize stories (such as when a blogger does highlights of a news story or when a mainstream news source summarizes a story from another mainstream publication).

Notice I mentioned how mainstream news publications also quote each other. Case in point, how the The Journal Inquirer in Connecticut has sued the Hartford Courant of plagiarism.

Another case in point? Let’s get close to home. The Financial Times broke the latest news on a Bing-Murdoch deal (TechCrunch had a similar report a week ago). Let’s say that the Financial Times was being like Murdoch, blocking its story from Google. Well…

1) I first saw the Financial Times story in a tweet from Business Insider, which wrote a summary of that story. Google (or Bing) wasn’t essential to me personally discovering this news, nor did I have to go to the Financial Times to understand essentials of the story.

2) I also saw Mathew Ingram tweet the same story, but when I tried to read it, the Financial Times declared I’d seen two stories already this month and couldn’t see more without registering.

3) Rather than register (I probably have an account, but being on my phone, I couldn’t be hassled to look it up), I searched on Google. There, I found the EXACT Financial Times article that is syndicated (almost certainly with the Financial Times’s permission) on CNN. So CNN wins my traffic on this day, not the FT.

4) But let’s say the FT somehow full locked down pesky news blogs like Business Insider and completely closed syndication. How else might I have learned about this scoop. Well, turns out the Wall Street Journal has coverage where it cites the Financial Times. Now, will Murdoch start complaining about how his publication is ripping off the FT, in the way he claims Google’s links to his own articles are somehow a ripoff (Google at least links to sources — the WSJ did NOT link to the FT?

Now to be clear, the WSJ said “according to people familiar with the matter” in the lead to its own story, which indicates that the reporters there saw the news in the FT, were actually extraordinarily nice in noting that the FT was out first with the news, but verified the same details with their own sources. So this really isn’t a ripoff case — but it IS an example of how the news that started with the FT hardly was locked down to it.

In other words, sure, there are news reservoirs. But anyone can tap into it — and competing publications (both mainstream media and news blogs), do so.

Meanwhile, Mark Cuban did a post on how smart a Bing-Murdoch deal would be. I left a comment over that dissected some of his assumption and why I don’t think they hold water:

Cuban: “They need the most popular searches in the categories they want to impact. Bing just has to corner the market on specific categories. ”

Say like shopping? Because Bing’s been doing that for about a year now, offering people cold hard cash money if they do shopping search at Bing — Bing Cashback. In hard economic times, when people nonetheless still need to buy, you’d think this should be bringing people to Bing in droves. And the marketshare growth from that? Not significantly moving the needle.

So news? News content that they will still find at Google in other ways is going to drive folks to Bing? Not convinced.

Cuban: “Or they can target to pay sites about mesothelioma and other diseases that ambulance chasers covet and pay huge dollars per click through, or other high paying PPC searches.”

Corner the market on mesothelioma sites? How do they do this? They payoff the first 10 sites listed in Google and say drop out, give up all that really valuable traffic that you’re paying nothing for, and we’ll give you 10% of that traffic (at best) plus some hushmoney that might not rival what you get off lawsuits? And by the way, when you go, there will be another 200 sites that are probably equally good to you that will move up. Because we can’t buy them all off.

Cuban: “Then consider MicroSofts first move on twitter…”

First move of what, three hours? Which gained them a non-exclusive?

Cuban: “their investment in Facebook…”

Which over the past two years has done more and more to open itself, and its content, up to … Google. Because you know, the walled garden still finds itself needing external traffic.

Cuban: “Which makes the public positions of AP and Reuters and other top news sites all the more interesting. One thing they all have in common ? They dont like the way google has treated them and they all need money.”

The AP has a deal with Google. They liked how Google was treating them when they cut that deal, well enough. They don’t like Google now simply because, it seems, they want to negotiate more money now that the deal is up for renewal

As for Reuters, president Chris Ahearn said in August that he believes in the link economy. No threats at Google at all. Instead, he blamed news organizations with problems on “Incumbent business leaders in news haven’t been keeping up.”

If AP pulls out of Google, I suspect Ahearn will be happy to take the traffic. If the WSJ goes, I think the NY Times will be happy to take that traffic.

Cuban: “Many, like Henry Blodgett on Silicon Insider correctly make the point that news from de-listed sites will eventually find its way on to other sites and into the Google Index. But after how long ? Without question there will be a lag time. Which may be all that MicroSing needs. You can get ALL the news you need on Bing NOW, or you can wait for it on Google.”

Well, maybe a few minutes? If that. Right now, Google’s indexing seems to routinely beat Bing’s. So let’s say the WSJ goes out with a story, something exclusive, and totally only reported out the WSJ.

Bing might take 30 minutes to show that story. Meanwhile, some news blog sees the story about 1 minute after it appears. They blog it. Google picks them up 1 minute later after they ping Google. So now Google’s 28 minutes ahead.

But hey, Google’s got a Twitter deal too, right? So you see the WSJ article. You tweet it. It shows up in Google within seconds.

Also remember that most of the WSJ (and News Corp content overall, for that matter), is NOT unique content. So Bing has to get ALL the major news organizations to play — and face facts, some of them aren’t upset with Google and figure they can monetize the traffic.

Also remember that much of the traffic to news sites isn’t off the breaking news but off queries over time. If you’re searching for a particular topic, it may be a key article that is listed in “regular” Google that’s generating visits. Pull out of Google, there’s another article there to serve the audience with a non-time sensitive need.

Cuban: “Google already has a problem in that they do a horrible job of blocking spam in their date sorted results. Removing valid results is going to make their date sorted results look even worse”

Which is why in news search, date sorting isn’t the default. Relevancy sorting is. And personally, in news search, I haven’t seen this spam problem of which you speak. If you’re talking blog search, different story (and largely non-issue given the low usage there). And when I date sort news stories for “murdoch” in Bing and Google, both seem just fine to me.

Next, just a few ironies that I tweeted about all this:

irony. murdoch pulls news corp from google. people using The Sun search powered by google can’t find news corp content

irony. murdoch pulls news corp from google. people using The Sun search powered by google can’t find news corp content

See, several News Corp sites offer Google search on those sites. If Murdoch pulls his content from Google, then he pulls his sites out of the Google results on his own sites.

Of course, he could eventually cut similar deals with Bing. And maybe he’ll restrict the use of things like Google Maps by various Fox affiliates and try to block all things Google from being used by News Corp.

Of course, as I also tweeted:

be fun if google blocked all news corp IP addresses from searching for “free” on google when researching stories, too

As my Do Newspapers Owe Google “Fair Share” Fees For Researching Stories? post explains, Murdoch’s news organizations regularly tap into Google search to research stories, unless they are somehow NOT like practically everyone else who searches. I’ve talked with plenty of News Corp reporters (from The Times, from the Wall Street Journal, from Fox News) who I personally know have used Google to research.

Will Murdoch declare Google verboten? Or what will he do if Google decides to block his sites. I doubt they would, but they could.

The could get by with Bing, of course. Perhaps they’d get by just as well. But his rank-and-file reporters probably wouldn’t want to.

Meanwhile, let’s also remember that virtually all major newspapers in Belgium opted-out of Google a few years ago. They sued to get out, rather than just using a super easy voluntary system. That’s because, in my view, the lawsuit was more about hopes trying to force Google to the bargaining table to include the papers for a fee

Instead, Google conceded and dropped the papers. Down the line, the papers effectively came crawling back asking to be reincluded. Belgian Papers Back In Google; Begin Using Standards For Blocking has more. So is News Corp’s content more valuable to Google than that of an entire country? Maybe we’ll see.

Also remember that just as Bing can do deals, so can Google. If Murdoch’s publications go bye-bye, Google might do a deal with competitors, say the New York Times. Murdoch will be gambling that Bing will pay him enough money to make up for the lost traffic. The New York Times might be gambling that the extra traffic would help cement their place in a new future, especially as they can always do a paywall and still be listed in Google as well.

Maybe we’ll see, if this all plays out.

Lastly (for now, I may update other thoughts later), I think it’s a really poor move for Microsoft to be trying to strike exclusive deals like this. It’s one thing to license content. It’s another to apparently overtly suggest that a competitor be denied that content.

Microsoft has a bad anti-competitive reputation. It’s also in the middle of trying to convince regulators both in the US and Europe that it should be allowed to purchase Yahoo’s search technology and effectively end Yahoo’s role as a search provider, leaving the space to just Google and Microsoft.

So a deal to lockout Google? You can bet Google will use this to argue to anyone and everyone that Microsoft is back to “old tricks.”

As I said, I’ll try to revisit this in a more comprehensive, coherent manner in the near future. Also see these past posts that provide more background and perspective:

• Would Someone Please Explain To News Corp How Google Works?
• Josh Cohen Of Google News On Paywalls, Partnerships & Working With Publishers
• Google’s News Experiments & The Quest To Solve The “Read State” Issue

Be sure to also see Techmeme for related coverage.

Google hosted something of a formal “status update” on Chrome the operating system in Mountain View on Thursday. There we discovered the company is open-sourcing the code. We also found out it’s intended as a netbook OS (for now) and that Google is working with several hardware partners to create a better netbook experience (full-sized keyboard, slightly larger screen). We also learned it’s intended to be a secondary or supplemental machine, not a primary computer.

That positioning is very important.

Google Product VP Sundar Pichai wouldn’t discuss the hardware partners involved with Chrome OS during that meeting but an earlier blog post indicates many of the usual suspects are already involved: “Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.”

Since Thursday there’s been a steady debate on whether Chrome will succeed or fail. Much of the discussion in the room on Thursday was fairly technical: about the “stack,” the Linux kernel, security, chips, code and so on. But I want to step back from the “specs” arena and look at the Chrome/Google netbook from a consumer perspective — because that’s where it will live or die.

Several years ago people were inhibited (me included) against buying Macs because of the dominance of Windows and related Microsoft software. The general concern went to being an outsider or incompatible, literally and figuratively, with the larger network of Windows machines out there. Several things have changed all that today — the rise of the internet among them — and Microsoft no longer has that same kind of psychological “lock” on computer purchase behavior among consumers. In fact its stepped up ad campaigns against Macs and the opening of physical retail stores both reflect that.

With Chrome netbooks, Google is entering the market at a time when people are increasingly open to buying non-Windows PCs. Mac sales obviously reflect that. By contrast, Linux and various Linux derivative operating systems (i.e., Ubuntu) have never established credibility with consumers, which is why they’ve been unable able to establish a commercial foothold. As Microsoft began to defensively focus on these cheaper, smaller computers consumers equally embraced Windows netbooks because of the familiarity of the Windows brand. Windows is now the dominant OS on netbooks accordingly.

Now with Google and Chrome there is likely to be a credible alternative to Windows-based netbooks. Putting aside the rumored tablet, Apple says it can’t build a low-cost computer that will uphold its quality standards. Google apparently said on Thursday (according to later hearsay I received) that if netbook makers want to use the Google brand — as in “with Google” on Android handsets — there will be some license fee involved. However, I’ve yet to see this confirmed anywhere.

I see Chrome (the OS) and Android as quite analogous in many respects. In fact, Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin also said that Chrome and Android will likely merge or converge at some unspecified future point. (There are a number of device makers that are putting Android on tablets and netbooks.)

The Google association or explicit Google branding will be relatively important in my mind to establish the credibility of this non-Windows, non-Mac machine with consumers. A “Google PC” or “internetbook” with the Google brand attached will attract consumers, especially students and younger users. In addition, the presentation of this as a second computer will relieve some of the pressure on Chrome to do everything a Mac or Windows box can. People will judge and consider it in a different way. Accordingly it also probably won’t be very important that there’s no (Microsoft) software on the device. (iTunes might be an issue, however.)

This brings us to arguably the most important consideration of all: price.

While Macs have been able to survive as a “premium” hardware line, the rest of the PC universe is ruled by price competition. That’s especially true among netbooks. Netbooks have been the best-selling segment of the PC market during the recession — because they’re cheaper. Contrary to perceptions that everyone is buying netbooks because they’re highly mobile, NPD Group found among consumer survey respondents that 60% of netbook buyers never took them out of the house. (Of course people might move them around the house on wireless networks, which goes to portability.)

The top-selling netbooks on Amazon all come in at under $300. In addition, most of the major US wireless carriers (and those abroad) have been subsidizing netbooks with a two-year contract. In the US, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon are all selling subsidized netbooks for $199 with a two-year service contract.

Google wouldn’t discuss pricing at the Chrome event. That’s up to the hardware partners apparently. Yet Google knows that to succeed a Google/Chrome netbook will need to come in at less than $400 at the highest end and potentially around $200 to really take off. The economics of that lower price point may be very difficult to achieve. Accordingly Google & partners may need to distribute via subsidized mobile carrier relationships to bring the price down to the point where it will really get consumers’ attention. I would speculate that Verizon, given the Google-Android relationship, is almost certainly going to do this.

Google promised these devices would start appearing before the “holiday shopping season” (read: Thanksgiving) in 2010. Of course the computer must work relatively well and not be a piece of junk. But here’s what it comes down to from a consumer perspective: If Google and its partners can build a machine that costs $300 or less, that carries the Google brand and is positioned as an “on the go” internet device not intended to replace your home computer it will probably have a winner on its hands.

You’re the analytics evangelist for Google. Doesn’t every marketer understand the importance of analytics? With hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions using Google Analytics, why would Google need an evangelist, and what do you see as the most important part of your job?

Numbers are hard to come by on this but in my humble experience a tiny fraction of people who should use data productively access it, and a tiny fraction of that actually end up using data effectively. We, as a universe, have a long way to go.

My role at Google is in two parts. In the inward facing part I am the “customer evangelist” as I help shape the vision, direction and features of 13 different Google tools that provide data to customers. In the outward facing role I help the top xx Google customers to leverage data more effectively.

The most important part of my role is that I am a small part of larger effort to create a data democracy in the online world.

All of the above is distinct from my role as a blogger (evangelizing the use of data in web decision making) and as the co-founder of MarketMotive (providing latest online marketing education and certification).

Avinash, following your first book, Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, what drove you to write your second book, Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity? Did the field change so much since the first book?

The world indeed has changed a lot in two years, especially in three areas: user centric design, competitive intelligence and social media. There are a raft of new and delicious options that simply did not exist when I wrote the first book.

But the primary impetus behind writing the book was to address challenges that we all now face, challenges that present new opportunities (to engage and influence current and future customers) and how to measure success is a complex ever evolving ecosystem.

An example of that last point is in Chapter 9, if you see Figure 9.04. It makes you stand back and marvel at how we are measuring anything at all!

Even in a “standard” area like paid search analytics there has been so much evolution in the last couple years, analytics of which are covered in the new book.

Do you see both books as an evolution? I mean, would you recommend readers start with the first and then go to the newest one?

It is definitely an evolution.

People who have read the first book should feel that the second book is an immediate step up to a more evolved way of thinking about analytics, from the classic Trinity to the new Web Analytics 2.0. With each chapter there is a new way of thinking about what we already know and assumed. The second half of the book is where all the delicious stuff is that will help you change the game—it covers analytical techniques, social media analysis, competitive intelligence, new ucd approaches and of course things like multi-touch campaign attribution analysis.

If you want to start with the basic and take a gradual course then I recommend Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, but if you are willing to be a bit brave then Web Analytics 2.0 will get you to the goal faster.

I did want to point out that both the book are written for marketers, executives and analysts. You don’t need particular deep technical knowledge to become a analysis ninja.

Can you describe in a few words what is the main philosophy behind the book, the concept of Web Analytics 2.0?

Here is my definition of Web Analytics 2.0.

It is: the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your website and the competition, to drive a continual improvement of the online experience of your customers and prospects, which translates into your desired outcomes (online and offline).

Put simply, it is the art and science behind making intelligent decisions about all you do online—as a company, blogger, non-profit.

One sentence in particular caught my attention: “We’ve evolved from hits to page views to visits. Now we have outcomes.” Can you elaborate on that?

I have become convinced that more of the online world is not data driven because we have been reporting “silly metrics.” By that I mean hits and visits and page views and even visitors. What is the point of all those metrics?

They are all “aggregate” metrics that simply tell you “consumption”.

What they don’t do is answer this question: “What the hell happened?”

That question is important to answer because that is what matters to every senior decision maker, people who cut checks, people who will promote you and me.

Hence my near paranoid focus on first measuring outcomes—what happened as a result of all those people showing up? Did we make money? Are more people coming to my protest against cutting redwood trees tomorrow? Am I wasting my time marketing on twitter? What was the point of using video to sell micro-chips to B2B customers of Texas Instruments? So on and so forth.

God will welcome into sweet heaven people who focus on measuring outcomes. Because outcomes help businesses and people get better each day.

Your book has a lot of great advice for big companies trying to understand how their customers interact with their websites. But if I work for a Small-Medium Business, with a very limited budget, how can I go about implement this strategy? Any advice on whether search marketers should hire skilled web analysts or outsource the job to experts?

The book should be useful to businesses of any size. Throughout the book there are recommendations where to start and what to do first or what tools to use. For example on Page 13 it tells you that if you are a small biz then you must do x first, then y and then z and don’t worry about a and b. Or in Chapter 10 The Ladder to Analytics Nirvana gives a very specific road map for someone who is small to someone who is big. Same thing with Paid Search, Chapter 4 has the basic to medium stuff in terms of what to analyze for higher ROI and Chapter 11 is where all the juicy complex “I am going to be awesome” advanced stuff is.

My hope was to always provide a shallow end of the pool so everyone can get in, then those who want to do more can slowly, with confidence, move to the deeper part.

In terms of hiring… it would depend on your budgets and in-house sophistication. I have come to believe that if you don’t know what you are doing it is best to hire a consultant and put them on a “profitability plan” (i.e. you do the work I don’t know and we’ll both share the profit—not just hourly rates). Over time as your budgets increase, you become a medium sized biz, it is prudent to bring it all in.

Another interesting subject you deal with in the book is the web analytics career. What do I need to succeed as a web analyst? And if my main focus is on SEM, how can your book help me succeed?

You need to loooooove the web and all the glory and all the possibilities. If you don’t have passion for this medium there is no way you can put up with the work that is required.

Other main skills I look for: Initiative. Curiosity. An aptitude for data. Statistics 101. Self taught.

If your focus is on search then first Chapter 13 will help you plan your career effectively and help you create your own path for success. But most of all I am sure at some level we all understand that Search is not everything, certainly not paid search. The book will help you understand how the broad portfolio of online marketing works and of course how to be king by being data driven.

In the end it should make you a more rounded individual, and thus, I hope, a more marketable person in the job market.

You’re well known for the 10/90 rule. Why do you think it’s more important to put the emphasis on people rather than technology? How much is enough? How do you set reasonable goals and know whether you’ve achieved them, or to put your head down and try, try again?

Here is the picture that illustrates my concept of Multiplicity:

What it shows is the breadth and depth of the tools that are required to answer the four important questions: What, How Much, Why and What Else.

Even a few years ago for you to get access to tools would have required you to spend a lot of money, that’s not the case any more. Clickstream? Surveys? Competitive intelligence? A/B or multivariate testing? You got it, every single one has a 95% world class tool available for free.

So having tools (access to data) is no longer the key differentiator between companies, large or small. Having the brains to actually make sense of it all, look to the right tool to get the right answer, be able to actually analyze the data and not just data puke is not cheap. That’s where humans come in, that’s where the strategic differentiator comes in.

I had created the 10/90 rule almost five years ago when I was at Intuit. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would actually be practical, but it is now. Every company in the world should not shoot for 10/90 (10 tools and 90 in people), experiment and find your balance. I think many people start with 10/90 and in a few years might morph to 35/65. No worries as long as you can so ROI impact.

But I have to admit, if you are not egregiously overloaded in the big brains (internal hires or consultants) you don’t stand a chance.

There’s a lot of buzz around attribution modeling, knowing the “value” of certain clicks to the overall conversion process. Is it important to know whether the last click was the major influence on a conversion, or will analytics packages increasingly try to understand the various steps in the overall buying funnel? If so, how?

This is the only question on which I’ll bow out from answering, it is complex and I think the reason we are in the soup we are is we look for shortcut quick answers. There are none. Of course I absolutely apply critical thinking to this in the book and provide answers.

Analytics systems are notorious for delivering vastly different interpretations of seemingly simple data—how users interact with a site. Why aren’t there more standards, and why are the reports from different vendors so different?

This is like asking a four year old boy how come he is so lame that he does not already exhibit the mannerisms and sophistication of a fully grown man.

Our industry is a baby, it is in a growth spurt, we must be patient and let things evolve. And they will.

Complete side note: It is utterly futile to wait for perfect data to make decisions and / or spend time comparing numbers between Omniture and WebTrends. What is the point of it? So we are more comfortable that one piece of data is 5% better than the other? Pause and think for 60 seconds how tv ratings are measured. It will horrify you how the data is collected and subsequently used for multi million dollar decisions. On its worst day the worst third party cookie based tool gives better and more accountable data for Marketing spend online. I personally don’t recommend wasting time trying to get the last 5% accuracy, simply not worth it. Implement tools correctly and completely. Don’t worry about the wife you just divorced. Worry about the one you just married and make a happy life with her.

Thanks so much for the opportunity to do this interview.

Thank you for spending the time to map your most interesting views of this subject, Avinash.

Editor’s note: Want to know more about Avinash’s new book, Web Analytics 2.0? He’s written a short overview of the book in this blog post. You can also buy the book through this affiliate link with Amazon and Avinash will donate 100% of the proceeds to two charities, the The Smile Train and Ekal Vidyalaya.

Mike Blumenthal received a screenshot that seems to show a test of a new presentation of Google local/geotargeted AdWords. Mike suggests this may be an expression of AdWords local extensions:

This is AdWords and not Local Listing Ads, but the presentation (with the blue pushpin) is similar, signifying a local business or a physical location. Here is an example of Local Listing Ads:

Postscript: Here’s another image from a Chicago result sent to me by Jason Normoyle:

Hey news publishers. Stop acting as if your content only appears printed on dead trees and tap into the dynamics that the web offers. That’s a blunt summary of advice from Josh Cohen of Google News, from a wide-ranging interview with him on Google’s experiments with new ways of delivering news.

Cohen, business product manager of Google News, says Google has no ultimate solution for the future of news online. It does have a vision of a super personalized news product that tracks someone’s “read state” and keeps them constantly informed with updates. But to turn that vision into reality, it’s conducting a variety of experiments. Some will succeed; some won’t.

The experiments aren’t meant to compete with publishers. Cohen stressed that Google’s not a content play and has no “Hulu for journalism” pretensions. Google’s a technology company, he says, one with tech that it hopes news publishers can tap into.

For publishers to be successful in a personalized news product, they may have to consider the “Living URL” model of stories, Cohen said. Think Wikipedia, written by journalists. And think about how newspapers might learn from a classic Christmas film, Miracle On 34th Street, where sending your customers away might actually make them more loyal.

Below, you’ll find Cohen’s comments on these and other issues. It’s the second part of a three part series, from an interview I conducted last month. Also be sure to read the first installment, Josh Cohen Of Google News On Paywalls, Partnerships & Working With Publishers.

What’s Up With Hyper Personalized News?

Both Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Google vice president of search product and user experience Marissa Mayer have talked about the concept of a hyper-personalized news system that remembers what you know, finds what you want to learn about and would be as easy to use as flipping through a newspaper or magazine. It’s been raised as an idea by Google as far back as 2007. Is this real? Is it coming? Is Google working with publishers on it? Cohen wouldn’t say much:

The short really unhelpful answer is, sort of. I think if you look at a few of the things we’ve launched in the last month or so, and launched being a broad term for publicly available, you get a sense of how we’re approaching some of this.

Journalism Should Be Written For More Than Print

Continuing, Cohen spoke more broadly of the idea that journalism still largely acts as if it is meant for publication in a hard-copy newspaper instead of also appearing in the instant access, hyperlinked world of the web:

News online by and large hasn’t adapted to the medium and still is largely brochureware, where people are taking not only just the physical article that was in the paper and just putting it online but also just the way you tell stories.

It [storytelling] just hasn’t really adapted and taken full advantage of the medium. Beyond just the challenges that go with it, it’s a completely different way of telling a narrative. And so there hasn’t been that real transformation. As a result, you get a lot lower engagement online.

Fast Flip: To Combine Best Of Online & Offline

Cohen said that Google Fast Flip, launched in September, is one example of how Google is experimenting to combine the best of both worlds, offline ease of reading and browsing with online’s “smarts” that allow for personalization:

The premise behind Fast Flip is really a step in that direction of trying to figure out how do I create a good online reading experience that is engaging, that captures some of that browse experience?

Fast Flip is focused right now on a specific set of content, more of the longer form content that’s more suited to a magazine, which is why you can sort of get that idea of a custom magazine that you can sit back and browse, flip from one page to the next, and without having to take 5 to 10 seconds for each of those pages to load.

You literally have that offline browsing experience with all the advantages of being online, customization, aggregation, and all those types of features.

Fast Flip: A Test, Not Google’s Ultimate Solution

However, those who interpret Fast Flip as “Google’s plan to save newspapers,” Cohen said, are making a mistake. It’s not perfect. It’s a test, and a test that might not work for everyone or at all.

What it is, is Google’s attempt to try and experiment in one of those categories. I think Fast Flip has a lot of advantages for, and this is my personal view, a certain set of content. How does that work for all forms of news, for all forms of content, I think remains to be seen.

We want to put that [Fast Flip] out there in Labs [Google Labs, where Google releases experimental products]. We’re excited about it. I think the response has been really positive both from users and from publishers. But we want to test it.

I think we all see it as one step in that direction of what does a news experience look like? Could that be a Google-hosted experience? Can that take place on a publisher side of it? Sure, I mean yes, the answer is ‘yes’ to both those. But that’s, more than anything, it’s an idea of ‘Look, we’re experimenting with this.’

Continuing, Cohen explained that Google sees certain issues with how news is delivered online, has thoughts on how things might be improved, and that Fast Flip is meant to test some of those theories:

That’s kind of how we approach things. We go out there and test it. And we have certain assumptions that are behind Fast Flip, which the data will prove us right or wrong, and then we’ll go from there and either continue to expand it and see what’s working and what’s not and iterate on it, potentially blow it out, deeper integration into [Google] news, separate products. Who knows? We try and be as open as possible to letting the product and the users’ reaction to it drive that direction more anything else.

In fact, Google has just begun a small test of Fast Flip being integrated directly into Google News.

Google To Publishers: Can Our Technology Help You?

How about that laundry list of ideas that Google provided to the Newspaper Association of America, which approached companies it selected for ideas on how to monetize news content? Cohen said this wasn’t a specific plan but rather a list of off-the-shelf technologies and systems that Google already had which might be adapted:

The way that we intended it was a response to say, ‘Look, this is our thinking on the space.’

Continuing, Cohen explained:

“We really tried to map out how we saw that ecosystem working [such as news publishers trying to process micropayments for content], how some of the existing Google technologies could potentially plug in to that, and we could power a site in the same way that Google Maps can power your mapping solution. We don’t create content but we create technology, so how can you use that?”

After the document leaked out, Cohen said it kicked off a number of discussions with publishers wanting to know more. Focusing on the micropayment aspect, he commented that subscriptions can and do work, but an easy way to charge is vital

For a certain set of content, and for a certain type of publisher, subscriptions, not only can they work, they do work, for a subset today. Is it a panacea for all forms of content, simply to put in a paywall? Personally, I don’t believe so. But again, if there’s a set of content that it works for, you’ve got to have a technology solution that works.

If you’ve gotten over the hurdle of someone saying ‘Yeah, I’d be willing to pay for this, I’m going to take out my wallet,’ don’t have them go through 50 leaps to get there. Then it’s really doomed to fail.

Google News & Personalization

Cohen then circled back to my original question, about how all these news experiments relate back to a more personalized news experience that Google espouses.

“We always talk about delivering the right results,” he said. “So yes, Google’s working on this. What forms that might come out in, could it just be a better personalization of Google News or certain types of feeds you can subscribe to or custom sections that are there today? I think it’s kind of any and all of the above.

By the way, since I conducted the interview, Google rolled out Custom News Sections, a way to personalize Google News so that you can browse stories that match particular keywords you’re interested in. A form of this has existed since 2007, but the update rolled out a directory, so that Google News readers could share custom sections with each other, along with the ability to have more complex keyword matching.

Challenge Of Explicit & Implicit Personalization

Of course, Google also has personalization that learns through watching behavior. But both explicit and implicit personalization features have much room for improvement, Cohen said.

I don’t think it’s where we want it to be. Personalization is hard to do.

The easiest of those are explicit personalizations. Even that, I think, is hard to get right, because a user will come and make certain decisions or choices about the type of content that they want to see, and yet if they miss something because of the personalizations [that they did], it’s still your fault.

You know, ‘These are the sources I want to see, these are the topics I want to see,’ and then they miss something, and, ‘Why didn’t you tell me about that?’. And again, that’s with a lot of direct signals and instructions from the user.

Then you continue down that spectrum on the implicit side of it, of understanding my reading pattern, not only what stories and sources and topics that I’m interested in but also my experience reading those specific stories. And so I think Eric’s talked a little bit about this, the ‘read state.’

Read State: What Online Can Detect That Offline Cannot

Read state, Cohen explained as he continued, is a key challenge that Google feels online news faces, the need to figure out where someone has left off in following a particular news story.

Think about it this way. The traditional newspaper reader would get their morning paper, read some stories and be done. The newspaper had no idea what they read. So when writing updates to those stories, the newspaper was forced to assume you knew nothing. It had to get the most important breaking aspects up at the top of a story, writing in “inverted pyramid” style so that if a reader drops off, the less important facts are safely buried further down in the story.

Online papers could be smarter. They could understand what you’ve read, where you left off and keep you informed with only the new material you need, because they’d understand your read state. But online news isn’t written this way. It continues to be produced as if people are reading offline. As Cohen explained:

Every single day I have to put something out in the paper. So there’s an on-going story. Every single day I file another article. A deadline comes in, 6, 7 o’clock or whatever, I file it, and it goes out there because I have to put something out there in the paper.

As a result, often times you have to have a certain set of facts, even if they’re just one little update to that story. It generates a larger story either to fill space or because I can’t just put a quick headline update to it and link back to my other sources to it.

Part of the reason that you see that is, one, there hasn’t been too much innovation in the space. But also because people don’t take into account your read state. So if I know that you’ve come there, I can give you the full story, or I can give you a quick update, a bulletpoint summary. That’s another level of personalization that I think is not there.

Living URLs & Bringing “The Miracle On 34th Street” To news

In theory, the idea sounds great — this “Living URL” idea that Google’s Marissa Mayer has especially suggested, the story that lives in a single place, constantly being updated. But aside from current technical issues Google News has, where it can’t even handle stories like that (see Of Living URLs, Newspaper Rankings & California Fires), there are current business issues that prevent it.

For example, what happens when one paper reports on a story, then a different publication reports a unique and specific fact. You do you merge what the two competitors say together, especially when they often don’t want to acknowledge each other?

That gets to another issue, people not linking out. Publishers trying to be all things to all people, instead of a focus area, of whether it’s a regional area where it’s the LA Times and I covers LA or it’s a topic where I’m the Washington Post and I can cover politics or I’m the Wall Street Journal, and I can cover business…

My value is my editorial filtering. I recognize that if I send you off [my site], and I just put a link to an update, if I’m the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal has a good update, I’m going to link off to it, so that I know that this is a good source that tells me what I should be reading, even if it’s not on their own site.

That’s what’s going to set me coming back. Not because I’m trapped into their web site, and I have to know that all the information is coming from there. There’s a comfort level, there needs to be a comfort level, to send people out.

That’s certainly a Google bias towards this. Where our focus is largely on getting people off of our site, because we recognize if we provide value in serving them the most relevant search results, whatever it is, news results, that this is going to be a jumping off point for them.

Call it the Miracle On 34th Street approach to news. For those unfamiliar with the classic film, the Macy’s department store Santa Claus (who is actually the real Santa) sends shoppers who can’t find what they want to Gimbles, Macy’s archrival. While at first Macy’s management is horrified, they’re won over as a customer declares her loyalty to Macy’s for putting the customer first.

In my own experience, the mainstream media traditionally has not linked out. It’s more common where they have blogs, such as Bits from the New York Times or Digits from the Wall Street Journal. And among news blog, it’s very common to crosslink (my Blogs & Mainstream Media: We Can & Do Get Along post gets into this more).

Should Newspapers Become Like Wikipedia?

The Living URL / Read State concept also sounds similar to something that already exists: Wikipedia. Should papers all simply become Wikipedia-like, where stories about a particular topic reside on a single page that’s constantly updated? Cohen’s not certain himself and figures there will be lots of experimenting.

I don’t think we have that answer. That’s something else that I think we’ll certainly experiment with on our side and experiment with publishers directly. I think the concept makes a lot of sense. How do you put that theory into practice?

I know you played around with certain parts of it, and you felt certain parts didn’t work felt or not. That was like one take at it. There will probably be 50 different takes at it from a number of different sources….

I think everyone recognizes the value in an online world, of having that persistent URL and a single source to get all the updates on a given story. That doesn’t mean there aren’t changes that need to take place on the editorial workflow, on the product design and also on the search side of it about how you pick those things up, too, which I think you pointed out.

Is A Living URL System In Testing?

But does Google have something like this in testing, that hasn’t been put out there? What about all the rumors that Google has something in the works with the New York Times or the Washington Post? Cohen wouldn’t say but rather pulled back again to stress there’s no perfect grand plan system Google has up-its-sleeves:

I will say this. We are directly working with a number of different publishers. We talk about the monetization, but product and content creation as well, whether it’s a set of tools or a structure or do so.

There are definitely discussions we’ve been having. There was that story that was reported about these collaborations with the New York Times and the Washington Post. It took bits and pieces of a lot of these different experiments and turned into a brand new product that would be the “future of news.”

While it is accurate that we’re working with the Times and the Post – among others – about improving the online news experience and how Google might contribute, as with many things, it often gets turned into something much grander.

Google Unlikely To Build A Hulu For Journalism?

How about the thought of a “Hulu” for newspapers and other journalism outlets, where Google might compile all the stories together for publishers, with single monetization or a subscription basis?

Cohen didn’t see Google as putting out a specific collective solution but rather staying focused on publishing tools that publishers could use individually.

Broadly speaking, the area of creating platforms for content is something we do today, such as with Blogger or YouTube or Knol. These are all examples of Google trying to make it easy to put content online. That’s consistent with what we want to do,” he said.

But Fast Flip seems like the start of a Hulu. Or is it something that Google may license as a tool for anyone to use? Indeed, that might be its future.

“Fast Flip is a longer term vision. We’re not saying it must be hosted at Google,” Cohen said. It might evolve into something publishers can host on their own sites or customize, he said.

Spotlight Added; Newsmaker Comments Go – Learning From Everything

How about the new Spotlight section of Google News. What’s the purpose behind that, and what’s selected for it?

It’s been really successful with us so far. There’s interest from publishers that it has potential to give another platform for content that often doesn’t do that well with Google News, which changes hourly. It’s for long shelf-life content, the enterprise stuff, the investigative pieces.

And thoughts on things that have gone away, such as dropping the attempt to get quotes from newsmakers on stories. Disappointing?

I don’t mean this to sound too Pollyannaish. Google is trying to encourage itself as a place where you can have failures and think more radically about the approach to a product. There’s no sense that I have get this perfect or it will never launch.

The comments feature is something we killed, but we also learned something from it …. People are encouraged to ask ‘What did I learn from this?’ That’s what makes it interesting to work on the products.

Are there things Cohen particularly likes? Cohen said he was happy with many “under the hood” changes that he thinks help people better trust Google as a news aggregator.

I was curious if more people browse stories at Google or do keyword searches. Cohen wouldn’t give specific figures, but he did say that at a typical news site, he knows that searches tend to be in the single digit percentages. In contrast, browse versus searching at Google “is much more balanced,” something he didn’t think was surprising, given that ultimately Google’s a search engine.

Google News: Trying To Serve A Balanced Diet Of News

Finally, I’ll end this part of the interview with what Cohen said was the overall mission for Google News, to “educate and inform.” In particular, Google News is aiming to expose things you want to see alongside things you should see. Or as Cohen put it, “serving the vegetables as wells as the dessert.”

Next week, the final part of this interview, looking at how Google News determines what to show visitors.

While the National Association of REALTORS® is planning to launch its own national property database sometime next year, Google seems to have just stolen the NAR’s thunder. How? By rolling out individual “place pages” for every property that’s listed in Google Maps. Like this one for a home in Seattle:

The real estate listing place pages include property information, photos, map placement, Street View imagery and functionality, nearby public transit details, and even AdWords ads. Google has added links for “Directions” and “Search nearby,” as well as a “Send” link that opens an outgoing email with the place page link embedded inside. The property details in the example above are sourced from two separate Prudential Real Estate web sites, and from NWSource.com, which is the Seattle Times’ web site. It’s all presented just as you’d see on any standard MLS web site, though it lacks some of the deep information (such as square footage of individual rooms) available in a typical MLS listing.

There’s no announcement of this new feature yet on the Google LatLong blog, but it was announced today on the official Google Australia blog. That post says the real estate place pages may also include things like videos and inspection times. Left unsaid is that the place page format gives Google the space and flexibility to add new types of information in the future.

Google Maps has, of course, shown individual property information for some time. But it was relegated to the old, small, somewhat user-unfriendly info pop-up windows. The new place pages offer more information, are more user-friendly, and have short, clean links (like http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=18428966863334951733) that home buyers can easily pass around.

It’s the latest in a string of upgrades that Google has made to how it presents real estate information in Google Maps. For more, see Land Grab: Google Expands Real Estate Listings from July and Google Maps Makes Real Estate Search More Visible from last month. Add them all together, along with other updates that are sure to come, and it’s obvious Google is on its way to building what amounts to a national MLS-like database of property listings.

The Google Mobile Blog announced that Google News on the iPhone, Android and other smart phone devices has a new design. The new design looks more like the desktop version of Google News with minor changes to make it fit better on the smartphone screens.

The new design has more stories and images, has personalization features, search and a neat “jump” to section feature. Here are screen captures:

Sometime later today, a small number of Google users will see a new look to Google’s Search Options feature. If all goes well, the cleaner display may be launched across Google after the New Year. And it’s all because Google’s vice president of search product and user experience Marissa Mayer doesn’t like jazz.

Simmer down, jazz lovers! Jazz is just not her thing; she’s not making a personal campaign against it. Instead, Mayer was using jazz to explain a pet metaphor she has about search results pages. They have their own “rhythm,” and Google’s results have been sounding a bit free form lately.

“I don’t like jazz, because you never know what’s going to happen next,” Mayer said, continuing on to apply the musical style to Google’s search results. “I’ve been calling this problem ‘user interface jazz.’ This result looks this way, and that result looks that way [something much different], and it really does slow you down.”

Indeed, it has felt a bit confusing with Google lately. When I wrote my Up Close With Google Search Options story in October, after new search option features were introduced, I detailed a number of inconsistencies in how they operate.

I haven’t yet finished another piece about a growing gripe I have, inconsistency in how Google enhances search listings with sitelinks. I never know where to expect them now. They can appear in in any position, within snippets, on a single line and in even more ways. It’s been making my head hurt.

I raised the inconsistency issues with Google cofounder Sergey Brin last month at a press conference, and he said experiments on this were in the works. So now we have a visual sign of that.

Search Modes

Personally, I’m glad if the results will be getting more predictable. But enough generalities. Let’s take a closer look at the changes. Here’s an overview of the new results page in testing (and yes, you can use the screenshots below if writing about this — just link over to our story):

“We’re basically looking at a new look and feel for Google,” Mayer said of the change. “It’s an overall cleaning up of the search results page.”

The search options appear in the left-hand column. The former “All results” area that allowed you to switch between different types of searches (images, news, maps and so on) has been replaced with new tabs for these services:

Internally, Mayer said that Google calls “modes.” For example, after searching for “australia” in the example above, you’re in “Everything” mode (I love this name). But with a click on the Images tab, you can switch to “image mode” and get back image results, select News to get news results in “news mode” so on.

By default, Google guesses at the modes it thinks are most relevant to your search. But the “More” tab gives you access to the full range of search services Google offers. If you Video mode, and that’s not automatically suggested, you can select More, choose Video and get those results:

As happens now, when you switch modes, the search options change. In video mode, you get unique video filtering options such as duration of clip or to see only video in high quality:

New to the search options area in this test is a “See also” section that suggests other queries related to your original topic. As for a search on pizza, Google also suggests things like “tacos” or “fried chicken:”

Interestingly, it doesn’t show more typical related queries that incorporate the main terms, as you can currently see at the bottom of results now for pizza, such as “pizza recipe.” But perhaps this will change.

As the second arrow in the screenshot shows, there are even more search features that you can access by using the “Show search tools” option. Features such as “Wonder Wheel” or “Timeline View” or “More shopping sites” all reside in this area (to learn more about these, see Up Close With Google Search Options).

Google 3D

The most dramatic change in the design is that the search options window is permanently open, rather having to be manually toggled on, as is the case now. That’s right. If the test proves successful, Google’s almost certainly moving to a three “pane” format, with search tools and options located on the left, search results themselves in the middle and ads on the right.

Mayer said going left made the most sense. Google continues to add new search features, and they need to be exposed to searchers somewhere. Putting them at the top of the page pushes results down; ads are already at the right. Having the tools on the left, with the pane permanently opened, is something she said she’s personally wanted for some time, but not everyone in the design team was convinced. The test will be a final proof of how well it works with Google’s audience.

“While I wish we had gotten here sooner, Mayer said, “I’m excited to finally have it out.”

But hey, wasn’t there a search engine that ushered in a three pane design like this not to long ago? Yep. Ask.com, with it’s Ask 3D view that was developed under then-Ask CEO Jim Lanzone. Bing and Yahoo now have three pane designs, as well. So did Ask have it right back then, I asked? And is the three pane view now the industry standard?

“Now you know why I’ve been searching for John Stuart Mill,” Mayer said, speaking of his book On Liberty and how it discusses that universal truths always come through.

“Is it the trend du jour or is that a universal truth,” she said, of a three pane design. “It is a likely universal truth.”

Mayer added that Google had recently done nearly 50 mockups, all done independently, to examine results. A three pane design was a common theme that kept coming up.

Bimodal World Of Screen Sizes

Mayer also spoke to the growth of screen sizes, pointing out that we’re in a “bimodal” world where screens are conversely getting larger on the desktop (and people have more of them) and smaller (as people do more and more browsing on mobile devices). So a three pane view may make no sense for mobile devices. But on the desktop, there’s much more room to spread out than in the past.

“This is a first step. We do think we can add that left navigation and it won’t impact the rest of the page,” she said, pointing out that currently, the actual search results only take up about 1/4 of the screen real estate available for a typical desktop viewer. She also said that Google will do more things in the future to take advantage of larger desktop screens.

What about the navigation bar at the top of the results, which people can also use to switch between different search options such as news and images. Is it becoming redundant as the left-pane continues to evolve?

Mayer said Google would revisit the design of the top navigation links area next year. But right now, it works, moving around “a ton of traffic” to different portions of Google. She also said it’s a helpful way to unify Google’s various properties. Plus, it allows people to go directly to a particular search service, such as image search, without first having to do an “everything” search and then refine it.

Search Button, Meet Search Box

Looking at the new design, I remarked how noticeable it was that the search button is directly integrated into the search box. Consider the before:

And after:

Internally, plenty at Google have noticed the change and not necessarily liked it. “That’s has been one thing that’s drawn the most ire. If the ire continues [from the public testing], that may be one of the first thing that changes,” Mayer said.

She added that Google’s also closely looking at how well the Everything tab and the new Search button work, as illustrated below:

“That big blue Everything on the left and search button on the right, they do pull …. and we do intend to pull the user’s eye …. but I wonder if it’s putting the emphasis enough where we want,” she said.

Fading Home Page Slow People Down

Since we were talking design, I asked about that funky fading home page that Google’s been testing. Is that going to become permanent?

“The fading home page is either going to be reformulated or go into a whole new direction,” Mayer said. People visit it more and do more searches because of the change, she said metrics show. However, ironically, the page also slows them down. They take additional milliseconds to act (and for Google, every millisecond counts).

“Their time to first action is slower,” Mayer said. “It’s almost like they’re disoriented, thinking ‘What? Where is everything?”

That brings things back to the search results page. People like patterns. The more a page has an easy pattern that can be processed — the more “rhythmic you can make it,” Mayer said, the faster she says people will be.

So who sees the changes? About 1% to 3% of Google users, who will be randomly selected. The test will probably run for about six weeks. If successful, expect to see the changes — altered to take in account test feedback — show up across Google soon after that.

Postscript by Barry Schwartz: There are some people actually seeing the new user interface in the wild. Here is a screen shot of what people are seeing:

Saying the host site was serving malware to users, Google has removed a controversial photo of First Lady Michelle Obama from Google Image Search. The site itself, however, remains listed in Google web search results without any visible malware warning.

Welcome to the murky world of free speech, politics, and Google.

It began last week, when Search Engine Roundtable pointed out a racist image showing as the number one result in Google Image Search for the term [Michelle Obama]. The image was apparently removed yesterday.

In a Google Web Search Help Forum thread discussing the image, a Google employee named Jem explained yesterday that there are three reasons why Google would remove content from its index:

“… Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results, or images from our Google Images results, simply because the content is in very poor taste or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the image, page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the image.“

(emphasis mine)

An offensive photo of Michelle Obama doesn’t obviously violate any of those three guidelines on its own. Google’s press office has yet to respond to our request for an official statement. But in the comments of today’s Search Engine Roundtable post, Google’s Matt Cutts says the site was violating Google’s webmaster guidelines:

“… that page did violate our webmaster guidelines because it was serving malware to users, which violates the quality guideline that says ‘Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.’ I believe that the Images team did a general anti-malware sweep.”

Sure enough, a [site:] search for the site in Google Images produces no results. But the malware sweep apparently didn’t reach the main web search index. As Michael Gray points out on SER, the site itself is still listed in Google.com search results with no malware warning.

Making matters slightly murkier is that, as you see above, the image was hosted on Google’s own blogging platform.

Google’s critics will no doubt call this favoritism toward the Obama administration and be quick to point out the company’s ties to Washington, DC. Google CEO Eric Schmidt endorsed Obama for president, later campaigned with him, and then turned down an offer to join the administration. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Google was the fourth-largest corporate contributor to Obama’s presidential campaign. And we’ve reported about a few notable Google employees who’ve left to work for the Obama administration.

On the other hand, we’ve also written more than once about potential friction between Google and the Obama administration. Christine Varney, the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust has been quoted as saying that Google “has acquired a monopoly in internet online advertising.” See our stories Will Obama Be The Downfall Of Google? and Google’s Anti-Trust Problem Appears Very Real for more.

If, in fact, the blog hosting the offensive image of Michelle Obama also hosts malware, Google’s removal of the image seems justified in light of the company’s stated policies. But, in that case, a malware warning should also be placed on the site itself in Google’s main search results. Until that happens — and perhaps even after — Google’s critics are likely to question the decision to remove this image.

While today’s episode may be a case of Google looking for an excuse to remove an image from the index, it should be said that the same exact image of the First Lady can be found on other sites and remains in Google Image Search because those sites apparently don’t meet the criteria for content removal. There are similarly offensive images of the President himself that can be found quite easily in Google Image Search, too.

Something’s up with Google’s Chrome operating system. Don’t know what, but we’ll all know soon as a press conference begins at 10AM Pacific. I’m coming at your live from the Googleplex. Buckle up, and we’ll see what’s happening. You can also watch from home. Webcast info is here.

There will also be related coverage developing at Techmeme, including news the Chrome OS source code is now apparently live. as Google’s Matt Cutts has tweeted.

And we start. Sundar Pichai says not launching today. A year away from that but have made constant progress and will show demo of what they’ve got so far and how will go to market. But primary reason is as of today the code will be fully open. Developers internally will work on the same tree as those internally.

Where at after a year since the Chrome browser? 40 million users, 39X faster JavaScript than Internet Explorer. Most users who use Chrome send most common feedback that Chrome is fast. 19 stable releases. Lots of work on HTML 5 to push web forwad.

Chrome for Mac is close to launch. “Looking at the number of Macs in the room, I’m excited about it.” Linux will come. Nearing the point of releasing Chrome Extensions.

Talk about wanting ways to do better graphics, video/audio playback, multiprocessor use.

Three industry trends.

Huge “phenomenal” growth in netbooks. Users view them and response as ultrathin ultralight PC.

Hundreds of millions of uses live in the cloud.

Phones are effectively becoming like computers, while laptops are more like phones (in terms of always on connectivity and long power, lighter to carry.

Looking at all these trends, the question we ask ourselves, is there a better model of computing we can give our users. We think so, and that’s what Google Chrome OS is.

Focused on speed, security and simplicity. No applications. All in the browser. Easy to use. We want it to be possible for people to share machines and feel comfortable with that.

Since no applications installed on the system, they can monitor stuff — completely inside the browser security model.

And now we’re about to see a live demo. Here’s a video I shot of this portion (live blogging continues below it):

Applications run in tabs, like in a browser. you can pin a tab to make it an “application tab” so you can easily go back to it. There’s also an app menu.

There are also panels. Light weight windows you can have all the time. Showing a chat window for Google Talk, for example. There’s a notepad panel. Where’s that data go. It sync to the cloud, shows up in Google Docs (so is the cloud in Chrome OS = Google’s own cloud?).

Doing search for Beautiful Day on Google, using OneBox to start playing music in a persistent window.’

Now we’re playing chess. Chrome OS version of Solitare?

Now showing Google Books and how you can go in full screen mode and use this as an ereader.

It’s common for people to have multiple windows, but so far, we’ve been in one window. But you can easily move to different Chrome “instances.” IE, multiple desktops. If you have a Mac, you know of this as Spaces (which are awesome by the way.”

Shows how you can browse files. Pulls an Excel app up. Clicks on it and shows how it launches the Microsoft Excel app, stressing this means the OS isn’t locked to Google or a particular cloud.

Now taking picture with an Android phone. Now showing how you can bring it up in Chrome. Hey that’s me. Ugh! Took a picture of us in the front :)

Now Matt (and I didn’t get his last name, sorry — but it’s not Cutts) is talking Chrome under the hood. They want to be like a TV, instant on, book out of RAM and fast rather than from a hard drive. Not to load things that aren’t needed, like a bios or OS call to find non-existent floppy drives.

Security. Chrome checks on each boot, a “verified” boot, “we double check that you’re running what you should be running.” They check for the cryptographic signatures. See, big word. it’s safe. Let’s call it a digital signature.

Now let’s say the signature check fails for some reason, such as with malware or some other reason. They find it happens, do the detection, system repairs itself. System does fresh download, and restarts. It essentially reimages your computer. But without the pain. Made in a way where all your system data is saved. “You don’t lose anything in the process.”

How make sure applications don’t harm your machine? Applications on operating systems now have full control. In Chrome OS, apps are all web apps, which have different security model, where the browser takes pains to assume they’re hostile. They can’t do things to your hard drive or system. So in Chrome, the system uses “security sandboxing” and basically doesn’t trust the applications.

Every tab in Chrome OS separated from others. File system is locked down. Lots of technical stuff. But user data is constantly synced with the cloud. This has this wonderful property that if you … lose your device, you get a new one, log in, and it’s just the way you left it.

And now back to Sundar on how to go to market. Says will talk much more next year. Working on the Google Chrome OS image, the software. Don’t support hard drives. Only solid state. Only some wireless adapters (I think he said). So you want to run this on any old computer? Might not work. “You would have to go buy a Chrome OS device in the marketing … our timeframe is next year .. want to make holiday season.”

And now we get a movie explaining to us in basic terms on how Chrome OS is better. Like how if it doesn’t take 45 seconds to boot, you could make a sandwich.

It all sounds so perfect. Kind of like those Mac ads. Be cool if it “just worked” in the way the Mac is supposed to but doesn’t always.

What about when you’re on a plan and offline? You can cache material locally and play, videos, etc.

Can you run it in a virtual machine today? They do for developers. A virtual machine is a great way to do that.

Android apps won’t run on Chrome Apps.

Mike Arrington  from TechCrunch asks, really, no way to run third party apps? The current plan is to support web apps, so they feel they are supporting third party apps. Arrington says that’s what Steve Jobs said about the iPhone. Sundar says it is different on larger form factors (in other words, I think, since you’re not running a cutdown browser, what happens on a “real” computer will work on a Chrome OS machine.

Business model on Chrome? Full free, fully open source. As more people use the web, it benefits Google as a company.

Question. What was demoed, can’t I do that with any browser logged into various cloud services? As a model of computing, Google thinks things are much different.

What if cloud is down? How can Google be trusted with the data?

If cloud is down, that affects people on computers now. You can’t get to email, for example. As for trust, really important that users have choice. Users are always in control. You can decide what to do.

And now Sergey Brin has come in and been invited up to the Q&A.

Plans to be like an second OS that could be booted? Not a focus.

Question again on devices. How’s it going to handle things like printers? Sundar: plan to support all standard keywords, mice, anything that identifies itself as a standard storage. Looking at printers. Yes, Chrome OS will print.

Question to Sergey on competition and how things have changed with Google making its own laptops. He responds:

Call us dumb businessmen, but we focus on user needs … rather than competitors .. so this is meant to fill a need.

And the session concludes. Also see the Google blog post here.

Postscript by Barry Schwartz: Danny gets to have all the fun and live blog the event, while I get to watch all the videos posted to the various Google blogs. There is a dummy video on the Google Blog and more technical videos on the Chrome blog. Here they are all those videos: