August 9, 2005

According to a new study by Jupiter Research, advertisers will spend almost $19 billion on online advertising in 2010, up from $9.3 billion last year. The biggest increase will be in search engine marketing, while sales of banner ads and classified ads are also predicted to grow very quickly. The amount of rich media and streaming video advertising is also expected to increase sharply.

June 8, 2005

Informit.com has published an article explaining how to use the Google Web API from your own .NET and Java applications. Using the Google Web API, your applications can access many of Google's services, including its immense index of the web. The API uses a combination of WDSL, XML, and SOAP to communicate with Google, but all of that complexity is hidden from developers thanks to the Google Web API. The article shows you how to put together sample Google Web API applications in C# using Visual Studio and in Java using the Sun JDK.

June 3, 2005

Google has unveiled a new service for webmasters called Sitemaps. Using this service, which is still Beta, operators of web sites can improve the quality of their search listings in the Google index by keeping Google informed about all of a site's web pages and any changes to those pages. For Sitemaps to work properly, web administrators need to place a Sitemaps configuration file on their web server.

May 19, 2005

Google has taken a page out of Yahoo's playbook and created their own My Yahoo-style personalized homepage service. The new service lets you arrange your GMail, Google News, Google Maps driving directions, Weather, Stock Quotes, and soon, RSS feeds, on a single personalized homepage.

May 16, 2005

Informit.com has published an article that compares and reviews free desktop search engine software to find out which one is best. Software packages reviewed include Ask Jeeves Desktop Search, AutoFocus, Copernic Desktop Search, Google Desktop Search, HotBot Desktop, MSN Toolbar Suite, and Yahoo! Desktop Search. In related news, Microsoft has released the first non-beta version of MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search.

May 8, 2005

Wired.com has taken a look at ZabaSearch and interviewed their top executives. ZabaSearch is a new free search engine that lets you locate people and get information about them. The service uses public records as sources and provides certain details about people that make many very nervous. Using ZabaSearch.com as well as other free people search engines like Zoominfo.com, Preople.com, Ziggs.com, and Jigsaw.com, it's possible to freely and easily obtain a stunning amount of information about a person. Privacy advocates have yet to significantly weigh in on this issue.

May 4, 2005

Today Google launched a beta of the Google Web Accelerator, a free plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer that is designed to speed up web browsing for users with broadband connections. In order to achieve this, the Google Web Accelerator uses the browser plug-in and thousands of servers run by Google in order to cache frequently accessed pages, prefetch pages on users' computers, manage TCP/IP throughput, and compress transmitted content.

May 2, 2005

Search engines and others are moving into the local advertising space, targeting small businesses who want to reach customers in their communities. Experts agree that switching small businesses from print advertising to online advertising is difficult, but the $60 billion spent on advertising each year by small businesses is a very tempting prize indeed. Companies like Verizon with their SuperPages.com service may have a head start, but look to Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others to move agressively into this space. Start-ups like InsiderPages.com are also moving quickly to try and capture a piece of this lucrative market.

April 27, 2005

Google is testing a new service that allows blogs using RSS or Atom feeds to carry AdSense advertising. Other companies like Kanoodle, Moreover, BlogAds, and Yahoo either already offer or are testing similar services.

April 25, 2005

Starting today, Google is letting advertisers display images and animations on third-party partner sites using a new feature called Site Targeting. Advertisers can choose the sites where their ads will appear, in addition to using keyword based placement. In order to take advantage of these new features, advertisers must bid for placement on a cost per impression (CPM) basis, rather than a cost per click (CPC) basis. The move puts Google in direct competition with display ad networks like DoubleClick, Fastclick, ValueClick, Tribal Fusion, and Advertising.com.

April 23, 2005

According to a Wired article, the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN are moving quickly toward indexing and aggregating video content. Initially much of the content will be from existing television networks, but further down the road a lot of content will come from independent producers, video blogs, and other sources. These new services will allow users to search for and stream video based on their preferences.

April 22, 2005

Google has reported their first-quarter earnings and Wall Street is amazed. The company reported a net income of $369.2 million, or $1.29 a share, on revenue of $1.26 billion in the three months ended March 31. The results for the comparable period a year ago was a net income of $64 million, or 24 cents a share, on revenue of $651.6 million. You can listen to the Google earnings conference call for more details.

April 20, 2005

Today Google launched Google Maps UK and Google Local UK. The mapping service works exactly the same way as Google Maps in the US. The Google Local UK service provide listings of local businesses in the UK.

April 10, 2005

This is probably the coolest hack we've seen in a long time. Someone has created an amazing web application hack by merging Google Maps with Craigslist real estate listings. Users can specify price ranges and search for both rental and for sale properties. The location marks are even color coded: a yellow mark means a property photo is available while a red mark means that one is not. These photos even appear in location balloon in Google Maps. Clicking on a property brings up the actual Craigslist posting in a new window.

April 5, 2005

Google Maps has added color satellite images. After selecting an area, simply click the Satellite link at the upper right of the page. These images are draggable and zoomable just like standard Google Map images, however they do not appear to be as detailed as those at Microsoft's TerraServer site.

April 4, 2005

Today Google unleashed three new experimental features including real-time stock quotes, an anti-phishing feature for the GMail service, and personal video archiving and searching.

April 3, 2005

UK's Guardian newspaper has an interesting article about how Google created a brand from nothing, without spending a dime on marketing. It's about more than just having an awesome product.

April 1, 2005

Google is adding rich text formatting support to GMail messages. Users will be able to use different fonts, colors, and other formatting. Some formatting options include: Bold, Italics, Underline, Font, Font Size, Font Color, Background Color, Numbered and Bulleted Lists, and Left/Center/Right Text Alignment. The rich text formatting feature is being rolled out to GMail accounts over the next several weeks.

April 1, 2005

Late last night Google went live with a beta of Google Ride Finder, a new service that integrates Google Maps with live GPS tracking data from a number taxi fleets in 11 major U.S. cities. You can now track available taxis, limousines and shuttles in real time so that you can find a ride. Google will be adding more cities and taxi fleets in the months to come.

March 31, 2005

Google has announced that it is doubling the size of the free storage offered to users of its GMail service. The capacity will go from 1 GB to 2 GB per account, and may even increase beyond that in the months and years to come.