I had a chance to get a first hand demo of Google Video at the Zeitgeist 05 conference, and was quite impressed with what they were doing.

The Google Blog announces a list of even more videos available on the property.

It will be interesting to watch how this product continues to expand. There hasn’t been a lot of press, positive or negative comments, anything, about this product. It seems Google Print is taking away all the press from this one, which might be good as Google just continues to add more options while no one is watching.

ClickZ article on Looksmart’s new vertical based properties.

I took a look at the properties, did some searches on them, and can’t figure out what the big deal is. It looks like they put a different logo on each property, left them powered by the same database, put some predefined search queries (which all have looksmart.com URLs) and sent them on their way.

If I’m missing something valuable here, please feel free to comment. I do often miss things, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what is with these properties.

ePrécis has received a bit of press lately about being the next up and coming search engine. However, ZDnet puts a better spin on what it actually is:

“ePrécis is not a program per se, but a C++ language application programmer interface (API) that can be embedded in any number of applications to return relevant outputs given a wide variety of natural language inputs. In addition to plugging into Web browsers or search engines, it could plug into word processing programs to automatically provide abstracts, executive summaries, back-of-the book indexes, and writing or translation support.”

Language application, interpretation, semantic indexing, etc have been buzz words for a little over a year now. This system is no different in the use of buzz words, however, it might actually be using a bit of the technology behind the mere words.

Full article at ZDnet.

Ask continues to make quite moves in the search engine world. This time with the launch of their Spanish search engine.

Announced in press conference in Madrid, the site offers a wide variety of features to help searchers find what they are looking for faster: solid Spanish language and Spain specific search options; Binoculars to preview results; the possibility of storing and sharing web pages and images through MiAsk; related search for suggestions to refine queries; News, Local, Product and Download channels in partnership with leading providers; Bloglines Notifier; and the just released toolbar: Barra Ask.

Ask Blog Article.

Business week has released the latest info about the top brands.

I always check to see where the major search engines rank.
As usual, Coke is #1.

#2 Microsoft (ok, this is cheating as MSN isn’t as big as MS)
#38 Google
#58 Yahoo
#68 Amazon (owns a9.com)

Full Article.

Financial Highlights:

Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated $885 million, or 56% of total revenues. This represents a 20% increase over the second quarter revenues of $737 million.

Google Network Revenues – Revenues generated on Google’s partner sites, through AdSense programs, contributed $675 million, or 43% of total revenues. This is a 7% increase over network revenues of $630 million generated in the second quarter.

International Revenues – Revenues from outside of the United States contributed 39% of total revenue, compared to 39% in the second quarter and 35% in the third quarter of 2004.

Source: Google Investor Relations

Looks like AdSense is going strong. Makes one wonder if the incentive is to patrol the network so more advertisers don’t opt out, or a duty to their investors to overlook a few sites.

Ask seems to be quietly rolling out new features all the time right now, and it’s not receiving a lot of press.

The first one contains additional information about video games. Links to cheats, trailers, and game information appear below some video game search titles. This is obviously an attempt to tap into the lucrative, yet hard to target 18-34 male demographic.

This demographic has been moving from TV to the net; often uses ad blockers; spends more time playing online games than surfing the web; often reads news through RSS and not on a CPM supported website. It’s an interesting experiment to see if some of the new Ask features can capture this demographics’ attention.

The second new feature is recipes. Good timing a month before thanksgiving, which is one of the top seasons for recipe searching.

With the ask.com acquisition, the re-branding of ask without the butler, heir own ad network, and new features quietly rolling out, ask.com might turn into a solid player without anyone realizing it.

Interesting article posted by Gary Price on the SEW Blog about a Google earnings call.

Worth a read.

Danny shows an interesting image of the privacy policies compared to each other.

The old privacy policy is here.
The new privacy policy is here.

The Google blog posts a nice review of Google.org.

“When we told prospective shareholders about Google and how we wanted to do business, we said that we hoped our philanthropic efforts could some day have a greater impact than Google itself. We committed one percent of our profits and equity toward that vision. ”

Love ‘em or Hate ‘em – one just can’t argue with commitment to a cause.

Full article.