Steve Bryant

Google launched today a hosted software package of productivity tools that places it closer into competition with Microsoft’s Live products. Google Apps for Your Domain is a software bundle aimed at small and midsize businesses. The free package combines Google’s e-mail, calendar, IM and page creation software. The package creates a private label suite all […]

Google launched on Friday a new site called Webmaster Central, which the company says will help foster better communication with site owners. Webmaster Central offers another Google blog and a variety of tools related to Google’s search engine, including a status wizard that checks to see whether Google is properly indexing a URL. Google also […]

As Marissa Mayer prepares to give her speech to television executives at the Media Guardian TV festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, tomorrow, she would do well to consider how a fake TV news anchor is helping Google’s advertising plans, one video mashup at a time. Mayer will encourage the boob tube brass to consider–if they haven’t […]

The USPTO published yesterday a patent awarded to Google that provides clues to Google’s plans for social search, including details about how Google will use human editors to help facilitate algorithmic search. The patent, system and method for supporting editorial opinion in the ranking of search results, describes processes whereby Google can better judge user […]

Reuters has a story today about Brazillian authorities filing for permission to sue Google, alleging the company is withholding user info required for a criminal investigation. Brazilian authorities want Google to turn over info from Orkut, the G Poppa’s social networking site, which Brazil believes is being used for organized crime and child pornography. The […]

It’s been almost three weeks since AOL’s research team released keyword search data for 658,000 users onto the Internet. Unlike other recent data breaches, in this case AOL employees voluntarily released the data, unwittingly circumventing their company’s privacy policies and security controls. So it’s no wonder of profundity that the breach concerns privacy advocates and […]

Hosted application provider Salesforce.com has purchased start-up Kieden Corp., which helps customers track sales leads generated with Google AdWords: “The software works by identifying which keywords attracted Web surfers to click on a particular Google advertisement, then request product information. It attaches that data to a file that Salesforce software uses to track leads throughout […]

Publishers who want to make their books searchable online but aren’t comfortable with Google Book Search now have another option. Publisher HarperCollins and Austin, Texas-based LibreDigital announced today a hosted service called LibreDigital Warehouse that will give publishers and booksellers the ability to deliver searchable book content on their own Web sites. Like Google Book […]

Google began testing video ads with partner Viacom today. The initial test, which will include up to 150 AdSense members selected by Google, will use channels of video content provided by MTV Networks and will last four weeks. The testers received instructions on how to implement a JavaScript object that embeds a Flash player in […]

Google Checkout continues to struggle through early growing pains. According to two surveys by analyst company Piper Jaffray, 81 percent of online retailers say they won’t implement Google Checkout. The reason: Retailers don’t want to cede customer ownership to Google. And 10 percent of companies surveyed said that Google Checkout would provide Google with too […]