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What's New in Search - February 2010
Google's Gmail Adds New Social Media Elements, Moving It into Competition with Facebook
Google has recently added Google Buzz to its existing Gmail platform. Google Buzz allows users to post personal updates, links to interesting articles, videos or entire websites, and also allows the option of tracking recent postings or updates from friends. This new feature puts Gmail in direct competition with Facebook, which has experienced marked success offering the same features. Furthermore, Google Buzz will soon unveil a mobile phone application that allows people to track updates from friends in the same geographical area, similar to Twitter. These additions to Gmail come as a second attempt to compete with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter after Google's original Facebook-like platform, Orkut, neglected to enjoy success outside of Brazil.
Update: When first released, Google Buzz was set on auto-share, meaning that photo albums, Gchat updates, personal preferences, etc. were automatically shared with everyone on a given user's contact list. Google has received numerous complaints about the auto-share setting, and has since removed that feature. Users will now choose whether or not to share specific items with members of their contact list.
Google to Test New Gigabit/Second Broadband Network
Google is planning to build a new high-speed broadband network that it will be testing at a low price with 50,000 to 500,000 people. The experimental fiber network will be 100 times faster than current internet speeds, at 1 gigabit per second. Google hopes that the new, faster network will encourage users and developers to create new, unheard-of applications and new ways to build and create fiber networks and deployment techniques that will be shared around the world. The new ultra-high-speed fiber network will be "open access," meaning that users will be able to use any one of several service providers. Google will have competition though, as Verizon Wireless has already released a broadband network that operates at 2.5 gigabits per second, though it is still being refined. Google is currently putting out feelers to see what sorts of capabilities are desired by different communities in order to get an idea of what sorts of applications could be tested on the new network and enhance the Internet experience.
Google Buys Aardvark Social Search Site/Ask.com to Launch Q&A Community
Google has agreed to buy Aardvark, its first social search service acquisition. Aardvark is a social search site providing services similar to Ask.com, except instead of providing relevant sites or documents on the Web to answers users' questions, Aardvark has real people, research experts, answer individual questions. Aardvark will initially be available through GoogleLabs and will remain a free service. Google will be continually looking for ways to improve the speed and efficiency of the existing Aardvark service. Ask.com, the existing question-and-answer search engine, has responded to Google's announcement by revealing plans to launch a question-and-answer community of its own. This new Q&A community, which will be launched in Beta later this year, will route user questions through real-life experts before returning an answer. Ask.com executives stated that Google's new social search purchase only validates its own philosophy that social search is the future of the Internet.
Yahoo! Sells HotJobs to Monster Worldwide for $225M
As part of its ongoing efforts to clean house of any services or platforms that do not fit the company's goals to expand its news, communications or entertainment initiatives, Yahoo! sold HotJobs, its job-posting site, for $225 million. Yahoo! sold the site to its direct competitor, Monster Worldwide, Inc. for over $200 million less than it initially paid for the site in 2002. With the decline of the global economy, sites like HotJobs or Monster.com have shown decreasing revenue over the years. With the acquisition of HotJobs, Monster will be eliminating one of its main competitors. Included in Yahoo!'s HotJobs sale agreement, Monster.com's job listings will be featured on the front page of Yahoo! for the next three years. Monster will also make annual payments to Yahoo!, the amount of which will be based on the amount of traffic the site receives from the links on Yahoo!'s home page.
Facebook Ditches Microsoft Display Ads
Although Microsoft has been selling Facebook's display ads for the past three years, the companies have decided to sever those ties. However, Facebook and Bing will still work together, with Bing continuing to provide Internet search results on the social networking site. Bing will also continue to power the search-based text advertisements found on Facebook. Bing is working to improve the search experience for Facebook users, with Microsoft executives stating that the two companies have mutually decided to focus on this aspect of their partnership in lieu of display advertising.
AOL Integrates AIM with Facebook Chat
AOL has recently integrated its AIM (AOL Instant Messaging) service with Facebook Chat, allowing all Facebook users to chat with people on their AOL instant messaging contact list through the Facebook platform. Similar to Gmail's GChat/AIM integration, Facebook will now automatically combine users' AIM contact lists with their Facebook Chat contact lists, eliminating the need to log on to both services in order to chat with friends. With this integration comes access to Lifestream , the platform currently channeling updates and feeds from social networking websites into the AIM program. Lifestream will be the first Internet application allowing Facebook users to initiate real-time communication without leaving the Facebook site.
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