While Google may in fact be omniscient, at least in relation to the web, at least they aren’t in your face about it like the Eye of Sauron was. Geek-addled facetiousness aside, while the backlash may not have been what some expected, any time the words “Google” and “privacy” come together, it makes for an interesting topic. From Google’s perspective, it’s all about consolidation and personalization, something their disclaimer states quite clearly:

If you’re signed into Google, we can do things like suggest search queries – or tailor your search results – based on the interests you’ve expressed in Google+, Gmail, and YouTube. We’ll better understand which version of Pink or Jaguar you’re searching for and get you those results faster.

The privacy concerns about the sharing of this personal information across multiple platforms seemed to be addressed with the confirmation that Google users can indeed opt out, something Danny Sullivan discussed with Marketplace, which was broadcasted over NPR’s airwaves. Sullivan explains what Google’s privacy changes to the everyday user:

“…YouTube can see maybe what you’ve been searching on on Google web search and say, oh, you’re really interested in skateboarding so I’m going to prepopulate the YouTube homepage perhaps with a lot of skateboard videos.”

The full audio of Sullivan’s Marketplace appearance is also available:

Existing entirely within the Facebook ecosystem, the Company’s unique marketplace pages provide access to daily deals from over 500 sources and present them both by category and by location on its first-of-a-kind interactive Google deal maps as well.

“Our Facebook Marketplace Network is designed to simplify the customer’s shopping experience. Instead of having to sort through dozens of emails notifying them daily of individual deals, they can see all of the offers for their city presented in an easy-to-browse format. Because this happens within Facebook, registration to view deals is not necessary, and when a Facebook member ‘likes’ a deal they can Tweet it to their friends as well,” stated Stephen Schramke, founder and CEO of The Daily Deals Agency. “Our daily deal marketplaces provide unprecedented convenience for Facebook members who shop daily deals and the companies that want to engage with them.”

Once you locate your city’s Daily Deals Marketplace page on Facebook, you’ll see an interactive map beneath a window displaying several tabs that list the categories of deals for the day. At first, the map will display what appear to be beacons with numbers inside of them.

As you zoom in to the colored beacons, eventually you will see the familiar red pins on the map. Each of the pins is a hyperlink that you can click to find out what the deal is in that location of the map.

It’s a pretty innovative way to localize your search for deals to your neighborhood or places you plan to be visiting in the near future. As of right now, the service is limited to 40 cities that are, as you can imagine, some of the more metropolitan offerings within the U.S. To find out if your city is included in the marketplace, simply type “(city name) daily deals” in the search bar of your Facebook page and, if your city is a part of Daily Deals Marketplaces, you’ll see a page with the green star with the Uncle Scrooge moneybag as the page’s profile pic. Click on the page and away you go the land of steep savings.

Distimo cites free apps as the leading cause for Android Marketplace reaching the 400K mark as 68% of all apps downloaded on Android devices was free content. As we’ve mentioned before, free apps, otherwise known as the freemium apps, are becoming the emerging business model in app development. The model has boosted the downloads from the Android Market nearly 166% since the beginning of 2011.

Distimo drew up a timeline comparison of Android’s ascent to 400K downloads with Apple’s trajectory to the same milestone. While Apple’s climb has been relatively steady to each subsequent thousand-download marker, Android Marketplace actually took longer to reach the 200K and 300K marks than Apple App Store. However, Android Marketplace took considerably less time to expand from 300K to 400K than Apple App Store, which gives cause to speculation of whether Android will be able to maintain this steep increase as it approaches future milestones.

One reason Distimo offers for the boom in Android app downloads is the application store’s 100,000 active developers publishing on average 4.1 apps a piece. More apps developed make for more apps downloaded, for sure. At any rate, Android Marketplace appears to be on track to outpace Apple App Store in 2012.

So yeah, once you’ve been lampooned with a mocking cultural phenomenon, you’re pretty well-known. You’ve arrived. Android users might have noticed all of this talk of Tebowing because of the ridiculous amount of apps about Tim Tebow in Android Marketplace. Well, there’s only 6 (or 8 ) but that’s still more than all of the NFL’s 2012 Pro Bowl quarterbacks combined (Google tells me that the Pro Bowl is a pretty sweet honor). Android Central explains:

There’s “Tim Tebow.” (with a period). “Tim Tebow” (without a period). “Tim Tebow!” (because dude deserves an exclamation point). The “Tim Tebow Unofficial App.” “Tim Tebow News & Stats.” And our favorite (although likely a little offensive to some), “You-R-Tebow,” in which your face is planted on top of the genuflecting QB’s body.

That’s more than a half-dozen Tim Tebow Android apps. Guess how many the wonder boy Tom Brady has? Two. And his fellow 2012 Pro Bowlers don’t fare much better. Aaron Rodgers (3). Drew Brees (2). Eli Manning (1). And poor Ben Roethlisberger and Philip Rivers don’t even merit a single app. (Not even a search for “meathead” turns up any results for those two.)

It appears that most of these apps give you real news and information about Tim Tebow as well as quotes (because he has said things) and player statistics. Apparently at few people actually like this football player, too, because there’s more than two or three downloads of each of these apps (that You-R-Tebow app is a bit disappointing with how few installs it has, but I guess people like interpretive Tebowing than superimposed Tebowing). So yeah, all you Android users, enjoy the Tebowness for the next couple of weeks before the next non-ironic ironic meme rolls out of the Internet that you can use to impress your friends in the new year.

A Look Inside A Very Controversial Startup

You paid for that mp3 and you don’t want it anymore. Why not sell it? Despite a a legal quagmire that suggests that you shouldn’t, startup bopaboo.com says you can and they’ll help you. 

Still in private beta, bopaboo provides a simple marketplace to buy and sell mp3′s and potentially other digital content. In a test, I was able to upload a random mp3 and have it on sale for 45 cents (a typical price) in seconds. Using a bopaboo provided $1 credit, I bought another mp3 and downloaded it easily.  Seconds later, since it was still in my online locker (bopabox) as well as on my computer, I had the same track back up for sale.

Therein lies the legal rub for the music industry and for bopaboo, the ease with which digital music can be copied.  Music attorney John Strohm looked at the issue…

and concluded that the most obvious illegal act happened when the track was copied and bopaboo did not do the copying. But "is there a way to confirm that the files being sold are obtained legally and that the seller is not retaining copies?," he wrote on Idolator. "If not, is a company truly able to insulate itself from liability through its terms of use, and are consumers willing to take the risk?"

In other words, just like a pawn shop can be prosecuted for selling goods it could reasonably have suspected were stolen, bopaboo might be proven to be facilitate and even encourage the sale of illegally copied tracks and the buyer to have purchased stolen or copied goods.

Bopaboo is not unaware of the legal challenges it is certain to face. "When we began Bopaboo, we set for ourselves not a modest challenge: can we provide consumers a legal method and marketplace to buy and sell digital music?," executive Alex Meshkin wrote on the company’s official blog. The next chapter’s should be interesting.

Comments