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It looks like Deutschland has a bee in its bonnet about Google. Apparently it is using the dreaded M word “monopol” which, according to Google’s own translation tool is the German form of the English word monopoly. The Germans are concerned that Google is looking like Microsoft and they are not happy. Somebody needs to get in their Mercedes and take a ride on the Autobahn to cool off, maybe? We learned of the Reuters report from Search Engine Land . Apparently the German justice minister is upset that Google isn’t transparent enough. I thought monopolies are about cornering markets and not transparency but maybe I am missing something in the translation. Here’s her thoughts from Reuters In an interview with weekly magazine Der Spiegel, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said she was concerned the firm was accruing too much power and information about citizens via programmes like Google Earth and Google Books. “All in all, what’s taking shape there to a large extent is a giant monopoly, similar to Microsoft,” the minister said. “My initial response is not to ban something or stop something. But I do want to create more transparency and ensure that users know what is going on with their data,” she added. “I think the companies have an obligation here, and a lot of things ought to be improved. If that doesn’t happen soon we may have to take action as legislators.” Once again I have to ask the question does Google actually monopolize anything? According to Dictionary.com monopoly is: a board game in which a player attempts to gain a monopoly of real estate by advancing around the board and purchasing property, acquiring capital by collecting rent from other players whose pieces land on that property. Oooops. Wrong one. Here’s the one that works for our purposes here: 1. exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices. 2. the market condition that exists when there is only one seller. I think this is where people are getting confused. Microsoft and the desktop smelled of monopoly because no one else could play. Google, on the other hand, is not the only player in nearly everything it has its tentacles in. It just does things bigger and, most times, better than the rest. That’s called cleaning the competition’s clock, not a monopoly. I am sure there will be plenty of arguments that Google is a monopoly and I welcome all of them here. Just be sure that when you are using Google and monopoly in the same sentence you are not just complaining that Google does more things and they do them better. They have to prevent competition from taking place to be a real monopoly and I don’t see that like others might. Did you hear Google cry that Lycos, AltaVista and Yahoo were “monopolies” when it was in its infancy and seen as the new kid on the block with the goofy name? Nope. They went out and did things the old fashioned way: they innovated and gave the public what they wanted and in the process laid waste to things that didn’t work as well as they did. If that’s a monopoly then I’m all for it.

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Germany Cries Monopoly and Doesn’t Even Collect $200

And I don’t mean job security for Carol Bartz. Yahoo’s BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is a popular, free way for developers to access the Yahoo index and to implement Yahoo search for your site. With the pending Microsoft-Yahoo deal outsourcing the search business, there has been some concern over whether BOSS will be discontinued. Never fear, says Yahoo—BOSS is sticking around. Like the main search results, the BOSS results are slated to use Bing’s index as well. But the bad news is that BOSS may not continue to be a free offering. Ashim Chimbra addressed developers’ concerns in the Yahoo Tech Group and alluded to possible pay structures in the future (emphasis added): Under this agreement, Yahoo! is permitted to continue offering the BOSS web service, with search results that would integrate Yahoo! services and content with algorithmic results provided by Microsoft. As always, our intention is to provide a BOSS offering as long as it makes business and economic sense to do so. We are still examining what the BOSS offering will consist of, with some services powered by Microsoft, unique content that Yahoo! currently provides, and the potential for additional Yahoo! content in the future. Prior to the announcement of the Yahoo!-Microsoft search agreement, we’d already shared our intention to explore a fee-based structure for BOSS. We continue to explore an appropriate fee structure or other revenue model as we work through the future of BOSS. As you know, we must receive regulatory clearance before actual implementation of the search deal with Microsoft can occur. Only then can we finalize the future shape of BOSS. Of course, we will provide additional clarity and certainty when we can. So clearly, they’re keeping their options open for pricing. What do you think? Will they be able to keep it free, or is the deal with Microsoft underlying evidence of the need for revenue? via

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Yahoo to Keep BOSS under Microsoft

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been almost one year that Carol Bartz has taken the top position at Yahoo! She officially celebrates the one-year mark next week but is taking a look back at what was probably a whirlwind event no matter how much experience she brought to the table. Bloomberg reports that Bartz recently gave herself an interesting grade for her performance for the year: a B-. Why is that interesting? It’s interesting to me because it seems to be pretty honest. It’s saying “Hey, I did OK and everything is OK but there is room for improvement.” I appreciate the honesty because she places herself precariously close to a C grade, which is just average. So what were Ms. Bartz’s own words? Carol Bartz gives herself a B-minus in her first year as chief executive officer of Yahoo! Inc., saying she could have moved faster to reorganize the company and strike a Web-search agreement with Microsoft Corp. “It was a little tougher internally than I think I had anticipated,” Bartz, 61, said in an interview at Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. “I did move fast, but this is a big job.” The Bloomberg article paints the picture of Bartz being dealt a ‘tough hand’ (does this writer also cover politics for them?) which can be perceived as the truth, an excuse or a combination of the two. You’ll have to make the call on that one. Her year though started with a lot of work to clean up that ‘tough hand’ which did include dismal economic conditions overall. After becoming CEO, Bartz cut her staff by 5 percent, shuttered underperforming businesses such as the GeoCities Web- hosting site and installed her own management team. Then she broke out the big pen for “boat loads” of fun in the Microsoft, bingahoo, Ya-bingaroo or (insert favorite name here) deal in July, which began the end of the era of Yahoo as a search engine. A partnership with Facebook was thrown in for good measure as well. Now the company is concentrating on its strengths and trying to reclaim its identity in a manner of speaking. The company also has been hiring people for sales and engineering, tapping into the savings generated by its cost- cutting efforts. “A very good company kind of got buried,” Bartz said. “It is coming out.” Last year also saw some pretty dismal financial performance but Bartz is unapologetic which comes as no surprise. Despite these numbers the stock was up 38% for the year. Go figure. Yahoo’s sales have fallen for four straight quarters, and its stock trailed the Nasdaq Composite Index in the past year. “We came out of one of the worst climates ever,” Bartz said. “And if you look at growth of Fortune 500 companies, only being down 12 or 15 percent is damn good. I’m not going to apologize for our growth.” Funny how being down 12-15 percent can be spun into a sentence that implies growth where there was none. Anyway, now that the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” are fading fast, what does Bartz say is ahead for Yahoo? Bartz said she plans to do more acquisitions this year, probably of less than $1 billion apiece. Potential targets include overseas companies and data-analytics businesses that help advertisers assess their results, she said. Bartz said the company continues to improve its products, such as its home page and e-mail service, though she didn’t give specifics. Last year, Yahoo unveiled a new version of the home page, the site’s first major upgrade since 2006. Yahoo is likely going to need to make some serious noise in the upcoming months to be heard above the din that is being made by Google and all the others in the Internet space. What do you think the upcoming year(s) have in store for them?

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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz Gives Herself A Grade for Her First Year

I trust you had a great Christmas! As our minds dream of how fantastic 2010 will be, it’s time to look back at the hot topics of 2009. Here are Marketing Pilgrim’s top ten most read posts in 2009. Bing.com; Is it Worth Switching from Google? – A home run for Microsoft? While Bing certainly deserves credit for being the first serious challenger to Google, it didn’t hurt that 2009 was the year that Microsoft stepped-up its media outreach to us. Social Media Monitoring Tools: 26 Free Online Reputation Tools – This post was written in 2007 and has been in our top five for the past 3 years! Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide – A great guest article by Jon Rognerud and it still stands-up as a great primer for social media marketing. 8 Essential Free Social Media Monitoring Tools – A smart blogger knows not to simply update a popular post. Instead, you think of ways to expand on it–with a new post! This post from December 2008, added 8 more great monitoring tools for reputation monitoring. 200+ Internet Marketing Gurus on Twitter – Back before there Twitter Lists were just a twinkle in the eye of Twitter’s founders, Brian Chappell authored the definitive list of marketers on Twitter. If we hadn’t introduced a policy to close comments on older posts, I believe this one would have easily broken 1,000 comments by now! 21 of the Best WordPress Plugins for New Blogs – Just a little over a year ago, I spilled the beans on the plugins that power Marketing Pilgrim. Look for a new, updated list, in the New Year! Google Offers Cheap Online File Storage With a Catch – How in the world did this benign looking post from 2007 make it into our top ten list of 2009? Good keywords! The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing – My good friend Ben Wills authored this post in 2006–which at the time was groundbreaking. In fact, I blatantly–with his permission–used it to frame an entire chapter of Radically Transparent! Google Reputation Management: Fix Your Google Reputation & Remove Negative Results – Do you get the feeling that we have a good grasp of reputation management issues? This post is over 2 years old, but, aside from the Google Pages reference, is still remarkably relevant. Facebook Really Does Make Mone y – When it comes to Facebook, I tend to defer to Jordan’s critical eye. She never fails to deliver! Some observations: As of today, Marketing Pilgrim consists of 6,792 (make that 6,793 with this one) posts and more than 45,000 comments! That’s a lot of words! Traffic was up 17.54% in 2009 compared to 2008. Not a bad growth rate! Referrals from Twitter were up 120%!!! Referrals from Yahoo were down 13%. Our own URL shortener– Gri.ms –let us track the origination of around 10,000 visitors! We know where you live! Want to see previous years’ top posts? Check out 2006 , 2007 and 2008 .

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The 10 Most Popular Marketing Pilgrim Posts of 2009

As expected it looks like this week may be a bit light in the news department. That’s fine. Everyone needs a break from time to time. So as I am looking around this morning I come across an op-ed piece in the New York Times that is written by Adam Raff, a co-founder of Foundem, an Internet technology company. From what I can gather, Mr. Raff is upset that his site was banned from Google’s index. There is no explanation as to why this happened so I am not going to assume anything although an article from eConsultancy looks at his plight and we get some insight as to why Google is so ‘mean’ to him. As a result, Mr. Raff contends that Google simply is too powerful and that the government should be considering a ‘search neutrality’ platform that falls in line with the ‘net neutrality’ platform. Here is a bit of his concern: Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing have become the Internet’s gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include “search neutrality”: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance. I had to shake my head that this was actually put in print but I kept reading. I bumped into more ‘complaints’. Another way that Google exploits its control is through preferential placement. With the introduction in 2007 of what it calls “universal search,” Google began promoting its own services at or near the top of its search results, bypassing the algorithms it uses to rank the services of others. Google now favors its own price-comparison results for product queries, its own map results for geographic queries, its own news results for topical queries, and its own YouTube results for video queries. And Google’s stated plans for universal search make it clear that this is only the beginning. I guess my question is “What is a company supposed to do in that situation”? Why should anyone in the free market be obligated to being relegated to a ‘public service’ status just because they do something better than most? I admit that it seems a bit creepy at times to see just how far reaching Google is with regard to services. I also believe that as they get bigger there are likely to be many vulnerabilities that will be discovered and exploited as the free market has seen in the past with seemingly invincible powers like IBM and Microsoft. It just happens. There’s a lot more to this op-whine piece that I am surprised the Times even allowed to see the light of day. Without search neutrality rules to constrain Google’s competitive advantage, we may be heading toward a bleakly uniform world of Google Everything — Google Travel, Google Finance, Google Insurance, Google Real Estate, Google Telecoms and, of course, Google Books. Some will argue that Google is itself so innovative that we needn’t worry. But the company isn’t as innovative as it is regularly given credit for. Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Groups, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Android and many other Google products are all based on technology that Google has acquired rather than invented. Ask Cisco if they ‘invented’ everything they own. The folks who make Flip cameras are thrilled that Cisco likes to buy good ideas. Interestingly enough, Mr. Raff actually shows that Google PROVIDES market opportunity for the little guy. There are small companies out there that make good things that Google could buy thus making the companies that were innovative enough to be recognized successful beyond what was likely to happen on their own. Maybe Mr. Raff needs to think about making something worthy of being purchased by Google rather than worming his way into the media to complain about his issues. I do have a solution for Mr. Raff. If there is this need for an impartial search engine (which is a ridiculous concept because in order for anything to be ‘ranked’ in numerical order there needs to be some guidelines thus implied ‘partiality’) that is based solely on merit (Whose definition of merit? Someone has to be judge and jury here, right?) and relevance (as defined by whom?) why not let the government build its own search engine? Why put this constraint on the private sector? Our current situation here in the US is that the government wants to be knee deep in everything so why not let them create the engine ‘for the people and by the people’ then let the people decide? Are there any Googlers out there who would like to address this kind of thinking? As for Marketing Pilgrim readers how do you really feel about Google’s place in the market? Is there any validity to this argument? Is Google’s dominance something to be concerned about or just accepted? Is there a real threat of this becoming a Google world? What if that did happen? Is there any validity to the concept of ’search neutrality’? Weigh in please. I have a better idea. Would someone please make some news so we can move on to other things?

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Search Neutrality?

I don’t quite ever remember a social network that I at first so loved, and then ultimately, so hated. Fortunately, the bad taste left in my mouth by MyBlogLog will likely go away at the beginning of the year–according to rumors that Yahoo will shutter the service. MyBlogLog had so much potential as a network that connected bloggers with their readers. So much, in fact, that Yahoo bought the company back in January 2007 . The ink was barely dry on the contract when the service simply started sucking: Removing MyBlogLog Widget – Too Slow Today MyBlogLog Reacts to Boycott, Reinstates Shoemoney MyBlogLog a Bunch of Schmoes? Forget Google, Now MyBlogLog Adds Friends without Your Consent That’s just a summary–and doesn’t include the now infamous event where a former Yahoo employee got egg on his face. You can argue that MyBlogLog suffered because of better solutions from Google and Facebook, but in the end, I believe the company’s former co-founder Eric Marcoulier hits the nail on the head: “So much of your company’s long term success when it’s acquired is based on the amount of executive juice it has. The only way it survives and flourishes is if you have an executive champion who promotes it internally. Shortly after we were acquired we were transferred away from our champion and under someone who didn’t feel the same way about MyBlogLog. In those circumstances, things simply slow down.” Or completely suck. I wonder how many other Yahoo products have suffered the same fate?

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MyBlogLog to Become NoBlogLog?

Back in February, Google, Yahoo and then-Live premiered a solution to on-site duplicate content: a canonical URL element that let you designate which version official word was, of course, that the element is still just one signal.) Unfortunately, that element only worked within a single domain—if you had your content copied on another domain, no joy. Until now. Yesterday on the Webmaster blog, Google announced a new cross-domain canonical URL element . Now, if you have the same content on two domains, you can indicate to search engines which one is the preferred URL. The element uses the same syntax as the prior version, but now you can indicate the canonical URL is on a different domain: As part of the announcement, of course, they review other ways to handle cross-domain duplicate content, including 301 redirects. However, if you can’t use server-side redirects, the cross-domain canonical URL element can help search engines find the new content and possibly use that new URL in search results. In the questions sections of the post, they note that you can’t use the cross-domain canonical URL element to just redirect search engines to a new root site (it’s for 1:1 mapping of substantially similar pages), and that pages with redirected cross-domain elements should not use meta noindex.

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Fix Cross-Domain Duplicate Content