Google has reached 65.1% search engine market share, up .2% from the previous month and closing in on an amazing 2/3 market share, according to the latest stats from Hitwise. Yahoo fell almost half a point to 21.21%, Microsoft fell almost as much to 7.09%, and Ask fell a tenth of a point to 7.63%. Of course, Google won’t truly be satisfied until it hits 100%.
(via John)
Google is preparing to launch Google Questions and Answers, or Google Q&A, the successor to the retired Google Answers. While Answers worked by having people ask questions and pay experts for the answer (an interesting idea, but one that never took off), Q&A is more similar to the free community-based Yahoo Answers, according to Ionut, who discovered the plans in Google’s translation console.
Google Q&A is currently available in Russia and China, and we’ve talked about it before, but Google had no indication at the time it was bringing the service to the U.S. and replacing Answers, which it closed one year ago. It remains to be seen if Q&A brings anything new to the table over Yahoo Answers, which is enormously popular. Given Google’s inexperience with building social communities, if Q&A isn’t immediately and obviously innovative, it won’t last half as long as Google Answers did.
Google has decided to keep the party going for another month, making Google Checkout free through February 1st. Currently, Checkout doesn’t charge credit card processing fees, which means Google swallows the expense every time, a program that was supposed to end in two weeks. Looks like Google couldn’t stand the idea of sending anyone an actual bill (or more likely, they wanted to extend the program through the end of the post-holiday shopping season), so free Checkout continues, for one more month.
(via Digg)
YouTube has semi-opened up its Partner Program, the program which pays video creators for their videos, allowing anyone interested to apply for inclusion. Previously, you had to be invited by Google to join, which meant you had to be popular and specially chosen. Now, you apply and if you meet the criteria, they might let you in no matter what. The criteria are:
Don’t get excited, though. I’ve been in the program for a month by invitation (I sent in contracts, talked with an account rep by phone, got told it was “up and running” on November 15), and the ads still aren’t running because the people at YouTube still haven’t finished setting up the account. Last week, I called my account rep at Google to find out what the hell was going wrong, and he said the people at YouTube were swamped with so much work that it sometimes takes a while.
So, even if you get into the program, god only knows what will happen. Apply here.
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