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My 2 featured articles for the week ending Apr. 28, 2006:

Archived blogs for the week of April 24, 2006

1156 - April 27, 2006 - 5.36 PM EST

Google ambitious to sell to gov. agencies

It is reported that fresh job postings by Google may reveal that it plans to increase its sales team in its Washington offices.

Some observers say such a move could suggest Google wants to boost the level of business with the government than what it currently does.

The search engine giant is looking for a head of enterprise federal sales to establish and expand its present-day business with large federal customers.

Google also wants to hire a federal sales engineer with a track record of selling to the U.S. government, etc.

The Mountain View, CA. company is currently doing business with a good number of federal agencies, including the U.S. Army, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Social Securities Administration.

"The federal sector has significant search and information needs," Matt Glotzbach, head of products for Google Enterprise, said in response to a question about the ads.

"As we invest and boost that market further, we are hiring top talent to build our team."

Posted on Businessblog™

1155 - April 26, 2006 - 6.01 PM EST

Lawyers unhappy with Google's initial settlement

Lawyers defending click fraud victims in a Google lawsuit say they are unhappy with the preliminary settlement.

Brian Kabateck, a lawyer representing plaintiffs in a Federal Court click fraud class action lawsuit pending against Google, says the $90 million preliminary settlement in an Arkansas case announced April 20 includes a $30 million windfall for the plaintiffs' attorneys but provides only pennies in credits to Google click fraud victims.

Kabateck said the most a victim can expect to receive is about a half a cent for every $1 lost to click fraud.

After reviewing the 46-page preliminary settlement, Kabateck, partner with Kabateck Brown Kellner LLP who represents Google's AdWords clients in AIT vs. Google, says the proposed settlement in Lane’s Gifts and Collectibles LLC, et al., vs. Yahoo Inc., et al. is almost financially meaningless to Google, which reported $1.5 billion in profits for 2005, of which nearly all comes from advertising appearing on search engine results pages.

Click fraud typically occurs when an advertiser's competitor repeatedly clicks on the advertising. Google and other search engines charge advertisers for each click, regardless of whether the clicks are fraudulent or valid.

Posted on Businessblog™

1154 - April 25, 2006 - 3.22 PM EST

Meet Sphere, a new blog search engine

Sphere is a blog search engine that went live today. At first glance, Sphere looks interesting. We were limited in how much we could experiment with Sphere, developed by a San Francisco company led by Tony Conrad.

However, there are two nice features worth highlighting. The first is the "chronology" feature. Tony showed us an example using "Mohammed Cartoons."

Type that search term into the search bar, and you get 274 blog post results. Sphere then gives you a frequency graph of the blog posts over a certain timeline.

The Mohammed cartoons spiked in February, corresponding to the outcry created when French newspapers republished cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.

Sphere defaults its frequency chart to 4 months, and underneath shows you its relevant results for that period. But you can choose to expand or decline the timeline to any dates you want, by dragging the bookends of the timeline.

If you want to limit your search to the height Mohammed cartoon controversy, for example, you can pick Feb 9 through Feb 17, and Sphere pulls up only blogs posts written during that period.

Sphere orders the blog posts by relevance. First, it looks at link structures. For example, Om Malik is an authoritative blogger on telecom matters, enjoying numerous links from other well-known bloggers on the topic.

If Om points to a blogger also writing about telecom, Sphere awards that blogger a boost in his relevance ranking, and his posts are considered and ranked higher.

Posted on Businessblog™

1153 - April 24, 2006 - 4.24 PM EST

Microsoft hires former Ask.com CEO

Microsoft announces it has hired former Ask.com CEO Steve Berkowitz to head it’s Online Business Group (OBG).

The newly formed Microsoft Online Business Group will include MSN.com, MSN AdCenter MSNTV and Windows Live.

Under Berkowitz’s leadership Ask Jeeves rebranded and restructured its search engine into Ask.com, was acquired by IAC, and has repositioned itself into the respected information and usability driven engine that it is today.

In addition Ask.com (or IAC Search & Media) revenue more than tripled while Berkowitz was manning the bridge. Goes to show that less ads can equal higher revenues under the right monetization plan.

According to Microsoft, Berkowitz “will be responsible for running the Online Business group, which includes include MSN.com, MSNTV and MSN Internet Access programming, advertising sales, business development, and marketing for Live Platforms, MSN and Windows Live.

This team’s mission is to deliver world-class go to market leadership, that wins customers to our services and builds a world leading advertising business. The responsibility for the monetization of our Live Platform, MSN and Windows Live assets is owned by this team, and includes end-to-end management of the online P&L.”

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2006. All rights reserved.

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