Sam Altman returns to OpenAI as CEO ‘in principle’
Days after being ousted as CEO by the OpenAI board, Sam Altman will return to the company, restoring the status quo.
Topic: Bret Taylor
Confirmed: Marissa Mayer Leaving Google For Yahoo CEO Role
Marissa Mayer is leaving Google today, and will take over as Yahoo’s President and CEO as of tomorrow. The 37-year-old Mayer was Google’s 20th employee and has been responsible for a number of Google products over the years. Most recently, she oversaw development of Google’s local products and services. Yahoo has struggled to find a leader […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 18, 2012
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: The Hideous Site: An Allegory For Oddities In Local Search Results The small, local businesses in a particular industry on this island all vied for top slot in Google’s rankings, since […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 24, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Says SEO Is Not Spam Matt Cutts, head of the Google’s web spam fighting team, has gone on record by saying Google does not consider SEO to be spam. Matt […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 20, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: The Growing Need For SEO In Political Campaigns It’s going to be a while before we see a political campaign that’s “less digital” than the last one. Budgets keep getting bigger, […]
Taylor: “The Majority Of People On Facebook Have Modified Their Privacy Settings”
Speaking at Web 2.0 Summit today, Facebook’s chief technical officer Bret Taylor said that people do change their default privacy settings on Facebook — most of them, in fact. “The majority of people on Facebook have modified their privacy settings,” Taylor said. “If you talk to a college student, they know exactly what their parents can see […]
F8: Live Blogging The Keynote (Timeline + Ticker)
I’m sitting in the large hall in the SF Concourse awaiting the F8 keynote from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, now a wealthier man (on paper) than Google co-founders Brin and Page. We expect a series of announcements around music and movies but there will be a ton of stats about Facebook usage and growth. If […]
It’s Not About Cookies: Privacy Debate Happening At Wrong Level
Some form of digital privacy regulation in the US is about 90 percent certain in the coming year. In Europe, where privacy rules are much more stringent, the details of new consumer protections are currently being worked out on a practical level. For example on Wednesday the EU data protection authority decided that location data […]
Has Facebook Become The Master Key To Unlocking The Web?
When Facebook rolled out its Send button last week, I laughed. I even mocked on Twitter that Facebook wouldn’t be happy until our pages were full of buttons. But the Send button, as well as integrating other aspects of Facebook into websites, does make a lot of sense. In fact, it’s beginning to make so […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 7, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Instant Replay: Where To Find The Super Bowl Ads Are you one of those people who get upset when the Super Bowl gets interrupted by football or corny half-time events? You […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, January 25, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo Reports Lackluster $1.5B Revenues, But Display Up 17 Percent Yahoo reported Q4 2010 earnings this afternoon. Revenues were slightly up vs. the previous quarter but down compared to the same […]
Facebook: You’ve No Right To Export Email Addresses (Unless It’s To Yahoo & Microsoft)
The Google-Facebook wars have heated up this past week over the ability for people to swap contacts between the services. In the latest round, a Facebook engineer says people have no right to export the email addresses of their contacts. Unless, of course, you’re exporting to Yahoo and Microsoft. I’ve been watching the events unfold […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 13, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Facebook On Social Search: ‘We Want To Work With Everybody’ That was a statement Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made in response to a question at the end of the Bing-Facebook press […]
Facebook On Social Search: ‘We Want To Work With Everybody’
That was a statement Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made in response to a question at the end of the Bing-Facebook press event today. He expressed openness to working with others (read Google or Yahoo) as a philosophical matter. I followed up with Brett Taylor, Facebook CTO and former Googler, about Zuckerberg’s remark. I said to […]
Bing, Now With Extra Facebook: See What Your Friends Like & People Search Results
At long last, Facebook’s social data is coming to search in a big way. Bing is now making use of it to show new “Liked By Your Friends” matches and Facebook-powered people search results. The move offers a huge amount of promise, and perhaps gives Bing a edge that Google can’t quickly replicate. But at […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 25, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Facebook “Search War” With Google Mostly Sound And Fury The people running Facebook are an ambitious crew; they see Facebook as a successor to Google in many respects. In fact many […]
Facebook “Search War” With Google Mostly Sound And Fury
The people running Facebook are an ambitious crew; they see Facebook as a successor to Google in many respects. In fact many of the executives used to work at Google, including CTO Bret Taylor, COO Sheryl Sandberg, Advertising VP David Fischer and Communications VP Elliot Schrage, among others. However as a search property Facebook has, […]
Facebook’s Alternative Internet Vision And Its Search Implications
I attended the F8 Facebook developer event this morning and might have live blogged it but the public WiFi connection was extremely slow. Maybe that’s a good thing; aspects of what were announced had me confused, especially the privacy issues raised by the announcements. I’m not a developer and this event was geared toward them; […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 10, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Pitches Benefits, Ease Of Using Google Maps Google’s outreach last week was all about Street View. This week it appears to be Google Maps’ turn in the spotlight, thanks to […]
Done Deal: Facebook Buys FriendFeed
Previously rejected by Twitter, Facebook has bought FriendFeed, instead. The official release is on Facebook, and FriendFeed’s Bret Taylor has posted about it on the FriendFeed blog. Though Facebook has long been competing with MySpace for social networking supremacy, it’s been eclipsed in some ways by the immediacy of Twitter and, to a lesser degree, […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 1, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
FriendFeed: Easy Way To Track What Friends Are Doing On Social Web
Service Helps Friends Share Their Online Discoveries from the New York Times reports on a new service named FriendFeed that enables people to easily keep track of what their friends are doing on the social web. FriendFeed was created by four former Googlers, Bret Taylor and Jim Norris (who created Google Maps), and Paul Buchheit […]
Is Google Losing Its Magic For Employees?
Today’s Wall Street Journal featured an article entitled Start-Ups Make Inroads With Google’s Work Force, which focused on emerging potential retention problems at Google (in particular vs. Facebook). Yahoo has recently shed – both voluntarily and involuntarily – a number of high profile employees and suffered negative publicity from some of those departures. Now it […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 21, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Top Google Engineer & Product Manager Leave Google
Two top Google engineers leave — to Benchmark Capital from VentureBeat reports Bret Taylor and Jim Norris, top Google engineers, have left Google to work at Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm. Taylor and Norris were largely responsible for the development of Google Maps as well as other Google products. Taylor was the project leader […]