The video-sharing website YouTube has reached a deal to pay royalties to thousands of composers, songwriters and publishers if their track is used as backing music on clips.
Artists such as Lily Allen and Sir Paul McCartney could benefit from the deal after an alliance which includes the Performing Rights Society, has licensed more than 10 million pieces of music for use on YouTube.
The British deal is to avoid the possibility of performers suing Google and follows a similar agreement in America.
The search engine says that companies should not be expected to police the web
Internet companies such as Google should not be responsible for censoring content, one of the web's founding fathers has said.
Vint Cerf, who is credited with inventing one of the internet's key protocols and now holds the position of chief internet evangelist at Google, said companies should comply with existing laws and take down illegal content when requested to do so, but should not actively seek out breaches.
The gPhone rumors, which I discussed in depth a few days ago, have gotten stronger and more credible over the last couple of days with complementary reports on two respected tech blogs that said they had details about Google’s wireless phone plans.
Engadget said Tuesday that Google is poised to announce a wireless phone operating system after the Sept. 3 Labor Day holiday. Citing “a number of trustworthy sources,” Engadget said that the team from Android, a company acquired by Google in 2005, has developed a Linux-based mobile OS that Google is shopping around to various handset makers. Ryan Block, author of the Engadget report, says that he doesn’t think that Google actually wants to make its own phone, but he doesn’t rule it out.
The pace of rumors and leaks around the fabled Google Phone is picking up, suggesting that Google is making a real push to launch something early next year and and is no longer to keep everyone quiet.
Yesterday Crunchgear got confirmation from a senior (and anonymous) HTC exec that they’ve created some twenty devices for Google to test and are shooting for a Q1 2008 launch.
8/28/2007 10:02:38 AM Tuesday morning, Internet search solutions provider Google Inc. (GOOG) revealed a multi-year advertising deal with Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX) news website CNN.com, which would enlist Google's AdSense advertising program to deliver site targeted advertising to CNN.com. The company noted that the collaboration places contextually relevant advertisements alongside CNN.com content, enabling advertisers to target CNN.com specifically and connect with high quality content and traffic. Under the terms of the deal, Google will serve as the exclusive provider of auction-based text advertisements throughout CNN.com.
Germany's Central Council of Jews is considering pressing charges against Google-owned, video-sharing Web site YouTube for hosting videos that promote racial hatred and glorify war.
According to a news report to be aired Monday night by German public broadcaster ARD, right-wing extremists use the free video platform for sharing and viewing propaganda videos that incite to racial hatred.
On one of the other blogs I write, I note that you can now import your Gmail contacts into Twitter.
BTW, only your Gmail contacts. For now.
It’s funny, this Google-Twitter connection. I know of at least two Google alumni who have gone over there. When I step back and take a wider view of the bigger picture, I see a scenario that shows a real collegial closeness between Google and Twitter.
As entrepreneurial as the Twitter folks are, and as strategically acquisitive as the Google folks are, I sense the inevitable. I can’t say when, or for how much, but write this down.
One of the founding fathers of the internet has predicted the end of traditional television.
Vint Cerf, who helped to build the internet while working as a researcher in America, said that television was approaching its "iPod moment".
In the same way that people now download their favourite music onto their iPod, he said that viewers would soon be downloading most of favourite programmes onto their computers.
Survey shows university students don't seem to question Google's ranking system.
University students may be encouraged to be critical but they don't seem to question Google's ranking system, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
The experiment involved 22 undergraduate students (with various majors) from Cornell University in the U.S. It found that overall, the students had an inherent trust in Google's ability to rank results by their true relevance to the query.
Google's vice president of search products, Marissa Mayer, has revealed a jump in mobile access to Google's services during May and June; a time when traffic usually drops off as users go on holiday.
Google Maps has done particularly well, with the iPhone launch increasing traffic by almost 50% at the end of June. Google Maps has a huge hey-look-at-this factor, which quickly drops off once all the user's friends have been impressed (or politely pretended to be), so it remains to be seen how much of that traffic is sustainable.
GOOGLE yesterday began the move to recoup its £875 million investment in YouTube by introducing video advertising on to the phenomenally popular sharing website.
Until now the search engine giant has been cautious in exploiting the commercial value of the site it bought in October 2006.
But from yesterday, YouTube viewers began seeing short "overlay" adverts across the bottom of video clips.
Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize. Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips.
Picasa also makes it a snap to share your pictures – you can email, print photos at home, and make gift CDs. And with the new Web Albums feature, you can upload your photos to the web with just one click. You can even download your friends’ photos directly back to Picasa on your own computer. It’s never been so easy to share photos online. Now with Picasa Web Albums!
Google (GOOG) on Monday night apologized to customers for the way it had planned to shut down its video purchase and rental service. The company offered customers full credit card refunds for any videos they had purchased through the service, and said the purchased videos will continue to be accessible for six months.
ComScore Inc., seeking to give its customers more detailed information on the habits of Web users, changed its method of measuring Internet searches to include queries sent to search engines by other websites.
Under the new system, Google Inc.'s share of queries rose to 55.2% from 46.2% a year earlier. Yahoo Inc.'s share fell to 23.5% from 29.8% a year ago, the biggest decline among the top five search engines, Reston, Va.-based ComScore said Monday.
Internet search engines make money by displaying ads that are related to the user's query, with companies paying a fee when users click on the links. ComScore also said it would start measuring search queries at sites owned by companies such as Amazon.com Inc. and EBay Inc. and would track the Web-search market in as many as 15 countries by the end of the year.
Security researcher Robert Hansen has slammed Google over its response to an email he sent about a vulnerability that could allow hackers to use gmodules.com for phishing attacks. The domain is used by Google to host Google Gadgets.
Google Gadgets are small applications that can be placed on your desktop to show information such as new email, weather, time, photos and news.
So much for Grand Central’s “one number for life” promise. The company is turning off customer phone numbers and giving them new ones following their acquisition by Google last month.
Troy Schneider received such a notice, advising him that in 8 days his Grand Central number would be canceled and that he would be required to immediately start using a new number allocated to him. Judi Sohn received the same message: with no prior warning she had 8 days left on her existing phone number then it would cease to operate.
Upset that advertisements for its competitors are appearing in searches for their trademarks, American Airlines parent AMR has sued Google seeking unspecified damages.
AMR says that ads for competitors' services appear when searching for its trademarked names, such as its “Aadvantage” frequent flyer program. The company says the ads appear alongside ads placed by the company itself in the ‘Sponsored Links’ section.
Google India has started the display of advertisements in Hindi under its contextual Adsense service. Under this contextual service, website publishers earn a portion of the advertising revenue for placing Google sponsored links on their web sites.
Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- VMware Inc. is challenging Google Inc. for Silicon Valley's most-coveted prize: computer- programming talent.
VMware, which went public last week and has a market value a seventh of Google's, is wooing code writers with salaries that recall the dot-com heyday of the late 1990s, headhunters and analysts say. The salaries are more than other software companies in the area are offering, said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research.
Google buys stake in Tianya.cn, China's third largest social network, as it tries to turn around fortunes in the country
Google has taken a stake in Tianya.cn, the Chinese social networking site, broadening its presence in the world’s second-largest online market.
A spokesman for the search company confirmed that Google has invested in Tianya.cn, but declined to give further details. Reports in China suggested the holding could be as much as 60 per cent.
Google has launched a resource center about click fraud, describing 'invalid clicks,' and monitoring tools.
Google Inc. has unveiled a Web site "resource center" focused on the thorny issue of click fraud, which many consider a potential threat to the company's main source of revenue: pay-per-click advertising.
Google developed the new Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center primarily to give its advertisers a single place to find Google's information about click fraud, said Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for trust and safety at Google, on Friday.
And when Jim Killeen, failed Los Angeles actor, found all of them on Google, he decided to make a movie called "Google Me."
It began in August 2006 with a routine self-Google, the sort of ego-surfing that millions perform regularly to assess their status in the digital world.
Google Inc. said Thursday that it had added five universities to its roster of customers for Google Apps, a collection of Web-based programs that compete with Microsoft Corp.'s products.
The University of North Carolina in Greensboro and the University of Texas in San Antonio are among the institutions that will start using the product, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said. Google Apps includes e-mail, word processing and spreadsheet programs.
It's interesting to see the Google browser rumors make their way to the surface again. Netconcepts search strategist Chris Smith recently shared his thoughts on the possibility of the search company entering the browser wars, and several of his points are attention grabbers.
First up is the noted fact that Google had registered a "Gbrowser.com" domain name, which would lead one to believe that some sort of interest exists in such a browser. On the other hand, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said in the past that the company would build a browser only if there were a real user benefit.
So, would there be a user benefit? Yes and no. As Google comes up with more and more applications, the usefulness of a browser of their own increases both for the user, who can then access more intensive applications with higher speed, and Google, who can then deliver these more intensive applications. In other words, the "thin client" model can only go so far.
MICROSOFT ANNOUNCED a cunning plan to increase the storage limit on its Hotmail accounts from 2GB to 5GB. The move comes shortly after Google began offering extra storage on its Gmail accounts, at a price.
Google currently offers 2888MB of storage space for free. The figure on a Gmail account used to be constantly increasing and Google encouraged users never to delete email.
As if its court battle with Viacom wasn't funny enough, YouTube has now asked for testimony from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert - the faux newsmen whose exploits on Viacom's Comedy Central cable TV channel once made for prime viewing material on the video-sharing site.
According to a filing with the New York federal court where YouTube is fighting a $1bn copyright infringement suit from media giant Viacom, the Google-owned video sharer has requested depositions from 32 people, and numbers three and four on the list are Stewart and Colbert. That puts them a few spots below Viacom chief executive officer Philippe Dauman, who's first, and a few spots above executive chairman and American icon Sumner Redstone, who's number eight.
According to an analysis by ACSI E-Business and ForeSee Results, Yahoo! has overtaken Google in American customer satisfaction.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index report delineates information regarding online news and information sites and measures information about search engines and portals. ACSI is based out of the University of Michigan. ForeSee Results sponsors the ACSI e-business report.
Per the ACSI's 100 point measurement scale, Yahoo's customer satisfaction showed a score of 79 which is up by almost 4% this year. Google's customer satisfaction declined by 3.7% to a score of 78 which is their second yearly decline in a row.
Not content with taking on Microsoft Office with its online Docs and Spreadsheet service, Google has now included StarOffice in its free download suite.
StarOffice is, curiously, the paid-for cousin of the open-source OpenOffice, which has been selling for around $70 on Sun's website. StarOffice includes extra features, fonts and templates over OpenOffice. Sun also offers customers three free support calls during the first 60 days of ownership.
Google has launched a new service that will allow users to expand their Picasa and Gmail storage limits.
Currently, the two free services offer 1GB and 2.8GB of storage space respectively.
Users who run out of storage space will now be able to purchase additional space from Google. The extra space will start at $20 for 6GB and sell as a yearly subscription service.
It's not often that Google kills off one of its services, especially one which was announced with much fanfare at a big mainstream event like CES 2006. Yet Google Video's commercial aspirations have indeed been terminated: the company has announced that it will no longer be selling video content on the site. The news isn't all that surprising, given that Google's commercial video efforts were launched in rather poor shape and never managed to take off. The service seemed to only make the news when embarrassing things happened.
Yet now Google Video has given us a gift—a "proof of concept" in the form of yet another argument against DRM—and an argument for more reasonable laws governing copyright controls. How could Google's failure be our gain? Simple. By picking up its marbles and going home, Google just demonstrated how completely bizarre and anti-consumer DRM technology can be. Most importantly, by pulling the plug on the service, Google proved why consumers have to be allowed to circumvent copy controls.
MUCH of Sydney's city centre as it appears in the satellite images on Google Maps Australia has been fuzzed out, just weeks before the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit.
Google says the imagery was downgraded as a result of a "commercial issue" with a supplier, but there is speculation it was done at the request of police in order to minimise the risk of a terrorist attack during the September summit, where Sydney will host 21 world leaders including the US President, George Bush.
First INQpressions OK but has quirks to be ironed out
SEARCH GIANT Google has begun promoting its paid storage space to users of its webmail service, GMail, starting at $20/year for six gigabytes.
GMail was introduced with the premise that you will never have to delete mail, but now Google has started peddling its "extended storage" plans to heavy users like this scribbler, in other words "e-mail hoarders". But I don't blame Google as, for some of us, our GMail inboxes are big giant "archives in the sky". OK, "cloud" as Voles put it.
Not to be outdone on 'green,' Google says white-background home page does not waste more energy than a black one
Not to be outdone in the "green" category, Google says that the white background on its home page doesn't waste more energy than a black background would.
In a post on its blog titled "Is black the new green?" Google argues that making its homepage black won't reduce energy consumption, as suggested by the search site Blackle.
SAN FRANCISCO: Google is giving the subjects of news reports a way to comment on articles written about them.
The company this week introduced an experimental feature on its Google News Web site in the United States to allow any person mentioned in a news report that is linked there to submit a written response.
A Google employee then must verify the authenticity of the e-mail response. Methods include independently tracking down the subject's contact information and calling that person directly, or checking the author's e-mail address and phone number against information on a company or organization Web site.
An adult photo publisher Thursday sued Microsoft for copyright infringement, saying the software giant's MSN Search engine displays thumbnails of pirated versions of the company's copyrighted pictures in search results, and that those results include links to the full-size pirated versions.
Never mind that a federal appeals court less than three months ago tossed out an earlier victory in a similar case that the company – California publisher Perfect 10, Inc. -- brought against Google and Amazon.
"Microsoft is showing tens of thousands of extremely valuable celebrity images, along with Perfect 10 images, without authorization, which it obtains from hundreds if not thousands of pirate websites," Norm Zada, president of Perfect 10, said in a statement.
So did an audience member at the Seoul Digital Forum back in May when he asked Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt to define Web 3.0. Schmidt’s first response was that Web 2.0 is nothing more than “a marketing term” - which I partly agree with. I think Web 2.0 used in the mass media to create hype is a marketing term. But when I consider Web 2.0 from a user’s perspective (gotta watch this video as well), I can honestly see the difference from the web of yesteryear.
Eight more parties join in the copyright lawsuit against YouTube and Google
Google has drawn significant heat from copyright holders of materials uploaded by users to the YouTube video site. A pending class action lawsuit against Google claims YouTube deliberately encourages copyright infringement.
FORTUNE MAGAZINE has penned an article which suggests that Google is going the way of Microsoft and becoming too arrogant over the recent FCC auction of radio spectrum.
The search engine outfit lobbied hard in Washington to dictate terms on the auction so that it can take its profitable targeted advertising beyond PCs and inject it into any other medium it can find. Its goal appears to be cellphones, Fortune said.
Google has added four more cities to its Maps street view: San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston and Orlando, Fla. San Diego is getting the same high-resolution imagery treatment that Google gives San Francisco; I'm not sure why. I asked Google about this and this is the response I got:
"As you probably know, Street View imagery is gathered by Google and a third-party data provider. Imagery in San Diego, like San Francisco, was gathered by Google. Our focus is on providing coverage for as many cities as possible; I don't have any additional details about our imagery collection schedule at the moment, but we will announce new roll outs on the Lat Long blog."
Google Desktop gives you easy access to information on your computer and from the web. It's a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, computer files, music, photos, chats and web pages that you've viewed. By making your computer searchable, Google Desktop puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails and bookmarks. It makes searching your computer as easy as searching the web with Google.
Google Desktop doesn't just help you search your computer; it also helps you gather new information from the web with Sidebar, a new desktop feature that shows you your new email, weather and stock information, personalized news and RSS/Atom feeds, and more. Sidebar is personalized automatically, without any manual configuration required (though you can certainly make your own customizations if you want to).
We've also improved your desktop search experience. With Quick Find, you can now launch applications and see search results as you type without even opening a browser. We've also extended our Outlook integration, so you can search Google Desktop with the Outlook Toolbar and see results within Outlook itself. Finally, you can search even more stuff, including your Gmail, files on network drives, many Outlook data types (including Contacts, Tasks, Calendar, Notes and Journal) and MSN Messenger chats. And if you yearn for even stronger security, you can encrypt your entire index.
Improved Sidebar and Google Gadgets. Add Google Gadgets to customize your desktop and Sidebar, Developers: Create and share your own gadgets.
San Francisco (August 7, 2007) Open Invention Network (OIN), the company formed to spur innovation and protect the Linux System, today extended the Linux Ecosystem with the signing of Google as its first end-user licensee. By becoming a licensee, Google has joined the growing list of companies that are leveraging the Open Invention Network to share Linux–based intellectual property.
Patents owned by Open Invention Network are available royalty-free to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System. This enables companies to continue to make significant corporate and capital expenditure investments in Linux – helping to fuel economic growth. By developing a web of Linux developers, distributors, sellers, resellers and end-users that license its patent portfolio, Open Invention Network is creating a supportive and shielded ecosystem to ensure the growth and adoption of Linux.
Google Inc has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its cell phone project and is courting U.S. and European mobile operators according to The Wall Street Journal.
Google has also developed prototype phones and talked over technical specifications with manufacturers including LG Electronics, but finally gone with Taiwan’s High Tech Computer (HTC) Corp to design a Linux software-based phone for launch in the first quarter of 2008.
The future of wireless surfing could soon heat up even more...with Google trying to get a chunk of the wireless pie.
"What's at stake here is the future of the internet and how accessible it's going to be to the largest number of people possible. Right now we think of the internet going to our home by DSL or cable, but the future is wireless," explained Google VP Chris Sacca.
What Google wants, and is willing to spend several billion dollars to get, is a way to compete with wireless giants like AT&T, for what is essentially undeveloped property in cyberspace.
There was an old ad campaign that went something like, "It's not nice to fool with mother nature." And I believe the perpetrator of this crime was quickly zapped by lightening.
Google's rumored Google phone, which will offer consumers free cell phone service, subsidized by placing text or voice advertising on the phone, puts this saying in mind.
To most Americans, their cell phone is a personal device that they do not want messed with.
It is hard enough, especially for those of us who remember the old monopolistic days of Ma Bell, when phones just worked, to get used to lousy cell phone service, let alone listening to ads every time we dial.
Help us imagine how an email message travels around the world. Take a look at the collaborative video we started, and then film what happens next. We'll rotate a selection of the clips we receive on this page, and add the best ones to the video. The final video will be featured on the Gmail homepage and seen by users worldwide.
All it takes is a video camera, the Gmail M-velope, and some creativity.
Submit your clip by August 13th, 2007 to be considered for the final collaborative video.
Google's mysterious poking around in the wireless communications space is spawning rumors of an advertising-supported smartphone carrying the Google brand. The rumors have been given some support, however, by a Wall Street Journal article that says the search and advertising giant is courting wireless service providers for the would-be device. For its part, Google is saying very little.
The persistent rumors surrounding a Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) "Gphone" have been stoked again, this time by a Wall Street Journal article that reports that Google is courting wireless operators to provide an ad-supported mobile phone service to Google-customized handsets.
The Journal article does not directly identify sources of this information, only that it's coming from "people familiar with the plans" and "who have been briefed on it."
A new report claims that a group of Japanese music, film and television representatives held a press conference in Tokyo yesterday to complain about copyright violations on YouTube. One composer, Hideki Matsutake (pictured right ), is quoted as saying, “YouTube has to stop how it runs its site and get rid of the illegal clips. We want them to reset the service… There is no middle ground. We demand that all copyrighted material be removed immediately.”
There are also comments from a member of Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers, the group Google has attempted to appease since last year regarding the YouTube copyright issue.
If you live and commute in a congested metropolitan area, odds are you live by the traffic updates on your AM radio. Today, Google bolstered its Google Maps with a traffic gauge that shows you the status of local routes in over 30 cities--including Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco. speeds directly on the map.
If the traffic reporting is available for your city, you'll see a stoplight pin-cushioned into your map. Click on that to zoom into a view of the traffic conditions. Major arteries turn red, yellow, and green, to reflect how the current traffic is moving.
