August 15, 2008

Ben Ling Becomes Ex-Ex-Googler

Two days ago, we brought you news that Ex-Googler Ben Ling was leaving Facebook. Now, we know where he's headed - back to Google.

Ling will be taking on the difficult task of monetizing YouTube, Google's popular online video sharing site (acquired in 2006 for $1.65 billion).

via BoomTown

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 7, 2008

Is 'Good Ship Lollipop' Sinking At Google?

The 'state-of-the art' day care facilities at Google have increased their pricing to around what it costs to go to some community colleges, according to the New York Times. While the free food, refreshments and candy, once looked upon as a great perk by many outsiders considering a Google job, now seem to be considered pampering by co-founder Sergey Brin, NYT reports.

Though a Google spokesperson denied it, several people who attended a T.G.I.F. meeting in June claim Brin said "he was tired of “Googlers� who felt entitled to perks like “bottled water and M&Ms,� NYT stated.

Hey Sergey, you keep these people at their desks longer - or is it productivity or new thoughts outside the box are not coming as rapidly as in the past? Maybe the $72 million a year spent on food is cutting into Sergey's private income, and he does not want child care to take even more.

Given stock prices are a long way from the $700 highs of last year, it should now not fall on the non-millionaire employees to make up the short fall.

Seems to me this approach is a lot like the minimum bid increases that saw the regular advertiser pay for Google's efforts to stop arbitragers - they were so profitable Google continued this with implementation of Quality Scores to keep minimum bids and have all new advertisers pay premiums starting out their accounts.

Working at Google was once almost an extension of living with your parents, but now it seems dad is starting to charge rent.

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 30, 2008

Cutts Talks Spam While Obama Supporters Flag Blogspot Blogs

Matt Cutts is addressing the ever-present topic of spam again, only this time it's on the Official Google Blog. Cutts wrote about coming across spam links in the search results. He says this doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, thanks to Google's anti-spam metrics.

One of those metrics is data from search logs. Many have worried what Google does with the data collects, and Cutts assures that data such as IP and cookie information is used to help improve the search results.

"The IP and cookie information is important for helping us apply this method only to searches that are from legitimate users as opposed to those that were generated by bots and other false searches. For example, if a bot sends the same queries to Google over and over again, those queries should really be discarded before we measure how much spam our users see. All of this--log data, IP addresses, and cookie information--makes your search results cleaner and more relevant."

But Cutts is also aware that the war against spam continues on:

"If you think webspam is a solved problem, think again. Last year Google faced a rash of webspam on Chinese domains in our index. Some spammers were purchasing large amounts of cheap .cn domains and stuffing them with misspellings and porn phrases. Savvy users may remember reading a few blogs about it, but most regular users never even noticed. The reason that a typical searcher didn't notice the odd results is that Google identified the .cn spam and responded with a fast-tracked engineering project to counteract that type of spam attack. Without our logs data to help identify the speed and scope of the problem, many more Google users might have been affected by this attack."

Another unsolved webspam problem - that was not addressed by Cutts - is letting humans in on the reporting of spam. Over at Blogspot, supporters of Presidential candidate Barack Obama have reportedly been flagging anti-obama blogs as "spam." As a result, several of the blogs, including ones created by Hilary Clinton supporters, have been frozen.

Of course, this problem is experienced in the 'paid links debate' as well. Google accepts anonymous reports about paid links, which is an easy way for competitors to attempt to flag each other out of the results.

What do you think of Cutts comments? Do they reduce your fears about Google's data collection? Should Google let third parties flag sites? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 26, 2008

Google Names Patrick Pichette New CFO

Google has announced their replacement of outgoing CFO George Reyes. Former Bell Canada CFO Patrick Pichette has been offered the position along with an employment package as good as many first round draft picks in sports.

As the San Jose Mercury News details, Pichette will get a $500,000 signing bonus and the rest of the package makes his first year's pay in the millions.

Welcome to the team Patrick.

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 23, 2008

Matt Cutts Shares 5 SEO Tips with USA Today

USA Today recently asked Google's Matt Cutts for tips to help sites rank in their search engine. Cutts offered up 5 tips plus a word of advice in implementing the tips. Here they are:

1. Spotlight your search term on the page. If you want to be found for your keyword, make sure that term is on the page you want to rank. The term should be at the top as well as peppered throughout your copy.
2. Fill in your "tags." The two most important tags are Title and Description b/c that's what is displayed on the search results.
3. Get other sites to "link" back to you. This is one of the most important of the 100 factors Google considers when ranking sites
4. Create a blog and post often. This can help you get links.
5. Register for free tools. Cutts recommends using the tools at google.com/webmaster, as well as creating a text-based sitemap www.xml-sitemaps.com, and adding your business to Google's Local Business center (google.com/local/add)

And that word of advice? Don't overdo it. In other words, don't stuff your pages full of keywords.

What do you think of Cutts' advice? Leave a comment!

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (36)

June 12, 2008

Google's Schmidt Talks Yahoo, Newspapers, 'Don't Be Evil', and iPhone

Yesterday, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt was interviewed by Ken Auletta on stage at a San Francisco event hosed by Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications. Schmidt offered up insight on a variety of issues. Let's dig in.

Yahoo

An independent Yahoo would be better for innovation and competition, in Schmidt's opinion. He feels that Microsoft has delivered products such as Windows that limits the choice of consumers.

Newspapers

Schmidt said that Google has a 'moral imperative' to help newspapers, who've lost money in recent years to online publishers, who often provide their content for free. DoubleClick will be a part of the effort, though specific details were not revealed.

Of course, newspapers haven't traditionally been Google's biggest fan. A Belgian newspaper group has been going after Google for years for indexing their site.

'Don't be Evil' The famous mantra is misunderstood, says Schmidt. Instead, the phrase was designed to facilitate internal conversations about corporate ethics, but most people interpret it as an absolute moral stance.

iPhone

Schmidt said that a "vast majority of searches" performed on Google via mobile phones are generated on iPhones. But since Google is preparing its own mobile platform, Schmidt has been excused from Apple board meetings a couple of times. He said that Android will "likely be quite different" from the iPhone.

via InfoWorld, USA Today, Reuters, and MarketWatch

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 28, 2008

Matt Cutts: Can You Help A Brother Get A Lap Dance?

Figured the title would get Matt's attention. Okay Matt I need some help. I have been hired by an adult entertainment site to build their presence online - get better rankings etc.

I need to build their inbound links and want to make sure I am not wasting my time and their money. So before I started I did a search for your comments on directory submissions, paid links (well everyone knows that opinion), reciprocal links, bad neighborhoods (of the IP kind - not the seedy parts of towns where my client's businesses are located) and your example site review post.

So I began to think that I may not be able to do much for them. In general adult content has a bad rap in our industry - the job no one wants to take on for fear of the association - but it is also the industry that has been 'gaming' the system for the longest and thus most neighborhoods have been marked bad.

What's a guy to do Matt?

Directory listings seem to be one way. But how do we really know which ones are still considered any good and are the adult areas of some of the bigger directories taken with a TON of salt?

Could Google set up a Monitored By Google program? Why not give a Good Search Keeping Seal of Approval? Since directories should be an important part of deeper search results, if there was a system or established list maybe the work on one end could help in other areas of the fight against spam.

I know I am going to hear: "Google does not want to classify good and bad" or some variation of that, but we are being told to use no follow - so maybe other rules and system checks could help this.

Given the basis of the Google algorithm is link based and your job is to fight back the constant spamming, some sort of system could help people.

Interestingly, as I did my searches I did find a lot of people using your name to promote themselves, the one by submit edge is particularly good. They are 2 and 3 for Matt Cutts Directory Submissions and offer to get you in to hundreds of directories for a fee. Despite their SEO efforts I am thinking they may not be a good investment.

There are millions of directories, hell I started dozens back in the day. But if you are going to push your way up the rankings you need links.

I want to do it the right way, so am reaching out to you Matt for some advice. I could do a hoax press release about some gossipy fake story - hey include a porn star and a search industry leader (Danny smart move introducing me to your wife now I can't use you) and I will get a lot of links.

I have read your advice to use common sense when looking at directories but unless I am building the ultimate "good directory list" it is an endless job and one that is still subjective.

Hell, I am sure the people below still do not share the views they once stated:

Rand may not still think: What does suck, imo, is that Google doesn't want to recognize more legitimate sources of paid links - I'm not talking about link brokers, but about sponsored links on particular sites or in directories, etc.

The belief that a link should not be counted as a vote if someone paid for it is a very dangerous idea. Imagine the link structure of the web without the influence of paid or monetarily influenced links. It would be a very, very different environment and I wonder if Google really believes it would be a better one. It's particularly egregious since their business model is serving links to paid sponsors, but they don't want folks doing it on their blogs or sites unless they add "nofollow" and remove some of the value of that link... Seems highly hypocritical to me.

Jill Whallen: Come to think of it, it's just not fair that Google doesn't want to count my link farm links as links. Google sucks and so does Matt Cutts. Okay that one was a joke - don't shoot me Jill.

Time has changed what w do. Would love some insight into where directories stand now as a link building tool.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

May 8, 2008

Google: Our Brain is Just Fine, Thank You

Recently, Google has been losing executives and staff to social sites and startups. This has led many to speculate that Google is losing the brainpower that built the mega company.

But the so-called brain drain is not occurring. At least, that's what Google spokesman Matt Furman told BBC news. Furman said that Google's management pool is deep. Plus, they're not want for talent with 1,300 resumes arriving at their doorstep every day.

Many Googlers have hopped over to Facebook, where they're more likely to find the startup culture that was so endearing about the Google of years past. Now Google, despite its free lunches, is a bonafide corporation, with structure and chains of command to boot. Still, those Googlers may have had a harder time landing their Facebook gigs had it not been for the presence of Google on their resumes.

Of course, Googlers-turned-Facebookers may question that move if Microsoft should really, truly buy Facebook.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 17, 2008

Google Engine Discussed At Popular Mechanics

Google Search Guru Udi Manber answered 20 questions over at Popular Mechanics, and they were not discussing gas mileage or horse power. The questions covered the future of search and Google's role in the industry.

Manber, "a computer science professor at the University of Arizona, then a senior vice president at Amazon and Yahoo's chief scientist, Manber is now vice president in charge of search quality for Google, where he makes sure results are engineered to the utmost (near) perfection."

Go Wildcats - I thought all the Jedi Search Knights came from Stanford!

One question's response was very interesting.

Do you find that the content on the Web is evolving to be more search-engine friendly? It’s hard to say. It’s definitely still lacking. I wish people would put more effort into thinking about how other people will find them and putting the right keywords onto their pages.

Now is that a recommendation of keyword stuffing or just an instruction that specific keywords on a page influence placement?

The article is well worth the read to get an understanding of how a senior Googler sees the search space.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:31 PM | Permalink

February 11, 2008

What's it Really Like to Work at Google?

Many of us have have heard tales about Google’s storied culture, lifestyle, and talented employees. Yes, we’ve also heard about the food! Take a moment and dig into the details with Avinash Kaushik. He shares what it’s truly like to work at Google, hang out with the beautiful people, dream in color, create, and manufacture atomic powered ideas from intellectual metal.

He's just published an emotionally introspective post, 10 Insights From 11 Months Of Working At Google, in which he freely shares specifics as concern day to day life among Googlers.

Who Is Avinash Anyway? In the world of search marketing there are precious few true analytics luminaries. Avinash Kaushik is a consensus master in taking analytics to the “actionable” level.   He also happens to work at the Googleplex making his creative wit extremely influential. His personal blog, Occam’s razor, is nearly universally respected by SEM professionals, revered by some. Google’s Analytics Evangelist Many readers know that Google Analytics is an powerful (and free) analytics package offered by Google to it's users. Used effectively in tandem with AdWords PPC, rudimentary (albeit powerful) conversion tracking can be set up.  Avinash is currently contracted as Google's in-house Analytics Evangelist, rolling up his pragmatic/esoteric sleeves. Here are the categories by which the analytics master segments the blessed Google life. Avinash says "ten insights from / cool things about / reasons for / delightful surprises from almost a year of working at Google." #10 The amazingly fantastic food and impressive digs. # 9: “Micro Efficiencies” # 8: A company that truly cares. # 7: Brain expansion opportunities. # 6: The sheer amount of brilliant Google employees. # 5: Empowerment (The big small company). # 4: The scale of your impact. # 3: Doing Good: Green & .org # 2: It’s a happening place. The energy, the vibe, the passion. # 1: The brand."

No doubt the matrix outlined above has been given due thought by Avinash. The post is worth a read for the pictures alone. Thanks for the terrific insight  Avinash.

Posted by Marty Weintraub at 2:06 PM | Permalink

January 29, 2008

Google So Big They Don't Know Their Own Products

The presentation of various Google products detailed by Kevin Heisler may have given a bunch of people a little insight into the various advertising products Google now offers, but the lack of connection between them and the lack of knowledge a few showed of their own products questioned how long this expansion can last.

The Ad Creation Marketplace to develop rich media ads for Google advertisers was a side project the speakers were not aware of. How designers can be outsourced through Google - a major coup for people recognized by Google as worthy of recommending - was unknown when the Q&A period asked for more details.

The cross over of measurement and how detailed analytics could get was another thing no one seemed to have handy.

Don't tell me "you just hype it... but really never use it so how could I have such knowledge".

I never did get the chance to ask how the bar code technology being used by print would allow tracking.... and I was intrigued by the thought it could.

Events like these are an important part of making people aware of the variety of Google's reach in media... it would just be nice if the information was a little more detailled.

Kevin noted there were no engineers present... maybe there should have been. I know the guests were savvy and knowledgeable.... but then again we use the products.

Posted by Frank Watson at 11:55 AM | Permalink

December 20, 2007

Free Google Flip Video Camcorder --No purchase necessary

OK, strike "no purchase necessary." Free Flip video camcorder: "big purchase necessary?"

Google gave big-time advertisers and SEMs (whose clients spend big) a Flip Video Ultra Series camcorder with recording time up to 30 min. and 1GB internal memory.

Search marketer Shimon Sandler recorded an Oscar-worthy short film (YouTubed) of his Google Video Ultra gift being unwrapped. You'll watch the film again and again, if only to get into the Xmas spirit of green envy that children of all ages feel during the Holiday Season.

Google Flip flopped with all the SEMs who only received Google 2GB USB memory cards instead of the Google Flip (with MSRP of $149.99!). The 2GoogleByte USB card was described by our friends at SERoundtable as more or less a lump of coal -- way inferior to last year's Google gift gadget: a sweet digital picture frame.

It would seem only the FTC approves of Google acquisitions these days.

Here at Search Engine Watch, we'll be providing the P.O. Box for Google Customer Returns and the address of the secret Google Gift Exchange location.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 6:46 PM | Permalink

September 12, 2007

Adam Bosworth Leaving Google

Adam Bosworth, who was charged with developing health information for Google Health, will be leaving the company to pursue other opportunities, the Times Online reported.

John Batelle notes that Marissa Mayer will take over the position.

Bosworth helped develop XML - the Extensible Markup Language - before joining Google three years ago.

Mayer has held many senior positions with Google. In 2002 she was a product manager, but by 2005 Mayer was Director of Consumer Web Products, though ended the year as VP of Search Products & User Experience.

Got to wish them both the best.

Posted by Frank Watson at 2:43 PM | Permalink

August 6, 2007

Beating Google at the Hiring Game

Google's strengths may also be its weaknesses, according to the Forbes article "How To Beat Google To Tech Talent." Google is seen by many as the ultimate employer, and Google has developed a lengthy hiring process to make sure it gets the "best of the best" talent.

A recruiter shares with Forbes some ways that Google's high standards and lengthy hiring process can actually be seen as vulnerabilities to be exploited by other companies trying to hire the limited talent available:

• Google's consensus-driven hiring process is slow. Act quickly and give limited-time job offers.
• Google has high academic standards. Target students outside the top tier or those from non-elite schools.
• Google's consensus-driven approach introduces the potential for one person to sink a candidate. Target socially awkward but brilliant engineers.
• Google stockholders reacted negatively to its recent hiring binge. Expect their pace to slow.
• Google stock shot high since its IPO, but may be leveling out. Give new hires an opportunity to share in your potential growth.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:38 PM | Permalink

June 14, 2007

Vanessa Fox Leaving Google

Big news from the world of Vanessa Fox. She is leaving Google, and moving onto a new role at Zillow. It should be fascinating to see what changes result from this.

Google will miss her, because she developed into one of their public faces (ala Matt Cutts, and Adam Lasnik) that they could keep in the spotlight on a regular basis. Vanessa has done a great job of helping to humanize the search giant for webmasters, and always had a smile on her face, even when she was accosted by a troubled webmaster at every turn at Search Engine Strategies and other industry gatherings.

She leaves Webmaster Central to the newly expanded team, which will carry on the good work in her absence.

I am sure that Vanessa will do well in her new role. She is very smart, and very personable. So a public best of luck to Vanessa!

Posted by Eric Enge at 1:35 PM | Permalink

May 30, 2007

Web Is 'Force for Democracy': Schmidt

Goolge CEO Eric Schmidt said, at a conference yesterday in South Korea, that the web is a force for democracy.

"Politicians will be forced to be more transparent," PC World reported Schmidt said.

"Internet tools like search ultimately help make the world a better place, allowing more people to access information that affects their lives and make smarter choices when voting for officials. "More people looking at an idea results in a better outcome," Schmidt said, calling the Internet a "powerful force for democracy."

...

While Schmidt preaches the value of greater information access for democracy, Google hasn't always been so free with information about itself. Relative to many of its competitors, the company has earned a reputation for carefully managing the release of information about its activities and executives, even as it compiles reams of personal information about its users." PC World

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:53 PM | Permalink

May 22, 2007

Google Is Big Brother

I guess it has just gotten to be all too much for the senior staff over at Google.

CEO Eric Schmidt, was quoted by the Financial Times as saying “(t)he goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ �

Really now.... sort of like the modern-day "mirror on the wall" - or some other twisted piece of macabre theater.

The messages may be mixed, but the intent seems to be focused: "Total Global Domination".

But without being evil.....

We seem to have taken the bitter pill and are living this "Google-in-Wonderland" life.

Guess that makes either Larry or Sergie Alice and the other the White Rabbit.... I already know who the Mad Hatter is!

Posted by Frank Watson at 5:11 PM | Permalink

February 28, 2007

Google Ad Sales Exec Exits

Patrick Keane, until recently the head of advertising sales strategy at Google, has left to become executive VP and chief marketing officer at CBS Interactive. Keane will help CBS implement systems to market and sell its content on emerging media platforms and expand the company's roster of advertisers, according to a press release. Keane joined Google four years ago, having previously been a VP and senior analyst at Jupiter Research, covering the online advertising space.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:49 PM | Permalink

January 3, 2007

Does Google need more bloggers or people who own dogs?

Matt Cutts has a fascinating post in his Gadgets, Google and SEO blog entitled, "The real lesson from this week." He rhetorically asks, "So what does Google need to keep us on the right path?" And his answer is, "I think what Google needs is more bloggers. I’m using a liberal definition of bloggers here; I mean people who monitor the blogosphere. In an ideal world, they’d also respond to feedback online."

Meanwhile, Saul Hansell of The New York Times has written a fascinating story this morning entitled, "Google Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm." He reports that Google is starting to ask job applicants to fill out an elaborate online survey that explores their attitudes, behavior, personality and biographical details going back to high school. One of the potential questions tested in an earlier version of the survey was, "What pets do you have?"

So, does Google need more bloggers or more people who own dogs?

Using "biodata" to create "an automated way to search for talent among the more than 100,000 job applications it receives each month" seems logical for people in Human Resources. The number of employees at Google has doubled in each of the last three years. While the company now has about 10,000 employees, Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president for people operations, told The New York Times that he saw no reason the company would not double again in 2007. That would increase the number of hires at Google to about 200 a week.

However, it turns out that owning a dog isn't a useful predictor of success at the company.

So, what about the idea of hiring more bloggers?

According to Cutts, "Some of the most dynamic teams at Google are the ones that listen to bloggers and respond. The webmaster console team has Vanessa Fox, Amanda Camp, and several others. Mihai Parparita and the entire Google Reader team listens for requests and responds to feedback in the blogosphere. Sometimes I’ve gone to answer a blogger’s question about Google Calendar only to see that Carl Sjogreen already arrived and answered it better than I could."

However, this train of thought took a surprising turn. Cutts continued, "No single person should be Google’s unofficial blogger–that’s not scalable. I love working at Google, but at some point my wife is going to wake up and smell the coffee. She’ll say 'Hey, we agreed we’d try this Google thing for four or five years, and then I’d get to pick what to do next. It’s been like eight years now! When do we move on to our next adventure?' Any Google engineer will tell you that a good way to scale something is to shard it. Rather than relying on one person, Google needs lots of unofficial bloggers."

This prompted David Naylor (aka DaveN) to read between the lines and wonder aloud, "Matt Cutts to leave Google?" According to Naylor, "My Gut feeling is Matt is looking at letting all the little Cuttlets down gently."

Meanwhile, back at the Times article, Bock told Hansell, “Last week we hired six people who had below a 3.0 G.P.A.�

Stay tuned. It's too early to tell what "the real lesson" we'll learn from these developments.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 9:00 AM | Permalink

November 28, 2006

Yahoo China's President Xie Wen Resigns After Six Weeks

PC Advisor reports that Xie Wen, president of Yahoo China, has resigned after only six weeks on the job. Zeng Ming, senior vice-president of Alibaba, will replace Xie, who is resigning for "personal reasons." Xie will stay on as a consultant for Yahoo for an undisclosed time period. This follows on Google China's president apparently announcing he would be resigning earlier this month, though I can't find a more detailed story about that.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:00 AM | Permalink

November 27, 2006

Matt Cutts On Site Problems & Mistakes To Avoid

Ever wonder what is going through the head of a Matt Cutts (Googler) while he is sitting on a site reviews panel reviewing sites? Matt Cutts posted his detailed notes of the panel he did in Vegas at PubCon. He explains some on site problems and mistakes a webmaster should avoid. It is worth a read, because Matt totally kicked my coverage of that session.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:19 AM | Permalink

November 21, 2006

Google Beats Microsoft, Yahoo As College Grad Choice

Online Recruitment reports on a CollegeGrad.com poll showing Google is the most desired place for technology students to work for. The poll asked 1,600 respondents in October "Who would you rather work for?" The results:

• Google - 49%
• Microsoft - 29%
• Yahoo - 12%
• IBM - 10%

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:30 AM | Permalink

November 15, 2006

Google To Add 500 Jobs In Dublin, Ireland

Reuters reports that Google is going to be adding 500 new jobs in the Dublin, Ireland office. This will make the Dublin office fairly large with 1,300 people, after first opening in 2004. If you are looking for a job in that area, you can check out the job openings page here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:36 AM | Permalink

November 13, 2006

Google's Schmidt Says Cell Phones Should Be Free

CNN Money reports that Google's CEO Eric Schmidt saying, "Your mobile phone should be free." He said Google has no plans to give phones away itself, but he foresees advertising making phones free or near free, in the way newspapers are.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:34 AM | Permalink

November 10, 2006

Battelle "Grilled" Schmidt On Google Video, Google Docs & More

PC Magazine has an excellent write up on John Battelle's interview with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google at the Web 2.0 conference named Google's Schmidt Grilled At Conference . John Battelle (which PC Mag spelled wrong), sat with Eric Schmidt for 30 minutes and asked him tough questions on YouTube, Google Docs & Spreadsheets and more. For example, Battelle asked, "So why did you buy YouTube? Was Google Video not doing well?" Battelle then noted that Google Docs and Spreadsheets were a Microsoft Office replacement, in which Schmidt replied, "We don't see it as a replacement of Office. The focus we have is not the focus they have." Battelle's response to that is the focus is that it is free. I wonder what the audience reaction was to this interview?

Postscript: Danny has coverage on the Web 2.0 conference from earlier this week here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:23 AM | Permalink

November 8, 2006

Eric Schmidt At Web 2.0 On YouTube & Other Issues

John Battelle spoke with Eric Schmidt at Web 2.0 yesterday. What have we got? YouTube's growth made it a necessary purchase. No, money's not set aside to cover YouTube legal claims. Yes, you can have your date if you want it, users. No, Google's not trying to take out Microsoft Office. Plus some more below.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: We would never trap user data from ZDNet has coverage that has Schmidt saying:

• Google bought YouTube because it was growing faster than Google Video, and video was a "fundamental data type" to Google.
• Google's still figuring out ways to compensate content owners with video, a complex area.
• Google would support exporting personal data (search history, email, etc) to other providers, if it can be authenticated.
• Google's office products are "casual" and not aimed at Microsoft.

Google CEO denies rumor of YouTube legal reserve from Reuters quotes Schmidt as saying "not true" to a rumor that $500 million of the YouTube sales prices was set aside for legal claims.

@ Web 2.0: Day One Highlights: Ad 2.0; Google CEO; Skype Content from PaidContent covers Schmidt but also touches on IAC's Barry Diller saying in a separate interview that he doesn't expect Google will become a media monopoly or dominant player.

Web 2.0 Con: Liveblogging the "Conversation with Eric Schmidt" from Valleywag has a nice minute-by-minute rundown of the interview, for those that want more -- and covers that if Schmidt or one of the cofounders Larry Page or Sergey Brin don't agree on something, the cofounder wins. "I'm the one with the experience who's late. Left to their own devices they'd be early and right, but too early."

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 5:34 AM | Permalink

November 7, 2006

Google's Adam Lasnik Interviewed

Lee Odden interviewed Adam Lasnik of Google the other day. Adam Lasnik is one of the folks at Google responsible for being the voice of the webmaster. His day job is to help webmasters with ranking and indexing issues either through communication or other means. I find the read interesting and helpful - it really shows that Google cares.

As for what questions annoy me the most? There aren’t any specific ones that I find particularly frustrating. Rather, I do occasionally grow weary with two types of questions:

1) Questions that are clearly answered in our much-improved Webmaster Central, via a quick search of our Webmaster Help group, or questions that would also be likely answered via use of our Webmaster Tools. There’s no such thing as a stupid question, IMHO, but lazy questions… well, that’s a different story. 2) Accusatory “questions.� I suppose I need to get some thicker skin, but it stings when people imply that we either don’t care or — worse — that a relationship between Webmasters and Google must inherently be adversarial. Every time I’ve spoken with Larry Page and Marissa Mayer they’ve made it unequivocally clear that being mindful of Webmaster concerns is something resonating not just in Search Quality, but from the very top of Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:26 AM | Permalink

October 30, 2006

Google's Page or Brin Purchase NY City Apartment For $30 Million?

The New York Metro suggests that either Larry Page or Sergey Brin, they are not sure which one, have purchased an apartment in 15 Central Park West, Manhattan, for about $30 million. The broker of the apartment is Corcoran’s Patricia Warburg Cliff, who declined to comment. The NYC "apartment has 5,500 square feet, five bedrooms, and a terrace."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Google Interview With Shashi Seth On Custom Search Engine Product

Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting posted an Interview of Google's Shashi Seth. Shashi Seth is Product Lead of Search and was directly responsible for the Custom Search Engine. Eric asked Shashi questions about the new product and Google Co-op platform.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:24 AM | Permalink

October 26, 2006

Charting Google's Growth By Employees

Philipp Lenssen located this chart that shows the growth of the number of Google employees. You can see that Google has grown from 2,000 in 2004 to more than 9,000 employees in 2006.

Here is the chart from Zorgloob.com:

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:12 AM | Permalink

October 23, 2006

Google Tries To Streamline Hiring Process

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has begun trying to improve their well-known hiring process. They have currently reduced the number of interviews from 6.2 to 5.1 people. They have also set up deadlines for when the interviewer has to submit their assessments (within one week now). Google is also trying "short questionnaires for applicants and different interview formats" and "abbreviated hiring process" consisting of just two interviews.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:23 AM | Permalink

October 20, 2006

Yahoo India's CTO To Join Google As R&D Lead

Steve Bryant reports that Prasad Bhaarat Ram, Yahoo India's CTO, has been hired by Google to lead the research and development office in Bangalore. Dr. Ram said, "It is a great opportunity to join Google and be involved with a company that places such great value on innovation and creativity." Dr. Ram is to begin immediately at Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:06 AM | Permalink

October 19, 2006

Google Hires Pizzella Of GSA's FirstGov

FCW.com reports that Google hired M.J. Pizzella to work at Google's Herndon, VA office to "help Google better understand and solve the government’s technology needs." Pizzella worked as the associate administrator of GSA's Office of Citizen Services and Communications and was directly responsible for government's official search engine, FirstGov's most recent redesign. Her title at Google is senior business development manager at Google Enterprise.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:29 AM | Permalink

October 10, 2006

Justin Uberti, AOL's Top AIM Developer, Hired By Google

Steve Bryant reports that Justin Uberti, who has been with AOL for about 10 years and working on AIM for almost 9 years, has been hired by Google to work in the Kirkland, WA office. Justin posted this news on his old blog and announces the launch of his new blog at juberti.blogspot.com, where he has links to the Google Blog, Google Talk Blog and Google Video blog - which may be signs as to what he will be working on at Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:57 AM | Permalink

October 4, 2006

Eric Schmidt Warns Politicians That Elections Will Forever Change

The Financial Times reports that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, warned politicians at a Tory party conference in Bournemouth that the outcome of general elections will be changed "within five years" by what Eric Schmidt calls "truth predictor" software.

A politician may be making claims live during a debate and a voter will be searching the internet to validate those claims, in real time.

Schmidt said, “One of my messages to them is to think about having every one of your voters online all the time, then inputting ‘is this true or false?’ We [at Google] are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability.�

The Register.com has a link to the speech here (for Windows Media users).

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:10 AM | Permalink

October 2, 2006

Google Buys Birthplace Garage

Google has purchased the garage where the company developed after its initial birth at Stanford University. Actually, they've purchased the home of Google vice president of product management Susan Wojcicki. Before she became a Google VP, Wojcicki rented the garage attached to her home to Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google buys garage that launched Internet's top search engine from the Associated Press has details about the sale, which was probably in the $1.2 million range. As of yet, Google doesn't know what exactly it may do with the home the article reports. It's already a tourist attraction, it seems.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:23 AM | Permalink

September 27, 2006

Evil Matt Cutts: Matt's Evil Twin Brother

Spotted via SEO Home, it appears someone launched an alter ego to Matt Cutts's blog at evilmattcutts.com. You got to admit, this is funny. The picture, the reworded blog posts, and the concept. One example blog post is named How to Verify Google Bot, then Kill and cook him. Who owns the site? Well, I know who owns the domain, http://whois.domaintools.com/evilmattcutts.com.

Matt, what happened to your front tooth?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:41 AM | Permalink

John Battelle Talks With Matt Cutts & Nofollow Attribute The Same As Meta Robots Nofollow?

John Battelle has a short interview with Google spam fighter Matt Cutts. The most interesting part I found was news that the W3C has added a meta nofollow tag to their page with paid links, which Matt seems to say is the same as the completely different nofollow attribute and thus something acceptable for to do by those selling links who fear the wrath of Google.

Let's back up. You can put a meta robots tag on your pages with the value of "nofollow," as described here. This tag, about 10 years old now, long predates any concerns about link selling skewing search results or the nofollow attribute. It is supposed to tell a search engine not to follow any links on a page, for purposes of indexing those links.

In other words, you've got a page with 20 links leading to other pages in your web site. Put nofollow into a meta robots tag, and you're telling the search engine not to follow the links on that page to those other pages.

An important note. Just using nofollow doesn't protect those other pages from being indexed. If there's any other links pointing at them from anywhere on the web, search engines will follow through to them that way. So if you don't want them indexed, you need to make use of a meta noindex tag or robots.txt text to specifically block them.

Now on to the nofollow attribute. Created in January 2005, it was a way to flag particular links to search engines as those a site owner doesn't explicitly approve of. It was never defined as a means to telling search engines not to actually "follow" the link. It was more a way to say that you don't endorse the link. In fact, to my knowledge, Yahoo and perhaps others will still "click on" or follow links even if they make use of the nofollow attribute.

Now to the W3C. W3C Selling PageRank Or Thanking Supporters? covers how some have felt they've effectively been selling links without using the nofollow attribute that Matt Cutts in particular has urged those selling links to do, lest they potentially be penalized by Google.

In Matt's interview, we read that using nofollow in the meta robots tag might be seen as the same thing as a nofollow attribute, at least in Google's eyes. That's a completely new thing to me. I've commented on Matt's blog post about the interview, to see if he'll clarify more.

Aside from nofollow, the interview also gets into some interesting discussion of whether Google should do more to use humans in refining results.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:42 AM | Permalink

September 25, 2006

Google's Marissa Mayer Makes Newsweek Cover

Via Valleywag, news that Google's Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products & user experience, makes the cover of Newsweek and is named one of the most powerful women of her generation.

Good luck trying to find the article on the horrible MSNBC-hosted Newsweek site itself. I finally gave us and did a regular Google search for marissa mayer newsweek sept. 25 to find it here: Leading the Way. Marissa comes up on page 5.

Her home town paper gives her a write-up here: Wausau girl hits big-time, along with a larger version of the Newsweek cover.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:42 AM | Permalink

September 21, 2006

Webmasters Complaining About Google? Get A Job Helping Them Know!

A new job opening from Google, Webmaster Trends Analyst. It's all about helping Google monitor what webmasters are upset or concerned about at forums, conferences and other venues. From the job description:

Responsibilities:

• Monitor webmaster issues (in various online forums, conferences, internal questions, etc.).
• Analyze data for trends.
• Formulate recommendations.
• Route issues using appropriate escalation paths.
• Investigate specific issues, as needed.

Sounds like a perfect job for Barry Schwartz! Of course, if I lose yet another news editor to a search engine, oh vey!

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:13 PM | Permalink

September 7, 2006

Former Google UK Chief Kate Burns Joins AdLink Media Company

Kate Burns, former Google managing director of UK, who has left Google in June for more family time, is reportedly joining a new firm named AdLink. Burns who previously worked for AltaVista was the first Google employee outside of the U.S. Why is Burns coming back so soon? Well she said she has "enjoyed a much needed break over the past couple of months" but she is "ready to return."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:58 AM | Permalink

Matt Cutts Doll Gets New Clothes

We mentioned in June how there's an online Matt Cutts doll, where you can put some virtual clothing on Google spam fighter Matt Cutts. Good news, Matt fans. The Matt Cutts Doll has gained some new clothing, creator Evan Bailyn tells me. Among other things, you can now put him in a ninja outfit, a Hugh Hefner robe (completely with pipe), a Yahoo shirt (I think that's new) or position him with his cat. No, you still can't put him in a black hat nor switch him from being a briefs to a boxer guy.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:20 AM | Permalink

August 30, 2006

Google CEO Eric Schmidt Joins Apple's Board Of Directors

Google CEO Eric Schmidt's looking for another small company to help run -- this time, Apple. He's just been elected to Apple's board of directors.

Google CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt Joins Apple's Board of Directors is the press release on the move, with these quotes from the two main men:

"Eric is obviously doing a terrific job as CEO of Google, and we look forward to his contributions as a member of Apple's board of directors," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Like Apple, Google is very focused on innovation and we think Eric's insights and experience will be very valuable in helping to guide Apple in the years ahead."

"Apple is one of the companies in the world that I most admire," said Eric Schmidt. "I'm really looking forward to working with Steve and Apple's board to help with all of the amazing things Apple is doing."

Google CEO elected to Apple Computer board of directors from the AFP has the expected (and reasonable) speculation that this will mean closer ties for Google and Apple.

The Wall Street Journal in Google CEO Schmidt Joins Apple Computer Board (paid sub. probably required) notes some of the cross-pollination going on:

Mr. Schmidt's election deepens existing high-level personal ties between the two companies. Genentech Inc. CEO Arthur Levinson sits on the Google and Apple boards, while former Vice President Al Gore and Intuit Inc. Chairman Bill Campbell, both Apple directors, are longtime advisers to Google. Mr. Schmidt's appointment means half of Apple's eight-person board of directors has a formal relationship with Google.

Messrs. Schmidt and Jobs also share the battle scars from long careers competing against Microsoft, Redmond, Wash. Mr. Schmidt, one of Silicon Valley's most seasoned technologists, spent more than a dozen years at Sun Microsystems Inc. starting in 1983, rising to the post of chief technology officer during that computer maker's fierce efforts to establish the Java programming language as an alternative to Microsoft's dominant programming standards. Mr. Schmidt joined Novell Inc., a bitter Microsoft rival in the market for network software, in 1997 as chairman and CEO.

Want to comment or discuss? Join our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Google CEO Eric Schmidt Joins Apple's Board.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:32 AM | Permalink

August 23, 2006

Google To Party At Worldcon: Shiny!

Man. I wrote earlier of Google doing a recruitment and PR push at the Star Trek Convention last week. I joked about wishing I could go to that and this week's Worldcon. Today, Google writes that it will be at Worldcon, recruiting and throwing a party as well. And they semi-taunt me about going in the post. Have a great time, everyone who is going. It'll definitely be shiny.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:40 AM | Permalink

Google Keynote Conversation, Part Two

Today's SearchDay article, CEO Schmidt: "Many People are Very Happy with Google Search", continues Andrew Goodman's coverage of Danny Sullivan's keynote conversation with Google's chief executive that began with yesterday's Google CEO Maps Missions, Stays on Message.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:34 AM | Permalink

August 22, 2006

What is Google These Days?

Google is a search engine, but it's also one of the world's largest advertising companies. And many analysts are now calling it a media company, as well. So is Google still focused on its mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible? Danny Sullivan put that and other questions to Google CEO Eric Schmidt in his keynote conversation at the recent SES San Jose conference. And, as has become a tradition, Andrew Goodman was on hand to not only report on the dialogue but to add his own laser-like insights. Read on in today's SearchDay article, Google CEO Maps Missions, Stays on Message.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 11:18 AM | Permalink

August 18, 2006

More On Google's Warp Speed Run Into The Star Trek Convention

I wrote earlier about how Google was going to be hunting for engineers at the 5th Annual Official Star Trek Convention this week in Las Vegas. Now more news about that and more.

The company's put out a press release about taking part in the show and set up a special site for Star Trek fans. Don't get too excited. The site has little to do with Star Trek and a lot more to do with promoting how developers can now put geo-location files (KML) on mobile phones. Way down at the bottom of the page are links to plot sci-fi related locations on Google Maps (see them here) or Google Earth.

Much cooler is an AFP article, Google builds bridge at Star Trek cult convention, about how Google's booth will feature a mockup of the Enterprise bridge (TOS, probably, rather than TNG or STE. Don't know the acronyms? Then you don't care which bridge it is). The main viewer will access Google Earth, which sounds pretty cool.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:12 AM | Permalink

Googlers Only Have Sold GOOG Stock - Cause Of Drop In Stock Price?

Bloomberg has a very interesting report on why they believe Google's stock has been falling this year, down about 7 percent this year. They say that Google's executives have sold off a boatload of stock since the IPO.

"Google's top executives have offloaded about $7.4 billion of stock, equal to about a third of the company's starting market value when it sold shares at $85 each in the August 2004 IPO," says Bloomberg columnist, Mark Gilbert. Not only that, he reports "not a single Google insider has bought a single share of the company in the 18 months since the IPO lock-ups expired." Can you believe that!

Postscript From Danny: It's worth noting that at least to me, the idea that the insiders are selling their stock and not buying is unsurprising. They've got a lot of stock. A lot of stock!

Buying some shares would probably be a good PR move, and after an article like this one, I can imagine some of the execs might start doing it. But the point of selling, as the article itself notes, is to diversify portfolios that, for these execs, are ironically unhealthily skewed toward Google.

For the curious, there are various places to see insider sales over times. Yahoo has a nice list here. Note how entries for Eric Schmidt and many others are tagged "automatic." That because, to my knowledge, they have preplanned to diversify their portfolios by selling shares automatically over time. That protects them against accusations of insider sales.

Also interesting are entries like exec Omid Kordestani acquiring 76,459 shares on June 12, 2006. Didn't the Bloomberg article say no big Googlers were buying? Yes -- so what's this? I assume that Googlers might still be gaining shares in other ways, which adds further understanding as to why they might not be buying on the open market.

Finally, it's no surprise that that over the past 18 months that neither founders Larry Page or Sergey Brin have been selling. That's because they already said in 2004 that they'd spend the next 18 months diversifying their portfolios through planned sales.

Overall, insider trades are definitely interesting to watch, and I'm sure Google will take a PR black eye over the apparent lack of purchases. But I think there are factors that don't make it as bad as it seems.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:12 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

The Inside Scoop from Search Bloggers

The major search engines all have unofficial bloggers talking about what's going on in their respective companies. At a recent SES session, search-blog stars Jeremy Zawodny, Gary Price, Matt Cutts and Niall Kennedy all revealed their modus operandi, and guest writer Sara Holoubek was there to capture their insights for today's SearchDay article, Expose: Search Engine Bloggers Tell All.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:44 PM | Permalink

August 15, 2006

Beam Them Engineers Up, Google

Google's boldly going where no one has gone before....in search of engineers at the 5th Annual Official Star Trek Convention next week in Las Vegas. Google's going to have a booth and presence at the event, I'm told by a friend who knows. Apparently, many of Google's engineers already attend Trek conventions, so it's fertile recruiting ground. So far, I see nothing about Google on the convention site. But Google Operating System noted yesterday how Google SketchUp is already doing a cross-promotion.

Have fun at the con, anyone who's going. Wish it were me! Of course, going to WorldCon in LA (ahem, actually Anaheim in beautiful Orange County) later this month would be nice. My first and only one was in Anaheim back in 1984. Too long, too long. Hey, how about Battlestar Galactica Con? Heck, I'd be happy with Xena Con (though Gabrielle Con would be better).

Postscript: Google's got a post up now about the recruitment drive there

.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:17 PM | Permalink

Google Hires Linux Coder, Andrew Morton

Andrew Morton, well known in the Linux world for coding under Linus Torvalds, has been hired to work at Google, reports News.com. Linus commented about the job in a message board posting on Aug 6th. Andrew will continue working on Linux, but Google will be paying him to do so.

"In my position as kernel maintainer I feel that I should not be employed by a company which has a direct interest in the kernel.org kernel because this would put me in a position of making decisions which are commercially significant to my employer's competitors," Morton explained. "As Google maintains their own kernel variant for internal use, their interests are largely decoupled from what happens in the kernel.org kernel."

Google's active use of Linux and participation in open source development was another big draw. "It is beneficial to me (and to Linux) that I be in day-to-day contact with people who use Linux for real things. Hence Google is a good all-round fit," Morton added.

More details at Linux Today.

Does this mean a Google OS is coming soon? Well, that may be far fetched. Google is known to write their own kernels for their servers, to best tweak the performance out of them.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:07 AM | Permalink

August 14, 2006

Matt Cutts Confesses To Being GoogleGuy

In Monday Morning Roundup, Rand Fishkin writes:

Did anyone blog about Matt outing himself as GoogleGuy during SES? I believe his exact words were "I backed into that position."

Nope, Rand -- I was surprised about the lack of reaction and blogging to that myself. I'm still doing post-show catch-up, but it hardly seemed to catch any buzz. Perhaps one of the industry's oldest secrets -- Matt Cutts being GoogleGuy -- was no longer a secret to most any longer.

I moderated the panel, and the confession came out when a member of the audience flat out asked Matt if he was GoogleGuy. Matt hesitated just a moment, and I could swear I could almost hear the internal debate of "should I finally confess or not." And then he did, saying as Rand notes that he sort of backed into being the GoogleGuy who posts on forums and blogs. Matt then added that today, GoogleGuy might be one of many different people from Google commenting in public areas.

Matt's been blogging for just over a year now, and it's been great to have him out under his own name. Personally, while I love the Google Guy name, I sort of hope it gets retired. I'd rather have Googlers taking part in conversations under their own names than through anonymous handles. Plus, it would help avoid things where the named person might comment on something they've also posted under an anonymous handle. As I wrote last year:

Matt Cutts, posting over Threadwatch and sounding pretty in sync with GoogleGuy, explains that msn.com is a PR8 site and points to the Future PageRank checker at SEO Tools as a way to see this. (At this point, you're asking "Isn't Matt Cutts GoogleGuy?" For the record, Matt's never publicly laid claim to being GoogleGuy. But since Matt's more active on commenting with things these days, I think it's well time that GoogleGuy step forward with a real name, so that if they are one and the same, there's isn't confusion that two different people are talking. Honestly, at some point we'll have someone citing GoogleGuy, then someone citing Matt against GoogleGuy, which is absurd if they are the same. I and many others do know the real identity of GoogleGuy. I think it's well time everyone knows and hope GoogleGuy will step forward).

By the way, if you missed the panel, Blogging for the search engines from Melanie Colburn at Searchblog is a very nice summary of it. Matt also made many new friends at the last conference and today blogs on how to tell who the real ones are :)  That includes these two founding members of his fan club, complete with T-shirts. He also gets search god status on the new Men Of SEO blog.

Postscript: WebmasterWorld's Brett Tabke pinged me to say that Matt's been wearing a "Google Guy" name badge at PubCon for the past two years now, and Thomas Bindl notes this was the case last November at the show, as well. So I guess Matt's been out as GoogleGuy long before this. Then again, despite wearing that name badge in front of plenty of people, he still wasn't fessing up to it when I or others would ask him about going public. And over at Rand's blog in the comments, Matt's suggesting that he was answering a different question.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:54 AM | Permalink

August 9, 2006

The Google Doctor Interviewed

Philipp Lenssen links to an interview of the Google Doctor, Taraneh Razavi at Blogs for Companies. The interview really goes over more about why the Doctor started a blog at Google, then anything else. So you know, Sergey Brin suggested to her that she start her blog at http://dr-razavi.blogspot.com/. Other than that, she helped improve the nutrition and health of the meals provided at Google, and of course, does the day to day doctor duties at Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:56 AM | Permalink

August 8, 2006

More SEO Video 'Cutts' By Matt

Matt Cutts at Google has posted a few more videos with Google SEO tips for us. Here they are:

+ Session 11: Reinclusion requests + Session 12: Tips for Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose 2006 + Session 13: Google Webmaster Tools

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:10 AM | Permalink

August 4, 2006

Google Grabs Former "Time" President As Head Of Ad Sales

MarketingVox reports on AdAge scoop where Google has hired Eileen Naughton, former president of Time magazine, to be the "head of ad sales" in the New York office. Her responsibility will be to improve Google's reputation and ties with the Madison Avenue folks. Eileen Naughton will begin working at Google in several months.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:45 AM | Permalink

August 3, 2006

Eric Schmidt Asks Photos Of Him & Wife To Be Kept Private

The Boston Herald reports that while Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, was at the Circus Flora in Nantucket, he asked reporters not to take or distribute pictures of him and his wife. Marie-Claire Rochat sent an email to "the island media" stating; "One couple has requested that no photographs of them be published - Wendy and Eric Schmidt. It is, of course, important that we respect their wishes."

The article then mocks Eric Schmidt for this request being that he was so upset with News.com for publishing Schmidt's personal info that was found on Google. Schmidt was so upset, that Google blacklisted News.com for a period of time.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:12 AM | Permalink

July 17, 2006

Google Hiring Television Engineers & Wireless Software Engineer

Search Engine Watch Forums moderator evilgreenmonkey (brand new moderator) has informed me that Google posted two new interesting jobs for the London office for Software Engineer, Television Technology & Wireless Software Engineer in Test.

The television technology job does not say much;

We are hiring well-rounded Software Engineers with a proven track record in creating and deploying robust, high-volume applications for consumer devices.

Responsibilities: To develop robust, high-volume applications for consumer devices. To develop prototype applications and manage the evolution of these to scalable, shipping products.

Seems as if they are looking for ways to create mobile solutions and methods to distribute television programming over devices other than televisions.

The wireless engineer is for QA (quality assurance) work on wireless applications.

We are looking for software QA engineers to work with the testing team and the development team to investigate, report and track defects and expand our automated test suites. Your duties will focus on creating test plans, setting up test environments, developing automated tests, executing and maintaining automated test suites and the analysis of the results. They would also include leading test efforts and exploring new ways of UI test automation. If you love coding and testing, are a quick learner, a great team player and able to work independently, this is your chance to join us in our quest to make all the worlds information accessible from the palm of your hand.

Related? I dunno.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:34 AM | Permalink

July 3, 2006

Matt Cutts Is Back From Vacation

We all missed him, Matt Cutts has returned from his long vacation. Hopefully he can get back in the saddle and begin working on those issues at Google. :) Seriously, we all miss you Matt, thanks for coming back and winking (blinking that is) at us.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:47 AM | Permalink

June 29, 2006

Another Microsoft Executive Leaves To Join Google

Business 2.0 in Microsoft exec jumps to Google reports that another Microsoft executive has left the company this month. A 15 year veteran, general manager for platform evangelism at Microsoft, Vic Gundotra, has left Microsoft to join Google. This news comes after shocking news that Microsoft VP Martin Taylor has departed from Microsoft. Vic Gundotra has a non-compete that will not allow him to work for Google for at least one year. During that time Gundotra will be working on his "charitable endeavors."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:02 AM | Permalink

June 26, 2006

Build Your Own Matt Cutts

I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable on a funny little web site that gives you a way to build your own Matt Cutts. To dress up Matt Cutts, go to the Matt Cutts Doll and drag and drop clothing on top of Matt's body. Oh, if you ever wondered if Matt was a briefs or boxers guys, now you know. Too funny.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:21 AM | Permalink

June 23, 2006

Google To Have 1000 Employees In China By 2007

Pacific Epoch reports that Google expect to have over 1,000 employees in Google China by 2007. By the end of this year, Google hopes to have 200 employees based in China. Google will have three research and development centers in China, they will be based in Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan according the article.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:59 AM | Permalink

June 22, 2006

When's Matt Cutts Back From Vacation Countdown Clock

Thomas Bindl does what I was hoping someone would do -- make a countdown clock for when Google's Matt Cutts is returning from his vacation, spotted via Threadwatch. I've seen a number of posts in various places suggesting that Google has been having its recent spam and indexing problems because Matt's finally taken a nice, long break. Bull. Matt's great, a huge resource to Google, but the problems going on seem far more fundamental than Matt being away. If they really are due to him being gone, then Google has even bigger issues to deal with. Still, plenty of us will be happy to see him return and jump back into the search conversation.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:46 AM | Permalink

June 21, 2006

Microsoft Employees Use Google More Than MSN?

Philipp Lenssen reported on a Andrew Hitchcock post that detailed search engine usage by search engine firm. It appears that Microsoft employees prefer Google to MSN Search when searching the web. At Microsoft 66.31 percent use Google, 19.65 percent use MSN and 10.18 percent use Yahoo. Yahoo employees aren't afraid to use Google search either, with 29.80 percent of searches conducted on Google and 68.87 percent on Yahoo Search. Google employees seem to be 100 percent loyal to Google search, based on the data.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:48 AM | Permalink

June 16, 2006

Schmidt Talks On Staying In China, GBuy & More

Conde Nast Portfolio, a new business magazine out next year, landed a nice coup of having Eric Schmidt speak yesterday at its launch party (Schmidt's also apparently set to be one of the first profiles in the new magazine). The video of the interview is online here, covering mostly stuff you've already heard Schmidt say before in other interviews (the LA Times had one last week) over the past years. But here are some things worth highlighting to me.

What would be the one do over for him? He says if Google had done any one particular thing three months earlier, it would have been better.

China was an example of this. In hindsight, he wishes Google had gotten a Chinese government approved version going sooner. "I don't think we would have changed the decision, but I think earlier, the better." He didn't say exactly why. My assumption would be that Google would be stronger in China compared to Baidu, but also that he would say they would have been serving people in China better for a longer period.

Was Google cofounder really suggesting last week that Google was having second thoughts when he said:

"Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," Brin said.

No -- it was either a nuanced comment, a misquoted one and there was also a whole part of what he said missing, Schmidt said. The missing part Sergey had said was, he explained, was that Google had decided to go ahead with what it considered the lesser of two evils, serving people even though it had to do censorship.

There's more of the how Google operates stuff, the 20 percent time (for engineers -- still not others, apparently), the 70-20-10 time allocation of work time, and the idea of not trying to tell people what to do, for fear of stifling creativity. Instead, Google suggests what are company priorities and hopes employees agree because they, too, want to work on what's important for the company.

He talks about Google doing ads on cell phones in Japan and says they'll come to Europe this summer and to the US within the next 12 months.

GBuy? That's the press name, not Google's name, and "It's not like PayPal at all." He says its designed to help advertisers have their customers buy things more quickly than through other mechanisms. We'll see. If PayPal means sending money between two people, it probably won't be. If PayPal means an alternative to buying with a credit card (or having a credit card account as a merchant), then I think GBuy will be very much like PayPal. And it operates this way already on Google Base. For more, see Google GBuy Launch Later This Month To Challenge PayPal?. And hang in there. Schmidt said it's coming soon.

Will Google do its own hardware? "It's much better to have a partner," and "It's much better to be in the software business," he said. The economics are better, he explained.

Biggest competition? Yahoo and Microsoft are both strong and good competitors, but Yahoo is the "primary competitor."

Is Google too powerful, especially given statements he made years ago relating to Microsoft that could be applied to Google today. There are a number of other choices consumers could go to, he said -- "and we know this."

In other words, Google knows that it could potentially lose customers at any time, so it will self-police itself. Same thing he told me back in 2002 in my Google: Can The Marcia Brady Of Search Stay Sweet? article:

"We have very poor lock in. Microsoft has very high lock in," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt, when we spoke at Google's offices last month. "The switchover cost for you to move to one of our competitors is none. As long as the switchover costs are so low, we run scared. Everyday I wonder if there are very smart people at Berkeley coming up with a new algorithm," Schmidt adds -- but in a way that clearly suggests that he wants Google to run scared, in order to keep the company smart and honest.

Although to update things, Google has much better lock-in these days, given Google's many portal features. People are storing email, web analytics data, photos and spreadsheets to name only few things they may not wish to abandon, not to mention kicking the Google Habit can be hard and people aren't likely to do it unless Google gets really bad, as I've written.

As for having knocked Microsoft when he was at Sun for releasing weak products and using customers as guinea pigs, how does he respond to accusations that Google does the same? He says they have a two to three month product cycle now. To be fair, the endless betas Google used to do have gotten better.

During Q&A, Chris Anderson of Wired asks about the impact AdSense has on fueling spam across the web -- search spam, comment spam, trackback spam and so on. Schmidt responds to say Google looks had at preventing click fraud, not really answering the question.

ClickZ also has coverage of his talk in Google's Schmidt at Conde Nast Lunch Today and Reuters looks at the GBuy comments in Google tests Web buying system, says unlike PayPal.

Need more on Schmidt talking Google? See our Google , Google: Employees and Google: Revenues categories of Search Topics for archived articles going back for years, if you are a Search Engine Watch member.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:57 AM | Permalink

June 15, 2006

Google's UK Chief Kate Burns Leaving For More Family Time

Last time I saw Kate Burns last year, she was about six months pregnant. Now Google managing director of UK, Benelux and Ireland is leaving the company to spend more time with that growing family. Best of luck, Kate! More details in Burns set to leave Google director role from Brand Republic.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:22 AM | Permalink

June 13, 2006

A Look At 20 Googlers Via Orkut

Philipp Lenssen complied a list of 20 Googler Orkut profiles. Orkut is Google's social networking software, and many Googlers have profiles and accounts with Orkut. Some of the 20 compiled by Philipp include; Sergey Brin, Adam Bosworth, Jeff Huber, David Krane, Marissa Mayer and more. Nice work!

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:47 AM | Permalink

May 26, 2006

Google Seeks Employees Through Wired Ad

Google Ad in Wired from Google Blogoscoped covers Google doing print ads. No, not to drum up new users, though it has done some of that before. This time it's to attract employees to work for the company. If you didn't skip three grades and failed to learn Lisp by age 10 like Niniane, there's no need to apply. Darn, and there's me wasting all that time on Basic at age, um, 13? Well, I can still make my name fill the screen of a TRS-80.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:08 AM | Permalink

May 24, 2006

Larry Page Video Interview

Channel 4 interviewed Larry Page and the video is available by clicking here. He discusses that artificial intelligence will play an important role in the future of search. He also answers questions about China and privacy concerns. Watch the video at Channel 4 News.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:21 AM | Permalink

May 19, 2006

Google Collector's Cards

Philipp Lenssen has been creating Google Collector's Cards. So far he has posted three, including;

+ Larry Page Collector’s Card + Eric Schmidt Collector’s Card + Marissa Mayer Collector’s Card + Sergey Brin Collector’s Card + Matt Cutts Collector’s Card

Guess who will be coming next... :)

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:30 AM | Permalink

May 18, 2006

A Talk With Vinton Cerf On Google Book Search

Leslie Walker from the Washington Post sat down with Vinton Cerf, founding father of the Internet and Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, about Google Book Search. They basically talked about Google's goal in digitizing books to make them easily findable via search. Read the article at WashingtonPost.com.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:10 AM | Permalink

May 17, 2006

Google Adding More Jobs Than Yahoo

BusinessWeek.com reports that Google is adding more jobs than Yahoo. Google has 1,800 open positions this year, up from 800 open positions last year. Yahoo has 800 openings this year, but they have declined from last year, with 935 job openings. Google is also higher a higher percentage of employees overseas, with 51% of their job openings based outside of the U.S. Yahoo has 29% of their job openings based overseas, up 15% from last year. Yahoo still has more employees than Google, with 10,098 employees at Yahoo and 6,790 employees at Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:59 AM | Permalink

May 16, 2006

Mike Grehan Podcast With Google's Matt Cutts

Can't wait for my podcast with Matt Cutts today? Mike Grehan has just posted a 75 minute interview in two parts with Matt that's well worth listening to. They cover issues such as cloaking, "site links" (those little links you sometimes see below the first result), non-indexed links still ranking well and more. Mike's summarized some info in his ClickZ column, Google's Matt Cutts: The Big Interview, and links to the podcasts are at the end. As I said, it's great listening -- I've just finished them both. I'll make sure for my podcast today with Matt that we go into some different areas.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:54 AM | Permalink

Google Loses New Chef

Steve Petusevsky, one of the two head chefs Google hired last month after a much publicized 18 month hunt, has apparently left the company. The news came in a post to a mailing list for former Google employees. I haven't yet confirmed this with Google. I'll check tomorrow and postscript if it turns out NOT to be the case.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:09 AM | Permalink

May 15, 2006

Google Hires SEM For "Better Conversations" With Webmasters

Matt Cutts, the bridge between Google & SEMs, has announced the hire of Adam Lasnik, an old time affiliate marketer and SEO, to help Matt with the communication between webmasters and Google. Adam said his role will be the "Webmaster Advocate" at Google, pushing for Webmaster needs and concerns. He calls himself the "MiniMatt," attending SEM conferences, replying to Google-related blog or forum posts, responding to some Google e-mails, and more. So now Matt can finally take a vacation.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:29 AM | Permalink

May 9, 2006

Google Resets Many Inactive AdWords Keywords to Active

I reported this morning about Google resetting many of the "inactive" keywords in a Google AdWords account to the "active" status. Keywords become inactive often if the "quality" of those ads are too low, most likely because the click-through rate on that keyword is too low. It seems as if Google has reset many of the "inactive" keywords in AdWords advertisers campaigns, so they can start fresh.

Postscript From Danny: This is likely related to what Google announced last month, that for some terms, it would be pushing ads out more often. See Google AdWords Broad Match To Act Differently For Commercial, Non-Commercial Terms for more.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:40 AM | Permalink

May 2, 2006

More On Amazon Dumping Google & Missing Paid Listings

Barry noted yesterday that Amazon's A9 was no longer carrying Google results. More important, this means that Amazon itself no longer carries Google's search results -- and in particular, Google's paid listings.

Google and Amazon partnered back in 2003 for Amazon to offer Google searches on the Amazon site. Google ads also were displayed there. I'm pretty sure at one point, the Google logo was on Amazon's home page, along with a search box. Unfortunately, the Internet Archive simply serves up pages from 2000 no matter what links I try from the years 2003 through 2005 to check on this.

Anyway, these days, there's a small A9 Web Search box in the upper right-hand corner of the Amazon site. Until last week, that box brought back A9 results that were powered by Google. Now they are powered by Microsoft's Windows Live Search.

Few people use A9 -- but many more use Amazon. How many did web searches at Amazon is unclear, but in either place, they are no longer seeing the paid listings that Google also used to provide.

In addition, I'm also pretty certain that an ordinary Amazon search (which lots and lots of people do) used to bring up Google paid listings as part of Amazon search results. Today, I don't see these at all. Over at Threadwatch, others report not seeing these either.

MSN syndicates Search to Amazon from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has more on the new Amazon-Microsoft agreement. The issue of who is providing paid listings isn't covered, but since the Amazon-Google agreement wasn't renewed, I'd assume these are to come from Microsoft.

Amazon Search Finds Microsoft from the Washington Post also has some details on the move, including the inspiring answer to whether Amazon felt Microsoft was providing better search results: "It will be up to users to try that out." So more a business move than a relevancy issue, fair to say :)

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our SEW Forums thread, Amazon Ditches Google For Microsoft.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our SEW Forums thread, Amazon Ditches Google For Microsoft.

Postscript: See also Nearly 10 Percent Of Amazon Visitors Clicked Off To Google.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:15 AM | Permalink

April 28, 2006

Google Finally Hires Two New Chefs

MercuryNews.com reports that Google has hired two new executive chefs, Scott Giambastiani of San Mateo's high-end Viognier restaurant and Steve Petusevsky, a former national director of creative food development for Whole Foods Markets. They come in to replace Chef Charlie Ayers, Google's old chef and old Grateful Dead chef, who has left Google last May. It has taken Google over a year to find a new chef; the search began in December 2004. Congrats Google.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:21 AM | Permalink

Google Second Most Desired Place For MBA Students To Work For

ZDnet reports on a 2006 Universum Survey MBA Edition, that shows Google has jumped from 129th place in 2005 to 2nd place this year as the most popular place to work for MBA students. McKinsey remains the number one place for MBA students to work, followed by Google and then followed by Goldman Sachs. The top 100 list has five search related companies, including;

+ Google at number 2 + Microsoft at 16 + Yahoo at number 26 + Amazon.com at number 32 + eBay at number 37

Google was not in the top 100 last year, listed at 129 in 2005. Microsoft was ranked 18 last year, up two spots this year. Yahoo was 37 last year, up 11 spot