Yellow Background Trial for Top Ads

The Adwords ads that appear at the top of the page - usually 2, sometimes 3, have occasionally been appearing with a yellow background, rather than the standard blue. Pic here.

Google seem to be overly cautious with their testing, and few trials ever become reality, while many stay on trial forever. I can't see why you need 500 billion test searches instead of 10 billion.

To me the answer is obvious - have 5 other colors, and for every 5th search replace the blue with one of them. It will reignite the ads for those who are blinded to them due to seeing them too much.

YouTube anti-piracy tool coming in September

"The video recognition technology will allow copyright owners to provide a digital fingerprint that within a minute or two will trigger a block from YouTube whenever someone tries to upload a copyright video without permission". More...

This might not be enough, for it requires copyright owners to actively place the fingerprint into their content. If there was a global standard for this, without being run/designed by Google, then it would work fine. But as a Google-only thing, many content owners might prefer just to sue YouTube...

Google Buys ImageAmerica

This could indicate that Google wants to take the photos themselves, rather than using a 3rd-party:

Google has announced the acquisition of Clayton, Missouri based ImageAmerica, a company that builds high-resolution cameras for the collection of aerial imagery.

ImageAmerica has previously provided images for Google Maps and Earth, including high-resolution black and white imagery of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

More...

Google Shares Dive

Google shares fell more than 7% in late trading Thursday after it missed second-quarter earnings estimates, a rare stumble for the Web giant.

Excluding one-time costs, the Mountain View, Calif., company earned $3.56 per share for the quarter that ended June 30, 43% over last year but 3 cents shy of the consensus estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

Sales grew 63% to $2.72 billion after subtracting traffic acquisition costs, the fees its pays other Web sites that carry its ads.

Overall costs rose 68% to $2.76 billion, much of that due to the company's frantic hiring and bigger-than-expected bonuses.

New: Google Custom Search Business Edition

A bit of a mouthful, Custom Search Business Edition is Google's new paid service that allows sites to utilise Google's search power for site searching, but without ads.

At $100/yr. it is substantially cheaper than forking out $2000 for a Search Appliance, although it seems that any pages crawled would appear in Google's regular search results as well - so it's not a cheap way of searching an intranet of private data.

FeedBurner: More for Free

One of the many benefits that FeedBurner publishers will enjoy now that FeedBurner is part of the Google family is a little something we like to call, "more for free!" Beginning today, two of FeedBurner's previously for-pay services, TotalStats and MyBrand, will be free.

These services let you see how many folk receive & view your posts, and allow you to use you own domain instead of feedburner.com

Same Legal Action - Different Country

It's the old "a competitor used our brand in their Google ad" complaint that has been heard in other countries and dismissed. Basically it is impossible for Google to know which words are trademarked and if the merchant cares and if the advertiser has a right to use that keyword or not - so Google has a policy of banning the use of trademarks when the trademark owner lets them know.

This time the legal action is in Australia, and is being taken by a government department, the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission). As well as the trademark problem, they are claiming that Google doesn't differentiate between organic and paid results enough:

injunctions restraining Google from publishing search results that do not expressly distinguish advertisements from organic search results

Adwords Maintenance - Why a Saturday Afternoon?

The majority of Google staff work only during the day, Mon-Fri, which is at complete odds to their 24/7 service and the importance of it to so many businesses.

If a hosting company wants to upgrade their service, they tend to do it at 2am or 4am or thereabouts, a time at which it will affect their customers the least.

So why does Google do their AdWords Maintenance on the second Saturday of each month, 10am to 2pm PST?

My guess is that weekends are quieter than weekdays, so their staff make a BIG sacrifice to do this on a Saturday morning. But there's no way they could possibly do it at 2am, when it would only affect a fraction of the daytime users. No way, not even if you paid them big bonuses. Probably because they are all multi-millionaires by now and we should be grateful they work at all!

Google Maps for Russia, finally

“Until just recently, it was a crime to produce and distribute overly detailed maps of Russia,” acknowledges Tai Adelaja of the Moscow Times; it seems the country’s government was even more concerned about security risks than some American politicians.

But “Google on Thursday launched its Russia Map service,” Adelaja continues, “showing the locations of and providing directions to people looking for places or businesses all across the country.” And although I’m sure Russians are rather used to their homeland, it seems that, in such a vast nation, maps and directions would be particularly handy.

Man have we come a long way since the end of the Cold War! More...

Google Censorship Facts

Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped has put together a FAQ of Google's censorship in countries like China. One of the facts is:

How did Google justify their China self-censorship?
In general, Google says that it’s their “policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so.” In regards to China, Google argued that filtering their results clearly compromises their mission, but that failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world’s population compromises their mission more severely.

Google loses Gmail in Germany

A court in Germany today banned Google from using the name "Gmail" for its popular webmail service following a trademark suit filed by the founder of G-Mail.

Daniel Giersch (33), started using the name G-Mail in 2000, four years before Google released "Gmail".

"Google infringed the young businessman's trademark that had been previously been registered," said the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in its judgement.

More...