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WTF?? YouTube Yanks Tibet Video at Olympic Committee's Request

Apparently, it's not just in China that you can't read about Tibet on the Internet. On August 7, the group Students for a Free Tibet pulled a clever guerrilla prank at the New York City Chinese consulate, projecting images of human rights abuses in Tibet and associated images of the Olympic games. And like any self-respecting protest group, they posted a film of their action on YouTube. The International Olympic Committee promptly claimed that the Olympic rings projected onto the consulate violated its copyright of the brand and demanded that the video be yanked immediately. So guess what Google did. It's bad enough that Google's collaborating with Chinese censorship laws in order to penetrate the country's market and rake in the lucre; now they're suppressing videos that link the Olympics and Tibet on the flimsiest of excuses, regardless of what country they're produced in. Fortunately, as Slashdot's already pointed out, you can still see the offending film on vimeo.

Is Google's Search Ad Business Plateauing?

Here's the funny thing about setting out to rule the world: people actually set expect you to deliver. Over at TechCrunch, Erick Schonfeld has mapped out Google's revenue growth over the last four quarters, and discovers that growth in the company's organic revenue (that would be its core business, the most important of which is search ads) has steadily declined. In the last year, Schonfeld notes, Google's organic revenue growth has dropped from 57 percent to a paltry 32 percent. That's right, revenue from Google's core business only grew by a third in the last quarter. Now, you may be thinking about how staggering those numbers are, or the fact that Google's profits are ten times Yahoo's. But even when you astonish the world by dominating Internet search in the space of a few years, people tend to expect an encore.

Georgia Uses Google Blogging Service to Cry for Help

As the Russian invasion of Georgia proceeds, and hackers shut down most of the country's officials web sites, Zdnet notes that Georgian government officials have created an alternative propaganda and information arm by using Blogspot, Google's blog software. As you can see by clicking here and here, web sites for both the Georgian government and President Mikhail Saakashvili are down, at least intermittently. But the Georgian government has set up at least two emergency sites here and here, where they are posting updates on the conflict and publishing photographs of mutilated and dead Georgian civilians. Wired quotes Navy veteran and technology consultant Jim Stogdill musing that Georgia must have decided that Google's superior hacking defenses make it a better choice to get their side of the conflict out to the Western world. (In fact, Wired has some remarkable reporting on how the Internet is being used in the present conflict.)

Meanwhile, Valleywag notices Google News initially reported that the Russian army has invaded the Peach State...

Google Gets Ambitious

Yes, we know -- what else is new? But in the last 48 hours, the search giant has launched no fewer than three separate initiatives to increase its customer base around the world.

Let's start with the niftiest: YouTube has announced a partnership with the International Olympic Committee to post professional-produced clips of the upcoming Olympic games in countries around the world. You won't see them in the United States, of course, because NBC has the exclusive domestic broadcast rights. But wherever the IOC hasn't negotiated an exclusive broadcasting agreement (think India, Africa, South Korea, etc.), YouTube will offer what may be the best, most recent sports broadcasts available, every day. This obviously offers the IOC more exposure for the games, but Google's angle may be even more clever. As Motley Fool notes, advertisers have been reluctant to buy ads on YouTube, as they're dismayed by the amateurish quality of the average video clip. This deal gives Google a chance to rebrand YouTube as a site for professional, sophisticated video worthy of advertising support. In addition, the deal will expand YouTube's brand recognition in foreign markets, which already account for half of Google's annual revenue.

In more prosaic news, Google has launched a new project to help advertisers discover what people are searching for, when they're searching for it, and where. The company has offered similar products before, but the new tool, dubbed Google Insights for Search, allows advertisers an easy, accessible means to discover what web users around the world are most hungry to stare at, and match their ads accordingly. Finally, Google has rolled out an updated version of its Google Search Appliance, a hardware tool for companies and government agencies to internally store electronic documents and search them with Google algorithms. The new device is the size of a pizza box and can hold ten million documents at a time.

So in the last two days, Google has announced plans to deepen its presence in search advertising, executive software, and the international video advertising market. That's a lotta midnight oil.

Google to Launch Venture Capital Arm

We know you're a little busy keeping track of the Scrabulous fight, but while you were trying to figure out how to play Wordscraper, Google has been quietly building a venture capital arm of its own. The Wall Street Journal reports that the new project will be led by Vice President of Corporate Development David Drummond and William Maris, who used to do health investment work with Sergey Brin's new wife Anne Wojcicki. VentureBeat's Chris Morrison speculates that Google plans to use the fund to beef up its Android mobile Internet service, investing in new telecommunications companies as a way to penetrate the mobile advertising market. But as the Journal points out, big companies that build a VC arm have run into resistance from entrepreneurs, who worry that their corporate investors might hamper their freedom to sell out to rivals.

Cuil: New Google-Killer on the Prowl

Just days after Google launched its effort to replace wikipedia, a group of former Google engineers have launched an effort to replace Google! Anna Patterson, who worked at Google for two years, leads the team behind the new search engine Cuil, one that its creators claim is far more comprehensive in the web real estate it scans to find search results. (Google no longer goes public with how many pages its scans when searching the web.)

So how does Cuil hold up? Not so well, from our point of view; as of this blog post, the web site can't even load. Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan is only slightly impressed; after running nine quick search queries, he concluded, "I still didn't come away with a sense that Cuil has Google-beating relevancy." For one thing, Cuil is apparently just as vulnerable as Google to the George Bush "miserable failure" Googlebomb; Bush showed up as search result number two when he made the query. In addition, Cuil's search results didn't account for all the possible contexts for a search query; a search for "cars," for example, only brought up results for the extremely useful technology, not the overrated Pixar film. Finally, Cuil apparently only offered three results for the query "New York." Now, that's a problem.

Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica gratefully notes that unlike Google, Cuil doesn't archive what you search for, offering the kind of privacy Google denies its users. Still, she concludes, Cuil is definitely in the beta stage, with a lot of bugs to work out. "Cuil has a ways to go in optimizing its search pattern analysis to figure out exactly what it is that users are looking for and how to present it, although some of these burps can undoubtedly be attributed to opening day troubles," she writes. "We still doubt that we'll be seeing the next 'Google Killer' anytime soon."

Motley Fool's Rick Munarriz focuses on Cuil's business plan, of course, and predicts that Cuil's best prospects will be to build enough users to get Microsoft to buy it and incorporate it into its schemes for world domination. "I happen to like Cuil's chances," he writes. "Its timing couldn't be better, at a time when Web users are gun-shy over how search engines are keeping and manipulating search history data. If Cuil becomes the new 'do no evil' player, it could be a feel-good winner."

What's the Buzz on Google's Knol?

So it's D-Day plus one since Google launched Knol, a hybrid online encyclopedia designed to replicate wikipedia, but with entries penned by named authors, preferably experts in whatever field they're writing about. Wired has a decidedly thorough account of the project's origins and mission here, but here's the capsule version: Google head of search engineering Udi Manber was annoyed that no one had posted a definitive wikipedia item on New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno, and that got him thinking about all the other esoteric subjects in need of an authoritative explanation web users could find with a quick search. (Using, of course, Google.) Eighteen months later, he and Google have launched the beta version of Knol, in which experts will theoretically write explanations of everything you might find at That Other Source of All Knowledge, but attach their names to the item, rather than let any anonymous web browser change the item. This theoretically inoculates Knol from the nasty entry wars often seen at wikipedia, offering a more professional effort to fully explain an entry in good faith. it's wikipedia without the wackiness! And since entry authors get to share in any ad revenue that accompanies the item, experts suddenly have a little incentive to get to work.

So how they doing 24 hours later? Well, the mischief's already started. Los Angeles Times writer David Sarno has already written a Knol post about the freezie machine in the paper's cafeteria. Meanwhile, no one had taken a stab at writing up Barack Obama, John McCain, or even Google itself. A Times reader noticed that if you Google Knol, the wikipedia entry for it ranks higher than the page itself. Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan is surprised to learn how quickly Knol entries have risen to near the top of Google's search rankings. ZDNet's Garrett Rogers wonders what's to stop anyone (like, say, me!) from copying wikipedia's entries, registering as an expert at Knol, pasting them onto a Knol entry, and waiting for the ad bucks to roll in. Hmm.... if you'll excuse me, I just realized I gotta see a man about a horse...

Yeow! Google Buying Digg?

Techcrunch reports that Google is in the final round of negotiations to acquire Digg, the social news website that serves as one of the Internet's most important news aggregators. According to Techcrunch, representatives with both companies have signed letters of intent, and the reputed price will hover around $200 million. Techcrunch has been posting rumors about the sale for months, which Digg CEO Jay Adelson has faithfully and strenuously denied. Now, reporter Michael Arrington claims the deal could be announced in a matter of weeks. Oh, and that ad deal Digg has with Microsoft, the one that provides most of its revenue? Dead, if the buy goes through.

Motley Fool reporter Rick Munarriz thinks Google has plenty of incentive to snatch up the site. Although the Digg clone Yahoo Buzz generates more revenue, that's largely due to the synergy of placing Buzz headlines in the portal. Google could easily do the same thing, with more bang for the buck, and boast the main brand name for news aggregation in the process."Buying the leader saves the hassle of starting from scratch, while also turning a threat into an ally," Munarriz writes. "Spending $200 million or so, and then building on Digg's popularity by incorporating it into Google's own news aggregator page, would be child's play for a cash-rich player like Google."

YouTube Tabloid Divorce Ends Badly for Cyberslanderer

No YouTube phenom has been as titillating and mortifying as the strange case of Tricia Walsh Smith, the estranged wife of Broadway mogul Phillip Smith, who decided to spice up her divorce proceedings with YouTube videos exposing his porn collection and other private tidbits. Tricia even filmed herself calling her hubby's assistant and ranting about his nuptial shortcomings to his embarrassed assistant. But while we may have watched with detached fascination, Tricia's divorce judge Harold Beeler wasn't quite as amused. Calling her performance "a calculated and callous campaign to embarrass and humiliate her husband," Beeler let their pre-nuptial agreement stand yesterday. Which means the newly ex-wife walks away with just $750,000. Speaking of walking away, that's just what she'll have to do with her swanky Park Avenue apartment. But we'll always have the memories, Tricia.

Viacom CEO: Google Deliberately Stole From Us

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman held forth at an informal presser last night in San Francisco, and CNET's Greg Sandoval was on hand to listen, if not exactly take notes. Which is a shame, because Dauman, whose company is suing Google for $1 billion, dropped a pretty big bombshell. Google, he speculated, knew YouTube was violating copyrights on Viacom videos, but figured a $1 billion court judgment was a small price to pay if the company could utterly dominate the world of Internet video posting. In addition, Sandoval reports, Dauman considered YouTube a "rogue company," and was initially relieved with Google bought it, hoping that the search giant would now force its new acquisition to respect intellectual property. In fact, meeting with Google CEO Eric Schmidt was one of Dauman's first tasks when he took the helm at Viacom in 2006. But now he thinks that Google planned all along to just say all the right things and keep letting people post copyrighted material while they built the brand. Now, he concludes, Google's feeling the backlash, as entertainment companies take one look at Google's bad faith and shy away from development deals. Now, does that sound like a man who wants to settle out of court?