Google Street View now covers Antarctica.
The Times sheds more light on the previously-denied Google/Verizon pact to strip net neutrality:
The proposal, however, carves out exceptions for Internet access over cellphone networks, and for potential new services that broadband providers could offer. In a joint blog post, the companies said these could include things like health care monitoring, “advanced educational services, or new entertainment and gaming options.”
Ah, look how the PR folks sell you a whopper. All indications are that more and more online access will be coming through mobile devices. Sooner rather than later most of us might well be getting most of our “online” information through cell networks. Coming up with different rules for mobile and traditional broadband today is simply ending Net Neutrality on a time-release loophole.
From Search Engine Land, a look back at Google’s shuttered products. I long ago learned to watch out for new Google products, as it often puts out half-baked ideas without a real commitment to them. It’s fun to try them out as a lark but beware becoming so attached to that you’d be in trouble if they closed. From the article:
“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.
First off: Cringely doesn’t provide evidence. He’s guessing that a way of giving Google preferred access without technically violating net neutrality is to give them access to Verizon property for server farms, thus cutting out some of the hops on the internet backbone. Interesting theory. I wonder if/when we’ll get the real story of this secret pact.
To see how it could work, you need to know a little about Google’s network of data centers, those windowless buildings around the country containing the servers that answer search queries, show maps, provide e-mail service and download YouTube videos. Several years ago, the company found a way to build a data center quickly and easily by simply filling a warehouse with stacked shipping containers — each one filled with computers. You just plug the containers together and flip the switch. Clever.
The New York Times reported it yesterday and though there have been official denials, it’s still far from unclear whether the deal is happening. If true, Google is on the verge of selling out a basic tenet of free speech on the internet (everyone has access to everyone) to get preferential treatment for Youtube. Very slimy and a very scary thought for under-funded but vital web publishing.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Google and Verizon “are nearing an agreement that could … speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.” While both Google and Verizon quickly denied the NYT report, the newspaper says it’s standing by its story. If the Times is right, this content-for-cash scheme would be the greatest scandal in Google’s history. We could term it “Internet Payola,” after the practice of record labels paying radio stations to play their songs.
"For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube."
Biking Directions on Google Maps
This is so cool. This is what the future is supposed to look like. I wonder how well it works…
From MIT’s Technology Review:
The tweets are a mainstay of Google’s real-time results, but Google has not previously discussed how it ranks them. A fundamental Google strategy for identifying tweet relevance is analogous to that used by Google’s PageRank technology, which helps find relevant Web pages with traditional Web search. Under PageRank, Google judges the importance of pages containing a given search keyword in part by looking at the pages’ link structure. The more pages that link to a page—and the more pages linking to the linkers—the more relevant the original page. In the case of tweets, the key is to identify “reputed followers,” says Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow, who led development of real-time search
Why Facebook matters: over the last six months Facebook referrals to QuakerQuaker.org site have grown steadily and surpassed organic Google search in December.
An ebook by Lifehacker’s Adam Pash and ex-Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani. There are plans to keep it updated through Wave’s evolution over the next year.
Looking at those images, the blogger Setanor noticed something curious: if you use Street View to retrace the route of the car that took the photographs that day, you can see that the van parked in Mr. Garrido’s driveway pulled out and appeared to follow the Google car for several blocks.
Many of us have noticed that Twitter has been replacing RSS in our lives. We’re ignoring the site feeds that we used to read with Google Reader and signing up to them via Twitter. Many of the top RSS feeds are channeled through Feedburner, which Google bought a few years ago. Today’s news that Twitter has hired up Feedburner’s founder means they’re looking seriously at the Twitter-as-Feed phenomenon too.
From the article, Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft. And It’s Made of Chrome:
In the second half of 2010, Google plans to launch the Google Chrome OS, an operating system designed from the ground up to run the Chrome web browser on netbooks. “It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be,” Google writes tonight on its blog.
The NYTimes also runs an article, Google Plans a PC Operating System.
Martin’s commentary: Google releases its share of junk that it never really supports (Froogle, Google Notebook) and it buys companies that it lets whither away Yahoo-style (Feedburner), but when there’s something they want to go after they’re completely serious.
A Chrome OS makes a lot of sense and explains why they went to so much trouble to make a Google branded browser even though they already pretty much had one (Firefox development is more or less paid for by Google). It’s often been reported that Google employees have their own Linux-based operating system and now they’ll clean it up and release it widely.
Smart move, though I wonder why they didn’t go the Mozilla route: fund a third party to do the development work as an open source project and keep it officially at arm’s length. Kind of hard not seeing the anti-trust government units not getting nervous when the operating system, browser and user data all has “GOOGLE” stamped on it.
Who’s behind corporate fraud on Wall Street?
[√] Google!
Who’s behind the real estate bubble?
[√] Google!
Who’s behind high gas prices?
[√] Google!
Microsoft new Bing.com search engine is here to help us “feel right” again. They will help freckled-faced red-headed twelve year old girls buy expensive video cameras and freckled-faced red-headed nine year old boys purchase plane tickets (the black amputee doesn’t seem to need a computer but maybe it’s sufficient that he looks so hot working out at the gym!!!).
All those things we WANT and we DESERVE that we can’t afford because GOOGLE ruined our WAY OF LIFE by giving us the WRONG search results can be OURS again if we put our trust in Microsoft.
Yes, you see rising gas prices have nothing to do with dwindling reserves, over-consumption and spending of trillions of dollars in wars to get our oil out from under their sand. Detroit isn’t in trouble because of two decades of crappy cars with terrible mileage that people didn’t want. Real estate prices haven’t fallen because of vaporous numbers games played by Wall Street insiders and Americans who thought their $25,000/year jobs entitled them to half-million dollar McMansions. The real reason is that too many Americans have spent too much time typing search queries into Google, which sometimes returned humorous viral videos.
In past economic crashes it’s usually been the Jews that get scapegoated for being at the root of the problem. Microsoft is clearly (and rather ridiculously) blaming Google for just about everything. The ad is certainly of the genre of old-fashioned scapegoating. The ad is totally tone-deaf but it’s disturbing that Microsoft thinks it will motivate people. Surely, they’ve done the requisit consumer testing?
The Microsoft commercial was created by JWT, maintainers of the Anxiety Index and purveyors of “Brand Answers for an Anxious World”. Fear sells.
Personally, I think it’d be refreshing if Microsoft brought back the old gonzo style that current CEO Steve Ballmer demonstrated back in 1986:
The USGS and Google say LA’s #earthquake happened here.
