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My 2 featured articles for the week ending Aug. 11, 2006:

Archived blogs for the week of Aug. 21, 2006

1220 - Aug. 25, 2006 - 1.16 PM EST

Is Google's market share slipping a bit?

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, Yahoo had a slight gain in its market share when compared to a holding pattern for Google.

On Aug. 21, Nielsen reported that Google accounted for 49.2 percent of all search activity in July, nearly flat from June’s 49.2 percent.

The research firm also reported that Yahoo Search garnered 23.8 percent of last month’s search activity, up from June’s 23 percent. MSN accounted for 9.6 percent of last month's searches, down from 10.3 percent in June.

As Danny Sullivan points out "One has to look at longer term trends and consensus figures from multiple providers. We’ll see what Hitwise has to say about this now".

What Hitwise data shows is something similar: a flattening for Google and fractional growth for Yahoo, although Hitwise reports a near 60 percent market share for Google.

There is speculation that Google's almost 60 percent market share could reflect some saturation and that the dip in the numbers above may be a seasonal fluctuation.

It will be important to look at next month's results to better establish if in fact a new trend is developing at this point.

Posted on Businessblog™

1219 - Aug. 25, 2006 - 7.20 AM EST

Ask.com hires Chuck Geiger

Ask.com announces that it has hired Chuck Geiger as executive vice president of technology and engineering. With seventeen years of experience with leading technology companies, including recent executive-level positions at PayPal and eBay, Mr. Geiger brings extensive engineering and operational experience to the company.

In his new position, Chuck will manage site engineering, IT and operations, quality assurance, data engineering and program management for Ask.com. In addition, Geiger will oversee engineering for Bloglines, the world's most popular free online service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing news feeds, blogs, and rich web content.

"Chuck has a great balance of technology, business, and mentorship abilities that will help Ask.com's technology groups scale domestically and internationally," said Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com. "With Chuck's help and expertise, we hope to take our technology organization to the next level."

Most recently, Geiger served as CTO and acting CEO of Protrade.com, a sports entertainment start-up that provides evaluation tools for athletic performance.

Prior to his tenure at Protrade.com, Geiger was CTO of PayPal and managed all key technology practice areas and a team of more than 500 professionals.

As vice president of product development and architecture at eBay, Geiger was responsible for creating the next generation architecture, systems, and platform at eBay.

Geiger has also held senior-level positions with leading organizations including Gateway, Travelocity, Texas Instruments and American Airlines Decision Technologies, among others.

"With a new site and cutting-edge search technology, Ask.com is well-poised to continue its swift climb up the search ladder," said Geiger. "Ask.com has made a name for itself as being an innovator in search, and I look forward to applying my experience to help drive further advancements for searchers. This is definitely an exciting time to be joining the organization."

Posted on Businessblog™

1218 - Aug. 23, 2006 - 4.42 PM EST

Three employees leave AOL

AOL's CTO Maureen Govern has decided to leave AOL effective immediately, AOL's CEO John Miller wrote in an eMail to employees dated Aug. 21.

Additionally, two other employees have been fired from AOL after the release of Internet search data from thousands of AOL members prompted widespread criticism of the company. Govern could not be reached to comment.

Maureen Govern, the researcher responsible for the data being posted online and the researcher's supervisor, who reports to Govern, were both fired, according to a source close to the matter who asked not to be identified.

Meanwhile, John McKinley, who is president of AOL Digital Services and served as chief technology officer from 2003 to 2005, will step in as interim CTO until a permanent replacement is found, AOL said.

In a separate eMail to employees, Miller said the company would create a task force to develop new and improved practices on privacy and will look at how long search and other data should be saved. The company also is considering tightening restrictions on access to databases containing search data and other sensitive member data.

AOL is currently looking into ways to ensure that such information is not included in research databases and adopting education programs for employees on how to protect sensitive information, the e-mail shows.

"After the great lengths we've taken to build our members' trust and be an industry leader on privacy, it was disheartening to see so much good work destroyed by a single act," Miller wrote. "This incident took place because some employees did not exercise good judgment or review their proposal with our privacy team. We are taking appropriate action with the employees who were responsible."

AOL researchers posted the data on the user Web searches to a new AOL research Web site last month. It then pulled it and apologized for the security breach shortly thereafter, but not before other sites got ahold of the data and made it searchable. AOL has been widely criticized for releasing the data.

Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group in San Francisco, filed a complaint against AOL with the Federal Trade Commission. The complaint (click here for PDF) asked the FTC to look into AOL's possible violation of its privacy policy and federal law. The EFF also asked regulators to require AOL to notify all users affected by the leak and to stop logging searches except in extraordinary cases.

The World Privacy Forum also filed an FTC complaint (click here for PDF) against AOL last week, including an allegation that AOL released user search data in 2004.

While the members were kept anonymous, the data was so thorough and extensive that privacy advocates warned that it would be possible to trace searches back to specific searchers, which several newspapers and other organizations were able to do.

"Whatever staff changes AOL chooses to make does not reduce the need for Congress and the FTC to step in," Kevin Bankston, staff attorney for the EFF, said in a telephone interview.

"To the extent the CTO's departure does have to do with this, I hope that it indicates AOL recognizes this isn't an issue of fixing a unique incident but rather reconsidering their approach to how they handle search logs," he added.

Posted on Businessblog™

1217 - Aug. 21, 2006 - 7.32 PM EST

Del.icio.us adds search advertisements

Del.icio.us underwent a small facelift offering more usability to its service, in the hope it will bring more users to its site.

The new del.icio.us homepage is much more Digg-like than before, with the entire homepage featuring bookmarked stories which range from being ‘Hot Now’ to ‘Still Cool.’

A nice addition to the del.icio.us homepage is thumbnails of the sites and posts which are being featured. Like the titles of the featured stories, the thumbnails also link to the original destination.

The new set up also gives more emphasis on “Save This” which lets users bookmark stories easier in the same fashion that someone may Digg one on Digg.com. Relevant tags are also served, keeping del.icio.us still showing its roots in tagging & bookmarking.

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2006. All rights reserved.

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