Apparently, when users typed in the name of the firm, “Lyonnaise de Garantie”, into Google, AutoComplete offered the term “escroc” associated with the term. “Escroc” means “swindler” or “crook”.

Google explained to the court that it did not influence the results of its AutoComplete technology, but rather the suggestions were the result of other users’ searches. That is to say, other people were searching for results about that insurance company being crooked. Google makes no representation as to whether the statement implied is true, accurate, etc. It simply is there because other people put it there.

As reported on Fierce Government IT:

“The French court in its ruling said Google can, or should, exercise “human control over the functionality” adding that absent a delegation of powers, every company head “is personally responsible for the information content that the company, according to his purpose, issues to the public.” The fine amounts to approximately $65,000.”

The notion of a party trying to hold Google responsible for simply impersonally reflecting the state of things on the Internet is not unfamiliar to Americans. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, now a Republican Candidate for President, has tried to do that himself, with no success.

As Josh Wolford reported last week, Rick Santorum has had a “Google problem“. And, as is the nature of things online, when he tried to fight it directly, it only got worse. Finally he approached Google as a corporation and demanded that the offensive search results be removed. Google refused.

Thanks to details provided by the Google Lat Long blog, what we have is an awesome representation of Google Earth based on Google’s own Liquid Galaxy feature the mapping service. It should be noted Liquid Galaxy was designed with home computer screens in mind, and not displays that feature 100 million pixels across 48 individual displays that are working in unison.

Nevertheless, Google pulled it off, thanks to a partnership with Le Pavillon de l’Arsenal. The development of the display was done in conjunction with JCDecaux, which, according to their Wikipedia profile, ” is the largest outdoor advertising corporation in the world.”

Besides bringing Google Maps to a 48-screen setup, the goal of the project was also to give Parisans a look at what Paris might look like in the future. Google’s blog post explains further:

Late last year, the Paris Center for Architecture and Urbanism: Le Pavillon de l’Arsenal, approached us asking if they could use Google Earth to power a new interactive display highlighting the Paris metropolitan area in 2020 with upcoming buildings in 3D. Naturally, we were excited about the project, especially when they shared that the display would be 40 square meters – posing a fun and unique challenge.

The larger version of Google Earth is controlled by four touchscreens that can both pinch and zoom on the Google Earth image/area being viewed. Be sure and check out the video if you haven’t already, if, for nothing else, the incredible amount of wiring it took for the project to come to life.

The Paris court has ordered eBay to stop using keywords which harm the reputation of the Louis Vuitton brand to promote its sites and will impose penalties of  $1,372 (1,000 euros) for future violations.

"Louis Vuitton welcomes this decision, which confirms established case law that aims to protect the consumer from the illicit use of company trademarks," said Nathalie Moull-Berteaux, Global Intellectual Property Director of Louis Vuitton.

The court also ordered eBay to pay $274,407 (200,000 euros) in damages to Louis Vuitton. eBay has also been ordered to pay $41,161 (30,000 euros) to reimburse the legal costs of Luis Vuitton.

"This case is about the use of Adwords to direct buyers’ listings for authentic goods from eBay sellers," said Yohan Ruso, director general of eBay France.

"This issue is being used by certain Rights Owners as an excuse to retain total control of what people can buy, where they can buy it from, and how much they have to pay. This is why 750,000 Europeans signed a petition to the European Parliament last year, protesting barriers to Internet trade."

The online database will allows users to access information on 22,000 works of art from the Louvre, and provide high-resolution images along with their locations in the museum.

Before today, the Atlas database was only available in French and could be accessed via the Louvre’s website, which receives more than 10 million visits a year.

The launch of the English version of Atlas was started by and funded with a $380,000 grant from the American Friends of the Louvre, a group that was founded in 2002 to strengthen ties between the museum and the American public.  The new version of the database will offer English-speaking visitors in depth information on the Louvre’s large collection.

Atlas was launched in 2003 and offer access to a database of 26,000 of the 35,0000 works on permanent display at the Louvre. Currently 5,500 artists in a variety of media are on the site. Atlas also offers online visitors a virtual album, which allows them to customize their own personal tour of the Louvre.
 

In case you forgot, back when Paris Hilton launched her own special YouTube channel to promote her silly little song, purist YouTubers chimed in with their fears that the site would become too commercial.

Well, it’s too late for that now. It’s a marketer’s world these days, whether you’re selling hotel rooms or politics. But the burning debate surrounding video ads has been over whether pre-roll, mid-roll, or post roll ads were best.

Advertisers like pre-roll ads the best, but they can push the viewer to push the "Stop" button. People rightly assume viewers won’t stick around for post-roll. Mid-roll ads operate on the same premise as TV and radio ads – hook the viewer, make them wait a few seconds, and then get back to the content.

Google and YouTube know their touchy demographic, though. They won’t tolerate any in-video ads for long, if at all. This must be why they’re falling back on old standards: banners and pop-ups.

Yes, pop-ups.

If you have you’re Firefox browser tuned right, you won’t be able to see what Beet.tv’s Andy Plesser is pointing to. So use Internet Explorer or check out Plesser’s Dennis Kucinich video screen shot of the Best Western pop-up ad.

The banner ads seem more contextual. Click to view a Kucinich video and you may see a banner ad for YouTube’s latest baby, CitizenTube.

Though it seems backwards at first for such a Web 2.0 marketplace, it makes a lot of sense to do it this way. YouTubers just won’t tolerate their pure user-generated haven being interrupted constantly by in-vid advertisements.

The pop-ups may get annoying though. It will be interesting to see how the YouTube crowd responds. 

The interesting bit of information was:

Kids today spend 6.5 hours per day with media.

26% of the time they are using more than one device, which amounts to 8.5 hours of media time in a 6.5 hour period.

If you want to go read the whole report venture over to Kaiser Family Foundation and download the monstrous 150+ page report (PDF).

Answer this question, are you getting everything done in a day that you want? Are you not getting it done because you’re some type A personality who won’t settle for second best? Or is more likely are there too many demands on your time and for your attention.

Are you reading your feeds over your morning breakfast? Very few people actually read anything anymore, most of us scan headlines, skim posts, and breeze through emails to try and catch up, and not fall behind with the unending barrage of information thrown at us on a daily basis. When’s the last time you went on vacation or took a few days off, unplugged and went off the net. Did you feel guilty or regret it when you came back and saw several hundred emails? Just like time, attention is becoming a precious commodity.

I don’t have the solution to fix the too much information problem, however I think you need to understand that you are competing for attention and “step up” your game if you’re going to remain a player. Realize you aren’t just competing for keywords or links, you’re competing for mind share and attention first. You need to get in touch with your inner Paris Hilton and stand out from the crowd. Maybe you dislike the spotlight and the attention, but remember the Linkerati aren’t always linking to best resources, but they are linking to the good ones that get their attention. Since I know someone skimmed over that post or read what they wanted to see, I’ll repeat it, you need good content to back up that attention grabbing headline, because you’ll never be Paris Hilton if you aren’t good looking, rich and famous.

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Google News Played by Foreign Sources?

Google News has made a point of linking to authorative sources which is why many blogs aren’t included in the news engine. Google’s algorithm doesn’t seem to apply this formula to its foreign based sites. At the time of this writing there are at least 10 U.S. based stories on their front page of Google News U.S. linking to non U.S. news sources. Possibly more concerning is the quality of the sites being linked to.

For instance…

– The site Playfuls which is based in Cyprus seems to have 5-10 stories linked to on the front page of Google News at all times. They currently are linked as the top story in the entertainment section covering Paris Hilton driving on a suspended license. Amazingly, Playfuls has nearly 8,000 listings in Google News, more than even the New York Times.

– News site SpiritIndia is linked to as the top source for an article called, "Low fat dairy foods may increase infertility risk". This was based on a study by Harvard University.

Interestingly, both of these news sources have a high concentration of Google Adwords on them. SpiritIndia goes as far as hiding the bulk of text in their articles in order to display ads at the top and bottom of stories without the content interfering. Both sites are clearly going after Google News traffic juice to fuel Google Adwords clicks.

Aren’t there any news sites on the scene of these stories. For instance, TMZ.com should be the top link covering the latest Paris Hilton or Britney Spears story … not Aljazeera, Xinhua, or Playfuls.

Don’t forget this is Google … people assume the top links on story groups to be the most relevant link to an article.

I know Google wants to appeal to a worldwide user base but constantly linking to obscure foreign sites rewriting U.S. based stories in order to promote their Google Adwords is probably not a great idea.

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But Google, historically with its ducks in a cleaner row than its competitors, may already know that, considering its recent experiments with mid-roll skipable ads on Google Video. That may be the route the company plans to take with YouTube to soften the loyalist purist aversion to commercial video – that, and the potential to share the wealth.

Even then, it may be that YouTube users talk a big game but won’t actually abandon their beloved over it – when Paris Hilton set up a channel to promote her video, spittle-mouthed protests careened over the comments sections begging the site operators not to dirty their purer, and user-centric, video playground.

After all, the public did forgive cable companies eventually for not delivering on ad-free subscription TV. To quote Stephen King, “everything’s eventual.”

About 32 percent of respondents to Harris’ poll said they watch less TV as a result of YouTube, but that love isn’t unconditional. Seventy-three percent say they would visit the site less if pre-roll video ads started popping up before every clip. If good on their word, that represents 42 percent of online adults overall that visit the site.

It’s not just TV, respondents are choosing YouTube over other things too: other websites (36%); email and social networking (20%); work/homework (19%); playing video games (15%); and watching DVDs (12%). And just wait until you hear someone’s wife on Oprah complain her husband chooses YouTube over her. Twelve percent prefer YouTube over family and friends.

In all, two thirds said they sacrificed other activities to watch amateur silliness. Let the interventions begin.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that users are choosing YouTube over TV network sites, though. Forty-one percent say they’ve watched a video at a TV network site, compared to 42 percent of the rest. And, perhaps by conditioning, they are more tolerant of pre-roll ads at those network sites.

“Indeed, we have seen in previous data that consumers as a rule are not averse to watching commercials online in order to catch an episode of a TV show they would otherwise miss,” said Aongus Burke, Senior Research Manager of Harris Interactive’s Media & Entertainment Practice.

“Yet those who are accustomed to finding and watching everything for free at YouTube may have developed a very different set of expectations for the site.”

Pre-roll, post-roll, mid-roll, it probably won’t matter to advertisers because YouTube hits exactly the right demographic. Usage is greatest among the hardest-to-reach through TV demographic. More than three-quarters (76%) of males 18-24 say they have watched a YouTube video, and 41 percent say they visit frequently.

“We know from some of our other data on teens that YouTube is just as popular with them as it is with young adults,” said Burke. “It has really emerged as a major force in, and problem for, the traditional entertainment industry.

“Not only is YouTube using a lot of their own content to steal the eyeballs they want the most, the site has provided a launching pad to wholly new forms of user-generated video entertainment that are gaining popularity quickly.”

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PlayPhone boasts a wide variety of mobile content, which it has brought to Lycos’s mobile marketplace. The two companies have set up a store, which will allow anyone with a mobile phone to quickly and easily download a virtual cornucopia of games, wallpapers, ringtones and the like.

Yes, now you too can have Paris Hilton’s “Stars are Blind” as your ringtone, as well as a picture of the controversial socialite as your wallpaper, too.

Although, I don’t know why anyone would want to go that route, but that’s beside the point.

The PlayPhone online storefront platform is structured by a subscription model, where consumers purchase ten credits on the website, which can be used to purchase the content, for $9.99 a month. Unused credits roll over to the next month, and wallpapers and ringtones start at just one credit.

Lycos and PlayPhone are currently offering 10 bonus credits with the first month’s subscription fee. The mobile marketplace will be supported and cross-promoted throughout the Lycos network on sites including Angelfire.com, Tripod.com and Gamesville.com.

“We are very focused on providing our community members with the most robust content offerings on the Web, including a top-rate mobile entertainment channel,” said Brian Kalinowski, chief operating officer for Lycos, Inc.

“PlayPhone is the only company to offer a complete package including the technology that drives the online storefront plus a peerless library of games, wallpapers and ringtones.”

“Our goal is to provide Lycosmobile’s visitors with access to the mobile content they crave while giving them the quickest, easiest download experience possible,” said Ron Czerny, chief executive officer at PlayPhone, Inc.

“We have one of the highest download success and satisfaction rates and with our cutting-edge platform, the Lycos online community now has access to the best all-around mobile content offering.”

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

The second installment (here’s the first installment) of what topped Google’s search charts in ’06 comes from the News category. Of all the outrageous stuff that went down this year, news about Paris Hilton and Orlando Bloom was the most sought after by Google News searchers.

Before that Top 10 list, here’s a list of just some of the outrageous stuff that went down in 2006, but didn’t even blip the Google searcher’s radar:

But no. Google searchers wanted Paris Hilton and Orlando Bloom. So, whatever, I give up.

Here’s the Top 10 Google News Searches for 2006:

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