Google is a Pre-Teen Today!

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Google, Happy Birthday to you!

For informational purposes:

• According to one Yahoo posting, Google had 25 million web pages indexed total in 1998, today, it indexes millions daily. (Can we step back and think of the irony here? Yahoo... Google...)
• According to this USA Today article, Google's claimed a number of different birthdays over the past. Sounds like my idea of a birthdays... just give me the whole month!

Happy 12th birthday, Google. Thanks for being there for as long as I've been using the Internet.

Warning: Guard may or may not be on duty, Facebook at your own risk.

A few articles caught my eye this week and they're bringing me back to the concepts of my first blog.

According to [Bloomberg Business Week] article, "Facebook sells your friends," "The company has developed a potentially powerful kind of advertising that's more personal—more "social," in Facebook's parlance—than anything that's come before." As if we need their ads to get MORE personal.
Under the article's section from critics were some pretty good explanations. One of them: "People join Facebook to share their lives with friends, yet the information they reveal 'is being used by strangers for completely unrelated commercial purposes,' says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year over changes to the social network's privacy policies. 'That is a little unsettling.'"

And while that may not concern you, this might: hackers.

[CIO] talks about the weakness of the security protocol (The standards that specify the format of data as well as the rules to be followed during transmission) for Facebook (also Salesforce.com and others).
Apparently the authorization protocol, OAuth 2.0 is easy to mimic and malicious hackers do.  Even one of the creators of OAuth has voiced criticism.
Sounds like a process that could use some reengineering...

Communicating with limited characters: texting helped Twitter take off

Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, thanks lucky stars: [CIO.com]. I'm thankful for micro-blogging (< 140 characters) in general.

Google Leaves Us Seconds to Spare.

Google Speeds Up Search with Google Instant (CIO.com)
The tag under this article title reads: "Predictive search that narrows results as you type is expected to save two to five seconds per query, according to Google."

My first reaction is, "two to five seconds... seriously? really? I mean c'mon, big deal." And then I think, "OK, two to five seconds honestly does keep me from getting frustrated with a Web page." And I end with "Remember the days when two to five seconds was unheard of? Ad. Vance. Ment. (three words worth)."

And of course I then begin asking questions:

1. How much time is actually spent on Google?
In the article Google predicts 350 million hours of users' time will be saved within a year.
According to a very unofficial blog from 2007 only 2.1% of all U.S. Internet time was used on Google. Also by the same author Google was number 5 on the top 20 Websites with 5 billion minutes spent on Google in December 2006 (at the time Myspace was in an overwhelming lead of all other sites).

2. How many versions of Google can they possibly come up with?
Google Instant
Google Images
Google videos
Google maps
Google news
Google chrome
Google Earth
Google groups
... there are more and even more.
And there are also some very interesting themed search engines, apparently powered by Google:
Google Translate (which may be of some academic value)
Google Elmer Fudd
Google Hacker
Google Klingon
Google Piglatin
Devil's Google
Google for Linux
Google Easter Egg
*If for some reason the above links won't work, refer to this handy article.
http://emogoogle.com/
http://tattoodle.com/
www.googoth.co.in/
http://googlemyway.com/
Google Loco
http://www.purpoogle.com/
http://www.mypurplesearch.com/ (note that there are multiple PURPLE Google engines)
Backwards google- elgoog.
And I'm fairly certain this list continues.

Those thoughts having been explored, my simple conclusion is: Google has more time, money and reach than I think I ever imagined.


For the record, the new Google Instant is definitely a sight (site) to behold, in fact as you search it warns you:
"Feelings of euphoria and weightlessness are normal. Do not be alarmed."



P.S. -- Google, thanks for the blog space ;-|

Consumer Database... Thanks for Stalking.

The title of this article, “Salesforce.Com Rolls Out Contact-Data Service” was an immediate stand out to me. No, not because “sales” is in the title or even because it was the first article listed… This contact data service sounds a lot like something I’ve heard about in undergraduate classes.


Technology combined with the tactics used in political campaigns… it gives me the urge to yell “SNEAK ATTACK.”

One NPR article, “New Hampshire Campaign Goes Door to Door,” touches on it. “Every campaign has compiled a list of the people who are likely to support their candidate. The names are culled from events and internet lists and secret marketing databases.”

ClickZ has an article “The Political Ad Practice Insiders Want to Keep Secret” that discusses the invasiveness in greater detail (plus Bobby Jindal is mentioned, cool!).

Unfortunately, the big kahuna of a story on this topic is currently evading me. Although there’s no authority in my mentioning this, I’ll go ahead and try to describe the video that impressed me so much in previous classes. One door-to-door campaign somewhere, for some candidate relied on some database full of all the information that could possibly be gathered on potential voters. This information was used to decide WHO would knock on the potential voter’s door, WHAT promotional video they would be shown via handheld device, WHICH issues would be most important to mention to sway said potential voter, etc.

Anyway, Salesforce.Com’s new service sounds like a similar concept… that, or I grossly misinterpreted what this article has to say. Either way I’ve gotten to mention this marketing strategy that frankly scares me a little bit.

So advertisements are customized to me, so I don’t have to search through every campaign issue to find the one most important to me, so I can have items I will like suggested to me (that last one is especially frustrating, I don’t need to be encouraged to buy more things I don’t NEED but now WANT)… All these things happen because someone (something) has collected a great deal of data on me. First, I really don’t want employees of these companies to have access to the “Merrill File.” But mostly:

Do they know more about me than I do myself!?