Google has bought the conferencing software developed by Marratech, giving it a powerful desktop-based collaboration tool with video, text, VoIP and whiteboard features. Google’s blog post indicates they will be using the software internally, for employee communications, but it is certainly reasonable that Google may eventually fold it into a more powerful version of Google Talk, or use technology in Gmail or the Google Apps suite.
Wouldn’t it be funny if Google just bought a copy of some software at Staples, and issued a blog post that read like they had bought the company? I mean, the Marratech press release/blog post almost read like they did exactly that. I can picture it now…
Collaborating with Microsoft
Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 8:10:00 PM
Posted by Douglas Merrill, VP Engineering
As a company, we thrive on fun interactions and spontaneous video gaming. So we’re excited about acquiring Microsoft’s video gaming console, the Xbox 360, which will enable from-the-couch gaming for Googlers in videogaming meetings wherever there’s a TV.
We look forward to learning from the extraordinary ingenuity of Microsoft’s engineers as they focus on video gaming research and development in Seattle, where they will continue to be located.
Update: To clarify some confusion, we bought an Xbox at Best Buy, not the company itself.
April 20th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Talk, Apps, Products, Services, Gmail, General |
2 comments
Not content to rename one service this week, Google’s done another, but this one gets new features that make the name change make sense. Google Search History is now called Google Web History. With it, comes a new feature that keeps track of every web page you’ve ever visited, ever ever ever. If you have the Google Toolbar installed and the PageRank feature on, Google will keep track of all web pages you visit, enabling you to go back and visit everything and track everything.
It’s long been conspiracy theorized that, thanks to the PageRank feature on the toolbar, which tells you the PageRank value of every page you visit, Google could keep track of every site you go to. Now, thanks to Web History, that is actually true, but you have to specifically enable it in several ways, all of which Danny Sullivan explains. And yes, you can temporarily pause recording of your history.
Coverage:
ThreadWatch
Official Google Blog
April 20th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
History, Search, General |
2 comments
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Is nofollow not enough? Gray Hat lists other tags you can use to tell Google the intent behind a link, including the “rel=”irunadsense”" tag, in order to protect your links from penalties.
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So, Andy’s all like “If you’re a developer, read on. Otherwise, here are photos of kittens”. Classic!
April 20th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Bookmarks |
no comments
The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, and many other news organization web sites have bought keyword ads for terms related to the Virginia Tech tragedy. As investigated by Brad Flora, they are paying as little as 5 cents and as much as $2.15 per click to drive searchers to their websites who are looking for information about the shooting. While no doubt these are ads of interest to searchers, is it really right for Google to accept those ads?
After every major event, SEM-savvy news sites buy up keyword terms related to those events. This has been going on for a little while, and when see in regards to such a close-to-home tragedy as this one, it seems cruel. I wouldn’t fault Google, even a little for accepting the ads. It’s an automated system, it adds value to the searcher, and it’s a free market. But still, I wonder if they wouldn’t sleep a little better at night knowing they had added a parameter refusing those sort of ads? I might.
(via BoingBoing)
April 20th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Search Marketing, AdWords, Advertising, General |
5 comments
Google decided last night to kill off the Froogle brand name, replacing it with Google Product Search. The product is the same, just the logo and URL have changed (and old URLs, like froogle.com). It’s curious that Google would do this now, as there have been rumors and some word from Google that Froogle would be replaced with a Google Base-based solution one day, but I guess they couldn’t wait.
Google doesn’t have too many actual brand names, especially not many it created itself. Technically, there’s Gmail, Orkut, AdSense, AdWords, and, uh, yeah, that’s it. So with the end of Froogle, the fact that Orkut is practically a seperate island, and Gmail called Google Mail in other countries, Google has practically rid itself of any product name that could be clever or inventive. Jeez, they’re worse than Microsoft!
Google has a few interesting product names Not Invented Here: Blogger/BlogSpot, SketchUp, Picasa, DoubleClick, YouTube, dodgeball (not really, be honest), but they’ll rename anyone they can. Keep in mind, Google Earth was Keyhole, Analytics was Urchin, Docs was Writely, and Groups sorta was Deja.
Coverage:
John Battelle
Andy Beal
Philipp - who suggests new boring/descriptive names for other products, some of which are almost guaranteed to happen
Gray Hat - some funny stuff, too
April 20th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Product Search, Froogle, Search, General |
no comments
