Google Losing Search Share? To ... Microsoft?

Wow! If only I trusted Nielsen's numbers, this would be a big story...

Google garnered a 56.3% share of the U.S. search market in December, compared with a 57.7% share in the previous month, according to Nielsen. Yahoo Inc., meanwhile, saw its share in December fall slightly to 17.7%, compared with 17.9% in November...Microsoft Corp. was the only company among the three largest search providers to see an increase in December, as its share rose to 13.8% of the U.S. market from 12% the previous month, according to Nielsen.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:14 AM
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Joel On AT&T;'s Filtering Plans

BB Gadget's Joel Johnson talks about AT&T's plans w/r/t internet filtering on an AT&T show. The other shoe has not dropped on this one yet, but I salute Joel for bringing up a very important issue.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:09 AM
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Mail That Baby, Baby

I was going to wait to post this till the start of a mobile posting campaign that Microsoft is very kindly launching, but I just can't let it wait (for those who might care, Microsoft is going to underwrite a bunch of FM authors, including me, posting mobile stuff like photos and maps and voice posts). Anyway, I was in JFK airport and I saw an arresting image in a Pitney Bowes ad.

Now, what does Pitney Bowes do? Well, turns out I have some knowledge in this area, as my father, ever the itinerant entrepreneur, tried to compete with Pitney in the 80s by creating a better postage meter. He didn't get very far. Pitney is the Microsoft of postage meter companies. They own the market.

So they are doing a corporate campaign, apparently, and somehow, they came to the conclusion that slapping postage on a newborn baby - wait, let me say it - a not very pretty newborn baby - is somehow a powerful statement of corporate purpose. (That bracelet is actually a postage label).

Now, am I off here, or does this simply offend at too many levels to really go into? Do they really want to be seen as "putting a stamp" on newborn babies? Are they out of their minds? Anyway, a funny ad, a funny photo, taken as I was, perhaps, a bit funny myself, given I was two beers in waiting for my delayed flight...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:40 PM
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Google's In House Brand Guy

Andy Berndt, a former Ogilvy star recently hired by Google, says Google's "Creative Lab" is an "internal creative and marketing resource at Google to manage the brand and our only client is Google." More in this Ad Age piece.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:52 AM
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Which Year Is It?

Name the year this was written:

Yahoo offered details of its long-awaited turnaround strategy... hinging its future on advertising, exclusive paid content and revenue-sharing deals with Internet access providers.....Yahoo executives gave some specifics regarding a long-expected corporate restructuring, saying that they will whittle down Yahoo's 44 business units to six: listings, commerce, communications, media, access and enterprise. In addition, the company will lay off 400 employees, or 13 percent of its work force.

That is from a November 2001 article in Cnet, and yes, it sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:03 AM
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Yahoo Integrates Delicious?

Techcrunch has shots of some tests...

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:02 AM
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More Pressure on Yahoo From Wall St.

Yahoo's Ripe for Shake-Up from the WSJ's "Breaking Views" column is quite a read. It argues that the sums of Yahoo's parts, in particular its holdings in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba, which combine for more than a third of Yahoo's overall market cap, should be spun off, as should its search business (I've argued that for some time now.) Interesting.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:36 PM
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What Percentage of Yahoo's (and Google's) Revenue Comes from Domainers?

I'm digging into the domain space for this talk next week. It's a fascinating, frustrating industry. I posted a general query last week, and got a ton of wonderful advice. But I did not get an answer to the question above.

Does anyone know?

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:10 PM
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Sorry Singapore, That's Not Enough Scratch

$100K as the prize for building a new search engine? Sorry, that's not gonna get it done...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:41 PM
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Yes, That's A Lot of Scratch

$50 Billion in online ads three years hence. Wow.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:38 PM
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What Is Private?

All Facebook discusses the story of a dust up between Facebook and blog publisher Gawker, which posted information and pictures found in a well known New York socialite's Facebook profile.

Is information found in a Facebook profile public? It seems to me to be pretty clear that it's not. Emily's public profile on Facebook has none of the information Gawker published. The real question seems to be whether Emily is a "public figure" and therefore subject to a different standard. The author at Gawker got access to Emily's "friends" profile, which had much more information, and published that. Is that so different than gaining access to, say, a private party where a reporter sees Emily, and reports on what she does? That's privileged information, but no one would have an issue with a gossip reporter covering a party full of socialites.

Regardless, it's clearly a violation of Facebook's terms of service. Will be interesting to see if Emily or Facebook pushes on this.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:45 AM
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Floating Datacenters

This story, from Ars, is really cool. Office space is expensive. Energy and cooling is expensive. Solution? Float your datacenter. Neat.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:19 AM
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Travelin' Blues

On the road this week, posting alas will be light.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:47 PM
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MSFT YHOO

I love Kara's take on Microsoft merging with Yahoo:

But that’s kind of like stitching together Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich and getting a potential front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Maybe with some Yankee determination, the two will make it happen. But I kind of doubt it. Microsoft has a lot on its plate just making aQuantive pay off this year...on the other hand, Microsoft kind of needs it...and so does Yahoo..

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:49 PM
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Zuckerberg Transcript

Thanks to Gary for pointing me to the transcript and video of Mark Zuckerberg's 60 Minutes appearance. So far the response (at least from comments here on Searchblog) is not overwhelming.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:26 AM
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Memo to the Writers Who Want To Start Their Own Company

Guys, it's a great idea. But don't make the same stupid mistakes your bosses made and claim you need $30 million to do it.
Did it cost $30mm for Ninja, RocketBoom, WebbAlert or Diggnation to make serious money? Nope, it did not. Don't take VC money and fail. Do it smart, lean and right on the web. In short, don't do it in a packaged goods way. Do it conversational.

Update: I know that these guys want to make traditional movies, but there are so many new ways to finance movies as well. You don't need to finance the company to the tune of $30mm to do it...

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:30 PM
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The Size of the Domain Market and Other Stats

I've always been marginally fascinated by the domain marketplace (key companies include Oversee.net, Name Media, Demand Media), it's not an area I've studied closely, but clearly, it's booming. I'd like to get to know it better, in particular as I prepare to give a talk to a massive gathering of folks in this industry later this month. So in the spirit of "my readers are smarter than I am" I'm asking for your help - where can I get good information on this market? I'd like to know its size, growth, issues, etc. I am already doing research on it, but figured if anyone knows, you all do...

A few things I'd love to know with some authority:

- Overall size of the market

- What percentage of traffic is "type in"?
- How do majors figure in the business - do they endorse, ignore, partner (I know Google partners...)
- How much of the domaining business revenue is Google Adsense?

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:50 AM
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Curtain Rasier on Zuckerberg's 60 Minutes Interview

Beacon will be a "really good thing." In so many words, I agree. If...If...If....

PS - note to CBS, make the videos easy to embed, please...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:45 AM
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Please, Don't Make Me Yell

Google has no reason to buy a Yellow Pages company. Does it? I've railed about this before, the sourcing at British newspapers is nearly as bad as second class blogs. Listen to this little bit of sourcing gymnastics:

The Independent newspaper in the U.K. reported today that a ``market source heard talk of a 500 pence-per-share bid'' for Yell by Google. Spokespeople for Yell and Google couldn't be reached immediately to comment.

Jesus. And I woke up and thought that Google might buy Circuit City out of Chapter 11, so I printed it.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:44 AM
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Computational Advertising

I think humans are required anytime you want to connect a brand with a person in any kind of meaningful way. But "computational advertising" is one way to optimize that connection, for sure. This talk by Yahoo's A. Broder does look interesting (via Greg).

PS - Greg is starting at MSFT next week. Great hire, and congrats Greg!

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:23 PM
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