Danny Sullivan, the best known and respected SEO in the world announced today that as of December 1st, 2006 he will leaving the home that he originally created www.searchenginewatch.com.

Why is Danny Leaving? The reasons for his departure are eloquently described on his blog in Danny’s straight forward and professional manner, which I highly recommend reading. The short version is that he and Incisive Media, the new owners of SearchEngineWatch (as of 2005) , were not able to come to an agreement on the terms of his contract renewal. Read more…

Google launched a free packaged business solution for enterprises today (Sunday, August 27th) including online chat, email, calendars, and hosting. Called “Gmail for Your Domain” (a ghastly name that is only slightly better referred to as “Google Apps” within the actual admin area) this application package will allow a business owner or administrator to create a separate account per employee. Read more…

Recently the world of online auctioneers saw the rates at eBay spike a little higher, and has a number of sellers very unhappy about the situation. This has also sparked a number of eBay listings surrounding this hike, like this T-Shirt “I survived the eBay Rate Increase of August ’06“. Wonder how many they will sell?

Finding information on the eBay rate increase was more difficult than expected. One would expect to find a press release, but a look at their PR page come up blank (). I’m curious, eBay sends out a ton of messages advertising free listing days and other various news to its users. I on the other hand did not receive a single message from them stating the rate increase. Would this not seem like a natural thing to do?

Many are turning to Google in hopes that the internet search giant will come out and develop a true eBay competitor. Today eBay has a virtual monopoly on the online auction business. While there are many auction sites on the internet, none can even come close to comparing to the immense power and spread of eBay. Where’s Google? Even Yahoo has an auction site, although I have to be honest, I have yet to try it.

This does bring up the question, why has Google not come out yet and created a competitor? Google seems to have a knack for this kind of thing. It seems to me that because of the power and revenue generated by AdWords ads, they could do quite well even offering a free online auction service. The ad revenue could far exceed the auction listing fees and combined with an even stronger online presence, Google could certainly overtake eBay and profit considerably.

A search of Google Labs, or even a general internet search doesn’t turn up anything official even suggesting that Google is thinking about going in this direction, but it does seem like a natural progression seeing as how they have roughly 50% of search already, and have developed a name trusted around the world.

This March an online word processing startup called Writely was purchased and merged into Google. This fledgling company had one of those great ideas that Google seems to have a hard time passing up; online interactivity and document interaction. To quote Jen Mazzon, one of the creators and a part of the new Google Writely Team, “everyone told us it was crazy to try and give people a way to access their documents from anywhere — not to mention share documents instantly, or collaborate online within their browsers. But that’s exactly what we did.” (source URL). Read more…

Google provided a little insight into their plans for the spidering of images across the web. Over the next few years they are going to be focusing on facial, geographical and other forms of recognition within images. The plan is to improve the capabilities of their free Picasa tool but you can bet that this will spread into Google Images. What does this mean to you?

Just imagine if you could search for all pictures taken in a backwater location in your home town… say your favorite lake. Some day Google may have the ability to show you all pictures that appear to match those surroundings; I doubt it will be even 80% accurate but it is still a huge step.

You may also be able to search for pictures of your buddy ‘Bruce’ by letting Google analyze a photo of Bruce that you have on hand. Then, after some whirls and clicks, Google would provide you with additional photos of Bruce found online. Okay I may be reaching a bit here with how this might work but I honestly believe this is in our future.

With Google you can pretty much let your imagination run wild. After all, Google is the perfect example of a company with unlimited financial and intellectual resources so the sky is the limit.

Here is the original announcement.

P.S. Hmm, image SEO just might be taken to an all new level.

Google is preparing to announce a new offering specifically designed for the Open Source Community. All of the tongues are still at Google except for this posting by Greg Stein, an engineering manager in Google’s Open Source Group.

I can’t say I am exactly in the ‘know’ on this topic but I would take a cheap bet that Google is going to launch it’s own version of SourceForge.net (touted as “The world’s largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications”).

Hmm, I wonder if the Open Source community would be interested in this? Would you post your open source project on a Google property?

Do you have feedback? Please leave a comment!

If such a creation were embraced by the OS community it would certainly solidify and diversify Google’s advertising market.

Well I promised to keep you up to date on whether the Google code that was stumbled upon was real or not. Matt Cutts (a senior Google engineer) has confirmed that this was real and that “steps have been taken” to ensure this kind of information does not reappear.

Here is a permalink to Matt’s blog entry that discusses this:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/catching-up-2/

And just in case you feel like a trip down memory lane, here is the blog post that started this: http://www.abuzant.com/od/2006-07/google-server-errors-fact-or-fiction.html

Well it is all over the ‘net (see news search). The term “Googled” has been officially acknowledged by the granddaddy of dictionaries; check out the official Google definition page.

Now that you have seen the definition you may have spotted what made me laugh… Webster uses Adsense both below and to the right of all definitions within its site. I guess that quells any dissenters to this literary addition; Google really is everywhere.

I found out that it is within the realm of possibility that Telcos will be given the powers to abuse the Internet by charging customers more for certain types of Internet use. Google has flatly stated that it will file Antitrust complaints if this indeed occurs. Here is an article that may just raise the hairs on the back of your neck: “Google to File Antitrust Complaints Against Telcos if Necessary” by Tuan Nguyen.

What Does this Mean?
You can bet that this form of abuse (should it occur) will drastically affect nearly every aspect of Internet use and thus the behavior of Internet users. Just how long will a person stay at your website if they begin to worry about extra fees? Who knows? This is all conjecture at the moment but the Internet is ever-changing and I feel it is important to keep a diligent watch on the infamous greed of Corporate America.

This is my last official post in the role of News Editor at StepForth Placement. As of the middle of the month, I will be a free agent. As of the end of this post, I am on vacation-time. Its a strange feeling.

It has been an incredible adventure and a true privilege working here for the past six years. In that time, the website optimization and search engine marketing sector has grown from a tiny cottage industry to become one of the most significant sectors operating on the Internet. Read more…