Search-engine giant Google has a new tool for exploring 5.2 million books it has digitized, and not just in English but also Chinese, French, German, Russian and Spanish.
But unlike its Web search function, this tool, called the Ngram Viewer, goes through the 500 billion words in those books to show trends in word usage. It can determine how often words, or phrases, show up in a given year.
Using the viewer, historians, language experts or anyone with a home computer can track items as seemingly trivial, for example, as when “hep cat” entered the popular lexicon, or when writers generally stopped using the phrase “dying of consumption.”
Historians can determine which of three former presidents — Abraham Lincoln, George Washington or Thomas Jefferson — made the most appearances in print in a given decade. (Washington surpassed Lincoln sometime around 1928 and has remained in the lead ever since.)
Is this the end of Amazon’s ebook reign? Google is launching its new open ebook store today, simply called Google eBooks, with over 3 million titles, in a bid to take on the ebook world dominated by Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple.
As we reported previously, Google’s ebook venture will be more open than its competition. Consumers will be able to browse and search Google’s enormous ebook library, and they can read ebooks on any web enabled device. Your ebook library will be tied to your Google account and will be accessible through any web browser. You’ll be able to buy ebooks directly from Google, or from independent bookseller partners like Powell’s, Alibris and participating members of the American Bookseller’s Association.
Google wisely isn’t relying on the web entirely, as the company is releasing free Google eBooks apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. The apps will let users continue reading where they left off when they switch devices, just like ebook reading apps from Amazon and Apple. You’ll also be able to browse and purchase ebooks from within the apps. Google is also providing an app for Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Sony’s ebook readers. There’s no word on Kindle compatibility yet, but I wouldn’t hold your breath for that.
The ebook store will also tie into Google Books, the company’s digitization project for the world’s books. Google says that is has scanned more than 15 million books since the project began in 2004 from more than 35,000 publishers. You’ll be able to search through Google’s scanned offerings in the research section of its ebook store.
I don’t suspect that Google will initially be very successful with this ebook venture. Competitors like Amazon and Barnes and Noble are already entrenched in the market, and consumers interested in ebooks are already loyal to at least one of Google’s competitors. But Google does boast a bigger library than the rest with 3 million titles (including some 2 million free public domain titles), compared to Barnes and Noble’s 2 million (with public domain titles) and Amazon’s 750,000 (not including public domain). It’s unclear how Google’s paid ebook library compares to Amazon’s, a company that has had years to form relationships with publishers.
The open nature of Google’s ebook store may eventually help the company grab a bigger slice of the market. You’ll eventually be able to purchase Google ebooks from multiple sources, as well as see them marketed on blogs and other sites on the web. That’s a big difference from Amazon’s Kindle books, which you can only purchase from within Amazon’s store. Google also has the advantage of not being burdened by a device — instead it’s built a system that can work with practically any device.
Search-related keyword advertising is a multibillion-dollar industry for a reason — because it is extremely good at converting people who are searching for information into shoppers who want to buy something. But it doesn’t work for everything, and it’s worth being reminded of that sometimes. Dropbox CEO and founder Drew Houston provided another example of that in a presentation at the recent Stanford Accel Symposium, where he talked about how the cloud-based storage company grew to where it is now, with more than 4 million users. Among other things, he described how search ads didn’t really work for the company in helping to achieve that growth.
The way Houston describes it, Dropbox did lots of things that it thought young startups should do to get attention, such as hiring a PR firm and buying search ads for Google keywords — but none of those worked particularly well. Specifically, he said, search ads were a complete bust as far as getting new users was concerned, because the company was spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on advertising just to get a single new user — far more than it would ever likely make from them in fees for its service.
So why didn’t Dropbox get much traction from search ads? Houston argues it’s because people didn’t really know what they needed, or weren’t aware of how Dropbox could solve problems for them in their lives, so they didn’t really respond as well to keyword ads for “document synching” and other terms. The Dropbox founder said something similar about the growth of the company at a startup conference Liz attended earlier this year — saying search “is great for harvesting demand, not creating it,” and that the company got far more mileage from referral offers and other tools for spreading word-of-mouth.
This goes right to the heart of something we at GigaOM talk about a lot, which is the threat that Google faces from social media in general, and Facebook in particular. Google does well with search advertising because it involves people who have already made up their mind to buy something and are looking for where they can go to do so — but it doesn’t do as well with people who are just looking to talk or network with others. To the extent that your potential customers are closer to the networking end of the spectrum (as Dropbox’s were, because they likely weren’t even aware that the product could fill a need in their lives) social media is likely going to be far more effective, because it is about word of mouth recommendations.
Where do people get word-of-mouth recommendations and related discussion from Google? The short answer is that they don’t really. Maybe they get some of that from Buzz, but as a mainstream product Buzz is pretty much a bust. That’s not to say Google itself isn’t useful, of course, or that keyword ads are worthless — even in Dropbox’s case, once users heard about how great it was, they would probably go and search for reviews, information about other related products, etc. before trying it out. But Google doesn’t play in the social part of the spectrum, and that is a problem because money follows attention, as Kevin Kelly writes in a piece in the Technology Review.
Houston’s observations are just another example of why Google needs to be afraid of social and what it implies. And it explains why the company is focusing on adding what CEO Eric Schmidt called a “social layer” to its products and services — although being truly social, as I noted in a post, is not the same as simply adding a widget to your existing features, which is why Facebook has a leg up in that department. Regardless of how it does it, Google needs to find ways of incorporating the social element into what it does, or risk losing attention — and by extension, potential revenue.
Hotmail has released a cool new feature today: the ability to receive and send e-mails from other addresses, including ones from Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
The new feature, announced by Microsoft earlier today, is pretty straightforward. Users just have to register and validate their outside e-mail addresses, which then allows them to manage their outside e-mail accounts from inside Hotmail via POP.
Hotmail users already have the ability to send e-mails from another address through the “Send As” feature, but today’s update provides a more complete e-mail management experience.
Gmail and Yahoo Mail both have similar features for managing multiple e-mail accounts. Microsoft is hoping to keep users familiar with the Hotmail interface on their servers by making it easy to manage their other e-mail accounts via the service. Some people have work accounts they’d rather manage via Hotmail; others might not want to send messages from the Hotmail domain but still like the interface. These are the types of users Microsoft is targeting.
With nearly 350 million users, Hotmail is still by far the most popular webmail service around, but Microsoft is feeling the pressure from its competition. The tech giant recently revamped its webmail client with a slew of new features to keep it competitive with its Google and Yahoo counterparts.
Google just filed its quarterly 10Q statement. Among the things in the filing is detail about Google’s acquisitions in 2010. There were 40 costing Google a total of $1.6 billion and change.
There were three substantial acquisitions (mostly bought with stock) and a whole bunch of smaller acquisitions that Google lumps together in the filing: “During the nine months ended September 30, 2010, we also completed 37 other acquisitions for a total cash consideration of approximately $626 million.”
The big three were AdMob ($655 million stock, $26 million cash), Slide ($179 million cash) and On2 Technologies ($95 million stock, $28 million cash). The AdMob shares were either vested or on an accelerated vesting schedule because AdMob founder Omar Hamoui has left the building, only about five or so months after the acquisition formally closed.
However less than a month after the closing I discovered on LinkedIn that AdMob VP Ali Diab (former Yahoo and co-founder of Ripple TV) was gone and had founded a tech hedge fund. And while Google has plenty of capable people to run mobile ads, these (and other losses) are a partial blow. “Omar and his talented team” were part of the reason for the AdMob acquisition. Another reason of course was to keep the AdMob business away from Apple, which went on to buy Quattro Wireless after it was outbid by Google for AdMob. Many of the “talented [AdMob] team” remain at Google including Jason Spero, Tony Nethercutt and others.
Another apparent and potentially major loss for Google is Lars Rasmussen, who conceived of and built Google Wave, a compelling product that was never properly explained to the public or a solution in search of a problem depending on your perspective. Rasmussen also was one of the creators of Google Maps, among the company’s most visible and successful products. According to TechCrunch Rasmussen will join other former Google employees at Facebook. (In September Google lost Emily White to Facebook, where she is now Sr. Director of Local.)
Rasmussen’s departure may not be a blow to Google in terms of any hole that it creates for the company right now. Rather its sting may be felt later in competitive products that Rasmussen helps Facebook build.
A less significant “departure” for Google is YouTube CEO Chad Hurley, who is moving into an “advisory role” at the company he co-founded. This is a transitional move as he segues out of the company I would guess. Salar Kamangar, who has apparently been running day to day operations for some time, becomes the new YouTube CEO. YouTube recently took over Google TV from the Android gang based on the need to shore up and smooth over troubled relationships with broadcasters and content producers who have been blocking access to their programming.
Postscript 2: In an email today, Google told us that the Google TV organizational shift to YouTube had nothing to do with the negotiations with the networks or the recent “blocking” incident. Here’s a formal statement provided by Google:
There is no correlation between the recent blocking by three US networks of Google TV accessing their full-length Web shows and a reorganization that YouTube did over a month ago. Google TV has been closely aligned with YouTube for years and its reporting structure has remained largely unchanged. The reorganization YouTube did over a month ago focused on streamlining our operations so we could make faster decisions and align team goals with the company’s overall business objectives. Just like any rapidly growing organization, it is important for YouTube to evolve and grow to ensure further success in the future. The recently created YouTube Content Organization is run by VP of Content Partnerships, Dean Gilbert
Apple has trouble with basic time travel, Microsoft has its finger on the button, and T-Mobile’s got the iPhone 4 in its sights (which it borrowed from Apple). Lock on to the remainders for Wednesday,
Remember all the hubbub over the iPhone’s “kill switch”? Surprise: Turns out Microsoft’s got one for Windows Phone 7. “In the rare event that we need to, we have the tools to take action,” said Microsoft’s director of product management for the Windows Phone Marketplace. And this is that tool.
Install iOS 4 on your iPhone 3G and end up with nothing more than a case of sobbing regret? You’re not alone! And now you can do something about it. I mean, no, you can’t really fix the phone, but hey, you can join the great American tradition of suing somebody by joining this class action suit and, maybe, possibly getting a whole $27.16 out of it. In Apple gift card form, naturally.
T-Mobile’s hitting Apple where it hurts—its U.S. carrier partner. A new ad knocks the respective video-chatting capabilities of the iPhone 4 and the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G by parodying Apple’s own Get a Mac campaign. But they couldn’t even be bothered to hire John Hodgman or Justin Long? Come on, guys, show a little pride in your knock-offs.
The optimization tool is the latest result of Google’s speed obsession and could add to the company’s bottom line.
Google wants to make the Web faster. As well as optimizing its own sites and services to run at blazing speed, the company has been helping to streamline the rest of the Web, too. Now Google has released free software that could make many sites load twice as fast.
The software, called mod_pagespeed, can be installed and configured on Apache Web servers, the most commonly used software for running websites. Once installed, mod_pagespeed determines ways to optimize a site’s performance on the fly. For example, it will compress images more efficiently and change settings so that more of the pages are stored in a user’s browser cache, so that the same data doesn’t have to be loaded repeatedly. The software will be automatically updated, notes Richard Rabbat, product manager for the new project. He says that this means that as Google and others make improvements, people who install it will benefit without having to make any changes.
“We think making the whole Web faster is critical to Google’s success,” says Rabbat. Making the Web faster should encourage people to use it more and increase the likelihood that they will use Google’s services and software. Rabbat points to the frustration that people feel when they click a link or type a URL and see a blank page for several seconds. “In many cases,” he says, “I’ll navigate away when that happens.”
Google already offers a tool called Page Speed that measures the speed at which a website loads and suggests ways to make improvements. “We asked ourselves, instead of just telling people what the problems are, can we just fix it for them automatically?” Rabbat says.
The software could be particularly useful to operators of small websites. Such people may not have the skill or time to optimize their site’s performance themselves. It should also be useful for companies that use content management systems to operate their websites and lack the technical capabilities needed to make speed improvements to Web server software themselves.
Google tested mod_pagespeed on a representative sample of websites and found that it made some sites load three times faster, depending on how much optimization had already been done.
Google is also making deals with other companies to ensure that mod_pagespeed is widely distributed. Hosting company GoDaddy, for example, plans to add the software to its Web hosting products. According to GoDaddy’s president and chief operating officer, Warren Adelman, the software will offer a way to “make it easier for our Web hosting customers to build the best website possible with the least amount of effort.” Google’s Page Speed tool, he notes, “required a certain degree of technical savvy for website operators to implement,” and he expects the new tool to have a broader impact.
Content delivery network Cotendo, which helps its customers distribute content quickly, is also integrating mod_pagespeed into its offerings. Misha Kuperman, vice president of operations, says that optimizing code on the fly, as the new software does, improves on the optimizations his company already does. Though people can install the software themselves, Kuperman says, having it as part of a content delivery network makes it easier to use for companies that don’t control their own servers, or that have Web resources scattered across the globe.
Google’s efforts to speed up the Web reach across many of its products. For example, it designed the Chrome Web browser to be faster than other browsers, and the company is giving very-high-speed broadband connections to a select number of towns in the United States. Earlier this year, Google announced that it would consider the speed of all websites when it ranks pages in search results, which could have a significant effect on how many visitors a company’s site gets.
Speeding up the Web has a clear financial payoff for Google. “If websites are faster, Google makes more money,” says Ed Robinson, CEO of Aptimize, a startup that also provides software that automatically optimizes Web pages, much as Google’s new offering does. Robinson explains that the faster a website is, the more pages users will view, and the more ads Google can serve—on its search pages or through its ad networks. Because the company’s reach is so wide, even small improvements can add up to massive revenue gains for the Web giant. He adds, “Making the Web faster is the logical next step for moving the Web forward.”
In the days of cold, hard newsprint, only people who could draw were successful comic strip authors. In some cases, this resulted in comic strips that had very nice pictures, but weren’t all that funny (cough, Blondie). Thankfully, the Internet has taught us not to accept an inferior form of comic artistry, but a more flexible one.
The best part about these developments is that they allow you, regardless of any talent as an artist or comedian, to create your very own comic strip. Depending on what you’re going for, you can use one of these six sites to help you do it.
MakeBeliefsComix.com is easy enough for children to use, but there are enough options for adults to get a message across, too. Users can choose from 25 characters to fill a two-, three-, or four-paneled comic strip. Currently, the site supports typing in seven different languages. There are plans to add Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters in the future.
One limiting factor is color. Though you can choose a background color, the characters remain black and white. If you’re planning on printing your comic strip, this could be a good opportunity to pull out the old-fashioned box of crayons. But if you’re planning on sharing it online, it’s a bit restricting.
The pre-set options that make the site so easy to use can also be slightly limiting. Your comic strips will look pretty generic. There are only about four different expressions for each character. The upside of this is that you can finish a perfectly respectable online comic in about ten minutes.
The creator, Bill Zimmerman, is the author of 18 books — including Make Beliefs: A Gift For Your Imagination. “My hope is that by giving you a choice of characters with different moods and the chance to write words and thoughts for them,” he writes on the site, “you will tap into your creativity and explore new possibilities.”
If there’s any company that knows what it takes to build great comics, Marvel Characters does. So it’s no surprise that its DIY comic site is pretty awesome, considering its simplicity.
Features that make it awesome include choices for different styles of panels (not into boxes? try zig zags), the set-up for creating up to a 22-page comic book, and the Photoshop-esque tool dock that moves around the page. Your character choices include the stars of the Super Hero Squad Show, including The Hulk, Falcon, and Wolverine.
The site does have some rough patches. If you’re hoping to create an original-looking comic strip, you’re out of luck, because you are limited to Marvel characters. There are a measly five options for objects, and you can’t change the background. With no option to save your work on the site, it’s also unlikely you’ll be completing a full 22-page comic book in one sitting.
This is the comic strip creation website for artists. The site allows for as much customization as possible without the need to build from scratch. Instead of just choosing the color of a character’s shirt, for instance, there are options to adjust the collar, shape, sleeves, and size of the shirt. Instead of relying on preset poses and emotions for each character, users are able to click and drag character limbs into new postures and can customize eyes, ears, noses, and hairstyles. It’s also convenient to add images from Flickr or Google images.
Successful comics vie every day for a spot in the prestigious Pixton top 10.
ToonDoo hits the fine balance between creative versatility and user friendliness, ensuring that the final results look sharp. While there’s still an extensive library of characters and objects to use in your comic strip, there are also tools to create your own touches. The TraitR tool allows you to create custom characters and DoodlR lets you paint freely. If you want to use your own photos or another image in your comic strip, you can manipulate it through the ImagineR photo tool.
Unlike other sites, there’s an option to save your project mid-creation so that you can come back to it later. When you finish a handful of ToonDoos, you can compile a book. It’s easy to embed individual cartoons in a website or share them over networks, and you can buy print-quality images of your favorites.
The stoic characters of Strip Generators lend themselves to sarcastic commentary. There’s not a whole lot of opportunity to create a personal style — you need to work with what the site gives you — but that doesn’t mean you can’t be creative. The community topic-themed galleries are testimony to this (check out the current theme, “Autumn”).
One unique capability is adjustable frames. If you need a specific cell to be a bit wider or longer, you can just drag the wall. Another stand-out trait is the personal library. When you tweak an image to get it just right, you can save it to use again later.
Pikistrips takes your photos (er…”Pikis?”) and turns them into comic strips. Once you upload your favorites into a customizable comic cell format, you’re free to add text bubbles, speech bubbles, and objects. The object gallery is pretty extensive, and its contents aren’t random. Many of the categories — like hairstyles, hats, mustaches, scars, and tattoos — wouldn’t be much fun without using your own photos as a canvas. If you miss the cartoon look, you can apply the “comic” effect to your photo or choose from seven others.
All in all, this site is fun for tweaking your photos (also see the related Pikipimp.com), but is intended to boost the company’s custom printing business (you guessed it, “pikiprint”). On the other hand, if you want a custom mouse pad, bag, or cup with your photocomic on it, this aspect works out nicely.
YouTubeSocial founder David Sanghera has informed us that Google has sent the group viewing startup multiple email requests to hand over the YouTubeSocial.com domain. We also hear that the i/o Ventures -backed YouTubeSocial, which has amassed 50,000 unique visitors in the 30 days since we wrote about them last, is currently in advanced acquisition talks with a major media company so Google’s entreaties are a definite sign they are doing something right.
For those of you that are old, these kinds of “knock it off” threats, if not complied with, turn into ubiquitous “Cease and Desist” letters which come with the territory; Large companies send this kind of stuff to startups all the time, even we were not immune back in 2006.
According to Sanghera, Google and YouTube are asking YouTubeSocial for the following concessions:
1. YouTubeSocial cannot use YouTubeSocial URL. Must change it to something else.
2. Must also change the branding and logo.
3. Must not use any monetization features. (Which it doesn’t)
4. YouTubeSocial must transfer their domain over to Google/YouTube.
While Sanghera says that he, like we did, will eventually succumb to Google’s requests, YouTubeSocial’s current strategy is to appeal to its users and start pushing out new features, like a public rooms feature and the Flingo.org assisted “Fling to a Web enabled TV” feature; “We’re doing this for our users, how are they going to hang out and talk with their friends if Google and YouTube takes us away?”
YouTubeSocial is still serving up YouTube ads up against all its content, so Sanghera refers the Socialvision’s product as really a “win win” situation for YouTube; “The average user spends 12 minutes on YouTubeSocial and recurring users spend about 35 minutes. So people are discovering a lot of content.”
On what happens if this David and Goliath tale does not have a happy ending? Sanghera says that the startup will have to change its URL and branding and start looking to other video services like Vimeo for content, “We’re the little guy, so obviously we have to comply.”
It turns out Google’s Street View cars found out more about Internet users than previously acknowledged. Last Friday, the company said the cars, which roam the world taking pictures for its location-based applications, scarfed up e-mail addresses, URLs and passwords from residential Wi-Fi networks they passed by in dozens of countries.
And while Google said it was “mortified” by its discovery, apologized again, and announced some measures to beef up privacy awareness within its ranks, the admission could expose the company to greater global scrutiny, fines and potential lawsuits, experts said.
Over the weekend, the British government launched a fresh investigation into the Street Cars data breach. Italy demanded that Google give residents several days notice before its cars roam their neighborhoods, Reuters reported. Regulators in France, Germany and Spain have begun inverstigations of their own. More than 30 state attorneys general in the United States also have launched a joint probe. And Epic, a privacy advocacy group, urged the Federal Communications Commission to initiate a breach of privacy investigation of Wi-Fi communications networks.
Last May, Google said its Street View cars accidentally picked up some unencrypted information about Wi-Fi networks it was also tracking with the cars.
In Friday’s blog post, the company said the fragments of Internet user data the cars had picked up included entire e-mail addresses, Web page URLs and passwords.
“We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologize again for the fact that we collected it in the first place,” wrote Alan Eustace, a senior vice president of engineering and research.
The announcement paralleled similar findings by Canadian privacy authorities, who conducted their own investigation of Street View. Google said Friday that it will beef up training on privacy and had promoted Alma Witten, previously head of privacy engineering, to also lead privacy efforts over product management.
“We are mortified by what happened, but confident that these changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users,” Eustace said.
In a statement, a Google spokesperson said the company has never used the information it gathered from Wi-Fi networks for any Google product.
Some privacy advocates say Google’s admission highlights a common attitude among high-tech firms that rush to get out new technologies without enough consideration of how consumers may be harmed in the process.
“First they said they didn’t gather data; then they said they did, but it was only fragments; and today they finally admit entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords,” said John Simpson, director of consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog. “Maybe some Google executives are beginning to get it: privacy matters. The reality, though, is that the company’s entire culture needs to change.”
where he talked about how the cloud-based storage company grew to where it is now, with more than 4 million users. Among other things, he described how search ads didn’t really work for the company in helping to achieve that growth.
their outside e-mail addresses, which then allows them to manage their outside e-mail accounts from inside Hotmail via POP.
