Google Everywhere: Don't do evil?

Blogger's Note: These series of articles highlights the moves of Google as it tries to reach out to areas of competition against a series of competitors. Read on... 8-)

Google Thinks Small
Quentin Hardy, 11.14.05, www.forbes.com
It has huge sales, prodigious profits and a bid to log all the information in the world--one tiny project at a time.Google chief executive Eric Schmidt realized he was at a new kind of company soon after joining in 2001. At a 10-person management meeting--Google employed only 180 people at the time--everyone talked, fast, about whether to put ads on Internet search results. It was a two-hour debate, and each combatant had lots of data to back up his position. But the decision to proceed was pretty much unanimous, launching Google on a path to torrid growth.Schmidt realized this company loves to talk it out, jettisoning hierarchy, business silos and layers of management for a flatter, "networked" structure where the guy with the best data wins. "It was a big conversation. The networked model is a conversation," says Schmidt, a brainiac engineer who worked at the famed Xerox PARC labs, then ran strategy at Sun Microsystems and was chief executive of Novell before joining Google. Google is now at $6 billion a year in revenue and $7.6 billion in cash, employing 5,000 painstakingly chosen people. Schmidt and other insiders believe they may have found a world-changing way to run a company. (Then again, nothing Google does, in its own view, is ever average.) Most firms still look like the refining and manufacturing businesses of Rockefeller and Ford. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, children of the Internet, have built a world where a well-chosen elite accommodates flexibility, shifting roles and, above all else, urgency. Google prides itself on hiring only the truly brilliant (and the unabashedly arrogant, rivals say) and believes the crowd always outsmarts anyone inside it. It shares all the information it can with as many employees as possible, encouraging debate but insisting on like-minded cooperation. It also pursues a rapid-fire food-fight strategy that throws out ideas as fast as possible, to see what sticks. Brin and Page have created a corporate organism that tackles most big projects in small, tightly focused teams, setting them up in an instant and breaking them down weeks later without remorse. "Their view is that there is much greater progress if you have many small teams going out at once," Schmidt says. The mission overall: to collect "all the world's information" and make it accessible to everyone. "It's a cause." Hundreds of projects go on at the same time. Most teams throw out new software in six weeks or less and look at how users respond hours later. With 82 million visitors and 2.3 billion searches in a month, Google can try a new user interface or some other wrinkle on just 0.1% of its users and get massive feedback, letting it decide a project's fate in weeks. One success in ten tries is okay; one in five is superb. Everyone from a failed venture moves to another urgent project. "If something is successful, you work it in, somehow," Schmidt says. "If it fails, you leave." A typical task, from tweaking page designs to doing scientific research, involves six people. Orkut, a social network with several million users (most of them in Brazil and Iran), has three full-time staffers. Last month Google was reported to be in a bid to derail Microsoft's overtures to America Online by teaming up with Microsoft's cable ally, Comcast, to invest in AOL; that this didn't leak earlier may have been because only a few Googlers were in on it. One true god rules at Google:data. The more you collect, the more you know and the more certain your decisions can be, disciples believe. Gut instinct, a staple at Barry Diller's InterActive Corp. and at Terry Semel's Yahoo, isn't in evidence at this company. "Often differences of opinion between smart people are differences of data," says Marissa Mayer, director of consumer products and among Google's first 20 employees. In some meetings people aren't allowed to say "I think … " but instead must say "The data suggest … " Every Google employee starts the week writing five lines on what he or she did the week before. They are posted on an internal Web site for all to see. New product ideas circulate among thousands of engineers on an "ideas mailing list." An e-mail flies out every time someone posts (there are now thousands in the archive). The e-mails are half brainstorming, half a search for kindred spirits, inviting others in the crowd to join you on a project you propose.They have spawned much of the software inside everything from the Gmail e-mail product to a controversial effort to digitize thousands of books. Caffeine and a sense of community fuel these pursuits. At the Googleplex, the crowded headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., coffee stations have urns labeled "regular" and "strong."Private offices go to only a few dozen of the brass. Even Kai-Fu Lee, the China superstar who defected to Google and sparked a lawsuit from his former employers at Microsoft, shares a cubicle with two other guys. One key rule:You can't call any idea "stupid." (Nor is most any idea too wild. On a recent day at the Google campus a bulletin board invited workers to a session on the dream of erecting a 200-mile-high elevator into space.) This ideas-and-data approach lets Google use fewer managers--one for every 20 line employees, compared with one for as few as 7 industrywide. "It has been as high as one to 40," Mayer says; one manager had 180 direct reports. Another benefit, she says, is that employees may be better braced should Google stock, which went public at $85 in August 2004 and is now at $340, suddenly crater. "In a downturn you want your people to feel empowered. Fear and suspicion happen when information is hidden." Some applicants may start with one of Google's famous--and ridiculously difficult--exams. (Sample:"Find the first ten-digit prime number in the mathematical constant called ‘e'.") Prospects endure eight or more interviews. Each interviewer ranks them on a 1-to-4 scale; a 4 means "I would hire this person, and I will argue why," while a 3 means "Inclined to hire, but can be argued out of it." A panel of eight Googlers reviews the scores. Later annual regression analyses compare performance with initial ratings. One anomaly:Women with weaker scores end up performing better than women with all 4s. "The interview still isn't picking something up," worries Mayer, a former debate champion whose rapid speech races to catch up with an even faster brain. Schmidt credits her with inventing the Google way, starting with building the Google roster. "We need generalists," she says. "Lots of projects and companies grow without doing new things; they just get bigger teams. We want projects to end." Once deemed Google-worthy, new hires get bid on by managers across the company. Workers are asked to spend 20% of their time on something that interests them, away from their main jobs. Companywide a full 10% of time is spent dreaming up blue-sky projects. Some brilliant prospects don't get hired, flaming out when background checks show they are difficult to work with. "It takes discipline not to hire some of these people, they are so smart," says engineering chief Alan Eustace. "But it also doesn't take much for a single person to subtract 10% from everyone else. Very quickly, that reduces your total output." But Eric Schmidt worries how long he can make it all sing. The bigger Google gets, the harder it is to foster useful conflict and make fast decisions. And the stronger Google gets--its third-quarter net income soared sevenfold to pass $380 million on sales that almost doubled to $1.58 billion--the more it comes into the crosshairs of sniping detractors. The Association of American Publishers is suing Google over its plans to scan the contents of several major libraries, fearing large-scale copyright infringement. "Their attitude is that we don't get it, we are flat-earth people, and they are in a hurry without time for all this," says the publisher group's president, former congresswoman Patricia Schroeder. "Their model is to get all the content for free--great for them," she says, predicting, "They'll do the same to the movie industry. Hollywood won't like it." Marc Meyer, who knew Schmidt at UC, Berkeley and worked with him at PARC, says Schmidt sees a day when Google will hold everyone's data on a "trust me" basis. "He told me, ‘If you want it to be private, don't put it in a computer,'" says Meyer, now at a recent tech startup. "Eric has an Anakin Skywalker conundrum. He has absolute power, and it will be hard to resist the Dark Side." Schmidt counters:"I joined a small company full of smart guys, and it still feels like that. We just have to change outside perceptions."

Just Googling it is striking fear into companies
By Steve Lohr
http://news.com.com/Just+Googling+it+is+striking+fear+into+companies/2100-1032_3-5936014.html
Story last modified Sun Nov 06 11:56:00 PST 2005

Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, often intimidates its competitors and suppliers.
Makers of goods from diapers to DVDs must cater to its whims. But there is one company that even Wal-Mart eyes warily these days: Google, a seven-year-old business in a seemingly distant industry.

"We watch Google very closely at Wal-Mart," said Jim Breyer, a member of Wal-Mart's board.

In Google, Wal-Mart sees both a technology pioneer and the seed of a threat, said Breyer, who is also a partner in a venture capital firm. The worry is that by making information available everywhere, Google might soon be able to tell Wal-Mart shoppers if better bargains are available nearby.

Wal-Mart is scarcely alone in its concern. As Google increasingly becomes the starting point for finding information and buying products and services, companies that even a year ago did not see themselves as competing with Google are beginning to view the company with some angst--mixed with admiration.

Google's recent moves have stirred concern in industries from book publishing to telecommunications. Businesses already feeling the Google effect include advertising and software companies and the news media. Apart from retailing, Google's disruptive presence may soon be felt in real estate and auto sales.

Google, the reigning giant of Web search, could extend its economic reach in the next few years as more people get high-speed Internet service and cell phones become full-fledged search tools, according to analysts. And ever-smarter software, they say, will cull and organize larger and larger digital storehouses of news, images, real estate listings and traffic reports, delivering results that are more like the advice of a trusted human expert.

Such advances, predicts Esther Dyson, a technology consultant, will bring "a huge reduction in inefficiency everywhere." That, in turn, would be an unsettling force for all sorts of industries and workers. But it would also reward consumers with lower prices and open up opportunities for new companies.

Google, then, may turn out to have a more far-reaching impact than earlier Web winners like Amazon and eBay. "Google is the realization of everything that we thought the Internet was going to be about but really wasn't until Google," said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School.

Catch Google if you can
Google, to be sure, is but one company at the forefront of the continuing spread of Internet technology. It has many competitors, and it could stumble. In the search market alone, Google faces formidable rivals like Microsoft and Yahoo.

Microsoft, in particular, is pushing hard to catch Google in Internet search. "This is hyper-competition, make no mistake," said Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman. "The magic moment will come when our search is demonstrably better than Google's," he said, suggesting that this could happen in a year or so.

Still, apart from its front-runner status, Google is also remarkable for its pace of innovation and for how broadly it seems to interpret its mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

The company's current lineup of offerings includes: software for searching personal computer files; an e-mail service; maps; satellite images; instant messaging; blogging tools; a service for posting and sharing digital photos; and specialized searches for news, video, shopping and local information. Google's most controversial venture, Google Print, is a project to copy and catalog millions of books; it faces lawsuits by some publishers and authors who say it violates copyright law.

Google, which tends to keep its plans secret, certainly has the wealth to fund ambitious ventures. Its revenues are growing by nearly 100 percent a year, and its profits are rising even faster. Its executives speak of the company's outlook only in broad strokes, but they suggest all but unlimited horizons. "We believe that search networks as industries remain in their nascent stages of growth with great forward potential," Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, told analysts last month.

Among the many projects being developed and debated inside Google is a real estate service, according to a person who has attended meetings on the proposal. The concept, the person said, would be to improve the capabilities of its satellite imaging, maps and local search and combine them with property listings.

The service, this person said, could make house hunting far more efficient, requiring potential buyers to visit fewer real estate agents and houses. If successful, it would be another magnet for the text ads that appear next to search results, the source of most of Google's revenue.

Google's telecom moves
In telecommunications, the company has made a number of moves that have grabbed the attention of industry executives. It has been buying fiber-optic cable capacity in the United States and has invested in a company delivering high-speed Internet access over power lines. And it is participating in an experiment to provide free wireless Internet access in San Francisco.

That has led to speculation that the company wants to build a national free GoogleNet, paid for mostly by advertising. And Google executives seem to delight in dropping tantalizing, if vague, hints. "We focus on access to the information as much as the search itself because you need both," Schmidt said in an analysts' conference call last month.

Telecommunications executives are skeptical that Google could seriously eat into their business anytime soon. For one thing, they say, it will be difficult and expensive to build a national network. Still, they monitor Google's every move. "Google is certainly a potential competitor," said Bill Smith, the chief technology officer of BellSouth, the Atlanta-based regional phone company.

The No. 1 rival to phone companies in the Internet access business, Smith noted, is the cable television operators. "But do I discount Google? Absolutely not," he said. "You'd be a fool to do that these days."

In retailing, Google has no interest in stocking and selling merchandise. Its potential impact is more subtle, yet still significant. Every store is a collection of goods, some items more profitable than others. But the less-profitable items may bring people into stores, where they also buy the high-margin offerings--one shelf, in effect, subsidizes another.

Search engines, combined with other technologies, have the potential to drive comparison shopping down to the shelf-by-shelf level. Cell phone makers, for example, are looking at the concept of a "shopping phone" with a camera that can read product bar codes. The phone could connect to databases and search services and, aided by satellite technology, reveal that the flat-screen TV model in front of you is $200 cheaper at a store five miles away.

"We see this huge power moving to the edge--to consumers--in this Google environment," said Lou Steinberg, chief technology officer of Symbol Technologies, which supplies bar-code scanners to retailers.

Such services could lead to lower prices for consumers, but also relentless competition that threatens to break up existing businesses.

Making its own news
A newspaper or a magazine can be seen as a media store--a collection of news, entertainment and advertising delivered in a package. A tool like Google News allows a reader or an advertiser to pick and choose, breaking up the package by splitting the articles from the ads. And Google's ads, tucked to the side of its search-engine results, are often a more efficient sales generator than print ads.

"Google represents a challenge to newspapers, to be sure," said Gary B. Pruitt, chief executive of the McClatchy Company, a chain of 12 newspapers including The Star Tribune in Minneapolis and The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. "Google is attacking the advertising base of newspapers."

At the same time, Google and search technology are becoming crucial to the health of newspapers as more readers migrate to the Web. As one path to the future, Pruitt speaks of his newspapers prospering by tailoring search for local businesses, but also partnering with search engines to attract readers.

Within industries, the influence of Internet search is often uneven. For example, search engines are being embraced by car companies, yet they pose a challenge to car dealers.

George E. Murphy, senior vice president of global marketing for Chrysler, said Chrysler buys ads on 3,000 keywords a day on the big search sites: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and AOL, whose search is supplied by Google. If a person types in one of those keywords, the search results are accompanied by a sponsored link to a Chrysler site.

Chrysler refines its approach based on what search words attract clicks, and studies its site traffic for clues on converting browsers to buyers. "We've got Ph.D.s working on this," Murphy said. "The great thing about search is that you can do the math and follow the trail."

After following a link to a Chrysler Web site, a prospective buyer can configure a model, find a dealer and get a preliminary price. Only dealers can make final price quotes. Yet with more information on the Web, the direction of things is clear, in Murphy's view. "It will fundamentally change what the dealer does, because telling people about the vehicle won't add value for the customer anymore," he said. "If dealers don't change, they'll be dinosaurs."

Breyer, the Wal-Mart board member, watches Google closely in his job as managing partner of Accel Partners, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. These days, he advises start-ups to avoid a "collision course" with Google, just as he has long counseled fledgling companies to steer clear of Microsoft's stronghold in desktop software.

Internet search, like personal computing in its heyday, is a disruptive technology, he said, threatening traditional industries and opening the door to new ones. "We think there is plenty of opportunity for innovation in the Google economy," Breyer said.
Entire contents, Copyright © 2005 The New York Times. All rights reserved.Copyright ©1995-2005 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

How Google battles its increasing power consumption
By Wolfgang Gruener, Published Friday 4th November 2005 21:31 GMT
Original URL: http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/11/04/google_power_consumption/


Google is known for mastering a model to get the most performance out of a computer system for the least amount of money. Instead of running a few super computers, the company relies on thousands of fairly cheap entry-level systems with lots of system memory.

The reasoning behind this strategy is the simple fact that there is no linear relationship between more expensive computer systems and the performance gain they provide. As long as applications support a massively linked system, the cheapest available processor will deliver the most bang for the buck. But even with the money saved through this strategy, the staggering number of those computers rakes up rapidly climbing operational costs such as power consumption.

Even with cheap commodity computers, the control of cost appears to be a growing challenge for Google. And this challenge is not just about hardware costs, but also about reducing energy consumption, Hoelzle writes.

He estimates the system power consumption of a single dual-core processor system - which he described as a "successful attempt to reduce processors' runaway energy consumption" - at around 265 watts, which requires another 135 watts of power to cool the system down within a data center. "Over four years, the power costs of running a PC can add up to half of the hardware cost," he writes, and adds: "Saving power is still the name of the game, even to the extent that we shut off the lights in them when no-one is there."

Looking at power inefficiencies, Hoelzle criticizes that the performance-per-watt ratio, a phrase that is being touted more and more by Intel but has been promoted especially by Transmeta in the past, "is stagnant."
While performance increases, power consumption is rising as well and "operational costs of commercial data centres are almost directly proportional to how much power is consumed by the PCs," according to Hoelzle.

As one of the major innefficiency factors, Hoelzle points to DC power supplies that " re typically about 70 percent efficient," but reach 90 percent at Google. Hoelzle says that Google is working with compinent makers to accelerate the time-to-market of more efficient devices, such as motherboards with a smaller number of DC voltage inputs. Other strategies of limiting power losses include more efficient software as well as an effort to improve the physical design layout of a data center: "We employ mechanical engineers at Google to help with this, and yes, the improvements they make in reducing energy costs amply justify their wages."

Hoelzle believes that "ultimately, power consumption is likely to become the most critical cost factor for data-centre budgets" in the light of rising energy prices and "and concerns about global warming."

Googling Around
ARTICLE DATE: 10.31.05
By John C. Dvorak, www.pcmag.com

The top executives at Google recently admitted that they kind of let their employees invent and develop whatever they think is cool and the company has no problem putting it online to see what happens. Thus far a number of very successful efforts have appeared, from mapping applications to, uh, well . . . chatting?

I was thinking about all the cool stuff Google has done when I realized that none of it was original. The folks at Microsoft, long known for being copycats, must be furious, since nobody has ever accused Google of the same thing. Everything Google has done has been derivative. The search engine was taken from the AltaVista idea of huge computer farms. Gmail is a clone of Hotmail. The Google Chat is nothing special. Orkut is a copy of Friendster. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Even the invention of ads targeted to search requests is derivative of the old GoTo.com search engine. I'm surprised Google hasn't done a lottery.

So why does Google get off scot-free insofar as public criticism is concerned? I've pondered this and I think it is purely by the company's seemingly nonaggressive and pleasant nature. The people at Google present themselves as public servants. They aren't making public denunciations of the competition or saying they'll crush the competition, the way Steve Ballmer does.

Also, the company doesn't necessarily "go after" anyone—or so it seems. Maybe someone can show me contrary evidence. The only mean-spirited thing the company has ever done seems to be its refusal to talk to CNET: "No soup for you—come back in one year!" That edict was delivered when CNET wrote up and posted billionaire Google CEO Eric Schmidt's personal information, which was gathered with Google searches. But that episode seems to be less about Google and more about Schmidt's being peeved.

When Google does copy another idea, such as mapping, they put a unique twist on it, such as their satellite image overlays. When they copied the Hotmail model with Gmail, they gave users a gigabyte of memory. Memory is cheap, and Google has plenty. Hotmail was hounding its customers to clean out their boxes or upgrade until Gmail came along.

Now Google appears to be rolling out a service that is similar to craigslist, called Google base. The usefulness of this idea is blatantly obvious. Google can run a nationwide classified ad system and drop in those little Google ads along the way. —Continue reading...

What else can we expect from Google? Just look at the landscape and see what can be copied with a twist or what is out there already that can drive ad revenue. Surely Google will look at some of Yahoo!'s notions and make them work better. Personals come to mind. The only sort of personals and matchmaking that have worked have been closed systems such as Match.com. All the open personals, except the ones on craigslist, naturally deteriorate into spam. Yahoo! is filled with tons of junk. It never created a cleaning mechanism such as that employed by craigslist, where you can flag offensive posts or spam. Junk posts get removed by a community mechanism. Google can do this sort of code too.

Google has also avoided automated open forums, but there are a lot of growth opportunities there. Slashdot is probably the best example of a self-cleaning open forum with good usability. Its new competitor digg uses even weirder methodologies to generate both posts and self-cleaning. If you look at Web stats, the growth rate of digg is phenomenal. Google must be looking at these as potential ad-revenue generators too.

We can probably expect to see Google TV and Google Radio. Perhaps a podcasting center might be opened, or even an iTunes clone. The company has no choice but to become, essentially, the entire Internet. It already copies the whole thing (most of it anyway) onto its warehouses full of servers. So why not just become the Internet?

Luckily, the company isn't that nimble. And they do lose interest in some of their own ideas. For example, a couple of years ago the company started scanning in almost all of the direct-mail catalogs for its catalog index, found here. At first this was pretty phenomenal, but now many of the catalogs are very much out of date, and there seems to be little interest in the project. It's a handy resource that was under-promoted, and Google now seems to be looking for an exit strategy.

And, before someone chimes in, yes, there is always the possibility of Google marketing an operating system. Google-Linux is my best guess.

Not all the Google initiatives are best of breed. Its IM system, for example, is nothing special. Orkut falls far short of its competition. There are other examples.

Still, the search engine is still the best of breed and, more important, the company is best of breed and is warm and fuzzy. It is an object lesson for those entrepreneurs who think you have to be overly competitive to get anywhere in high tech.

Google: King of the Tech World
ARTICLE DATE: 10.11.05
By Lance Ulanoff

Google is now the most important technology company in the world. Microsoft? Yesterday's news. Intel? An also-ran. IBM? The day before yesterday's news.

If you're looking for evidence, take a look at PCMag.com's homepage. Lately, it's been overrun by Google. As I write this, there are two Google-related stories stacked on top of each other. There's nothing on Intel or IBM. Microsoft's Windows Vista is there, but it's the only Microsoft story anyone really cares about. The technology page of CNN.com has three Google headlines. If someone at Google burps, people care.

The company nearest to Google in terms of hipness and being a true alternative to the big guys is Apple. But most of its products serve a small and truly passionate user community. Google's user community is, by contrast, everyone on the Web. There's really no comparison.

Right now I feel for Bill Gates. It must be so frustrating running the company that was at the center of the technology universe. Microsoft had that distinction in the 1980s and part of the 1990s, although it transformed, in many people's minds, into "the evil empire" in the late 1990s. These days it's viewed as established, a big business for big business, and generally stodgy. Now Gates and Microsoft know how IBM must've felt in the 1980s.

Google, like Microsoft circa 1986, has earned its place in the pantheon of technology gods. It's built a rock-solid search business and expanded expertly into e-mail, satellite imagery, news, shopping aggregation, and browser toolbars. Recently, Google added instant-messaging and Voice over IP apps. Each of these products is well done, if not market-leading. When we write about or review any of them, the traffic is significant. Stories about how to get more out of Google search explode.

Google is, right now, the center of everything, online at least. More than once, I've been asked if Google is taking on too much, expanding too far into categories it can't handle. Usually I answer, "No." Google's line extensions have dovetailed nicely with its existing products and fit not only the Google brand, but its basic approach to product development and release: Build light, simple, and effective apps, and remain in an "underdevelopment" beta mode for as long as possible to shield the young products from criticism. This is one rock-solid strategy. Google rarely, if ever, varies from this. I defy you to find a cluttered or complicated Google product—and it's also just as hard to find a final version of anything.—Continued...

Google is not invincible, however, and the first chinks in the armor are quite visible. Some of what Google does in search, especially ranking results, is seen as manipulative, and its way of delivering contextually relevant ads is viewed by some as an invasion of privacy. The company is making its way, ever so slowly, into "evil oligarch territory." That, as Bill Gates could surely tell Google's Larry Page, is the next logical step in the Google evolution. All world dominators are ultimately viewed as evil. People either knuckle under to them or seek to overthrow them—and sometimes they succeed.

Google execs have been, for the most part, much smarter than Microsoft, avoiding binding licenses and grabby deals that smell of too much global ambition. Virtually every tool it offers to consumers is free, and the company persona is one of good times and corporate casualness. No one really expects Google to end up like Microsoft—an unhip company that's only interested in money (heaven forbid a business should operate on a revenue and profit motive). Google is the counter culture.

Still there is a dissonance at work in Google's world. The best evidence we have is from the remarkable CNET vs. Google incident. There were reports a few months ago that Google has banned CNET for a year—no one from Google is supposed to talk to anyone at the technology Web site, and this, I believe, includes cluing them in on upcoming product developments. Talk about cutting your nose to spite your face. We compete with CNET, but even I know that you want to talk to them if you plan on getting the word out. What's more alarming about this development is why Google banned CNET. The Web site's news division apparently used Google's own tools to research and report on one of Google's key execs. It then reported its findings on the CNET Web site. Someone at Google went ballistic.

This is not the kind of response we expect from Google-Land. They're happy, cool, playful, willing to make and take jokes. Look at the whimsy we sometimes see on the Google homepage when it changes the logo for a holiday or special event. Few other big businesses would do that. So why is Google acting this way?

It's inevitable really. Google is acting this way because no company can stay small, young, and hip forever. The leadership ages and changes, more traditional corporate types arrive as the company grows, and soon Google's just like anyplace else. I mean how can it not be? The company has tolled out a multibillion-dollar IPO. That means the quiet, private do-it-your-own-way company is answering to a lot of more traditional shareholders. People who, regardless of how liberal they are on the outside, must push the company hard to make bigger and bigger profits any way it can.

Again, the template has been set. Most of us remember how everything revolved around Microsoft in the early and mid-1980s, and we recall the phenomenon of all the "Microsoft millionaires" produced by its first IPO. Here was a company that was beating the pants of uptight, always "Thinking" IBM and making millionaires at the same time. The company was so, how can I put it? It was. . . That's right. Microsoft was cool once, too.


Google hiring like it's 1999
By Elinor Mills
http://news.com.com/Google+hiring+like+its+1999/2100-1025_3-5924424.html
Story last modified Mon Oct 31 13:15:00 PST 2005

It may take a village to raise a child, as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton likes to say. But it looks like it's going to take quite a bit more than that to fulfill the Google dream of one day indexing all the world's information for that little tyke.

The search giant is on a hiring tear. In its most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 30, Google added 800 employees, bringing its global work force to 4,989. That's more than triple the total from just two years ago.

"For a tech company to do that, we haven't seen that since the bubble," said Umesh Ramakrishnan, vice chairman at executive search firm Christian & Timbers.

News.context
What's new:
Google added 800 people to its staff in the last quarter, and increased its work force more than threefold in the last two years.
Bottom line:
About 1,100 job openings, many of them in the engineering field, are listed on the company's Web site. Although the company is always on the lookout for people with good ideas and skills, jobs at Google are in such high demand the company rarely has to recruit prospects.

Still, it would be difficult to argue that Google is hiring irresponsibly like an old dot-com, considering its sales are keeping pace with that work force growth. Google's third-quarter revenue nearly doubled from a year ago to $1.58 billion, with a net income of $381.2 million.

At the moment, Google has at least 1,000 positions available all over the world, according to a count of job openings on the company's Web site. It's difficult to provide an exact tally. Though the openings cover nearly every facet of Google, from advertising sales to human resources, the bulk of the openings are in what the search company's executives hold most dear--engineering.

"They don't even have to recruit, it's so hot," said Stephen Arnold, author of "The Google Legacy: How Google's Internet Search is Transforming Application Software." "I gave a keynote recently in Nimes (France) followed by someone from Google and right in front of my eyes three people went up to him and said, 'How can I get hired at Google?'"

Of course, there have been more than a few high-profile hires. Google picked up controversial computer scientist Kai-Fu Lee, whose hiring away from Microsoft landed Google in court, and Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, who co-designed the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) and previously worked for MCI.

But for every tech luminary, a few hundred not-so-famous people have been hired. And the question of course is: What does this mean to the rest of an industry that already complains about a lack of good engineering talent?

"We see that some of these graduates that would have gone to a telecommunications company as recently as three to four years ago would much rather be hired by Google or a mini-Google because they believe the industries are converging," Ramakrishnan said.
So what does Google look for in an employee?

In a speech at the VortexSF 2005 technology show in San Francisco last week, Douglas Merrill, senior director of Information Services Technology at Google, said his company believes that today's work world moves too fast to hire "experts." Rather, he said, Google looks for "learners."

"We always try to hire a person that is too good for the current job and is about right for the job that is the next step," Merrill said. "We always overhire."

The company has an online applicant-tracking system that allows the job seeker and those who are doing the hiring--a broad group from across the company--to send information electronically in response to automated e-mails.

A committee made up of Googlers--not the hiring manager--then looks at all the material and evaluates all of the information.

Employees are evaluated in a similar way, with all those with whom they work able to submit information publicly to their review. Additionally, everyone at the company can view what projects any other employee is working on.

Merrill acknowledged that both the way Google hires and evaluates employees is unusual.

"We view ourselves as a living experiment," he said. "What we do is clearly less efficient...The question is: What is the return on that tax?"

Given those tough standards, Google isn't missing any

CONTINUED: Google bulks up, but so does Yahoo... opportunity to find the best and the brightest. The company ran a student code-writing contest this summer. It also often hires people who hack Google code or do interesting things with it, including Paul Rademacher, who wrote Housingmaps.com, which combined Google Maps and Craigslist real estate listings in the first Google map mash-up.

"Yahoo was the media darling in the '90s. Google is that company today."
--Gautam Godhwani, chief executive, SimplyHired.comGoogle "is completely changing the paradigm in the way you and I think about things like a normal telephone call or opening up the yellow pages. They are changing the way we live life. Who doesn't want to be a part of something like that?" Ramakrishnan said.

A recruiting video on the Google Jobs Web site shows smiling employees discussing the company's meals and snacks, and the resultant "Google 15," referring to the weight new employees gain from eating all the free food.

Among the other perks offered at Google's headquarters, affectionately dubbed "Googleplex," are an on-site doctor and dentist, massage and yoga, child care, maternity and paternity leave, adoption assistance, on-site dry cleaning and coin-free laundry room, and one day set aside for engineers to work on pet projects.

"Yahoo was the media darling in the '90s. Google is that company today," said Gautam Godhwani, chief executive at job search site SimplyHired.com

"Google continues to represent a company that is much closer to being in its early stages, with rapid growth, never having had a significant failure and ramping quickly with a compelling vision," Godhwani said.

That's not to say that Yahoo isn't doing its share of hiring. Yahoo hired 880 employees in the third quarter, bringing its work force to 9,660 employees. That's up from 7,022 a year earlier. In fact, this has been the busiest hiring year in the history of the Internet pioneer. But as a percentage of the total work force, Yahoo's additions are a little more than half those at Google.

Also hiring fast are global outsourcing companies like Wipro, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, which says it plans to hire 13,500 workers this fiscal year.

Of course, there are plenty of risks when a company is growing as fast as Google. Most important, will it be forced to water down recruiting standards? "The management challenges of this are a potential deal breaker for Google," Arnold said. "As they get bigger and bigger and more and more distributed that's going to be tough."

A Google spokeswoman downplayed such concerns. "Our recruiting organization is world-class, and we've been pleased with our ability to scale quickly without sacrificing the quality of our recruits," Google spokeswoman Lynn Fox wrote in an e-mail.

But as long as Google can continue its revenue climb while still being viewed as a technical innovator, bringing in top-notch talent shouldn't be too difficult in the near-term.

Google "is so incredibly democratic. It's like an electromagnet for talent," Arnold said. "I think it's the new Bell Labs...If I were 35, I'd be begging them to hire me."

CNET News.com's Ina Fried contributed to this report.
Copyright ©1995-2005 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

Google throws bodies at OpenOffice
By Stephen Shankland
http://news.com.com/Google+throws+bodies+at+OpenOffice/2100-7344_3-5920762.html
Story last modified Mon Oct 31 04:00:00 PST 2005

Google plans to hire programmers to improve OpenOffice.org, a demonstration of its affinity for open source initiatives and one the company believes also shows sound practical sense.
OpenOffice has its roots in Sun Microsystems' StarOffice suite of programs. Five years ago, Sun turned its proprietary software into an open-source project. Only recently, however, has the competitor to Microsoft's Office attracted serious attention.

Now Google believes it can help OpenOffice--perhaps working to pare down the software's memory requirements or its mammoth 80MB download size, said Chris DiBona, manager for open-source programs at the search company.

News.context
What's new:
Google plans to hire programmers to improve OpenOffice.org, an open-source software suite that competes with Microsoft's Office.
Bottom line:
The move strengthens the search giant's ties to open-source development. But Google also has business reasons to justify its embrace of OpenOffice, which competes directly with a Microsoft product.

"We want to hire a couple of folks to help make OpenOffice better," DiBona said.

Google has shown an affinity for open-source software, which are programs developed in the open and available for free. Many of the company's programmers came of age in the open-source era, so advancing the open-source agenda comes naturally, DiBona said. But the company also has business reasons to justify its open-source embrace.

"We use a fair amount of open-source software at Google. We want to make sure that's a healthy community. And we want to make sure open source preserves competitiveness within the industry," he said.

Earlier in October, Google and Sun announced a partnership to boost several software projects, but released few details. Asked about OpenOffice collaboration, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at the time only that the search engine power would "work to make the distribution of (OpenOffice) more broad." But OpenOffice, like the other software projects the partners intend to work on, competes directly with Microsoft software--a point that has not gone unnoticed.

As one of the most-watched companies in the industry, Google's involvement has helped Sun draw attention to OpenOffice.org. And there are other reasons the software is taken more seriously as an alternative to Microsoft Office. For one thing, OpenOffice.org 2.0 was just released with a modernized interface and some new features. For another, OpenOffice.org supports OpenDocument, a standardized file format that many endorse as a way to break the lock-in of Microsoft's proprietary formats.

DiBona didn't mention a wider competitive perspective in giving Google's rationale for investing time and money on nonproprietary software. "We were looking for ways to work with Sun and ways to help users. This is a good place to spend some resources," he said.

Google's heavy use of open-source software for its operations has kept its developers in touch with cutting-edge technology, but the do-it-yourself approach has also meant that its employees have technology maintenance responsibilities that most companies leave to others.

Some believe Google eventually will have to settle with a more conventional approach: buying technology instead of building it in-house. Among them is Brian Stevens, chief technology officer of Linux seller Red Hat. He said many customers began with their own versions of Linux before turning to Red Hat for support.

"With most customers, we have a relationship that started that way. Every financial services company, the Department of Energy--almost everyone got Linux in a nonstandard way on their own," Stevens said. But Google probably won't keep its in-house Linux version, he predicted. "That's not where their competence is. They've got a lot of other problems than building Linux distributions."

A peek under the hood
Google is notoriously reluctant to describe the particulars of its search-computing data center, which served the demands of 380 million people in August. But DiBona did discuss some details.

The company uses the Linux operating system for its mainstay search

CONTINUED: What Google won't open-source... service, he said. Its Linux core begins not with software from a company such as Red Hat, or Novell's Suse Linux, but rather from the version that project leader Linus Torvalds posts periodically to the kernel.org Web site.

Among the open-source technologies used by Google are the Python programming language and the MySQL database, he said. In addition, Google's Blogger site uses Apache Web server software and the Tomcat package for running Java programs on the server.

The GCC compiler software, used to create nearly every open-source program in existence, also is widely used at Google.

Sun's Java also figures prominently, even though it's not open-source at its center. "We make great use of Java at the company," DiBona said, including for Gmail. The company claims the Web-based e-mail service has millions of subscribers.

Sun hasn't released the fundamental part of Java--the virtual machine component--as open-source software. However, the Apache Software Foundation is working on an open-source Java effort called Project Harmony, an initiative that now has IBM developer support.

"I think they'll succeed wildly," DiBona said of Harmony. "They're so good at this. They say, 'We're going to write this software,' and it gets done."

Despite Google's liking for open-source software, plenty of programming at the company is proprietary.

"We're never going to open-source PageRank," DiBona said, referring to the algorithm the company uses to choose which search results to present. "It's the thing that makes Google Google."

Open-source output
Google isn't only an open-source software consumer. It's an open-source producer as well: For example, employees submit software to the Apache Axis Web services project, DiBona said.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company also employs some open-source notables:

• Sean Egan, leader of the GAIM project for instant messaging software;

• Alex Martelli, a leading Python developer;

• Greg Stein, the Apache Software Foundation chairman and a manager of the Subversion source code management software.

• And Ben Goodger, the lead programmer of the Firefox Web browser project, as well as a few other Firefox programmers.

Google also has published several open-source projects, including tools for debugging software, improving its performance, monitoring MySQL databases and using the AJAX software for richer Web page interfaces.

But so far, there is a significant limit to the group-programming facet of Google's projects: The company doesn't yet accept outside contributions.

Some developers have offered the company contributions meant to improve Google's open-source software--for example, to add 64-bit support to 32-bit software. That cooperation is awkward right now for reasons relating to intellectual-property control, DiBona said.

"We've been slow in being able to accept outside patches," he said. But the company is working on a contributor license that lays out patent and copyright terms for outside contributors. "It's something that pays to be very, very careful about."

The company has helped outside open-source projects, though. Through a $2 million program called the Google Summer of Code, the company sponsored 400 college-age students to work on open-source projects last summer. Each got $4,500 if they met their goals, which 84 percent did. Another $500 went to each of the several open-source projects that helped organize the effort, DiBona said.

Open-source software is good for young programmers, DiBona said, noting that it gives them real-world problems to solve and teaches them self-management skills.

"We think open-source is pretty important," DiBona said. "Without it, the industry would not be as good as it is now to newcomers."
Copyright ©1995-2005 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

OCTOBER 26, 2005
News Analysis

Big Waves from "Google Base"
By Robert Hof and Sarah Lacy
Is the search giant preparing for a landgrab in online auctions? Or classified ads? Or even more? It's sure looking that way

It's not enough that Google (GOOG ) seems to be taking on everyone from Microsoft (MSFT ) and Yahoo! (YHOO ) to Verizon (VZ ) and the world's book publishers (see BW, 9/5/05, "Google's Grand Ambitions", and BW Online, 10/20/05 "Google's Escalating Book Battle"). Now, it looks like the search giant has its sights set on tearing into another cast of corporations: online marketplace eBay (EBAY ), the funky classified-ad site Craigslist, the entire newspaper industry, and maybe more.

Google's already outsize ambitions appeared to balloon even bigger on Oct. 25 with the news that it's apparently testing something called Google Base. The test site, spotted by sharp-eyed Web surfers in Europe, indicate that Google aims to solicit people to post all manner of content on its site. But what got people's attention were the specific examples, such as classified-ad listings for real estate.

For now, Google says only that it's trying to provide content owners an easy way to "give us access to their content." It also says it has nothing to announce right now. But that didn't stop rampant speculation about precisely what Google's next move would be. Because Google has been looking at getting into auctions or classifieds for months now, most of the buzz has centered around the potential to take on eBay.

POTENT AMMO. It's not as crazy as it may sound to the casual Web surfer. In essence, notes Steve Harmon, vice-president for corporate development at local online classifieds site LiveDeal, "Classifieds are product search." So it fits neatly into Google's stated goal of organizing the world's information and making it more accessible. And, of course, taking tidy profit off the top.

Google brings some potent ammunition to what's shaping up as a pitched battle for the $90 billion U.S. market for newspaper classifieds, Yellow Pages listings, and local radio ads. For one, it has a hugely appealing brand and enormous traffic. It managed to appropriate an entirely new advertising market that already has stolen ad revenues from traditional media, newspapers to magazines.

The highly profitable revenue from those ads has enabled Google to offer a raft of new consumer services, from e-mail to desktop search, for free. "They're not starting from scratch in many regards," says Derek Brown, senior analyst at Pacific Growth Equities. "The foundation Google is working off of is pretty sizable." It's already getting product feeds from its Froogle comparison-shopping engine, it's working with existing merchants through keywords and advertising, and it has millions of consumers.

GIVE IT A TRY? Google has also been working on a payment system for months. Few companies other than PayPal -- including eBay -- have been able to pull that off, and no one knows how far along Google is. But Brown sees Google Base potentially cutting into eBay's pricing power -- if Google's service were free -- and into the auction giant's growth. Brown already has a sell rating on eBay's stock because he's concerned about growth and large eBay sellers moving off the site.

Perhaps the most crucial eBay constituents are the so-called Power Sellers, those who make all or a substantial portion of their living on the site and account for about 29% of eBay's sales, says Martin Pyykkonen, managing director at Hoefer & Arnett. They're not going to switch capriciously, but there's nothing stopping them from testing a few transactions on Google to see how it goes, he says. As news of Google Base filtered out on Oct. 25, eBay shares fell $1.41, or 3.6%, to $38.01.

eBay may not be the only company in the way of Google Base. Newly discovered Google screenshots seem to indicate a wide range of categories of content: course schedules, events, housing, jobs, news, people profiles, reference articles, products, vehicles, travel, and more. That seems to suggest a wide variety of traditional media, such as newspapers, magazines, and even scientific journals, could be in the line of fire.

"HEAVY CONFLICT"? Even more than eBay, Craigslist looks to be squarely in Google Base's sights. Minority-owned by eBay, it has garnered a loyal following of people who like its spare but friendly feel -- and its proven success in matching buyers and sellers. Google's widely recognized brand could help it ramp up classified listings quickly, surpassing Craigslist in short order, Pyykkonen says.

Google will have to break down roadblocks, though, before Google Base poses a meaningful threat to eBay or any other rivals. It appears Google Base would put Google into the content business -- that is, content it would own, not just point to. That could rankle partners, specifically the classified-ad sites such as Monster.com from which Google recently has been asking for feeds. "It starts to put them in heavy conflict with their partners," says Craig Donato, CEO of Oodle, a new search engine for classifieds, itself a would-be competitor.

Another set of challenges lies in creating a workable user experience, says Rajesh Navar, LiveDeal's CEO. It's one thing to scan search results. It's another thing entirely to view and buy through classifieds. So the user experience would need to be carefully set up to make it clear, for example, who's doing the selling. Also, because classified listings are so transitory -- good ones on Craigslist are gone in 10 minutes -- they may not be conducive to Google's so-called spidering, the process of storing Web pages and indexing keywords, links, and text.

LOTS OF BETAS. Navar points out that Yahoo and AOL (TWX ) had, and perhaps still have, a better position from which to offer classifieds, but they've largely failed. So it's not a lock that Google would succeed.

The biggest question remains whether Google can deliver on services beyond ad-supported search. It's developing a reputation for launching beta project after beta project, from its Gmail Web-based e-mail service to its Orkut social-networking service, that fail to gain much traction. In particular, traffic to Froogle trails far behind that of rivals such as eBay's Shopping.com and E.W. Scripps' Shopzilla, despite Froogle's debut in test mode more than two years ago.

That's why one person familiar with eBay management's views says the company actually remains less worried today about competition from Google than it was six months ago. Indeed, to offer buyers and sellers a credible alternative to eBay, Google also would have to come up with a number of new services -- for one, a payment system. It has said it's working on a Google Wallet, which it hasn't yet introduced, but eBay's PayPal unit took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to clear regulatory hurdles and stamp out fraud before it caught on.

WATCH YOUR BACK. Google also would need to create a reputation system to rival eBay's formidable feedback system, by which buyers and sellers rate each other to build trust.

Still, Google has a big and growing cash hoard it could use to hire the right talent, create the needed technology, or strike a deal with partners and the many upstarts already challenging Internet incumbents. If nothing else, Google Base will force a whole new swath of the business world to pay attention to the brash boys from Mountain View, Calif.



OCTOBER 20, 2005

Google's Escalating Book Battle
News Analysis
By Burt Helm
Since neither publishers nor the online-search outfit will budge, the final chapter of this saga seems certain to be written in court

Objection to Google's plan to digitize millions of library books is mounting. After months of saber-rattling, publishers made a direct thrust at the Web search giant. In a complaint filed in the U.S. District court in New York on Oct. 19, publishers McGraw-Hill (MHP ), Pearson Education (PSO ), Viacom's (VIA ) Simon & Schuster, Penguin, and John Wiley & Sons (JWA ) sued Google (GOOG ) for copyright infringement (BusinessWeek and BusinessWeek Online are owned by The McGraw-Hill Companies). Google says its actions are compliant with an exemption in copyright law that makes allowances for reproduction for special purposes like research.

The suit, which seeks a ruling rather than an award for damages, reflects publishers' concerns over Google's Print for Libraries. As part of the program, Google plans to scan and index books from five of the world's major libraries, and make that content searchable using the Google's search engine (see BW Online, 9/5/05, "Google's Grand Ambitions").

While Google won widespread praise for its offer to digitize classic and obscure books in the public domain, it drew the ire of publishers and authors alike when it announced that at three of the libraries it would also scan the full texts of copyrighted books.

THE PERMISSION PROBLEM. The lawsuit is a setback to Google's library program, the case has broader implications: A ruling against Google could disrupt its aims to digitize and make searchable all kinds of media and information (see BW Online, 9/22/05, "For Google, Another Stormy Chapter").

"If Google were to lose this, it might hinder not just Google Print but all sorts of technologies," says Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Chances are next to nil that a negative ruling would jeopardize the Internet search business, since Google's practice of copying Web pages for search purposes is generally accepted by Web publishers.

But a legal ruling forcing Google to gain explicit permission from all other copyright holders could hobble attempts to apply the same method to existing media, like books, film, or sound recordings in programs like Google Print and Google Video. "Web search would not exist today if you had to go door-to-door asking permission," says Google's intellectual-property counsel Alexander MacGillivray. The sheer volume of information is too vast to get permission on a case-by-case basis.

"MASSIVE COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT." The disagreement centers on the question of permission. Google argues that since it's basically just creating an enormous card catalog -- and that it will limit what users can see of copyrighted texts to one- or two-sentence excerpts -- it shouldn't have to get explicit reproduction permission. Publishers argue that scanning a whole book without permission, and storing it indefinitely on a Google server, violates copyrights, plain and simple.

The rift between publishers and Google highlights the chasm between how copyrights are viewed online and off. On the Internet, copying and storing files is a fundamental part of how Google's search engine works. By indexing Web-page copies on its servers, Google can rapidly search those files and point users in the direction of relevant sites. In the cases where a Web publisher objects, Google's allows it to "opt out" by writing a special tag in its site's code.

The suit comes after 10 months of escalating tensions between publishers and the search giant. Earlier in the year, trade groups including the American Association of University Publishers (AAUP), the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and major publishers including Random House and John Wiley & Sons sent Google letters expressing concern that the Print for Libraries program amounted to "massive copyright infringement." Negotiations ensued.

OFFER REJECTED. At a meeting on July 1, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt extended what Google considers a compromise, offering publishers an opt-out clause comparable to its policy with Web-site owners. Google would pause scanning until November while giving publishers a chance not to have their books searched.

AAP members rejected the proposal, saying Google's actions would open the door for anyone to digitize their intellectual property. In the summer negotiations, members of the AAP proposed that Google use the Bowker database, which assigns a specific number, called an ISBN, to every book published since 1967, for determining which books required permission. For all out-of-print copyrighted titles without ISBN numbers, the AAP would have a "more relaxed" agreement with Google, says Alan Adler, general counsel of the AAP.

The AAP offer was untenable, Google's MacGillivray says. "If copyright law were such that if [a library] wanted to create a card catalog it had to find every single person who had the rights to these books...imagine how few books" would be accessible, he says. "It turns copyright law on its head."

FIRING UP THE SCANNERS. So Google decided to go on with the plan originally proposed by Schmidt. The move rankled book publishers and authors alike, and on Sept. 20 the Authors Guild filed suit. The publishers decided to call Google and renew talks to give a peaceful resolution one more try.

After several phone meetings, both sides held a last-ditch conference call on Oct. 13. Google execs made this offer: They would delay the scanning of in-copyright books for a longer period of time, while continuing to meet, according to Adler. But says AAP CEO Pat Schroeder: "Google wasn't taking negotiations seriously," and the AAP board decided to pull the trigger.

On Oct. 17, the AAP board called Google and said its offer was unacceptable. The lawsuit was filed two days later. Google says that, regardless of the suit, it plans to resume scanning copyrighted books on Nov. 1 (see BW Online, 8/12/05, "Google's Plan Doesn't Scan").

THEN AND NOW. An irony is that it's not clear whether the program would help or hinder book sales. Almost exactly a year ago, publishers showered praise on the search giant when it announced a slightly different program called Print for Publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. In that program, Google invited publishers to send it specific titles that it would scan so that it could make excerpts show up in search results, and publishers lauded the program as an innovative way to promote new and old titles alike. All of the companies involved in the litigation are partners with Google in that program, and say they plan to remain partners.

What a difference a year makes. Just hours after the news of the American publishers' lawsuit, members of the International Publishers Assn. and PEN, the authors association, passed a resolution at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair voicing opposition to Google Print for Libraries. If the publishers prevail, the company with the unofficial motto "Don't Be Evil," may need to start saying please.


SEPTEMBER 22, 2005
For Google, Another Stormy Chapter
NEWS ANALYSIS :TECH
By Burt Helm

Fuzzy copyright laws leave plenty of room for controversy -- and a new lawsuit -- over the search engine's right to scan books
Google's (GOOG ) plan to index millions of library books online rankled some authors and publishers from the start. Companies such as Random House and publishing groups including the Association of American University Publishers cried foul over what they said would constitute a large-scale rights violation.

Just how onerous some writers find the so-called Print for Libraries initiative was made plain on Sept. 20, when a group of authors sued the search giant. By creating and keeping digital copies of scanned books in order to attract Web site visitors, Google is "engaging in massive copyright infringement," says the complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in New York and requests class-action status.

HANGING TOUGH. Further, the complaint demands that Google pay damages for each infringement, and asks the court for an injunction prohibiting the company from scanning copyrighted books without explicit permission.

The plaintiffs consist of authors Herbert Mitgang, Betty Miles, and Daniel Hoffman, and the Authors Guild trade group, an associational plaintiff. Google says it received the complaint on the afternoon of Sept. 20 afternoon. "We're going to defend against this lawsuit vigorously" says David Drummond, Google's general counsel. "We believe it has no merit."

The legal action comes as yet another setback to Google's goal of serving as a clearinghouse of a wide range of global information, legal scholars say. In addition to its publishing woes, Google has also drawn the ire of TV networks for its Google Video, which records and stores TV programs.

SPATE OF SUITS. In March, Agence France-Presse filed a suit seeking copyright infringement damages after Google put AFP headlines, photos, and story summaries on its news search page. And on Aug. 24, Perfect 10, an adult-entertainment company, filed a copyright infringement suit against Google because it put thumbnails of Perfect 10 photos on its search site. (Google has agreed to take down the links to the AFP's content.)

Worse, the authors' lawsuit adds to opposition that could derail a main component of Google's publishing effort. As part of Google Print, a plan to index millions of books, Google's Print for Libraries involves scanning copyrighted texts from three major libraries, including the entire holdings of the University of Michigan.

Google would then make parts of those books available via its search tools. Tension has been mounting since Google announced the libraries program in December. While the company was widely applauded for its plan to index library books in the public domain, the project started to vex publishers and authors when it became apparent that Google also planned to scan the books without seeking copyright holders' permission.

SHORT PAUSE. In the months following, publishers including Random House, Houghton-Mifflin, and John Wiley & Sons sent Google letters expressing concerns over the program. On May 20, the Association of American University Publishers sent its own letter, saying it felt "alarm and concern at a plan that appears to involve systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale" (see BW Online, 5/23/05, "A Google Project Pains Publishers").

In June, the Association of American Publishers, the principal trade organization for commercial publishers, sent its own letter to Google, requesting a six-month moratorium on the project.

The breaking point, however, came after an Aug. 11 posting by Google executive Adam Smith to the Google blog, says Paul Aiken, the Guild's executive director. In that posting, Smith announced that Google would pause scanning until Nov. 1 in order to give copyright holders a chance to opt out of the print project if they chose to do so (see BW Online, 8/12/05, "Google's Plan Doesn't Scan").

"THEY DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT." Although many onlookers interpreted the move as an act of goodwill by Google, authors and publishers saw red. The plan was almost identical to one that publishers had already rejected -- after Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt proposed it during a July 1 meeting, according to Alan Adler, general counsel for the Association of American Publishers, and it ignored the counteroffer publishers had proposed just a few days earlier.

The "opt-out" notion stood out as particularly perturbing. "That's no compromise," says Aiken, "They don't have the right to determine copyright in that matter."

Pat Schroeder, chief executive of the Association of American Publishers, expressed a similar sentiment in a statement following the Aug. 11 announcement. "Google's procedure shifts the responsibility for preventing infringement to the copyright owner rather than the user," Shroeder said, "turning every principle of copyright law on its ear."

SOME STILL SILENT. While publishers wondered aloud whether negotiations could continue following Aug. 11, the Authors Guild decided enough was enough. "It became plain that Google was planning on going ahead even with the complaint of publishers," says Aiken, "We would have nowhere near the same amount of leverage [as] publishers, so we had to pursue a class action [lawsuit]."

Still, there's a chance some publishers will reach an amicable solution. Some have been in negotiations with Google throughout the summer, Schroeder says. Representatives from several publishing houses, meanwhile, would neither confirm nor deny whether their legal teams were gearing up for possible litigation.

The meat of the suit will pertain to what, exactly, constitutes "fair use," a clause in the Copyright Act that allows for the reproduction of portions of copyrighted text for specific purposes, including research.

MURKY AREA. For its part, Google has said that, to comply with fair use, it plans to show only a few sentences of text from copyrighted works on its search page. "We're essentially creating a card catalog," says Drummond. Publishers and authors say this is beside the point. Their argument: Making a digital copy of the entire book, keeping it on a Google server, and using it for commercial purposes violates the very nature of a copyright.

Intellectual-property lawyers admit there is a lot of room for interpretation. "Fair use is very murky here," says Jonathan Zittrain, chair of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University. "We really don't have firm guidance from prior cases."

Joel Beres, an intellectual-property attorney for Louisville (Ky.)-based law firm Stites & Harbison, says he believes that Google has a "good argument" for fair use, since it seems unlikely that Google's use will adversely affect the market for book sales.

FAIR-USE ARGUMENT. "Essentially they are creating an index, which is something you could legitimately walk into a library and do," says Beres. The fact that Google is a for-profit company and would keep its own digital copy was "more problematic," because it owns neither the copyright nor the physical work, he says.

As far as the opt-out provision, Google maintains that it is providing it as a courtesy. "Copyright law says there are certain things [for which] you have to get permission from the copyright holder, and in some you don't" says Drummond. "This is one where you don't -- it's our fair use to use [scan the books]."

If neither Google nor publishers can reach common ground on that point, that courtesy could torpedo any hope of a peaceful resolution.


Google's Grand Ambitions
SEPTEMBER 5, 2005
NEWS: ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY Its lips are sealed, but its moves rattle everyone from Microsoft to eBay

In years past, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT ) could freeze competitors and send investors scurrying just by uttering the name of a market it fancied. Today, Google Inc. (GOOG ) is the 800-pound octopus that is filling potential rivals with dread and envy.

In typical Google fashion, the company chose an unusual moment -- the sleepy doldrums of mid-August -- to shake up the tech world with a flurry of announcements. First, Google confirmed that it had quietly acquired mobile-phone software startup Android Inc. Then came the surprising news that it would add $4 billion to its cash war chest with a secondary stock offering. And then on Aug. 24, the search giant announced it was getting into the instant messaging and Internet telephony businesses. No wonder tech watchers from Silicon Valley to Bangalore are all wondering the same thing: What the heck is Google up to?

No point asking the Mountain View (Calif.) company. Google, as usual, is about as talkative as a telephone pole. But in dissecting the company's spate of recent hires, investments, and acquisitions you can catch tantalizing glimpses of where the search giant could be headed. Talk about ambition. Google appears to be contemplating forays into everything from Wi-Fi Internet access and mobile devices to operating systems and e-commerce.

Google faces serious challenges of course, not least because it is playing catch-up in some of these fields. But if the company's outsize ambitions come to fruition, Google would suddenly be on a collision course with some pretty heavy hitters. The company is already challenging Microsoft and Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO ). Now it seems to be getting ready to stomp on the turf of such giants as eBay (EBAY ), Motorola (MOT ), Nokia (NOK ), SBC Communications (SBC ), and Verizon (VZ ). And if you're a tech startup working similar technologies as the savvy folks in the Googleplex, you have two basic choices: Plan to be acquired -- or get run over. "There is a new fear and caution about how Google will use its war chest," says Chris Shipley, producer of the DEMO Conference, where startups strut their stuff.

If the search behemoth goes ahead with its myriad initiatives, it will be Google vs. Everyone. Here's a glimpse of where Google may be headed:

GOOGLE VS. VERIZON Playing a role in how consumers connect to the Net is an important step for online giants. It helps deepen the link between Web surfers and Internet companies while providing a window for these outfits to showcase products and services. Google clearly covets such a role, but it has shown no interest in mimicking the access businesses of other tech titans -- piling up millions of subscribers like America Online (TWX ) or following Yahoo's lead of partnering with telecom giants.

Google may be showing its hand in this arena with a couple of little-noticed business moves. In April, Google teamed up with wireless startup Feeva Inc. to sponsor a Wi-Fi hot zone in San Francisco in which Google appears as the start page. Google says this is all part of its mission to make access to information more readily available, but it won't comment on other Wi-Fi moves. Some analysts, though, believe it would make perfect sense for Google to bankroll Wi-Fi access points, not only allowing Google to get more users but also to target ads better locally -- a huge growth area. "Google wants there to be more search moments," says Esme Vos, editor of the MuniWireless Weblog and a consultant to cities deploying Wi-Fi solutions. "This would make a lot of sense."

Meanwhile, in July, Google invested in Current Communications Group LLC, a company that offers broadband access over power lines. The company has been rolling out its service to a few markets in the U.S., including Cincinnati. Verizon and SBC take note. These moves show Google is "really interested in affording people the greatest possible access and speeds," says Scott H. Kessler, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor's (MHP ).

GOOGLE VS. MOTOROLA Former insiders say Larry Page -- who, with Sergey Brin, founded the company -- has ruminated in years past about offering a Google mobile phone, allowing users to search the Net easily and get data from the device. Although a fiercely competitive space crowded with companies like Motorola and Nokia, the barriers to entry are getting lower all the time, thanks to a passel of contract manufacturers from Taiwan and elsewhere eager to make phones cheaply for anyone interested in breaking into the market.

At the least, recent acquisitions show the company is working on a software platform for mobile phones. In July, the company snatched up the secretive startup Android, founded by Andy Rubin. Rubin's previous startup was Danger Inc., which developed the popular Hiptop communications device. Although little is known about Android, one person familiar with the company says its engineers at one point had been working on an operating system for mobile phones.

Google also buttressed its mobile-software arsenal with its May acquisition of Dodgeball. The startup has developed social-networking software for mobile devices. A Dodgeball user, for instance, could contact a group of friends in a particular vicinity with a single message on a mobile phone. Google declines to comment on how it intends to utilize the Dodgeball and Android technologies.

GOOGLE VS. MICROSOFT Google has been poaching talented engineers with a wealth of expertise in two Microsoft strongholds: browsers and operating systems. One source familiar with the company says some of these hires are working on an Internet operating system that might run on top of Linux and could compete with Microsoft's Windows franchise. Although any such offering may be years out, it seems plausible based on the talent Google has lured. In recent years, it has hired several architects of Microsoft's .Net strategy -- an attempt to expand its operating system dominance to the Internet. If Google is indeed contemplating an OS, it would amount to an attack on the very foundation of Microsoft.

Google's raid on browser talent has been just as important. In the past year it has hired several top developers of the Firefox browser, a well-regarded but distant challenger to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. "If I'm Microsoft, I'm watching these guys co-opt my desktop," says Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research. "I would be concerned about... the sheer power of their presence."

GOOGLE VS. eBAY Google has not wowed anybody in online commerce so far. Its shopping search site Froogle has not distinguished itself from the pack, and it garners only a fraction of the visitors that go to competing services, such as Yahoo! Shopping. But Google concedes that it is working on an online payment platform -- which could put it in direct competition with eBay's PayPal service.

Another possibility: Google could eventually allow individuals to post items for sale on Froogle. Google's recent hiring of Louis Monier, former director of eBay's advanced technology research, has only added to such speculation.

It's a good bet Google is pondering all of these possibilities and more. The real question is what projects will get the resources inside Google and see the light of day. With uncertainty like that, Google will have the rest of the tech world on edge for some time to come.NOVEMBER 22, 2004
TECHNOLOGY & YOU

There's Google. Then There's Google Desktop
The local search tool is no privacy threat, but it falls short in several ways

The logic behind Google (GOOG ) Desktop Search is simple enough: Why shouldn't the best tool for finding things on the Web do equally well at helping people search their own computers? The product demonstrates that, as computer scientists have long known, a local search is a world apart from a Web search. It requires different tools and approaches.

Like just about everything Google has done lately, Desktop Search is controversial, with some privacy advocates and competitors warning that the software poses a grave threat. Charges that the new Google product exposes your private searches to the world are grossly exaggerated. The truth is that, while Google does a reasonably good job of finding things on your computer, it presents the results in a way that is not terribly useful.

Bear in mind that Google Desktop Search, available for free download from desktop.google.com, is a "beta," or test, program and will probably remain so for many months. Some of its shortcomings, such as the inability to search the contents of Adobe (ADBE ) Acrobat files, will be fixed. But there are fundamental problems in using Google's Web query and results formats for local searches.

GOOGLE'S GREAT STRENGTH IN SEARCHING your PC is the same as in Web searching: It's terrific at finding the copies of Web pages you have visited that Internet Explorer stashes away on your hard drive, including Web-based e-mail such as Hotmail. Enter a search term, and you get back listings that look exactly like Web search results -- 10 or so items consisting of a title and a couple of lines of extracted text that includes the search term. This is fine for locating the Web page of that hotel in Antigua you looked at six weeks ago, but it's a terrible way to locate the e-mail Aunt Millie sent you last month.

In a local search, you generally know what sort of file you are looking for. So it ought to be easy to restrict the search to e-mail messages, Word files, and the like -- but it's not. Most desktop search programs, such as X1, Copernic, or Enfish -- as well as the test version of MSN desktop search due from Microsoft by yearend -- let you limit the search with a mouse click or two. With Google, you must use geeky filtering commands, such as filetype: e-mail, as part of each search. What's more, the competing tools typically present results in a window with multiple panes -- one giving file names, or in the case of e-mail, the subject and the sender, and another giving at least a partial view of the contents. Google gives you a thumbnail image of some Web pages, but it is too small to be of much use.

Google Desktop Search is bound to improve before it is officially released. For example, the list of searchable file types will be expanded. And the restriction that keeps more than one person from running searches -- on a Windows XP or 2000 computer -- will go away.

Despite critics' warnings, Google users need not worry that their desktop queries will be shared with the world, saved in a giant Google database, or used to unleash a flood of ads on their PCs. When you use the Desktop Search form, no keywords leave your computer. If you use the regular Google Web search form, you'll get results from both the Web and your PC, and your search terms will obviously be sent to Google. The company insists that the information is not saved and the only ads sent are the sort that accompany every Google search.

Your decision to use Google Desktop Search should be based on whether it meets your needs, not scare talk. If you mostly search for Web pages and use a Web e-mail program, it might be just the ticket. But if, like many business users, you need to search a variety of document types and use a mail program such as Microsoft Outlook, you'll probably be happier with a different search tool.

By Stephen H. Wildstrom


NOVEMBER 22, 2004
TECHNOLOGY & YOU

Online Extra: Is Google Desktop a Privacy Threat?
No, your hard-drive searches aren't broadcast over the Net. Still, you need to be a careful user. Here's the real deal

As soon as Google released a trial version of its new Desktop Search product, warnings started circulating that it was a grave threat to privacy. "The software takes your search terms and broadcasts them out over the Web, to deliver ads and the like back to your desktop, while at the same time potentially exposing your private search terms to hackers," warned a somewhat overheated e-mail from Google competitor Copernic. Is Google Desktop Search, or any other desktop indexing program, a real privacy threat. Let's separate fact from fiction.

What information does Google Desktop Search (GDS) send back to Google?
If you use the GDS search form, no search terms or results ever leave your computer. That's what Google says, and I have verified it by using a tool called a protocol analyzer to monitor my computer's Internet output while using GDS. In the GDS default setup, a Web search will also automatically return any matches it finds on your computer, which means you can use the standard Google search page or Google Toolbar to search your PC.

In this case the query is, of course, sent to Google and is used to generate standard Google "sponsored links." Results retrieved using purely local search contain no ads or sponsored links.

There's always a theoretical risk that any information you send unencrypted across the Internet could be intercepted by hackers. But someone would have to have an obsessive interest in your searches to make it worth the tremendous amount of trouble, not to mention the legal peril, of intercepting your traffic.

Is it true GDS can expose personal information such as bank statements and account numbers?
Yes, but only to someone who has physical access to your PC. And this is something you can control. By default, GDS indexes all Web pages that you have viewed. You have the option of turning off the indexing of secure pages -- those that were encrypted during transmission.

Whether or not you want to do this depends on how you use your computer. If you use a Web-based e-mail program such as Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail, you must index secure Web pages if you want to search your mail. If you do a lot of online banking or other sensitive transactions, you probably should turn this function off. If you use Web mail and do a lot of transactions, you have a hard choice to make.

It's important to realize that nothing on you computer should be regarded as safe from someone who has physical access to your account. Someone in that situation could install an indexing program even if you hadn't. And unless you're dealing with very, very poorly designed Web sites, you password should never be revealed on indexed pages, though you user name and account information may be.

Does GDS retain copies of pages that have been deleted?
Yes, the program builds its own cache of Web pages, so a page you visited in the past may be accessible even if you've cleared out your Internet Explorer history. So if you want to remove traces of sites you've visited, don't use Google Desktop. One the other hand, the program will allow you to recall old versions of pages that have since changed, which can be quite handy.

I share a computer with my kids. Can they use GDS to search my files?
If you have set up your Windows XP or 2000 computer correctly, each user has his or her own login. In its current state, GDS can be installed by only one user on a machine, and it will search only that user's files. Anything in another user's My Documents folder, Temporary Internet Files, e-mails, or instant messenger chats won't be indexed and isn't accessible.

Other indexing programs, such as Copernic, can be set up for multiple users and respect the walls between different users' data. Google plans to add multiple-user support to Desktop Search before it launches the program officially.


NOVEMBER 29, 2004
TECHNOLOGY & YOU

Microsoft Is No Threat To Google -- Yet
If the new search's loads of glitches are fixed fast, it has huge potential

In the past decade, searching the Web has grown from an academic experiment to a multibillion-dollar business. Microsoft (MSFT ) has not been a player, being content to outsource its MSN Search service to rival Yahoo! (YHOO ). Now, Microsoft is offering a homegrown search engine, but, despite some nice touches, it has a long way to go to challenge industry leader Google (GOOG ).

A public trial of the new service launched on Nov. 11, and it has some very rough edges that suggest it was pushed out before it was quite ready. Still, it's a big improvement over the old Yahoo-powered MSN Search, which is what you still find at the standard MSN search page and the MSN Toolbar. To use the new service, you must go to beta.search.msn.com. There you will see a simple, clean search form. You type in your search term and click either the "search" or "near me" button. The first runs a standard Web search. The second restricts the scope to a city or region.

The odd results generated by a "near me" search reveal the considerable gap between Microsoft's ambitions and reality. The top 10 results in a search for "furniture stores" in Washington turned up a newspaper in Kenai, Alaska, but no furniture stores closer than New Jersey. By contrast, local searches at Google and Yahoo both gave 10 Washington furniture stores.

When you type in a search term that can be interpreted as a factual question, Microsoft will try to give you a simple answer from its Encarta encyclopedia. For example, "capital of Ohio" returned the answer "Columbus" and a click on "Encarta Answers" took you to additional information on Ohio. Unfortunately, the encyclopedia search is buggy. "Who shot Lincoln" prompted MSN to ask "Were you looking for 'who shot' near Lincoln, Neb." Typing in "President of France" offered no answer but did gave a link to a speech presented in France by the president of the Church of Scientology.

ONE HELPFUL TOOL IN THE NEW MSN SEARCH is the Search Builder, which gives advanced users an easy way to fine-tune results. You can tweak the search algorithm to vary the weight given to the preciseness of the match, the popularity of the site, and the frequency with which it is updated. You can do the same thing in Google, but only if you know some arcane query commands. You can also restrict the search by country, region, or language, limit it to a specific site or domain, or get only a listing of pages that link to a specified site. And the search-results pages are clean: The only ads are clearly identified sponsored links that are even less intrusive than Google's.

Like Google, Microsoft offers the option of restricting your search to images and news sources. But unlike Google's eclectic collection of media outlets from around the world, Microsoft favors a relatively small collection of well-known, mostly U.S. sources. Usually the first result comes from MSNBC -- one of the few places, besides Encarta, where Microsoft has succumbed to the temptation to promote its own products and services.

Microsoft does not plan to make the new version the official MSN Search until early next year. That gives it plenty of time to fix the glitches. The company is also still building its index of the Web and says when it is finished, it will not only be bigger than Google's but will be updated far more often. In the meantime, however, Google is going to find things that Microsoft misses.

Microsoft's next big search move will come in a few weeks when it supplements its new Web search with a desktop tool that will find files on your computer, as does the new Google Desktop Search (BW-Nov. 22). Microsoft's unparalleled ability to integrate its search tools into Windows, Internet Explorer, Outlook, and other Microsoft Office components could give it a huge competitive advantage. But first it must greatly improve the quality of its new search service.

By Stephen H. Wildstrom


OCTOBER 20, 2005
Technology & You
By Stephen H. Wildstrom

The Way to a Google Office
Thanks to a recent alliance between the search king and Sun, your office suite could soon come to you straight from the Net

One day in the not-too-distant future, you sit down at your keyboard to check your messages from Google's Gmail, then fire up Google Word to write a couple of letters. Next, you work on a presentation on new business locations in Google Point, incorporating maps from Google Maps and satellite imagery from Google Earth.

A world in which software from Google (GOOG ) has replaced much of today's Microsoft (MSFT ) hegemony seems far-fetched. But advances in technology and the hints dropped by the very secretive Google suggest that it could become a reality a few years down the road.

The most interesting recent development was the Oct. 4 announcement of a strategic alliance between Google and Sun Microsystems (SUNW ). The only detail revealed was an insignificant plan for Sun and Google to distribute some software for each other. In the longer run, however, this could be a big deal indeed for computer users, especially at home, in schools, and in small businesses.

INSTANT ACTION. A Google-Sun alliance, if it flowers, could take advantage of new technology for running applications on the Web, one that eliminates the sluggishness and limited functions of traditional Web-based programs. The most widely used approach is based on an industry standard called Ajax, and a second method uses Macromedia Flash.

Either can produce programs that look and feel like the desktop ones running on your hard drive. Screens redraw nearly instantly, and you can use the mouse to drag and drop text or other objects. Yahoo! (YHOO ), EarthLink (ELNK ), and Microsoft's Hotmail are testing mail services that, in speed and responsiveness, behave more like Outlook than like clunky Web mail. Google Maps is also a showcase for this technology.

The key to any Google applications package could be Sun's StarOffice, a desktop-productivity suite that matches Microsoft Office program for program. StarOffice costs $75 for Windows or Linux, or you can download a similar package for free from OpenOffice.org.

TOUGH CHALLENGES. While lacking some of the polish of Microsoft Word or Excel, StarOffice is more than adequate for most consumer, educational, and small-business uses. It can now accurately read and write files in Microsoft formats -- something that was problematic in earlier versions.

The main difficulty is with documents that have programs, or macros, embedded within them. StarOffice uses a different programming language and can't run custom Microsoft programs without conversion. But this is an issue mainly for corporate users.

Google and Sun would face formidable challenges if they decide to turn StarOffice into a Web-based suite. The technical job of reworking the suite into software suitable for Web delivery is a big one. On the plus side, Sun and Google both have deep knowledge of how to run the sort of large, complex network that would be required.

UP FOR GRABS. The business hurdles may be even greater. Although the rental of Web-based software has gained some traction among companies -- Salesforce.com's customer-relations-management program being a prime example -- it will likely be a tough sell to consumers.

And it's hard to see how Google's basic model of selling ads closely tied to content could work with a word processor or spreadsheet. But Google has been good at finding ways to make money from services, such as search and free e-mail, where no one else saw much chance for profit.

Nothing Google or anyone else does is going to disrupt Microsoft's hold on corporate desktops. Most companies have invested too much in an Office-based ecosystem to consider changing. But other markets, including education, could be up for grabs, especially if Google were to devise an offering that was easy to use and free of the ever-increasing bloat of Office features that only interest corporate users. If Microsoft executives aren't worried, they should be. READER COMMENTS




OCTOBER 26, 2005
Product Review
By Stephen Baker

Gmail: Just a Bit Too Quirky
Google's mail service offers plenty of storage and swift, sure searches. Trouble is, some of its eccentricities are just plain annoying

Give the Google team credit. They rethought e-mail down to its very roots, then last year created Gmail, a revolutionary form of Web mail.

This piece, the third in a series of reviews on Google tools takes a look at Gmail's novel approach (see BW Online, 10/12/05, "Google's Still Got It" and 9/22/05, "Google's Lackluster Blog Search").

ODDBALL APPROACH. Gmail does away with folders, and entrusts organization to what Google (GOOG ) does best: search. The service now offers a generous 2.6 gigabytes of storage space, virtually eliminating the need to erase messages. And when you trade e-mails with someone, Gmail makes it simple to follow the thread of the conversation. Gmail celebrates innovation.

But you know something funny? I rarely use my Gmail account. It's clever, I find, but weird. And the soon-to-be released Yahoo! (YHOO ) e-mail service that I'm testing blends the good features of Gmail -- lots of storage, great search -- with a more traditional approach that I find comfortable.

An example of Gmail's quirks: Early last summer, I sent a Gmail message to a friend, asking if she'd be going to a mutual friend's birthday party. Turned out she wasn't invited, which led to quite an embarrassment. For months, every message we sent back and forth carried not only the same original label -- "Going to the B-day party?" -- but gathered all the correspondence into one big ball.

IN THE BIN. I would have preferred to leave behind the individual pieces, each one anchored to its original date. I finally started a different string by composing a new message, rather than simply sending a response. And now, as long as we both keep hitting the reply button, another compilation is taking shape.

Looking at the Gmail in-box takes some getting used to. Your own e-mails are tagged simply "Me," and all of the e-mails received and sent are piled together. It's an eyesore. The best way to deal with it is to tag and archive the e-mails.

Although initially disappointed not to find familiar folders, I discovered that Gmail's tagging system works better, because you can cross-reference. If you get an e-mail from your sister about your father, for example, you can tag it with "father" and "sister," and find it in both bins.

UBIQUITOUS EYES. Of course, in the true Google approach, you can dispense with these organizational crutches and simply rely on the search box at the top of the page. As you might expect, it's lightning-fast and accurate.

When Gmail was released in mid-2004, its advertising strategy raised a hubbub. The service combs through the correspondence looking for themes, then drops small, contextually relevant ads into the right-hand margin of the page.

One point in Google's defense: If the idea of computers raking through your mail is worrisome, you might as well skip e-mail altogether. Spam filters are constantly monitoring all of our messages and analyzing the content. The only difference is that they're not all dropping in ads -- and I've barely noticed the ones on Gmail.

A LITTLE SLOW. Compared to Gmail, the new Yahoo service is a throwback to classic e-mail. But it feels more like a desktop setup, such as Microsoft (MSFT ) Outlook, than a Web tool. It's a cinch to drag e-mails into folders (yes, folders), and the pages feel broader and more substantial than traditional Web-mail pages.

Like Gmail, Yahoo's upcoming mail includes an excellent search function. Both systems provide a glimpse into each document, allowing you to see the content.

The downside of the new Yahoo service could be its size. It takes a few seconds for the computer to load the application. And, if you have several hundred messages in your in-box, it takes additional time to list them all -- more reason to put things into folders. Any e-mailers out there who still use a narrowband connection may want to stick with an older, simpler service. For now, the leader in that trailing pack would be Microsoft's creaky Hotmail.

STORE OF VALUE. For most of Gmail's first year, Google limited access to its e-mail system. Now it's open to everyone -- at least everyone willing to provide a mobile-phone number. (Google, looking ahead to mobile search, clearly wants that database of wireless-phone numbers.)

For those with the time and inclination to tinker with something new, Gmail is worth checking out. And even if its idiosyncrasies leave you cold, it's still a handy place to store loads of digital data.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Baker is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York

SEPTEMBER 22, 2005

PRODUCT REVIEW
By Stephen Baker


Google's Lackluster Blog Search
The long-awaited tool is fast and sorts by relevance. But it misses results and lets in too much spam
(Readers' Reviews below)Editor's Review
The Good Lets users pick between most relevant and most recent blogs. And it's fast
The Bad Doesn't provide complete results, and includes too many spam blogs
The Bottom Line The search giant fails to deliver a KO. For now, it's just another blog search engine

Search the Web, and you plow through a vast digital library. Things don't change much from one day to the next. But searching the world's fast-growing universe of blogs is another experience altogether. Blogs show us what people are talking about today. If Web sites show us what the world knows, blogs give us a read of what's on the world's mind.

Check that. They would give us such a read if we could turn to a fantastic blog search engine capable of combing through 17 million blogs (and counting), minute by minute, and making sense of it all. Plenty have tried, from market leader Technorati to Blogpulse and newcomer IceRocket.

SPEEDY SEARCH. But the results vary widely, and sometimes the service is painfully slow. The situation became so dire last summer that frustrated bloggers circulated digital petitions imploring Google (GOOG ) to enter the realm of blog search.

Google finally responded. On Sept. 14, the search giant unveiled the beta version of its long anticipated Blog Search. At first glance, it looks like bloggers' prayers are answered. Google provides the same barebones design we've grown used to.

It also lets users toggle between lists, one showing the most recent blogs on a subject, the other the most relevant. For me, this is the most valuable feature of the service. What's more, the speed of its blog search is just what you'd expect: lightning fast.

SPAMMERS' STRATEGY. So what's wrong? If this were a new blog search by any other company, I'd be blowing its horn long and loud. With one leap, Google has produced a search engine that's among the best. Maybe it's not fair, but with Google's immense resources, I expected the company to leave the competition far behind from Day One. But no, it has its share of problems, just like the others.

The first: It doesn't provide complete results. On BusinessWeek's own site, Blogspotting.net, we posted six items on Sept. 20. Five of them showed up on Technorati, none by late that afternoon on Google. Even on the Advanced Search feature, where you can type exact phrases to look for, our posts remained hidden.

The second problem is spam blogs. These machine-generated blogs are engineered to amass the right combination of links and key words to rise to the top of search-engine rankings -- and to attract Google's automatically placed advertising. Early test drives on Google turn up a fair number of them.

LIMITED USE. Google sits at the center of the spam-blog universe, and with its new search engine, this could get worse. Here's why. Google already runs the biggest free blogging service in the world, Blogger. Since it's free, easy and popular, Blogger unwittingly hosts loads of the spam blogs. Google also operates the largest automatic ad-placement service, AdSense. That provides much of the revenue for spam blogs. And you can bet that the spammers are already gaming their blogs to climb toward the top of Google's new blog search.

The good news: Now that Google is in the middle of the spamosphere, perhaps it will focus its prodigious brainpower into vanquishing the spam bots and their pollution. For now, though, Google's entrée into blog search doesn't change much. I'll be using the engine from time to time, especially its useful tool to find relevant blogs. But even with Google in the mix, blog search is still very much a work in progress.


OCTOBER 12, 2005

PRODUCT REVIEW
By Ben Elgin


Google's Still Got It
Even as competitors improve their Web search tools, Google continues to lead the pack when it comes to finding what you need on the Net
(Readers' Reviews below)Editor's Review
The Good Snags more hard-to-find info, packages content atop results
The Bad Struggles with some queries, rivals are closing the quality gap
The Bottom Line The most comprehensive and highest-quality search tools

Google retains a lock on the biggest slice of the Web search market, sometimes to the surprise of observers. Over the company's seven-year life, Internet users have typed billions of words and questions into the company's small, spare rectangular search bar.

And Google's (GOOG ) share has only widened in the last 18 months, despite dogged efforts by competitors Yahoo! (YHOO ) and Microsoft's (MSFT ) MSN to beef up their own search tools. Since its IPO last year, Google's share of U.S. searches inched up to 37% of the market, while its profits exploded more than sixfold, to $343 million.

GOOD ALL-ROUNDER. But is Google as good as its market share and breakneck growth would suggest? Numerous researchers have been startled in recent years after taking an up-close look at the habits of search-engine users. When presented with results stripped of identifying logos, users deemed the engines -- particularly Google's and Yahoo's -- roughly equal in quality. But stick the branding back and poof! Google nearly always jumps out to a commanding lead in user satisfaction.

As Google passed its seventh birthday in September, I determined to find out for myself whether the site deserves its reputation for having the best search technology in town. As a journalist, I conduct dozens of Internet searches each day, mostly on Google. Recently, I began to run these queries on all the major search sites -- Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, and AOL -- to compare the results. I wrapped up my investigation with a 12-hour marathon of comparative searches on a wide range of topics, from the obscure to the mundane.

My conclusion: Google still provides the best all-around search experience. And while several competitors are hot on its trail, only in a few areas do they offer a better alternative.

SEARCH DEBATE. Google's strength is that it does most everything well. It has a famously Spartan and user-friendly homepage. And it appears to trawl more of the Web than its competitors. It boasts more bells and whistles, such as a handy auto-translation tool for foreign-language pages that turn up in its search results. And Google is on the leading edge of a trend to bring more information and content directly into the search-results page, saving users an additional click or two.

Like most information professionals, I conduct a large volume of arcane searches each day, often on very specific topics -- like the time I sought employees who worked for a certain Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ) office in the late 1990s. When it comes to specialized searches like that, the size of the engine's index can play an important role.

The amount of online content that each engine actually sifts, however, has been the subject of heated debate. In August, Yahoo claimed that it searches over 20 billion documents and images -- more than three times the total last touted by Google. The latter's execs fired back, saying their engine combs through three times more online material than its nearest competitor.

OCEAN TRAWL. Whatever the true tally, my numerous queries revealed that Google nearly always returns more results, without yielding much -- if anything -- on quality and relevance. For example, I recently read of a relatively unknown, yet particularly nasty, patch of ocean just northwest of the Golden Gate Bridge, dubbed Potatopatch Shoal. Apparently, this submerged sandbar can generate giant waves 20 to 30 feet high and has swamped several ships over the centuries.

My interest piqued, I went to the search engines and typed in "potatopatch shoal." Google returned 32 listings, compared with 12 for Yahoo and nine for MSN. Among the documents that Google alone turned up was a riveting, 1997 story in The San Francisco Chronicle about a bar pilot escorting a Korean container ship through the perilous Golden Gate in the dead of night.

The fact that Google regularly snares more documents is one plus. Arming users with tools to crack these documents is another. A biggie is Google's auto-translation feature, which lets you translate documents from eight different languages to English with the click of a mouse. It has been a frequent boon to my research.

TRANSLATION BOON. Earlier this year, I was researching a potentially newsworthy link between Salesforce.com (CRM ) and Japanese business Macnica. Salesforce.com wouldn't comment, and a Macnica official said he didn't know of any such ties.

So I went to Google and simply typed in the two companies' names. One listing, entitled "CRM Customer Success Story," grabbed my attention. It was a link to a page on Salesforce.com's Japanese Web site. Unable to read Japanese, I clicked Google's auto-translation feature and hit the jackpot: Macnica, indeed, was a customer of Salesforce.com.

Identical searches on Yahoo and MSN turn up the same page, but they don't offer a translation feature. In this particular case, I would have been left guessing as to the page's contents -- or at least hunting for a translator -- instead of moving ahead with the research.

THE EXTRA MILE. Another area where Google excels is going beyond the typical ho-hum search-results page. Google, like most of its competitors, is beginning to package content above the usual listings, the so-called 10 blue links. If you go to any of the big search engines and type in a stock ticker such as MSFT, for Microsoft, you'll get a small box of information at the top of the results page, showing Microsoft's latest stock price, a graph of the stock's movement, and other market information.

In many cases, however, Google goes beyond its competitors in adding extra information. Searching on Google for "Flightplan" and "Omaha" or "Capote" and "San Francisco," for instance, brings up a small box with the names of theaters screening each film in the respective city, including show times, a link to a map of the cinema's location, and other useful info. MSN and Yahoo don't highlight any such information.

Other queries produced similar results. A search for "8 piece cookware" on Google brought up a box of three one-line product listings, including the name of the vendor and the price. Again, Yahoo and Microsoft don't cull anything above the search results. It's important to note that this is so-called editorial content, distinct from the advertising that adorns the results pages of Google and its rivals.

SOME MISSES. But for all that Google does well, it still has some drawbacks. For whatever reason, the company struggles to handle searches for little-known commercial entities, particularly those that include a person's name. This can include a sizable number of industries, such as doctors, dentists, investors, and lawyers, among other professionals.

Earlier this year, I encountered this problem when looking up an address for a doctor's appointment. I typed the name of my doctor, who I'll call "John Doe," into Google. Dr. Doe's name came up in numerous listings, such as papers and industry associations, but none of them contained his address. After trying several more queries on Google, I became frustrated and turned to Yahoo. My doctor's own Web site, with his name directly in the URL, was the first result that popped up.

It's not as if Google hadn't found the site, but it puts it at No. 28 out of 33 results. Yahoo and MSN both list it at No. 1. After several such experiences, I've adapted my searching habits and quickly move to Yahoo if Google doesn't deliver in its first page of results.

CONTENT CHALLENGE. One of Google's current strengths could also wind up being a long-term challenge. Right now, it packages content into results pages as well as -- if not better than -- any search company. But some rivals with strong content roots, including AOL and MSN, are starting to discover ways to include their vast stores of info into results pages.

As a whole, they only best Google on a few of these searches, but the potential is obvious. Type "Barry Bonds" into AOL, for instance, and you'll get a headshot of the baseball player, current-year statistics, and links to other info in a box above the results. The data is provided by SI.com, a sibling site. Google visitors, by comparison, will see a drab list of links.

Or type "Grand Canyon" into AOL. You'll see a photo image with links to driving directions, the official Grand Canyon site, and other info, all provided by AOL Cityguide. Again, Google visitors see little beyond the 10 blue links.

Despite the mounting challenges, Google still provides the best overall search option. Sure, its technology lead has narrowed in recent years, particularly with MSN and Yahoo throwing piles of money at their competing technologies. But after examining these engines side by side for several weeks, I have found ample reason to keep Google.com as my default search choice.


Web-based software challenges Windows

NEW YORK (AP) -- A quiet revolution is transforming life on the Internet: New, agile software now lets people quickly check flight options, see stock prices fluctuate and better manage their online photos and e-mail.

Such tools make computing less of a chore because they sit on distant Web servers and run over standard browsers. Users thus don't have to worry about installing software or moving data when they switch computers.

And that could bode ill for Microsoft Corp. and its flagship Office suite, which packs together word processing, spreadsheets and other applications.

The threat comes in large part from Ajax, a set of Web development tools that speeds up Web applications by summoning snippets of data as needed instead of pulling entire Web pages over and over.

"It definitely supports a Microsoft exit strategy," said Alexei White, a product manager at Ajax developer eBusiness Applications Ltd. "I don't think it can be a full replacement, but you could provide scaled-down alternatives to most Office products that will be sufficient for some users."

Ironically, Microsoft invented Ajax in the late 90s and has used it for years to power an online version of its popular Outlook e-mail program.

Ajax's resurgence in recent months is thanks partly to its innovative use by Google Inc. to fundamentally change online mapping. Before, maps were static: Click on a left arrow, wait a few seconds as the Web page reloads and see the map shift slightly to the left. Repeat. Repeat again.

"It's slow. It's frustrating," said frequent map user Fred Wagner, a petroleum engineer in Houston. "We're all getting spoiled with wanting things to happen."

So he sticks with Google Maps these days. There, he can drag the map over any which way and watch new areas fill in instantly. He can zoom in quickly using an Ajax slider.

No more World Wide Wait.
"Everybody went, 'Ooooh, how did they do that?"' said Steve Yen, who runs a company developing an Ajax spreadsheet called Num Sum. "It turns out the technology's been there for awhile."

Jesse James Garrett, an Adaptive Path LLC usability strategist who publicly coined the term 'Ajax' 10 days after Google Maps launched in February, said such examples "convinced a lot of Web designers to take another look at something they may have previously dismissed as experimental."

Also contributing are faster Internet connections, more powerful computers and better browsers able to handle Ajax, which is short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.

Consider e-mail.

Until recently, Web mail meant sending forms back and forth online. Check an item to delete and hit a button. A remote mail server receives instructions and responds with an entirely new page, which is missing only the one deleted item.

Enter Yahoo Inc. and an interface it is testing using technology from an Ajax pioneer it bought, Oddpost. Delete an item this time, and Ajax reconfigures the page immediately without waiting for a response.

Open a message to read, and the browser fetches only the message's body -- it already has the subject line and other header information and doesn't have to waste time duplicating that data.

Yahoo also is developing an Ajax tool that instantly updates flight options as travelers narrow their choices of airports, airlines and travel times.

This summer, Time Warner Inc.'s America Online Inc. which also owns CNN.com, started using Ajax to let users rearrange, display and switch photo albums with fewer clicks.

And last week, Dow Jones & Co.'s MarketWatch began embedding news articles with stock quotes updated several times a second, blinking green and red as prices fluctuate.

"A Web page takes longer to load than that," said Jamie Thingelstad, MarketWatch's chief technology officer. "Your computer would just be hung."

Microsoft, which uses Ajax in a new map offering and an upcoming Hotmail upgrade, is even starting to build new tools to promote Ajax development -- even as it pushes a next-generation alternative.

The alternative technology, known as XAML, will permit even richer applications over browsers. Alas, unlike Ajax, it will run only on Microsoft's Windows computers -- no Macs, no Linux.

Startups, meantime, are embracing Ajax for Office-like tools. Such applications won't replace Office but could find a niche _ parents collaborating in a soccer league could jointly update a Num Sum spreadsheet with scores, while users too poor to buy Office or students always on the go could compose a letter from anywhere using Writely word processor.

Scott Guthrie, who oversees the Microsoft Ajax tools called Atlas, believes Ajax has a future but not one at odds with Microsoft's.

"Ultimately when you want to write a word processing document or manage a large spreadsheet, you are going to want the capabilities ... that are very difficult to provide on the Web today," Guthrie said.

Computer-intensive applications like Adobe Systems Inc.'s Photoshop image editor and high-end games won't come to browsers anytime soon.

Even Google had to create desktop mapping software, called Google Earth and requiring a download, to permit 3-D and advanced features.

"Ajax cannot do everything," said Bret Taylor, who oversees Google's mapping products. "Web applications have a way to go."

Other limitations are intentional. For security reasons, a browser cannot seamlessly access files or other programs on a computer. And, of course, Web applications require a persistent Internet connection -- making work difficult on airplanes.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen also worries that loss of productivity -- a minute here, a minute there, multiplied by thousands of employees -- will offset any savings in installation costs.

"When you do a lot of transactions, you want something that's optimized for the transaction, not something optimized for information browsing," he said.

Among other criticisms, developer tools for Ajax aren't as mature as those for one of its chief rivals, Macromedia Inc.'s Flash. And many Ajax programs don't work well beyond Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox browsers.

Yet Web-based applications are increasingly appealing at a time separate computers for home, work and travel are common and people get used to sharing calendars and other data with friends and relatives.

Ajax can make those experiences richer.

"There's a lot of power sitting on that Web browser ... that people are just tapping into," said White of eBusiness Applications. Web developers "are beginning to push its limits in terms of creative uses and new applications."

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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