Google released a short video today highlighting some of its key milestones in search over the past decade. It's both a fun blast from the past and a worthwhile reminder of how much things have changed over the years. The video is also a nice follow-on to the look under the hood of search that Google released in August. From the Google blog post announcing the video, Google sums up its approach to improving search: "Our goal is to get you to the answer you’re looking for faster and faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between your questions and the information you seek. That mean [...]

Related Topics: Google: General | Google: Web Search | Stats: History | Top News

Spending on search engine marketing (SEM)  grew 23% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2010, signaling optimism both from marketers and consumers, according to the latest report from Efficient Frontier, a search marketing agency that manages more than $1 billion in annual spend for its clients. The company attributed the strong growth to increases in cost-per-click, indicating larger budgets and competition among advertisers for coveted keywords. Consumers' likelihood to click on ads also increased, the 4Q report indicates. Interestingly, while spend increased, return-on-investment dr [...]

Related Topics: Stats: General | Stats: History | Stats: Spend Projections | Top News

With the Facebook movie's debut a week away, how about something to keep you entertained while you wait? A book. About that other major internet drama story, Google. The book? "Googled, The End Of The World As We Know It," by Ken Auletta. Googled came out at the end of last year, and I've been terribly remiss in not writing my review of it until now. It is a masterwork. Required reading for anyone trying to understand how disruptive the internet has been to businesses, and how Google has ridden that disruptive wave, as well as having churned it up. You want drama? Here's drama, about [...]

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"We celebrate our failures," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday when speaking at the Techonomy confernce, in response to the surprise closure of his company's Google Wave product. When it comes to failures, Google's celebrating more than you might realize. Some believe that anything Google touches is golden. Yesterday's closure of Google Wave is another reminder of how this isn't so. Below, a summary of important Google products that haven't made the cut, over time. For each product, I've also pulled a "celebratory failure quote." I don't mean for that to be as snarky as it seems. It [...]

Related Topics: Features: Analysis | Google: Business Issues | Google: Marketing | Stats: History | Top News

Earlier I wrote about the depature of Yahoo's Srinija Srinivasan. Yahoo's lost another person, and another big figure in search, that of Tim Mayer. Tim just tweeted, as shown above, that he's enjoying his first "post-Yahoo" day. Tweeted using the Twitter account I personally set up for him ages ago, I might add! Who Didn't He Work For? Where to begin with Tim? How about his LinkedIn profile, which recounts his storied past moving from search engine to search engine: RealNames, in the summer of 1999 Inktomi, as director of product management, from 2000 to 2002 FAST Search, [...]

Related Topics: Features: General | Stats: History | Top News | Yahoo: Employees