Home > News and Views > Newsletter > May 2007

Microsoft "wont buy Yahoo!" iGoogle, YouTube ad revenue share, latest analytics, Google reveal "Universal Search", Google checkout transactions plummet

Yahoo! buys Right Media

Yahoo! has bought Right Media for $680 million. It's had a 20 per cent interest in the firm since last October.

iPodGoogle

Google have re-branded the Google Personalized Homepage. It is now called iGoogle!

Along with the new brand comes the launch of Google's Gadget Maker which will allow even non-developers to create content for their personalized homepage.

Yahoo! creates tags to indicate that blocks of content should not be indexed

Yahoo! have announced a new Yahoo!-only mechanism for indicating that a certain block of text is not relevant to the page and should not be indexed by search engines (currently Yahoo! only). Details about how to use this can be found in this Yahoo! webmaster help topic. Essentially, it is done using a class attribute of "robots-nocontent" on any tag, which indicates that the content up until the tag closes should not be indexed by search engines.

Microsoft buys mobile ad firm Screentonic, online firm aQuantive and WPP buy 24/7 Real Media

The purchase of Screentonic should boost Microsoft's Digital Advertising division which has recently been bolstered by the acquisition of Massive, which places adverts inside games and Motionbridge, which offers mobile search.

Microsoft has also bought aQuantive for $6 billion, which could be the largest purchase in Microsoft's history. WPP have bought 24/7 Real Media for $649 Million.

Google to pay top YouTube posters via ad revenue

"A select group of content creators will get promotion on the YouTube platform, and we will help them monetize their content," said Jamie Byrne, head of product marketing. "This will help erase the stigma around the user-created content, and, to be honest, these guys are media entities in their own right."

YouTube had previously said it might populate videos with pre-or-post roll ads as soon as this summer, the monies for the new program will come from the sales of banner ads.

MySpace to buy Photobucket for $300 Million

There are reports which suggest that the userbase overlap of these sites is almost 100%. Launched in 2003, Photobucket receives 17m unique visitors per month - a massive number, except that the majority of traffic was being referred by MySpace.

Google releases update Analytics

Google have announced a new version of Google Analytics.

They have begun upgrading accounts to this new interface already, and should be done in a few weeks.

Google 'Dear John' letters on hold

Google temporarily ceasing spam penalty emails due to fake penalty notification emails being sent alleging they came from Google Search Quality.

Google creates video advert creation marketplace

Quote: "In the Ad Creation Marketplace, you'll find industry professionals who can provide script writing, editing, production, and voice-over talent at an affordable package cost. It's free to search for and send project bids to specialists, and you aren't under any obligation to work with them until you accept a bid."

Google's great value has been in targeting and tracking, but text and image ads are not as emotionally appealing as video ads. As they try to move up the value chain to capture branding ad dollars they are trying to create a support ecosystem that helps the market grow quickly and keeps the market as efficient as possible.

Google 'Universal Search'

Google have launched a new search interface called Google Universal Search. This new interface blends news, video, images, local and book search into its main web listings.

Google buy Feedburner

Google have bought FeedBurner for around $100 million, possibly to help them get into the rapidly expanding RSS advertising market. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.

Google maps

Google has added a feature called "Street View" in certain locations on Google Maps. Also, Google is adding a developer-created gadget which enables third party developers to create mini applications that can be displayed on Google Maps, much like Google Gadgets are displayed on iGoogle. These Mapplets contain a variety of information, from housing listings to crime data, and tools like distance measurement. Users can select from a wide range of Google and third party Mapplets to display on the Map.

Google Gears

Google launches Google Gears, a plug-in that allows you to build offline web applications.

"We are releasing Gears as an open source project and we are working with Adobe, Mozilla and Opera and other industry partners to make sure that Gears is the right solution for everyone. We also want to get early feedback, community involvement, and rapid iterations" Aaron Boodman & Erik Arvidsson, Google Gears Engineers

Google purchase of DoubleClick investigated by FTC for antitrust issues

THE Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating Google's planned $3.1 billion purchase of the online advertising company Doubleclick.

There is concern that Google collects the search histories of its users, while DoubleClick tracks what Web sites people visit. The merger would give one company access to more information about consumers Internet activities than any other company in the world

Microsoft 'wont buy Yahoo'

Following rumours last month about a purchase, Yusuf Mehdi has stated that Microsoft are not interested in purchasing Yahoo!

Google keeps tweaking its search engine

Saul Hansell has produced an excellent article explaining algorithms in layman's terms for The New York Times

Google Checkout transactions plummet as vouchers end

Where PayPal built its market share on providing a safe way to make payments for those without the throughput to justify a shopping cart, Google checkout targeted larger merchants and, as the promotional vouchers have stopped, so has the loyalty. Checkout has failed to take the world by storm and captured just 1% market share in March.