Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Technology Blog

Archive for June, 2010

Rumors On ‘Google Me’ Ring True

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

A recent rumor that simply started as a tweet from Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg, has it that Google is developing a social networking site called Google Me.  The speculations circling Google Me are actually true and that means that Facebook is in for a scare as Google Me will be the ultimate rival.

According to CNET, “former Facebook executive and Quora founder Adam D’Angelo took things a little further by declaring on Quora that ‘this is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this.’”

Kevin Rose’s exact tweet from late Saturday night read: “Huge rumor: Google to launch Facebook competitor very soon “Google Me,” very credible source.”  Kevin Rose has a reputation of spilling the latest technology gossip and he seems to be right again.

What Google Me could be exactly is still unclear, but some say that it is an extension of Google Profiles, which is basically a representation of the user.  Others are saying that the prospective social network in question could combine Facebook’s news feed with Google Profile, status updates, pictures, etc.

What is interesting is that Google hasn’t been investing a lot of its time into social media.  Google Buzz was one recent attempt, but that did not catch on to the general public and proved to have major privacy issues as well.  Although Google fixed these issues, Buzz has not been all that popular.

Unlike Google Buzz, Google Me would probably have improved privacy controls and all new features.  According to Infosyncworld, Google Me could potentially appear on cell phones, including Google’s Android OS.  It shouldn’t be too long before we see the development of Google Me really take a leap.

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China Asks Google To Stop Redirecting China Users to Hong Kong Search Engine

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Recently, Google has been redirecting mainland Chinese users to the Hong Kong search engine to allow access to unfiltered search.  The Chinese government, however, is no longer accepting the redirect and has asked Google to put an end to it all. Should Google refuse, China will not renew the Internet Content Provider license and that means Google must shut down Google.cn for good.

To tackle this problem, Google is planning to redirect a small percentage of mainland China users to a landing page on Google.cn which will link to Google.com.hk.

According to Google, “this approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page…As a company we aspire to make information available to users everywhere, including China. It’s why we have worked so hard to keep Google.cn alive, as well as to continue our research and development work in China.”

The Chinese government has yet to speak out about the new strategy and if they do not like the idea, it may be the end of Google in China.  Currently, mainland Chinese users can only search for certain topics, but cannot access the websites that come up on results pages.  Google continues to stand behind its commitment to making information available to everyone, but China’s push towards censorship is continuing to present challenges for Google.

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Federal Court Rejects Viacom’s $1 Billion Lawsuit Against YouTube

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Viacom, one of the world’s most widely known media giants, recently attempted to file a $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube only to get rejected by the U.S. Federal Court.  Viacom, like many other similar companies including Disney, NBC Universal and Time Warner, are trying hard to prevent TV clips and movies from being available on the Internet for free.

Louis Stanton, a district court judge, said that YouTube cannot be held responsible for individuals who post videos from popular productions, including Viacom, without getting approval from YouTube itself.

Viacom’s argument was that YouTube makes it “easy” for users to post video clips and difficult for copyright owners to monitor those clips that get posted without approval.  Judge Stanton simply rejected this argument based on the fact that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act eliminates the responsibility for websites of having to check user-generated content before it gets posted on the site.

YouTube has a reputation of removing clips that in violation of copyright laws immediately after they are posted, a fact confirmed by the judge.  Two years ago, YouTube actually removed 100,000 videos that violated Viacom copyright laws.

Viacom agreed to appeal the ruling in that it goes against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as the views of Congress and the Supreme Court.  According to the ruling, individuals post 24 hours’ worth of video every minute to YouTube.  For Google, this ruling was an important win considering the number of people who turn to the Internet for information, content and communication.

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Google the Gaffe Engine

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Forced backgrounds? Really?

Google has been making some uncharacteristic mistakes that are driving users away.

The first blunder was last month when the Google logo was turned into a playable PacMan game. You might think this was not a bad idea at all, and it wasn’t—it was a wonderful surprise. The problem was that someone forgot to put an off button for the sound, and the game automatically would start (with sound) if a user loaded the Google home page, but didn’t navigate away (e.g. doing a search or logging into an account). They ended up correcting this problem later during the day, but the damage was done.

The second gaffe which went in effect yesterday was the forced background image for the Google home page. Initially it was an option, and was a welcome change; however, Google has decided that it’s better to force the picture on its visitors. What’s worse, there is no option to remove it, unless you are logged into your Google Account. Understandably, though apparently not to the decision-makers at Google, this forced change is at best irritating.

Hopefully Google will fix this problem soon, before it loses even more users to Bing.

For those of you who missed the PacMan logo, Google has kept it around: http://www.google.com/pacman/

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