Google Seeks “Total Information”
Google’s a perfectly good search engine, but how well would it function as some sort of omniscient life coach? I don’t know – and I’m not sure I want to find out – but we may see it assume that role; Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said his company might be able to give extremely personalized tips and answers within the next five or so years.
Marketers Not Investing Enough Online
Suggesting that media is past due on shifting its focus to online promotion, a new study reveals that broadband users are spending nearly half their spare time online – and the other half becoming paler and fatter.
PR in the Face of Web 2.0 and Social Media
In Part I, I stated that all things 2 dot oh were now the cattle call heard round the world for marketers to update their service menu, increase prices, and start offering a brand new, shiny set of new media services – most at the expense of the companies they represent.
Amazon Buys Brilliance Audio
Online retailer Amazon.com has purchased Brilliance Audio, the largest independent publisher of audiobooks in the U.S.
Amazon says the acquisition will expand the number of books produced in the audio format giving customers a broader selection of audiobooks.
Amazon subsidiary CustomFlix now supports both standard CD and MP3-CD audiobook formats through its Disc on Demand service.
Google Apps Customers Get Over-Billed
Google may be great at finding things, but the company is apparently not so good at counting – some Google Apps Premier Edition customers were recently billed $500 for ten accounts, even though they held just one, two, or three accounts.
Google & Feedburner – The Good & Bad
Rumours have been surfacing for the last few days that Google might be buying FeedBurner for around $100M.
Technorati Refreshes With Major Update
Spring cleaning at blog search site Technorati has yielded an updated interface and a more intuitive way to search for blog content.
Google Walks Dogs, Wins Fans
Beginning a piece of writing with a quote is bad, and using clichés can be worse, but a lot of intelligent, upright, and otherwise excellent people subscribe to the maxim that the dog is man’s best friend. Google’s devotion to these animals – as recently demonstrated by its participation in the RSPCA Million Paws Walk – has, as a result, won the company a lot of fans.
Google Grows, Others Slow
At this point you start to wonder why bother: Google reins supreme in the realm of search, Yahoo doesn’t, neither does Microsoft, and everybody else might as well hang it up.
MGoogle Grows, Others Slow
Google To Digitize Indian Palm Leaves
Google digitizes books on a fairly regular basis, but it’s not every day that manuscripts made of palm leaves join the “to-do” pile. That’s the case, however, at the University of Mysore in India, where over 800,000 documents are set to be brought into the twenty-first century.