Recently on the NY Times there was an article on how a 9year old kid was using YouTube to do research on an Australian animal.

Is this the real reason why Google bought YouTube?

To control all areas and methods of searching? The 9 year old said that he uses YouTube if needs help in some of his video games or on his card collection, if he can’t find what he’s looking for on YouTube he’ll use one of the other search engines.

Now according to comScore in November last year people in American did nearly 200million more searches on YouTube than on Yahoo, this moved Yahoo into third spot for search engines.

Surely Microsoft and Yahoo must be wondering how this has happened, how another website (one that is owned by Google) has surpassed them in the number of searches run.

Currently YouTube is busy setting up deals with Sony and Nintendo to be able to allow their users to search and view YouTube videos via the game consoles on the TV, notably not on the Xbox.

I give it another 5 years before we don’t even need a satellite/cable service for our TV’s but simply connect our TV to the internet and watch everything through that. And why not, currently we just PVR/TiVo everything and fast forward the ads, why not just select what you want to watch and download it or stream it to your TV.

Goodbye to the big TV satellite companies…

Jerry Yang has or is stepping down as CEO of Yahoo! and today the shares of Yahoo! rose by 11.19% to a whopping $11.82…

My how the shareholders must still dream about Microsoft offering them £33 per share… I wonder if their was some conspiracy between Google and Microsoft to wipe Yahoo out a bit as they have both dropped Yahoo in the last couple of months.

Yesterday while trying to do some work I was listening to 5fm Radio and DJ Fresh’s show which I do enjoy. During they show they started talking about the old Simba packet design and how Simba just changed it back in the early ’90s. Fresh was complaining about the fact that Simba did not consult him in their change and their design choice…. Now a major company like Simba back then was not going to go out and consult the average Joe as Fresh would have been back in the ’90s.

They also spoke about products that were discontinued for some unknown reason back then and how they would like it back.

Now, we fast forward to the present day and look at major companies changing things and what happens when they do:

1) Facebook changes their profile design and has millions of people join groups complaining about the change

2) Yahoo makes changes and adds in a centralised profile page and has countless complaints pouring in while they are still only testing it.

3) Google makes changes to the iGoogle page and thousands of people start complaining, one chap was even quoted as saying:

How can I be rid of this ugly piece of crap?” asked one forum user about the iGoogle overhaul. “Google has decided to unilaterally change the layout of my page. If I can’t find a hack or a Greasemonkey script to undo this, good-bye Google, hello Yahoo!

Will Google, Yahoo or Facebook bring back the old designs? I don’t think so, the only difference now from 15 years ago is that we can make our voices heard. It now depends if the big boys decide to listen to us or not…

So Google continues to buck the trend in my eyes against their ‘Do no evil’ motto!

Recently reported on TechCrunch.com that one of their readers who currently spends $100,000 a month on Google Adwords was contacted by a lawyer from Google, the lawyer said he represented Google in their Yahoo advertising deal.

Here is a copy of the voicemail left by the lawyer:

Hi Darren my name is Donald Burke. I’m calling on behalf of Google to talk with Adwords advertisers about the new proposed Google/Yahoo Advertising Agreement. If you have a couple of minutes to talk with me, my number is…Thanks very much. Take care.

The reader phoned the lawyer back immediately and was asked to make a public testimonial in support of the deal:

I received a voicemail from an attorney representing Google yesterday so of course I called back (voicemail attached). We spend about 100K a month on AdWords so we’d apparently been targeted because of that. He was looking for large advertisers who use both Google and Yahoo (we do) who would be willing to provide public testimonials in support of outsourcing Yahoo’s search ads to Google. I told him I’m a free-market competition kind of guy so he tried to address my concerns for about 15 minutes and then called it quits.

According to the reader the lawyer was looking for people who advertised on both the Google and Yahoo networks, now either the Google lawyer was just guessing that the reader just advertised considering the amount they spend on Google. The problem would be if Yahoo provided Google with a list of companies that advertise on their network.

This is a deal that if Google wants to keep their heads above the water and not go against their ‘do no evil’ motto they should just walk away!

So recently some stats was released on the numbers of people on Facebook and the fastest growing countries etc, SA is very close to crossing the 1 million mark and I reckon if you had to include the Saffas living in London and elsewhere we would easily be over the 1million mark.

It was quite strange to see that in the 3rd quarter Facebook’s traffic decreased by 1% in SA…. strange. I’ve been working with Facebook Apps quite a bit and have a wishlist app out now that works off the MyKindaPrices database and allows users to create a wishlist and their friends to view it and book items to buy. Now, people often talk about Facebook been the next Operating System but in order for it to work they would need servers in every country cause at the moment the way it works is as follows:

1) You’re logged into Facebook
2) You click onto the MyKindaPrices App
3) Request is sent from your pc to Facebook servers in the US, they in turn send request to our servers in Joburg which starts returning the data via the Facebook servers in the USA which in turn the relays it to your PC here in SA.

That is quite a bit of a round about and it not the quickest way to do things, Facebook obviously needs to make it secure and this is the only way.

Microsoft just launched Microsoft Live Search on Facebook, now as Facebook has 135million users this could improve their search market share if everyone runs 10 searches a month on it… but I would still prefer localised search results, maybe they should use Google for that!

Just to update everyone in case you didn’t know – Google and Yahoo have put their deal on hold while they wait for the authorities to OK the deal. They were planning to just go ahead with things.

Ask.com or previously Ask Jeeves recently relaunched with a redesign that is supposed to be faster and provide more relevant results through its upgraded search technology and increased database size.

Ask.com’s sponsored results are how ever powered by Google as Yahoo’s will also be soon.

People are continually talking about how competitors to Google are looking for ways to set themselves apart from Google and be slightly different or better. Ask.com is going back to its way of been able to answer any question instead of searching for something. It also claims to have the biggest database of recipes available.

The question though, are people trying to beat a dead horse?. I’m not to sure they are based on the money they earn from such a small percentage share of the market. In August 46million searches were conducted on Ask in the UK which accounted for one in five people using the search engine.

I think that Ask.com and Yahoo are both missing the picture… Google has created a very sophisticated affiliate network which places millions and millions of its adverts on websites around the globe, they also have setup local servers and search results for many individual countries (like SA) – Competing search engines should maintain their 2% in the USA/UK but also be seeking to compete in local scenes where they could have more opportunity to compete against Google on the same playing ground and not be David vs Goliath any more!

Today it was announced that Yahoo had been granted permission by the Securities and Exchange Commission to keep certain parts of its Google ad deal out of the public eye and make it confidential.

Now, why would they do this when there is so much focus on this deal already and people like Microsoft and many companies looking to get the deal stopped. For me it makes Google and Yahoo look really bad!

In its quarterly filing with the SEC Aug. 8, Yahoo redacted multiple details about its search advertising deal with Google. Simply put, it was a festival of asterisks that looked like this:

One of the main reasons I feel this deal is bad besides a huge monoply coming out of it is the fact that the prices of keywords will increase drastically. Its already dodgy the way Google manages the prices and placings of the adverts.

If a company could provide decent results like Google does and provide better ad placing technology together with a great affiliate network they could challenge Google. Now, just to put all of that in place…

So, for those of you who don’t know about the partnership between Google and Yahoo read the next few lines. If you know about it then skip to the next paragraph.
Basically – Yahoo and Google entered into a partnership in which Google will provide advertising placed alongside search results on the Yahoo site. This is been reviewed by the Justice Department in the USA and they have yet to reveal any results into any anti-competitive behaviour. Google announced confidence in the legality of the deal last month and stated that they were planning to move forward in October regardless.

Individual companies have not been prepared to stand up against the partnership and complain but rather have kept quiet. The biggest complaint so far has of course been from Microsoft until now. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) came out yesterday against the partnership.

The ANA, a trade group that represents companies including Procter & Gamble Co., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and General Motors Corp., sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas O. Barnett yesterday recommending that the deal be blocked.

The letter claims that “a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90 per cent of search advertising inventory,” and argues that the merger would be bad for advertisers.
The partnership “will likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search advertising,” the letter continued.

Google voluntarily submitted to a Congressional investigation when the deal was completed in June as a courtesy, but the company has said that it was not legally necessary.

While competitor Microsoft has already voiced displeasure with the plan, the Wall Street Journal thinks this complaint may hold more weight:

“As they weigh comments from outsiders, regulators often discount the views of competitors who complain about a deal, as Microsoft has done. They are likely, however, to listen closely to customers, in this case major advertisers, so the association’s letter could be a significant hurdle.”

Yahoo responded to the letter on Sunday:

“We are disappointed with the ANA board’s position regarding Yahoo’s non-exclusive search marketing agreement with Google… Yahoo remains steadfast in its belief that this deal -– in which prices are determined by advertiser demand-driven auctions, and not by collaboration between Yahoo and Google -– will strengthen Yahoo’s competitive position in online advertising and will help to drive a more robust, higher quality Yahoo marketplace for our advertisers.”

I myself don’t think the deal is a good one and would prefer Microsoft to eventually buy out Yahoo – reasoning is that Google needs some competition and its going to be harder and harder for Microsoft to compete without some acquisitions.

Photo: Flickr/dannysullivan

Last weekend I took part in my first mountain bike race with some mates, see you the right here as we cross the finish line – I just loose out to Dave, but I must admit my friend has lent me his bike and during the race the back breaks failed, I was limited to about 3 gears and the front wheel almost fell off on a downhill. So I luckily finished the race in one piece and had some good banter from Dave.

Our aim was to not let any under 10year olds finish before us as we were doing the mighty distance of 15km. Now this is deemed as the fun ride for families and younger members it is not to be approached lightly. After that we shared one or two glasses wine at the Stellies Wine Fest, what a day it was revisting past memories of jolling in Stellies as a student.

Meanwhile, aside from the weekend spent outdoors there were some other things happening in the world, namely:

A recent vote of the Yahoo shareholders initially yielded support for poor Jerry Yang and his board but after an audit was held of the results it was discovered that there was an error… Read the full story here
I feel sorry here for Yang after been one of the founders of Yahoo to be receiving all this from their shareholders, I would be pretty pissed in his position. But on the other hand if I owned 10,000 yahoo shares at just under $20 a share and I could have received $33 a share that equates to almost a gain of $130,000.

Apparently the battle of the online websites are heating up with a new job portal website and computer retailer website opening their doors so to speak. The new jobs site is jobs.co.za and the new computer retailer site is click2buyIT.co.za.
With all these job sites it must be a pain for the retailer/agency to have to go to each different site and post the job ad 4-5 times or more and pay a fair bit for that. Why don’t the job portal sites get together and make one front-end that they all access, agencies only need to register their job once and presto its on all the sites. In terms of splitting the cake then thats something for the job portal sites to work out.

Keep it classy, South Africa, Keep it classy.