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ABOUT MATT MCALISTER
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Matt McAlister began his technology publishing career at Macworld Online where he covered new technologies and games. He then joined the founding team of The Standard and led the online efforts in the US from launch until 2000 when he left to help launch the European edition in London. Currently, he is VP and General Manager for InfoWorld.com by day and instigator of a dotcom media revival by night.
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Here's Why Google Should Buy Technorati
Why? Real simple.
Google is the leader in the Web-search space, but is mediocre at best in the Blog-tracking space. It takes days, if at all, for some of my various blog posts to come up in a Google search.
Technorati is, at least to me, the leader in the Blog-tracking space. As I type this, (around 2 p.m. Pacific Time on Thurs., 1/13) they are watching 5,986,975 blogs, and tracking 766,620,835 links.
Based on the current pace at which Technorati is adding blogs, they should exceed six million blogs - and counting - within the next 24 hours.
How? Why? They are quick. You post, you ping, and you're done.
A few minutes before I got here, I posted to another blog I write for. That blog pinged Technorati. Within a few nanos, Technorati indexed it and my entry is now searchable by keyword.
Google, they of the $52 billion market cap, needs that functionality in the blog search space. They should acquire Technorati, and then do the following:
*Keep Technorati as a distinct URL. Otherwise, pinging anarchy would rule, and that would suck.
*Set up a Blog tab on the Google home page, on the same line as "Web, Images, Groups," and so forth. That way, you can specify a search of Blogs rather than Web, Images, Groups, or even your desktop.
*If you perform just a plain ol' Web search, list the first few Blog hits above the Web hits, in summary form.
Yes, Google should buy Technorati. How about, now??
Perhaps they are already planning to do so. If this goes down, just remember you read it here first. Then, watch (groaner pun alert here) "Russell Crow."
Posted January 13, 2005 09:05 PM
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Why Did Google Let The "Google Store" Trademark Die?
Maybe you haven't heard of Google Store. Can't blame you because by all appearances, this enterprise is strictly a backwater, low-profile operation.
This status seems at variance to my impression that Google once viewed an online store as a much higher priority than it has become for them. In fact, they once applied for an Google Store trademark, only to let it lapse.
More about that later in this entry. First, let's see what's up there now.
When you click the More link on the Google home page, the page of links that comes up does not even mention Google Store.
Unless you've typed in Google Store's eponymous URL by random chance, the only way you'll get there is by clicking About Google on the Home Page, and then scrolling down to click the Google Store link on the lower right-hand corner of that page.
What they have for sale is not much, Google-branded pens, shirts, bags, backpacks, t-shirts, and woo-hoo, a lava lamp.
I was puzzled by the low-level profile of Google Store. Usually, when a company has plans for a major branding operation, they trademark the brand. And since we're all aware, that Google knows branding and self-promotion, the fact that they've let something as important as a trademark application die tells me that to put it mildly, you aren't gonna see Google Store wheeled out front and center.
It wasn't always that way, though.
Google actually did apply for a Google Store trademark back in September, 2001 - two months after CEO Eric Schmidt assumed his current position.
I've unearthed the Google Store trademark application, and found out some interesting information.
One section of the application described Google's plans for "Electronic retailing services via computer featuring mouse pads, flashlights, lamps, license plate frames and holders, books, notebooks, pens, greeting cards, stickers, decals, tote bags, duffle bags, backpacks, luggage tags, umbrellas, mugs, tumblers, shirts, t-shirts, modem cords, vests, caps, hats, and other clothing items."
OK, that pretty much describes what's up there on Google Store now. But wait, there's more.
Another section of the same application used the exact same merchandising language, but with phraseology that kicked off with "providing an on-line searchable database featuring mouse pads...," etc. That would seem to describe Google Store's search function.
I read through the document describing the disposition of the Google Store trademark application. After 29 months of correspondence and paper shuffle between Google legal counsel and the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, the Google Store trademark application was officially declared "abandoned" in February of 2004.
So as of now, Google Store sits without a trademark, buried deep in the site's taxonomy.
So what does this all add up to? Google seemingly didn't care enough about the Google Store trademark to pursue it through the approval process. Google Store is what it is - a low-profile stepchild for Google-themed merchandise.
Posted January 9, 2005 03:42 AM
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Don't "Hitchhike"A Ride On Google's Trademarks and URLs
Beware of ticking off Google by abusing its registered trademarks or URLs.
Google has had a recent dustup with MoreGoogle, a site that promised "enhanced" results based on Google searches.
Last month, MoreGoogle founder Andreas ("Leaning Tower Of") Pizsa felt the weight of Google's "lean" too much. The Austrian gave up his domain name to the big search engine that can .. sue, if need be.
Google is also quite properly vigilant about its trademarks.
So yesterday, I decided to have some fun and check the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office Web site for trademark applications that sound a lot like "Google." In some cases, the applications were rejected, were withdrawn or were allowed to expire. Sometimes this happened after a USPTO examiner objected, other times after the trademark-holder made their feelings known to the same agency.
The latest abandoned Google sound-alike trademark application I found was for "Googleprice," which would have been "an Internet price comparison Web site service."
Admit it. Doesn't the now-discarded vision for "Googleprice" connote exactly what Froogle does? Yup, too much potential for confusion there.
Other dropped Google-like trademark applications on record at the USPTO include "Oogles and Googles of Stuff," "Googleberry" and "Googlegear." To me, "Googlegear" sounds too much like a place where you can buy, say, tee shirts with the Google logo. (If you really want a Google tee shirt, they are available for purchase at the Google Store).
These rejections and abandonments have not prevented others from trying for trademarks that, one could say, at least make one think of Google. Right now, there are what the USPTO calls "live" applications for such trademarks as "Googlelaw," (for electronic retailing and computer services), and at least three for the term "Googles."
I'm not a trademark attorney, but it seems to me that a trademark examiner seeking to pass judgment on such applications might have to balance Google's hard-won identity with uses that pre-date the search engine.
In 1999, a "Word Mark" (similar to a trademark, but more of a logo than a business name) was granted to a Laguna Beach, Cal. woman for Google Trout. The line of soft stuffed animals had been around since 1993, five years before Google was born.
An even more colorful derivation of "Google" can be found in Douglas Adams "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." In the book one of Deep Thought's designers asks, "And are you not," said Fook, leaning anxiously foward, "a greater analyst than the
Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?"
Brief sidebar cackle: I know some firms who would looove to have more great analysts who can calculate trajectories. :-)
No, Adams did not take from Messrs. Brin and Page. Quite the reverse. Google employees call their headquarters building the "Googleplex." As to Adams, he launched his work as a radio comedy in 1978 - the year that Sergey and Larry turned five.
Google itself was founded in 1998- 59 years after the trademark for cartoon characters Barney Google ("with the Goo, Goo, Google-y eyes") and Snuffy Smith was granted. Messrs. Google and Smith received their third trademark extension in 1999.
Posted December 21, 2004 01:53 PM
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Washington Post Has It Wrong: Streaming Video Files Are Not That Big A "Search Challenge"
The other day, the Washington Post ran a piece entitled Video Files Present A Search Challenge. The piece by Leslie Walker, as well as another article on our own site, both describe the obstacles that video indexing services such as the newly launched BlinkxTV and Yahoo! Video Search face.
I don't know Perl script from Pearl Jam, but if you are talking about searching the Web for streaming video files and then indexing them (as opposed to extracting searchable text from the video, which is difficult) I don't see what the big deal is.
Folks, this ain't hard. This isn't rocket science. It's barely computer science.
Several years ago, I worked on a video Web search project for the now-defunct Streamsearch.com, a $20 million-in-VC-backed guide to streaming video and audio events. They flew me out to St. Louis to build a database of hundreds of sites that regularly Webcast streaming video and audio content. The database of sites was added to Streamsearch's crawlers. Steered by a troupe of caffeine-addled programmers and creative GUI jocks, we harnessed the database into a site where visitors could search for live and archived Internet video by keyword, day, time, bit rate, and topic.
The business model failed in part because streaming event producers only wanted links to their spawning pages, not to the streaming URLs themselves. Also, the proprietary streaming media player guides wanted all the affiliate referral income for themselves.
Now, the situation is different. The encoding Balkanization problem has largely receded. Rather than requiring a specific streaming video player, many streaming video formats are mutually intelligible to media player software heretofore encoded for only one format. In fact, RealNetworks' Helix Producer is capable of authoring video streams for several other formats besides Real's.
Plus, thanks in large part to Google, robots have improved greatly since then. Google, plus the blessed arrival of RSS, enables content that once took crawlers weeks to find to be retrieved in seconds. Plus, with so many more broadband subscribers around then four or five years ago, streaming video is an established fact with better demographics, production values and usability.
I'm sure we could do better now.
So, as the temporarily "smartest man in the world" Lt. Barclay once said about an hypothetical advanced computer on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "here's how you build it:"
Most video files have an extension that identifies them as having video content: .wmv, for example, means Windows Media Video, and .qt stands for QuickTime. Much in the way that Google news crawls 4,500 news sites in real time, a significant number of sites that offer streaming video could be crawled in the same real time for newly posted video file extensions.
Additionally, the websites for the three leading streaming video media players (RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and QuickTime) have timely indexes of live and on-demand streaming video content. With the right licenses, as well as descriptive, indexable phrases provided by event programmers - a video search service could crawl these indexes and insert cited programs and content into their own listings.
There are three other ways such an index could be augmented. Bots could be set up to crawl the Web for keyphrases such as "video," "live video," "on-demand video," and so forth. RSS functionality could be added to streaming video launch pages, thrusting their links out front and center. Finally, a streaming video index could add a form for Webcasters to submit their own listings for inclusion.
Memo to Sand Hill Road: If you fund a truly turbo-powered video search engine, it will be built. If its built, visitors will click. If they click, sponsors will pay. If the sponsors pay, you'll be paid.
Posted December 19, 2004 07:41 PM
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Library Books Are OK, But Here's What Google Should Really Be Concentrating On
Google's p.r. apparatus, the professional librarian community, as well as many mainstream journalistic outlets, are are falling all over themselves hailing the announcement that within the next several months, the search engine giant would begin scanning in and indexing mostly non-copyrighted content from several leading university libraries.
I suppose if I were researching Chaucer, I would be more excited than I am. Graduate humanities and literature students, plus the term paper mills that serve at least a few of them must be licking their chops at the near-term availability of this collected knowledge.
To me, the effort - while a laudible nod to the wordsmiths of the past - has two basic flaws. First, as Search Engine Watch's Danny Sullivan and others have commented, valuable search results gleaned from the enhanced database of library holdings will be included below citations from existing sources. And, as eWeek's David Coursey writes, too much overtly commercial content already appears in Google's search results. Blame that on batallions of Search Engine Optimization experts who have learned to pirouette around Google's once-vaunted algos.
To me, though, there is a deeper problem. Much deeper. That's one of misapplied resources.
Click-to-Chaucer is just fine, but that's not where most of the world's vital digital information is. Such data is located in the hidden and the opaque Web. And Google has not yet shown the collective drive yet to tackle the problem.
"Hidden" and "opaque" are terms used to describe Web pages that are spawned on the fly from database queries, and/or are hidden behind the CGI'd, Session ID-URL'd moats of password-protected and fee-accessed Web sites.
BrightPlanet, a company that catalogs and provides some access to "Deep Web" sites, estimates that some 85 billion documents are either contained or can be created on the 60 largest of these sites. That's only 60 sites, but BrightPlanet's sister site, CompletePlanet, lists more than 70,000 such searchable databases.
Even on those 60 sites, 85 billion docs is more than 10 times Google's current public Web count of 8,058,044,651 Web pages.
What's more, those 60 sites contain some real vital info. By some pointing and clicking, you can obtain all manner of climate data, research a patent, locate a part for a compressor, find cancer-related drug trials, research a court case, read a newspaper article from 14 months ago, or pull down a financial analyst report.
All these, and so many more, resources, are much more valuable to most of us, than one-click digital access to dead poets. This is the data that makes our economy, indeed our entire infrastructure, run.
True, Google points to some of these sites. But pointing is little better than indexing. With pointing, you either have to trust the content indexed in the search results to point you to a site where this information is available. Then, you actually have to visit each site that may or may not hold promise, and try them out one by one.
If you are doing real world, not dead poet, research, that can be a time-consuming bear. Take it from someone who knows.
So what I am I proposing? One of two approaches, neither of which are mutually exclusive.
First, Google should start an affiliate program with these Hidden Web sites. Let Google provide the interface to have its site visitors burrow in and actually get to the search boxes that hold the key to all this knowledge. Then, provide Google with the ability to serve up an abstract or a summary of the document. This could be done by crawling the first sentence or two of the document. Then, if money is required for access, Google could collect a kind of a finder's fee for taking searchers that far.
Perfect brand name: Google Database.
Second, Google should buy BrightPlanet. This VC-backed firm has seven patents pending. That tells me that the firm has some mean and lean Deep Web-burrowing brainpower. They couldn't be that expensive to swallow whole. Considering Google's market cap, that would be like a whale swallowing a cuttlefish.
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