David Dalka attends and reports business events and conferences to discover the future of business where technology, organizations and customer exeperience meet. Also serves as emcee, moderator and motivational business keynote speaker.
Google (GOOG)
Google Adsense™ for Mobile launched yesterday.
What wasn’t announced fully was if the program is different in any way than traditional Adsense. It would also be interesting to understand how Google is exactly defining mobile websites.
As people start to use it, I’m sure these issues will become transparent.
Wow, I’m amazed that Youtube has a page up to collect this material over 10 weeks in advance! That will obviously generate many, many questions from the supporters of the candidates in the race as well as issue voters:
Sam Brownback, U.S. Senator from Kansas
Rudy Giuliani, Former Mayor of New York City
Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas
Duncan Hunter, U.S. Representative from California
Alan Keyes, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council
John McCain, U.S. Senator from Arizona
Ron Paul, U.S. Representative from Texas
Mitt Romney, Former Governor of Massachusetts
Tom Tancredo, U.S. Representative from Colorado
Fred Thompson, Former U.S. Senator from Tennessee
UPDATE: Due to off topic comments not related to the Youtube process, the comments have been closed on this thread.
Shuman Ghosemajumder (see pronunciation in this previous post) was interviewed in the most recent issue of Forbes. First time full length interview I’ve seen in quite some time on his areas of expertise.
Google announced this major event quietly on a Friday before a major holiday. That in itself is highly interesting, but will not be the focus of this discussion. At 10:48AM (not sure what time zone) on Friday, August 31st, 2007 Google News Business Project Manager Josh Cohen wrote a post ironically entitled “Original Stories from the Source” which announced a significant change of aggregating AP and other news stories into one entry that will be more prominently featured.
While I applaud the removal of this duplicate content highly (I hope they do this in search results as well – Matt Cutts can you tell me?), all one has to do is Google – AP sucks – to see that there are many people that would likely highly disagree with making the AP stories more prominent. Furthermore, AP stories lack transparency, ie contact information for a real reporter. I would suggest and hope that Google would create a feedback mechanism to the reporter as some sensitive topics are better handled personally rather than in topics. Remember the Duke Lacrosse incident? The AP spread inaccuracy during that incident that led to innocent people having their lives damaged by being prosecuted in the national media quoting questionable people not even closely related to the case. (Ironically none of those AP stories can be found easily on Google today when I searched.)
I’ve got a few points I’d like to make here:
1. Danny Sullivan wrote an excellent post that you should read on this that properly linked to the source Google blog (Not to Blogger team: Danny’s link isn’t showing on the blogs that linked to this feature).
2A. The New York Times inappropriately did not link to the source Google News blog when they wrote a short, non-value adding fluff piece the next day. A reader of that publication was deprived of their ability to click through to that Google News post as were other bloggers. All mainstream news sources and blogs should link to original news sources whenever possible so that people can see the original detailed source content. I’d like to call on journalism schools, universities and standards bodies to join together to make this the standard protocol a reality in the future.
2B. To show the dysfunction that occurs when news media or blogs do not link directly to a source blog I’ll point to Jeff Jarvis’ post on the subject. I appreciate Jeff as an elder statesman in the blogosphere, however when he read the New York Times fluff piece (you can read the link in Jeff’s post) he was deprived of seeing the original Google blog post. This caused two unfortunate things to occur 1) Jeff likely did not read the Google Blog post because there was not link to the source and 2) Jeff unknowingly committed an act that adversely affected Google’s search algorithm by linking to the New York Times story, I’m almost certain Jeff would linked to the Google News Blog or other in depth commentary if he were aware of it, in fact I’d encourage him to update his post to add a link to the actual source.
3. In this case the source story is a blog, which is an increasingly common occurence. As I’ve stated many times before, I think Google should revamp the increasingly outdated separation of blogs and news sites, if news starts on a blog and is linked to it should be the relevant source document in Google News…
4. The ultimate irony in all of this is the Google News original source blog entry that started all of this Original Stories from the Source – is not in Google News itself! Google, until you incorporate blogs fully into Google News and allow users the option to see all news and blog sources together, you likely will not have this original source thing nailed down quite right and I highly encourage you to do so.
I look forward to thoughtful conversation and hopefully progress towards adoption of the concepts above in the coming weeks. Thanks for joining this important conversation.
Google just sent out the following announcement. One wonders if this is the first of many senior executive exits as certain post-IPO events and timelines are reached. Time will tell. It will be extremely interesting to see if they promote from within or go outside the firm. The following is form the Google press release:
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – August 28, 2007 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)
announced today that George Reyes has informed the company of his
intention to retire as Chief Financial Officer. Reyes indicated that
he will remain to assist in the search for a new CFO and to assure an
orderly transition, which Google expects will occur by the end of the
year.
“I’ve known and admired George since our days together at Sun,” said
Google Chairman and CEO, Eric Schmidt. “As Google’s CFO, George
successfully navigated our innovative IPO, the regulatory demands of
Sarbanes-Oxley, and the management challenges of scaling a global
finance organization. Though we fully appreciate his decision to step
back from active management, we’ll miss his thoughtfulness, good humor
and wisdom.”
“Working at Google these past 5 and a half years has been an
extraordinary ride,” said George Reyes. “I’m honored and flattered to
have been a part of this great management team. I know I’m leaving the
company in good hands with a remarkable team of professionals that
will continue to build on Google’s tremendous achievements.”
“George has been a full partner in Google’s global growth and
development,” added Google co-founder, Larry Page. “He has done an
excellent job in keeping us financially disciplined while protecting
the best of our entrepreneurial culture.”
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – August 27, 2007 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)
announced today that Sundar Pichai, Director of Product Management,
and Nicholas Fox, Group Business Product Manager, will participate in
a question-and-answer session at the Citigroup Technology Conference
in New York. The session is scheduled for 4:10 p.m. Eastern Time /
1:10 p.m. Pacific Time on Thursday, September 6, 2007.
To access the live audio webcasts of the presentations, please visit:
http://investor.google.com/webcast.html
I’m struck by two interesting incidents I had with some Googlers this week in regards to communication.
The first involved Google Calendar and a lunch appointment. The lunch appointment stated 2:15PM. What I didn’t know is that this was Chicago time! The lunch was for 12:15 San Jose time. Unfortunately, none of the communications from Google Calendar mentioned the time zone conversion that had occurred.
Later that same day, I was supposed to connect with another Google employee via cell phone at the Google Dance. I dialed the number provided and the person’s spouse answered. The confused spouse stated that their significant other was at the Google Dance and that they coudln’t understand how I had dialed this number. Well that made two of us! I later learned that this person was experimenting with Grand Central and that both numbers were set to ring and that their cell phone could not be heard at the dance.
The people involved and myself have already shared a good laugh about all of this so there is no need for Adam Lasnik or Matt Cutts to send any notes of apology or anything like that!
I’ve recently become fascinated by the way that technology that is meant to improve our communication often fragments communication instead! This is something to keep top of mind as we enter the mobile era and design and execute the mobile search services of the future. How do we reduce communication fragmentation by the usage of technology?