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Online Journalism News

Google bonanza news round-up

Posted: 21/03/06 By: Jemima Kiss
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It is just as well the search behemoth has taken on extra PR support for the UK. It seems like every day there is another significant development from everyone's 'favourite online brand' - apart from that mucky China business, that is...

Moving towards licensed content?

• Google has announced the launch of Google Finance, a financial news service trial incorporating licensed content from specialist news providers.

Google is understood to have established license agreements with financial content providers Reuters, Morningstar, Revere Data, Hoovers and the Interactive Data Corp, combining the licensed material with aggregated news from 4,500 major news sites. News is presented in the same form as Google News but within a dedicated channel.

The service includes discussion groups, a human-edited area called Google Finance Groups, market summaries and news from related financial blogs through Google Blog Search.

Additional features include biographic information for key executives, interactive data charts and a company search tool. Users can also compile their own portfolio to keep track of stocks and mutual funds.

The service will eventually introduce advertising. Yahoo!, MSN AOL and TheStreet.com all offer similar services but Google claims its service is different because it offers a more uncluttered page.

More copyright woes

• Meanwhile, Google's 7 March launch of a trial Hebrew-language version was met by an announcement that Israeli publisher Walla would use every legal means possible to "protect its rights". In a letter to Google that echoed recent concerns of the World Association of Newspapers, Walla's legal representative Maya Alcheh Kaplan wrote that Walla's web content is its exclusive intellectual property: "Therefore, the unauthorised use by your company of these items on its website constitutes a serious breach of my client's intellectual property, as well infringing their copyright."

• A judge ruled in February that Google had infringed the copyright of a Los Angeles-based porn firm by including thumbnail photos from the Perfect 10 site in its Google Images search results. Judge Howard Matz said that, because Google receives advertising revenue from its search services, it is not entitled to the same level of 'free use' as other organisations. However, a judge in the similar Arriba-Soft case in California ruled that the use of thumbnail images was acceptable.

• Recent research commissioned by Superbrands found that BBC Online and Google are the internet's most trusted and reliable brands. A survey of 1,400 people found that Google was users' favourite web brand. Times Online was the only newspaper to make the top 10 of trusted, reliable online brands.

Click fraud

• On 8 March, Google announced it would pay up to $90 million to settle a lawsuit from publishers that claim they are victims of fraudulent clicks on their Google adverts. Advertisers pay Google according to the number of clicks each advert attracts, but third parties can drive up the costs by repeatedly clicking on an advert, either manually or by using special software. Advertisers claim that Google has not done enough to prevent fraudulent clicks. Google agreed to reimburse advertisers for clicks "they believe to be invalid" by a total of up to $90 million.

New plans

• On 9 March, Google confirmed its acquisition of Writely.com, an online service for creating and storing documents.

• The search engine is now running a trial RSS reader, choosing to avoid using the term 'RSS'.

• Google plans to further encroach into the traditional publishing space by expanding its trial of advertising space in US print magazines. The trial started in August last year when Google invited selected advertisers in its Adwords programme to bid for space in technology magazines. It has now invited advertisers to bid for space in a wider range of motoring, computing and lifestyle magazines including ElleGirl and Martha Stewart Living.

• Cue reels of predictable headlines: Google has announced the appointment of Dr Larry Brilliant as executive director of Google.org, the company's slightly less evil wing.

And an even bigger market share...

• Recent research by Nielsen//NetRatings found that Google has gained an even bigger share of the US web search audience, accounting for 48.8 per cent of all search requests in December 2005. That share increased from 43.1 per cent with an overall increase in the number of search requests. Nielsen//Netratings estimates 5.1 billion web searches in the US every month. Both Yahoo! and Microsoft saw an increased number of searches but lost part of their audience share to Google.

If only marketing was stuck in the eighties, we would be sleeping in Google pyjamas under Google duvets and resting our Google-organised brains on Google pillows.