On Friday I mentioned that privacy advocates are becoming even more concerned with how much information Google knows and will know about us. Two recent events are causing the uproar. First is Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick, which would come with a large amounts of user data the ad company has collected over the years. Second is the slightly more recent expansion of search history to web history within Google’s personalized search. Both will give Google more information about our surfing and searching habits than any company has ever had.
Google Losing Fight For Its Name
The search advertising company has been fighting against the usage of its name as a verb ever since Merriam-Webster put ‘google’ in the dictionary. It’s a battle they are not going to win.
Google Responds to Viacom
Google has released its official response to Viacom’s billion dollar lawsuit against its YouTube property, saying that Viacom is threatening the way everyone exchanges information on the internet. Google’s claim is that Viacom’s lawsuit completely ignores the DMCA, and as a result threatens to unravel it and introduce all sorts of chaos for websites and service providers.
Google Has About 900 Millionaires, Some Leaving
The Guardian has an article about rich Google employees leaving, and they say a report quoted Google as having as many as 900 millionaires. Considering that Google has 12,238 employees (as of March 31), and had only 6,790 employees a year ago, that’s a pretty significant percentage.
Google Personalized Homepage Gets A Name: iGoogle
Google has finally given its personalized homepage a name, calling it what many people had suspected the name was all along: iGoogle. Google had a whole Personalization Workshop in Mountain View yesterday, and Google Blogoscoped had someone on the scene for the whole thing.
Some details:
Calacanis Building the Next Google?
Having recently read Jason Calacanis’ blog post about how to correctly place your lips on his butt, if you want him to link to you, I can’t help but think Valleywag’s speculation, that the former blogging mogul is building a search engine, is nothing but that.
Google Answers Viacom Lawsuit
No real surprises emerged in Google’s response to Viacom’s billion-dollar copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube: Google denied Viacom’s claims and asked for a jury trial.
Google Giveaways Now Include Villages
People care a lot about national borders – there’s a great scene from the “Blackadder” series, for example, in which one soldier tries to convince another of the value of the seventeen square feet of land they’ve gained. But if seventeen square feet is a cause for celebration, Argentina must now be throwing a heck of a party – Google tried to give it a whole village.
Behavioral Targeting Moves by Yahoo & Google
A recent article by Brandweek, talks about how Yahoo is betting big on Behavioral Targeting.
Shuman: Google’s Down With CQC
The eight principles the Click Quality Council would like to see search engines adhere to in improving PPC quality; Google’s cool with all of them.