Google Wallet Will Allow You to Send Money as Gmail Attachment

Gawker:

Google has been trying to get its electronic payment service, Google Wallet, off the ground for years now but as the months dragged on Wallet was getting about as much traction as its sister service Google Plus. That all might change with Wallet’s latest development, introduced today in the video above. If Google has its way, you’ll soon be able to send and receive money via your Gmail account in the length of time it takes to send any other email.

Beginning in the coming months, Gmail users who are 18 or older will be able to use Google Wallet to attach money to their emails. Transactions from bank accounts are free, while transactions with debit or credit cards will be charged a 2.9 percent fee. The person receiving the cash won’t have to have a Gmail account, though they will have to sign up for Google Wallet to accept the transfer. And if the thought of sending lots of money via email creeps you out,”Google Wallet Protection” will cover “100% of all eligible unauthorized transactions reported within 180 days of purchase.”

If this takes off, it seems like it could be the death knell of electronic payment giant PayPal. According to PayPal’s own numbers, it has 110 million active accounts. Gmail’s user base—425 million as of June of last year—dwarfs that.

Google +1 To ReRank SERPS

From Wired:

Google is making plans to turn its +1 button into a crowdsourcing tool that
helps it re-order search results and fight web spam.

While not surprising, the move would bring Google’s search
engine into the social networking era, while simultaneously creating a new
avenue for blackhats to manipulate search results and potentially incurring the
wrath of trust-busting authorities.

Google confirmed its plans in an e-mail to Wired.com.

“Google will study the clicks on +1 buttons as a signal that
influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results,” a
spokesman wrote. “The purpose of any ranking signal is to improve overall search
quality. For +1’s and other social ranking signals, as with any new ranking
signal, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how those signals are related
to quality.”

Google prefaced its admission of the +1 search integration project to Wired.com
with a statement downplaying its potential significance: “There are more than
200 signals that we use to determine the rank of a website, and last year we
made more than 500 improvements to the algorithm.”

Introduced in March, the +1 sharing button debuted with
little incentive for web surfers to click on it. If you +1-ed a story on a
website that embedded the button, your profile picture would display next to the
URL when a friend of yours ran a search with results that included that URL.

But last week, the button entered adolescence, and can now
be used to post stories to friends and followers on Google+, much as the Like
button functions for Facebook.

So the next step of using what people are liking, sharing
and buzzing about online to rearrange search results is obvious enough.

Google dipped its toe into these waters with Twitter by
licensing its stream of Tweets, but that agreement ended before Google got so
far as to figure out how to do more with the fire hose of real-time information
than just decorate pre-computed search results with Tweeters’ profile pictures.

And as for Facebook? Google would love to get at its data —
the way that Bing is already — but the two companies go together like toothpaste
and orange juice. Facebook will likely never let Google anywhere near its data
stream, which meant that Google had to build in its own social network.

But therein lies the rub. If Google’s search results become
heavily dependent on social signals from Google+, then there’s going to be heavy
pressure on the net’s websites to embed the Google+ button.

And depending on where you work — say, Facebook or the
Justice Department — that could look like Google is unfairly using its search
engine might to boost its Facebook alternative.

That might explain why Forbes killed a story by Kashmir Hill
entitled “Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic
Suffers” which was seemingly based on information from a meeting with Google
ad representatives. On August 18, Hill wrote, “the message in this meeting was
clear: “Put a Plus One button on your pages or your search traffic will
suffer.”

Hill followed up with Google’s press team. which gave Hill
the same carefully couched answer it gave Wired.

But the story quickly disappeared from Forbes’ website and
from the Google cache, though it was noticed and saved by the Raven Tools SEO blog.

One guesses the tone of the post — and its headline —
rankled someone somewhere.

Forbes, Hill and Google all declined to talk on the record
about the post that disappeared into the memory hole.

That silence says as much as you need to know about the
touchiness involved in integrating a Google +1 button with Google’s search
box.

But Google’s biggest weakness is the possibility that
someone will figure out how to build a better search engine — and there’s many
who bet the way to do that is to make search involve more of a human touch and
less of a machine’s.

indeed, Google’s interest in incorporating +1s into its
search ranking algorithm might also explain Google’s hard line position in the
so-called Nym wars. Google is being adamant that users of its new social
networking tool use their real names. In its zeal to root out fakers and people
using pseudonyms, Google has deleted legitimate profiles and raised the ire of
those who defend the need for pseudonyms on the internet’s identity
platforms.

But if Google’s going to start using those +1 votes, the
company is virtually inviting the world’s spammers and blackhat SEO magicians to
flood its social networking system with fake profiles and fake votes —
potentially ruining it and possibly making the problem of search spam even
worse.

Google + Begins Verifying

Google’s Wen-Ai Yu announced Friday evening in a Google+ post and accompanying video that Google is beginning to verify accounts of public figures, celebrities and people who have been “added to a large number of circles”.

Google: When you visit the profile of a celebrity or public figure, you’ll see a verification badge next to their profile name. This will help you easily determine which profiles are owned by real, verified people.

Let the ego stoking begin!

Google iCatalogs…err Just Catalogs

Google debuts an iPad app, Google Catalogs, for customers to shop 50 catalogs from retailers including Crate & Barrel, L.L. Bean, Patagonia and Williams-Sonoma. Retailers can, for now, add their catalogs for free.

Shoppers can flip through the pages with the swipe of a finger on the tablet screen. Small price tags appear on product images; touching a price tag opens up a window with products details. On the details screen are two buttons: Buy on Website and Find Nearby.

Touching Buy opens up the product page on the e-commerce site of the retailer without leaving the app and customers can buy the product. For now, Google does not charge retailers to be included in the app, nor does it take a cut of sales generated by the app. There is also a “Find Nearby” ability which will  displays a map with a listing of the retailer’s nearby stores based on the tablet’s GPS capability.

 “For years, shoppers have enjoyed flipping through glossy print catalogs to be inspired, discover new trends and find great products,” writes Kinnari Jhaveri, strategic partner development manager for the Google commerce team, in a Google blog post. “Today, mobile technologies can make catalog shopping more engaging, social and creative. Google Catalogs enables you to browse all of your favorite catalogs and interact with new layers of rich-media content.”

Google created the popular Android mobile operating system for smartphones and tablets yet opted to launch Google Catalogs for competitor Apple Inc.’s iOS mobile operating system, which runs the iPad, along with the iPhone and iPod Touch.

“We develop mobile applications for a variety of platforms, including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Nokia,” the spokeswoman says. “As with all of our mobile products, we try to make them available on as many devices as possible. Development of the Google Catalogs app for Android is already in the works and will be available in the coming months.”

Google Can Be Mean

We’ve all seen funny Google auto fill-ins, but I don’t think I have ever seen a Google Map suggestion so mean spirited as the one I ran today. I a search from the headquarters of the company that I work for to a latrine. (Don’t ask…it wasn’t for me.)
Well Google asked, ” Did I Mean”: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (first result). For those of you who aren’t familiar with the foundation, it was founded by (unsurprisingly) Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft; it is a non-profit, philanthriopic orginization “dedicated to bringing innovations in health, development, and learning to the global community”.
Shame on you Google…or more likely some Google engineer.

Bing and Yahoo Partnership Cleared by US and EU

From Yahoo:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100218/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_yahoo_microsoftWASHINGTON –
Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. have received clearance from regulators in Washington and Europe to proceed with a search partnership intended to challenge Google Inc.

The companies announced Thursday that the partnership has been approved without restrictions by the Justice Department and the European Commission. Under the 10-year agreement, Microsoft’s Bing search engine will process search requests and steer search-related ads on Yahoo. Yahoo is due to get 88 percent of the revenue generated from the ads placed alongside the search results on its sites.

The companies said they will begin implementing the deal in the coming days by shifting Yahoo’s search platforms to Microsoft. They hope to move most advertisers and publishers before the 2010 holiday season, but may wait until 2011 if necessary, and expect to complete the process by early 2012.

This deal came about after the Justice Department indicated in 2008 that it would fight Yahoo’s plan to team up with Google on search. That rejection led Yahoo to turn to Microsoft, which had once offered to buy Yahoo in its entirety.

A statement from the European Commission said the Yahoo-Microsoft partnership “would not significantly impede effective competition.”

Web Pages ala Goldilocks, Too Big, Too Narrow Just Right for Google

With Matt Cutts twittering about Google incorporating website load times  into rankings and Google providing a tool to measure how your website is viewed by different browsers, it might be time to reevaluate your site.

Google Loses Market Share, Small Biz PPC Spend Up

According to WebVisible, the current break down of search share is:

Google: 60.4 %

Yahoo 26.2%

Bing 10.5%

Ask 2.4%

Continuing from the WebVisible report:

“Small Businesses Increase Spend by 91 Percent Generally, small businesses are buying more keywords and dramatically increasing their paid search budgets when compared to last year, according to WebVisible. First off, the average small business purchased 55 keyword phrases in Q3, which is up 30 percent from Q3 2008′s median number of 43. That statistic represents the high-water mark for the four quarters that WebVisible has been tracking small businesses keyword buys. Meanwhile, businesses dedicated an average of $1,658 to search ads, 91 percent more than Q3 2008. And business-to-consumer professional services appear to be the busiest in terms of collecting local sales leads via SEM. Attorneys and dentists made up the top two advertiser categories, with 7.7 percent and 5 percent of total small advertisers, respectively. Each of the two categories invested far more than average, spending $2,560 and $2,005 respectively in Q3. Air conditioning services and physicians/surgeons were the only other categories that accounted for more than 2 percent of search advertisers. Overall, the research suggests that the small business search advertisers are a varied bunch. The top 20 categories accounted for only 36 percent of total dollars spent. Thirty-two percent of search clicks resulted in a “lead conversion,” meaning the viewer either clicked through to a landing page on the advertiser’s Web site, printed a landing page, watched a video, printed out directions, entered an e-mail address, inquired via e-mail, or completed an online form. Clicks to the Web site were far and away the biggest lead conversion type, coming in almost twice as high as the next three categories: printed landing pages, submitted e-mail inquiries, and printed driving directions. For small businesses utilizing a call tracking number, 4.5 percent of the clicks resulted in a call, a 3.6 percent lift from 2008. No material differences occurred among advertisers in terms of CTR or proportion of lead conversions. However, WebVisible said that cost-per-clicks and keyword counts tended to increase with rising spend levels.”

 

Quite a shift!  From a merchant’s perpsective this is a double edged sword. When Google had 75-80% of the marketshare, an arguement could be made to neglect MSN and Yahoo and focus on having the best possible Google ppc campaign. Now that is no longer true. That may put a lot of strain on merchant’s paid search team to manage additional campaigns.

But, with the growing market share of Bing and to a lesser extent Yahoo, merchants who can act quickly and more nimbly then larger orginizations may be able to take advantage and grab a disproportionate share of these other engines at reduced costs.

Google to offer Free Phone Service?

From CNN via WIRED:

Google is set to become your new phone company, perhaps reducing your phone bill to zilch in the process. Seriously. Google has bought Gizmo5, an online phone company that is akin to Skype  but based on open protocols and with a lot fewer users. TechCrunch, which broke the news on Monday, reported that Google spent $30 million on the company. Google announced the Gizmo acquisition on Thursday afternoon Pacific Time. Gizmo5′s founder Michael Robertson, a brash serial entrepreneur, will become an Adviser to Google Voice. It’s a potent recipe — take Gizmo5′s open standards-based online calling system. Add to it the new ability to route calls on Google’s massive network of cheap fiber. Toss in Google Voice’s free phone number, which will ring your mobile phone, your home phone and your Gizmo5 client on your laptop. ÿþ Meanwhile you can use Gizmo5 to make ultracheap outgoing calls to domestic and international phone numbers, and free calls to Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo and AIM users. You could make and receive calls that bypass the per-minute billing on your smartphone. Then layer on deluxe phone services like free SMS, voicemail transcription, customized call routing, free conference calls and voicemails sent as recordings to your e-mail account, and you have a phone service that competes with Skype, landlines and the Internet telephone offerings from Vonage and cable companies. That’s not just pie in-the-sky dreaming. Ask longtime VOIP watcher and consultant Andy Abramson, who introduced the idea of integrating Gizmo5 and Grand Central (now Google Voice), long before Google bought either. “If AT&T is Coca-Cola, Google is now 7-UP.” –Andy Abramson “Google is now the the uncommon carrier,” Abramson said, punning on the iconic 7-UP commercials and the phrase “common carrier.” That refers to phone companies that operate on the traditional publicly switched network — a status that gives them benefits and obligations. “If AT&T is Coca-Cola, Google is now 7-UP,” Abramson added. “All of a sudden you have something that offers more than Skype,” Abramson said, saying the combo could now put Google in competition with phone and cable companies, IP “telephony” (VOIP) companies and Vonage. “But now you can do everything with Google and pay nothing and have a platform where engineers can build new things.” In fact, Gizmo5 offered a rogue version of that service for $6 a month until last week. On November 2, Gizmo5 abruptly canceled the two-month old “residential service,” which paired the free phone number available through Google Voice with Gizmo’s Internet calling service to provide the equivalent of a home-phone replacement like Vonage. Now, that service has been wiped off the Internet and, more intriguingly, Google’s cache of the page disappeared the day after the acquisition was reported. For $6 a month, Gizmo5 residential users got 300 minutes a month of outbound calling anywhere in the United States, unlimited incoming calls on their home computers or even home phones (using a broadband-to-phone network conversion box) and E911 service (which means 911 calls work like landlines calls do, once you register your home address). It’s not too surprising that offer got taken down. For one Google is already trying to steer clear of U.S. regulators by making it clear that Google Voice isn’t a replacement for a home phone since you have to have phone service from some other company to use it. You can forward calls from a Google Voice number to your Gizmo5 number, but you must have a mobile or landline number as well. Google doesn’t say it, but clearly it hopes that restriction will keep the service from incurring the common carrier obligations attached to the regular phone system (PSTN), and the 911 and wiretapping requirements that apply to Internet telephony and to traditional copper wire phones. AT&T has already tried to sic federal regulators on Google Voice because Google is blocking outgoing calls to a handful of shady calling services  mostly free conference-calling services that exploit federal rules that let rural phone companies charge high fees to connect calls to rural areas. AT&T itself has sued similar services that play this arbitrage game, and complaining to the feds may have only brought more attention to an issue the FCC has procrastinating fixing for too long. Gizmo5 will also help save Google money on phone-call termination fees as users start to use computer-based clients to connect to Google Voice. That would allow Google to recoup the purchase price of $30 million in little time, if only it saves even a few dollars per user per year. Google also gets Michael Robertson, a troublemaker with technical chops. Robertson made millions from MP3.com in the dot-com boom, despite drawing lawsuits from major record labels for creating innovative services. He was later sued by Microsoft for his startup Lindows, which made Linux installations for cheap PCs. And his current music venture, MP3tunes.com, is being sued by EMI. Though still in invite-only mode, Google Voice has about 580,000 active users and nearly 1.5 million registered users, according to a Google filing with the FCC. If you are interested in the combination, you might want to sign up for Gizmo5 before the acquisition is formally announced, since Google often freezes new registrations at companies it acquires until it figures out how to integrate the technology.

Google > You

The Hills Are Alive With Sound of Google Music

Since I scrupulously only buy music from places the labels have approved and never use any p2p this isn’t huge news for me. but according to Google:

“…we’re rolling out a search feature that does just that by enabling you to search and more easily discover millions of songs, all via a simple Google web search. If you’re searching for music, “time to result” is really “time to music.” Now, when you enter a music-related query — like the name of a song, artist or album — your search results will include links to an audio preview of those songs provided by our music search partners MySpace (which just acquired iLike) or Lala. When you click the result you’ll be able to listen to an audio preview of the song directly from one of those partners. For example, if I search for [21st century breakdown], the first results provide links to songs from Green Day’s new album. MySpace and Lala also provide links to purchase the full song.”

Big news for you? Or was regular search working  just fine for you?

 

 

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/making-search-more-musical.html