Ah, how fast Google's grown and reached the classic Silicon Valley milestone (aka "The Ultimate Kiss of Death"). They want to build a monumental HQ.
Google Inc. is expected to announce plans today to build a 1 million-square-foot campus at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, sources familiar with the plan said Tuesday
Irony is lost on these people. The SGI-built Googleplex they occupy today should be enough to remind them of the folly of building their own Xanadu.
¶ 9/28/2005
Once again, the genius of Philipp at Google Blogoscoped is on display. He unearthed this gem:
“It’s hard to imagine a group of 23-year-olds with more responsibility on the planet.”
-- Marissa Mayer, Director of Consumer Web Products at Google, on Google’s several dozen product-manager associates
Is there anything that needs to be added about a statement so impressively self-important and egocentric?
¶ 9/27/2005
Snap, you may recall, is a search engine based on a CPA model that publishes all of its revenue data. It's open, in a financial sense. It was founded by Bill Gross of Overture/GoTo fame.
Anyways, Snap is not doing so hot:
- Total searches are down
- Paid clicks down
- Revenue per click is flat
I like Snap. I think it's a cool idea. However, the world is not beating down the door to this mousetrap. Maybe people in the online ad world just don't care about accountability yet.
¶ 9/23/2005
Adam Penenberg replays the rigamarole he has to go thru to get back-of-the envelope guesses for how much professional bloggers make in this wired article. Apparently, the blog masters like Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis want to keep these numbers secret. Who knows why?
Overall, the entire internet advertising and marketing industry suffers from competitive paranoia so much so that it's impossible to know the price of things.
Example pricing questions that people just don't or can't answer:
- How much do you have to bid to be the top ad for "Schick Razor" on Google?
- How much are you making from eBay affliate bids?
- How much click fraud is Yahoo or Google finding?
- What percent are you getting of that AdSense ad revenue?
- How much is AzoogleAds taking from the leads you provide?
When will pricing information be free of all this secrecy? Would it be better and easier for the online marketing world if it was?
¶ 9/22/2005
If you ever tire of building web pages that use Arial, Verdana, Georgia and the other stock web fonts, or if you have kids learning the alphabet, this might be fun.
¶ 9/20/2005
I'm burned out on Google. Nothing they seem to do seems interesting anymore. It's all blah... I can't even get that excited about the following:
- Google is launching a public VPN for encrypted wireless
- Google may be building a $100M fiber optic network
- They just might buy AOL to thwart MSTF and to protect the 12% of their revenue that AOL supplies
- What is the meaning of G blogsearch, and why does it seem so lame?
- Froogle is undergoing a major revision
If any of this is interesting to you, go check out Inside Google, where they cover it all with a heavy dose of circumspection.
Oh for the days when Google could surprise and amaze...
¶ 9/19/2005
Wired has some great reporting on a how a businessman was allegedly using a rogue ISP and a group of hackers to take out his competitors web sites.
An Ohio computer hacker who served as a digital button man for a shady internet hosting company faces prison time after admitting he carried out one of a series of crippling denial-of-service attacks ordered by a wealthy businessman against his competitors.
Apparently, an unscrupulous businessman has a lot of ways to use the internet and the hackers who hang out on the IRC systems.
"Every script kiddy on IRC had a shell there," says Andrew Kirch, a security administrator for the Abusive Hosts Blocking List. "Spamming, hacking, phishing, DDOS networks -- you want to run scans for a large amount of IP space for prevalent Windows vulnerabilities? Set up there."
The internet is a scam heaven. Spam, click fraud, phishing, etc. What is more worrying is how the online marketing world - including affliate marketing can be drawn into the scam world.
Echouafni, who was CEO of Massachusetts-based Orbit Communication at the time, allegedly claimed that competitors RapidSatellite.com and WeaKnees.com had stolen his content and attacked his online business, which sold satellite TV gear over the web.
Though the article doesn't say so, some of the businesses mentioned are heavy affliate marketing sites. The incentives for illegal and unscrupulous practices are fairly large in lucrative markets like satellite TV affliates.
Where is Echouafni now? He skipped bail and is thought to be in Morrocco.
¶ 9/08/2005
Andrew Goodman's book
This book is detailed, and covers everything from the history of Google and AdWords to ROI, conversion rates, and metrics for your AdWords campaigns. It even mentions Orkut(!).
The best part of the book is Andrew's straightforward philosophy, and if you read it through, you will be able to focus on creating AdWords campaigns that will really impact your business. You'll also be able to pass the AdWords Professional competency test if you read carefully.
Andrew also is the author of a very useful ebook (that costs $65) called: 21 Ways to Maximize ROI on Google. If you haven't bought the ebook, buying his new paperback book will give you most of the key information, and since the "Winning Results" book costs under $25, it's a very good deal.
In summary, a detailed and wide-ranging book on AdWords and online marketing in general. Check it out!
¶ 9/08/2005
Are there going to be reprecussions when the mortgage market changes - if interest rates go up, or housing really is in a bubble, and it pops? I think so. A lot of people have signed up for loans that they won't be able to handle. Since internet marketers have started to draw a lot of profit from this market, I wonder what will happen if it starts to go south.
Don't believe it will happen? Here's an article on Motley Fool which has emails from industry types who seem worried:
T.B., the owner of a mortgage-financing company, says: I have to chastise my fellow mortgage professionals for their money hungry nearsightedness. The interest only and option-ARM (pick your payment) loans are going to come back to haunt the majority of those who have chosen to use them....
The mortgage companies and lending institutions that are heavily promoting these loan programs don't care about the borrower (their customer!) all they care about is making a fast buck.
For internet marketers, a mortgage market shake-out or increased regulation will slow down the easy money in the most lucrative online lead market. One thing to watch out for is the inevitable blame game after the shake out, where the government or Eliot Spitzer tries to make people feel better by going after the people who made a ton of money when times were good.
¶ 9/02/2005
