Alongside contextual ads, of course!

Google announced yesterday that they are expanding historical newspaper archives that users can search online. Google will scanning the archives of a number of partnering newspapers then making the results available on Google’s News Archive Search.

The technology uses optical character recognition to scan and distinguish between headlines and text - basically, it’s an extension of Googles book scanning technolgies.

Unsurprisingly, the news archives results will run contextual ads from Google AdSense with click revenue will being shared with the original publishers. The service will initially launch with millions of articles which will extended in due course.

An interesting point to come out of this technology is Googles hope that the new offering will drive print subscriptions:

“This is built on scanning technology we built for Google Books, but with some new features.

We’ve already started this with books and maps, now we will do it with newspapers. Viewers will see it in their original context, can pan around and search. We will widen the user base and readership of news archives.

We already have News Archive search. You will see an interface similar to Google Books search. But our engineers have built in new algorithms to figure out [things like] what is a headline. As I mouse over the page, headlines are highlighted in blue, indicatingtheir clickability. When you click on something, it centers the story, and zooms in. You can do a snapback to the original article. In the sidebar, in addition to sponsored links we have related articles you can click on.”

Looks like another massive money spinner for the kings of search!

Popularity: 6% [?]

Share price down, down, down!

Recently, the share price of Yahoo was hovering the $34 mark - in part, thanks Microsoft’s attempt to buy up the internet giant.  Yesterday, the price dropped to a five year low of $17.75 - that’s around $23 billion less for the share holders to pad their wallets with!

This doesn’t look good for Jerry Yang - I reckon he’ll be replaced in the very near future but as to when this will happen, who knows! If prices continue to fall at their current rate I’m betting he’ll be gone by the end of November. The Yang farewell march may already be planned but with no formal announcement - look at this way, the Icahn attack dog has been quiet for a while now. Maybe a deal has been done to keep both sides of the table happy.

As to who will fill  Yang’s boot nobody knows but some pundits are betting on Dan Rosensweig returning which, if true, would be one the better decisions the board has made.

Popularity: 7% [?]

..in Japan.

Figures from Nielson Japan show that Yahoo took 76% of the 350 billion-ish search engine and portal-related pageviews leaving Google trailing far behind with about 5.4%. he figures translate to 21.9 billion pageviews for Yahoo and 2.2 billion for Google. That’s some catching up to do.

To most of us, it might not seem like a big thing until you find out that Japan has one of  the highest levels of internet penetration in the world (about 74%). This makes the Japanese market a key battleground for ad revenue. So how does Google beat Yahoo?

Mobile Web! By targetting Japanese mobile phone companies Google is seeking to sneak in the back door via pre-installed apps on handsets. Docomo and KDDI have integrated Google Search into their start menus which means users get content from mobile and web sites (plus ads, of course!).

Japanese users can also access Google Calendar, Youtube and other Google services. Some Docomo handsets are even being shipped with Google Maps pre-installed.

The question is, ‘Will it be enough?’. I’m not sure,  Internet portals are still big business in Japan and Yahoo caters to that need. Looks like Google are trying to ignore this and draw in users of mobile web apps. It may be successful but only if Google manage to persuade a whole nation of users that the Google way is best.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Another 3 years in the love shack.

That’s right, you can expect to see Google as the default search option inside Firefox for another 3 years or so. The original deal was originally supposed to expire in 2006 but the two internet darlings tied up for another two years. The latest deal should run until 2011.

The Mozilla foundation does well out of this deal - to the tune of $57 million in 2006. That’s in the region of 85% of Mozillas total revenue! Don’t jump the gun; this money allows Mozilla to pay for further development of the Firefox browser, bandwidth and infrastructure services. There is one downside - Mozilla is almost totally reliant on Googles money. Without it we might now see the polished product that Firefox currently is.

Makes me wonder why Goolge haven’t bought Mozilla yet, just think of the potential - a Firefox derivative to replace the traditional OS.

Popularity: 6% [?]

…after 4 years

Firstly, Google Suggest is an auto-complete tool for searches on Googles homepage. The service will allow users to see the most commonly searched phrases after they’ve typed in the first few letters of query. A little like Firefox does when you use the Google builtin search bar.

The service isn’t live just yet but should be with us in a week or so. If you’re interested in trying it out now here’s the link - Google Suggest.

Although the Suggest feature was started back in 2004 it’s already been incorporated into Google Labs, Toolbar, Firefox, Maps and web based search (for a select group of countries) and YouTube.

This should make searching simpler and cut down on the number of spelling mistakes made by searchers (is this the end of making bank on adsense using typos?) but is by no means original. Yahoo have had this feature for some as has Cuil. Let’s see if Microsoft joing the party?

Popularity: 6% [?]

…defying scarey economic predictions

Recently, Mervyn King, the head of the Bank of England, pretty much said “we’re stuffed” ! Ok, those aren’t his exact words but over the next few years we should all expect some pretty hard times.

So it would seem that we’re going to slow down on buying, business will dry up, unemployment will rise… It may well happen but I don’t think many consumers (that’s you and me) are listening according to a report released by IMRG and Crapgemini. The figures show UK internet sales reached £4.8bn in July - that’s a massive 11.3 per cent rise  over June. This figure is equivalent to £79 spent for every person in the UK.

‘Hooray, the economy is going to be fine’ - not exactly! Online spending went up, high street sale went down by 0.9%. So, do we finally trust technology to help do our shopping or are we just lazy? Look at is this way, why go to town when you have it delivered?

The largest sales increases were seen in clothing, footwear and accessories, which rose by 22.8 per cent. Call me a sceptic, but a lot of this could be parents getting ready for their kids going back to school!

Popularity: 7% [?]

Outage dampens enthusiasm for Google Mail service

Internet darling Google has publicly apologised to users for an outage that prevented users from accessing free and paid services. On the Google blog, the company has promised to carry out a review to see what went wrong and implement processes to ensure it doesn’t happen again. No money back for paid subscribers?

The Gmail problems follow Google Docs and Spreadsheets access problems in July when customers were locked out of their cloud-based applications for over an hour.

Google really can’t afford problems like this to happen again. Microsoft is preparing to launch a rival to the Gmail and Apps services in 2009 which could leech customers away from the Goog.

The Microsoft offering, Business Productivity Suite (do they really pay someone to think of these names?) will offer customers a subscription service. A range of Microsoft software will be available to customers, including Exchange, Dynamics, and Office SharePoint, Communications and Meeting for around £90. Hmm, time for Google to sort their house out!

Popularity: 7% [?]

A snip at £20 million!

It would appear that BT is keen to expand its BT Directories business. Ufindus  currently has a huge number of customers - 20,000+ small and medium-sized business customers and around 1.9 millionlistings in its online directory. In addition, Ufindus offers its services through three directories: SmileLocal, MoreUK and Ufindus. On top of thie, it also runs more than 100 niche directories and provides website design services.

Lancaster based Ufindus had reported revenues of £14m in the year to 31 March, 2007 - that actually looks like a real bargain for BT.

Ufindus is expected to play a key role in the development of BT Directories’s online service offering.

“Through Ufindus’s considerable expertise and experience in online classified advertising, we access further local classified product offerings, significant search traffic and new customers for this fast-growing part of our business.” said David Benjamin, the chief executive of BT Directories.

Interesting news, I’m off to play a game of ‘Monopoly’!

Popularity: 12% [?]

It’s all up in the air!

Now this is amazing; mid air views with users interacting with Google Earth using their hands. The potential for Human Computer Interface (HCI) is awesome.

The holographic interface is being developed by lm3labs…I’m going to stop talking now, check it out here.

Popularity: 9% [?]

DoJ launches anti-trust investigation.

It would seem the US Department of Justice is a little edgey about the deal which allows Yahoo to serve Google ads. To be honest, I’m not really surprised when you consider that the deal effectively wraps up 80% of the search market between two companies!

Ok, the deal hasn’t actually gone ahead yet as Google and Yahoo have agreed to give the DoJ 3 months to investigate but as the companies aren’t merging the deal doesn’t need upfront approval. If found to be anti-competitive the deal could be stopped or modified.

Given that the advertising rights are not exclusive, I would say that this deal will be approved with little or no change to the wording.

I wonder how Microsoft will answer this!

Popularity: 11% [?]