Search advertisers are offered two basic marketing models, paid-ads and free organic ads. While there are advantages and disadvantages to both models, one clearly stands out as a better advertising option than the other. Why is it then that advertisers from small business to mega-corporation tend to show higher interest in the more expensive and least effective of the two? Read more…
For budding Internet entrepreneurs Andrew Holt and Rishi Khaitan, building a better mousetrap was the key component in their vision of the upstart comparison search engine dontbuyjunk.com. Behind the sparse front page is a wealth of products, information and consumer recommendations on a wide array of consumer and business electronic goods. Read more…
SurfWax’s Site-Specific Search Tool
SurfWax, a Menlo Park based software developer, has introduced an anticipatory onsite search tool known as LookAhead that makes looking for and finding information on most websites much simpler. Read more…
Google is working on its most ambitious project to date, the creation of a global data transfer network that could effectively serve as a private Internet. Since the introduction of AdWords three years ago, Google has become the world’s largest media company and advertising vehicle. It has grown to rival Microsoft in scope and scale. The process has made it a fully globalized corporation. Read more…
Long known for its external secrecy, Google has been opening up lines of communications over the past year to the delight of SEOs and webmasters. About eighteen months ago, an anonymous character known as Google Guy began appearing at certain search-related discussion forums sharing information and answering questions. The experiment with the Google Guy persona was very successful and now one of Google’s top engineers, Matt Cutts is a regular contributor to several search related discussion forums. Read more…
Google and Microsoft appear to want many of the same things. Two years ago, when Microsoft saw that Google was threatening to dominate the Internet in much the same way Microsoft dominated the desktop, Microsoft began to move mountains to get into the search field. Since MSN released its own search tool earlier this year, the two firms have viewed the other as its chief rival and the competition between them has been tremendous. This summer, Google and Microsoft have been waging multiple battles across several fields from the courting of business in China to the courtrooms of King County. This week, a new battleground may be opening, this time in the Manhattan offices of Time Warner, the owner of AOL.
A September 15 New York Post article fueled speculation that Microsoft might be interested in acquiring a part of AOL and integrating it into MSN search. Today, rumours are circulating that Google is working to either block or outspend Microsoft’s bid. Compared with the other battles being waged between the two firms, the fight to own AOL could be a turning point for both companies.
It has been nearly six years since AOL purchased the Time Warner media empire for billions worth of stock certificates and just over five years since the bottom fell out of those stocks. Since that time, AOL has been the poor cousin in what had become the AOL Time Warner chain, performing so badly that the board of directors voted last year to remove the letters AOL from the corporate name.
In many ways, AOL has been synonymous with “second ran” for much of its existence. Its proprietary web browser, Netscape was all but destroyed by Microsoft almost ten years ago. Its user base, while still enormous, has been shrinking for several years. As an Internet Service Provider, most long-term web users liken AOL to training wheels for new-users. AOL has had few major successes in the past five years. The most obvious is the development of Firefox by the Mozilla Foundation, which AOL fostered but spun off two years ago. Another success, the reach of AOL’s advertising arm, is seen as the real prize being fought over by Microsoft and Google.
AOL provides Internet services to over 27-million people around the world. One of those services is a search-service and like most modern search services, AOL’s includes sponsored or paid advertising. Google provides search results and sponsored ads to AOL in an arrangement that supports about 12% of Google’s annual revenues. Google has long benefited from their partnership with AOL and will likely do whatever it takes to keep it.
Microsoft is very worried about the growth of Google and is determined to do whatever it can to emulate its success while hindering, slowing or stopping Google’s progress in key areas. A purchase of AOL would provide Microsoft’s MSN search division with two very powerful assets, the first being their own proprietary contextual advertising network, the second being a partnership of some sort with Time Warner (the world’s largest media conglomerate). The added bonus is the destabilizing effect of losing AOL on Google’s bottom line.
MSN needs to bulk up on its users if it is to be successful in paid-search. Gaining access to 27-million AOL members, along with millions of ICQ subscribers, CompuServe clients and AIM users, is a good way to very quickly increase an auditable user-base to serve paid-advertising to. Being able to tell potential advertisers that their ads might be viewed in the online editions of some of the world’s most popular print-magazines is a good way to boost advertising sales. Eating your competition’s lunch in the process is a priceless component to the deal that has obvious value in the long run.
In what might appear to be one of the highest stakes games of Monopoly ever played, AOL represents one of the few remaining high-power areas in which deals can be made, at least in the current configuration of the search game-board. Both Google and Microsoft would both see great benefits from an acquisition of AOL, including the virtual hobbling of the other.
Last week Google hired a net-god, Vinton Cerf, as its “chief Internet evangelist”. Google’s hiring of Cerf has set off a wide range of speculation among Internet watchers. Vint Cerf is not what many would consider a “normal” person and is no where near a “normal” employee. Cerf has been called the Father of the Internet and the most important person alive. Read more…
I have recently learned that students as young as grade 6 and 7 are being pressured to declare career interests in order to best direct the limited public education resources after years of funding cut-backs. I don’t recall that sort of pressure in school twenty years ago. I completed my schooling in the days before the Internet existed in the public realm. Things seemed a little less focused back then though I must admit the core curriculum placed in front of today’s students is much more challenging than those placed in front of my generation. There is simply far more knowledge to share today then there was when I was a public school student, especially in math and the myriad science-based specializations. Read more…
Vint Cerf is one of the original pioneers of the Web. Cerf is the guy who developed the TCP/IP communications protocol that directs all packets of information from servers to users. He is also Google’s newest employee. Cerf joins the search giant as its “chief Internet evangelist” on October 3rd having defected from MCI Inc. where he served for 11 years as the Sr. Vice President of Technology Standards. Read more…
Earlier this week, Fortune magazine editor John Huey wrote a call to action editorial to American businesses and corporations telling them to put their vast resources to good use in this national emergency. On Monday, Toronto based automotive parts magnate Frank Stronach showed how it should be done. Read more…
