Google Interview
This week Read/WriteWeb finally got an interview with Google, something I've been wanting for a long time. Matt Cutts, head of Google's web spam operations, talked to me on the topic of next-generation search. Unfortunately I published it just as news of the $1B Viacom lawsuit against YouTube hit (the Techmeme 'Scrum of the Week'), so my interview with Matt didn't get the attention it deserved. However there is a lot of great info in this interview, so I encourage you to read it - maybe print it out and read it in bed on Sunday morning, along with the Sunday paper :-) Also check out the follow-up post: Video PageRank: Google Searches for The Holy Grail.
The interview post got some good comments, for example Steve said:
"The personalization of search is great for local companies competing in global markets. It will be interesting to see the evolution of natural language in search. If i was google, i would be doing my best to purchase Wikipedia. They are sending them most of their traffic... so why not?"
Why not indeed? Apart from the fact that Wikipedia is non-profit, so there would be a major outcry from people about a commercial company taking it over - especially a company like Google that already controls so much access to information on the Web.
Phill Midwinter commented that he isn't so impressed by Google's search engine strengths:
"It's a nice interview - but again I'm not seeing anything new here beyond what I've been hearing for the past two years. Google is looking increasingly stagnant from my point of view as a search engine developer. If they are truly keeping to release often, release early; then they haven't actually done much of importance for quite some time to improve search."
My feeling is that Google is innovating a lot, but it hasn't necessarily integrated those things into the main search.
]]> Finally, web 2.0 innovations wrote:"...the site that would potentially undermine Google’s dominance in finding information on web will be anything else but not Google-style search engine."
Indeed! Hence Read/WriteWeb's Alternative Search Engine list.
Alt Search Engine Mashups
Speaking of which... this week a couple of mashups of our Top 100 Alt Search Engine list came up. Check out:
Also we've created a kind of sub-list of weird search engines - I think you'll agree, an entertaining list to play with!
Yahoo Personal Finance review
I recommend reading Sramana Mitra's excellent analysis of Yahoo's new Personal Finance site, from earlier this week. It's a good illustration of where Yahoo's strengths and weaknesses are in its web properties.
Other Analysis Posts
Early this week the annual SXSWi (South by Southwest Interactive) conference was held in Austin, Texas. This has a reputation for being one of the most fun conferences on the Web tech circuit, so I was sorry to miss it again. Maybe next year! Luckily though, Sean Ammirati was there to cover the event for Read/WriteWeb. I particularly enjoyed his Web App Autopsy report and the follow-up The Figures Behind The Top Web Apps. Here is a list of all Sean's posts from SXSW:
Some interesting startups crossed our path this week. I was particularly enamoured with an online video site called We Dig TV. My review: We Dig TV Brings Television Game Shows To The Web. Also I recommend Alex Iskold's review of Summize, a search engine with heatmaps. Lot of innovation in that app.
Other startup posts this week:
We actually ran two polls this week. The first asked: How many RSS Remix feeds do you subscribe to?. The results:
I've subscribed to hundreds of remix
feeds 5% (11 votes)
Somewhere between 51 to
100
5% (12 votes)
11 to
50 13% (31 votes)
1 to
10 24% (58 votes)
I haven't subscribed to any remix
feeds 44%
(106 votes)
I don't know what you're talking
about
10% (25 votes)
There was a bit of confusion about what RSS remix feeds are. And it's clear from the results that filtered feeds are still very early in the adoption phase. Only 23% of respondants have subscribed to more than 10 remixed feeds, while 10% of people don't even know what a remix feed is. Lot of work to be done here (including by blogs such as R/WW, to explain them).
Our other poll asked: Why is there no advertising with YouTube videos? The reason for asking this was that Mark Cuban had commented in a previous post that the only reason for no advertising on YouTube is the copyright issues. So we decided to find out if others agreed. The results:
The Mark Cuban choice -- Google is concerned about legal
exposure 37% (57 votes)
The R/WW choice -- Google hasn't cracked digital
relevancy 22% (33 votes)
Both -- Google is running scared of big media AND hasn't found a VideoRank formula
yet 41% (63 votes)
It looks like a small majority think it's both a technology and copyright issue, but a good percentage agree with Cuban that it's all down to copyright.
That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
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