Beware of Google Agent 007
Google is so good at what it does that it actually uncovers illegal acts and helps bring perpetrators to justice. Well that may be a bit of a stretch but in the “is that really news department” is an incident where the roving Google camera caught a Canadian tree-killer in the act. As a result, the parties that were committing “treeicide” (not a real word, I know but this is a blog, remember) may find themselves facing some significant fines.
Forget about all of those ubiquitous police surveillance cameras in your city: the new sheriff in town is that shifty Google Maps camera wheeling through your neighborhood.
Recently, a property owner in Canada was charged with illegal removal of trees after a Google camera helped capture the evidence, according to CanWest News Service.
Last May in Vancouver, Margaret Burnyeat allegedly hired a company to remove 23 cedar, cypress and evergreen trees from two adjacent lots she owned. Neighbors alerted the police, who found some stumps that hadn’t yet been removed.
Luckily for the city, one of Google’s Street View cameras — strapped to cars and driven through neighborhoods to photograph high-resolution, 360-degree images that are then linked to Google’s online mapping tool — caught some of the culprits in action.
The picture that brought them down
What is ironic about all of this is the adversarial relationship that exists between the roving Google camera and the Canadian government. Things between the two have been a little rough in the past.
Ironically, Canadian authorities have been some of the most resistant to the presence of Google’s controversial cameras in streets. The company launched its Street View service in parts of the U.S. and Canada in 2007 and have since expanded to 12 other countries.
But after the Canadian privacy commissioner and others raised questions about whether the roaming cameras were legal, because Google collected identifiable images of people without their consent, the company implemented an automated feature that blurs faces and license plates. The company will also consider removing some images from its service upon request from the public or governments.
So what’s the takeaway here? Be careful what you do because you never know when Google Agent 007 is looking. He seeks justice under the guise of recording locations without your permission. Isn’t he slick?
Why Aardvark’s Social Search Engine Might Suffer from “Participation Fatigue”
Let me ask you something, are you happy with the search results you receive from Google?
If you were to guess how often Google gives you exactly the result you were searching for–on your first search query–what would that look like? 40% of the time? 60%? 90%?
I’d say that for me, Google gives me precisely what I was looking for, less than 50% of the time–at least out of the gate. I find I have to refine my query before I get the desired set of search results.
Would I be better off asking my network of friends? Social search engine Aardvark’s new research paper suggests that might be the case:
70.4% of answers were deemed to be ‘good’, with 14.1% as ‘OK’ and 15.5% were rated as bad.
So, if you stretch it here, almost 85% of Aardvark users were satisfied with the answers provided to them by their network of peers. That’s not too shabby, right?
It’s even more impressive when you consider that Aardvark users tend to use the service for those really complex search queries:
The average query length was 18.6 words (median of 13) versus 2.2-2.9 words on a standard search engine…98.1% of questions asked on Aardvark were unique, compared with between 57 and 63% on traditional search engines.
Combined with the revelation that more people use Aardvark on their cell phones than their desktops–which some predict is the future hot area for search–and you could easily surmise that Aardvark is poised to kick Google’s butt.
Ah, but this wouldn’t be a Marketing Pilgrim post if there wasn’t at least a little cynicism. 
For Aardvark, its Achilles heel is something I’ve dubbed "participation fatigue."
You see, what happens when the novelty of Aardvark wears thin? What happens when the site’s user base grows beyond the current 90,361? What happens when the thinly sliced group of users that answer questions, get overwhelmed and start dropping out?
86.7% of Aardvark users had been asked by Aardvark to answer a question, of whom 70% actually looked at the question and 38% could answer. 50% of all members had answered a question (including 75% of all users who had ever actually interacted with the site), though 20% of users accounted for 85% of answers.
Google doesn’t suffer from participation fatigue–it’s spiders and algorithms never grow weary of answering your questions. Aardvark’s future is bright, but the dark cloud on the horizon is its reliance on humans. Humans that have a tendency to get bored easily and move on. If it can overcome that, then it might have a shot.
Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!
Google to Open Online Software Sales Effort
Google continues to reach into the application side of the web wholeheartedly while dabbling in the device area as well. It is likely that Google is smart enough to see what happened to the PC industry when it was finally realized that “It’s the application, stupid!”. As a result it looks like Google is readying another opportunity to get deeper into the application game while turning the corner from being totally “free” to generating revenue from their efforts. Imagine that. Revenue.
The Wall Street Journal reports
Google Inc. is preparing to launch a store selling online business software that integrates with its Web services, according to people briefed by the company, enlisting software developers in its battle against Microsoft Corp.
These people said the store will sell business software designed by outside developers to integrate and add capabilities to Google Apps, such as enhanced security features or the ability to import contacts. Google Apps provides Web-based email, word-processing and spreadsheet functions.
Google could announce the new store—a revamped version of its Solutions Marketplace site that features third-party programs—as soon as March, they said.
The revenue side of this is that Google would so a revenue share with the developers thus getting a piece of everything sold through this online marketplace. Google is officially shying away from an actual announcement but it makes sense that they would head in this direction. The goal is to take a bite out of Microsoft’s lead in this area for the enterprise. The smallest of the SMB’s of the world can usually get by with free versions of the tools but the enterprise requires more functionality. Google has been making inroads in getting larger customers to use the Google apps platform like the City of Los Angeles and others.
Google says more than two million businesses are using the paid or free version of Google Apps. There are around 500 million users of Microsoft Office, according to Microsoft.
Google is turning to developers to help fill the holes and develop features its online software lacks, such as specialized editing software or tools to access online files offline.
The new store borrows a page from other technology companies including Apple Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc., which have tried to broaden the appeal of devices and software by opening up to outside developers.
While some bemoan the fact that Google is looking to charge for something that they feel should be free I think those days are finally starting to move along. Free doesn’t pay the bills and there is absolutely NO obligation to any company to provide the people as a whole with free services. None. So if anyone barks about the idea of charging for online business software they are missing the point. It takes money to do this stuff.
There is plenty of opportunity for sure. And we can be assured that where there is opportunity there will be Google.
Did Apple Brainwash Us with Its Subliminal Messaging for iPad
Is Apple’s Steve Jobs the king of subliminal marketing?
You decide:
Wow!
(via)
Katy Perry: I Googled Myself & I Liked It
How did singer Katy Perry discover that Russell Brand was going to propose to her? Turns out that Perry googles herself on a regular basis and found out Brand had purchased a ring.
Perry explained to reporters as she walked down the red carpet to the Grammys this week that she uses Google Alerts to track [...]
….
Does CityGrid “Answer” The Local SEO Problem?
Ad one time local startups could reliably count on Google organic traffic to help build their own traffic and brands. Indeed, this is how Yelp gained visibility in its early days. And larger publishers such as yellow pages sites have relied heavily on seo as well to drive traffic to their advertisers. However recently that’s [...]
….
Google Gears Comes To AdWords: Browser Local Storage
Tim Cohn reported that he was given a new option yesterday, after logging into his AdWords account. The new feature utilizes Google Gears, a browser plugin that allows you to download web-based data to your local hard drive, so you can work offline. The feature is named Browser Local Storage and it basically [...]
….
Google News Adds Stars
Google News has added the ability to allow users to star news clusters. When users star news clusters, it let’s Google do three things:
(1) It lets Google know that you’re interested in that subject.
(2) When there are significant updates, Google will alert you by putting the headline in bold so you can get more [...]
….
What Is A Link Worth? Part 1: Valuing PageRank
This posting is the first in an occasional series that will attempt to quantify the value of links – in this case, by measuring the value of links in terms of other links PageRank (i.e. how many PR4 links is a PR5 link worth). A later posting will cover market pricing of links with statistics from the various paid link markets, and other postings will cover what links are worth in terms of effort and resulting traffic. By the end of this series, a complete model for valuing linking…
….
Why Coming In Second Can Be A Good Thing
Sometimes being European can be very frustrating. Let me rephrase that: when it comes to internet, tech and search, being a European is very, very frustrating. Why? Because Europe always comes in second. Cool new things like Google’s Nexus phone, the iPad or even Bing are invariably launched in the US and Europeans have to [...]
….
