Omar Kattan - search in a nutshell

In an unprecedented move, ASK (previously ASK Jeeves) has changed its data retention cookie policy to incorporate users’ preference on how long they can retain personal search data.

Ask decided to make this move after it conferred with the Center for Democracy and Technology.

 This is what CDT Deputy Director Ari Schwartz said about ASK’s decision:

“We’re extremely pleased to see a new breed of innovative, competitive tools that allow users greater control over their personal information and online experiences”

Google has recently been criticised in recent weeks about their own policy on data retention and have responded by decreasing their cookie length to 2 years. 

Google’s pro-privacy critics however have rebuffed this gesture as misleading and continue to criticise the search giant about their data retention policies.

ASK has recently positioned its self as “the other search engine” (ie the one that is not monopolising search and the one that respects users privacy.

This it truly a ground-breaking move on ASK’s part and a master stroke if you ask me. 

The European Union gave Germany the nod to spend 120 million euros ($167 million) on research into Theseus, a search engine to compete against Google.

The project boasts high profile partners including Siemens, SAP as well as other high profile companies and governmental/semi governmental institutions.

Theseus aims to be a multimedia search engine and includes text translation tools as well as tools for identifying and indexing images, sound and text.

Siemens’ Vice President of Corporate Technology Hartmut Raffler said of the project:

“Theseus will make it possible for all Internet users to have easy access to global knowledge, the technology Theseus will develop will generate new knowledge from knowledge.”

Theseus is named after a character in Greek mythology who uses thread to navigate King Minos’ maze and was originally a French-German search initiative called Quaero.

Quaero split in December 2006, with the French continuing to work on Quaero and the Germans working on Theseus.

It seems like the bug to compete with google is spreading

In a followup to its Audio Ads, Google has just launched its Print Ads programme in the US market.

In a nutshell, Google Print Ads allows companies to run advertisements in local newspapers using Google’s Adwords web interface.

Google Print Ads allows companies with little or no experience with print advertising to create, publish and manage their print ads with little to no experience.

Similar to PPC advertising, companies bid on available ad sizes, sections and dates; it’s up to publications to accept or reject the bids. Google’s technology automates the billing and payment cycles.

Google Print Ads was launched in Beta last Novembe, partnering with 50 newspapers and approximately 100 Google Adwords advertisers.  The Google Print Ads service has since then expanded to more than 225 papers according to the search giant.

This is what Eric Schmidt said during the launch:

“Newspapers are an important source of information and a powerful communication tool, Google Print Ads will bring more advertisers to newspapers which will ultimately benefit readers, publishers and advertisers.”

Google claims that its Print Ads service has a reach in excess of 30 million readers in 32 of the top 35 advertising markets in the US, including New York, Washington, Seattle and Silicon Valley.

Yahoo has a competing service that includes 265 newspapers.

Up to one quarter of searches on Google are ‘new to google’ searches. 

Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Search Quality at a recent conference said that “20 to 25% of the search queries Google receives every day are being seen by Google for the first time”

This is an interesting stat as it highlights the sophistcation of searchers when performing a search query on Google or any of the other search engines.

Manber also gave examples of how Google will be handling peoples queries in the search box as follows:

• “How much does it cost for an exhaust system” will pull up results from “cost of an exhaust system.”

• “Overhead view of bellagio pool” will pull up results from “bellagio pool pictures.”

• “Fedora 5 losing network connections” will pull up results from “fedora 5 network configuration.”

The thing to take from all of this is that search is developing and developing fast.  The way people are searching is also changing at a fast pace therefore optimising search (both paid and organic) need to take into consideration these satistics and  include them into the overall search optimisation strategy.

Google’s purchase of DoubleClick is facing a major hurdle this week as it get more heat from a US congress enquiry.  This has been the biggest set back to a $3.1 deal that has been controversial (to say the least) from the get go.

The main issues being investigated are consumer privacy and anti competitiveness, both of which are hallmarks of this high profile deal.

All this comes on the heal of Google’s announcement last week that it will shorten the amount of time that it will hold data collection cookies to two years from the previous 30+ years.  However this move on Google’s part may have come too little too late to affect the ultimate decision of the Federal Trade Commission.

on Tuesday, Precursor President Scott Cleland released a 35-page white paper detailing why the deal should be blocked by the FTC he wrote:

“(the deal) would lessen competition and harm consumers, advertisers and content providers” and give the combined entity the opportunity and incentive to “corner” the online advertising market by dominating all three sides: users, content providers and advertisers.”

The white paper goes on to compare the Google/DoubleClick level to one single financial services company owning the top 15 Wall Street banks/asset managers; 60% of the hedge fund and private equity industries; The New York and London stock exchanges; data providers Bloomberg and Factset; credit profile providers Experian and Equifax; and 60% of the Federal Reserve’s and U.S. Census Bureau’s raw market and consumer data.

Whatever the outcome, this is sure to be one of the biggest battle Google had to fight since its inception.