Now, let’s see what happens when the blogosphere starts encouraging everybody to use this url. I think Google will disable this feature very soon…

The top3:
1. Pageflakes (30%)
2. Google reader (26%)
3. Netvibes (21%)

Now it’s time to compare these numbers with the attention that number 1 (pageflakes) and number 3 (netvibes) are receiving from the blogosphere.

Let’s start by asking BlogPulse:

And what about technorati:

As you can see, netvibes is receiving at least twice as much attention. Assuming that it is not the bigger user base which is responsible for this, what is it that makes bloggers write about them?

Google could even create content-matched captchas for adsense publishers! The big advantage is that every visitor is forced to look at it!

This thesis proposal has a detailed explanation.

This is definitively the biggest and probably the most important acquirement in the (young) history of Google. It is now Googles turn to show how they will make YouTube profitable.
See Google’s press releases here or here.

The press release has been taken offline by Google, but here is a mirror:

Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock

Combination Will Create New Opportunities for Users and Content Owners Everywhere

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., October 9, 2006 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community.

The acquisition combines one of the largest and fastest growing online video entertainment communities with Google’s expertise in organizing information and creating new models for advertising on the Internet. The combined companies will focus on providing a better, more comprehensive experience for users interested in uploading, watching and sharing videos, and will offer new opportunities for professional content owners to distribute their work to reach a vast new audience.

“The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,â€? said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google. “Our companies share similar values; we both always put our users first and are committed to innovating to improve their experience. Together, we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers.â€?

“Our community has played a vital role in changing the way that people consume media, creating a new clip culture. By joining forces with Google, we can benefit from its global reach and technology leadership to deliver a more comprehensive entertainment experience for our users and to create new opportunities for our partners,� said Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube. “I’m confident that with this partnership we’ll have the flexibility and resources needed to pursue our goal of building the next-generation platform for serving media worldwide.�

When the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and complementing Google’s own fast-growing video business. YouTube will continue to be based in San Bruno, CA, and all YouTube employees will remain with the company. With Google’s technology, advertiser relationships and global reach, YouTube will continue to build on its success as one of the world’s most popular services for video entertainment.

The number of Google shares to be issued in the transaction will be determined based on the 30-day average closing price two trading days prior to the completion of the acquisition. Both companies have approved the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2006.

Besides the fact that it is absolutly ridiculous to let people pay royalties before even playing a song, this will also cause serious problems for the dutch electronics industry.
From january 1st 2007, every MP3 player will rise 25 euro in price. Oh no, let me rephrase that: from january 1st 2007, every MP3 player in the Netherlands will rise 25 euri in price.

So, I guess you don’t have to be a genious to understand what will happen…
Exactly: everybody will buy a MP3 player somewhere else. Belgium and Germany are only a short drive away and offcourse we also have the webshops which will be happy to deliver that new iPod to our home address.

In my opinion, there is only one solution for all the copyright problems we are currently facing: lower the price of the music! I just can’t understand why the record labels still don’t get it. Let’s get rid of the DRM and charge reasonable prices for mp3 files! That’s the only way to boost the online music sales and it will prevent a lot of people from downloading ‘illegal mp3s’.

Oh, but wait, the fact that they also need a whitelist must mean that they do use some auto-discovery. Apparently it works a bit too well occasionaly, so they included a whitelist for sites that are known to be safe. Still interesting though.

Update: more about the lists can be read at the mozilla wiki, might be handy if you plan to use the lists in your own application.

The research was performed in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University, together they analysed up to 30 million search sessions from search engines including Alta Vista, AlltheWeb.com, Ask.com, Excite and Dogpile. Apparently they didn’t make use of AOL’s logfiles that were are available online.

A few explanations that Prof. Spinks has:
- “More women are searching the web. Back in the 90s, it was probably young male geeks, but now the demographics are changing with mums and dads, kids, grandmas and business people all searching the web.”

- “The general population is searching now compared to the male set in the 90s.”

- “Back in the 90s, there wasn’t as much business information on the web.”

To be honest, I’m not really convinced. I would love to read a more detailed paper about how the research was performed. Looking at the statistics of one of the major Dutch search engines (where I happen to work at), I can only draw the conclusion that sex does still dominate the search topics.

A couple of days later, Steve Irwin (the crocodile hunter who we are talking about) is almost dominating the web. His own website can’t deal with the high number of requests and is seriously offline. In all of the major search engines, “Steve Irwin” and “Crocodile Hunter” are among the most executed queries. A tribute to Steve is one of the most viewed videos on youtube. This weeks most popular story on digg is about Steve as well.

It’s also remarkable to see the huge power of consumer generated content. The wikipedia page about Steve Irwin is already completely up-to-date, where MS Encarta doesn’t even seem to know who Steve Irwin is.

So, what lessons can we learn from this?
a) never come too close to a frightened stingray
b) become a crocodile hunter and die tragically if you really (and I mean really) nead a lot of traffic to your website