Google has a specifically vague job description on its website: Director of Other. Apparently, they’re looking for someone to be in charge of the company’s 10% projects*. The Director of Other, who must have a Bachelor’s degree in a technical discipline, would be tasked with shepherding 10% of Google’s time and effort into tangential products, growing them into full-fledged and successful endeavours.
Gotta say, being in charge of 10% of a $213 billion company doesn’t sound so bad.
Via Valleywag, where commenter Twig says:
This makes perfect sense. Google tries hard to snap up top talent of all varieties; why should bullshitting be exempt?
* - At Google, their resources are divided 70% into core businesses, 20% into related areas, and 10% into new and unlerated “Other” businesses
photo by blueace under CC license
December 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Culture, Humor |
no comments
YouTube has dropped a few categories, added others to replace them. The changes:
- The Howto + DIY category was changed to Howto & Style
- The Gadgets and Games category is gone, now part of the Entertainmnet category
- The Travel & Places category was changed to Travel & Events
- New categories are being added:
- Education
- Nonprofits & Activism
- Science & Technology
The new categories are not available yet on search and browsing pages, but will be as soon as they have enough videos.
(Found via a TechCrunch commenter)
December 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
YouTube, Services |
no comments
Google changed the clickable area on AdSense ads last month, requiring users to click the title or URL, and not making the white space a trap for accidental clicks. It’s a move that scares the hell out of many publishers, but may very well improve earnings in the long run as it improves click quality. Still, some have noticed that Premium AdSense publishers, plus Google’s own Gmail, still have the white space active for clicks.
I looked into it, and this is most incidental, not an intentional oversight by Google. Even though the change to white space rules is only three weeks old, Google did make sure to change the guidelines for Premium publishers, instructing them to apply the same title and link rules to their ads. If you remember where the guidelines are, you can check it yourself, and you’ll see the new instructions:
Clickable area – only the headline and the display URL should be clickable and should go directly to the URL. When a customer mouses over the listing, the URL shown should be the display URL rather than the actual URL.
The old guidelines told publishers to use all the available white space for clicks. Premium ads are specifically coded by the publisher, and the publishers had to implement the white space, not Google. Even though Google changed the rules, the old code is exactly the same, and that means it contains the same white space rules. New ads will be coded according to the new rules, but Google hasn’t told the Premium to go back and re-code anything, and it shouldn’t expect them to, either.
As for Gmail, that’s Google’s oversight, and I’m sure they’ll correct it. After all, they wouldn’t want an unfair advantage, right?
December 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
AdSense, Advertising |
no comments
AppleInsider was talking about the feature added last week to Google Maps for Mobile devices, which has the phone determine your location on the map by triangulating cell phone towers. They talk about whether the feature is on its way to the iPhone, and that got me wondering.
Who is in control of the Google Maps application that ships on every iPhone? Conventional wisdom is it was a collaboration between the regular iPhone developers who created everything else on the device and some people at Google, though it is possible Apple wrote the whole thing using the API, and also possible (though highly unlikely) that Apple just had Google build the whole thing themselves.
So, who owns the application? Who is responsible for shipping updates? Google Maps gets great new features all the time, and Google has been putting a lot of work into improving its mobile application, but none of that work may be going into the iPhone app. Sure, the iPhone app is nice eye candy, but features do matter, even to Apple, right?
Guess this another case of wait and see. According to Google search, I’ve used that term here over 200 times!
photo by Florian Blumeroth under CC license
December 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Apple, Google Maps, Services |
no comments
Jotspot’s former VP of Product Development and current Googler Scott Johnston gave a presentation last week where he revealed much of Google’s plans for JotSpot. Turns out the collaboration software will be the basis for Google Sites, the replacement for Google Page Creator, using powerful collaborative tools to allow businesses to create “intranets, project management tracking, customer extranets, and any number of custom sites”.
Scott also confirmed what most people had been suspecting, that Google Gears support will be built into Google Docs, Gmail and Calendar for offline access. He explained how offline and online collaborative editing of the same document would be reconciled.
What happens when somebody edits a document offline at the same time another user is editing the online version? The same algorithm that reconciles simultaneous editing will apply here when the offline version is merged back into the online version. Changes will be versioned the same way, so basically in chronological order.
Google is also apparently not yet working on OCR (optical character recognition) for imported files (Microsoft Office’s OneNote does this), but may one day. Integrating GrandCentral into Google Apps is a major priority for Google, he said. And finally, don’t expect video conferencing in Google Talk/Chat, not soon at least, though it may be considered for the long term.
December 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Docs, Apps, Gears, Calendar, Talk, Services, Products, Gmail |
no comments
Google’s Blogger has added the ability for users to comment using their OpenID, thus allowing those logged into accounts from their WordPress or LiveJournal blog, or any of a ton of other OpenID sources, to comment as a logged in user. Bloggers can turn it off in the control panel, if they like.
Is Google abandoning the Google Account? Of course not. What’s happening is Blogger understanding that comments need to be encouraged to have a robust platform, and that commenter authentication is hugely important for cutting down on spam. They’re improving their platform in a small but important way, and I’d encourage them to go even further and try to implement Microsoft’s Live ID to cover tens of millions of Spaces users.
By the by, heard that LiveJournal was sold to some Russian media company? Crazy. I wonder if Six Apart made a profit on it.
photo by jonny goldstein under CC license
December 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Blogs, Blogger, Services |
no comments
TechCrunch had a very controversial guest post over the weekend from Dan Ackerman Greenberg, explaining some of the techniques used by himself or other viral marketing agencies in working to make a YouTube video go viral. The post inspired a heated discussion (already over 500 comments), as he described things like paying bloggers to embed videos, fake comments, mass emailing and deleting and reposting videos until they hit the front page.
It’s a dicey subject, one that makes you wonder if the next “viral” video you see is just a plant, and the person sending it to you has been paid to do so. I encourage you to read the post and Dan’s follow-up, where he backs off some of his claims; it really raises a lot of questions.
And I’d like to know: How many of you, when hearing they paid bloggers to embed videos, thought of just one thing: “How do I get in?”
image by jenlight under CC license
December 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
YouTube, Services, Advertising |
no comments
If you watched last week’s YouTube debate, you might be interested in this collection of corrections from FactCheck.org. They’ve analyzed the candidate’s words from the debate and listed all the times a candidate was dead wrong, mistaken or technically inaccurate. There’s a lot of stuff on the Giuliani “Sanctuary City” brouhaha, Huckabee’s real position on the IRS, and even some fact-checking on the jokes in the debate.
December 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
YouTube, Services |
no comments
It’s been 21 months since Google Finance, Google’s financial news, information and stock price site was launched, and that ComScore chart above shows that it doesn’t really have any more users now than it did a year ago. Google’s that hot pink line at the bottom, representing 1.5 million monthly unique visits, well behind leader Yahoo’s roughly 38 million, MSN’s 20 million, AOL’s 12.2, and CNN Money’s 6.7 million.
Why does Google have so little upward movement that in the last 12 months, Yahoo has gained as many users as Google has in total, seven times over? Google may promote its own Finance product at the top of search results, but it also links to Yahoo, MSN, CNN, MarketWatch and Reuters, giving itself no more real space than the competition. Plus, the Finance chart it inserts on certain searches actually discourages users from seeking further information.
Universal Search is useful for users, but it doesn’t seem to do any good promoting other Google services. In the long run, it may have more value convincing users to stick with Google search than convincing them to switch away from search verticals that are extremely popular at Yahoo, MSN, or anywhere else.
On a related note, it’s been just over a week since Google removed the Google Video link from its search link bar, and it gets more annoying every day. I really miss having an easy way to get video search results.
The chart’s via TechCrunch, which has a report on AOL Money and Finance’s new version, complete with Relegance deep news browsing integration, very powerful interactive Flash charts, and a return-on-investment table for multiple time periods. Michael doesn’t actually explain how to get it, so I’ll tell you to go to this page to check out the new beta experience, or check out this chart for GOOG.
December 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Finance, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Search |
no comments
