Google is getting into the entertainment delivery business this fall with 'Family Guy' creator Seth MacFarlane in a deal to distribute via Google AdSense, Web-only episodes of series "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy."

The series will only be available on the Internet and will be promoted by Google. However, unlike Google's traditional AdSense text and banner ads, the show Cavalcade will be promoted through relatively unknown Google service called Google Content Network. Using AdSense video clips Cavalcade promos will be embedded on thousands of Web sites frequented by Family Guy fans (read males under 30), according to a report by the New York Times.

Read more: pcworld.com 

Labels: cartoon, Family Guy, rss, Web

You can now access real-time last sale prices from both the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Google Finance, Google.com and other search properties.

And of course it's free - there are no subscription fees or registration.

More: finance.google.com 

Labels: finance, quotes, stock

Google Media Server is a new gadget for Google Desktop.

Watch movies, music and photos on TV.

This gadget requires Google Desktop 1 or above.

Download: Google Media Server

Labels: Desktop, Media, Media Server, TV

Washington (dbTechno) - Google has announced the release of a brand new application called Google Media Server, which allows users to play videos, photos, music, and more from their PC, right on their TV.

The Google Media Server has the ability to hook up with any device that supports Universal Plug and Play, or UPnP.

This means that the Google Media Desktop will be able to hook up with devices such as video game consoles Sony PS3, as well as the Microsoft Xbox 360.

Read more: dbtechno.com 

Labels: entertainment, Gadgets, Media Server, TV

YouTube's huge lead in market share over other online video sites continues to get bigger, even as the over all video viewing market continues a decline. According to traffic analysts Hitwise, YouTube now sees 75.43% of traffic to the online video category; that's up 26% from it's May 2007 marketshare of 59.95%. The nearest competitor is still MySpaceTV, which was down a whopping 44% to 9% marketshare. (Full chart of top 5 sites below.)

In April we reported that YouTube's dominance in online video was bigger than Google's dominance in search (67%). The new Hitwise numbers raise a number of questions for us.

Full article: readwriteweb.com 

Labels: market, video, youtube

The new YouTube homepage answers the question "What should I watch today?" by recommending videos based on what you've previously watched, what your friends have "favorited" or rated, and more.

It's fully customizable so you can tailor it exactly to your taste. You'll have to be signed into your account to use this feature. Also this month, we added a search-suggest feature to the YouTube search box, so now you get query suggestions as you type. By offering these suggestions, we save you several keystrokes, reduce spelling errors, and improve the overall search experience on YouTube.

More: youtube.com 

Labels: video, Web, youtube

Microsoft couldn't get all of Yahoo, but it can still get some Yahoo employees

Microsoft may not have been able to complete the deal to buyout Yahoo, but the company has now launched a recruiting campaign aimed at Yahoo's engineers.

"There is just great search talent here," Microsoft spokesperson Doug Free said during an interview.

Microsoft has several offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, where it is now showing a renewed interest in adding office space and employees. Microsoft already has offices in San Francisco and Mountain View -- about one million square feet of office space -- and 2,000 employees.

Microsoft would have been able to add 2 million square feet of office space and an additional 5,000 employees to its Bay Area roster.

The fallout from the failed Microsoft deal has seen a number of Yahoo executives flee the company over the past several months. The Mountain View-based company also laid off 1,000 employees in February.

Read more: dailytech.com 

Labels: engineer, microsoft, Yahoo

We’ve got multiple sources at both Yahoo and Microsoft telling us that official talks are back on between the two companies. But we’re hearing something different than CNET - the talks are about a full buyout again, not a sweetened search-only deal.

The information we have is thin, but what one source is saying that Microsoft is talking a price lower than the $33 they were offering when the talks disintegrated in May. Given Yahoo’s recent share price (it’s below $21 today), and the fact that just about everyone other than their board and top execs are publicly screaming for a deal, I’m not surprised.

Full article: techcrunch.com 

Labels: microsoft, Yahoo

Boston (dbTechno) - Google is getting ready to unveil a new tool that will allow them to measure Internet usage.

The report comes out of The Wall Street Journal, which stated that Google will announce the new tool as early as Tuesday morning.

The idea behind the new tool is to help out advertisers in a big way.

Read more: dbtechno.com 

Labels: freeware, Internet, tool

Yahoo Inc. on Monday announced a new "Smart Ads" feature for its HotJobs board, along with a company profile feature that showcases employment brands using rich media and company-specific content.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) said the features are designed to help recruitment advertisers meet their hiring and branding objectives by delivering more relevant job listings to candidates.

"Recruiters can leverage Yahoo's innovations in targeting -- behavioral targeting, contextual targeting, career interest, location, and HotJobs' R.E.A.L. search ranking system -- to find the right candidates," the company said.

Read more: bizjournals.com 

Labels: HotJobs, smart ads, Yahoo

According to the Wall Street Journal (which charges $90 per year to access full articles), Google’s Android plans aren’t moving quite as fast as the company had hoped.

Android chief Andy Rubin told the Wall Street Journal, “This is where the pain happens. We are very, very close.”

The slowdown appears to be a result of copious reams of red tape from carriers coupled with constant changes to the Android platform frustrating developers.

Read more: crunchgear.com 

Labels: Android, developers, mobile, phone, platform, Software

 

Labels: summer

Yahoo will introduce two new e-mail domains for its users. The new domains, Ymail and Rocketmail, will be available sometimes during Thursday.

Yahoo officials said that due to the growing number of users, creating a name for an e-mail account on Yahoo Mail has become quite a complicated task.

Instead of simple e-mail addresses like myname@yahoo.com , the users should use various combinations. In order to ease the life of its customers, Yahoo has decided to expand the domain names of its free webmail.

The name Rocketmail was acquired by Yahoo in 1997 when the company bought Four11, which was Hotmail’s main competitor. Unveiled later that year, Yahoo Mail was based on Rocketmail engine.

The users of Rocketmail have kept their e-mail accounts after the acquisition, but Yahoo has blocked the new sign-ups. Ymail is a domain that is already well-known for the users of Yahoo Mobile services.

Full story: efluxmedia.com 

Labels: mail, Rocketmail, Yahoo, Ymail

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) said the co-founders of its online photo-sharing Web site Flickr are leaving, marking two more executive departures from the troubled Internet company.

Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield - the husband-and-wife co-founders of Flickr - are leaving, Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Wong said in an email. Fake's last day at Yahoo was June 13, while Butterfield's final day will be July 12.

Fake and Butterfield sold the photo-sharing company - which lets people upload digital pictures and share them on the Web - to Yahoo in 2005. In April, Yahoo added video technology to the site, allowing users to share short video clips.

Kakul Srivastava, currently senior director of product management for Flickr, will replace Butterfield as general manager, Yahoo spokesperson Terrell Karlsten said. Sara Wood, who recently joined the Flickr team, will serve as senior director of product management, Karlsten added.

Read more: cnn.com 

Labels: co-founder, Flickr, Yahoo

'It may seem counterintuitive, but ...'

Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang has defended his company's decision to eschew Microsoft once and for all by partnering with Google.

Shortly after the deal closed on Thursday, Yang posted an article to Yahoo's Yodel Anecdotal corporate blog stating his case on why joining forces with a former rival is the right move for the company.

"We have done something important today. We are directly addressing one key element in Yahoo's strategy to lead the way in search and display," wrote Yang.

"I believe it puts us on a faster track to creating stockholder value and strengthening our advertising leadership."

Under the deal, Yahoo will allow Google to sell and display AdWords advertisements alongside Yahoo search results.

Read more: vnunet.com 

Labels: Jerry Yang, microsoft

Need to get access to real scientific data but having trouble finding any relevant search results in Google? That could be because a lot of the science and technology documents on the web aren't typically indexed by major search engines. They're a part of the "deep web," the repository of web pages usually generated by database-driven sites that search engines' spiders can't access.

One resource to help open up the deep web for scientific research is WorldWideScience. This portal allows you to query more than 200 million documents not typically indexed by today's search engines.

WorldWideScience is a science portal developed and maintained by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), an element of the Office of Science within the U.S. Department of Energy. The WorldWideScience Alliance, a partnership consisting of participating member countries provides the governance structure for the WorldWideScience.org portal.

Full article: readwriteweb.com 

Labels: Science, search, stuff, Web

Google announced an interesting development for Google Docs last week. They have issued an update to include PDF support, adding one of the most popular online documentation and form format to their free suite.

The addition at this point does not include editing or saving PDFs, only the ability to read PDFs and paste into fields. However, it's a jump from having no PDF support at all.

Read more: techspot.com 

Labels: docs, PDF, Spreadsheets

Logo: koutuk.blogspot.com

2008 may be the year that Google’s innocence ends, as media and governments start to cast a less forgiving eye at the behavior of the company that controls 60% of the search market and perhaps as much as half of all online advertising revenue.

In 2007 the Federal Trade Commission opened an antitrust investigation into Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. The deal was eventually approved, although the EU took a lot longer to give their stamp of approval (The EU in general isn’t a fan of Google).

This year, though, things might not go so well. Politicians are lining up to question Google’s recent search marketing deal with Yahoo. The deal was clearly structured to try to slide past regulators, but it isn’t clear that this time Google will get a pass.


Full article: techcrunch.com 

Labels: advertising, DoubleClick, search, Yahoo

And I was starting to feel unfulfilled by the stuff coming out of Google's labs. Its senior policy director, Richard Whitt, says that they're cooking up software that'll tell you if your ISP is screwing with or slowing down your connection because you're hogging too much bandwidth, and what exactly they're doing to it. (There's already some available, BTW, since Whitt didn't mention a release date.) But it's not necessarily because they believe willy nilly in net neutrality.

Google just thinks that you have a right to know what your ISP is doing. If your ISP won't tell you, you should have the tools to figure out.


Read more: gizmodo.com 

Labels: Connction, ISP, tools

 

Labels: Father's Day

Hearing the call of duty to fix the online ad business, Schmidt comments on publisher fears and a broad array of issues

We're not your enemy, we're your friend -- that's the message Google's Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said media companies should take home about Google. In an in-depth interview with Ken Auletta, The New Yorker's media reporter, Schmidt portrayed that by "fixing" the advertising system and bringing offline advertising online, Google is bringing advertising into the twenty first century and is doing what it takes to save advertising.

Schmidt reaffirmed his claim that Google wasn't out to just make money, but was trying to promote a greater good. He states that concerning publisher's problems with advertising, "It's a huge moral imperative to help here."

Full article: dailytech.com 

Labels: Eric Schmidt, Internet, Media

Yahoo has agreed a deal with Google which will see Yahoo use the search engine giant's advertising technology.

Under the agreement, Google ads will appear alongside some Yahoo search results in the US and Canada.

The announcement came after Yahoo said it had failed to persuade Microsoft to renew its bid to buy all of the internet company.

Recent talks concluded after Yahoo rejected a Microsoft proposal to buy just its online search business.

Full article: news.bbc.co.uk 

Labels: advertising, share, technology, Yahoo

'A whole new industry' could be created around video advertising on the web, Google said, but it's not sure how

Google has said that it is still unsure how to make money from YouTube, the enormously popular video-sharing website it owns, but hopes to be able to do so soon.

Eric Schmidt, the search giant's chief executive, said it "seemed obvious" that Google should be able to generate "significant amounts of money" from YouTube, on which hundreds of millions of videos are watched every day, but that as yet it hadn't figured out how to go about it.

He also rejected suggestions that Google dominated the web, saying that it was outperformed by Yahoo!, the internet portal, in some areas, and added that in any case the company's goal was not "to monetise everything".

In an interview with The New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, Mr Schmidt was cautious about how profitable YouTube might be, but said he believed the site could lead to "the creation of a whole new industry." He said his optimism was based on two facts: "We know people are watching it" and "We have the luxury of time to invest."

Full article: timesonline.co.uk 

Labels: advertising, video, youtube

Google co-founder Sergei Brin has put down $5 million toward a flight to the international space station with the company that has sent millionaires and even a billionaire into orbit.

Virginia-based Space Adventures announced the identity of the future space traveler as well as its vision for the next decade of space tourism at a New York news conference today.

As part of the deal, Brin made a $5 million investment in Space Adventures, which would secure him a spot on the future Russian Soyuz flight to the station. The price tag for such a trip has run from $20 million (or less) to $35 million (or more). Thus, if Brin goes through with the purchase, he'll be paying millions more in the years to come.

Full article: msnbc.msn.com 

Labels: Sergey Brin, Soyuz, space

Transmission revamp

Google Gears now works in Mozilla’s upcoming Firefox 3 web browser.

The company hasn’t made an official announcement as yet but the Gears code site lists Firefox 3 support for release candidate two. A Google spokesman also confirmed it to El Reg today.

Originally dubbed Google Gears, the online apps project had its moniker truncated last month because the internet giant wants it to become a Silicon Valley orgy love-in for cloud computing-obsessed web programmers.

Full story: theregister.co.uk 

Labels: browser, Firefox, Gears, Mozilla

Google and Salesforce can’t seem to get enough of each other: over a series of announcements the companies have aligned their product strategies more and more closely over time. Now the companies are planning something new together, to be announced by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Google VP Engineering Vic Gundotra at Salesforce’s upcoming Tour de Force developer event on June 23 in Santa Clara.

A year ago Salesforce integrated adwords tracking into their platform. Then two months ago we heard rumors that the companies were planning on deeper product integration - it turned out to be the complete integration of Google Apps (Docs, Calendar, Gmail, and Gtalk) and Salesforce’s online enterprise apps.

Full article: techcrunch.com 

Labels: ads, ADWords, Salesforce

Google, Looking to Monetize Video Site, Is Letting Content Producers Sell Advertising on Their Branded Channels

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Google has struggled to find the best way to monetize YouTube. The latest idea: Let content creators sell ads.

Professional content producers -- those who come equipped with their own ad-sales teams -- are now able to sell advertising on their YouTube channels. That includes the click-to-expand overlays that run across the bottoms of YouTube videos and display units on the page that hosts the video player. The revenue is split between the content creator and YouTube, just as it would be if YouTube sold the ads.

Full story: adage.com 

Labels: ads, Adsense, advertisements, advertisers, advertising, video, youtube

Gmail Labs is set on accepting all available feedback from its users in order to upgrade its service with new and exciting features. As a first step in this direction, the company launched 13 new settings which will permit users to use them in any way they like and then directly tell engineers their thoughts on possible improvement.

For now, the developments are available in the United Kingdom and in the United States and they represent a significant change in the company’s strategy. Up until this point Google’s products were tested by its staff for several months before their public release.

Read more: efluxmedia.com 

Labels: e-mail, Gmail, labs

We're happy to announce a new way to add interactive commentary to your videos -- with Video Annotations. With this feature, you can add background information, create branching ("choose your own adventure" style) stories or add links to any YouTube video, channel, or search results page -- at any point in your video.

Uploaders have control over creating and editing an unlimited number of annotations on their videos. To start annotating, first make sure you have videos uploaded into your account. Log in, then go to view one of your videos. On the Video page, click the blue "Edit Annotations" button to the right of the video.

As you play your video, you can insert commentary by adding speech bubbles, notes and highlight boxes anywhere you want. You can also use the menu on the left to save a draft, delete commentary, edit start/stop times or add links to your annotations. Once you save the final version, click "Publish" to reveal your annotated video to other users. (Note: Video Annotations are shown by default, but the viewer can turn them off while watching a video through the "Menu" button on the bottom right of the video player).

Read more: youtube.com 

Labels: beta, video, youtube

 

Labels: Birthday, painter, paintings, Velázquez

Google's latest addition to Gmail will let users play with features that aren't quite ready for primetime - and decide what stays and what goes.

Gmail devotees anxious to get their hands on the latest and greatest that Google engineers have to offer will be happy to hear about the latest news out of Google: they’re providing a porthole to the inside. The newly created Gmail Labs will give Gmail users a chance to play with the experimental features before they get an official nod from Google, and give Gmail engineers to test their strangest creations on a willing public.

Read more: digitaltrends.com 

Labels: Gmail, labs, mail

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – NASA and Google Inc. Wednesday announced plans to develop a new high-technology campus at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

Under the terms of the 40-year agreement, Google will lease 42.2 acres of unimproved land in NASA Research Park at Ames to construct up to 1.2 million square feet of offices and research and development (R&D) facilities in a campus-style setting.

“With this new campus, we will establish a new era of expanded collaboration with Google that will further enhance our Silicon Valley connections,” said Ames Director S. Pete Worden. “This major expansion of NASA Research Park supports NASA’s mission to lead the nation in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.”

“This long-term lease agreement is a key component of Google’s strategy for continued growth in Silicon Valley,” said David Radcliffe, Google’s vice president of real estate and workplace services. “We believe this collaboration between Google, NASA and the city of Mountain View is emblematic of the mutually beneficial partnerships that can be created between the public and private sectors.”

Read more: Nasa.gov 

Labels: Center, NASA, research, space

With gTranslate you can translate any text in a webpage just by selecting and right-clicking over it. The extension uses the Google translation services to translate the text.

Requirements: Firefox 1.0 to 2.0.0

Download: gTranslate 0.5.1 

Labels: Firefox, gTranslate, translate

 

Labels: balloon, Flight

On a modest but significant scale, Google is sharing with its customers some of the control it wields over the search market.

As countless search-engine-optimization consultants can attest, Google maintains tight control over the parameters that rank the results of Internet searches. Google's power can be terrific for those who come out on top and a torment for those who rank lower.

But expectations are different for a Google service that lets Web site operators pay to use the company's search technology on their own properties. For those customers, Google now is sharing some control over the knobs and levers that govern search results.

Google launched the service in July under the name Custom Search Business Edition and expanded internationally in November. Now it's got the more palatable name Google Site Search, said Nitin Mangtani, product manager for enterprise and small-business search at Google.

Full article: webware.com 

Labels: admin, search, sites, Web