More Google Ads

This week ads appeared at Google Finance. They've been running video ads at YouTube for a short while. And now Google say that ads will soon appear on Google News. This has been put off for a long time, because of fear of being sued - basically the content is not theirs, so they shouldn't profit from it.

Although these things were always going to come to pass, perhaps the slump in the GOOG price on NASDAQ has prompted this flurry of ad expansion?

Google Like It's 1999!

2001 actually. Google is letting us go back in time and do a search exactly how it would have been in 2001. If you had a #1 ranking back then, here's your chance to prove it. For everyone else, look up something modern (like the iPhone) and see how it magically didn't exist back then, or perhaps meant something different that today.

http://www.google.com/search2001.html

No More Drunken Emails

The geniuses at Google have come up with an optional feature for Gmail - tell it when you are most likely to be drunk (ie Saturday night), and you will need to pass a sobriety test of sorts before you can send an email.

I can imagine some folk getting very upset if they write a long email only to find they can't send it - perhaps have an option of quizzing you before you write it all... But then again, the autosaved draft might be good for a laugh the next day.

Google's Sea Nation

The news said:

"The company is considering deploying the supercomputers necessary to operate its Internet search engines on barges anchored up to seven miles offshore."

An alert person has picked up on the possibility of Google forming their own off-shore micronation:

It's true! This is smart, using the ocean to cool their "supercomputers" and stuff. But! Hmm! Just seven miles offshore, you say? Now, most nations' territorial waters end at 12 nautical miles from shore. Their "exclusive economic zone" extends much further—but does not forbid "loitering," even "belligerent" loitering, in that zone. IS GOOGLE STARTING A MICRONATION????

Sergey Blogs

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has started writing a blog, and one presumes he will keep it up, so it might become an interesting read.

His first post proper tells of how he is at risk of getting Parkinson's Disease, which nicely provides a plug for 23andMe, a genetic testing start-up firm co-founded by his wife and funded by Google.

(The blog is called "Too" - and Sergey says that "this blog reflects my life outside of work".)

Aqua Google

Can't see it happening myself, can't see it being economically viable, but Google has filed a patent for placing server farms on barges in the ocean:

The Google design incorporates the Pelamis Wave Energy Converter units, which use the motion of ocean surface waves to create electricity and can be combined to form "wave farms." The largest existing project uses seven Pelamis units to generate about 5 megawatts of power. Diagrams included with Google's patent application indicate the company plans to combine 40 or more Pelamis units to produce 40 megawatts of power.

The patent documents describe a cooling system based on sea-powered pumps and seawater-to-freshwater heat exchangers.

I mean really, how expensive is land relative to all the other costs of normal data centers. To save a little bit of real estate costs (and real estate is actually an investment most years), you'd have to have cables running to the mainland, with all the extra difficulties of underwater repair/maintainence, plus ferrying staff out there, plus dangers of tropical cyclones....

Dumb idea, but clever none the less.

Google Apologizes for GMail Downtime

It was only a 2 hour outage, but that's expensive for any business that depends on this service for their email. So Google have taken a rare (according to them) step of publicly apologizing.
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/we-feel-your-pain-and-were-sorry.html

Well, a public apology would be a press release, something Google are quite adept at utilising. But this apology merely appeared in their blog. Google, in their hubris, expect that people would automatically:

1) Know the relevant Google blogs for the services they use
2) Subscribe to them

To their credit, a link to the post appears on the Gmail homepage. But if you are already signed in, you won't see that either...

Street View Australia Launched

You can see it here:
http://maps.google.com.au/help/maps/streetview/

All capital cities, most coastal cities and many regional & outback towns are covered but there are a few notable omissions, like Uluru. My home is there, and it works well.

There are still privacy concerns, but these have been lessened following the introduction of technology that can blur faces and number plates.

If Google Ruled the World

More of these can be found at a post on 2012 Forum.

Swastika Tops Google Hot Trends

A new method for gaming Google results has emerged.

At some point on Thursday, a member of 4chan's "b" channel posted a simple two-part instruction. First, Google "卐". Second, enjoy.

This had the double effect of getting the search query into Hot Trends, and also showing a symbol instead of words. Very clever indeed.

While not having the same long-term implications of Google bombing - which depends on links and link text and can take months, the nature of this makes it almost impossible for Google to counter, unless they do it manually. There's no way Google can tell if people are searching for something due to a news item, or searching because a news item, blog or forum post told people to.

I wouldn't be surprised if this behaviour took off, and Google changed the Hot Trends to a longer-term sampling.

Anti-eBay Anonymous Submission Not Anon Enough

Not too long after attacking eBay in public, Google have done it again, hoping to be anonymous, but actually not:

...one 38 page document that is squarely opposed to the actions of eBay was filed anonymously. Unfortunately for Google, David Bromage was smart enough to look through the document’s meta data. He found that the title of the original document[pdf] was “Microsoft Word - 204481916_1_ACCC Submission by Google re eBay Public _2_.DOC”. So much for being anonymous.

Google Answers in Poland now

This unmoderated forum is only for discussing Google products, but it seems to use the same software as Google's Russian Q&A site, which means it is quite likely a trial for a global response to Yahoo Answers.

Click on the image above to see it properly. Read here for more info.

Google UK Goes Gay

Normal search results, rainbow stripe between the results and the ads. Definitely a case of "MSN Search would never come up with such an idea". Well, not first anyway.

Full story

Favicon Update

The current Google favicon is one of a set designed for the new era of mobile devices, so that it scales down better. But it won't be the last word for google.com:

"There were more than 300 possible favicons mooted to replace the 'O.G', but the one currently displaying will not be the final one", says the NZ Herald