Earlier this month, the deal was finalized. We had a Q&A with Channel Intelligence CEO Doug Alexander and co-founder Rob Wight about why this was a good pick up by Google, and how search-based ecommerce is evolving.

Neither will be working for Google. Wight will continue the role he began two years ago, as founder and CEO of myList, and Doug Alexander will support him in this role while he continues as President of ICG, the company Google bought CI from. myList was spun off from Channel Intelligence in 2012, and it has operated, and will continue to operate as a separate entity.

“[Brand visibility in ecommerce] is important for the same reason that it’s important to be on a shelf in a store,” Alexander tells WebProNews. “It is how you get into the consumer’s decision set when they are ready to purchase. And just like in a store, brands that do a better job of merchandising and a better job of giving the customer the complete and accurate information they need to make a purchase (correct pricing, sizes, availability, etc.) will be the brands that customers choose to buy.”

“[Google's new paid inclusion model for Google Shopping] gives Google an opportunity to create better shopping experiences for consumers,” he says. “Now that it is paid, retailers will focus on presenting the very best offering to win the consumer’s attention. When it was free, it was easier for retailers to treat this channel more casually.”

“For over ten years, CI has focused on making it easy for consumers to find and buy products online, whether the buying process initiates on a brand’s website or on a shopping platform,” he says, on why this was the right acquisition for Google. “Our expertise with product data optimization and our deep relationships with retailers, manufacturers, publishers and agencies makes CI a natural fit with Google’s ongoing innovation to create outstanding consumer shopping experiences.”

“It should help all businesses, regardless of size, be more successful in reaching consumers with their products within Google Product Search,” he adds. “What will it mean for consumers? It should mean that consumers will have an even easier time finding, researching, and buying products online.”

Wight thinks search-based ecommerce is evolving into a more social media based experience.

“One of the places people naturally go when they’re thinking of making a purchase is to their friends,” he says. “You’ve seen the studies – Nielsen reported a year ago that 92% of people say they trust recommendations from people they know … which is well over the 47% who said they trust ads on TV or in magazines. Social media enables this discovery process to happen online, and people are already trading information – lots of information – there about the products and services they trust. It’s just still in a really fractured kind of way, with one-off conversations and, generally speaking, incomplete information, which is inefficient. So it’s not a matter, necessarily, of people changing anything they’re doing on Google. It’s more a matter of making what they’re already doing in offline conversations and within social media a lot more effective, and hopefully a lot more fun.”

“A friend of mine posted a really cool GPS tracking watch the other night,” says Wight. “He was raving about it. I was really intrigued, and pretty sure I wanted one too, but I didn’t want to leave where I was to go search for the price, colors, retailers, and all of that, so I just kept scrolling. If the picture my friend had shared has included the important product info, had shown me that 5 other of my friends already also had the watch, and had a simple link to buy it, I’m pretty sure I’d have made the order right there.”

“There are a lot of ‘disembodied heads’ of products floating around in social media,” he adds. “Just pictures, with a comment or a like. They’re just begging to be gathered up into one complete representation of the product, along with the rest of the kind of merchandising they’d get in a store, or that the brand would put on their product page on the brand site.”

Wight also sees another opportunity in social for brands to be able to act with more knowledge.

“This is good for consumers, for the brands, and for the social platform,” he says. “Ads are spam when they’re irrelevant, but [when] they’re relevant, they’re welcome. Google has done a great job with this: when I search for, say, a wetsuit, Google shows me ads for wetsuits. Helpful. I love that. I’ve told Facebook that I like triathlons, but up until now, there hasn’t been a way for me to signal when I’m in the market for a triathlon bike. If I’m talking about them, posting pictures of them to friends, pulling together a list of ones I might want to buy, that’s hugely useful for the brand to know, right? What brand wouldn’t advertise to me on Facebook if they knew I was actively interested? And as a consumer, these advertisements would be welcome, not an intrusion, because they’d be relevant … meaning I’d value the ads more, the platform more … a win for everyone.”

Google acquired CI for $125 million.

According to the report, Winslet speaks about her divorce, her recent marriage, and her newfound clarity about how her past experiences have shaped her.

Winslet also provided a rambling account of how her personal life has affected her acting. “I have so much more material to draw on for work – rubble, bricks – and I know I can carry it now,” the Daily Mail quotes Winslet as saying. “I’m not going to drop it, and if I do, I’ll sift through it. Does that make any sense at all? Probably not…”

Winslet was married to English director Jim Threapleton from 1998 until 2001. More recently she was married to English director Sam Mendes, but the couple divorced in 2010. Last December Winslet surprised many by marrying Ned Rocknroll, a Virgin Galactic executive and nephew of billionaire Richard Branson.

BBC Radio this week posted the interview, between Oz The Great and Powerful star Mila Kunis and Chris Stark, a reporter who claims the confrontation is his first celebrity interview. When Stark begins to make things awkward by voicing his fears, calling Kunis “hot,” and soliciting reviews of his interview skills, Kunis takes control of the moment. The conversation quickly shifts to drinking, sports, and nude wedding dances.

Before watching what could be the most interesting Mila Kunis interview ever, it’s worth noting that Kunis describes her condition as “deathly ill.”

Are you concerned about Gmail’s ad targeting practices? Do you consider them to be a violation of privacy? What is your opinion of the ads themselves? Share your thoughts in the comments.

We had a conversation about Microsoft’s latest attack on Google with Stefan Weitz, Microsoft’s senior director of Online Services (also one of the more well-known faces of Bing). While Microsoft recently launched a new mail product – Outlook.com – many find the timing of this attack a bit strange, given that Gmail has operated this way since its inception.

“We want to make sure people understand how much of their privacy they are giving up when they use Gmail,” Weitz tells WebProNews. “If people understand they are giving up their privacy and they wish to do so, that’s their choice. But we want to make sure they understand this is going on. What surprised us, even after a decade of this practice, is that over two-thirds of people don’t know what is happening and when they find out, nearly 90% say it should stop. People are saying it doesn’t seem right. It seems creepy. The question users have to ask is: Do you want one company to have that much information about you?”

Google did alter its privacy policies last year, essentially consolidating them into one that spans across its various products, making it easier for the company to use data from one of its services in another.

Of course, Microsoft does scan users’ emails. Just not to serve ads.

“We do not scan the contents of user emails for the purpose of showing ads,” says Weitz. “Like many email providers, Outlook.com scans the content of your email to help protect you and prevent spam, gray mail, phishing scams, viruses, malware, and other dangers and annoyances. It is just like how the postal service sorts and scans mail and packages for dangerous explosive and biohazards. Of course, Outlook.com

"Outlook.com uses other information like user profile information people submit when signing up (age, zip code, gender), but we even give users an option to opt out of personalized ads for free," he adds. "Gmail doesn’t."

In a previous article, we looked at what Google says about privacy in Gmail. Google’s PR has been sending around this comment:

“Advertising keeps Google and many of the websites and services Google offers free of charge. We work hard to make sure that ads are safe, unobtrusive and relevant. No humans read your email or Google Account information in order to show you advertisements or related information. An automated algorithm — similar to that used for features like Priority Inbox or spam filtering — determines which ads are shown.”

You can read a much lengthier set of relevant comments from the company from an old help center article in that article.

It should be noted that Google has fired employees in the past after they were caught (in separate incidents) spying on user emails and chats. You can take that two ways: 1. It has happened before. 2. Google does not tolerate such behavior. Presumably, these incidents had nothing to do with ad targeting.

Microsoft’s new Scroogled ads almost make Google’s ad targeting relevance seem like the subject of the attack in some parts. See the dead cat example in this one:

“Who wants a free pet exam coupon when the family cat has been put down?” the ad asks.

“First, it’s important to keep in mind that Google’s practice of earning money by reading personal e-mails is not exclusive to Gmail users,” says Weitz. “This also impacts those who don’t have a Gmail account. If you use another email provider but you send an email to someone else’s Gmail account, Google goes through that too. That’s why we’re also asking consumers to sign the petition on Scroogled.com and tell Google to stop going through their emails to sell ads.”

“Second, Outlook.com is committed to protecting users’ privacy and offers users the experience they’re seeking in their email provider,” he continues. “Last, I’m not sure how making their targeting even more exact is going to make the 90% of Americans who say it should stop any happier.”

In case you’re wondering if Microsoft has ever targeted ads based on email message content, Weitz says, “We have never targeted ads based on the content of email messages. Our privacy policy is very clear on this. The bottom-line is we don’t eavesdrop on private communications. We still have ads in Outlook, but the difference is we don’t scan your mail to sell those ads. We think we can still make revenue to pay for the service even if the ads are not directly targeted or related to the private communications that you have. And we give users the option to opt-out, which is a big difference from Gmail.”

Microsoft told us during the original holiday themed Scroogled campaign that the name “Scroogled” was about “Scrooge” (as opposed to “getting screwed by Google” or something along those lines). We could buy it at the time, given the holiday context. Bing even went out of its way to make A Christmas Carol references in its announcement of the campaign. Now that we’re into February, it’s starting to feel a little more like “screwed by Google”.

“You can interpret it however you would like, but Outlook.com’s ‘Don’t Get Scroogled’ campaign is purely about prioritizing privacy and making people informed,” says Weitz. “When polled, over two-thirds are unaware that Google reads their e-mails to make money from targeted ads. ‘Don’t Get Scroogled’ is simply a national consumer awareness campaign to educate Americans about Google’s practice of going through the contents of personal Gmail email messages to sell and target ads. That, and the term has entered the lexicon to generally refer to unseemly practices by Google.”

On a different note, given the rivalry between Google and Microsoft and Microsoft’s relationship with Yahoo, many are wondering what Microsoft thinks about the newly announced deal between Google and Yahoo for contextual ads.

“I’d say I wonder how Google is using the content [of] your private communications in Gmail to serve ads in other places,” says Weitz on the subject.

When we spoke with Microsoft’s David Pann last week, he told us that the company would be launching Google-like product listing ads (they’re also launching click-to-call ads with Skype integration) later this year. As long as we had Weitz, we figured we’d see if he had anything to add.

“We’ll have more to say about new ad products in the future but it’s important to note that they are just that – new ad types,” he says. “As we always do, we will clearly highlight when something is an ad versus organic.”

In addition to the new Scroogled campaign, Bing has also renewed its Bing It On campaign with new research data.

Do you think Microsoft is handling online information better than Google, whether that be in email, search or ads? Let us know what you think.

“I envision, some years from now, the majority of search queries will be answered without you actually asking. It’ll just know this is something you’re going to want to see,” he says.

Of course this is already what Google is trying to accomplish with Google Now.

He says that his personal vision is that the project will be part of Google’s core technology, as opposed to a standalone product, though notes that it’s premature to speculate.

He also suggests that people will give the technology permission to listen in on their lives, so they can better serve them (also like Google Now).

[via reddit]

He recently sat down with Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian to discuss his bestselling book “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t” (among other things).

The interview, part of Google’s popular Authors at Google series, is available in its entirety below:

Hawk caught up with Louis C.K. during one of the comedian’s tour’s stops in Detroit and proceed to discuss a wide range of topics including reddit, Louie, Dane Cook, and pushing the limits of comedy.

Tony Hawk obviously thinks quite a bit of Louis C.K., saying that he’s “smart, funny, poignant, crude, inappropriate and innovative; all the qualities of a genius in my opinion.” I’m positive that most of the internet agrees. Check out the entertaining (and a bit awkward) interview below:

The interview was posted to Tony Hawk’s new YouTube channel, RIDE, which debuted earlier this year.

[via UPROXX]

Of course, Zuckerberg knows that Russia is a big market that’s basically untapped. Russian-born social network Vkontakte dominates in the country. Some seemed to think that Zuckerberg may be secretly on a developer and engineer-finding mission.

Either way, Zuckerberg had time to do hit late night talk show circuit. Zuckerberg spoke with Ivan Urgant, host of popular late night show Evening Urgant. Evening Urgant is broadcast on “the biggest country-wide broadcaster with the largest audience in Russia,” Channel One. So I guess it’s comparable to Zuckerberg appearing on Leno, Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel, or Fallon in the U.S.

When asked about his meeting with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, there’s what Zuckerberg had to say:

“It was a lot of fun. We had an interesting conversation. He’s very supportive of developing the technology industry here in Russia. We’re really excited about this too – a lot of what I’m here to do is to talk to developers and engineers and entrepreneurs here who are going to build stuff using Facebook, and build a lot of new Russian companies. So, it was an interesting conversation.”

The topics of conversation ranged from serious to casual, for instance Zuckerberg talked about his famous attire (and the fact that he wore a suit to speak to Medvedev:

“You know, I actually went to boarding school, so I had to wear a jacket and tie everyday. So when I was done with that, I just decided that I was going to wear a t-shirt for the rest of my life.”

If you can put up with the Russian voiceover, Zuckerberg responds in English and it’s a pretty fun interview. Check it out below:

Cox is a Guinness World Record Holder, his claim to fame being the guy with the highest Gamerscore on the planet. I’ve been playing Xbox 360 for a good while, although admittedly casually at times. In my time, I’ve racked up somewhere around 25,000 gamerscore. Cox just broke through the 700,000 barrier. The put that into context, the average retail game (barring extras and DLC) has enough achievements to net the player 1,000 gamer points. Start to calculate how long some games take to complete (while grabbing all the achievements), and you can see what an accomplishment this really is.

“Day after day, game after game, it wears on you and tests your will on a daily basis,” says Cox.

And his ultimate goal is to hit 1,000,000 gamerscore. He chronicles his progress on his site, the aptly titled 1milliongamerscore.com. Cox has been racking up achievements since day one. Literally. When then 360 launched in North America, that’s when he began his quest:

“Xbox 360 launch day in North America is when I unlocked my first achievement, so technically, that is when my journey began.”

But when he started, 1 million wasn’t really a thought yet. He just wanted to beat everyone else:

“At the time I had no goals or thoughts of striving for such a score (1,000,000) but I did want to establish myself as the top guy. It was around 250,000 gamerscore when I thought to myself that a million might be possible one day.”

One million is still quite a ways off, however. It took Cox 2,312 days and 1,060 different games (retail, arcade and Windows 7) to hit the 700,000 milestone – on an achievement from Mass Effect 3. He really wanted to hit 700,000 on the particular achievement, so much so that he put off unlocking other achievements until he hit it. He compiled a video of his travels from 600,000 to 700,000, which you can check out below:

One of my first questions (and a lot of other people’s I presume) is how the journey to 1 million affects other aspects of his life. He says that he’s had to sacrifice a lot to get to where he is:

“When I’m not gaming, I’m mostly spending time with my long time girlfriend. I’ve had to sacrifice a lot to reach this goal. I’ve had a lot of talks with my girlfriend and we’ve come to the conclusion that I have entered the point of no return with my score. I must reach this goal, I’ve come too far just to give up now and over the years she has grown to support me,” he says.

And about the unavoidable haters out there?

“I’ve learned to deal with that as I’ve heard it all over the many years now,” he says. “The internet age is mostly a bunch of people being judgmental about people they don’t know. Especially the gaming community.”

It took Cox about 7 months to go from 600,000 to 700,000 gamerscore. If you extrapolate that out, he’ll hit the million sometime around December 2013. That, of course, all depends on whether or not he keeps up the same pace. But what happens when he finally hits the million? I asked him about what’s next:

“That’s a very good question that I have no answer for just yet. Celebration, a long vacation, and a good break from gaming will be first thing in order. I’ve had various job offers across the board on my journey so far. I feel like I should be able to land a good job in the gaming industry when all is said and done. Some people already have but someone will recognize my dedication and how driven of a person I am. That carries over to anything I do.”

Cox obviously loves games. You can’t commit yourself to something like this without a deep down affinity for it all. But why 1 million? What does that number mean to him? He says that there are all kinds of gaming records out there like high score in a single game or gaming marathon times. That’s “simple stuff,” he says.

“I’m on an over 6 year marathon so far and if I do make it to the million, I fully believe that will be the greatest gaming goal ever accomplished.”

Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

We had a conversation with Friend2Friend CEO Roger Katz to learn more about Universal’s efforts, how his company is working with the movie giant and how brands in various industries can leverage Facebook to drive commerce in 2012.

“Friend2Friend has worked with Universal for the past 2 years, providing all the social media marketing ‘engagement’ apps that reside on Facebook pages for their major movie releases, both in the US and Internationally,” he tells us. “Most recently, Universal Pictures is using Friend2Friend’s Social Media Platform to easily allow fans to turn a plan to go to the movies into a social experience on Facebook.”

“With the Universal Pictures ticketing app, fans can watch and share the movie trailer, find show times, invite friends, and buy tickets, all without leaving the Facebook wall,” he explains. “Universal kicked off this social commerce initiative with the movie ‘Safe House’ and plans to use the app on the upcoming film ‘Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax’ and other major movie releases in 2012 and beyond. The campaign enables movie-goers preferences to be socialized within Facebook, and then turned into monetizable action.”

“Further, a recent campaign for The Lorax includes a ‘stache’ app that launched in the US, and subsequently in the UK, Australia, Spain, Russia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and Latin America,” he says. “We went on to provide an extensive ‘content’ tab for all aspects of engagement for the movie on Facebook.”

More on that here.

“Other campaigns include ‘multi-function tabs’ for the movie Despicable Me, video voting apps for Little Fockers, and many other movies,” he adds.

So, just how is social commerce changing e-commerce?

Katz, of course has some thoughts about that.

“Social commerce, a new cut at e-commerce, is just getting traction in the market,” he says. “Social commerce is leveraging the phenomenal uptake of social environments like Facebook, where consumers are increasingly spending their time…and doing so while interacting with their friends.”

“If businesses can identify the social dynamics that factor into purchases of their product, and incorporate those into the actual purchase of their products in these social environments…well that’s the ‘social commerce’ pay-off,” he adds. “In the case of the Universal Showtimes and Ticketing app, users can watch a movie trailer, get background information on the movie, look up showtimes, invite friends and buy tickets, all within their Facebook Wall —the purchase becomes part of a fundamentally social experience — one that respects the context of the social network.”

“Real social commerce isn’t just putting a wrapper around a store on Facebook, or even adding a ‘Share’ button to a shopping site,” says Katz. “It’s about really making the shopping selection and consideration something done with people you trust in your social network — and then continuing that brand experience post sale to show how much you love, and are loyal to, that brand purchase.”

Facebook is obviously the big daddy when it comes to where people are spending the majority of their social networking time.

How can brands in different industries leverage Facebook, specifically to drive commerce?

Katz says, “I think this comes back to what’s the product, and how can social behaviors factor into the sale. Is it the recommendation of a friend? Is it wanting to experience the product or event with a friend? Or is it acknowledging that there may be no direct social aspect to commerce (A brand like, say, Preparation H comes to mind!)?”

“Again, social commerce is an emerging area and opportunity,” he says. “No one has all the answers today, and only over time will a best practices model emerge. However, given the size of the audience in environments like Facebook, it’s only a matter of time until the social cash registers start ringing. Remember, no-one was buying shoes online in the mid-90s, and today who isn’t?”

As mobile use continues to grow, and Facebook starts taking it more seriously, it’s going to be quite interesting to see how big a role social commerce plays not just online, but in the physical world, where we’re out shopping in real stores.