As for the recently announced Google Knol project, Anil says that just like with Google Page Creator, Blogger, Google Notebook, JotSpot, Google Docs and other tools, “Google has not proven that it understands content creation and publishing as well as it understands its core businesses of search and advertising.” In response, Jason Goldman, who worked at Google and is now at Twitter, says:

The screenshot [of Knol] shows something kinda like a Wikipedia article except it has ads by Google, peer reviews and prominent author attribution.

On the first point, a big reason this is happening is because of the amount of unmonetizable traffic Google sends to Wikipedia. … And Wikipedia won’t accept advertising. Let’s build Knol.

The further justification for Knol is “Who can trust all that crap on Wikipeda?” Google is fundamentally an academic institution and part of that ethos is that things aren’t really “good” unless peer reviewed. The concept of peer review is central to how work is done inside Google and that basically works as far as it goes. Unfortunately, that ethos has extended to the way Google views content on the web. Sergey once asked the Blogger team how Blogger was going to compete with the New York Times. Even though our pageviews exceeded those of the NYT, the point I think he was making was “When are you gonna produce something authoritative that lots of people will accept as good.” Blogger’s answer was “Huh?” Knol’s answer is peer review.

Jason adds, “The fact that the [Knol] article in the released screenshot was authored by a Stanford University academic is basically all you need to know about how Google views content on the web. It doesn’t count as knowledge until it’s given to you by an expert.”

Then again, PageRank too came about partly due to this ethos of accepting peer reviews as quality measurement; instead of counting article citations, back in the 1990s Google went about to count backlinks to measure the credibility of an article. Then again (again), PageRank was based on the open structure of the web, analyzing external data. This time, Google is shifting the model to its own servers by hosting all Knol data, along with the peer reviews & ratings for that data.

In related news, I recently emailed the domain owner of Knol.com, Hilco Knol, to ask if Google contacted him in regards to acquiring the domain. The site of this Dutch cleaning devices seller gained quite some traffic recently and chose to thank “Google”, “040 Hosting” and “TechCrunch,” among others, on their homepage. Interestingly enough, Hilco told me the following:

Till now have google don’t take contact with us we are positif suprised for using the name KNOL because it is my own name.

We want to launch our own products what you can see on our knol.com Internet site.

For the rest we see whats happening.

[Thanks Anil!]

Comments

That’s not to imply that Yvonne Genovese, a Gartner analyst, was out of line.  She used humor to her advantage, and generally voiced what hundreds of other people have said on blogs and in reviews.  Also, Ballmer didn’t exactly break down and cry.

Still, it sounds like an interesting exchange.  Patrick Thibodeau quoted both parties, and while at a conference and in front of a crowd, Genovese reportedly said, “I’m one of those early adopters of Vista.  My daughter comes in one day and says, ‘Hey Mom, my friend has Vista, and it has these neat little things called gadgets — I need those.’”

Ballmer replied, “I love your daughter.”

And to the crowd’s amusement, Genovese responded, “You’re not going to like her mom in about two minutes.”

Genovese then stated that she’d installed Vista, only to quickly reinstall XP – Vista didn’t live up to expectations.  Microsoft had a similar problem with its Live Search overhaul.  Plus, Steve Ballmer has been at the center of some controversy due to statements about Gmail and Facebook.  It seems like Redmond is getting knocked around a little more than usual these days.

You might ask what this has to do with internet marketing, but I think you’ll find the exchange of interest.

First up, Blodget put up his thoughts on Google’s share price hitting $2000, giving it a market cap of $750+ billion.

Then Michael Arrington decided to voice his disdain for Blodget and his reckless valuation.

Not long after, Blodget blogged that he believed TechCrunch could sell for more than $100 million, possibly to CNET.

Lastly, Arrington (with tongue in cheek) took back his criticism of Blodget.

So, which do you think is more likely to happen? Google will reach $2000 a share, or TechCrunch will sell for $100+ million?

Comments

It looks like the Amanda Across America tour will include a stop at the unemployment office. An unremarkable year with ABC, aside from a mildly controversial stint doing videos for chemical giant DuPont, ended not with a bang, but silence.

MediaBistro’s TVNewser confirmed what FishbowlLA and Gawker had been whispering about – Amanda Cong-done:

Here’s the statement from ABC:

"It’s been a great year with Amanda – a great experiment for both of us. We thank her for her many contributions and know that she’s about to embark on new endeavors and expect there will be times in the future that we can again work together."

We think this translates to "here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?" in Hollywood-speak. As for her response, there isn’t one on her personal blog, which has not been updated since September 12th.

When news of her work for DuPont, approved by ABC, began making the rounds in March, Congdon blew off criticism, saying "I am not subject to the “rules” traditional journalists have to follow."

That may or may not be true, but Congdon is certainly subject to the whims of traditional media, as ABC has demonstrated.

Google’s DoubleClick Buy Draws EU Criticism

Like their American counterparts who have concerns about the privacy implications of the $3.1 billion deal, the BEUC does not want such a massive trove of consumer data at one company’s fingertips.

An AP report on the BEUC appeal to European Union regulators cited Cornelia Kutterer, BEUC’s senior legal adviser, on the organization’s worries:

“They have so far complementary databases with private data. If they merge them, this could lead to unmatched databases of profiles,” Kutterer said. “If they can combine them, this could lead to a violation of user privacy rights.”

In a letter to data privacy and consumer rights regulators, BEUC said the combined company would have and could exploit enormous amounts of personal information about users as they click on Web pages and applications.

“Never before has one single company had the market and technological power to collect and exploit so much information about what a user does on the Internet,” it said. “The unprecedented and unmatched databases of user profiles . . . appear also to be in clear violation of users’ privacy rights.”

US lawmakers and agencies in Washington DC have heard similar concerns. When Google announced the deal, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and other groups filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about the deal.

“EPIC further urged the FTC to require Google to publicly present a plan to comply with well-established government and industry privacy standards such as the OECD Privacy Guidelines. Pending the resolution of these and other issues, EPIC encouraged the FTC to halt the acquisition,” the group said of its filing.

He didn’t slip quietly away, however, and instead addressed his critics head-on, making concessions here and there, but, for the most part, sticking to his guns. No, not his guns, because in his lengthy (and I mean lengthy) blog reply, O’Reilly pulled back from the Old West rhetoric.

This is about being civilized – a concept all but crushed beneath tonnage of words heavy with stone-faced anonymity. And sometimes, rather than gun-sticking, civility demands a more proper analogy, one that better embodies my imagining of O’Reilly in this aftermath, an old adage:

"Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes."

No doubt the roar, even a digital one, of collective dismissal is enough to spur the tremors. Bravo, Mr. O’Reilly.

The blog post centers on "Lessons Learned," and begins with an admission that the sheriff’s badge icon, an image intended to connote a voluntary ascription to a set of blogging morals, would actually convey heavy-handed blawg (word inspired by the self-titled "Blawgers") enforcement and "suppression of bad behavior rather than good behavior."

Besides that, sheriff’s badges are a bit regional as strictly American inamoratas.

These concessions, these reexaminations, are tempered soon after with a (civil) calling-out of Web-pioneer Jeff Jarvis for what O’Reilly felt was hypocritical commentary. Jarvis was critical of O’Reilly’s "Twinkie badges," asserting the non-necessity of signs pledging to be a good neighbor.

O’Reilly begs to differ:

A quick look at buzzmachine shows that Jeff does in fact have just such a "badge" on his site. In fact, he has two. It’s just that they are text badges rather than graphics. There’s one prominent link entitled Rules of Engagement that states "Any email sent to me can be quoted on the blog. No personal attacks, hate speech, bigotry, or seven dirty words in the comments or comments will be killed along with commenters." And there’s another one entitled About me /Disclosures that lists all of Jeff’s financial entanglements.

That’s at the heart of what he wants – a Chivalrous code among bloggers, a Hippocratic oath of sorts to uphold certain principles, a kind of Cyber-Masonic club, an Ichthus above the door.

And that, in a word, is noble.

In addition to the symbolic adherence of, forgive me, the Upright Bloggers Brigade, O’Reilly is calling for more careful moderation of comments from them – a dangerous line walked, to be sure.

Knee-jerk responders bemoan the implications for freedom of expression, imagining blog overlords (a bit grandiose, don’t you think?) picking and choosing what’s okay to talk about. Of course, it is their house, you may argue, and they can tolerate what they wish.

The other concern is liability. Bloggers are reluctant to edit comments because, according to some legal circles, any instance of editing is tantamount to responsibility for publishing of libelous statements that may appear from third parties.

But for O’Reilly, deleting comments isn’t about limits on speech, it’s about limits on "unpleasantness," turning the corner from the chivalrous to the downright dandy (in the Continental sense of the word – think of powdered wigs or, if you have the frame of reference, Christopher Walken’s Saturday Night Live creepozoid).

Then again, being from the South where manners are not just important, but nearly enforced, I sympathize with his notion of blogger etiquette, even if he gets sidewalk preachy about it:

If there’s one thing I’d love to come out of this discussion, it’s a greater commitment on the part of bloggers (and people who run other types of forums) not to tolerate behavior on the internet that they wouldn’t tolerate in the physical world. It’s ridiculous to accept on a blog or in a forum speech that would be seen as hooliganism or delinquency if practiced in a public space…

But I believe that civility is catching, and so is uncivility. If it’s tolerated, it gets worse.

The last time I heard a speech like that, it was in a Baptist church. O’Reilly’s words aren’t unrecognized, or unappreciated. I just have still have my doubts. But I also have more respect for, and understanding of, his position.

 Human Rights Watch asks:

How will China’s pervasive censorship and control of domestic and international media and the Internet play out when thousands of international journalists descend on Beijing? How are the Olympic Games being used to justify the violent forced evictions of thousands of people from their homes? (…) Human Rights Watch hopes that the 2008 Olympics will be an impetus for China to demonstrate greater respect for the human rights guaranteed to all under international law.

You got one answer right there on Google when you compare the search results for the query china olympics: the page I quoted from above is available Google+%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&lr=”>on Google.com’s Chinese search engine, but censored on Google.cn.

Certainly, this example is arbitrary… because whatever Human Rights Watch writes will be censored in Google China, completely automated. And certainly, it’s an English query, and many Chinese will query in Chinese. But you’ll be hitting on these censored queries in Chinese too: I just translated “olympics criticism” into Chinese using Google’s translator, and there’s again a self-censored result in the top 10 (per Google’s own disclosure, which reads “?????????????????????” – along the lines of “in compliance with local laws or regulations, some search results are missing"; you can find further validation by following up with a site-query for the domain you suspect to be censored, e.g. site:news.bbc.co.uk). Arbitrary as the example may be, you can be sure that there’s tens of thousands to millions of “missing” results for Chinese users on Google everyday. Because we often consult search engines in times where we want to learn something, a missing piece of knowledge can shape our thinking and have real-life consequences. Many Chinese users, thankfully, will be too smart to fully trust Google.cn results at this point.

Google claims they have 100 different means to rank a website – PageRank just being one of many –, and out of 7 million pages, Google’s algorithm decided that the Human Rights Watch page in question belongs into the top 10 for the query china olympics (even though it’s dangerous for any Chinese webmaster to link to this page, which can have the effect of downranking it almost “naturally”). But there’s a single thing which can overrule any of those 100 fine-tuned algorithms: a single government decision.

Google’s Eric Schmidt argues that engagement will bring improvement – but these are just overgeneralizations. Some engagement can have horrible consequences (IBM “engaged” in Nazi Germany by providing machines that were specifically tailored to register racial data among the population, even at a time when the Nazis delivered openly anti-Semite statements – in fact, even at a time when it was illegal per US law for US businesses to engage in Germany), while other engagement might bring improvements. So instead of such statements, Google should give people specifics. For starters, which “local laws or regulations” does HRW.org violate, justifying that its around 46,300 pages indexed in international Google are censored by Google China? When webmasters find their site banned, they can file a reinclusion request with Google; but where do I file my request if I suspect my site to be banned not due to cloaking or hidden links, but due to government-critical statements? (Is it good SEO in China to not speak critical of my government – are there any Google webmaster guidelines as to what may get you removed?) And who at Google is responsible for making the decisions which censorship requests are acceptable and which aren’t – or does Google accept every censorship request in China (and other countries where there are self-censored results)?

Comments

Tag:

Background

Ads appearing in the Tube encouraged bystanders to fight Google’s "information monopoly."

At the same time, searching for the term "Google" on Ask.com’s engine brought up a "Smart Answer" (here, it takes on the sardonic wit of a soon-to-be-back-handed teenager) featuring a man in a business suit, carrying a briefcase, on puppet-strings. "Don’t be a droid," read the snippet, "use different sources to get information."  That admonition came equipped with a link to Information-Revolution.org.

Following that link leads to the bemoaning of the fact that three-quarters of the UK use just one search engine. The authors call it "sleep searching."

The puppet Smart Answer was pulled shortly after criticism ensued.

The Cat-and-the-Canary Aftermath

Don’t believe Matt Cutts when he acts like he wasn’t dying to point out why three-quarters of UK surfers were picking Google. It’s just a Southern thing – delaying the mention of unfortunate unpleasantries until there’s no getting around it.

"Okay, I’ve been waiting for someone else to notice this," writes Cutts, "but it’s been several days now, so I guess I’ll have to be the snarky one." You know, if he absolutely has to. "The whole point of information-revolution.org is to remind people to try out other search engines, right?"

Cutts pitted the two search engines against each other to see which one had better results for the site information-revolution.org. Though his first test was confounded by the wrong command, Cutts did find that Google had 19 results for the site, compared to Ask’s one indexed page.

And it appeared to be an older version of the page, the language of which is a bit different than what shows up now.

But really, guys, he just hated to have to point that out.

Most of the responses I

Today, in fact just a couple of hours ago, YouTube deleted my account – in fact all of my accounts. They deleted the NickGisburne account, they deleted the Gisburne2000 account. And this is the reason that they gave me:

“After being flagged by members of the YouTube community, and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below has been removed due to its inappropriate nature: …

Islamic Teachings – Cruelty From the Quran

Due to your repeated attempt to upload inappropriate videos, your account has now been permanently disabled, and your videos have been taken down.”

… You can’t imagine how it feels, I just went completely white when I saw the email.

Nick claims he had hundreds of subscribers to his YouTube channel. While that channel is now closed, the video in question is currently being mirrored by other YouTube members. You may agree or disagree with the video’s message, but why remove it, and why remove Nick’s account with it?

[Via Searchblog.]

Comments

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Philipp Lenssen from Germany, author of 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google, shares his views & news on the search industry in the daily Google Blogoscoped.