Steve Bryant

AdAge released a list of media acquisitions in 2006, and Google is featured no less than three times.[1] YouTube by Google, $1.65B Massive by Microsoft, $200M – $400M Atom Films by Viacom, $200M DMarc by Google, $102M Xfire by Viacom, $102M Platform by Comcast, $80M Grouper by Sony, $65M JotSpot by Google, $50M Petfinder by […]

OK, well, Tim Berners-Lee didn’t create the Web so he could measure traffic, or count page views, or deliver top search terms and the number of blogs created per second. But in the age of Bubble 2.0, those measurements are certainly the focus of concern. Only problem is, they’re all a bunch of bunk. Or […]

While stumbling around the Web this weekend I ran across a paper published by West Point comp. sci. professor Gregory Conti, titled “Googling Considered Harmful” (PDF). A subsequent search for the paper online revealed only a few brief mentions, so I thought it might be of interest, especially as the paper dwells on the inevitable […]

Newsknife.com last week released its top ratings for news sites most often linked on Google News in 2006. The top 10: ABC News New York Times Reuters Washington Post Times Online, UK Forbes Guardian Unlimited Voice of America Christian Science Monitor International Herald Tribune The rankings haven’t changed much since last year, although SFgate.com has […]

Google is in talks with British mobile carrier Orange to develop a co-branded mobile phone, according to the UK’s Observer. The handset would probably carry both Google and Orange’s logo, would contain Google software that would “dramatically improve on the slow and cumbersome experience of surfing the Web from a mobile handset.” The partnership is […]

A Colorado judge yesterday dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit against Yahoo, in which Yahoo was sued for allegedly using a company’s trademarked terms in Google AdWords. The company that brought the suit, JP Enterprises, owns the trademark for dating site lovecity.com and filed suit earlier this year against Yahoo, Spark Networks and Insight Direct, alleging […]

Google and its Chinese search rival Baidu are exploring similar options in their quest to expand into online video in China. According to Reuters, both companies have been holding preliminary talks with video sites concerning the possibility of cooperation or acquisition, but neither Google nor Baidu has secured a specific target. Google is deciding whether […]

Google announced today that it will offer domains for $10 a year. The domain registration service, made possible through a partnership with GoDaddy.com and eNom, is being added to Google Apps for Your Domain, a hosted service for office productivity apps. As Google has noted before, particularly when explaining the Intuit partnership, many small businesses […]

While you may assume that only Web geeks and overzealous bloggers search for patents, truth is there’s a would-be inventor inside all of us (that’s the part that reaches for Popular Mechanics on the magazine rack, you know it’s true). And while you may think Google’s new patent search is another oddball one-off from the […]

Have you noticed how popular sentiment about Google has been turning negative lately? For example: — Matt Marshall’s VentureBeat piece about Google’s slackening grip on Silicon Valley’s workforce. “When Googlers leave, it’s usually to do their own thing. That may be changing soon.” — Aaron Schwartz’s post about how Google infantilizes its employees. “Everyone I […]