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Do Yahoo Users Spell Better then Google Users?

Statistically speaking, it’s likely that you (whoever you are) use Google for most of your searches.  That’s fine – and I’m right there with you – but new information suggests that people who use Yahoo are better spellers.  Wo is us!

In a thread on the Cre8asite Forums, John Mueller posted the evidence.  “Looking at my logs, I noticed that an average of 5 to 6% of all visitors from Google used the spell-correction to make it to my site (this is the same across several sites, the rest of the numbers are from one site only for the last 6 months),” he writes.

“Of all my Yahoo users, only 1.8% used the spelling correction . . . which could mean that either Yahoo users know how to spell or Yahoo doesn’t correct misspellings that well, or perhaps even, that Yahoo sends users to the proper search results even if the query is misspelled,” Mueller continues.  “I wonder which one it is?”

So do I.  In that same Cre8asite thread, Bill Slawski, “rynert,” and “Mano70” posted similar statistics, and on Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz says he may add even more.  This presumably creates a fairly large sample size that spreads across several demographics; something’s definitely at work here.

Yet, having proofread this article several times (and having left the misspelled “woe” in place on purpose), I’ll leave the speculation to someone else – perhaps a Yahoo user.

Google employee reveals it all to Microsoft

A former Googler who returned to Microsoft after a start-up he left the software giant to launch was acquired by Google, has some not so positive insights to share about what it’s really like to work at the Googleplex. Behind the lava lamps, organic dinners and free shuttle buses lurks a company where employees end up working long hours, don’t enjoy private offices and get paid less than Microsofties.

That’s according to an internal Microsoft e-mail that has made its way to the Web. The blog posting is believed to have been written by a Microsoft recruiter who interviewed the ex-Googler.

Some highlights:

– “People are generally in the building between 10 a.m. and about 6 p.m. every day, but nearly everyone is on e-mail 24/7 and most people spend most of their evenings working from home.”

– “Most people don’t actually have a 20 percent project. Most managers won’t remind you to start one.”

– “There are glass-walled offices, there are open-space areas, there are cubicles, there are people who’s (sic) desks are literally in hallways because there’s no room anywhere else.”

– “A college kid can literally join Google and, like they did as freshman at university, let Google take care of everything. Of course, if Google handles everything for you, it’s hard to think about leaving because of all the ’stuff’ you’ll need to transition and then manage for yourself.”

– “Google doesn’t place any value on previous industry experience. (It puts tremendous value on degrees, especially Stanford ones.)”

– “Google actually pays less salary than Microsoft.”

– “Google’s health insurance is actually not nearly as good as Microsoft’s.”

Among the insider’s suggestions for Microsoft to compete more effectively with Google in recruiting and retention is offering employees free food. Serving breakfast by 8:30 a.m. will ensure that many workers are at the office early, the ex-Googler said.

Who is this mystery person who dares to reveal the untold secrets about the company ranked best place to work by Fortune?

In her ZDNet blog, Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley says she knows who it is and that she contacted him and his opinions reflect those in the e-mail. He is one of the founders of Phatbits, a company acquired by Google, she says. He left Microsoft before starting Phatbits and then returned after leaving Google. Foley does not identify him but writes that he said he did not create the blog or post the e-mail to it.

UPDATE 9:00 AM PT June 28: A new “Phatbits.com” blog has one entry, entitled “My Words,” in which someone claims credit for the opinions expressed about Google but not for the creation of the posting or the blog, and expresses dismay that Foley revealed enough information for his identity to be discovered. “Today my words got splashed all around the Internet. It’s interesting to see them living a life of their own outside the context they were created in,” the posting says. It includes a letter to Foley that says, in part, “The questions did come from my recruiter and what is published is, as far as I know, my exact response. I haven’t compared the online text with the original response so it’s possible some details have been changed but, as far as I know, those are my words. I answered the questions in the context of a business communication so my response might include things Microsoft considers confidential. I made a big effort to make sure it didn’t contain any facts that Google considers confidential per my agreements with them.” It is signed “Warm Regards, Geoffrey.”

eBay Back On Google

According to Reuters, eBay will soon restart their advertising on Google but according to Hani Dursy an eBay spokesman “I will tell you it will be in a much more limited way than it was before.”

According to the report, eBay plans to reduce its exposure on Google and expand to other advertising vehicles: ” Instead, eBay plans to rely to a greater degree of competing advertising systems from Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, Time Warner Inc.’sAOL, and IAC/InterActiveCorp’s Ask.com.

eBay said the ads should start reappearing on Google sometime today (6-22-07). The AP has a much more through article about this situation.

I guess you could give round #1 to eBay in this battle of Internet Titans but this drama is certainly not over.

The Google Toyota Plug-in hybrid Car

Google has announced it’s launching a project that offers a glimpse of a smarter energy future: cars that plug into an electric grid powered by solar energy.

Read more: Here

eBay top in the world for privacy – Google worst

In a report due out today eBay joins the BBC and Wikipedia as some of the best companies in watchdog group Privacy International’s latest report. They are rated as “generally privacy-aware” along with Last.fm and LiveJournal, although this isn’t the top grade available which no company attained.

Google were alone in being awarded the worst possible grade given to companies with “comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy.” None of the other twenty-two companies in the survey which included both Yahoo and Microsoft sunk that low. According to Privacy International, Google has already embarked on a smear campaign to discredit and the report and the group.

Google is already under pressure to tighten up on privacy matters in the US and Europe and has recently agreed to only keep search information for two years. The latest report suggests that they still have a long way to go in this area. eBay however recently updated their privacy policy and it seems their efforts meet with approval, at least from Privacy International.

Salesforce in talks with Google

Shares of Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE:CRM – news) rose nearly 5 percent in pre-market trading on Monday after a report it is in talks with Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG – news) for an alliance that could help them compete better against Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT – news).

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the two companies are still working out details of a potential partnership, which is expected to be announced in the next few weeks. The report cited unnamed sources.

The paper said one outcome could be a Web-based offering that integrates some of Google’s online services such as e-mail and instant-messaging with those of Salesforce.com, whose customer-relationship management tools help salespeople track their accounts.

Salesforce.com shares rose by around $2.14 to $47.94 in pre-market trading while Google shares were flat at around $470.

Reuters

Search for Tomorrow – The Google Killers

An army of fledgling companies is lining up to take on Google. Could the world’s biggest search engine possibly be vulnerable?

Inc. Slideshow: The Google Killers

In April 2002, The New York Times anointed Google “the king of search.” It’s impossible to argue with that today. Google, which is headquartered in Mountain View, California, conducts 48 percent of all online searches in the United States, compared with Yahoo’s 28 percent. And although Google’s sales growth has slowed ever so slightly, it is beyond impressive for a company that is already huge. In the most recent quarter, Google reported revenue of $3.2 billion, a 67 percent increase over the same period in the prior year.

Yet despite Google’s dominance, there are dozens of companies working to bring new search tools to market. Last year alone, 68 search-oriented firms raised venture capital, according to VentureOne, and countless others have been self-funded or backed by angel investors. Yahoo and other members of the old guard are also showing signs of life.

What’s behind the renewed competition? The upstarts believe there is more than enough opportunity to go around. The market for search advertising is expected to hit $11.1 billion by 2011. And Google’s reputation has taken a pounding. Keyword prices for valuable terms (example: “medical malpractice”) are skyrocketing, crowding out smaller advertisers. Those who can afford keywords can be the victims of click fraud, by which they are charged for meaningless traffic. They must also compete for traffic with sham websites called sportals, splogs, and flogs, which divert users to irrelevant sites. To fight these scam artists, Google constantly tinkers with its algorithms, but that can sometimes frustrate the legitimate efforts of advertisers to optimize their rankings.

Besides these shortcomings, some competitors sense that Google is increasingly distracted by its ballooning portfolio of products. There’s the plan to scan the world’s books, the digital medical records, the no-frills office software, and even a map of the moon. Viacom’s $1 billion YouTube lawsuit, filed in March, is seen by some rivals as a portent of headaches to come.

In public, Google is sanguine about the rise in competition. “We’ve always said that small companies should be buying ads on Google and other search engines,” says Sheryl Sandberg, who oversees the company’s online advertising sales. “But we think we offer the highest quality of information to our users.”

Few would argue that Google is set for a fall anytime soon. Still, the bets being placed against it offer a fascinating menu of options for business owners in any industry who want to upset the status quo. Here’s a look at five ways of taking on Google.

The Technologists

Try out: hakia.com and powerset.com

Google became Google in part because its technology was better than everyone else’s, but it’s been more than a decade since Sergey Brin and Larry Page began developing it. Many software developers believe the world is ready for something new.

To that end, Powerset and Hakia, start-ups based in San Francisco and New York City, respectively, are developing “natural language” technologies that aim to absorb the human nuances of a user’s query. Both companies are well financed: Hakia has raised $16 million, Powerset $13 million. Using artificial intelligence technology from Xerox’s famed Palo Alto Research Center, Powerset will debut later this year. The beta version of Hakia is already online, and it seems to work as promised. Type in “Which club does Tiger Woods use?” and Hakia provides equipment-related results and serves you an ad for Callaway. Google responds to the same search terms by offering you information on Tiger Woods video games.

Natural language technology raises some questions. A site that handles searches better than Google could end up processing fewer of them. Would fewer searches yield less ad revenue? Plus, both Hakia and Powerset acknowledge that natural language sites are expensive to build and chug processing power. Are they doomed to lower profit margins? “The short answer is we’ll take them,” says Powerset founder and CEO Barney Pell. Last year, Google’s net profit margin as a company was 29 percent. If Powerset or Hakia make less on their searches, Pell says, they will still have viable businesses.

The People Powered

Try out: chacha.com and search.wikia.com

Scott Jones is relying on a business-world version of the time-honored “ask your teenager” approach. His site ChaCha employs more than 31,000 workers, half of them college kids, to serve as guides for stumped online searchers. The guides chat online with users for three minutes on average, and then provide them with a list of results. They work part time from home and earn between $5 and $10 an hour.

The approach is expensive, but Jones hopes to bring in revenue by running video ads for users while they wait. Then there’s the bigger prize. Data collected from ChaCha’s conversations will serve as the backbone for an automated search engine that will one day compete directly with Google. At least one Web pioneer thinks Jones is on to something: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is one of Jones’s lead investors.

The people-not-machines approach also underlies Wikia, a company started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Plans remain under wraps, but the gist is that users will edit automated search results for relevance. Like Wikipedia, Wikia will allow users to track changes and identify who is making them, undercutting efforts to manipulate search results. “Someone can do something bad,” says Wikia CEO Gil Penchina, “but at least it will be transparent.”

The Specializers

Try out: The likes of toptenwholesale.com, zillow.com, and kayak.com

Unlike Google, “vertical search” companies don’t rely on fancy algorithms or indexing technology. Instead, they specialize in a topic or industry and use rudimentary search means, such as collecting links to relevant sites or charging companies a per-click fee for a listing.

A handful of consumer-oriented vertical search engines–Zillow.com in real estate and Kayak.com in travel–have already garnered significant attention and Web traffic. The category also contains many business-to-business sites. For example, TopTenWholesale.com helps distributors source industrial-sized merchandise. (One recent posting offered a case pack of 200 laser pointers.) “Vertical search engines know their industries in a way that Google or Yahoo never can,” says founder Jason Prescott, who reports sales of $1.5 million last year. That may sound small, but the market will top $1 billion in ad spending by 2009, according to Outsell, a Burlingame, California, research firm.

The Comeback Kids

Try out: yahoo.com, ask.com, and live.com

In a bid to grab market share, Google’s major rivals–Yahoo, Ask.com, and Microsoft –have been on a rebranding binge. Microsoft and Ask.com have introduced spare homepages that resemble you-know-who’s. (Ask also retired its Jeeves butler mascot.) Not to be outdone, Yahoo recently unveiled Panama, which is intended to bring its system for placing ads alongside search results into parity with Google’s system. None of these changes is revolutionary, but they could make these also-rans more attractive to companies that advertise online if Google’s keyword prices continue to rise.

The Adsense Assailants

Try out: contextweb.com and quigo.com

Most people associate Google with search, and yet 39 percent of its revenue (or $4.2 billion) comes from the AdSense network, a service that allows website owners to display Google ads in return for a share of revenue. Some of Google’s new rivals are bypassing search and instead going after this business. The problem with AdSense, they say, is that Google refuses to reveal the actual revenue split to its partner sites. A firm called ContextWeb is now offering sites more control over how much they are paid. Another upstart, Quigo, is letting advertisers be more choosey about where their ads are displayed; Google has promised to follow suit.

Whether or not the challengers gain a foothold in the market, their efforts are good news for all companies that rely on search-engine optimization and online advertising to boost sales. By challenging Google, they help to ensure that it doesn’t become complacent. “Everyone thinks Google is great, but we don’t have any reference point for what search can be,” says Riza Berkan, founder and CEO of Hakia. “Search is not yet a solved problem.”

Inc.

Mobile Web – A Completely New Ball Game

Rich Skrenta feels that it’s time for the Winner To Take All. Google has won in what he calls the Third Age of Computing.

IBM and Microsoft were in that position in the two prior Computing Ages, but now Google owns the Internet. David Beisel is not convinced and feels a Fourth Age of Computing is on the way where Google will need to get involved in a new ball game. That new ball game is the Mobile Web.

The Mobile Web has even greater economic potential than the traditional Web as visited by desktop PCs. .. and despite the best efforts of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with its Mobile Web Initiative, it may not end up as they would wish as One Web. There is a fundamental disconnect between agreeing Standards and competing in a fast moving technology where there are mega-bucks at stake. If in addition, the Standards are tough to apply in order to achieve that One Web, then in practice it may not work out even if many would wish to apply the Standards.

The other factor is that many involved have lived through the Internet tidal wave and may see all this from their Desktop PC perspective. That One Web should just spread out so that it becomes the Ubiquitous Web. Doesn’t that seem a natural evolution to follow? Well natural evolution is fine provided we don’t run into a disruptive technology that changes all the ground rules. It may even be so cataclysmic that it deserves the title, transformational technology. Some observers would apply that description to the whole Mobile world.

That is at the heart of Mobile Persuasion @ Stanford University with its tagline, “Changing people’s beliefs & behaviors with mobile technology”. Cameron Moll summarizes another very important article by Tomi T Ahonen entitled, “Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users“. That would certainly confirm that Mobile Phones represent a transformational technology. Ahonen’s final paragraph points out the urgency in all this.

Whatever your business or interest, going mobile now will give you a competitive advantage. But going mobile next year will be a desperation move to stay in the game. Don’t miss out on this. Mobile is the biggest opportunity going. Where is your business? Where is your mobile strategy?

The fact that Google may have been the winner in the Third Age of Computing is no guarantee of success in a completely changed world. There are already some powerful entities in the Mobile world. Google may already be Celling Out (free subscription required), but that doesn’t yet seem to be showing results. Even a Google-positive article, Hooked on Google (free subscription required) showing Google is leaving Microsoft in the dust, had a sting in the tail.

In brand new areas, like mobile devices that connect to the Internet, Microsoft is holding its own against Google. According to Telephia, a research firm, 3.7 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers are visiting Microsoft’s mobile Web sites, compared to 3.5 percent for Google.

But even in this area, Microsoft is still No. 2. Kanishka Agarwal, vice president of mobile content for Telephia, said Yahoo is No. 1 with 5.9 percent of subscribers due to the popularity of Yahoo mail.

It will be interesting to see what develops during 2007 in this fast-changing Mobile world.

Google Phone To Challenge Apple IPhone?

Engadget is reporting that they have received information from an inside source with product information about the near-mythical Google branded cellular phone, which has been the topic of much speculation over recent months.

There’s nothing like a juicy rumor to get the blood pumping in the cold of winter.

I’m not talking about wild speculation and unsubstantiated hearsay; I’m talking about that sort of gossip that you knew was true all along — the kind that sends tinges of euphoria up your spine, enveloping you in the delight of a full blown “geekgasm” as the object of your desire edges closer to becoming reality.

Okay. Perhaps that’s a bit melodramatic.

Nonetheless, I daresay that as news continues to leak concerning Google’s venture into the mobile phone market, the fever-pitch among the masses will exponentially mount in a chorus of wonder and elation that will make the buzz surrounding the iPhone look like little more than after dinner conversation at your local senior citizen’s center.

Okay, enough adoration, let’s get to the nitty gritty details of the Google phone.

First off, it’s rumored to be a collaboration between Google and Samsung, which runs contrary to previous speculation that the Silicon Valley juggernaut would partner with Orange to develop its branded mobile phone.

Tech Digest lays out some of the features that you can expect from the Google Phone:

It’ll have built-in GPS, allowing Google Maps based navigation features, with a contact application that’s a cross between Gmail, Google Talk and more traditional text messaging.

Engadget, who received the initial tip, lets us in on another interesting aspect of the phone that is leaving many scratching their heads:

According to our tipster, the device doesn’t have any on-board storage. That’s right, all your applications are served up over the network with new apps “attached” to your account via a web interface.

No onboard storage? If that’s true, it tells me that Google plans to employ a massive network in order to support such a feature. Perhaps this explains why the company has been buying up so much dark fiber as of late?

None of this is confirmed; but as you have probably already surmised, I really don’t care. Everyone and their sister has fallen all over themselves to heap loving spoonfuls of adoration onto the iPhone, and declare it the undisputed champion of mobile phones — all before the device has even released. So, I’m just glad to see that there could potentially be another key player in the mobile phone arena.

Always remember, competition is a good thing.

Webpronews