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
Garett Rogers discovered a major update to Google Base that was in testing, one designed to make Base able to replace Froogle for the holiday shopping season. It looks like the update is now live, at least for some results types. For example, check out Events and activities or People profiles and you’ll see a new view that shows all the search results on a Google map, so you can see what people or events are near you. It also works for Jobs, Vehicles, Services, and a bunch of other categories. It doesn’t work on Products searches, but if you filter by location, the map comes up, a really smart decision. All very interesting, and really worth checking out.
October 31st, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Base, Froogle, Services, General |
2 comments
I won’t be back online till Sunday night, so everybody enjoy this one last giant link post.
Looks like Jason is running his own Google community at Crispynews, which uses a familiar voting-on-stories concept. Check it out.
Google Desktop ships with a warning only really visible when stacking the files in Windows Explorer. Cute.
Click fraud made the cover of BusinessWeek. Lots of exciting stuff in there. Kinda makes me wish I had a subscription.
Meanwhile, Newsweek had Marissa Mayer on the cover and nobody noticed for days. Ouch. Looks like one of those interesting Women in Power pieces. I’d like to see a cover story about old white guys who are changing the world.
Today was “OneWebDay”, when we were all supposed to get all flowery and write about how the internet has enriched our lives. Jeez. When did it become okay to invent days? I like the Talk Like A Pirate Day better.
I love this sign. Google is going to be a religion one day. Or the devil. Could go either way…
Google plans to put a Google Base search box above the results every time you do what appears to be a product search. Say ta-ta, Froogle.
Some online publishers are working together to create a universal way to tell Google and other search engine when to cache and not cache their content. Or, as Andy Beal says, they are looking to spend half a million dollars (more like $583,700) to build a robots.txt file. Their SEO is a genius, to have fooled all these idiots.
Bloglines introduced a nice mobile search option that also reformats linked pages on the fly, like Google Mobile does. The question is, can Bloglines’ RSS reader do this too?
Finally, from Niniane Wang:
What do Stanford students call themselves after they graduate?
Me: They call themselves Googlers.
Nice!
September 22nd, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Culture, Google News, Search Optimization, Base, Ask, Products, Froogle, Humor, Advertising, Search, Desktop, Services, General |
no comments
Froogle now has a link to show stores that use Google Checkout. Google also shows the 
Checkout shopping cart icon next to results that have it, like stuff from the Google Store. You can see it in a very obvious way by searching for “google“. Google doesn’t seem to be giving Checkout stores a higher ranking in the results, but the icon does add a little visibility and implied trust.
(spotted by Ionut Alex)
September 20th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Checkout, Froogle, Services, General |
one comment
Mark Otuteye writes about ten products that Google should be developing, all based on existing technology that they could leverage to expand their reach (without copying their competitors). There are some good ideas on the list, and others that we know might already be in development, like Google TV Search and free Google Storage. Google Genetics might be a little far-fetched (and likely to start a congressional inquiry), but most of them are solid and realistic.
I was particularly interested to see Scanbuy in the list of technologies Google should take advantage of. Scanbuy is a company that develops software that lets you take a picture of a barcode with your mobile phone, and then look up things like prices, share personal information (via a 2D barcode on the back of a business card) and develop barcode/camera applications using an SDK for all the major mobile platforms (Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm, Java, others).
I am an investor in Scanbuy, and have, on occasion, an advisor. The reason: I see so much untapped potential in this space, providing a cheaper, more secure and easier system than RFID, and I hope to see someone do some great things with it. Certainly, Google’s the type of company to develop some powerful mobile applications that involve camera phone pattern recognition, and could at the very least use it to improve their current mobile offerings, like Froogle.
(via Digg)
It should be noted that Google is folding Froogle into Google Base, a great idea and way to put all sorts of data on equal, usable footings. The more Google services that run on Base, the more Google can then concentrate on improving just Base, which would bring new features to a multitude of services at the same time.
June 5th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Base, Froogle, Services, General |
2 comments
The Google Base Blog has a post clarifying how Google Base entries are being integrated into Google. Products and vehicles will appear in Froogle search results as long as all required attributes are filled in. If a location is specified products can be listed in Froogle Local. And local business listings submitted to Google Base will appear in Google Maps. Listings can also be included in some experimental tests in Google search results, such as displaying recipe information.
Looks like a welcome addition as long as content is filtered and spam-free.
Via the Google Base Blog
June 3rd, 2006
Posted by
Jason Schramm |
Base, Google Maps, Froogle, Search |
no comments
Google has acquired Russian search engine Dulance, while announcing that it is making Dulance’s CEO, Sergei Burkov, the chief of their new Russian research and development center. Google had been looking to enter the Russian market, and by acquiring Dulance, they saved themselves the effort of actually building a Russian presence. Pretty smart. Plus they get the guy who ran the acquired company to run the thing, picking up someone who’s known locally, and continuing their trend of hiring through acquisition.
Rumours about Google’s intention to start R&D activity in Russia have been circulating in the industry since last year. Though the company did not comment on them, our sources confirmed two months ago that the company was preparing to open its engineering centre in the country.
Burkov, the new centre head, is a former research physicist who moved to the US from Russia in 1990 and has worked at both Cornell and the University of Wisconsin. He co-founded three companies, Bilbo Innovations (computer pedals), Invincible Data Systems (e-mail and disk encryption, access control and video-streaming encryption utilities developer acquired by Vasco Data Security) and Dulance, Burkov’s latest project.
Dulance is a search and price comparison engine for the goods sold over the Web. The service is able to automatically collect the data from Web sites extracting from their pages the names, descriptions and prices of the goods into its database. Potential competitors of Dulance, including Google’s Froogle, use a different mechanism with which merchants have to manually upload specifically formatted data.
The article states it as likely that Google will look to integrate Dulance into Froogle, but I wouldn’t be so sure. Dulance uses a very different system than Froogle, utilizing a crawler instead of a submission process. However, Froogle has become pretty useless the last few months, as so much spam has entered the system, that maybe Google saw an opportunity to switch to a Google News-like system, and bought the people working on it. I guess we’ll see.
(via Digg)
April 12th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Froogle, Services, General |
2 comments
Forbes gives Google grades on each of its courses, er services.
- Search, the big kahuna, gets an A-, losing points due to concerns that Google is running out of inventory, that growth can’t increase any more
- Contextual ads scores C+, since Forbes doesn’t think its as popular as it could be (possibly), the fact that Google doesn’t make that much of a share of AdSense, and a lack of perceived growth for the platform
- Google Local / Google Maps / Google Earth together earn a B+ grade, losing points only on the fact that monetization is taking time
- Froogle sits in the corner with a D+, with its lack of popularity, lack of comissions from retailers, and slow development
- Gmail squeeks in a C, hurting for lack of wide use and slow development (two years old this April!)
- Google Base also gets a C, since few use it and there’s no money. GBuy should help
- Google Search Appliance / Google Mini get a nice B, since they make money and are well-regarded. Forbes only regret: Google could dominate this market, if only it applied itself
- Google Pack rates only a C-, since there’s no money there and no buzz
- Google Video Store has to take home a C to mama, getting a bad grade for UI (compared to iTunes) and this analyst quote: “”Right now, I don’t think Google cares if anyone buys videos at the store or not”. Ouch!
- Blogger can’t like its C-, something it earned for lack of interoperability, lack of updates, and the fact that it doesn’t earn a dime
- Google Talk surprises with a shiny B-, Forbes recognizing its potential
So, grades of: A-B+BB-C+CCC-C-D+, do you think this Phd company is underperforming? Anyone want to calculate the GPA?
February 6th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Blogger, Google Earth, Google Local, Google Video, Talk, Store, Google Pack, Google Maps, AdSense, Advertising, Gmail, Search, Services, Products, Froogle, General |
2 comments
Google has added Personalized Search / Search History to Froogle, making it the fourth Google service (after web search, News and Images) to get it. Just be signed in to get it. Personalized Search is the future of Google Search, you’ll see.
February 2nd, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
History, iGoogle, Froogle, Services, Search, General |
one comment
Froogle now has the ability to search stores in your area, complete with Google Maps.
Just as I was ready to give up on Froogle altogether, they finally fix the damn thing. As far as I was concerned, Froogle’s results were so spammed up as to be useless. Froogle’s regular results still suck (like this product, where the cheapest result listed is for the wrong product), but the local results are beautiful, showing my local CompUSA, Circuit City, Staples, BestBuy, Office Depot and others. These are stores I can trust, that I can visit in person, and that have online components I can trust.
There are far too many crappy onlinestores plugged into Froogle right now, and Froogle Local is useful if only because it cuts them out. If you don’t live in New York City or a major metropolis, just enter 10001 as your zip code and you’ll still get better results than you would from Froogle’s regular search. I would love it if Google gave me the option to cut out certain stores (like the “delete this result” link in Google Personalized Search), but until then, this fixes Froogle very well.
Danny Sullivan points out that this is even more useful than Google Local:
How is this different from just doing a search on Google Local? Well, you can compare. Here’s cameras 92663 on Google Local. You’ll see that camera stores are listed in Google Local, while Froogle lists individual cameras for sale in various locations.
Another example is a search for ipod video 92663. In that case, Froogle shows you that several CompUSA stores have it in stock. A quick drive, and it would be in your hands if you needed it fast. In contrast, the same search on Google Local does poorly, bringing back two Apple Stores that probably have the item in stock but mostly a lot of places that won’t, such as The Friends Of The Newport Beach Library.
Greg Linden points out that this puts Google one step away from really challenging local merchants.
However, looking forward, this brings Google much closer to the disintermediation threat that has struck fear into retailing giants. Improve the coverage, hook this up to Google SMS, and you’ve got a service that might “be able to tell Wal-Mart shoppers if better bargains are available nearby.”
Oh, and here’s the search of the day.
November 22nd, 2005
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Google Maps, Google Local, Froogle, Services, Search, General |
no comments
Philipp posts a good question: Which Google service would you take with you to a deserted island?
Now, the obvious answer is to take things that can get you off the island, like Google Earth, Google Talk, and Froogle (to buy a boat). The humorous answer? Google Moon, PigeonRank and some Google Gulp. So, to be original:
- Google Answers, for assistance with outthinking the other castaways, and knowing which foods are poisonous.
- Google Scholar, so I can become smarter while I’m stuck there.
- Google Video, to aleviate boredom.
October 6th, 2005
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Google Video, Talk, Google Earth, Google Scholar, Humor, Froogle, General |
8 comments
Picasa 2 is now available. Download it.
What cool features does Picasa 2 have?
- Make instant backups to CD (or to other hard drives) of your photo collections.
- Edit your photos, with basic fixes, and 12 lighting and color effects.
- Organize your photos using labels and stars, just like Gmail. Each picture can have an unlimited number of labels, bringing the same advantages of labels from Gmail to Picasa. Labels are so useful, that once you use them, you begin wishing every program used them. Don’t be surprised if Google has made labels a “must-have” feature that will begin cropping up all over the place.
- Write captions for all pictures.
- Instantly order photo prints from various websites.
- RAW file support.
- Super-powerful undo button: Come back weeks later and undo any changes.
- Organizes videos as well as pictures. Picasa supports MPG, AVI, WMV, ASF and MOV files. You can play them inside Picasa, although there may be issues if you don’t have the latest version of Windows Media Player.
- Zoom all the way into a photo, down to individual pixels.
- Flip through your pictures as fast as 30 pictures per second.
- Filmstrip, so you can see each picture in context with other ones as you work on it.
- A dynamic histogram, which “shows all the internal data your camera recorded when it took each picture”.
- You can search by every type of variable, “a date, a name, a label, a keyword, the kind of camera you took a picture with, even a color, like ‘blue’”. This is the drop-down advanced search, which lets you limit to starred photos or videos, and has a cool slider that eliminates all but the more recent photos, but since it’s a slider, you can select just how recent:
- Password protect your porn stash, er, I mean photos.
- Picasa supports the same format the Associated Press uses to embed photo captions into photos, ensuring that the captions stay in the photo file no matter what you do with them.
- Integration with Gmail, allowing you to send email direct through your Gmail account from the Picasa program, while saving the sent message in your Gmail so it becomes part of a conversation. Also, the send pictures app uses Gmail’s address autocomplete.
- If you don’t have Gmail, you can use any email account, but it is sent by secure SSL so you don’t need to configure SMTP settings, a real headache saver.
- Automatic print settings for wallet-sized, 5×7, and 8×10.
- Froogle integration, so you can auto-search for supplies for your printer, if you need replacement supplies.
- Collage feature, combining multiple pictures into a collage. Also, it can simulate a multiple exposure.
- JPEG quality options, so you can downsample photos to save file sizes for publishing online.
- Picasa screensaver, which can display any photos you like.
- Export a sequence of photos as a movie.
- Doesn’t automatically include PNG and GIF files, so you need to tell it to in the options if you need that.
- View a slideshow of images. You can set it to play a specific folder of MP3s during the slideshow, and even display a lower-resolution slideshow for slower computers.
Plus, look at this cool window that slides out of the side of your screen when it finds a new photo:
The photo editing tools are extensive. You get six basic fixes: Crop, Straighten, Redeye, Auto Contrast, Auto Color, and Fill Light plus, in perfect Google style, an “I’m Feeling Lucky” button that is a one-click autofix for almost all problems. There are four additional tuning features: Highlights, Shadows, Color Temperature, and a nuetral color picker. The 12 effects are: Sharpen, Sepia, B&W (black & white), Warmify, Film Grain, Tint, Saturation, Soft Focus, Glow, Filtered B&W, Focal B&W, and Graduated Tint. Many of the effects have further sliders to fine-tune the effect to your liking.
So, first impression? Well, its a great release. Lots of cool features, even more useful ones. The product seems almost entirely developed by user feedback, so everything added is something you can use (and will want to). Kudos to the Picasa team for a great job.
Still two glaring omissions: First, the same problem the old Picasa had: no “Copy” button. You can’t select a photo and copy it to the clipboard; you need to locate it on disk to copy. This is annoying in so many ways, and I know the Picasa team is aware of it, since I told them about it myself, and they said I wasn’t the first to complain.
Also, with the JPEG downsampling, there are still some features missing before I can use Picasa to create photos for this site. You only get to resize, and adjust a image quality slider. There is no preview that shows you what the low quality version will look like, and no indicator of eventual file size. Also, you can’t create a screenshot in Picasa.
Looks like most of my web editing work will stick with Photoshop (and I recommend Paint.NET for Windows users who can’t afford that). Still, Picasa isn’t an image editor, it is a photo organizer, and it certainly is a very good one, the best I’ve seen, now with enough photo editing tools that are easier than Photoshops, and enough for most users. More so, Picasa is now a video organizer as well, so you finally have the same things that are great about Picasa for video. Picasa 2.0 is a superb release, one that should be on every computer.
I’ll leave you with this one little tidbit, greyed out, on Picasa’s “Create” menu:
Yup, TiVo, baby.
Thanks, Dave!
January 17th, 2005
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Froogle, Picasa, Gmail |
8 comments
Google Blogoscoped reports that a flaw allows URL-embedded JavaScript could allow an attacker to read a user’s Google Accounts cookie, and possible read that person’s Gmail account name and password. This info comes via Neowin, which notes that Israeli hacker Nir Goldshlager, and also says:
Goldshlager warned that even if the user chooses not to save the cookie, the hacker can still discover the username and password for other services such as Google Alerts and Groups because of the way that data is stored.
One poster explains how it works:
The exploit worked by sending you to a link on Gmail’s website. The link contained XUL code written by the hacker. Since the URL of the site was Gmail.com, the hacker’s XUL had full control over its cookie. he just took the hash and username, and stuck it in his own cookie.
January 14th, 2005
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Froogle, Security, Gmail |
2 comments
Froogle turned two this month, but is still in beta. A spokesperson from Google told Internet Retailer.com that the service will continue to remain in beta, at least until more services are added. Still, happy second, Froogle, and here’s to growing into something even greater. Cheers!
December 30th, 2004
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Froogle, General |
no comments
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
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 |
5 comments
