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Google have certainly been busy lately, seem to be on a bit of a shopping spree and, are attracting publicity, both good and bad. Like them or loathe them, much of what they do affects you as a marketer (directly or indirectly, depending on how heavily you rely on their tools), so I’ve gathered up a few Googlious links to the most recent goings on:
First the good news
… for honest marketers: Jensense did coverage of the news, when it first broke that Google AdSense disabling arbitrage publisher accounts as of June 1st. The New York Post covered it too (tip: Shoemoney).
And Rosalind Gardner sums up the issue Adsense Arbitragers to Lose Accounts well with the statement, “From an advertiser’s perspective, these guys cost me money by bidding on keywords for which they provide no useful content. With them gone - it should be easier to bid higher positions without additional cost.”
My reaction to the next one is mixed, in that having (currently) got Blogger blogs fed to Feedburner feeds, this would keep it all “in house”, on the other hand, I am not so keen on having all my “eggs in one basket”. Google buys Feedburner for $100 million, which Maki at Dosh Dosh forecasts will lead to more feed based monetization options.
The above said, I have been having issues with Blogger recently publishing (via FTP) to my own host. New Blogger, it seems is just not designed to support this. Yes, I should have migrated to Wordpress eons ago. Now import from Blogger to Wordpress is broken. But can anyone tell me if I am going blind, because when I had these issues last week, I hunted Blogger’s help section high and low, but the one thing - that used to be there and now I cannot find - is any means to contact Google for help when the FAQ doesn’t cover it. That is worrying. Not that I expect them to support a free service, just that for business, it is not acceptable to use an unsupported free tool.
Perhaps this gives us a clue. Whilst I find it hard to believe that Google could lack manpower - more likely that they are placing priorities elsewhere - but paranoia, we’ll assume, has caused Google’s inbox to grow to unmanageable proportions, as they announced that there’s no need to report your accidental clicks on your own Adsense ads. More at Inside Adsense, who say that “accidents happen”. Yeah, sure they do, just don’t think they will let you get away with many of them.
The idea of them telling us to email or not to email is pretty funny, but then you can understand why they need to get to finite detail - or maybe why they can’t handle volume - if many of their publishers are this confused.
Google to offer automatic translation. This one is intriguing. Apparently Google is to “launch a new system designed to automatically translate Internet search requests in 12 different languages”. Presumably, this is just a new interface to the language tools they already provide.
Personally, as someone who speaks two languages fluently and reads around half a dozen, this is not something I would advise marketers to get too excited about. It certainly is a nice idea to provide users with the facility, but you must remember that automated translations are usually art works of pure side-splitting comedy. They are not things to base serious business on. More puzzlingly though, recently I have to keep entering captchas because it thinks I am a robot (even though I visit the language tools page and paste in just one or two words manually). Me thinks they have a bit more BETA bashing to do on this one, before they can provide an automated service!
Google Controls Your Identity already, which is why I registered a “me” domain recently. In that one, you can’t beat them, so you make use of it.
Google Entertainment
BBC NEWS also tells us that Google invests in genetics firm. Obvious jokes about cloning Matt Cutts there, I think. He could be at work and on holiday then!
You can even have the Google Daily Challenge, Jeopardy! style and in a post entitled Google wants to dress you in the morning, Lifehacker says, “Google chief executive says that in 5 years time, it should be able to tell you what job to take and what to do on your day off. Shortly thereafter, none of us will need actual minds of our own.”
Well, there don’t seem to be that many people using them now! 
The possibly bad news
Kelvin Newman at Marketing Pilgrim writes in, Google Backlash Makes Front Page News, “Every week it seems more people are criticizing Google, whether its inevitable given their meteoric rise or a real shift in the internal culture of the company is debatable, however I had thought the backlash was limited to people kicked off Adsense for spamming, privacy nuts and Ask advertising campaigns. This seems to have changed. The Independent has featured a first page splash calling out Google as ‘Orwellian’.”
Brittany Thompson asks, Does Google Recognize Your Face? She explains:
For example, a Google image search for the word “blog” brings up various logos, graphs, and images from blogs around the world. Adding the variable &imgtype=face to the end of the results page URL, however, brings up only images of people - many of whom are the actual bloggers themselves. Changing that end variable to &imgtype=news shows images from recent news features in the New York Times or the Washington Post, to name a few.
Then, the BBC say that US regulators may hold an inquiry into Google’s planned takeover of internet advertising firm Doubleclick in this video, Google takeover may face probe. Though Google’s Eric Schmidt told reporters that he fully expects the DoubleClick deal to pass the scrutiny of an FTC investigation.
And, finally, we have no idea what category to place this in, good, bad or indifferent. Google steps into web security market, acquires GreenBorder Technologies. What do you think?
Sponzurz
