Google's attempt to integrate YouTube and Google+ might hurt both services.

One thing that innovative companies try to do is push customers into the future that they envision.  Apple is a good example -- they're famous for writing off technologies as obsolete long before other companies (and, indeed, most customers) have done so, be it floppy disk drives or, more recently, optical drives.  While I tend to think of businesses in general as needing to serve their customers, in technology the roles sometimes seem reversed.  That is, it is the users who often seem to be along for the ride while the businesses are the ones in the driver's seat pursuing their own goals.  The ride can be a bumpy one, as Google is finding out as it tries to more tightly integrate its video sharing site YouTube and its social network Google+.

It's not hard to understand why Google wants every YouTube user to become a Google+ user.  It wants its social network to be competitive with Facebook.  In the long run, it would like Google+ accounts to BE Google accounts...that's the dream right there.  Just imagine it: every single user with a Google account on Google+, socializing, commenting, and posting all matter of digital content under one ID.  That's a potential problem for Facebook to be sure.  However, Google may be making a mistake in acting with its own interests at heart rather than those of its users.  While users virtually always resist change to some extent, technology companies are allowed to be innovative because they promise a somehow better future; the ride may be bumpy, but it leads to somewhere glorious in the end.  I don't think that Google has effectively made the case that its users will be better served by integrating their YouTube and Google+ accounts.  Indeed, I think that's really the core of the reason why there's been such a backlash against the move.  As it turns out, associating YouTube videos and comments with people's real names is not really a future YouTubers as a community seem to desire...many chose to use pseudonyms to begin with, after all, and I'd hazard a guess that relatively few people use YouTube primarily to follow people they know or to socialize in any meaningful sense.  Just what, then, does tying Google+ accounts with YouTube actually offer as a benefit to the users, particularly the ones who do not currently use Google+? The "how" in change always inspires a degree of confusion and annoyance, but the "why" in change is what really shapes user behavior and attitudes.  The widespread perception is that Google is seeking to integrate YouTube and Google+ purely for its own ends, and it's hard to dispute that.   

As I see it, the backlash could end up hurting Google in two ways.  The first is obvious: YouTube could suffer.  There are actually quite a few YouTube alternatives out there: Veoh, Vimeo, and DailyMotion come to mind immediately.  The problem with all those sites is that they don't have enough video creators to attract bigger audiences...and they don't have a big enough audience to attract more video creators.  Technologically, the pieces are already in place, though I'd say a couple of the sites I've checked out recently still have a few things to learn a few things about usability (sidebar video ads that play, with sound, WHILE people are trying to watching a video on your site is not a good thing at all).  If video creators and video watchers start defecting, YouTube's audience will slowly dwindle.  The second way the backlash could hurt Google is by devaluing the Google+ brand.  The early adopters of Google+ joined the site because it was new and cool.  They liked features such as Circles and Hangouts.  They liked being part of an online community that skewed towards their interests.  They liked being away from, frankly, the unwashed masses that populate Facebook.  Now people are joining Google+ because they feel like they have to do so, because they want to continue to use a hitherto unrelated site, because they just want nag messages to go away...how do you think those people perceive Google+ now?  Imagine if Facebook had started rolling out Facebook Login before Facebook was popular and it lead to people signing up to Facebook just so they could use some other site.  Would those users be inspired to use Facebook as a social network when it was something they had to join or would they just use it as a login at most?  Google will undoubtedly succeed in upping the Google+ user account, but whether they'll end up with a social network anyone will WANT to use is another issue altogether.

Inertia is perhaps the strongest force in Google's favor.  It's not easy for users to transition away from YouTube because it's such a dominant force in the user-created video space.  Even a less than ideal outcome such as people simply commenting less and uploading fewer videos might not be such a bad thing if total views are not affected to a notable degree.  Joe Blow, Google+ hater and privacy fanatic, may choose to cease commenting on YouTube and no longer post videos of his pet squirrel, but if he and others like him continue to view other people's videos on YouTube it probably won't make much of a difference.  Popular content creators are quite likely to keep using YouTube much as they have in the past because they have the most to lose by abandoning the platform and starting fresh somewhere new.                    

Can Yahoo find a place for Tumblr?

The big tech news of the day is that Yahoo's board has approved a $1.1 billion cash deal to acquire the blogging platform Tumblr.   This deal, should it go through as is expected, represents an interesting about-face for Yahoo.  After all, this is a company that has shuttered a number of services focused on publishing user-generated content in recent years, including a blogging platform (360).  Thus, it’s no surprise that the rumors of this acquisition have been greeted with a good deal of skepticism.  In many ways, Tumblr does not on the surface appear to be a very good fit given Yahoo’s corporate culture.  Tumblr is a freewheeling platform where web comics, animated GIFs, adult content, teenage angst, and political activism have all found a home.  One could argue, based especially on its diversity of content (and the animated GIFs), that Tumblr is the GeoCities of the 2010s, but Tumblr is an even freer environment than GeoCities was, especially given that Tumblr bloggers can monetize their content.  Traditionally, Yahoo has frowned on adult content and barred users from making money using their platforms.  Yahoo also skews old while Tumblr skews very young.  That’s a reason FOR the acquisition from Yahoo’s perspective, but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t going to be a severe culture clash coming down a line.      

If there’s any reason to be hopeful that this acquisition just might work out, it’s Yahoo Voices.  That, too, is a service that specializes in user-generated content and was the result of an acquisition (Associated Content).  Essentially, it’s an article and video site powered by contributions from users.  For years, I would just about never run into Yahoo links on search engines apart from news stories on occasion.  Thanks to Yahoo Voices, those virtual encounters happen much more often now.  The actual material posted on the site varies widely in quality, as is to be expected.  From where I sit, though, it seems like a fairly successful site for Yahoo (though I have no clue as to whether or not it is a financial success).  The Voices comparison is even more appropriate when one considers it is an earning platform for writers and video creators.  I have a hard time imagining the Yahoo of 5 or 10 years ago running such a site.  Perhaps Yahoo really is changing.   

Arguably, Yahoo’s best chance at pulling off a successful Tumblr acquisition would be to let the site run more or less independently.  The fewer the changes, the smoother the transition will be for users.  Let some unconnected Tumblr users a year from now still not realize there was an acquisition because the site from their perspective works just as it always did – that’s the hallmark of a successful acquisition!  On the other hand, Yahoo does want to profit from acquiring Tumblr in some way.  The platform could no doubt be better monetized, but this will have to be done with subtlety to avoid angering the user base.  Tumblr as a company was extremely reluctant to monetize precisely because it realized its users might revolt at a wide deployment of ads or a sudden focus on paid services.  If nothing else, Yahoo hopes to be linked with Tumblr in the public mind – the corporate overlord also wants to be perceived as cool, hip, and young or at least as cooler, hipper, and younger than it was before the purchase.  It wants to be a company which is believed to have a vision and a mission, a business which makes moves with purpose and must be taken seriously.  In short, Yahoo wants to be relevant again – a true giant on the Web.  I wouldn’t necessarily bet against them.

Will Google Docs' submergence into Google Drive pose a branding problem for Google?

Google Docs users who have not yet opened up Google Drive accounts have been greeted by an ominous sounding message every time they login to their Google Docs account for some time now: "Google Docs will soon be upgraded to Google Drive. Google Drive will be the new home for your files."  A message like that brooks no space for disagreement -- your docs WILL have a new home, whether you like it or not.  There was perhaps no way Google could introduce Google Drive without annoying someone, but it's not hard to understand Google's reasoning here.  Drive, as a universal cloud storage platform, is a place to store everything from documents to media to software.  Google Docs documents are a part of many people's digital lives; it wouldn't make sense for Google Drive to not provide users a convenient way to access their Google docs.  Since it was a given that the two services would be integrated in some way, the next logical step was to simply fold Docs into the more universal storage service, Drive.  Why would you stop at just letting people store documents in Drive when you could allow them to conveniently create and edit them inside the service too? Granted, Google could have allowed Google Docs to coexist as a partner to Google Drive -- that's what change-averse users undoubtedly would have preferred -- but Google's been all about reducing supposed "dead weight" lately.  I'm not surprised that Google is picking the option of combining an old service with a similar new service as opposed to letting Docs linger on while Drive attracts a larger user base.

In truth, I don't think the transition to Google Drive is going to be all that difficult for most existing Google Docs users. You can, after all, simply refrain from storing anything other than Google Docs documents on your Google Drive and continue on as usual -- the experience of working with documents online hasn't really changed.  If you want to take advantage of the new desktop app, syncing, and extra storage possibilities, those options are now open to you.  Theoretically, it might seem like there will only be winners and mildly annoyed neutrals here.  Existing users aren't losing anything because of the switchover while Google has the opportunity to attract many more users who just want a place to store their digital stuff.  Who loses?  

If there is any danger in this move for Google, I think it's going to be related to the branding of Google Drive vs Google Docs.  Google Docs is a perfectly named Web service.  I could mention it to people and say a few words about it and they would quickly understand what it's used for.  Of course Google Docs is for collaborative online document creation and editing!  Google Drive doesn't sound like that kind of service at all, though...it sounds like a place for storage.  If someone told me he wanted to work on a document with me via something I hadn't heard of called Google Drive, my first thought would probably be that we would be exchanging Word files and taking turns editing and reuploading them (something we could do about as easily, if not more so, over email).  It just doesn't bring to mind the thought of editing documents online collaboratively -- it sounds passive versus active.  How existing Docs users perceive their new Google Drive accounts may well change over time, too, especially if they start using their drives to store more than documents.  Will you combine documents for work or school with music or video files on the same Google Drive or will you use different Google Drive accounts for different use cases in the same way that people often have different Gmail addresses for work and personal correspondence?  Alternatively, will you start using a Google Docs competitor, like Zoho, to manage online documents and store other files on Google Drive?  
Undoubtedly Google Drive has the potential to appeal to a considerably larger pool of users than Google Docs ever could.  After all, everyone has SOMETHING digital they want to store, but not everyone is interested in storing, editing, and sharing documents online.  However, it wouldn't surprise me if Google Drive's success in the cloud storage wars comes at a cost in the online documents space.  Services that seem more "docs-oriented" can now brand themselves as being "serious" alternatives to lighthearted, consumer-oriented Google Drive.  If people perceive Google Drive as being more like a digital playground and Zoho or another competitor as being more like a digital office, I suspect a lot more lab reports and sales figures will be stored outside the Google ecosystem.  This trend will only be accelerated if Google is perceived as having stopped trying to improve its Docs services -- a real possibility, I think, since I suspect most Google Drive users will not be using the service to create documents and Google will naturally be focused on trying to keep its new core user base happy.

Will users tire of the walled garden?

If I were starting this blog from scratch right now, I would almost certainly have to include Facebook on my list of Internet giants. In terms of sheer size as well as significance, Facebook deserves a place right up there with Google and Microsoft, and it should probably be listed ahead of AOL and Yahoo. However, Facebook doesn't really fit the "giant" paradigm that I created back in 2007. I envisioned an Internet where big companies were actively competing with each other, user by user, by creating new, innovative, and useful services. I took it for granted that users would pick and choose what services they liked regardless of what company offered them: a user might, for instance, use Google for searching, Hotmail for email, and Flickr for photos. Facebook is different in that it has a core product (social networking) that it builds all of its other services around. If you're not interested in social networking on Facebook, you are essentially outside Facebook's sphere.

Of course, most of us are inside that sphere nowadays. I often hear Facebook compared to the portals of old because of the way it seeks to draw (and keep) users in rather than send them out into the outside Internet. Certainly, it does do that -- you don't really need to leave the environs of Facebook.com if all you want to do is talk to your friends, share some photos, or even enter a sweepstakes. However, Facebook is also seeking to bring the outside Internet in in a way the portals didn't succeed in doing. Increasingly, users login to other sites with their Facebook IDs, comment on blogs that run Facebook Comments, and, when they find something online they think is cool, Like Web content on Facebook. Unlike many of the older portals, Facebook seems to recognize the dynamism of the Internet. Rather than try to keep users confined in the walled garden of Facebook.com, FB is trying to expand that garden to encompass much of the Web. Leaving Facebook.com doesn't mean you actually leave Facebook.

The question is will users actually play along with Facebook. My personal feeling is that no, they probably won't over time. There will certainly always be a need for social networks, but the people who are spending every waking hour on Facebook today aren't necessarily going to be the same people who are spending every waking hour on Facebook a year or ten years from now. Interests, lifestyles, and values change, and people get tired of the same old thing. If you're a daily Facebook user, then Facebooking your way through the Web is an easy and convenient thing to do. If FB is just another website to you, though, you may wonder why your Facebook ID should be your "passport" to the Web. There are huge downsides to letting one ID control your online world: perhaps the biggest is the fact that if your Facebook account is compromised all your stuff is compromised right along with it. Another big one is the privacy factor: how can you trust one company with so much data? I don't see any reason to believe that people want to do everything online on or through Facebook; the recent struggles of F-commerce show that users still see some value in keeping their online shopping antisocial.

And then there's anonymity, that thing that Facebook doesn't like. I actually think Facebook's much ballyhooed "real names only" policy will be a major part of its future decline. Let my own example serve as a cautionary tale. Some years ago, I started getting back into the BBSing scene. Long before I was on the Internet, I used my modem to connect to dialup bulletin board systems to download files, play games, talk on forums, get information, chat with others, etc. BBSes dimmed in popularity as Internet access became more widespread, but many still exist today and are actually accessible through the Internet. Anyway, I made the decision to simply let my real name be my user name on the new BBSes I was signing up for. I thought to myself, "Why not? I don't need to hide behind a user name...I'll just be me." Totally Facebooky, eh? There was no single moment in my BBSing experience that made me decide, "It's really a bad idea to use my real name online." Nonetheless, after a while I started to long for anonymity. There's a kind of burden to having everything you do online attached to your real identity. Every post, every action, linked for all eternity to you...I didn't like that feeling. If you're seeking fame or planning on making a living using your online identity, then "real names only" is a great policy. For the rest of us, it's a weight we have to carry on our shoulders; given enough time, I think many will be eager to shake it off. In a sense, we're already seeing this happen as it's become more and more common for people to create fake Facebook accounts for various purposes. Facebook can either double down on its anti-anonymity stance and push users away or relax it and become a less useful passport for the Web as a result. Either way, I think there are limits to how much of the Web Facebook can encircle.

The Google Video scare shows the danger of trusting one online archivist too much.

I've often written about good services being shut down on this blog and, when I heard Google's announcement concerning the imminent closing of Google Video, I felt sure I had another sad tale to write about. However, I'm happy to say that, for the moment, cooler heads at Google have prevailed and their pre-YouTube acquisition video service will kept open indefinitely as the content is migrated to YouTube. I have to give credit to Google for taking its users' content more seriously than many other Internet companies. For instance, I can still access my notebooks on Google Notebook even though the service hasn't been accepting new users in a long time. It's good to know the company hasn't totally lost touch with its roots, but it's still disturbing that the initial decision was reached to begin with.

Whether it is comfortable with it or not, Google has evolved into one of the foremost archives of the Internet. It hosts millions of blogs on Blogger, many of which are long "dead." It stores the wisdom of the ages on Google Books. It has scores of old newspapers available for searching and viewing at the Google News Archive Search. Of course, it also is the major online video archive too since it owns both YouTube and Google Video. It is disturbing to think that some bureaucrat or accountant could decide a service is no longer worth keeping and with the stroke of a pen or the firing of an email lead to content created by thousands or even millions of people being destroyed. It's not like this kind of thing hasn't happened before -- look at how Yahoo! gleefully junked GeoCities and its 360 blogging service. The trust that so many of us place in big Internet companies to safeguard our content is probably misplaced. Yet we also have a huge need for archives online, all the more so since the amount of digital content being created daily is mindbogglingly enormous. I wonder how many people who posted their work to Google Video when it was still accepting uploads are now dead. Had Google not reversed their decision, much of the content those people created would probably have been deleted for good because they were no longer in a position to protect their own work.

It's clear we can't trust the beneficence of the Internet giants to keep our digital history alive. We need as many archives as we can get. So don't grow too dependent on the Big G or any one archiving entity. Keep local copies of all your own work. Consider uploading your stuff to multiple hosts. And above all else support serious archiving projects like the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg. As a consumer, it's easy to grow accustomed to using one archive for one's viewing needs. That's OK -- we all have preferences. However, we have to accept that our favored archive may not be around tomorrow so it only makes sense to prepare ourselves for that possibility and do what we can to support the alternative options. In the long run, it's best for many different projects to shoulder the archiving load. That will mean that the loss of one partner in the struggle -- such as Live Search Books -- will not do as much damage.

Google shouldn't copy Blekko.

Ranking the best content for a given search query has always been a difficult task. I have no quarrel with those who note that search engine optimization techniques have allowed inferior content to overshadow the good stuff to a certain extent. It's definitely not easy to run a search engine -- part of the job is staying one step ahead of all those people who would like to manipulate search results for their own ends and they are legion. However, I don't consider ignoring wide portions of the Web to be part of the job...if anything, it's an abandonment of a search engine's fundamental duty. If a search engine no longer indexes the accessible Web, it is partially blind. It doesn't itself really know what is out there and so it can't possibly be trusted to direct its users to the best content.

Thus, when the search engine Blekko opted to ban a slew of sites accused of being spam by its users, I was frankly appalled, and my consternation only grew as I read through the list of the banned sites. Freewebs (rebranded Webs now) was one of the victims...it is a free web space provider, for goodness sakes! Just as they did on GeoCities back in the day, people use Freewebs/Webs today to gain experience building and maintaining web sites for free. Kids, Internet novices, and cheapskates, listen up: Blekko doesn't think you deserve a chance to be seen. Somehow, an online dictionary and a petition site made the list, too. That many of the banned sites do host rather poor content is undeniably true -- there is a reason so many Blekko users branded content on these sites "spam." However, many of these same sites host good and useful content as well. Rather than seeking to rank individual pages on their own merits, Blekko decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Should this idea catch on, it will place a target on the back of every site that dares to allow its users to contribute content...every article archive, every free web host, and every blogging host is at risk because these sites by design cannot guarantee an across the board consistency to their content. Blekko at the moment is a rather insignificant player in the search world, but I know a dangerous idea when I see it, especially a dangerous idea that can be linked to a noble idea like fighting spam and worthless content. Search engines at their best encourage free expression because they allow every writer a spot in the index...perhaps any particular individual's voice is hard to hear amidst the din of the crowd, but heard it can be if only that right, magical set of keywords is entered into a search engine. That's why I love writing on the Web: no matter how obscure a blogger I may be, I'm still just a few words in a search box away from being read. At least until Blekko takes over, that is.

Google has recently responded to the demands of its users for better search results with a significant algorithmic change. When Google talks about reducing "rankings for low-quality sites," it's difficult not to see the influence of Blekko at work. For now, though, Google seems to be trying to do things the right way -- it isn't banning low-quality sites but rather just trying to rank them more appropriately. However, even this mission isn't quite right...Google should be able to find the good content hosted on ANY site. Branding a particular site "low quality" may be convenient, but if the high quality content hosted on a low quality site appears below the low quality content hosted by a high quality site search engine results will still be bad. Certainly some content does indeed deserve to be sent to the Void -- sites that intentionally host malware, for instance -- but "low quality" (ultimately a rather subjective valuation) sites may still be useful and certainly do not deserve invisibility. Hopefully Google will not forget that its users count on it to keep track of the entire Web, even those neighborhoods some consider to be on the wrong side of the tracks.

In a surprise move, AOL has acquired TechCrunch.

Of all the companies I cover on this blog, AOL has perhaps lost the most relevance to me personally in the three years I've been writing here. I've posted before about how they've killed off the sites of theirs that I used the most. AOL hasn't simply been shrinking, however. Just as Microsoft has reemphasized its position as a search company (second only to Google), AOL has strongly established itself as a content company. It owns some of the most popular blogs on the Internet, and it has embraced the idea of user-generated content with SEED and local content with Patch. Increasingly, Internet users may not even be aware they're using AOL services, but they're reading AOL's content (and viewing AOL's advertising) nonetheless.

AOL's content strategy has led it to take the bold move of acquiring the TechCrunch network of sites. That AOL would want to acquire a leading blog network isn't surprising at all -- it's totally consistent with its content strategy. However, it did surprise me that TechCrunch ended up being AOL's latest pickup. Just think about what TechCrunch covers...the Web, online business, startups, technology. AOL seems more like a natural target of a TechCrunch expose than a benevolent parent company -- indeed, coverage of AOL on TechCrunch has not always been exactly positive. This acquisition must make TC readers wonder what this acquisition means for the future of the site. Will it still be able to cover AOL with a critical eye? What about the multitude of other Web companies AOL does business with? Accusations of bias have always been hurled at TC liberally, but virtually any praise for AOL and its partners as well as any criticism of AOL's competitors is going to be viewed with great suspicion. For instance, I remember a recent post on TechCrunch written by a guest writer that included some unkind thoughts on Associated Content and eHow. If such a post was to appear now, I suspect many readers would think TC was simply pimping for SEED. TechCrunch will have to earn its reputation for independent thinking and commentary all over again now.

I'm not sure AOL is too worried about TechCrunch losing some of its street cred. For them, this is just another acquisition that is expanding their content network and their reach. Even if TC traffic drops a bit, it'll still remain a big blog -- eyeballs tend to be more important in the Internet business than "trust" after all. Since most of the staff (including Michael Arrington) will probably be sticking around for the near future, I imagine most of TechCrunch's regular readers will keep reading. I know I will.

Google Instant is more annoying than useful.

Google became the world's largest search engine by making search simple and effective. Not only were prior search engines susceptible to attempts by spammers to game results (I can remember doing searches and finding pages in the initial results that were literally nothing but lists of random keywords!), but many also embraced the "portal" model whole hog and created extremely busy-looking homepages where the search box often appeared to be an afterthought. Google's basic, spartan design said one thing very clearly: "This is a search engine. You come here to search for things!" Even as Google has created or acquired all kinds of different services (rather like the portals of old used to do!), the Google homepage has stayed relatively simple and users have strongly resisted any changes to the basic search experience, such as the automatic inclusion of background images a la Bing. Indeed, you could go so far as to say that a lot of Google users don't really like change. As much as the big G would love to innovate, it risks alienating already perfectly satisfied customers with every alteration.

Google's current experimentation with Instant Search represents a huge risk. The basic premise behind it assumes that users resent the amount of time they waste typing search queries. If the search engine could "read their mind" so to speak and deliver them results without them typing full queries, time previously spent typing could be used clicking instead. Instant Search displays Google search results (and ads of course) as the user types in a query, changing as the user continues to type. I've read a number of positive reviews of the service, most of which highlight the time-saving aspects of Instant. It is something that may be particularly appreciated by mobile users whose devices are often not ideal for typing (once it is rolled out for mobile users, at least). There's also something undeniably interesting about how Instant changes the whole search experience -- suddenly, you're seeing search results you never asked for. You can come across some fairly interesting stuff totally unrelated to your intended search query; in a way, it makes search into a kind of content discovery game.

On the whole, however, my reaction to Google Instant has been very negative so far. When I search, I usually have a definite idea of what I'm going to look for and don't really want suggestions for the most part. I sometimes use Google's search query auto-complete feature to save time, but I've always found it easy to either use or ignore that feature as I desire. I know that my more obscure queries often won't have relevant auto-complete suggestions so I usually don't even spare them a glance. With Google Instant, though, I'm constantly aware of the searches Google is conducting as I type. It makes Google seem incredibly busy -- it's like a portal site that only comes alive when you start typing. I find the general experience jarring and even after many searches I still haven't gotten comfortable with it. As such, Google has actually made my search experience slower...now I have to turn Instant off every time I clear my cookies. Although I'm loath to change my search engine of choice, I have to admit the idea is getting more appealing to me by the day! I strongly think Instant would be better off as a non-default option. We'll see what kind of backlash against it emerges. Generally speaking, fixing something that isn't broken isn't a winning idea, and I don't really expect Google Instant to endure as a default option for too long.

Is Google's new China strategy brilliant or suicidal?

Google's reputation for not doing evil has been greatly harmed around the world by its policy of censoring search results in China. In their defense, the Internet giant from Mountain View has argued that some Google is better than none at all for the Chinese -- ultimately, all Google has done is comply with Chinese law after all. Frankly, we couldn't dare expect more from the average corporation...Google's competitors are thrilled to roll over in what ever way they can to please the Chinese government. Google, though, has long tried to establish a reputation for NOT being the typical corporation. Their continued uneasiness with the censorship of their search results in China may, in fact, lead to Google's exit from the world's most populous nation.

From the perspective of someone opposed to censorship and fearful of its spread, I'm thrilled with Google's change of stance. Google already has a massive amount of "geek cred" for owning the best search engine around and lots of other cool online services, but the company has just picked up a whole lot of new social cred. Google's decision, though, could have lasting financial consequences. Baidu remains the top search engine in China, but Google has captured a decent share of Chinese search engine traffic. While other companies are clamoring for access to China's growing marketplace, Google appears to be heading for the exit door. Google is potentially giving up on a lot of searches that won't be conducted and a lot of ads that won't be bought or clicked on if no agreement can be reached with the Chinese government. On the flip side, people who view this move as essentially a positive, anti-censorship stance are only going to like and perhaps use Google more. I'm seriously contemplating purchasing Google stock in the future, and I'm someone who typically loathes stocks that don't pay dividends. It goes without saying that I also feel prouder to use Google services now. Can the good will of those in the world opposed to censorship really counterbalance the loss of all that Chinese traffic? Frankly, I don't think so, but Google will still thrive in many markets thanks to its superior services and this gain in international goodwill will provide it an additional boost.

Just how international the search engine business is going to be remains to be determined. Google might not do business in China in the future, but I find it highly unlikely that Baidu will successfully penetrate European or American markets in a significant way, either. The rest of the world is a very big place, and Google is a leading player in the search engine world in most other places. China is an important market, to be sure, and in the future may indeed be the most important market...but if you have the rest of the world in your pocket, even losing China may not be such a big deal. There's also the not impossible scenario of China changing its policies and becoming more closed off to the rest of the world. Some backlash against economic liberalization is inevitable; ever-rising real estate prices and spotty social services can hardly be pleasing to sincere Communists. It's conceivable, though unlikely, that a lot of foreign companies may find themselves kicked out of the country or regulated to death should China's embrace of capitalism turn chilly. In that case, Google can be said to have gotten out while the getting was good.

The best case scenario for Google would be for its disappearing act in China not to be permanent. A different attitude towards censorship by a future Chinese government could reopen the market to Google. I have no doubt they'd be hot on Baidu's (or whoever else fills the Chinese search void in the meanwhile) heels in no time, even if they're shut out for a few years. Google's credibility gain has after all been felt in China as well -- they're frankly about the most prominent and believable voice to speak out against censorship recently. I put much less stock in what governments say about China because they always have an axe or two to grind. It's easy for a government to publicly complain about censorship or human rights abuses when what it is really concerned about is China's currency peg...that's part of how governments bargain with one another. Google, in contrast, has much to lose by taking such a strong anti-censorship stance. I don't expect Google's gamble to pay off immediately, but I also wouldn't be shocked if the company's brave move earns it a place in a history book or two a few decades from now.

Is MTurk keeping up with the competition?

I've long felt that Amazon's Mechanical Turk is one of the coolest projects undertaken by any of the giants. However, Amazon has been slow to update their online marketplace for work. Two years ago, I wrote a post on this blog suggesting two specific changes: one, I thought tasks should be categorized for the convenience of the workers, and two, I thought workers should be able to blacklist employers. Neither change has been implemented. The process of cycling through the available tasks remains slow and painful. Worse, scammers have increasingly started using MTurk to make money on the backs of workers by using many accounts and not paying even for good work. Amazon's limited enforcement of MTurk has been increasingly exposed and exploited.

Amazon's conundrum is that Mechanical Turk is a small component of its overall business. It makes some money, no doubt, but arguably not enough to justify putting more workers on the project. I suspect that's also why changes such as the ones I've suggested have been slow in coming. This leaves the door open for smaller, more nimble competitors who would actually be thrilled with those profits that seem small to Amazon. "Task" sites like MTurk seem to be cropping up at an accelerating pace; even worse news for Amazon is that they actually seem to be getting better. MTurk is still by far the most popular of the bunch, but if Amazon continues to be complacent that lead may slowly erode.

Right now, the new task sites offer one primary advantage over MTurk: they can pay people through PayPal, which means many international users are able to make money with them. MTurk allows users from around the world to join, but only Americans and Indians can withdraw cash...the rest of the international brigade have to be content with redeeming their earnings in the form of Amazon shopping credit. Microworkers, the most popular alternative to emerge so far, offers another powerful advantage: they actually have customer service that looks after the workers as well as employers. Case in point: I was actually able to get a task that was wrongly rejected reversed on Microworkers. That would be utterly impossible to do on MTurk! Microworkers also has a more sensible attitude towards rejections than MTurk: workers can be banned from completing tasks for a certain amount of time if they have too many rejections but they are given the opportunity to straighten up their ways. On MTurk, if too many requesters ban you in a certain time period, you're gone for good. Bear in mind that some of these banning requesters are themselves fraudsters. While Microworkers is the best MTurk competitor at the moment, myLot is another site to keep an eye on. They've long been a site which pays users for posting discussions, uploading images, and commenting on the news and blogs, but last year they opened up a tasks section to complement their other offerings. Because myLot offers multiple ways to earn, it's an attractive site for online workers who can divide their time between discussions and tasks.

I'm still waiting for the first tasks site to come along with a good categorization system, similar to what is seen on freelancing sites. You don't need to be a genius to figure out many online tasks can be grouped by category: transcription, article writing, SEO (social bookmarks, linkbuilding, and such) , data entry, signups, etc. Wading through huge lists of uncategorized jobs is a waste of time for workers and discourages them from specializing in particular tasks. I think the site that adopts such a system will have a big advantage. I haven't completely given up on MTurk implementing something like this, but I have a feeling it's more likely that one of the hungry young dogs, like Microworkers, will do it.

There once was a WebRing that escaped a giant.

I could fill pages with tales of sites that have been acquired and subsequently destroyed. Perhaps "destroyed" isn't the word -- sometimes web purchases are mainly done not for actual sites but for technology and people. From a web user's perspective (and that is the perspective I generally write from on this blog), though, services like Google's Dodgeball and AOL's XDrive have indeed been destroyed. They're no longer available to be used and enjoyed. It's almost as if they never existed at all in this crazy transient world we call the Internet, though Dodgeball fans should check out foursquare.

WebRing is an example of a rare happy story that can emerge when an acquisition goes wrong. A webring is basically a collection of related sites: you can think of it as a mini-directory that can be surfed not only at a centralized location but also at each site in the webring via a navigation bar. Years ago when I was starting out online webrings were pretty huge. They're much more obscure now, but just as useful -- I don't know of any other easier way to surf around the Web than to click on the "Next" link of a WebRing widget and it usually leads you to more relevant pages because webrings are human-edited. You can tell how big webrings once were by the fact that WebRing, the leading webring provider, was acquired by Yahoo! in 1999 as part of its purchase of GeoCities. By 2001, Yahoo! had lost interest in the site as they are wont to do. Normally, this would have pretty bad...disastrously bad you might say...as it is how acquired sites tend to meet their end. Rather than being catastrophic, however, Yahoo!'s abandonment of WebRing actually led to something good: an independent site run by one of the original site workers. Now Yahoo! doesn't own any part of WebRing -- it's a completely independent, privately owned site. I tend to think of it as a beacon of hope for all those who have had to watch their site fade away after being acquired. Sometimes, albeit rarely, there is life after a bad acquisition!

In addition to its core webring service, WebRing now also offers free webspace and free blog hosting. It is currently actively recruiting GeoCities users to move their pages there in light of Yahoo!'s recent decision to shutter GeoCities. You know, it might not be such a bad idea for someone to create a startup that just attempts to provide alternative services to sites that the giants kill. As WebRing's story illustrates, just because a giant loses interest in a site doesn't mean it doesn't have any life left.

Did Microsoft really need to rebrand its search engine again?

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Microsoft is a search company, and a serious one at that! What the company from Redmond has shown repeatedly over the last couple of years is that it is committed to search and it is willing to put all the effort required to make a dent in Google's throne. Microsoft's latest move has been to rebrand its oft-rebranded search engine once again. What was Live Search yesterday is Bing today. While Bing is more than just a name change, I haven't decided yet if Live Search's flaws have even by addressed by Microsoft in this latest iteration of its search engine. My big beef with Live Search has long been that it doesn't index enough of the Web in comparison to Google and its top listings are not necessarily relevant. Google doesn't necessarily return the BEST results for any given query on the first page of search results -- I would say it frequently doesn't -- but the main key to its success has, in my view, been its penchant for delivering relevant results for most every query. Part of the reason Google stays so relevant is because it indexes so much of the Web. It can handle the long tail keywords searchers throw at it better than any other engine. I don't think Bing can selectively index the Web and compete...it needs to be able to go everywhere the Googlebot does.

While I wish Microsoft well in its web endeavors, I can't say too I was too excited when I heard about the Bing rebranding. I actually feel like Live Search was an excellent name, and I was quite fond of the Windows Live brand as well -- they both sound professional, contemporary, and fit well with Microsoft's image. Bing, on the other hand, doesn't sound like a Microsoft product at all...it could be that's one of the reasons they picked it. It sounds lighthearted and fun, but to me it would seem to fit a game site better than a search engine. That said, you could argue that Yahoo and Google have silly names as well. Perhaps Microsoft feels that this is no coincidence and has embraced silliness in an attempt to compete. I think the name might just grow on me, though -- I love that the Live Search Club has been rebranded Club Bing and been given the domain name "clubbing.com"! That made me laugh...maybe Microsoft really can do this whole lighthearted thing after all.

I'm honestly going to give Bing a good try. Now that Microsoft has taken this leap, I hope it, too, gives Bing a good try. At some point, the rebranding needs to stop so a lasting brand can be established itself. Personally, I probably would've kept Live Search and just worked on making it a better search engine, but I see no reason why Bing can't be a success.

In2TV is a shadow of its former self.

I've long thought In2TV was one of AOL's most promising projects. If you've never heard of the site, you're not alone, but it is (was?) a site you could visit to watch classic television programs such as "My Favorite Martian" and "Scooby Doo, Where Are You!" Sounds like Hulu, right? Well, it was indeed like Hulu, except it had different content due to AOL's agreement with Warner Brothers. It was Hulu before Hulu was Hulu, and when it launched it was promoted by a television advertising campaign. That's actually how I found out about the site! Anyway, I've long thought In2TV was a nice complement to Hulu; while Hulu had fewer technical issues and was easier to nevigate, In2TV had content that Hulu didn't. Unfortunately, that just isn't true anymore.

Current visitors to In2TV will find a very plain list of viewable classic shows there. The problem is these are shows you can find on Hulu, Fancast, and other sites online. The unique stuff just isn't there anymore. AOL is still a force in the online video business, but it has increasingly become an aggregator, a site where people can go to find videos that can also be found elsewhere. The (essential) demise of In2TV may have been caused by the expiry of AOL's licensing agreements, but the redundant nature of the site seems to fit well with AOL's overall aggregation strategy. There's no particular reason to go through AOL for your video content, though, unless you're already used to using AOL. The old In2TV had unique content that could actually draw new people in...I don't think the new version has anything to draw people in with. Ultimately, In2TV seems like it will be remembered as a "What if?" site. It could have been where Hulu is today: near the top of the online video world. Why didn't it make it? Maybe it's the Internet's fault...not enough surfers used the darn site. The blogosphere didn't seem to cover the site like they should have; certainly Hulu got far more attention. In2TV was excellent in terms of content while it lasted, though; I really wish many of the old In2TV shows were still available somewhere online. Some of them aren't even available on DVD ("Head of the Class" is one example)!

This hasn't been a very good year for AOL. They've basically killed the three sites of theirs I happened to use the most: XDrive, In2TV, and P&G Classic Soaps. If we accept the giants as equal solely for purposes of this analogy, that would be like Google killing Google Search, Blogger, and Gmail. OUCH! Luckily, my favorite Google sites are more popular than my favorite AOL sites were so hopefully they'll stick around for a while. I may not have any sites left to use before long if the giants keep killing their sites like this, though.

Yahoo 360's long goodbye is finally over.

Yahoo 360 has had a strange history. To this day, many otherwise well-informed web surfers have never even heard of the site which was Yahoo's free blogging platform and early foray into social networking. It never became a notable competitor to Blogger or Wordpress or mySpace or Facebook when pageviews alone are considered. However, it attracted a loyal group of users, including many avid bloggers, who tended to think that 360 was a pretty amazing service. Yahoo didn't quite agree and in fact has been plotting the service's demise for the past couple of years -- someone even had the bright idea that all 360 blogs should be merged into Mash (a more "pure" social networking site) in 2008, but ultimately Mash died before 360 did. Just recently, Yahoo announced when exactly 360 would finally pass away: July 13th, 2009 is the date it will finally leave the Internet forever according to the official blog. I doubt anyone is really surprised that Yahoo is killing the service after the Mash fiasco, but many 360 fanatics still held out hope the service could be saved. Those 360ers always been a rather vocal and opinionated bunch of folks; if you don't believe me, just check out the thousands and thousands of comments on the older posts of the official blog. They have the right to be disgruntled considering that Yahoo is taking away a service they loved and replacing it with another service that is only a partial substitute.

While Mash didn't prove to be the successor to 360, Yahoo is now hoping many of its 360 users will move to its revised Yahoo Profiles service, which does allow blogging in much the same sense that mySpace allows blogging. Based on the 360 blogs I've visited over the years, I tend to think many did use 360 as a social networking tool so it is possible Yahoo will hold on to a good chunk of their more social 360 bloggers. Still, though, I think it's a mistake to to consider blogging synonymous with social networking or a subset of social networking. Google would be insane to try to merge Blogger with Orkut even though more social-type features have been added to Blogger of late; posts about international politics, the insurance industry, and Picasso's paintings just don't belong next to your vital stats and relationship status and I doubt that will ever change. While there are a few decent blogs on mySpace that I've come across, they tend to have a journal type feel to them...they're often deeply personal, and just the sort of thing your friends on a social network would want to read because they care about you personally. You probably wouldn't click over to Doug Dingleberry's mySpace profile to read his blog about the history and culture of southern Germany; you just might click there to read about what's happening in Doug's life, though. Obviously, the line between blogging sites and social networking sites is to a large extent cultural, but it is real for many. I predict that those who had the blogger mentality and used 360 just aren't going to like the social networking feel of Profiles.

What I find myself wondering is why a company like Yahoo ultimately couldn't have separate blogging and social networking platforms. I think their reasoning is partly philosophical -- there seems to be a great drive to consolidate at Yahoo and bring diverse services together under one umbrella: "One profile to rule them all" seems to be the motto. You could argue that that might indeed be rather convenient. Beyond that, I think Yahoo's actions betray the position the company increasingly occupies: they are trying to keep up with an Internet that is changing without their influence. They were late to both the blogging and social networking moves and in 2009 they're still trying to get a foothold in those sectors. When the next big trend hits, Yahoo will probably have to revamp Profiles again and start another site or three to try to get a piece of that new sector. Yahoo could be a highly successful copycat if that's all they want to be, but I think they'll need to stand by their projects more and stop dreaming their perfect copy of another's idea is going to be the next big thing. 360, like some other Yahoo sites, didn't really die of natural causes...it was choked to death by management that just didn't believe in it and thought it a failure.

Don't let your points expire at the Live Search Club.

I feel a certain twinge of pain after I view my stats page at the Live Search Club, Microsoft's free gaming-with-rewards site. It's not because I'm not proud of my exploits in the various word and other casual games at the Club -- I actually am -- but rather because at the end of my stats page there's a listing that shouldn't be there: Expired Tickets. Since tickets are the basic currency of the site, capable of being exchanged for such items as games, X-Boxes, and Zunes if you have them in sufficient quantities, it goes to figure that expired tickets are like money you can't use anymore. They totally suck, and I've got them. Oops.

A quick glance at the Live Search Club Terms & Conditions reveals what happened to my lovely tickets. Evidently, if you're not active on the site for six months (180 days to be exact), your preexisting points expire. Evidently, I wasn't active there for six months despite my big plans of winning an X-Box from the site. To be honest, that activity requirement is pretty reasonable as far as activity requirements go...I can't believe I went such a long time without playing the games there. It won't happen again, that's for sure, and I hope it won't ever happen to you. If you think you want to quit the site for a while, why not redeem your points for SOMETHING, anything, so they don't get the chance to expire? If I had done that I might at least have had some playing cards or a pen or something instead of all this sorrow and regret. Don't be me, people...use your tickets!

I believe the site is still doing well. There are some new (well, new to me at least...granted, I am expired ticket guy) games that I've been checking out lately...they're not all word games, either. "Discover the World", for instance, is a straight-up geography quiz and a lot of fun, while "Hidden Expedition: Titanic" is a find-the-image type of game that's strangely addicting. Given that Microsoft is going to be rebranding their search once again, I admit I do wonder a bit about the future of the site...but I'm hoping it will stay. It has plenty of good games and is one of the best ways to win (or, really, earn) electronics and other good prizes online -- in a world full of scams, the Live Search Club is a beacon of hope for Internet prize seekers.

The new Yahoo is the same as the old Yahoo.

With a new CEO at the helm, there has been some understandable excitement reverberating throughout the Internet community regarding the future of Yahoo. Finally, some meaningful break with the past had occurred at the tottering giant. However, Yahoo's recent decision to close GeoCities, the iconic free webspace provider, illustrates how difficult it will be for that tottering giant to ever truly revive. It's such a classic Yahoo move when you think about it. GeoCities was one of those Yahoo acquisitions that really went nowhere -- like Broadcast.com and Webring, GeoCities gradually fell from prominence after it was acquired. Yahoo's strategy has long been to close or ignore sites that aren't performing; they never seem to try to FIX their problems because they'd rather just get rid of them and start over from scratch no matter how much that costs them. This move is also sadly illustrative of Yahoo's supreme contempt for their users. Given that this is a company that once courted controversy by attempting to claim ownership over GeoCities' users content, no one should be surprised that Yahoo thinks little of deleting countless personal homepages that may have been hosted on their servers for many years. Still, Yahoo is unique among the giants in its truly cavalier approach to users' data: from closing Yahoo Photos to attempting to morph their blogging platform Yahoo 360 into a social network, Yahoo's history makes it very clear that it doesn't take its users' most precious content seriously. I wouldn't be surprised if they just decided to close Yahoo Mail for the hell of it one day given the corporate culture that seems to prevail there. Finally, this closure illustrates Yahoo's lack of respect for its own history; GeoCities was one of the first prominent free webspace providers and it allowed millions of people to create webpages for the first time. Although its best days may have occurred prior to the Yahoo! acquisition, Yahoo is the current owner of that legacy. GeoCities could have been closed for new registrations without any plans to shutter the service for existing users, allowing it to stand as a monument to an Internet gone by, but no...Yahoo evidently is worried about saving disk space and bandwidth in addition to the costs of maintaining the service.

There's one thing Yahoo did do right here, though, and that is inform its users well in advance of the closing. The exact date hasn't even been announced, but the lights will go out sometime later this year, with more details coming in the summer. Although Yahoo is emphasizing the fact that users don't need to do anything right now, I highly recommend that all GeoCities users find a new host for their sites and start redirecting their visitors to their new sites as soon as it is convenient in order to ensure a comfortable transition. Remember, search engines will need to find your new site, your old visitors will need to update their bookmarks, and other webmasters will need to update their links to your site -- it's a good idea to give yourself as much time as possible. There are plenty of other free web hosts around which frankly give you a lot more freedom than GeoCities ever did, but unfortunately many of these are fly by night operations. Google Sites gives you less freedom, but it is backed up by Google. Granted, those are the same guys who killed Google Notebook a while back, but I suspect Google users will still be able to access their notebooks long after GeoCities ceases to exist. Whatever GeoCities users do, I hope they don't move to Yahoo! Web Hosting, a paid hosting service, like Yahoo wants them to do -- come on, people, have some self-respect! Moving to another Yahoo web hosting service after getting screwed over by the company would be like knowingly hiring a guy who is having an affair with your wife to be your marital counsellor.

Personally, it's been a long time since I used GeoCities extensively. I'll always remember the site fondly for hosting some of my earliest attempts at HTML, though, in the pre-acquisition days. GeoCities' greatest legacy may be the generation of web developers who started at GeoCities (perhaps as children) and then went on to do great things outside the service, though GeoCities' closing is going to affect a number of great sites I still visit to this day as well. I don't want to whitewash history: the GeoCities story definitely isn't 100% good. They never sought to allow their users to profit from their content, for instance, and instead put obtrusive ads and watermarks all over their users' creations. While other free web hosts changed with the times and accepted that at least revenue sharing should be allowed, GeoCities resolutely stuck to the idea that providing free hosting was sufficient. I definitely think there was a reaction to this attitude; many great webmasters moved on to other free hosts and blogging platforms, and perhaps even more moved to paid hosting as that became gradually more affordable. To the end, though, GeoCities remained an outlet for free expression and continued to allow ordinary people to dabble with web creation for free. We're poorer without it. The extent to which Yahoo is poorer without it I'm unsure of, but I would think any remaining GeoCities users ought to be less inclined to use Yahoo services in the future.

The Internet still needs Yahoo! Search.

Searchers are sadly creatures of habit. When we find a search engine that delivers results we're happy with, we tend to stick with it. Although we might be open to changing search engines if something better comes along, most of us rely on one search engine. Google once was that better thing that came along and changed the world of search forever; it's still, in my view, the best search engine around. I rather think that too many people agree with me at the moment, for it can become dangerous for choice when a sizable majority of people come to prefer the same thing. With a new Yahoo! CEO at the helm, rumors that Yahoo! and Microsoft will strike a search deal are swirling once again. Such a deal might or might not make sense from a business point of view, but any potential tieup between these two Internet giants remains as bad for the consumer as ever, even though John Q. Consumer may not realize it yet.

I've always been one to dabble with different search engines, but ingrained habits die hard. Although I used to run the odd search with Hotbot and other search engines, Altavista was my bread and butter search engine for a long while; it was the site I searched with first almost every time. When I discovered Google, it quickly usurped Altavista's role in my search life. So, even though I may preach a lot about how having multiple search engines is very important, I myself use one search engine disproportionately more than I use any other. I want to change, though. Truthfully, the more I use Yahoo! Search the more I recognize that it is a necessary counterweight to Google. Trusting in Google's search results means accepting that Google's ranking system will always list the sites you want to see. For the most part, I am satisfied with Google's search results, but I still wonder, "What else is out there? What am I not seeing?" I don't want to totally depend on Google to let me know what is on the Web. When I search with Yahoo!, I often come across different sites that I don't see on Google for the same query even several pages into the search results. Sometimes these different sites are worth viewing, sometimes they're not, but they're certainly not so heinously inferior that I don't want to use Yahoo! anymore. Truth be told, I've thought that Yahoo! has grown into quite a decent search engine for a while now, unlike Microsoft's offering Live Search. Yahoo! does seem to have a preference for older sites, and it can't be compared to Google when it comes to indexing the Web (for instance, it thinks I last posted on this blog last spring!), but it's still the second best of the offerings we have right now. Even though I don't think too highly of Live Search's results, I'm glad that Microsoft is still in the search game, too -- the engine can always be improved, and I know Microsoft very much wants to become a serious search player. However, if Microsoft and Yahoo! end up partnering and canning Yahoo! Search in favor of Live Search, the Internet searcher is the big loser here. Not only would we lose a good search engine, but the new second best search engines would be even further behind Google in terms of quality.

Webmasters in particular should want to see multiple search engines continue to coexist. I normally don't get a lot of traffic from Yahoo!, but it really likes one of my recent projects for some reason and it has been sending me more traffic to that project than Google has so far. It's great for webmasters to know that they are not doomed to total obscurity just because one search engine doesn't like them any longer. If Yahoo! and the other search engines soldier on and hopefully grow more in popularity, neither webmaster nor searcher will have to depend on one company's ability to search, index, and rank the Web. We still need Yahoo! Search as much as ever.

Google Video is a service in transition.

Google Video recently announced that it will soon no longer accept new uploads. In effect, the service is transitioning from a hybrid video hosting platform/video search engine into a video search engine only though it will still host all its preexisting video content. I must admit I'm not as upset at this change as I am at some of Google's other recent moves, like the ending of development of Google Notebook, but that's probably because I've used Google Video primarily as a search engine for a long time now. (Of course, it also helps ease the pain to know that Google is still operating the Web's most popular user-generated video site: YouTube!) I've found that it's generally faster to search for videos on GV as opposed to searching individual video sites and it's also more effective because GV knows about more video sites than I do. I wouldn't say that Google Video is quite on par with Google's web search service in terms of delivering quality, relevant results for every search, but it's not too bad and I'm glad that the Google team plan to continue to work at tweaking it. A common complaint seems to be that YouTube dominates the search results, which is true, but I've personally found a lot of obscure, often country specific video sites through Google Video as well. Frankly, YouTube is the busiest online video host so it may well always dominate video search engine results.

Google Video did have at least one definite advantage over YouTube: it allowed all of its users to upload long videos whilst YouTube now restricts virtually all of its users to uploading videos with lengths of ten minutes or less. Formerly at least YouTube directors could upload longer videos -- actually, existing YouTube directors still can, but new directors no longer gain this ability. In part because of YouTube's restrictions, much of Google Video's popularity has stemmed from its welcoming stance towards long videos. In particular, it became a popular online destination for documentary watchers. Classic documentaries uploaded with the permission of their producers will still make Google Video a worthy video site in its own right for a long time to come, but it's sad that there'll be no new documentaries added in the future and that the diehard doc fans will have to find a new place online to call home. In the long run, though, I think Google Video will reach a larger audience as a search engine than it ever could just as a video content site in competition with YouTube. I don't agree with those who think YouTube will eventually usurp GV's search role, too -- it just makes more sense to search for video content on Google Video than it does to search on something called "YouTube."

In the face of a recession, Google shrugged.

I decided to focus this blog on the services offered by the five major Web players because at the time I started this blog I believed that they were coming up with some of the most innovative online projects and also because I thought a project backed by one of the giants would have a better possibility of surviving long-term. I have to admit now that I was totally wrong. None of the giants -- with the possible exception of Amazon -- really seem to stand by their projects. None of them -- with the possible exception of Amazon -- take care in what projects they choose to tackle and release to the public. They seem to release and kill projects at a whim. It might not be the bandwidth bills or server costs that kill their projects as so often happens with independent startups, but the projects die pitiful and sudden deaths nonetheless. I've long been planning on opening a sister site to this blog that just covers independent web projects, and the latest spate of project killings by Google has made me more determined than ever to do this. Frankly, the giants just can't be trusted.

Google has in the past done quite a good job at keeping its projects going. Yes, Google Answers was unceremoniously killed, and several projects have been ignored after their release or acquisition. The company has been reluctant to use the axe, though, and I thought that showed a commendable commitment to both its users and its projects. With the economy tanking, things have changed. Google's 3D community Lively was killed before most people even knew it existed. The long-ignored projects Jaiku, Dodgeball, and Google Catalogs were more recently canned. In my view, Google's recent decision to cease development and disallow signups for Google Notebook was the worst move at all. This was a useful service and seemingly a reasonably popular one; it seems to be the killed service that will be most missed judging from the online reaction to Google's recent moves. Granted, Google hasn't started hated its users -- it is throwing them a bone where it can, letting current Google Notebook users continue using the service and opensourcing Jaiku so that anyone will soon be able to start their own microblogging service on their own servers. Still, I have a hard time believing that these types of cuts were really necessary on the part of a huge company like Google unless they are in worse financial shape than is commonly believed. I have to wonder what service might next be axed for arbitrary reasons...perhaps it will be Blogger, the Google service I count on the most apart from search? Is any Google service really safe?

What is most unforgiveable about all this is that Google did not really explore their options with these canned projects. They didn't put ads on Google notebooks. They killed Lively before it had time to build enough of a userbase to get corporations and other advertisers interested. They didn't let Jaiku become a serious Twitter competitor when Twitter was experiencing serious growing pains because they never allowed open signups. It's almost as if the company didn't want these services to be successful -- or, more likely, they just couldn't be arsed to explore all these potentialities. The most annoying thing about web giants is their incredible inefficiency. On one hand, they have the talent and ingenuity to produce these often very interesting projects. On the other, they seemingly don't have the manpower or the will to build many of these projects up into something profitable and successful. They do have people willing to greenlight projects only to then kill them off suddenly, though.

Perhaps we'll be able to look back on this one day and say, "Well, it was just the recession. Google's stock sure took a beating back in '08 -- they had to streamline. The way they acted then didn't really reflect the kind of company they really are." I'm not confident that it is just the recession, though -- I think the malaise and inefficiency that has long afflicted Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft's web division may also have infected Google. Users beware: the service you love today may well be axed tomorrow.

Hexolabs is stretching the limits of YouTube.

When you think YouTube, you think "Video." Some people go to YouTube for funny pet antics, some go to it for news, some go to it for vlogs, some go to it for copyrighted content...but it's mainly video stuff that drives people to the site, apart from the ubiquitous "song + photo slideshow" offerings. Interaction to this point on YouTube has largely taken the form of communication between people -- through comments, messages, and video responses -- rather than direct interaction between people and the videos themselves. Hexolabs, an India-based mobile company, doesn't seem to think that YouTube needs to be such a passive experience. They have utilized YouTube's annotation feature set to produce one of YouTube's first interactive games. Who would have guessed that YouTube might ever become a GAMING platform?

Hexolabs' game is called "A Car's Life." It follows the animated adventures of a car travelling through a simple black and white world. To advance to each successive level, the player/viewer must click on the annotation link that crops up on each video; if you fail to click the button in time, you get to watch the car suffer a terrible demise. The button is really merely a link to the next video in the series -- you can certainly watch the videos out of order. In fact, you can "win" the game without even playing if you want. Because the link to the next level disappears very quickly, you may well find yourself tempted to cheat -- the link is fully clickable if the video is paused. Once I knew where the link was going to appear on each level, I personally didn't find it too hard to win the game the "right way." All in all, I enjoyed the experience, mostly because it forced me to change the way I view YouTube. It's amazing how a feature like annotation can create a whole new world of possibilities. As a game, "A Car's Life" is obviously very simple and more of an experiment than a polished product, but for a YouTube game in 2008 it's fantastic. If you enjoy the visuals of the game, you might want to give some Vectrex games from the 80s a try -- for some reason, I kept thinking of "Armor Attack" while I was playing around with Hexolabs' creation. I know what I'll be playing for the rest of the day...

I'm sure we haven't seen the last of gaming on YouTube. It will be interesting, though, to see if game development is something that will be encouraged or discouraged by the corporate overlords. One could argue that gaming on YouTube makes the site less pure as a video destination -- "A Car's Life" is cool because there aren't many YouTube games right now, but if you want to play online games there are tons of sites out there that'll let you do that to your heart's content. Personally, I welcome the chance to do something a little different on YouTube from time to time.