Search Headlines & Links: July 3, 2006

Below, a recap of stories posted today to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along
with other items we’ve spotted but not blogged separately:

From The SEW Blog…

• ‘Point
  and Search’ Redux
  After my most recent post on "point and search" mobile technology, prompted by
  last week’s NY Times’ article on GeoVector’s efforts in Japan, Search Engine
  Watch alum (now Director of Online Information Resources at Ask) Gary Price
  directed me to a number of his earlier posts on mobile search using camera
  phones. In this post he discusses Google’s voice search patent, "point and
  search" mobile technology from Microsoft and several-other camera phone search
  tools….
• Ending
  Click Fraud with Pay-Per-Percentage
  In Pay-Per-Percentage vs. PPC, Shimon Sandler points out an interesting new
  paper from the folks at Microsoft Research – Pay-Per-Percentage of
  Impressions: An Advertising Method that is Highly Robust to Fraud (pdf) As
  Shimon notes, the idea is that this type of advertising approach would be
  "immune to both click fraud and impression fraud," and would use something
  called "pre-fix match" instead of broad match….
• Yahoo
  China To Be Sued For Linking To Sites Selling Pirated Music
  Spotted via TechCrunch, Bloomberg reports that Yahoo China is to be sued for
  linking to sites that sell pirated music. The article claims "about 90 percent
  of all recordings in China are illegal, with sales of pirated music worth
  about $400 million annually," according to the International Federation for
  the Phonographic Industry. A new law in China that came into effect on July 1
  "fines distributors of illegally copied music, movies and other material over
  the Internet as much as 100,000 yuan ($12,500)."…
• New York
  Times Looks At Google’s Hardware & Infrastructure
  A New York Times article has a detailed analysis of Google’s infrastructure
  and discussion with Urs Hölzle, senior vice president for operations at
  Google. Here are some of the key points I pulled from that article. + Google
  tends builds from ground up versus buying. + Google’s computing costs are half
  those of other large Internet companies and a tenth those of traditional
  corporate technology users. + Critics call Google’s philosophy "unnecessary
  and inefficient." + "Google is reducing cost while maintaining performance by
  shifting the burden of reliability from hardware to software ? individual
  hardware components can fail, but software…
• Matt
  Cutts Is Back From Vacation
  We all missed him, Matt Cutts has returned from his long vacation. Hopefully
  he can get back in the saddle and begin working on those issues at Google. 🙂
  Seriously, we all miss you Matt, thanks for coming back and winking (blinking
  that is) at us….
• BBC News
  Features Article On Google Search Spam
  A BBC News front-page article named Google to stay focused on search brings
  the issues of search spam to the public. The article explains how
  seventy-percent of Google’s focus in on Web search and then goes into several
  paragraphs on how search spam is a huge issue. The article quotes Douglas
  Merrill, of Google engineering, saying, "Spam is an arms race," explaining
  that "spammers are highly motivated. There is a lot of money at stake."…
• Google
  Page Creator Now Supporting AdSense
  Google Page Creator, which I recently reported did not support AdSense, now
  does. Garett Rogers has invitations sent out to Google Page Creator accounts
  from Google, notifying them that they now accept AdSense. Honestly, when I
  read this, it made me sad. Why? One word, "MFAs". Below is a copy of that
  email invitation….
• Google’s
  Non Search Products A Flop
  BusinessWeek reports that when Google launches a new non-search product, the
  competition "shivers," Google has yet to lead in market share for any of those
  non-search products. Google’s Gtalk is currently ranked number ten with two
  percent market share, Google Finance is the "40th-most-visited finance site,"
  and Gmail "is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of
  people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail." So with all these product launches, is
  Google a threat? Read more at BusinessWeek….
• 
  KinderStart.com Case May Proceed To Court?
  News.com reports that the KinderStart.com case may proceed to court, based on
  this past Friday’s hearing. Kinderstart.com initially sued Google for a site
  penalty that downgraded the site’s rankings in the Google search results.
  Kinderstart.com claims Google violated antitrust laws, "What Google is trying
  to do is take out the competition," Kinderstart.com’s lawyer said. The judge
  gave KinderStart.com’s lawyers until September 29th to make revisions to the
  complaint. The judge said, "You can’t just file a blanket lawsuit and say, ‘We
  think we’re going to find some stuff.’" Also see news brief at ComputerWorld….
• Daily
  SearchCast, June 30, 2006
• Daily
  SearchCast, June 29, 2006

Other Things We Read, Didn’t Blog But You Might Want To Read…

• No search headlines today because of a light work schedule due to
  tomorrow’s Fourth Of July holiday in the US. Sorry!