If the Web has a single point of failure, you’d think it was Google, given the outcry over the the outages suffered by some of the company’s services Thursday. Something went wrong at the company this morning and whatever it was had widespread effects on a broad spectrum of Google services. The source of the disruption? A system error that sent a bunch of Google Web traffic to Asia, apparently.
In advance of its shareholder meeting today, Google is holding a press event at its Mountain View, Calif., campus with CEO Eric Schmidt presiding. Also on hand: Dave Drummond, senior vice president of corporate development; Susan Wojcicki, vice president for product management, and Marissa Mayer, vice president, search products and user experience. Hot topics of the day: Google’s and Apple’s interlocking boards, YouTube and the company’s thoughts on the econalypse, AOL and netbooks.
Leave it to Google to find a bit of meat on the revenue-starved bones of the newspaper industry. On Wednesday, the company extended its AdWords program to Google News, serving up text ads alongside news searches much the same way it does regular Google searches.
Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond says the company’s proposed search advertising partnership with Yahoo won’t increase Google’s share of search traffic. But no one appears to be taking him at his word. The World Association of Newspapers said Monday that it opposes the deal, adding its name to a growing list of critics that now includes not just Microsoft, but the Association of National Advertisers and European Union as well.
On the great list of words no tech executive ever wants to hear, “Google has entered your market” ranks right up there with “Microsoft’s made a hostile bid for the company” and “Hello, I’m Chris Hansen with ‘Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator’.” So local news aggregators like Topix and EveryBlock can be [...]
Publications that have taken issue with Google for excerpting their articles have another reason to be peeved at the company today. This morning, Google added a new feature to Google News that allows newsmakers to comment on the stories in which they’re featured (here’s an example).
“We’ll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from [...]
Given the ugly disruption the newspaper industry is suffering through as it belatedly adapts to the information age, why is that newspaper executives seem to feel that Google should pay them for the privilege of indexing their stories? Don’t they see the irony in demanding “fair compensation” for a search transaction for which they’re the [...]
It’s taken them a while, but Belgian newspaper publishers have finally managed to remember how the Internet works. On Thursday Copiepresse, an association of Belgian, French and German publishers whose contrarian and litigious stand on the benefits of search-engine traffic forced Google to remove its members from Google News in February, said the search engine could once again include them.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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