Written on August 29, 2008 – 10:46 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The folks in Redmond have recovered from their unsuccessful attempt to buy Yahoo and are, once again, on a buying spree. Microsoft is about to acquire web-based survey company Greenfield Online for $486 million.
This acquisition gives Microsoft access to Ciao.com, a popular price comparison and consumer reviews site in Europe. Of course this immediately brings up questions about whether Ciao.com’s validity stays in tact. What if Microsoft plugs it Xbox games a little too much in the video games section?
It definitely looks like Microsoft gets particularly excited about Ciao.com, as it will sell of Greenfield Online’s main business, namely the Internet survey solutions, to an unknown buyer. Reuters reports that this part of the company accounts for about 75 percent of Greenfield Online’s overall revenue.
With major companies like Microsoft and Google buying media outlets, the validity of formerly trustworthy tools like search machines and comparisons sites becomes doubtful. I earlier reported about Google ranking its own content higher in the search results (i.e. Knol above Yahoo! Answers), the same might be happening with Ciao.com.
Hopefully, these developments might spur an anti major media company sentiment. While we’ve agreed with multinationals buying news papers (Murdoch et al), it may be easier to develop alternatives to sites like Ciao.com. Will “has no mother company” become a popular marketing slogan?
I hope you like that post!
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Written on August 26, 2008 – 5:42 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Per the official AdSense blog: Google Ad Manager is now officially available for anyone, without invitation requirements. Now that the beta tag has been dropped, Ad Manager becomes available to anyone with an AdSense account.
Ad Manager can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure both directly-sold and network-based inventory. It offers an intuitive and simple user interface, Google serving speed and reliability, and significant cost savings. Best of all, Ad Manager can be optionally integrated with Google AdSense to offer you an automated way to maximize the revenue of your unsold and network-managed inventory.
So what’s new in this release?
- interface in 32 languages and support for international currencies
- manage third-party ad networks
- automatic macro insertion
- dynamic preview on live site
- day and time targeting
More information here.
(Via GigaOM Daily)
Written on August 25, 2008 – 10:37 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Not sure if it’s enough to change Preston Galla’s perception of Google (he just penned a thought-provoking piece on Computerworld about the search giant losing its mojo), but this is quite handy for people like myself: the company has introduced a new OneBox for quick and dirty translations.
All you have to do is type in “translate” followed by the word you want to have translated (and optionally the words “into English”), and out comes a handy translation result right before general search results for that term. The results stem from its own bilingual directory.
As Google Operating System points out, you can’t use the search box as a shortcut for Google Translate because full texts aren’t yet translated. The bilingual dictionary is only available for the following language pairs: English <-> French/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese/German/Russian/Chinese/Korean/Hindi. The blog has also found some translation results to be accompanied with image results, but I haven’t been able to replicate it at my end.
(Via Zorgloob, who picked a far less friendly search query to demonstrate the new functionality) :)
Written on August 25, 2008 – 12:12 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Yandex has changed its Roman character logo into one depicting the company name in Cyrillic. According to Yakov from Quintura, this means Yandex has become a househould name in Russia. The new logo, by design consultancy Art. Lebedev Studio must stimulate the rise of Yandex’s brand, which is on its way to becoming one of Russia’s best-known brands.
Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh
“Our technology is better suited for the Russian market,” Volozh told The Sunday Times. “We have brilliant mathematicians and programmers. We are very strong on data analysis and have developed better technology, which is cutting-edge in Russia. We are constantly inventing new programs to stay ahead.”
So there’s no world-domination tour coming up for Yandex. But why would they? Operating in one of the world’s most exciting Internet markets, the engine is attracting 8 million people per day to its site and holds a share of 55 percent. That’s the bases of their success story: the victory over Google, which only holds 21 percent of the Russian search market. Yes, Yandex is booming. CEO Arkady Volozh knows this, as he told The Times in an interesting interview that “in two years since Google opened an office in Russia we haven’t lost a single specialist to our competitors because Yandex is one of the best companies to work for in Russia.”
The Sunday Times article by Mark Franchetti proves an interesting insight in the career of Volozh, a mathematician who was 24 years old when he first saw a personal computer. Touchy subjects like goverment-supported oligarchs aren’t discussed though. Volozh only says he’s not considering a sale.
Written on August 21, 2008 – 3:59 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
World’s largest independent IM service eBuddy has hired former Google Netherlands executive Marc Duijndam to stimulate its international growth. Duijndam will work together with eBuddy’s senior management team. His focus will be on rapid development of eBuddy’s worldwide revenue and expansion of the partner network.
Marc Duijndam
From a national point of view, I’m proud to see a Dutch web company actively working to sustain and develop its international top position. But to hell with this pride, I’ll save it for the Dutch blogs. So here’s some more information that’s not just interesting for the Dutchmen.
Duijndam has six years of Google experience (2001-2007) and will play an important role in transforming a young fast-growing web company into a solid and really profitable player. Or, like eBuddy co-founder and CEO Jan-Joost Rueb says, “Duindam will take eBuddy to the next level”.
It’s part of every successful start-up’s growing curve. After gaining some traction, a round or two of funding, and some more traction; a careful selection of experienced business executives is made to turn the popularity into revenue.
eBuddy’s decision to hire the former Google executive matches with the international promise the company made when it secured a Series B round of 6.5 million euro from Prime Technology in February.
[Disclaimer: look at the right of this page, eBuddy sponsors this blog.]
Written on August 16, 2008 – 11:30 am
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Ernst-Jan has already written a piece about how useful the Quintura corporate blog is for keeping up-to-date on the latest developments in Eastern Europe and Russia. Now Yakov brings us this gem: apparently Czech search engine Seznam is talking to potential buyers about selling for a price exceeding $1 billion. Yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’ as in ‘big money’.
Google is cited as a potential acquirer, along with private equity firms Warburg Pincus, owner of Czech portal Centrum, and Macquarie Capital Alliance Group, owner of Czech yellow pages publisher Mediatel.
Seznam had 62% share of the Czech search market vs. Google’s 29% share. The site reported 4.4 million unique users in May 2008, and is estimating bringing in revenues of approx. $90 million this year, up 40% from 2007. The company was previously valued at $300 million after two private equity firms bought out Lycos Europe’s 30% stake for $91 million. The majority of shares is still in the hands of founder Ivo Lukačovič.
There seems to be a huge consolidation wave in the Czech internet landscape (see Yakov’s post for more on that), but if this deal goes through, it would make it one of the largest in the history of the Eastern European web scene alltogether.
Written on August 14, 2008 – 6:47 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Our Finnish Webtipr is a search engine anarchist. He denies submission to Google. Sure, he uses it a lot, and probably couldn’t live without it, but he’s critical. Timo Paloheimo basically has three problems with the search giant. He was so kind to mail them to me:
- Google has 70% market share in the US, worldwide even more. (in Finland their market share is said to be 95%).
- Google has no transparency, they do not reveal how their search engine ranks content. There are numerous opinions that Google does indeed favor their own content.
- Google’s reason for existence is to make money, which is done by delivering the best possible results for them, not the best for the user. A monopoly can do that.
You’ve probably heard these complaints before, maybe you discuss them with friends once in a while. But for Timo, it didn’t end with just complaining. He has used Google Custom Search to create a version of Google that doesn’t search within Google-owned services. So no Knol, YouTube, or Blogger. Google Minus Google offers you trustworthy results.
Media company or search engine?
Paloheimo found inspiration for his project in a New York Times article titled “Is Google a Media Company?“. The article raised questions like whether Google would give Knol pages a higher ranking than, say, a Mahalo or About.com page.
Paloheimo doubts whether Google offers the best pages, as it’s the party that offers the results, but also makes money from them. As an example, he mailed me two screenshots of a search for “analytics”. The Google search shows links to the Google Analytics tool and the blog, Google Minus Google offers links to Wikipedia pages and companies who specialize in analytics.
The best results
“Don’t get me wrong”, says Paloheimo - who hopes Google consider his idea to be a parody -, “I’ve been a Google fan for years and I use it every day perhaps a few hundred times. I love the search engine, it has delivered the best results. I want it to stay that way.”
Written on August 7, 2008 – 5:26 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Google Adsense has announced some key enhancements, based on the technologies of the in March acquired Doubleclick. These improvements will offer a “better experience for users” (meaning less annoying and less privacy) and “better value for advertisers” (meaning more statistics and control):
These steps will be introduced in the coming months:
- Frequency Capping: Enables advertisers to control the number of times a user sees an ad. Users will have a better experience on Google content network sites because they will no longer see the same ad over and over again.
- Frequency Reporting: Provides insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign, and how many times, on average, people are seeing these ads.
- Improved Ads Quality: Brings performance improvements within the Google content network.
- View-Through Conversions: Enables advertisers to gain insights on how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad. This helps advertisers determine the best places to advertise so users will see more relevant ads.
To be able to provide these new statistics, Google needs to follow your footprints through the Google Network. So Google will embed a cookie that monitors how many times you’ve seen an ad and whether you clicked on it. If this doesn’t sound like a good idea to you, there’s the possibility to opt out.
How about the not-so savvy users?
As a savvy user, you’ll be aware of this. But the majority of people browsing around the Google network still think there only is an analog version of cookies (the ones you’ll find in a jar). So how will they be able to know Google is tracking most of their online activity?
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