In my continuing effort to give away Gmail accounts, I have a question for my readers who do not necessarily use social networking services and who may not blog and use whiz bang blog tracking and tracing tools such as Feedster, Technorati, Waypath, K-collector, etc.

Google would be perfect if _________________.

Everyone uses Google, no? Once again,  please leave your responses in the comments field below.

And please let me know if you would like a gmail account. I will be giving away a gmail account to each of the first 10 'commenters' who leave reasonable responses. Please include a valid email address (in the email address field (private field) on the comments form) so I can invite you to your new gmail account.

There are soooo many different ways to track news, memes, conversations, chatter, and just plain old noise throughout the blogosphere, the webosphere, and beyond. However, a number of my most successful tracking mechanisms usually lead back to… Google.

According to a Reuters news item—Google Leads Web Search But Challenges Loom -S&P: "Forty-eight percent of search engine users … use Google most overall, compared with 20 percent for Yahoo Inc. ... , 14 percent for Microsoft Corp.'s … MSN and 7 percent for AOL" (survey results courtesy of Standard & Poor's and InsightExpress).

One of the many tools that I utilize is Google Web Alerts—which notifies me whenever new pages, related to my searching interests, float to the surface of the Googlesphere.

This morning—while peeking at the shavings from the Internet iceberg tip that Google continuously mines and deposits into my Gmail account—up popped an old bit on Socialtext.

Back on December 30, 2003, Neil J. Rubenking for PC Magazine rated Socialtext four out of a possible five bullets—making it a PC Magazine "Editors' Choice" product. (Don't think I blogged this one.)

 
PS: Hey Marc Canter—there are 16 entries in "My Workspaces" on Socialtext. Could one possibly be ahead of you in just this one area?:-)

Forget Orkut, and all of the other YASNS — if you want to find out how to contact someone, or need information on someone, or are just curious about someone, where do you go first? Google?

This evening as I was reviewing items to include in this Social Software Weblog — I was browsing through various news items and found about 100 references to Rachel Konrad's AP Newswire — Google Flirting With Offering IPO — simply because one of the people quoted in the article  mentions that "There's been a lot of people talking about search and social networking software…"

Search and Social Networking… Peas in a pod? And not necessarily searching my social network, or your social network, of our friends of friends of friends social networks… But the Internet at large's social network.

Search Engines, Life Engines, News Engines — lots of engines, where's the fuel from — renewable or depletable resources?

In a conversation between BusinessWeek Correspondent Ben Elgin and Google CEO Eric Schmidt —
Elgin asks Schmidt:

"Are you working hard to find a way to create more lock-in with your users?"

To which Schmidt replies:

"You're asking a perfectly reasonable question of a normal company. That's not how Google works. The way Google works is about innovation. We are awaiting the discovery of what will achieve your objective. Do you see the distinction?

Innovation comes from invention, which you cannot schedule. That's the secret. When I look at Google News or [Google's social networking site] Orkut, I never could have anticipated their success."
______________

Which of this current brood of YASNS will innovate well enough to 'stick'? Orkut? Some folks continue to regulary re-invent themselves in these social fora, in ways that evaporate quickly — like rain on hot blacktop. Another form of "Massively Multiplayer Online Games"?

Ryan Naraine reports that SNS Ecademy's Julian Bond has received a cease-and-desist order —

with a warning that the creation of a news feed from the results of Google News was against its terms of reference.

According to Bond, the company requested the removal of RSS-powered Google News headlines from his Ecademy business networking site and made it clear Webmasters are not allowed to display headlines from Google News on third-party sites.

Bond goes on to express his disappointment with Google's failure to embrace RSS. Ryan Naraine points out that:

many in the content syndication space view Google's reluctance to embrace RSS as a strategic move to boost the competing Atom format, Bond thinks the company has simply not gotten around to adding syndication to the news portal.

...Google, through its Blogger service, has ditched RSS in favor of Atom syndication format but critics argue that the availability of competing formats is scaring away mainstream adoption of RSS.

In March this year, Dave Winer, the co-author of the RSS format proposed a merger between the two formats, insisting "it's time to bury the hatchet and move on."

In addition to the new look that I posted last evening Google also has two new experiments in the lab — Web Alerts (BETA) and Personalized Web Search. [google-blog.dirson.com] I was also going to post reference to Google's More, more, more page last evening but it was too late to keep focusing on my screen anymore! (-:=

Just noticed Google's new look while searching for articles this evening:

Matt Hicks writes for eWeek on Microsoft's plans to release two new search services — MSN Newsbot for News and Blogbot for Weblogs [both probably in the first half of 2004 according to MSN product manager Karen Redetzki says Todd Bishop of seattlepi.com.] More on these two offerings from this eWeek article:

Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of the MSN Information Services and Merchant Platform division, offered early details of new search services during the company's Strategic Account Summit in Redmond, Wash.

 MSN Blogbot and MSN Newsbot are separate Web crawlers for indexing specific types of Web sites. Mehdi's presentation is among the first times Microsoft has discussed plans for blog search, and Redezki said it will differentiate MSN from other top search and portal sites that so far have not focused on search exclusively for blogs.

 Google, though, is well-known for including blogs in its Web search index, and dozens of blog-specific search sites exist. Among the best-known are Technorati Inc. and Feedster LLC, which also focus on indexing Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Yahoo also has included RSS feeds in its Web search results.

 "It's exciting for us to venture into this field because blogging has really taken off," Redezki said.

Todd Bishop, in his seattlepi post, adds:

And then there's something else — Answerbot. This will be a search feature that will retrieve answers to questions posed in natural language, along with links to related sites. This is probably a few years away from launch, Redetzki said.

Brad Stone Writes for the March 29 issue of Newsweek on the growing niche player competition nipping at Google's heels. He talks about the obvious big fish players — Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft making the largest imprints in the search industry, but then he also talks about the 'pilot fish' following in the wake of these giants of the search industry — Groxis with Grokker, Eurekster, Nutch, Dipsie, Brightplanet, Quigo, Mooter — do I hear strains of Yet Another Search Engine Service [YASES] playing in the background?

I picked up this Newsweek Cover Google story while tracking Eurekster — the YASNS / YASES play that I am following for the Social Software weblog.

It is true that Google does not meet all of the possible niche search desires of an increasingly 'search saavy society.' But it is also true that as these needs are increasingly surfaced and addressed by the niche players that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft will eventually make plans to either assimilate these niche players or meet the more popular needs themselves.

Odd to see Sergey Brin and Larry Page on the cover of Newsweek… (-:=

The search engine executive at Microsoft charged with building a paid-search technology to compete with Yahoo and Google has quietly left the company after less than four months on the job, according to a report by CNET´s News.com.

Paul Ryan, the former chief technology officer at Overture Services, was hired at MSN on Oct. 20, 2003, just weeks after Yahoo finalized its $1.63 billion acquisition of the commercial search groundbreaker Overture, which started as GoTo.com. Ryan's appointment as general manager in charge of "the monetization of MSN Search," according to Microsoft, was seen as a coup in the company's efforts to build a formidable rival to No. 1 search engine Google and replace its current commercial search partner, Overture.

According to the CNet report Microsoft spokeswoman Crystal Duncan confirmed that Ryan left on Feb. 12. "It's business as usual, his departure was unrelated to the company's emphasis on search technology," Duncan said.

In the race to become the top search engine delivering the most relevant and the most profitable search results (a strange relationship of contraries) this may deliver a large blow to the MSN Search juggernaut, in their chase to catch Google and Yahoo.

Mark Boslet of the Associated Press writes a NewsFlash article — Startups seek new ways to Google the net.

Will Eurekster capture market share with its 'personalized' responses? Will Yahoo succeed with its own search formulas? Will Endeca gain a footing by helping enterprise websites personalize their customers' searching? Will Groxis Inc.'s Grokker create its own 'bubble?' Will Google stay fresh and keep ahead of the pack of search services attempting to target more localized, personalized search?

Well… Chris Sherman, editor of SearchDay feels that the market is "going to evolve away from search engines to answer engines…"

Does this answer all of my questions? How about your questions?

comScore Media Metrix has published the 'Top 50 Internet Properties.' Included among these 'properties' are SNS's Tickle and Classmates.com as well as Lycos — soon to be re-invented as an SNS, and of course Orkut's parent, Google.

Forrester analyst, George F. Colony, weighs in on Google's pending IPO and cautions — "perspective is the order of the day, not irrational exuberance."

Orkut Buyukkokten, one of Google's engineers, has created a social networking service for Google. Right now it is 'invitation only.' Google employees, and friends of Google employees make up the 'orkut' membership. Are you a member?

Update from CNET: "Google spokeswoman Eileen Rodriquez said that despite Orkut's affiliation, the service is not part of Google's product portfolio at this time. "We're always looking at opportunities to expand our search products, but we currently have no plans in the social networking market."