Omar Kattan - search in a nutshell

I wanted to tell you about this fantastic book I just finished reading, its called The Google Story.  The book basically recounts the story of how Larry and Serge ”the Google Guys” founded Google from its early days as a university project to the mammoth that it is today.

Actually, its that specific book that inspired me to be the best I can be in search.  It also inspired me to create my very own search engine based on the Nutch technology.

Anyway, back to my review of the Google Story.  The best thing about this great book is the way its written … like a detective story.  The author, David Vise goes deep down behind the surface to uncover the truths and realities behind one of the most amazing business stories of our time.

What makes this book even more interesting is that it recounts the life and times of Google’s two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, from childhood , through Stamford University and most importantly the years they built Google into what it is today.

I highly recommend the Google Story to anyone who’s intersted in learning more and being inspired by one of the most impressive startups of our lifetime.

Buy the Google Story today and happy reading!   

One of the main threats to the YouTube business model has always been the threat of lawsuites from copyright holders.  The biggest testiment to this threat is the ongoing lawsuit between Sumner Redstone’s Viacom and Google.

When Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion back in October 2006 they were heavily criticised for disregarding this huge threat, however little did we know that Google not only took it into account but also has been preparing to combat it with technology.

Google has started using technology provided by Audible Magic, a Los Gatos, Calif.-based company that identifies copyrighted material by creating a digital fingerprint of a song or video and comparing it to a database of copyrighted works. 

This is how Audible Magic describe their service offering:

“(Our) company’s core copyright-sensing technology, CopySense®, accurately identifies digital or broadcast media content based on the perceptual characteristics of the content itself. Built on a patented electronic fingerprinting process, the technology is robust, efficient, and massively scalable.”

This technology is sure to bring Google’s YouTube nay sayers back into the believer’s fold, and maybe, just maybe, Sumner will decide to drop his lawsuite against the big G.  Yeah right!

Google China has decided to remove it’s cache feature in the Chinese market.

Cache (pron: cash) is the copy of a webpage that Google has in its database from the last time it spidered the site.

Why did Google remove the cache and what are the implications?

The issue lies in the fact that the Chinese government has managed to force the ISP’s (internet service providers) in China to disable the cache feature on their end, therefore if one was to click on the cache link they would land on an error page (page not found).  This is part of the Chinese governments ongoing efforts to censor the internet.

Google said that they decided to remove the link to safeguard the user’s experience in not clicking on broken links from its pages.

Do you agree with Google’s decision?  Are they (as ever) just bowing down to the Chinese government’s whims?  I think so!