InsideGoogle

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Google Sees Growth in Maps and Mail, Disaster in Products

google-november-2007-traffic.png

comScore has released statistics on the performance of Google’s various properties over the last year, and TechCrunch provides these handy reference charts.

google-november-2007-growth.png

As always, Google search is the big boy, with Google Images the only other vertical that performs spectacularly. However, strong growth in Google Maps and Gmail mean that the two have a shot of breaking out of the pack and joining those two.

In the third tier are Google News and Google Video, one growing slightly, one sinking slightly. Guess moving around Video and changing its focus every few months hurt Video, though not as much as you’d expect. The fourth tier has Books, Earth and Groups, which enjoyed moderate growth, Scholar, which sank 32% due to neglect, and iGoogle, which exploded and grew over 250%. iGoogle is Google’s success story for the year, which is great news for the struggling personalized homepage product category and Google’s Gadget developer ecosystem.

There are the also-rans at the bottom, including Blog Search, the Google Directory (shockingly still popular than many of the others), Google Talk (most neglected product of the year), Calendar and Finance. Google Product Search is Google’s biggest failure, losing 73% of its users from when it was Froogle. A year ago, Froogle had a good ten million unique visitors and a nice brand name, now it has maybe two million and two generic names. Google killed Froogle, and hurt itself badly with this one.

Missing from this list is another Google success story, Google Reader. This suggests that Reader, while disrupting the RSS market, is too small to make the list, or that comScore screwed up (since we know Reader had a ton of growth). Also: No Google Apps or Google Docs, no Blogger or YouTube or SketchUp or Desktop.

It’s important to note that, of the 17 Google products listed, the only ones being monetized are Web Search (#1), Gmail (#3), Google Maps (#4) and Product Search (to a very small extent). Not making any money are Images (#2), News (#5), Video (#6), Earth (for the most part), Groups, Books, iGoogle, Scholar, and any of the others. Google would love to monetize Images, News and Video, but the amount of content it doesn’t own in there makes it damn near impossible to do so and not get sued.

December 25th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | iGoogle, Reader, Talk, Google Video, Google Book, Blogsearch, Product Search, Finance, Calendar, Google Earth, Google Maps, Services, Google Images, Search, Groups, Froogle, Google Scholar, Google News, Products, Gmail | no comments



Want To Know What “Sporging” Is?

Some Google Groups users are discovering their groups are falling victim to “Sporgery attacks”. Now, the problem isn’t actually a Google Groups problem, but rather a Usenet (Newsgroups) problem, but the close connection between Usenet and Groups means a lot of people who might never have heard of the term are now suffering from it.

So, what is “Sporging“? The word is a combination of spam and forgery, referring to a spam attack on a newsgroup that not only floods the newsgroup with a ton of posts to disrupt regular discussions, but forges the usernames of regular active posters to make it appear that the regular users of the forum are saying offensive things.

The origin of the word comes from the Scientology Internet wars of the 1990s, where the usernames and email addresses of anti-Scientology posters were appended to posts from pro-racism newsgroups and reposted. Over the course of a year, over 1.4 billion racist messages were posted with the identities of Scientology critics, seemingly in an attempt to discredit them as bigots.

So, if your group is victim of a sporgery attack, or you hear one might be coming, don’t panic. Don’t blame Google, because it is a Usenet issue, and do consider contacting the FBI. Unlike regular spam, sporgery can be more actionably illegal, since it involves fraud and offensive content, and the FBI’s CyberCrimes division will often be interested.

Thanks to Tomi for the hat tip, and check out Tomi’s unofficial Google Groups FAQ.

August 15th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Spam, Groups, Services, General | 2 comments

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Ultimate Search For Bourne - Day Ten

The end of the second week of the Bourne Ultimatum Google game is here, and I picked up two more sightings yesterday. Looks like my theories regarding the sightings are finally working out.

You need to retrace your steps from the previous two days to determine if Ross is a liar, and if so, present a more accurate rendevous. Considering that if he weren’t a liar, the answer would be the same as yesterday, you’d better assume he was lying, and work from there.

Damn, that was easy! Ross mentioned a location in London multiple times, and if you go to priceless.com, the name of that place is listed at least twice, and part of the URL! Three cameras to place today.

For my cameras, I chose Waterloo Station, the London Eye, and, on a hunch, St. Paul’s Cathedral, since it was mentioned in the Google Group.

July 27th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | iGoogle, Products, Groups, Services, General | 10 comments

Ultimate Search For Bourne - Day Nine

Well, my hunch about the Priceless.com map paid off, and I’m one sighting closer to an iPhone.

Today, you have to contact Simon Ross again, using the username (CRUYFF74) and passphrase (don’t Silence the truth) from yesterday.

Simon leaves a message about a Tube station and a Google Group. The Google group has a map of the train lines, along with a major London tourist attraction that it right on that Tube line. Enter the name of that attraction in the Message Transmitter, and you’re done for the day, with another camera to place.

As for the cameras, I’m using the Tube map to place mine now. I chose Waterloo Station and the London Eye.

July 26th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | iGoogle, Products, Groups, Services, General | 14 comments

Another Google Groups Beta?

I have no idea what Google is trying to do, but they’ve released a new beta of Google Groups (the fourth version since 2001) that, on the surface, looks almost like a step backwards.

The new Groups allows groups to customize the look of their pages, using an interface similar to Google Page Creator. It also adds file storage and sharing. While it is technically a pretty good upgrade, the look of the pages are just kind of ugly, like they didn’t even ask a designer to look it over. Here are some screenshots:

I don’t know. It’s like, their heart is in the right place, but the execution just doesn’t do it. If I had to describe the new Groups, I’d say “It has a nice personality”. Which we all know is code for “It needs to lose weight and shave its upper lip”. The new features are probably making heavy Groups users happy, but Google needs to improve the visual aspect of the site before Groups Beta replaces the current site.

CNet has a more positive review.

Philipp notes the interface is inconsistent, jumping around and changing too often.

Garett Rogers says the sidebar being on the right side is driving him up the wall. Agreed. You don’t change established user interfaces without good reason, and there isn’t one here.

October 5th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Groups, Services, General | 3 comments

Google Blogoscoped Link Dump

I’m almost caught up from my vacation (one post, almost every hour, for three days, will do it) and here are eight Google Blogoscoped stories that I have open in tabs:

Philipp released his blog’s very cool coffee bar chat application as a free download. I love this thing.

Here’s a Greasemonkey script that puts your Google Calendar Agenda in your Gmail sidebar. There’s no reason Google shouldn’t have done this already.

Philipp has decided to preserve Google for future generations with a Screenshot Museum and Video Museum, so that down the road we can compare exactly how Google has changed over the years.

The Google Groups front page got a redesign, as Google is realizing that a simple page with a search box doesn’t cut it for content sites.

Philipp started a public Google Calendar, which several editors, that contains major search industry events.

Google Video now has a Top 100 page.

Google Maps got a tiny zoomed out dragger window.

April 25th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Culture, Google Video, Calendar, Blogs, Google Maps, Search, Services, Groups, General | no comments



Catching Up: New Google Stuff

Continuing the catching up bandwagon (six posts so far, and I’ve actually lost ground!), this time I’ll look at what’s new.

First off, Google just (and I mean just launched Google Finance. Finance is barely a search engine, focusing far more on content, namely stock market stats and aggregated information. The Finance page for a company contains a Flash (not AJAX! The horror!) stock chart, where you can drag a slider to select date ranges and run the mouse over to see instantly changing stats. There are news articles to the right of the chart, and they are based on the date range, changing when the range changes and being mapped out, Google Maps style, on the chart.

Above the chart is lots of basic numbers. Below it are company facts (profit, revenues, address and phone number), a Reuters company summary, excerpts from financial reports, a management list, related companies, links to other financial sites, blog posts from Blog Search and Google Group posts. Rolling over management names reveals an AJAX (whew!) popout that has a photo and links to the person’s bio, compensation and stock sales.

You can add any stock to your “portfolio”, which means you see headlines and quotes on the Finance homepage. You can also go to your portfolio page, enter how many shares you own and what you paid for them, and track your earnings (or losses). Yeah, how many people are giving up their stock portfolios to Google? God, they really are obsessed with getting your information.

Google also released version 1.0.1.0 of the Google Video Player. It includes clickable preview frames, optimizations, proper menu shortcuts, improved login, fixed audio stuttering, better error handling and a more polished GUI.
(via Digg)

Google Video now has a full-length indie flick for $14.99, or $1.99 for a day pass. Increase the day pass by a few days, drop the buy option to $10-12, and you’ve hit the perfect spot for movie downloads.

Turns out AdWords has been adding some great features I never noticed, including ad keyword popularity graphs, generating keywords based on your content pages, global traffic trends in search volume (for the last twelve months, including the peak season).

There’s a cool bookmarklet for adding bookmarks to your Google Account.

Follow this guide to make red/blue 3D images, for use with 3D goggles. Why am I mentioning this? Because a Digger used this method to create 3D Google Earth landscapes. Nice!

AdSenseBlackList.com has a generator that gives you a list of sites you should be blacklisting for AdSense, so called MFA sites. MFA is the popular acronym for “Made For AdSense” sites that provide zero content of any use, and buy really cheap AdSense ads to get people to visit.
(via Digg)

Turns out Adam Bosworth is working at something called Google Health, probably designed to target the health care industry. They stole my idea! I told some people at Search Champs that MSN should start a search engine to work through the clutter and provide accurate, up-to-date medical information. The elderly could use it to find the prescription drug plan that would be right for them, an impossibility in the current industry. The site could make money through comissions from mega-billions drug companies, instead of advertising (or both). I hope, for the sake of all the confused folks out there, that it is what Google is up to.
(via Digg)

31 tabs open, 1434 Bloglines items to go…

March 21st, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Google Earth, AdSense, Google Video, iGoogle, Store, Blogsearch, Stock Market, Products, AdWords, Advertising, Search, Services, Groups, General | 6 comments

Google Ads Ratings, Author Profiles / History To Groups

Philipp reports that Google has added rating of Google Groups messages (with a five star system), as well as author profiles which include a posting history. Presumably designed to eventually cut down on the visibility of spam, you can click on the star ratings to rate the better (or awful) messages. The profiles available for posters initially show the person’s posting history, linking you even more to every stupid thing you say in a newsgroup.

This comes on the very day Microsoft releases to a select group the first of several high-profile social websites. Whether or not Google is intentionally trying to compete with Expo and other unannounced Windows Live projects that are designed to work with a sense of community is not the issue, just that it helps that Google is trying well to adapt to the needs of a growing market.

February 10th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Groups, Services, Microsoft, General | no comments

links for 2005-12-13

December 12th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | CPM, Blogs, Bookmarks, AdSense, Groups, Advertising, Yahoo, Gmail | no comments

links for 2005-11-09

November 8th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | PPC, Google Scholar, Google Local, Search Marketing, Google Print, Groups, Yahoo, Advertising, AdWords, Search, Microsoft, General | one comment

Google Search Showing Groups Results

Google is now showing some Google Groups results after regular search results (sample search). Here’s a screenshot I took:

Interesting that Google is putting these after the results, and not before them. Possibly, they are concerned with cluttering up the top of the results, but this could also be simply a test to see how useful users find them. Google put its famous spell correction below results, and when they tested well, moved them to the top as well.
(via Search Engine Watch)

September 17th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Groups, Services, Search, General | 4 comments



What Should Google 2005 Look Like

What does Google plan for the future?

This is the single biggest question myself and many other Google-watchers are asking these days. Google, the seemingly invulnerable company, has been looking more Jimmy Olsen than Superman these last couple of weeks, getting one upped by Lex Luthor on a weekly basis. Does Google have the plan necessary to fight off the company that never loses?

First read my recap of the past year.

What do we see? Well, by all accounts, Google had its best year ever. In fact, remove MSN’s last six weeks, and Google had a great year, with no real bumps. The problem is, removing MSN would be like removing the fuel from a plane and expecting to fly properly. Microsoft is the eight hundred pound gorilla that Google has never had to stare down, and it has made an excellent showing over just a few weeks. Microsoft’s on a pace that makes Google look slow and confused.

Microsoft also has a better corporate philosophy. Surprised? You should be. Google’s corporate culture was supposed to be a strength. It’s young, brilliant, and savvy. Instead Google is looking more and more elitist. Its geeks-first attitude could alienate typical users as much as John Kerry alienated middle Americans.

If Google is the blue state search engine, then MSN is the red state search engine. The problem is, the internet economy is almost entirely red state. Blue users don’t click on ads. Microsoft’s products appeal to your grandpa, your sister, your postman, the guy who built your car. Google only appeals to the Slashdot crowd. In thirty years, the entire net will be tech-savvy, but for now, Google is ahead of its time.

Microsoft is going to beat Google not by stealing its core, but by building a much bigger core from everyone Google is ignoring. If Google wants to win this thing, it needs to learn to appeal to those people better than Microsoft will. Google needs a lot of things. It needs a portal. It needs original content. It couldn’t hurt to buy Flickr, but it needs to combine its services.

Integration is the first key. If Google can get its services to work together in an efficient way, it can use that as a selling point to grab customers. Picasa needs to work with Blogger, Hello needs to go 2.0 and create a community, Orkut needs to fixed or dumped for something better, Groups needs to work with Blogger. Google has no page that users can go to and see everything they can do with Google and the reason they should stick with Google. Give me one reason someone should stick with Google. I guarantee you the people who don’t read this blog have no idea what you’re talking about.

Information is the second key. People need to know what Google offers. For god’s sake! Buy a commercial! Tell people that Google is great and they have a reason to stick with it. Why doesn’t Google have a real slogan? Why don’t I see bus ads that say, “Google: The World’s Most Accurate Search Engine”? Why isn’t Google making an effort to let the public know what Google is all about? Microsoft plans to spend a ton of money promoting MSN Search. What about Google?

Innovation is the third key. Google needs something, anything, to take the focus from MSN Search. MSN has been hammering away at Google, and Google needs to give people a reason to remember that Google is supposed to be the industry leader. Picasa 2.0 is a start, but Google Desktop Search is where its at. Desktop search is overrated, but it is where the battle is most visibly fought, so Google needs to not be getting its butt kicked. GDS is so far behind MSN Desktop Search, it should be embarrassed. Just update something. Add a feature or two, post a press release, and hear how grateful everyone is that you guys aren’t asleep. MSN has been open and responsive to the blogging community. That vaunted Google “wall of silence” just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Google is at a huge crossroads. Either it starts to become a real corporation, with commercial needs and marketing and an idea of what its customers need, it is in for a very bad 2005. I have faith in Google. I believe they will pull it together, change their hurtful corporate culture, and win this thing. The problem is, Google is more of a religion than fact. I believe in Google; I have faith; and I have no evidence. I have no reason to show how Google will survive this challenge. I only have my faith.

December 26th, 2004 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Orkut, Groups, Froogle, Microsoft, Picasa, Desktop Search, Desktop, General | 16 comments

Google’s 2004 Year In Review

What happened this year?

January
Google has had an excellent year. At the beginning of the year, Bill Gates famously said, “They kicked out butts” about Google’s domination of and enormous profits on search, but promised a MSN Search engine within a year. Google began the process of going public. Yahoo freaked out and announced its new search engine and plan to dump Google as its results provider the next day. Google released Orkut, which everyone was convinced was the next big thing is social interaction.

February
In February, Bill Gates vowed, “We will catch them”. Google won “Brand of the Year” from BrandChannel, and I think everyone agreed they had a powerful brand. They were also named fifth best internet property by Media Metrix. Google’s overall index (web search, images, groups, print) reached a milestone with 6 billion items indexed and searchable.

March
March brought Froogle Wireless and the beginning of an issue that would dog Google all year, (and still does) sensitive information available on Google). Google Local launched, a model that would be eventually emulated by every major search engine. A man sued Google because his vanity search said terrible things about himself. MSN announced Newsbot. At the end of the month, Google got a facelift.

April
Gmail was the big news for April, and everyone thought it was an April Fools joke. It’s combination of unprecedented free storage and invite-driven exclusivity made it the hot thing through the summer. It also brought a new trend: privacy advocates vs. Google. Gmail’s scanning the text of messages for ads presented the first of many battles Google would have with privacy hawks. Google began scanning academic papers, a project that would eventually become Google Scholar. Amazon launched A9 in beta, putting itself in competition with Google at the same time it was using Google search results. Google announced it would allow the selling of trademarked terms in ads. At the end of the month, Google did the one thing that could be bigger news than Gmail: it filed for its initial public offering.

May
Google’s IPO dominated the conversation well into May, as the odd dutch auction style was debated among analysts and armchair stockbrokers all over the net. Google “joined the conversation” and launched the Google blog. Google brought out Google Groups 2 Beta, an attempt to expand Google’s Usenet archive to be like Yahoo Groups. Geico sued Google for selling its name as an ad keyword. Google topped the Wired 40.

June
June saw Hotmail announced increased email storage, something Yahoo unveiled the month before, as a response to Gmail. Google had such a slow month, it actually published a recipe for Buttermilk Fried Chicken Elvis Loved on the Google blog, the pre-IPO quiet period taking its toll. AOL bought Advertising.com.

July
Google shut down Gmail account sales in July, while adding address book importing. Google choose the NASDAQ for its IPO, which seemed so imminent that it could be any day. Google bought Picasa, then gave away its software for free, but is still developing its big plan for the software. MSN released Newsbot. Google announced its price range for the IPO, an astounding $108-135, and opened the dutch auction registration process as the month closed.

August
All through the beginning of August, speculation mounted, as everyone wanted to know if Google was worth its high asking price. As the IPO neared, Google settled its patent dispute with Yahoo/Overture, giving Yahoo 2.7 million shares of their stock. There was also a major flap when an interview with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s interview with Playboy was printed during the quiet period. Google submitted its IPO for final approval, and wound up with a much lower price target of $85-95, and with a smaller number of shares. Google opened at $101, and has never dropped to double digits. Yahoo started its own blog. Yahoo sold its Google shares at $82.62, losing, at current prices, just under $300 million. Microsoft announced WinFS, its searchable file system, wasn’t going to make it to Longhorn, something it had hidden for months as it developed MSN Desktop Search.

September
September began with a return to business as usual as Google decided it would be fun if its ads started saying ‘Ads by Goooooogle’ for no particular reason, a dumb idea which continues to this day. It also allowed up to 3 AdSense ads per page. MSN began girding for battle, as Steve Ballmer said Microsoft was “hell-bent and determined” to beat Google. Google celebrated its sixth birthday. Google Alerts came out of beta, with a neat interface for Web and News alerts. Google Local got a major interface upgrade, while Yahoo bought MusicMatch and A9 finally went live, but the biggest move was Jeeves, which upgraded a lot of services, adding MyJeeves.

October
October was Google’s last big month. Before “it” happened, MSN held its Search Champs, flying in search experts to test out the new engine months before it launched. Clusty launched, Yahoo Local went live, I finally got noticed when I posted about Gmail Atom feeds, the MSN Search Preview went online, My Yahoo launched, Bill Gross launched Snap, Google Print got bigger, Evan Williams said nice things about me, Yahoo uncluttered (somewhat), Yahoo revenues increased 212%, Larry and Sergey went to India, Howard Dean shilled for Yahoo. But on October 14, I attended Digital Life and saw firsthand the release of Google Desktop Search, which everyone treated like the second coming, and got a lot of notice for my post on Hello, Google’s instant messenger in Picasa. For the next several weeks, it seemed like Google was rocketing upwards, with a 105% increase in revenues, boosting Google stock to $175, a number it has stayed near for most of the time since, even though it approached $200. Google bought Keyhole, added merchant ratings to Froogle, Page and Brin hit the Forbes 400. Jeeves reported very good earnings. In a snapshot of things to come, MSN accidentally leaked its new search interface.

November
Google stayed back for the election (wisely, since their guy lost), but it did get embroiled in problems as its Desktop Search’s web history was declared a major privacy and security risk. Companies started bragging about their great PageRanks, Amazon started selling sex toys, and AskJeeves Local launched. I speculated on Google TV Search (and was proved prophetic by C|Net). Apple started promoting Spotlight, which shone a spotlight on how inadequate Google Desktop Search truly was. Gmail offered POP3 access, and Google doubled its official index count to eight billion (the actual number is higher than ten billion). That night, MSN Search Beta launched, too much acclaim for its technical wizardry. Google Images was revealed to be inadequate. InsideMicrosoft launched. Google stock plummeted after a lockup expiry. Google Scholar launched. Google opened a Kirkland office. The L.A. Times quoted me, and Target sold drugs.

December
December was all about MSN. Besides a “good enough as Google” search engine, MSN launched Spaces, a more mainstream blogging service, and later, the superior MSN Toolbar Suite. Overture settled its suit with Geico, not willing to take the risk Google would. Google Groups 2 got top billing, but it didn’t go over well. Yahoo announced its desktop search, and Jeeves delivered its. Google unveiled Google Suggest, which, because of its open architecture, has become more popular than some other, larger Google services, as well as announcing Google library search. Google beat Geico. Yahoo launched video search, while Blinkx launched TV search. Cindy McAffrey left.

Next: A look at what Google needs to think about to succeed in the coming year.

December 26th, 2004 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Jeeves, Yahoo, Microsoft, Orkut, Groups, Keyhole, Froogle, Google Suggest, Google Images, AdWords, Gmail, Search, Desktop Search, Picasa, Desktop, Email | 7 comments