The Google Rumor Mill

Google To Pay Mozilla $0.5 Billion To Retain "Default Search Engine" Place.

2008-06-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

With the release of firefox 3 just around the corner Google are heating up their talks with Mozilla and are about to make an offer ensuring mozilla keep Google as the default search engine across the board, On all of their software.
Google, Yahoo and MS have all put in bids trying to secure the place of "default search engine" on Mozillas firefox browser, But Google are believed to have put in an exceptionally large bid of 500 million dollars that would would also make Google the default search engine on all mozilla software which has an internet search function.

Users will still be able to change which search engine is used when they perform a search from firefox, but with an estimated 25% of all internet users now regularly using firefox and users on average performing 30 internet searches a day the status of "default search engine" will result in increased traffic and increased revenue from advertising to whoever get's this place.

Plans are also being formulated to strike a deal that would insert Google adsense ads on to any page which currently contains no adsense ads. the ad-revenue from these adverts would more than likely be split 50/50 between Google and mozilla (i'm sure plugins will be available to block this function).

Google To Buy Stage6

2008-02-25T16:38:00.000-08:00

The mill is churning and the word is that Google are set to make a $750 million offer to buy the DivX online video site stage6.

The announcement that stage6 was closing was news to everyone, Especially Google, Who after hearing the announcement formulated an emergency meeting and flew-in board members from all over the planet. As I type the board are banging their heads together trying to put the final touches in their buy-out deal which is expected to exceed $750 million.

The purchase of stage6 by Google will mean two things. Firstly the site will continue to provide high quality, High definition video available for download. But it also means that the copyright terms will be enforced a lot more... So don't expect to be able to download spider-man 3 from stage6 once Google buys it.

edit: News is yahoo is also interested in making a bid for stage6.

Google To Launch Wikipedia Killer With AdShare

2007-12-16T11:11:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, Google started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that they are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge. Their goal, According to this blog post, is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But they wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.

With knol google aim to create a huge online repository of user generated information which will be available for other search engines to crawl and index and which will also share a substantial revenue share from adverts with article authors.

A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors.

Knols will include strong community tools. People will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on. Anyone will be able to rate a knol or write a review of it. Knols will also include references and links to additional information. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads.

Google To Update PageRank 1/1/08

2007-11-29T10:24:00.000-08:00

Happy new year! Google are planning to update toolbar pagerank on January the first 2008 to fix the mess they made of the last update.

Google have been inundated with emails since they reduced the PR of any website suspected of selling text links for link juice drastically, many all the way to zero.

While many sites will have their PR restored to what it was before the last update, Not all will be restored. What Google have done is refine their algorithm for detecting what sites are buying and selling links for pagerank, So if you actually were selling text links for pagerank it's likely your PR will remain what it is now.

Google Magazine?

2007-11-18T01:24:00.000-08:00

A patent obtained by Google in 2006 indicates that Google may soon be venturing in to the world of printed media.

What Google are planning to do, By the looks of the patent, Is produce a system where by the user will be able to create a magazine based on their input via small kiosks, Similar to the way photo kiosks work now.

The system will aggregate information and articles from various sources based on user input and produce a real world printed publication or digital hard-copy containing targeted adverts. Similar to how RSS aggregation works now, But on paper.

Google previous attempts at printed media haven't worked out too well so we may actually see Google licence the patent out to companies with the intention of providing the adverts for the publication.

it will be interesting to know more about where google plan to get the data from. Scraping content from websites will infringe on intellectual property right. We may even see the introduction of a new meta tag that grants google permission to use a sites content.

Google Hacked?

2007-11-08T06:56:00.000-08:00

I was just sent this screen shot by an anonymous reader of another one of my blogs. it's an image supposedly showing a defaced google.co.uk page with the name tex-tenthousand.

At first i though "meh, he just saved the page and then edited it". But if you look at the pagerank bar it shows the correct pagerank for google.co.uk which it wouldn't do if he was viewing an html file locally.

Google Set To Unveil "Android" Phone Software

2007-11-02T23:40:00.000-07:00

Google is ready to unveil a suite of software for mobile phones based on open-source technology, backed by some of the largest wireless industry companies in the world.

The company is expected to hold a press conference on Monday to unveil the project, which is expected to incorporate software from the Linux world into a mobile platform code-named Android that's designed to run on phones, according to sources familiar with Google's plans. A software development kit for what's being called "a complete mobile-phone software stack" is believed to be in the works and will be released relatively soon thereafter, the sources said. It's not exactly clear what kind of software will come as part of that stack, but it's said to include everything you need to run a phone.

Japanese wireless carriers KDDI and NTT DoCoMo are said to be heavily involved in what will be called the Open Handset Alliance, according to other sources. The rest of the more than 30 other companies involved reads like a who's-who list of the mobile-computing industry, including Qualcomm, Broadcom, HTC, Intel, Samsung, Motorola, Sprint, and Texas Instruments.

Don't expect to see a Google phone, or Gphone, on store shelves anytime soon. And in such a large project with so many different players, plans and some details could still change over the weekend. It's unclear when the final version will be released. Google has repeatedly declined to talk about the Gphone or confirm the Monday event.

Google Rollout GMail 2.0

2007-10-31T06:41:00.001-07:00

Google are starting to roll out their new and improved new look GMail 2.0 to a few selected users. you may be one of those selected users. To find out, login to GMail and look for a "new version" link at the top of the page.

So what does GMail 2.0 do that the old GMail didn't? Well the main differences are a completely re-written Javascript backend to make GMail faster, and a whole new contacts manager to help you find those special people when you need to find them most.

The other new feature that i am especially liking is the filter. The old "more actions" drop down box now contains a "filter messages like these" option which will open a filter options box.

Does anyone else find it sad that GMail 1.x didn't make it out of beta? :'( *tear*

Problems With Adsense Stats Tracking

2007-10-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

If you have noticed large discrepencies with your Google Adsense stats over the last week, You are not alone.

Many people have been reporting a large drop in CTR and impressions which seems to have started around the same time as the last Adsense Maintainance Outage. There have also been issues with overall impressions and clicks not adding up to impressions and clicks in channels.

Google Adsense have been contacted numerous times over this but as yet have remained tight lipped saying nothing more than "we are working on it".

PageRank Update Drops YouTube To PR3

2007-10-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

Has your PageRank Dropped? Don't worry, Youtube dropped from PR8 to PR3 in this update. The recent change in the way Google calculate PageRank has hit the popular video site Youtube (owned by google) very hard.

Google were trying to limit the link juice obtained from buying text links and by reciprocol linking and have inadvertently caused youtube to drop from PR8 to PR3 in most datacenters, This drop is expected to slowly make it's way to all datacenters over the next couple of days.

The drop in youtubes PageRank demonstrates exactly how bad google are at determining what links are purchased and which are earned and how thier PR algo changes are going to effect sites that play by the rules.

Over the next week or so we should expect youtubes PageRank to be restored to PR8, But what about all of the other sites caught in the crossfire between the google PR algo and sites that buy text links? Will they have thier PR restored by selective handjobs? Or will they have to wait untill google are a bit more competent at spotting purchased links?

Google PageRank To Be Reset

2007-10-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

During a recent meeting with a Google engineer it was revealed to me that during November Google plan to make changes to four elements of their search engine and AdSense program in an attempt to thwart the increase of blackhat SEO, PR fraud and invalid AdSense clicks.

PageRank to be reset to zero and replaced

The infamous PageRank (PR) is going to be no more. All toolbar PR data will be reset to zero and PR will never be coming back (this is why we have been waiting so long for the update). This is very bad news for anyone who sells text links in order to make money.

This will be done in time for a mid November release of the Google Toolbar version 4.2 which will be used to roll out "VR" (visitor rating). Google VR™ will use a digg like system with a voting button on the toolbar to collect visitor ratings of the page and the VR will be displayed via a blue bar similar to the PR bar.

The VR value will be based on a number of factors like the ratio between visitors and votes and where your visitors come from (i.e referred from a site or a search engine), It will also take in to account how many people return to your site over time. I was assured that measures will be in place to stop competition rigging your VR by giving you too many negative votes.

Two clicks for AdSense

With the increase of click fraud and invalid, unintentional clicks, Google are bringing in a system designed to prevent someone clicking on an advert unless they actually want to. The system they are implementing will mean when someone clicks on your AdSense ads a box will appear telling them that the link they just clicked is a PPC advert and it will ask them if they want to visit the sponsored link. if they click "yes" you get paid, If they click "No" you don't get paid. It is speculated that this will reduce all AdSense earnings by 75% across the board but will increase the CPC.

No more link: data on the operator search

The link operator on Google search has long been an inaccurate way of seeing how many backlinks you have (another important factor when selling text links), But we don't have to worry about that anymore because Google are removing all backlink data from the search engine and from Google webmaster tools and analytics.

rel="nofollow" replaced by rel="dofollow"

Not to long ago Google came out with the great idea of using a rel="nofollow" attribute for links. What this done was tell the Google bot what links you didn't want it to follow from your site. This was a great way of stopping comment spam on blogs. Unfortunately not many people used the rel="nofollow" attribute and it kind of died out. So in november Google are replacing it with a rel="dofollow" attribute which will tell the Google bot what links you DO want it to follow. It will simply ignore all links with no attribute or the rel="nofollow" attribute, it will only crawl rel="dofollow" links. All links you have earned up to this point are now worthless.

Adsense Pay By Western Union

2007-10-18T19:15:00.000-07:00

We’re excited to tell you that we're offering a new payment method for some countries. If you're located in Argentina, Chile, China (Mainland), Colombia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, or Romania, you can now sign up for Western Union Quick Cash, a new form of payment that lets you receive your AdSense payments in cash using the worldwide Western Union money transfer service. Payments will be available for pickup at your local Western Union agent the day after they are issued, according to our normal payment schedule.

Adsense Down October 20th

2007-10-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, October 20th, Adsense will be performing routine site maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. You won't be able to sign in to your account during this time period, but rest assured that your ads will still appear and your earnings will continue to be tracked in your account. Here's the start time converted for various cities around the world:

London -- 6 pm Saturday
Athens -- 8 pm Saturday
New Delhi -- 10:30 pm Saturday
Kuala Lumpur -- 1 am Sunday
Sydney -- 3 am Sunday

GMail For Mobile Phones

2007-10-16T19:18:00.000-07:00

Accessing Gmail on my phone has become indispensable to me. So often, I need to do things like search through my archive to find the name of that coffee shop where I'm going to meet a friend, or to send a quick email when I don't have access to my laptop. Gmail for mobile helps make this all very easy and fast. I can access my whole archive, and send emails to anyone in my contacts list -- through an interface that's very familiar. We just released a new version with some updates that you can get by pointing your phone's browser to http://gmail.com/app. The new version works on most phones that are Java ME enabled. For BlackBerry devices, you can continue to download the previous version from the same site.

Content ID For Youtube

2007-10-15T19:16:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, we announced the initial development of a highly complicated technology platform -- content identification tools for YouTube. Today, we are pleased to launch, in beta form, YouTube Video Identification.

Video Identification is the next step in a long list of content policies and tools that we have provided copyright owners so that they can more easily identify their content and manage how it is made available on YouTube.

More GMail Storage

2007-10-13T19:20:00.000-07:00

When people ask me about my job, one of the common questions I get is, "Where does Gmail put all that mail?" I generally answer by pointing them to a web site like this one. While that's not exactly how it works, we do spend a lot of time working to make sure our users have all the space they need.

In April 2005, we started increasing Gmail storage as part of our "Infinity+1" storage plan. At that time, we realized we'd never reach infinity, but we promised to keep giving Gmail users more space as we were able. That said, a few of you are using Gmail so much that you're running out of space, so to make good on our promise, today we're announcing we are speeding up our counter and giving out more free storage.

Adsense Video Units

2007-10-08T19:12:00.000-07:00

AdSense isn't just for ads anymore; it's also a place to get video content for your site -- and earn extra revenue at the same time.

We're excited about the launch of video units -- a new way to enrich your site with quality, relevant video content in an embedded, customizable player. Simply embed a snippet of code and have relevant YouTube partner content streamed to your site. You can choose categories of video to target to your site, select content from individual YouTube partners, or have video automatically targeted to your site content. Companion and text overlay ads are relevant and non-intrusive. To further blend the YouTube player into your site, you can also customize the color scheme and layout as well as choose from three different player sizes.

GMail Collaboration Video

2007-08-28T19:21:00.000-07:00

Several weeks back, we posted a video to YouTube giving a behind-the-scenes look at how Gmail messages "really" travels around the world. We then invited you to submit your own clips to continue the story, and Gmail fans from more than 65 countries submitted more than 1,100 fantastic videos! We have to say, we are quite overwhelmed with everyone's creativity. From two Rubik's cubes, a few jaunts in a bottle, countless babies, and one dog's trip to the Southernmost point of the continental US, to jugglers, firemen, camel-riders, and original animation, we've had a lot of fun watching the responses come in, and we hope you have too. A big thanks to everyone who submitted clips, watched videos, and left comments for making this project so much fun!