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Knol, Google's Wikipedia, is Now Online |
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The project was announced in December 2007. Knol, the collaborative encyclopaedia - on the model of Wikipedia - was officially launched yesterday by Google. The difference, compared to Wikipedia, is pushing subject-expert authors (currently online are mostly health related issues), who publish an article on a topic, article which can be noted and commented upon by the community, but its author can decide if it can be amended by a third person or not. If an author agrees to put in place advertisements around its subject, he will receive a percentage. Google has also signed an agreement with the New Yorker magazine that gives authors the option to add a cartoon by article. Welcome to this new tool, whose future will tell whether its business model is complementary or a competitor to that of Wikipedia... 
Sources: - http://knol.google.com/
- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/knol-is-open-to-everyone.html |
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Google Acquires the Russian Begun, which Specializes in Contextual Advertising |
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Google has signed an agreement with the Russian company Rambler Media to acquire ZAO Begun, which specializes in contextual advertising, amounting to $ 140 million. Rambler holds 50.1% of Begun but will buy the remaining 49.9% to the company Bannatyne before selling it to Google. Rambler will also use the search technology and Google advertisements on its site. Note that Google is not the leader in Russia where Yandex is the number one player now, which is one reason that drives Google to better penetrate the territory where Begun manages 40 000 advertisers portfolio and a network of 143 000 websites. 
Sources: - http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20080718_begun.html
- http://www.ramblermedia.com/objfiles/i8366A9B8/080717_Begun_Transaction_Final.pdf [pdf] |
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AOL: Yahoo! or Microsoft? |
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According to Reuters, Time Warner is in negotiations with Yahoo! and Microsoft regarding the sale of AOL. A decision could be announced by the end of July. The market is not neutral in terms of information search on the Web since AOL uses Google's "search" technology and is one of its major customers. A takeover by either of the two companies would certainly undermine the contract between AOL to Google ... Let's Wait and see ...  Sources: http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSWEN670820080716?feedType=RSS&feedName=internetNews&sp=true |
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Google's Digg-Like Search Interface |
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Around the end of last year, Google had started testing a Digg-like tool enabling the user to modify the order of the search results. Google is renewing this experience with a system named "Edit Search Results" enabling the user to modify the order (moving upward or downward) of search results through the icon  , delete results using the icon  , suggest a link that does not appear in the results, or insert a comment ( ) that would only appear to the user having added this comment. It's important to note that these functionalities are also available for example in the latest version of Wikia Search. For the moment, on Google, only a selected number of users will be given the possibility to use these functionalities since it is still under the testing phase. 
Sources: - http://www.google.com/support/faqs/?editresults
- http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/14/google-bucket-testing-new-digg-like-search-interface/ |
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Google Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program |
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Many of you have already heard about Google Webmaster Tools, an administration interface that enables webmasters to obtain various information about how Google's robots and search engine sees their website. In the same spirit, Google announced a new version of this interface that they have been testing since November 2007 with Go Daddy. This offer enables access providers to provide a co-branded interface to each of their clients via Google's API. This tool, available in 26 languages, enables access providers to insert the information provided by Google in the administration interface proposed by the hosting company to its clients.
Sources:
- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/introducing-google-webmaster-tools.html
- http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/07/helping-yourself-to-webmaster-tools.html |
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