Microsoft Has Nothing to Lose on MSN's Live Search Cashback Program
Microsoft(MS) recently introduced cashback on your purchases through participating merchants if you find your items through MSN's Live search. Given that Google has been gaining search shares again and again, it's not surprising that people view Microsoft's move as desperate. Well, they are trying something that have been proven to work by Ebates, Fatwallet.
Basically, MS has nothing much to lose in this cashback program. They are betting that price-sensitive consumers in this recession period will want to save a few more bucks via cashback. With a CPA-based pricing model, MS hopes E-commerce retailers will increase their spend on advertising through Live when they see more leads through Live and good conversion rates/ROI(return on investment). MS is just giving up a little bit of income to potentially increase their search market share and e-commerce's advertising spend.
OpenSocial ( Google + MySpace + Rest of the World ) VS. Facebook - Finally I Am Motivated to Try Social App Development
If you can't fight the biggest player. Unite others to fight him.
OpenSocial API, proposed by Google, and supported by popular social networks including hi5, iLike, Slide, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Ning, Bebo, MySpace and SixApart, but excluding FaceBook, are going live in any minute(supposedly to be open tonight).
The open API will have three parts(from Oreilly Radar
- People
- Storage
- Activity stream
All of these calls will have a GData counterpart and they will use HTML and JavaScript only. Google is considering adding OAuth (Radar post) to the API.
Google is Evil: Your PPC Campaigns opt in Mobile Search Network by Default starting November 19, 2007
According to Clikz's post Google Ports AdWords Listings to Its Mobile Search Product: "Google will run listings free on Google Mobile Search pages through November 18. As of November 19, SEM buyers will have to opt out through the campaign summary page or pay for mobile clicks. While it is said ads will run across both the Web and mobile platforms, an e-mail sent to AdWords customers indicated that only ads with landing pages adaptable to mobile handsets will qualify for disbursement to the mobile search product." Here's the FAQ from Google.
Deja Vu: Google Maps Street View = Privacy Concern, (free) GPS, (free) Video Camera
Google released Street View feature in Google Maps yesterday. Luckily(or unluckily depending your view), the street I live on is covered by Street View on Google Maps.
The street view is stunningly realistic, and it's pretty easy to navigate. The first time I used it, the movie "Deja Vu" came to my mind right away. It's like the movie scene where police were looking at the past through lots of videos.
Compared to what I saw in Street View yesterday, I saw my neighbor opening the door of his car in Street View today!
According to O'reilly Radar, "Google partners with Immersive Media, a company that has an eleven lens camera capable of taking full, high-res video while driving along city streets. Each captured pixel is geotagged and primed for consumer use".
Carnegie Mellon Networking Night - Silicon Valley at the Googleplex
I attended CMU Network Night Silicon Valley at the Googleplex last night.
I got there half an hour late and missed the talk of the first speaker. The meeting room was full of people. The 2nd speaker Joshua Bloch(the author of the book "Effective Java" which is one of my favorites) talked about his experience in Java and the usage of Java in Google. He also mentioned Google uses Python as well. I thought Google only uses C++.
During the socializing hour, I was glad to see and chat some of my schoolmates and faculty from CMU West. I graduated in last summer. But it felt like it has been a long time since I was out of school.
Tags: cmu google googleplex
Make Google Better with GreaseMonkey
Google has great products.
Gmail is great. But you have to click on a drop down mail in order to delete a message. Hello, where's my convienent delete button like in Yahoo mail and hotmail?
Download the GreaseMonkey user script or the firefox extension to install a delete button for Gmail here
The Butler script can greatly enhance your google search experience. It basically removes google ads(isn't that EVIL?), add links to other sites where you can do the same search there.
Tags: greasemonkey firefox google
