A couple of major publishers are siding with (or at least edging towards) Rupert Murdoch in the News Corp./Google content dispute. MediaNews Group and A.H. Belo execs have said that they're interested in keeping Google away from parts of their sites.
Let's talk about MediaNews Group first. It operates 54 daily newspapers with a combined daily circulation of 2.4 million. Corresponding websites are part of the mix, as are a TV station and some radio stations.
Google is now offering some new formats for search ads. They have already been testing them in the U.S., so there is a chance you have already seen some of them if you live here.
Some of them include videos. Some include maps. Some include multiple links for different landing pages. Some of the new ads include product images with corresponding links and prices. Some actually offer comparison shopping functionality.
Take a look at some examples:
It has been discovered that Google is now showing AdSense ads inside Google Earth. While it is not that surprising to see Google putting ads on another one of its properties, it has raised a few eyebrows, given that Google Earth is a desktop application.
After all is said and done Rupert Murdoch may still be seen as the sly old fox that really knew best. Many bloggers and journalists have pounded the insanity of Murdoch's suggestion that News Corp publications might strike an exclusive indexing deal with Bing and delist itself from Google's search engine.
Google TV Ads is about to become a significantly more powerful marketing system. A new pact with TiVo will allow Google to gather (and then pass on) very precise data about which commercials are being viewed, and even (to a lesser degree) who is doing the watching.
Google has opened up the Chrome Extension Gallery (beta) to developers. This means that anyone can now upload their extensions. Google says it is making the upload flow available early so developers have time to publish their extensions ahead of Google's full launch.
The companies behind search engines sometimes try to attract more traffic by advertising. Establishing a partnership is another strategy, as is improving the actual search results. Microsoft might be ready to try something a little different, however, as a new report's indicated that the company is interested in making Google's results worse.
In this day and age, you pretty much can't ignore mobile users. The rate at which consumers are accessing the web via mobile devices is growing rapidly, largely thanks to the increasing popularity and production of smartphones.
Just having a mobile site isn't even enough. Sure, it's a great start, but you have to start thinking about a mobile site just as you would a regular site. Can people find it? Just because you have a good ranking in Google does not mean that your mobile site has a good ranking in Google's mobile search engine, or is even indexed at all.
Update: Google has now announced that it is expanding availability of Google Maps Navigation to devices running Android 1.6 (Donut) and higher, such as the T-Mobile myTouch 3G and the G1.
Google's Android is growing like a weed. Perhaps even a weed that's been fertilized and watered as if it was a desirable flower. A new report from AdMob lays out some impressive usage statistics and hints that there's much more to come.
Here are two eye-opening stats of a somewhat broad-spectrum nature: "Worldwide requests from Android devices increased 5.8 times since April 2009." Also, "In the US, Android has 20% share of smartphone traffic, up from 7% six months before . . ."
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