Is Google Approaching the U-Turn?

John Battelle has a very nice article entitled Thinking About Google and The Turning Point and I can relate. I still remember when Microsoft came out with Passport and what all the rage was. Now we are a lot more quiet and it is getting weird what kind of stuff I happily have on Google. Google tracks my web site (not for long, as it’s not good for a blog, more on that another time), handles my ads, does my eMail, is my search, runs small adwords campaigns for me (did run very big ones at my previous job and will likely again), has my account at Google Answers (and even gave me a blanket for being a researcher from the start :)), a bit of my network in Orkut, tracks me wherever there are AdSense ads, … the list could go on. Remember DoubleClick? When they bought a company that would potentially connect their clickstreams to personal identifiable data, all hell broke loose. HELLLOOOOOOO!!! Google has AdSense, the biggest advertising network ever invented, because it is a sales network and because its integrated effortless and works to a good degree.

Whenever they you see a Google ad, they know what it should be about, what the time of day is, what your country and provider is, what kind of conversion some of the ads have in the ad, what you search for when not surfing around, that you get lots of eMails (they likely don’t “know” what you get as eMail), and lots more stuff. So all in all Google is really approaching a size that makes it sound like the player out there but hey, you can switch. Go somewhere else. Things are hotting up out there and it will only get more interesting.

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Cat Mac Love


Cat Mac Love, originally uploaded by owt.

People searching already

We haven’t really announced our company yet, and already people searched for the company on OpenBC. I got somebody on my profile from Quotatis via a search for “Ormigo”, the name of the new company. Quotatis is a french site that allows individuals to get offers from 3 different merchants on a given subject allowing you to choose the best one. Congratulations for the 2 Million in funding. Also, Henning got called already by another entrepreneur to ask what we are doing based on his blog post. (Update: 2 people ;))

Ormigo is the name of our company we are currently setting up by the way, but you probably have guessed that already.

(Update: That person seems to have searched for some subjects, probably dropped by one of Henning’s posts, then searched on OpenBC, found the company name, … :))

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Searching Across Corante Web Hub Members

Corante has put together a great gang with their different hubs and I am still baffled that I am part of it. But if you want to know what the hub members have to say on a certain subject you can search directly on web.corante.com or check out this Rollyo search which covers everything Yahoo! has in their index.

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Firefox Referrals Available Internationally

The AdSense Blogs reports that you can now send Firefox referrals their way and get $1 even if you are not in the US and have an international account/site. I still use Safari I have to admit and I haven’t found out why I really need to switch yet, but Google seems to really be pushing their Toolbar with full force and that Firefox is part of the mix cannot be a coincidence. Some people already wondered whether Google has bought Firefox, with lots of Firefox developers now working at Google and if you believe the GoogleOS myths to be true, then having a good foot in the door in terms of future browser development and strategy is a good thing.

And as I posted some time ago, and now with Google’s Shipping Container, having the Toolbar everywhere would be a really good way to track everything and slowly but surely build their own Internet Backbone, knowing what users browse, search, read, and what their navigational paths across the web are. And as Seth has posted on Transparent Bundles, Clickstreams are gold to be mined.

So now go make me some money :)

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