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I left the soccer pitch yesterday 11 PM to see an SMS forward from a friend about TechCrunch Twitter alert, Yahoo-Google announcement 1:30 PM today. This is gotta be about the advertising partnership.

And indeed, I woke up today to read about the Google & Yahoo public joint announcement declaring they are going into an advertisement partnership in which Google Ads will be served on Yahoo search results for the queries Yahoo! see as rewarding for them. So Yahoo! is not giving up completely on their advertising program, but if the estimates of $800 million revenue increase in one year turns out to be true, and my senses tell it’s going to be more, I guess they could change their mind about the partial partnership.

The Justice Department ofcourse is still unhappy and are investigating a possible AntiTrust. However, since Yahoo played it smart, and made a non-exclusive advertisement partnership agreement, which means any other bidders may get theirs ads on Yahoo pages as well, then I guess there is no reason for the partnership to be stopped.

How this will affect advertisers is what makes me wonder however. Yahoo! can select the queries it want to have Google Ads for, and stick to their program for others. So how will this happen, for keyword “shopping” for example. There are two sides here:

- I am a Google Advertiser: Will I have the option to show my ads on Yahoo! search results. This could make sense to avoid possible lawsuits, or it could under the Content Network. If it’s an opt-in, the adaptation rate might be a bit slower. Not everyone is always up to date on those changes. Otherwise, it may be an opt-out option, and I doubt people want to do this really.

- I am a Yahoo! Advertiser: I am bidding for the word shopping. Does Yahoo! tell me “Sorry, go join Google and bid for Shopping word”? What if I don’t want to place my ads on Google because of say, click-fraud cases I’ve heard of. And what if not all my words are powered by Google Ads. It means I have to literally manage two advertising programs, who are mutually exclusive in the budget and tracking, to bid for the keywords I want.

I just hope there will be a bit more easier way to do it, and a sort of integration between the two.

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Just like Yahoo started sometime back, Google is in co-operation with AVG scanning their search results for malware sites.

And while this is good in concept, I found the scan to take way too long, that I don’t think people will generally wait to see the result. An option to turn that off was not spotted. This could be troublesome for people with slow connection. Luckily, Google is not mad at my blog, but they better be careful. They don’t wanna make Yahoo’s mistake, or some say trick ;).

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Google and Yahoo! have been undergoing a testing period for the efficiency of delivering Google Ads alongside Yahoo search results. This is to measure how the ad click-throughs are compared to Yahoo’s own ads. Yahoo themselves estimate that Google Ads bring 60-70% more revenue than Yahoo. This is because of ad relevancy for one, and two I’m sure from the large collection of advertisers Google has. The more options you have, the more possible it is to deliver better results. Also, the user won’t get bored from the same results all the time. And when it comes to global market, say the Arabic region for example, or any other non-English site, it’s pretty difficult to get any geo-targeted ads. I don’t see any Arabic ads at Yahoo or any other ad network, while Google is getting more and more every day.

The test was to show Google ads at 3% of Yahoo search results inside the US for two weeks only. How did it go? Both parties have spoken general good deal of it so far. The Justice Department have been officially informed about the ongoing tests, and questions are rising right now about whether a deal between the two would give Google a monopoly over the internet ad market. Frankly, I would love for my Google Ads to show on Yahoo results for two reasons. One, Google is the best advertising program I’ve tried from many others, and gives very strong ad control and tracking. Two, I don’t want to split my money and time following multiple ad programs. Still however, for a multi-billion dollar business that large, I believe Google are over looking certain areas and need to improve on them:

• Ad Filtering: Filter unwanted ads on my site. Sex & gambling mainly. Google does a brilliant job catching fraud ads, ads that do not reflect the site content, heck they even ban certain Arabic words if they are about medical terms without valid permit. I’ve had one keyword disabled “عقار” which means both real-estate and medicine. It was banned because it’s a medical term and I can’t promote medical stuff without any proof of permit, even if I really meant real estate. So their filtering is strong when they want to, yet their Google AdSense competitive ad filtering is pretty lousy. I filter a certain site and after 12 hours I can still see the ads showing up on my site. This could be really embarrassing and bad for a business. I also don’t get any chance to disallow gambling and sex sites, which I believe should be a normal easy to implement option. Google already offers to filter offensive content in it’s search, so an option to disallow those sites from advertising on mine should be pretty simple.
• Customer Support: How easy is it to contact Google for support? And how long does it take for them to reply. Not what you hope for from a leading company. Google support has always been disappointing to me.
• Wire-Transfer: For AdSense, most countries are still not supported for money transfer. Many smaller sites are ahead of Google and transfer to any place in the world. Google is only slowly expanding, and yet promoting the green environment thing.
• Money Split: For some reason Google just don’t wish to tell you how much your share is from the click. Many other sites do. The ad is on my site and we are sharing the revenue. Any business would usually include share percentage. Google always gives vague unclear answers about the subject. If it’s bad, then you’re doing EVIL. If it’s good, then say it. One report was published before by New York Times based on announced 2006 Google financial reports estimating 78.5% of the AdSense clicks going to the publishers. Such a big number makes you wonder why wouldn’t Google reveal it. One reason I can think of is maybe they don’t want competitors to know the percentage and start a percentage share war.

All in all, Google remains a very strong source for advertising and revenue that I would like to see expand further. A bit more attention is required hoewever for customer needs.

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With more restrictions, and yet more compound solution, as opposed to the Amazon separately offered services that you have to combine, Google App Engine has just recently launched as the first serious threat to Amazon Web Services. It’s a great chance I guess that you get to run your web application on the “same system that powers Google applications”, but Google’s record in providing enterprise solutions does not speak well for it. Other limitations that I didn’t like is having to use Python, while the options are much more open with Amazon Web Services. Also, Amazon web services is giving you the option to use only the parts you need of the service, while Google App Engine is designed so that you host your whole application there. Not something I may want to do until I’m sure about it. I would’ve much preferred something similar to what Amazon is offering. Gives more flexibility, and it also means that I can go with one option, if I don’t like it, I can with some work switch to the other. The service is still in limited version for first 10,000 developers (already taken), and there is no pricing yet for full version. They’re still trying to get feedback and measure performance it seems.

For some more discussion of the service, checkout TechCrunch blog, and if you are interested, you should also subscribe to the new Google App Engine Blog, which surprisingly still has zero subscribers… Including me!

UPDATE: After going through the Google Videos on the new App Engine, I came to know I was wrong assuming it an Amazon Web Service competitor. The thing is, Google is aiming to provide a framework for people to easily deploy their apps without going through the normal deployment procedure hassles, in addition to utilizing and hosting their app on the same framework Google uses.  It is not meant (as they mentioned) for doing heavy computation. With Amazon however, you can use their services for doing the heavy computation your normal host would not be able to handle. Google is not meant for this. It’s meant to host your normal application. Google App Engine may be suitable in cases where the app requires to expand in storage capacity. This will become clear when they announce their enterprise app engine packages.

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Google, the company which started 10 years ago as a Phd project, moved into a garage for a while, and then 6 years later went on public offering, turning half of it’s employees into millionaires over night. The company which was chosen as the strongest brand in the US, and best place to work for last year. That same company for the first time is not living it’s glory days from the start of this year, following several events:

• Two executives and several other employees moving from Google to Facebook, just as Google did to Microsoft in the past.
• Their stock price have gone down below the $450, after it was $700 3 months back. (This could be a right time to buy if you strongly believe in them. Most Analyst still do)
• For the first 3 months in a raw, according to comScore, the number of Google sponsored Ads clicks is declining. This ofcourse is Google’s main stream of revenue, that is feeding everything else. So if that goes down, well, Good bye Gmail, Google Reader, and all other great Google services.
• Decline of search volume on Google last month. Even though February was shorter than Jan by two days, and all other search engine volumes went down, in fact Google was the least declining from top search engines, analysts still think there is a decline in the amount of search done on the web. Why is that? Social networks? Blogs? Feeds? No answer yet.
• Rise of new search engines. Now I know not every new search engine is a threat, in fact most aren’t. And the reason is that, it’s difficult to convince Googlers why your search algorithm is better. You need to find another way to draw their attention. Two new comers actually did and have been turning some heads on the web. One of them is Mahalo, the human-powered search engine. It’s still new, has lots of missing content. I mean, they don’t have pages for Arsenal F.C. nor Monkey Island (turns out they do now :). Where are you Arsenal and Monkey Island geeks! Well, Arsenal might have enough problems right now, but MI fans, quit playing S&M and do some stuff :). Anyways, I was impressed by the spam-free form of it, and the rich content you can find there for items that do have some content filled up. You can go the their main page and browse from their to the hot topics and results on the web. The other search engine that will draw some market-share I guess if they keep going straight is Searchme. The engine is still in private beta, invitation only (except this very moment, they have limited instant accounts, currently 970 left). What’s unique about this engine is the way you browse the results. Instead of getting text based results, clicking a link, waiting for the page to load only to realize it’s spam or useless page, here you browse images of the page instead of text only. So before clicking on any link, you have an idea about how the site looks like and what you could find there. It’s actually pretty similar in nature to browsing file thumbnails on Apple Finder. The engine is flash based and I assume people with low resources and connection will not find it most useful. I was personally very impressed however from how it works, and am looking forward to more from it.

So what now. Is Google going to die? I don’t really think so, but their growth I presume is not going to be the same as last year. I personally don’t agree with what ex-Google employee said after joining Facebook, that social networks are “Google of yesterday, and Microsoft of the past”. You will always need a search engine (or alternative) to reach your information, and a social-network is not the one ofcourse. Also, social-networks are more like bubbles than any other. People follow the hype, join their friends, want to have fun in new ways. Then suddenly, a new social-network comes with new fancy way of doing stuff. People will start jumping there, and the net-worth of the company will run fast down. Especially when their current social-network is controlling too much sensitive information and keeps abusing it. The other point is what some analyst said. People in social-networks are mostly after entertainment and socializing with their friends, and they are less likely to be interested in some ad on the side. On the other side, people are more likely to click on related ads when they are actually searching for that specific topic. After all, it could be what they need. But it all depends on the quality of the link, which Google’s been trying to push for real hard.

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Google Reader for many is without any doubt the best feed aggregator and reader out there. Giving you the ability to read all your favorite feeds online, from any place, at any time. Using the shortcuts (J, K & S), you can easily browse next, previous, and star your item. This makes it extremely easy to go through the 1000+ items I have queued for me to read forever. The ability to merge all the feeds and browse them together is a feature not available in many other readers, where you usually have to browse every feed separately. Recently also, and finally, they allowed searching through all those feeds, turning your feed reader into a rich bookmark for all items you may want in the future. There is also the newly added ability to share items with your friends and blog readers. Simply mark the item as shared, and all your Gmail friends will be able to read it. So now, and instead of posting about any good article I find without adding any value to it, you can go through my shared items on the side menu, where I will be sharing lots of the useful articles I find.

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This is my main concern as I went through the technology news today. My 6600 (yeah old) has been begging for the bullet of mercy for quite a long time now. More than a year back, the zero button stopped working twice. Every time I show unmatched laziness to buy a new phone, and my phone somehow feels sorry and resumes it’s function few weeks later. For over six months now, it’s been going damn pretty slow I can hardly open any message, and friends ask me to accept MMS and applications from them! :). Pretty embarrassing for a geek!

So what’s holding me up from changing it? Well at first, I had many other stuff that I wanted more, and every time I buy one of them I feel the guilt, or sense of responsibility to save some and buy the phone the next month. The other thing is, I’ve been waiting for the phone that grabs all my attention. iPhone could’ve been a good candidate, but I like a camera on the go, I don’t wanna use a hacked phone that might stop working any day, I was expecting new release of it in a year, and then came the SDK announcement to stop my dreams. Nokia phones are good for a year or so, then you probably can’t sell it for 10 KD. Sony Ericcson’s got some good phones as well, but I never liked the button layouts. And then there is the HTC phone I kept thinking about. I didn’t like the fact it’s Windows based, but all have spoken great deal of it so far. You can get Google Maps on it and enable the GPS. Pretty good. But some HTC don’t have 3G with them, which is a shame not to have with a modern phone, and the ones that have are costly. Android ofcourse was a candidate, but it’s taking long time to come, so I wasn’t thinking of waiting for it. Also, I am a bit hesitated about the initial release of it. But…

Today I read this. HTC is coming up with their “dream” Android phone at end of this year. This seems like the best choice of mix for me now. But the big questions is “Can my phone hold up until the end of the year!?”. I doubt it.

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