2011 bonuses for Google employees are reportedly being tied to how well the company fares in its efforts to integrate social elements across Google products. That’s according to two reports from Silicon Alley Insider — reports that say the news first spread in a company-wide memo last Friday from co-founder (and now new CEO) Larry […]
Bloomberg provides more evidence of a coming antitrust investigation of Google by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or Justice Department. We’ve now been hearing these kinds of statements and suggestions — from various “unnamed sources” and “people with knowledge of the matter” — for months. The Bloomberg article says that the ITA-acquisition decision could […]
Google’s Gingerbread (Android 2.3) offers near field communication (NFC) support, which can be used for both “contactless payments” and marketing purposes. People tend to think about and discuss NFC in the context of “mobile wallets” and payments exclusively but there’s a great deal more it can do. For example, Google has been testing NFC-based marketing […]
GetJar released data from a “global survey” about mobile apps and user behavior that offers positive news for the Android platform, which reportedly beats the iPhone in terms of “next phone” purchase demand by more than 2 to 1. The survey was sent to 25 million users in 190 countries. However there were only 2,500 […]
Swiss privacy officials want Google to blur every face in Street View, even it’s by hand. Google typically does facial blurring with automation and says that process works in 99 percent of cases. However there’s that pesky 1 percent of cases where that doesn’t fully obscure people in the photographs. Now the Swiss are telling […]
The concept of “search neutrality” that has recently emerged is an attractive idea to many, appealing to notions of even-handedness and fair play. However it completely breaks down when one seriously considers its implications in practice. We’ve written a great deal about the challenges and problems lurking behind “search neutrality.” Now in an academic article, […]
There are many resolutions, eat less, stop smoking, win the lottery, you name it. All over the world most new years resolutions are the same, or at least similar. Most posts you read are from writers writing about their own new years resolutions. For 2011, I would like to give you some resolutions. I’ve written […]
In my last post here I gave some tips on which events you could go and visit in Europe. One of the sentences I used was “The SES circus opens its tents in London.” After that post I got an e-mail from someone asking whether I meant that in a positive or a negative way. […]
Although Google’s universal search results were introduced in the U.S. in 2007, they’re a relatively recent development in Europe, and not fully implemented everywhere. Universal search results show not only text links but videos, images, local results, maps and much more. And the problem is, many European web sites aren’t taking advantage of the opportunities […]
Just after Google announced the widely anticipated acquisition of travel data and software company ITA I was told by Google PR that European authorities weren’t going to get a chance to approve or disapprove the deal because ITA’s EU revenues were “too small” to qualify for scrutiny. Yet there are a range of actions and […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Live Matrix Wants To Be Your Guide To The Live Web If you’re looking for something to do, there are several event search engines you might use: Upcoming.org and Zvents are […]
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 Execs Still At $1/Year, But Company Cuts Other Perks Google’s trio of top leaders — co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, plus CEO Eric Schmidt — continued to receive $1 […]
In this column, I’ll follow up on my conversation with Dr. Jim Jansen from Penn State and his recent investigation into behavior patterns that lie within a large data set of visitor and search advertising campaign data from a high traffic ecommerce site. In part one, Jim and I explored whether a search funnel actually […]
This is now a familiar story: European privacy concerns and complaints against Google Street View. From angry mobs to European regulators, Google is confronting many more objections as it tries to visually map The Continent than it did in the US. This installment involves German “data protection regulators” in Hamburg who object to the way […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Privacy has re-emerged as one of the most pressing and complex issues for everyone online, including search engines, after a sustained period of relative calm. However, the rise of behavioral targeting, domestic spying/wiretapping by the Bush administration, attempts by states to regulate privacy, and more aggressive moves by Europeans to protect consumers have created conflicting […]
As many SEO/SEM professionals already know, marketing to people outside of the United States presents many challenges. Search usability is quite different due to language nuances, variations in color psychology, and allocation of screen real estate, among other things. Where are the best places for a search engine optimizer or a Web developer to place […]
Much of the discussion and debate in the U.S. over Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick was about the impact of the deal on consumer privacy, even though that wasn’t technically part of the anti-trust analysis before the FTC. Accordingly, the FTC approved the acquisition with one commissioner dissenting largely on privacy grounds. Now, Pamela Jones […]