Google has become all but synonymous with searching on the Web, but this is no time to sit still. Speaking at the Morgan Stanley technology conference Tuesday, CEO Eric Schmidt described today’s search market as a very fluid industry, and reiterated his enthusiasm for the opportunities lying ahead in mobile computing. “It looks like people will move very quickly from one search engine to another,” Schmidt said.

“A majority of people actually say they use more than one search engine, and of course Microsoft is working very hard to build a competitive search engine,” he added, noting the recent leak detailing plans about Microsoft’s next steps in the market. In search, Schmidt sees an ongoing challenge from a determined Microsoft, as well as a host of upstart players looking to augment traditional search with semantic data and other information on the Web. Microsoft, for its part, has been talking loudly about trying to resurrect a search deal with Yahoo after last year’s abortive negotiations.

Schmidt said he would welcome the competition, provided Microsoft played fair. “The problem has to do with Microsoft’s ability to use its Windows monopoly to restrict consumer choice,” he said. “Anything that Microsoft would do that would eliminate consumer choice with respect to search engines, Internet browsers, distribution — of which it was previously found guilty — are of concern, and there’s a history of that.” Schmidt’s talk comes amid a gloomy economic climate that he warned could get worse before it gets better, sapping the value of tech firms such as his own, which had long seemed impervious to recessionary pressures. Companies across all industries are tightening their belts and reassessing the business value of new initiatives that might have sailed through in flusher times.

“For the next few quarters, things are going to be very, very tough, so we’re talking about 2010″ before the economy begins to right itself, Schmidt said. “Everyone’s sort of assuming that 2009 is a tough, tough year.” The online ad industry may be better positioned to weather the economic storm than other sectors of the economy, but Schmidt said Google is by no means immune. “Google management spends most of its time doing business reviews today,” he added. “I think the situation is pretty dire.

The combination of everything that we have seen does not appear to have a current bottom.” Serving ads along side the search pages users see on their PCs will remain the core of Google’s business in the near term, but Schmidt was characteristically optimistic about the future of mobile computing.

He looks for Google’s revenue from mobile search to eclipse search on the PC over the next several years — “not decades” — as smartphones become increasingly sophisticated and affordable. “The fact of the matter is that mobile devices are going to be the majority of the way that people get information,” he said. “The argument is relatively simple: You already have them.

They’re called your phones.” He also took note of the netbook phenomenon, where smaller, lightweight laptops are making significant inroads in the traditional PC business. “What’s particularly interesting about netbooks is the price point,” he said “Eventually it will make sense for operators and so forth to subsidize the use of those books so they could make services revenue and advertising revenue on their consumption. That’s another new model that’s coming.”

New Frontiers for Google

In his far-ranging talk, Schmidt touched on several other fronts of Google’s business, including the ongoing integration of the businesses of ad giant DoubleClick. Despite the harsh effect the economy has had on display ads, Schmidt cited that as one of Google’s most immediate areas of expansion. But rather than the static banner ads that many people have come to know and ignore, Schmidt looks to video and interactive rich-media ads that would do a better job of engaging a Web user.

To that end, Google continues to work with major advertisers, such as Proctor & Gamble, to help them develop online advertising strategies. Last fall, the two companies swapped employees for several weeks in an attempt to hone P&G’s Web strategy and enhance Google’s position among the dominant company in the consumer-products sector. Schmidt said that Google is planning similar exchanges with other companies, but declined to name them as details are not finalized.

The online video arena, where Google has a vast reach with the wildly popular YouTube, has thus far yielded disappointing monetary returns. Schmidt said that monetizing YouTube remains a work in progress, and that Google is pursuing licensing and distribution deals with content producers to make money off things like music videos in a model similar to Apple’s iTunes. He also said that YouTube is planning to roll out more long-format and high-definition video content.

Google has finally brought in certain elements of semantic search into its search engine that brings about better search results by linking and associating different concepts.

The new technology will offer more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page), said Google.

For example, if you search for principles of physics, the Google algorithms will also associate concepts like “angular momentum,” “special relativity,” “big bang”, and “quantum mechanic” to your search.

Google said the new related searches would be available in 37 languages globally starting today. The Internet giant also said that information snippets that accompany every search result will also be increased in case of longer queries

Google has begun accepting paid applications into its Android Market mobile app store — a move that lays the groundwork for potentially following Apple’s lead in turning smartphone applications into a sizable moneymaker.

Initially, the Android Market offered only free applications. Now, however, the search giant confirmed plans to next week begin selling applications through Android Market after rumors began circulating earlier this week.

Users of the Android-based T-Mobile G1 smartphone can expect to see the paid apps available starting in the middle of next week, according to a Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) post on a blog for Android developers. The search giant said Google Checkout will serve as the payment and billing mechanism for the service.

The company started accepting paid applications from developers today, though it is limiting the program to U.S. and U.K. developers for the time being. Germany, Austria, Netherlands, France and Spain are slated to be added by the end of March.

The move puts Google more closely into competition for developers with Apple, and in particular, the PC maker’s popular App Store for its iPhone and iPod Touch.

Part of that motivation may stem from the fact that downloads at Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) App Store are off the chart. During last month’s earning’s call, Apple’s CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, said there are 15,000 apps on the iPhone App Store, and downloads have surpassed 500 million.

App Store frenzy

The App Store concept has caught the attention of all the big mobile providers. In October, BlackBerry maker RIM unveiled plans for an App Store of its own, starting in March.

In mid-December, Palm launched its own mobile storefront, the Palm Software Store. The company’s storefront opened with 5,000 applications for over 25 existing Palm (NASDAQ: PALM) devices, with about 1,000 of the applications available for free.

The next month, the Treo manufacturer gave a first look at its upcoming smartphone, the Pre, which will hinge heavily on a sleek design, an iPhone-like touchscreen — and downloadable apps.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is also thought to be weighing an Apple-like storefront for mobile downloads. In fall, it began dropping hints about launching an App Store-like effort.

The software colossus is expected to detail some of its upcoming mobile efforts — including, potentially, a mobile storefront — during next week’s GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Google this week said it’s preparing to launch new services for mobile users, offering free U.S. calls, unified text messages and voicemail across numbers and integrated speech-to-text and search functionality.

But the new only available to existing customers of GrandCentral Communications, a telecommunications firm Google bought in July 2007.

The Google Voice service will automatically transcribe your voicemail to text — though it can be shut off in the settings page of the service — and you can search through past voicemails as well as archived SMS messages.

“Users can access their voicemail and SMS messages by phone, e-mail, or the Web. From the Google Voice inbox, a user can search for a specific voicemail message or SMS message,” a Google spokesperson said.

While Google has long baked advertising into its core products — running ads in tandem with search queries and within services like Gmail — it’s still not clear whether Google Voice run ads alongside these transcripts or elsewhere in the new service.

“We don’t have specific plans to share at this time regarding advertising within Google Voice,” the spokesperson told InternetNews.com.

But industry analyst and consultant Greg Sterling speculated that Google may introduce advertising if it needs to help offset costs for the free calls and if the service becomes popular.

He also said the specter of advertising in the interface is what rankles privacy advocates.

“There are possibilities, though sometimes you expect Google to introduce ads at some point with a new service and they don’t,” he said. “But they could scan the content of voicemail transcripts and insert text ads.”

“I can envision a situation where the interface has ads ties into it, they could even be behaviorally targeted ads, based on their announcement yesterday, and this is what goes right at the heart of what privacy advocates are concerned about,” he said.

Sterling also raised the possibility of audio ads, given that Google recently shuttered its radio ad unit but didn’t scrap the infrastructure and said it would still look for distribution channels.

“Audio ads could be inserted, whether branded or contextually relevant, into voicemail,” Sterling said.

In terms of privacy issues, he said that Google is smart to take a wait-and-see approach before monetizing Google Voice, avoiding interference with the user experience until its widely adopted and politically prudent.

“The key is integration with other services like Gmail, that’s the appeal for the user is everything is all working together in a centralized way,” Sterling said. “But that’s also what raises concerns with privacy groups. The political part is Google doesn’t want to confirm fears of data mining.”

It’s too early to tell how Google Voice will impact the VoIP market in the long-term, and in particular how it will affect big players in the sector such as Skype.

The Google Voice news comes as eBay is betting on growing Skype well beyond its chief current focus as a PC-based voice chat and videoconferencing application, yesterday describing plans that could see Skype doubling revenue by 2011.

Meanwhile, though, Skype just last week began its own voicemail-to-text service using U.K.-based SpinVox, though it’s a paid offering.

Sterling said that Google’s competing release is impressive, and depending on how much the search leader promotes it, could have a big effect on the industry. On the other hand, initiatives such as Google Checkout, which was touted as a “PayPal Killer,” never gained wide adoption despite big marketing campaigns.

The launch comes just days after inventor Judah Klausner said he had settled a lawsuit with Google over Klausner’s patents covering “visual voicemail,” which gives users e-mail like controls for managing voicemail.

Klausner’s company had previously sued and settled with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), which includes visual voicemail in its iPhone.

Effective May 5, Google Checkout is moving to a tiered fee structure and is eliminating its AdWords discounts for sellers who use the search giant’s online payment processing system.

The new pricing effectively raises rates for most online merchants, and puts the online payment system more in line with PayPal’s rates.

The new rates will range from 1.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction for monthly sales of $100,000 or more, to 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction for monthly sales of less than $3,000. And, any transactions with buyers outside your home country will incur an additional 1 percent fee.

Currently, e-commerce site owners pay 2 percent plus 20 cents per transaction, with no monthly, setup, or payment gateway service fees.

Google also said it would discontinue the AdWords credit promotion that’s tied to Checkout. The way it works now, merchants who advertise with Google AdWords are eligible for free transaction processing for some or all of their Google Checkout sales each month. For every $1 spent on AdWords each month, merchants were allowed to process $10 in sales the following month for free through Google Checkout.

Google did say any AdWords transaction processing credits accrued during April 2009 will be applied towards transactions that occur on May 1 to 4, 2009, and Google Grants recipients will still be eligible for free donation processing until 2010.

When Google released Checkout in June 2006, there was speculation that it might overtake PayPal as the primary online payment processor, even though the two differ. Checkout provides another gateway for Google users to make credit card purchases online, while PayPal primarily acts as a replacement to using a credit card to complete an online transaction.

But Checkout never really became widely adopted in the marketplace, though some studies have shown it to be popular with males ages 18 to 34, and recently it’s being promoted for the mobile Android platform. Because Google never reveals the number of users who use Checkout, it’s hard to discern what impact the new pricing will have, and whether the change is due to its failure or success.

Regardless of numbers, it’s bound to be good news for PayPal, which now offers more merchant services for about the same cost, and just mapped out an agenda to double its revenue by 2011.

Google did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

When it comes to Web analytics, Google has been shaking up the established fee-based players with its free offering — Google Analytics — and quickly grabbed the lead in market share, but researcher CMS Watch said big companies would be well-advised to check out a lesser known analytics player, Yahoo

Last spring, Yahoo bought Web analytics company IndexTools and converted the company’s service to its own under the name Yahoo Web Analytics. CMS Watch said with the conversion complete, Yahoo is slowly ramping up promotion and further development of the service, but it already offers several advantages over Google Analytics.

Both services are free, though actively marketed by resellers who offer consulting services to help companies implement them. “Google has more customers than anyone else,” CMS Watch Founder Tony Byrne told InternetNews.com. “The difference at a feature level between Google and Yahoo isn’t very much if you’re a small to mid-level size Company, and those customers might prefer Google’s slicker interface. But when you start talking about bigger sized companies with big Web site issues, Yahoo is more relevant.” Of course, Google and Yahoo are hardly the only game in town.

CMS Watch evaluated 20 Web analytics platforms, including Coremetrics, Omniture, Visible Measures, and WebTrends, against 12 potential use cases in a 470-page report released this week. Byrne said smaller firms are attracted to the free services from Google and Yahoo, but they’re not for everyone.

Google said it had no comment on the CMS Watch report. Yahoo couldn’t be reached by press time. Byrne notes that the Terms of Service (TOS) agreements for both Google and Yahoo give those companies the right to reuse the data they collect as part of their ongoing aggregation of Web traffic data. Paid services typically don’t, the data belongs to the client. “Commercial Web analytics vendors, like WebTrends, Coremetrics, and Omniture, those guys will tell you, and I think it’s true, that Google has helped them because it introduced a whole generation of Web managers to what analytics can do in a training tools kind of way,” said Byrne.

“They know there comes a time when these larger firms reach the limits of what Google can do and they’ll need to upgrade.” On that later point of delivering what enterprises or large companies need, the CMS Watch analysis grades Yahoo higher in several areas. For one, it has a larger default monthly page-view limit, 200 million for Yahoo versus five million for Google. Google offers more if you’re running an active Google AdWords campaign. Another key difference is access to traffic data. Unlike Google, Yahoo gives you access to the raw data about Web site, not just the summary reports both offer, and the ability to export that data.

Should you choose to migrate to another service, that export feature would let you continue to maintain a historical record instead of starting over. “Enterprises with legal departments care about that availability to the raw data,” said Byrne. He notes neither Google nor Yahoo shares the data outside of their own companies, but the rise in privacy and security-related issues have made IT departments more sensitive than ever to who has access to their company information. Overall, CMS Watch found that Yahoo Web Analytics had its drawbacks, including “an administrative complexity that accompanied its functional richness.

“It also dinged the service for lack of 24/7 tech support. Byrne said neither Google or Yahoo is going to be a good fit for some enterprises that would be better off considering a fee-based Web analytics solutions. “What Google has done is focused on simplifying the report experience, but some enterprises may find the result too simple,” said Byrne.

Google won a significant legal victory when a judge ruled against a Pittsburgh couple who claimed that Street View on Google Maps was a reckless invasion of their privacy. Aaron and Christine Boring alleged in a lawsuit that Google “significantly disregarded (their) privacy interests” when Street View cameras captured images of their house beyond signs marked “private road.”

They sought more than $25,000 in damages and asked that the images of their home be taken off the site and destroyed.

But a federal judge in Pittsburgh found no merit to the claims, finding that Google could legally photograph on private roads.”Today’s satellite-image technology means that…complete privacy does not exist,” Google said in its response to the Borings’ complaint.

A couple in Pittsburgh whose lawsuit claimed that Street View on Google Maps is a reckless invasion of their privacy lost their case.

Aaron and Christine Boring sued the Internet search giant last April, alleging that Google “significantly disregarded (their) privacy interests” when Street View cameras captured images of their house beyond signs marked “private road.” The couple claimed in their five-count lawsuit that finding their home clearly visible on Google’s Street View caused them “mental suffering” and diluted their home value. They sought more than $25,000 in damages and asked that the images of their home be taken off the site and destroyed.

However, the U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania wasn’t impressed by the suit and dismissed it (PDF) Tuesday, saying the Borings “failed to state a claim under any count.”

Ironically, the Borings subjected themselves to even more public exposure by filing the lawsuit, which included their home address. In addition, the Allegheny County’s Office of Property Assessments included a photo of the home on its Web site.

The Borings are not alone in their ire toward the Google Maps feature. As reported earlier, residents in California’s Humboldt County complained that the drivers who are hired to collect the images are disregarding private property signs and driving up private roads . In January, a private Minnesota community near St. Paul, unhappy that images of its streets and homes appeared on the site, demanded Google remove the images , which the company did.

However, Google claims to be legally allowed to photograph on private roads, arguing that privacy no longer exists in this age of satellite and aerial imagery.

“Today’s satellite-image technology means that… complete privacy does not exist ,” Google said in its response to the Borings’ complaint

Not long after the feature launched in May 2007 , privacy advocates criticized Google for displaying photographs that included people’s faces and car license plates. And last May, the company announced that it had begun testing face-blurring technology for the service.

source: Cnet

Feb 12, 2009 at 3:55pm ET by Vanessa Fox

The web is full of duplicate content. Search engines try to index and display the original or “canonical” version. Searchers only want to see one version in results. And site owners worry that if search engines find multiple versions of a page, their link credit will be diluted and they’ll lose ranking.

Today, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (links are to their separate announcements) have united to offer a way to reduce duplicate content clutter and make things easier for everyone. Webmasters rejoice! Worried about duplicate content on your site? Want to know what “canonical” means? Read on for more details.

Multiple URLs, one page

Duplicate content comes in different forms, but a major scenario is multiple URLs that point to the same page. This can come up for lots of reasons. An ecommerce site might allow various sort orders for a page (by lowest price, highest rated…), the marketing department might want tracking codes added to URLs for analytics. You could end up with 100 pages, but 10 URLs for each page. Suddenly search engines have to sort  through 1,000 URLs.

This can be a problem for a couple of reasons.

• Less of the site may get crawled. Search engine crawlers use a limited amount of bandwidth on each site (based on numerous factors). If the crawler only is able to crawl 100 pages of your site in a single visit, you want it to be 100 unique pages, not 10 pages 10 times each.
• Each page may not get full link credit. If a page has 10 URLs that point to it, then other sites can link to it 10 different ways. One link to each URL dilutes the value  the page could have if all 10 links pointed to a single URL.

Using the new canonical tag

Specify the canonical version using a tag in the head section of the page as follows:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish“/>

That’s it!

• You can only use the tag on pages within a single site (subdomains and subfolders are fine).
• You can use relative or absolute links, but the search engines recommend absolute links.

This tag will operate in a similar way to a 301 redirect for all URLs that display the page with this tag.

• Links to all URLs will be consolidated to the one specified as canonical.
• Search engines will consider this URL a “strong hint” as to the one to crawl and index.

Canonical URL best practices

The search engines use this as a hint, not as a directive, (Google calls it a “suggestion that we honor strongly”) but are more likely to use  it if the URLs use best practices, such as:

• The  content rendered for each URL is very similar or exact
• The canonical URL is the shortest version
• The URL uses easy to understand parameter patterns (such as using ? and %)

Can this be abused by spammers? They might try, but Matt Cutts of Google told me that the same safeguards that prevent abuse by other methods (such as redirects) are in place here as well, and that Google  reserves the right to take action on sites that are using the tag to manipulate search engines and violate search engine guidelines.

For instance, this tag will only work with very similar or identical content, so you can’t use it to send all of the link value from the less important pages of your site to the more important ones.

If tags conflict (such as pages point to each other as canonical, the URL specified as canonical redirects to a non-canonical version, or the page specified as canonical doesn’t exist), search engines will sort things out just as they do now, and will determine which URL they think is the best canonical version.

The tag in action

This tag will most often be useful in the case of multiple URLs pointing at the same page, but might also be used when multiple versions of a page exist. For instance, wikia.com is using the tag for previous revisions of a page. Both http://watchmen.wikia.com/index.php?title=Comedian%27s_badge&diff=4901&oldid=4819 and http://watchmen.wikia.com/index.php?title=Comedian%27s_badge&diff=5401&oldid=4901reference the latest version of the article (http://watchmen.wikia.com/wiki/Comedian%27s_badge) as the canonical.

The search engines stress that it’s still important to build good URL structure and also note that if you aren’t able to implement this tag, they’ll still keep the processes they have now to determine the canonical. For instance, at SMX West on Tuesday, Maile Ohye of Google explained how Google can detect patterns in URLs if they use standard parameters. For instance, with these URLs:

• http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike
• http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike&sort=evil
• http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike&sort=good

Maile explained that Google can detect (particularly when looking at patterns across the site) that the sort parameter may order the page differently, but that the URLs with the sort parameter display the same  content as the shorter URL (http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike).

While it’s rare for the search engines to join forces, this isn’t the first time they’ve come together on a standard. In November 2006, they came together to support sitemaps.org. And in June 2008 they announced a standard set of robots.txt directives. Matt Cutts of Google and Nathan Buggia of Microsoft told me that they want to help reduce the clutter on the web, and make things easier for searchers as well as site owners.

This new tag won’t completely solve duplicate issues on the web, but it should help make things quite a bit easier particuarly for ecommerce sites, who likely need all the help they can get in the current economic conditions. Site owners have been asking for help with these issues for a really long time so this should be a greatly welcomed addition.

Postscript by Barry Schwartz:

The search engines will be talking about this news at the Ask the Search Engines panel at SMX West. We will be blogging this panel live at the Search Engine Roundtable.

With a focus on four themes - information, communication, entertainment and education, the Internet Bus will have useful and informative content in English and Tamil to give the users an understanding of how the Internet can be used for all of these needs. In addition to basic familiarization on using services like search, email, social networking, online maps and others the bus will showcase how the Internet can make everyday life simple.

The bus is designed to make the introduction to the Internet simple for a user. The message will be shared through interesting videos that will talk about how people are using the Internet for varied reasons and activities. These can include grandparents using email and video sites to interact with children and grandchildren in another city or a local music group using YouTube to share their talent with the world, etc.

The Internet Bus will also aims to address the challenge around access and language for a lot of users in smaller cities by educating them on how they can access the Internet on their mobiles and will use various Google tools to break the language barrier.

“We are passionate about empowering users with information and the Internet democratizes access to information. With this initiative we want to take the power of this medium to people who will really benefit from it,” said Prasad Ram, head of Google R&D, India