Social gaming has come a long way since your friend asked you to check out her farm on Facebook. Some estimates suggest that over a million developers worldwide are busily adding to the more than 50,000 games and applications already available on Facebook alone.
In 1994, the gaming world was taken by storm when Blizzard Entertainment launched World of Warcraft, which not only became their best-selling PC game but ballooned into 11 million active players in just 14 years. However, this is a drop in the bucket compared to what the current popular social games see on a regular basis. Zynga's CityVille has been reported to have nearly 76 million active monthly players and there are at least 30 other games with over 10 million active monthly users right behind it.
Google's monthly search improvement digest is a whopper this month, describing 30 highlighted changes to the way Google search works. This month, Google has started adding code names to make the changes easier to remember and follow.
The tweaks are a little bit scattered, affecting all different aspects of Google's search returns. Most of them affect the actual presentation of results. A couple affect the way results are ranked. There are two new kinds of results for entertainment-related searches. And there are a few back-end improvements and adjustments affecting site administrators.
My main man Steve Myers over at Poynter has broken down the outcome of a brand new phenomenon in the coverage of elections. Google's U.S. elections portal, launched just ahead of the Iowa Caucuses on January 3, provided more useful data about the caucus results than the Associated Press did. According to the veterans with whom Myers spoke, it was quite an upset. The speed and portability, not to mention the $0.00 price tag, of Google's data made an impression on the news outlets covering the caucus.
Myers points to WNYC's coverage as a superb example of the advantages gained by incorporating Google tools into original coverage. There's no question that Google has built a useful platform for news organizations on top of its existing core services. Myers wonders whether Google could even compete directly with the AP for the lucrative business of reporting election returns, and his sources believe it could, if its leaders wanted to. But I think there's even more going on with these Google election initiatives. It looks to me like Google is searching for ways to disrupt the whole election news business.
Google updated the Google Translate iOS app today adding iPad support. It's the same set of features as the iPhone version, but the iPad is a great place for a free translator. Technophiles are reading more on tablets lately, and a free Google Translate app is a boon for a more literate, global wired society.
Google Translate has been available on the iPhone since the mobile Web version launched in 2008. The native app released last year added the voice-to-text feature as well as the spoken translations from Google's voice synthesizer. As one should expect, the translations are never perfect, but they're great for getting the gist.
Google Chrome released a new beta version today that takes the insurgent browser's instant and predictive features even further. The Instant Pages feature that pre-loads Web pages in the background as you search has been expanded to the omnibox, Chrome's combination address and search bar. If you're typing in a site you visit all the time, and the address auto-completes, Chrome will begin pre-rendering the page, reducing load time.
The new beta also improves Chrome's security against malware attacks. The Chrome team reports that malware attacks exploiting user-initiated processes are on the rise. The browser can now analyze executable files - such as ".exe" and ".msi" files - that you downloaded yourself. Chrome will warn users to delete suspicious files.
I hate Google+. Can't stand it. It is agonizing to use. The stream is so ugly, it won't even bother me when the inevitable Google ads arrive. Culturally, it feels like walking into a religious school. It swarms with disciples of the + waiting for the messianic downfall of the Evil Internet, so that the One True Google+ is all that's left.
But I've been polite. It's my beat, so I've covered it fairly. When it gets a feature I love, I say so. When it does something obscenely bad, I give its creators a fair chance to respond. But it's getting harder to grin and bear it. I've been a happy Google customer product for a long time, because Google tools used to enhance the Internet. But as Google ships "the Google part" of its new Google+ identity, it's breaking the Web it once helped build. I can't take it anymore.
Google Chrome made a booboo, and now its own company is punishing it. Yesterday, the news broke that bloggers were being paid to use SEO spam tactics to boost the Google Chrome website's page ranking in search. Hundreds of paid articles, many of them totally incoherent, were used to promote Chrome. At least one of them violated Google's policy against paid links. As Google's search guru Matt Cutts wrote in 2009, "paid posts should not affect search engines."
So that was awkward. Fortunately for Google, the infraction could be blamed on Unruly Media, the third-party company Google hired to promote Chrome. Links from the paid posts were supposed to use the rel="nofollow" tag, so they wouldn't affect page rank. At least one blogger didn't, even though Unruly "advised" them to. In order for Google to get out of this mess, it would have to punish itself as it has done to others. Sure enough, Google says it will reduce Chrome's page rank.
Ahead of the Iowa Caucuses, Google has launched its U.S. elections hub. The site features news, calendars, maps and videos, as well as online tools campaigns, organizers and reporters can use. The Google Politics & Elections Google+ page will share the latest updates.
The Google.com/elections site's navigation allows browsing by candidate or issue. It also features a "Trends" browser, showing how candidates are doing in Google search, Google News mentions and YouTube views, and an 'On the Ground' viewer showing stories overlaid on a map.
According to data shared by Experian Hitwise US, Google+ received around 50 million visits in December. That's a jump of nearly 20 million from the month before and its biggest month of traffic since its launch at the end of June.
Google's social network launched a holiday barrage of commercials featuring the Muppets and pro basketball stars using Google+ video Hangouts. CNET called the commercials "desperate," but according to Hitwise's numbers, the effort paid off.
Google and Firefox renewed their partnership last week, ensuring that Google will remain Firefox's default search engine (and major source of revenue). Kara Swisher reported that the deal brings in just under $300 million per year for Firefox, amounting to almost $1 billion total. Google has to cough up the cash to prevent this coveted spot in the popular browser from going to Bing and Microsoft.
MG Siegler wondered why Google would bear this expense, "paying all that money to a competitor." He considered whether antitrust concerns played into the decision, or whether it was about mobile dominance. But Chrome engineer Peter Kasting offered a simpler answer today: "Google is funding a partner," not a competitor.
