The beginning of Google

Nice article by Battelle in Wired.

Tags: Google , History

New Media Placement

With the new satellites and aerial images of Google Maps, Google Earth, and MSN Virtual Earth, we should see in the near future a new media placement! The roofs of the buildings will probably look like that in a few years :

Yahoo buy Konfabulator

Nice move to open Yahoo properties data to everyone.
Update : http://widgets.yahoo.com/

MSN launch Virtual Earth : Google Maps will have solid competition

It was a long time I was impressed by something by Microsoft. Virtual Earth is a very nice web based apps with a very high quality aerial pictures, -in US big cities-, up to 4 windows layers of products/services (one fully open plus the scratch pad at the same time). All thoses layers, with transparencies in IE and FF, automatically update when you move your map with your mouse, unlike Google Maps and even Google Earth ! The support of the scroll-wheel of your mouse to zoom in/out is great too. The cartographic data is also a lot more precise than Google Maps, and even Google Earth, and all the small roads in rural region are there.
I'd like to have to possibility to resize and move thoses layers, but it's only day one of this project. Hope they gonna extend the aerial pictures to Canada and get more zoom level to cities like Miami. Nice jobs Bill.

Why Goog fell a bit after doubles earnings on Q2 ?

Here a few cues who explain why.

Corporate communication and blogs

Really good post of Tim Yang on the article of Heidi Cohen on measuring the effects of a corporate blog.

Because blogs communicate on a personal level, they must show some return in terms of increase in brand awareness, brand prestige or credibility, likeability of the brand or understanding of the message.

The goal of which should not be to ascertain profit, but to understand, communicate and network.

Your neighbors data on Gmaps

This apps tells you the name, address, and phone number of everyone on your street (US only:-)! That guy should provide the link to the removal page of that database.

Technical knowledge

	Have a good idea	Not really sure	Never heard the term
Spam	88%	10%	3%
Firewall	78%	19%	3%
Spyware	78%	19%	3%
Internet cookies	68%	27%	5%
Adware	52%	39%	9%
Internet “phishing”	29%	55%	15%
Podcasting	13%	64%	23%
RSS feeds	9%	65%	26%

*Pew Internet & American Life Project [PDF], May 4 - June 7. N=1,336 internet users. Margin of error is +/-3%.

Via Google Blogoscoped

BlogPulse add new tools à la Technorati

Interesting set of new tools been added to BlogPulse.

One small step for Google Maps

Google commemorate the first lunar landing. Pssst! Zoom in at the maximum level.

Google will help distribute Winzip

Vector Capital, the new company who bought WinZip, have made a deal with Google to help them on the distribution of WinZip.

Google open an R&D labs in China

Google open an R&D labs in China with a ex Microsoft scientists !
UPDATE: This new hire have made Microsoft angry.

PageRank and links buying

One of the best article I've read on the subject :

Boykin pointed me to an example of where he'd used the ad-space method, but he didn't want me to publish the URL. The most interesting thing I discovered about his page choice was he'd done his homework. It has 125 .edu domains and two .gov domains among those linking back to it.

I've long said Google very much approves of links from .edu and .gov sites due to their "authority." Boykin's heard me say it many times before.

As he himself says: "To me, that was the selling point. Personally, I could care less about PageRank."

Point final!

China : Paypal open it and Google may have a eye on Baidu

PayPal China offers payments in the local currency and integration with 15 Chinese banks and more than 20 different debit cards and will soon offer buyer protection on China-based eBay.

Here is the article about the rumor on the Baidu acquisition by Google.

Google investing in broadband business

Seem Google, Goldman Sachs Group and Hearst Corp goes in high-speed Internet connections over electricity lines. The company website ( Current Communications)involved in the transaction is currently down ?

Sina.com launched iAsk.com

The new iAsk search engine from one of the majors players in China is finally up and running. You can make queries in english and chinese and search for; news, pictures, music, knowledge, and video.