A proposal for Yahoo/MSN to beat Google

Post on lifeisaventure

A Billion-Dollar Question for Yahoo and MSN
Here is a proposal for Yahoo or MSN to gain $1B from Google:

Here is a proposal for Yahoo or MSN to gain $1B from Google:

As I wrote yesterday, every bit of your online life may be recorded in a database in Google, Yahoo or MSN. Google already said that they would not change this policy despite the grave privacy issues raised by the AOL data debacle.

If Yahoo or MSN comes out and says that they will not keep any of such records (or just keep the raw data for a short period for internal analysis), I bet there will be a noticeable shift from Google to Yahoo or MSN. If there is 20% shift, that’s a billion dollar! Simple:-)

Here is a billion-dollar question: will Yahoo or MSN do it?

Read full article: lifeisaventure

Google to scan 9 Million books from the library at Stanford University

By Bob Thompson

If it is really true that Google is going to digitize the roughly 9 million books in the libraries of Stanford University, then you can be sure that the folks who brought you the world's most ambitious search engine will come, in due time, for call number E169 D3.

Google workers will pull Lillian Dean's 1950 travelogue "This Is Our Land" -- the story of one family's "pleasant and soul-satisfying auto journey across our continent" -- from a shelf in the second-floor stacks of the Cecil H. Green Library. They will place the slim blue volume on a book cart, wheel it into a Google truck backed up to the library's loading dock and whisk it a few miles southeast to the Googleplex, the $100 billion-plus company's sprawling, campuslike headquarters in Mountain View. There, at an undisclosed location, it will be scanned and added to the ever-expanding universe of digitally searchable knowledge.

Read full article: washingtonpost

How To See the New Google Video Interface

Post by Michael Arrington on TechCrunch

We mentioned that Google is testing out a new interface for watching videos in a post yesterday. Razvan Antonescu, emailed me with a tip on how to see the new interface for yourself. Google Blogoscoped also wrote about this.

Read full article: TechCrunch

Google Porn?

Post by Michael Arrington on TechCrunch

People watching Google Video closely noticed a change this week in the upload area - the restrictions on uploading "pornographic or obscene" material is now just a restriction on "obscene" material. They've also added a "mature and adult" category to the genres and removed (I believe) a box on the initial uploading page that must be checked where the uploader certifies that the "video is not pornographic or obscene material".

This may or may not mean Google is allowing, or preparing to allow, porn. Videos containing nudity are clearly available on the site, and many were uploaded months ago (for example, is this porn?). But nothing hardcore seems to be on the site.

Read full article: TechCrunch

Google's Blogger unblocked (again) in China

Posted by Daniel Fleshbourne on neowin

Google's free Web log service, Blogger, is once again accessible from Beijing without the use of a proxy server, indicating that apparent government efforts to block the site have been lifted.

Access to Blogger was restored on Thursday. The site has largely been inaccessible from China since late 2002, when government censors apparently blocked access to Google's search engine and other sites. Last year, Blogger was accessible during a three-month period that stretched from mid-October until December, when the service once again became inaccessible. Chinese officials rarely discuss their Internet censorship efforts.The lack of disclosure sometimes makes it difficult to determine when a site is being blocked or is not accessible for technical reasons. However, in cases such as Blogger, where a site is inaccessible for long periods of time, the culprit is usually government intervention.

Source: http://www.neowin.net