Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

“‘Y” is Steve Souders, Chief Performance Yahoo, ”jumping” to Google as of January 7? Henry Blodget wants to know! Despite dubbing himself a ”Silicon Alley Insider (SAI),” the Wall Street outsider marks the end of 2007 with a public plea for “insights” for 2008, from the public:

“From the outside, hard to see this as anything other than yet another long-term exec fleeing a sinking ship. Any insights appreciated.”

No problem, Henry (only hard for you, perhaps): Here goes. Unfortunately for your signature “Yahoo to Zero” style sensationalist headlines though, and contrary to the “outrageous conculsions” your SAI traffics in, the Souders move from Yahoo to competitor Google is undoubtedly outrageously non-dramatic.

Steve Souders, a seven year Yahoo veteran, conculdes a banner year: YSlow performance tool, “High Performance Web Sites” book, conference mainstay…most significantly, success in making performance a “prioity” at Yahoo.

What next? High performance engineers continually seek more challenging challenges. Rather than “fleeing a sinking ship,” as Blodget brandishes, Souder is seeking new waters for professional navigation. 

Souder is far from abandonning Yahoo, he leaves the company with his performance mission accomplished and a Yahoo performance team ready and able to carry on the performance roadmap Souder set underway for Yahoo in 2008.

Why NOT move to Google now? Souder changed the Yahoo developer culture to one that is perfomance-centric. For his own personal development, however, Souder will grow more by being at Google now, a company which has long differentiated itself by performance.

Souders is curious, in particular, about how Google achieves proprietary competitive performance advantage, especially via its “hardware topology.”

Why does Google want Souders? It is unlikely that Souders will unveil anything not allready in the public domain that can speed up Google.com even more.

Google is keen on Souders accomplishing his next performance objectives under the Google banner, especially given that Souders’ next big performance challenges complement the Google development roadmap.

If Souders had remained a Yahoo!, he would be tackling two big speed challenges in 2008: ad serving and mobile. What good timing for Google, given its DoubleClick and Android investments!

Souders has already made a comittment to “improve the performance of ads” because he deems ad serving to be “the slowest part” of a users’ Web experience. Souders wants to make sure “people don’t hate ads.”

How about mobile? How about “YSlow for mobile”? Souders believes the performance field is but at “the tip of the iceberg” and is keen on evangelizing faster mobile performance.

In 2008, Souders will have ample opportunity to make the world better for ad serving and mobile surfing, thank’s to Google’s (soon to be?) DoubleClick and Android.

Google, itself, however, has some some big challenges of its own coming up. SEE: Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008

Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia and
2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook and
Browser Flack: Will Google Ever Escape Microsoft Rule? and
There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and
Lost On Google Maps! What Merry Christmas? and
Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers and
Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and
How Google AdSense FAILS Better Business Bureau and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! 

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Who needs Aristotle, Socrates, Plato…when Google offers “Our Philosophy.”  Heck, who needs Moses’ Ten Commandments, as Jeff Jarvis continues his ludicrous public cry to join him in worshipping God Google, really.

Google concurs: “To fully understand Google, it’s helpful to understand all the ways in which the company has helped to redefine how individuals, businesses and technologists view the Internet.” 

On the eve of the New Year, when learned men and women generally reflect on how, as individuals, we can help make the world a better place, Jeff Buzz Machine Jarvis doubles down on his inane campaign to negate thousands of years of spiritual yearning with an ode to a ruthless, $200 billion market cap corporation with the unholy mission of obtaining and controlling all the “information” in the world as its own private, for-profit property, aka Google.

What is REALLY scary, is that Jarvis is undoubtedly evangelizing his personal, one-corporation G worship to the nation’s future journalists as an instructor at the City University of New York, and MY tax dollars are helping fund the irrational, and dangerous, Google exuberance!

How IS Google God? Google has encapsulated all its Googley “ways” in a “Ten Things Google has found to be true” handy cheat sheet.

I repost them below (in italics), along with my Insider Chatter translation (in bold) of how Google is REALLY redefining how individuals, businesses and technologists are impacted by the Internet, Google’s Internet.

1) “Focus on the user and all else will follow”

There is NO escape: We follow the user all over the World Wide Web, and into the cloud.

2) “It’s best to do one thing really, really well”

It’s better to do dozens of things ad hoc, keeping our Googley fingers crossed that some will work out OK.

3) “Fast is better than slow”

We control YOUR data: Caching content owned by everyone else within Google’s server farms keeps US in control.

4) “Democracy on the Web works.”

Here’s the (Back)Rub: Google Democracy is for sale to the highest, non-transparent bidder.

5) “You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer”

We know where you live, work, play…what you think, dream…

6) “You can make money without doing evil”

A little evil is good for the bottom line, a lot of evil makes us GOD.

7) “There’s always more information out there.”

Resistance is futile, we WILL control the world’s information, all of it.

8) “The need for information crosses all borders.”

Who needs the United Nations! YouTube is the only electorate that matters.

9) “You can be serious without a suit”

It won’t be any fun to watch GOOG on the way down, but there is always the free lunch.

10) “Great just isn’t good enough”

Thanks to our Fuzzy Logic, Google is always great! Just Google-It, or ask Jeff Jarvis!

Jarvis’s new found G religion apparently worships dominant corporate market share which crushes all competition, oversized corprorate profit margins garnered at the expense of millions of businesses worldwide and defacto corporate control of the World Wide Web.

Fortunately for the sane Internet world, however, Jarvis’ spiritually misguided G yearnings may soon haunt him. While Jarvis revels in rattling off Google’s mighty corporate dominance stats, keen Wall Street analysts have a keen eye on the one-trick, rich pony that is GOOG.

YouTube may hope to move the elections, but it is NOT moving GOOG. Tech bloggers may swoon over Google Apps, but corporations are shunning it. Google Checkout may succeed in garnering free PR media puff pieces, but Google can’t buy its way to success…

Google Gears, Open Social, Android…so little, so late.

BUT, the biggest, baddest Google problem of all is the GOOG cash machine itself, Google.com. Read all about it in: Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia 

ALSO: 2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook and
Browser Flack: Will Google Ever Escape Microsoft Rule? and
There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and
Lost On Google Maps! What Merry Christmas? and
Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers and
Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and
Google Ignores Hanukkah, Again: Festival of Lights Dark on Homepage and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! 

ALSO: Rich Skrenta: Blekko ‘Absurd’ Search Startup Disses King Google

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

“Become a knowledge management ninja with Google Reader”? 

If 2007 was the year of Facebook’s “social graph,” Google hopes 2008 will be the year of Google Social. From Open Social, to Google “shared stuff,” to Google Reader “sharing,” Google hopes it can simply “share” its Googley way to Facebook extinction.

I have often underscored, however, that sharing Web 2.0 social media style is NOT really caring.

SEE: NewsFriends? Facebook Anti Social Utility: Real Friends DON’T Share and  YAY? Weblo Cheapens Facebook ‘Friendship,’ Whales Rejoice! and Twitter and Facebook: The BIG Illusions of Friendship and Influence

After all, Old Chinese proverb says: “You can hardly make a friend in a year, but you can easily offend one in an hour,” i.e. Facebook Beacon and Google Reader “sharing.”

Nevertheless, Steve Micro Persuasion Rubel wants more sharing in 2008, especially the Google kind:

Be a ninja in 08. Go forward and good luck.  have been using various RSS readers for nearly five years now - I’ve tried them all. However, none matches the power of Google Reader. I have found that if you tap into all of its features, it’s the Holy Grail of Personal Knowledge Management.

Rubel’s buzzwords dazzle, but where is the real knowledge that he claims to be managing?

I encourage you to throw as many feeds as you can at the Google Reader just so you can capture and mine it. This should include relevant feeds that you never have any intention of reading or even scanning.

Sound familiar? Facebook whales “throw” up to 5000 “friends” around, with never any intention of ever being their friends.

Rubel nevertheless believes his own custom searchable database makes him a knowledge “ninja”:

With the recent addition of search, the Google Reader becomes much more. Like Gmail, Reader should be viewed as a database that you can build from scratch and continually hone.

The end game? Rubel can do his own search for all mentions of employer Edelman’s client Microsoft’s Xbox in Techmeme!

YAY? For Google! Google is the one becoming the knowledge ninja, all knowledgeable of Steve Rubel’s every personal and professional interest and need.

The end of the year privacy brouhahas over Google Reader “sharing” and Facebook Beacon were but charades, feel-good “outrage” with no meaningful privacy effect.

What privacy transgressions were Facebook and Google accused of? The enabling of “sharing” of users’ information with users’ own social graph. The real privacy danger of Google and Facebook continues to be ignored by users, however, as I often underscore here at Insider Chatter.

SEE: Google Reader: Naughty or Nice? Santa Safe! and
YES! Facebook IS Scarier Than Google! and
Facebook is ‘Sorry’? Savvy Users Will Forget, NOT Forgive, Mark Zuckerberg and
Beacon Privacy Solution: STOP USING FACEBOOK! and
Dear Facebook, Beacon Tracking STILL Evil: Will Zuckerberg Partners Repent?

Why have I deemed facebook to be scarier than Google? Each Facebook user knowingly and willingly provides an interested corporation with the intimate details of their daily personal and professional lives to enable persistent data records for the unique data mining profit advantage of the corporation. Because Facebook as “Big Brother” is consensual, there is no redress.

Google has now tied Facebook for scary honors, however, due to how it profits from users’ personal genetic materials obtained by Google under false pretenses via GOOG 411. SEE: Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers

Bottom 2008 line? Use Google and Facebook accounts at your own risk.

ALSO: Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008 and How Google AdSense FAILS Better Business Bureau

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Good riddance Netscape? Blogosphere reaction to AOL’s announcement of the end of the line for its Netscape Browser ranges from fond nostalgia to intense disdain. Lost in the Internet Explorer vs. Firefox vs. Netscape debate, however, is the still browserless Google!

GBrowser anyone? Not according to Googler in Chief Eric Schmidt and friends. BUT WHY NOT?

It is the Google mission to “organize the world’s information,” all of it, in Google’s cloud, a very BIG cloud. The Schmidt holiday wish: 90 percent of all computing shall reside in the cloud, a Google branded one. After all, if Google succeeds in shifting the world’s computing from the PC to the cloud, it will be a “real improvement for people’s lives” because (Microsoft powered) computers are complex and unreliable, so preaches Schmidt.

The very same computers that Google disses, however, power Google’s cloud computing!

Upon Google’s announcement of its purported Microsoft killing Gear’s in May, I was the lone voice underscoring Google’s love hate relationship with the (Microsoft) desktop. I asked, does it gall CEO Schmidt to have to “Microsoft-enable” Google products? OR, does he get personal satisfaction in “using” Microsoft to achieve his Microsoft domination end-game?

“Because the Web is Google’s platform, we are interested in improving it as much as we can,” so declared Bret Taylor, Google Gears evangelist, of the planned “browser extension for creating offline Web applications.” For a user to access ”Google’s platform,” however, he or she generally arrives via Microsoft, desktop and browser.

Schmidt on Gears:

With Google Gears we’re tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud.

The Google platform is dependent upon its biggest competitor’s ”browser,” aka Microsoft Internet Explorer, big time.

MORE: There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business and 2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook and Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008 and Rich Skrenta: Blekko ‘Absurd’ Search Startup Disses King Google

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Surprisingly, SEOs are surprised that the world’s largest retailer wants in on the world’s newest opportunity: search marketing!

News Flash: Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club division efforts to help small businesses on the Web is old news.

Way back in In 2004, the warehouse retailer asserted its intention to be a service vendor of choice for its small business membership, brokering health insurance:

Providing insurance is one of the biggest challenges when competing for quality employees and improving retention. As the purchasing agent for small businesses nationwide, Sam’s Club continues to add services that benefit small business owners and enable them to improve their business efficiencies.

Sam’s Club sponsors the Small Business Administration’s annual Small Business Conference, underscoring “Sam’s Club serves more than 47 million members nationwide and nearly half are business members including entrepreneurs, owners and business operators. In addition to exceptional values on supplies and merchandise for small business, Sam’s Club also offers health insurance, health care services, merchant credit card processing and other marketing programs through a network of providers.”

What “other marketing programs”? 2004 also marked Sam’s Club entry into the Web services business, the company introduced a low price point hosted Business Web Sites service to members of its premium Business Plus program:

Sam’s Club is dedicated to providing a smooth, easy channel for businesses to grow using the resources of the Internet. Close to 70 percent of small businesses do not have an online presence because it’s just too costly or difficult to build and maintain a site. Our new Business Web Sites offering brings online promotion capability to even the smallest business in the true spirit of our low-cost philosophy. Companies typically would pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to develop a professional Web site, plus pay for ongoing support. Sam’s Club has dramatically reduced the cost to a price any business can afford.

Naturally, online marketing of Websites is a natural product extension to a Web development service package.

Rather than making for a “good laugh,” Sam’s Club savvy private label cross-selling of Web products to its engaged base of open-to-spend small business customers makes for good prospective business.

Sam’s Club Online Services is a smart move, for Wal-Mart and for its Web services supplier partner, Innuity:

Innuity is a publicly held, Software as a Service (SaaS) company that designs, acquires and integrates applications to deliver solutions for small business. The company’s Internet technology is based on an affordable, on-demand model that allows small businesses to interact simply with customers, business partners and vendors and efficiently manage their business. Using Innuity’s on-demand applications, small businesses can grow their revenues, reach and serve customers and run everyday operations.

Leveraging its reseller deal with Wal-Mart, Innuity aims to increase its “mass market retail distribution” in 2008. Amerivon has been retained by Innutiy to “broaden its mass market distribution strategy”:

The Amerivon retail agreement to further penetrate the mass retail market with our small business information solutions puts Innuity on an accelerated customer acquisition path. We are extremely pleased to have partnered with such a respected leader in the mass market distribution community and are looking forward to establishing long-term relationships with a wide variety of mass market retailers.

Mass market SEO/SEM? NOT such a novel concept. SEE: Local Ad Sales War: Why Google is a Guaranteed Winner

MORE ON LOCAL: Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! and
Google Apps & Maps: Enterprise and Local Business STILL Missing and
Local Advertising Online: SMEs Hold the Billion Dollar Keys, ILM ANALYSIS and
Google Beware: Facebook Takes Local Advertising Gloves Off, ILM REPORT and
Citysearch’s Herratti on Social Media and Merchant Reputation: ILM INTERVIEW and
Jason Calacanis: ‘Wrong About Local Too,” ILM REPORT and
The Future of Local IS (Google) Search: ILM REPORT and
Local is Global: $134 billion in Yellow Pages, Classifieds and Internet Advertising, ILM REPORT

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Poor Santa? Leave it to Slashdot to drag him through the snow in search of a link-worthy headline: “Google Reader shares private data, ruins Christmas.”

REALLY? Felipe Hoffa’s accusation is off the mark, way off.

In the “Sharing With Friends” feature, Google Reader is NOT deviously “sharing” any private data, as Hoffa melodramatically asserts:

As each day Google hoards more of your data there is an implicit deal that makes this possible: You give Google your private data, while they keep it private. That deal would fail miserably is someday Google decided unilaterally to share your data with more people. For example, with all your Gmail contacts. Many people fear that this might happen someday, but they don’t need to wait anymore as it has already happened.

Contrary to Hoffa’s beliefs, there is no privacy “deal” implicit in ANY of Google services which require login. Google’s privacy policies make that abundantly clear: Google is free to do whatever it likes, for as long as it likes, with any user data that is forked over to its servers by anyone. Gmail, for example:

Google maintains and processes your Gmail account and its contents to provide the Gmail service to you… and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail.

The “other purposes” Google disclaimer gives Google the explicit right to do virtually anything it wants with the data of others willingly handed to it for perpetual “hoarding.”

Google Reader’s privacy policy:

We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services.

What does such an open ended Google disclaimer allow Google to do with all user data obtained via Google Reader? Undoubtedly anything it wants to do, as GOOG 411 proves. SEE: Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers.

Despite that all Google Reader users agree to Google’s Terms Of Service, Hoffa is ”appalled” that Google has not “apologized” for its latest Google Reader sharing “enhancement” and has not offered a “quick fix” to the (not so) legions of Google Reader users that are not quite sure what to make of the new and improved Google Reader.

For Google, the Reader case is nevertheless clear:

The “share” feature was always intended to imply some amount of publicity. That’s why we used the term “share” and had shared items marked as public by default on the Settings > Tags page.

There’s a “clear your shared items” link on the Settings > Friends page if you urgently need to remove the items you’ve shared in the past.

It is still possible (as before) to share specific tags, or your starred items, independently of your shared items feed. This is a good alternative for people who have more specific uses for this feature than the general concept of “sharing.”

Hoffa’s Christmas plea is that Google Reader users are revolting en masse. But, it is a tried and true blog tactic to use Google Group or blog comment thread remarks as a proxy for average user reaction and thereby spin exagerated tales.

Commenters are nevertheless always but a minority of users, regardless of the company involved. What’s more, while many of the Google Reader Group commenters are indeed negative, many are also simply bewildered by the new feature and some are even down right happy with it!

The new Google Reader sharing actually gets a big thumbs up from many Group posters:

very cool, awesome, great idea, thanks Google, I absolutely love you…

WOW! Those Google Reader users certainly are enjoying their Christmas, thanks to Google!

Google Maps users, on the other hand, are NOT faring as well. SEE: Lost On Google Maps! What Merry Christmas?

ALSO: Will Twitter Meet Digg’s Fate? and Browser Flack: Will Google Ever Escape Microsoft Rule? and 2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook and Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008 and How Google AdSense FAILS Better Business Bureau

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN