Companies and countries mostly talk about google. Google is the search engine which goes boldly where no one else gone! But if you believe that you are on the right way just block google to index your site. Mostly no one can done this.

Execs reveal why newspapers don’t block Google by Greg Sandoval

To hear the poobahs of traditional media tell it, Google is to print media what global warming is to the polar caps. At many once-stalwart print publications, profits are melting away.

For several months, leaders at some of the nation’s most influential newspapers and periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and the online arm of Forbes magazine have begun blaming Google and similar Web services for at least some of their deepening financial troubles. Google sells ads tied to the news blurbs it “scrapes” from news sites. It links back to the Web sites from which it acquired the content but doesn’t share ad revenue with them. This isn’t fair, many media execs say.

In all the very public bashing of Google, however, few if any of the critics has answered why they don’t just cut Google out of the equation by preventing the search engine from indexing their Web pages. The task could be accomplished by inserting a single line of code into their URLs. If Forbes.com added a line such as forbes.com/robots.txt, content from the site would be rendered invisible to Google.

Representatives from the Journal and AP declined to comment for this story, but their Web sites speak volumes for them. None of the companies has severed ties with Google and risked losing access to the search engine’s millions of users. Traditional print publications, which have seen ad revenue plummet, mass layoffs, and in some cases the shut down of operations, are now hopelessly dependent on Google to lure readers, says media executives. Jim Brady, the Washington Post’s former digital chief, says the question of whether Google is good or bad for print journalism is almost irrelevant at this point. Print publications are helpless to do anything about it.

“Get out a sheet of paper and write down all the things Google does for you,” said Brady, former executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, as he offered advice to his former peers in old media. “Google allows your content to be exposed to people who would never see it otherwise. If you’re able to code your pages well, then you can get an awful lot of leads from Google. It’s up to your site to turn those leads into loyal customers…Google is not going away.”

Pointing fingers
That’s not exactly how Jim Spanfeller sees it. The CEO of Forbes.com questioned in an opinion piece he wrote for the blog PaidContent.com, “is Google being disproportionally compensated for what is fundamentally other people’s work?” He said the answer appears to be yes. He claimed Google “makes roughly $60 million a year directing folks” to Forbes.com.

So why doesn’t Spanfeller prevent the search engine from indexing the magazine’s content?

“I don’t know that this isn’t a bad idea,” Spanfeller said in a phone interview with CNET News. “But I think that would be hard to do without everyone’s competitors shutting (Google) out as well.”

The sounds like an acknowledgment that Forbes needs Google to compete and that the search engine may provide publications like his a valuable service. That’s at least what Marissa Mayer, a Google exec, told Congress on Wednesday during a hearing on the future of journalism. Google sends 1 billion page views every month to print publications, Mayer testified during the hearing.

He argues, however, that Google does do harm. For example, the blurbs the search engine obtains from news sites often includes enough information to satisfy the major questions about a story. For many people, reading a headline and synopsis about three more people dying of swine flu in Mexico is all some readers want to know. There’s little motivation to click on links to the site that actually produced the news. To some in media, this violates copyright law.

Spanfeller says there’s also frustration when a news organization pays professional journalists to do original reporting and then see links to stories written by amateurs–or worse, blogs that are little more than flimsy rewrites of their content–with higher visibility on Google than their own.

Spanfeller wants Google to do a better job of showcasing professionally created content, and “cease stepping on or over the line of fair use.” This means he wants Google to start providing less information in its news blurbs and crack down on sites that use stories without authorization.

“We show users just enough to make them want to read more,” wrote Alexander Macgillivray, Google’s associate general counsel, wrote last month. “Even though the Copyright Act does not grant a copyright owner a veto over such uses, it is our policy to allow any rights holder…to remove their content from our index.”

The cure?
So what do print execs want from Google? First, the search engine could cure a lot of ills by sharing ad revenue with print companies. After all, it’s their content Google is selling ads against. Forget it; not going to happen, predicts Brady.

“There was a fair amount of pushing from people at the (Washington Post) news group who said: ‘We should make Google pay us for our content,’ Brady said. “I told them ‘They’re never going to do it. They wouldn’t give us a dime.’ (They responded) ‘Well then, we should block it.’ I said ‘Fine, we can go ahead and do that and that’s suicidal.’

“Google built a better mousetrap than the newspapers were able to build,” Brady continued. “That’s part of the reason they’re making the money they’re making. At some point I don’t know what you can do about that other than to try and work it to your advantage.”

There are some media execs looking for new ways to get their content in front of readers without help from Google. Amazon on Wednesday showcased a new large-screen e-reader called the Kindle DX. The device is partly geared toward readers of newspapers, and magazines. Newspaper publishers Hearst Corp., and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. have said they will create their own e-readers, which they will use to deliver their own content.

This kind of effort is fine with Brady, only he would like everyone in traditional media to stop obsessing about the past.

“We have to ask, ‘what’s next?’” said Brady who plans to open his own consulting business. “That’s where everybody needs to get to. Because Google isn’t going away and they aren’t writing us checks. Let’s move on. We’re all getting way too hung up on the past, with all the things we should have done 10 years ago, could have done…well, we didn’t. Game over. We should be asking ‘What are the new rules of this game and how do we best take advantage of them.’”

People who sees this problem just as a legal subject or as a censorship law can only solve it for short term.

The best way to understand this issue is through knowing the internet history of Turkey. Perception and appreciation of internet as a media has started with the foundation of haberturk.com. Haberturk used scandal news and events in order to call attentions as a news website. The need of controlling and inspecting the internet by hands of state begins when this site starts to becoming a thread to  the governing party of the time. A draft of law has been constituted. However since this act of law aims to control websites such as haberturk.com, it becomes censoring more than inspecting. Moreover, since legists who prepared it knows the traditional media more than the digital one, the law contains technically impossible procedures such as two photocopies of each webpage sent to local authorities etc. Liberals who realized this reacted hard to the law. This caused the moderate renewal of the law.
But, despite all the softening, this new law signed by the President of the time, Ahmet Necdet SEZER in 2005 contains censoring of media in its soul, so its logic of punishment was deep wide in order to increase its dissuasiveness. The law took the force of processing this logic from taboos of Turkish society such as child pornography, insult to Ataturk etc. That is because the legislation was enacted by agreement of all forces from media to public. These forces of which the law received its support was its Achilles heel at the same time. May be by this analysis, or just by coincidence, immediately after the law was laid down, a video broadcasted in Youtube was sued for one of the nine main components of the so known catalog crimes in Turkish lawbook. Eventually the case lead to a ban to Youtube due to those nine crimes mentioned.

This situation caused the forces in Turkey who supported this law once splitted into two. The main reason to this separation was not arised of the problem thereopen but the worries. Yet for the moment Youtube.com should show respect to the subject which is very sensitive in common for Turkish people and remove the video. However, liberal constitution interests in concerns more than the problem itself, it cares for Turkey not to remain in hands of censorship, and uncomfortable with the incapability of government handling the issue. For the moment, major aim of all groups who want youtube.com not to be banned is not more than the will of diverging from a censorious society. Besides, all forces of Turkish community owns an indisputable integrity about the removal of those visuals containing insults and disrespect to Ataturk, and demands esteem on our culture and merits.Turkish culture, though it molded its matriahal basics through tolerance, is committed deeply to their values which are protected from past to present and endowed with high pride and figure to serve them even if it worth their lives. Although this approach of Turks is seem paradoxical in many other cultures including European culture,it is the main speciality that makes Turkish people distinct in the world.
To this reason, no matter how it is told, in order to remove this problem, primarily youtube.com has to show respect to Turkey’s culture and values. People who sees this problem just as a legal subject or as a censorship law can only solve it for short term. Youtube, like many other international firms operating in Turkey, has to be respectful not only to our laws but also to our viewpoints. In this matter, Google groups should take companies operating for long time in Turkey such as Microsoft as an example. Yet, though similar problems are lived with facebook, the solution come easily alongwith the communication skills of Microsoft.

Most of you can see that Obama has a great online campign. You can find more information about that on techpresident.com , but now it is time to make a great human resource for Obama to approve the mission impossible, the rise of the US again. But it is not as easy as it seems. Because, US not only lost it is trust on the point of view of their citizen but also its reputation on the world nations. Especially in Turkey. Hope Obama, will find his best path to Turkish Nations which are famous on their hospitality.

During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama used technology to organize, communicate, and raise funds in innovative ways that gave him an advantage over opponents in both the primaries and the general election. It’s clear that Obama views tech as a powerful catalyst, and with the U.S. facing an unprecedented array of economic challenges, Obama will need to use technology to drive efficiency and institutional transformation.

A part of his policy platform, Obama has stated that he plans to hire the nation’s first chief technology officer (CTO) to play quarterback in driving these changes. A CTO is typically an organization’s top engineer and focuses on outward-facing technologies , but based on Obama’s policy statements he wants to use the national CTO position to:

• Build a 21st century technology infrastructure
• Unite and lead the CIOs and CTOs of various federal agencies
• Architect innovative tech solutions to help solve big problems

As a result, Obama is going to need a visionary tech leader who can rally both technologists and standard Washington bureaucrats around a common purpose. It also wouldn’t hurt to bring in a big name — someone who already has a strong reputation that will translate into political capital. Here are 10 top candidates.

10. Shai Agassi

This former technology head of SAP has the business experience and the interest in larger societal issues to do well as America’s CTO. However, he’s recently founded his own company, Better Place, to create an entirely new business model and power system to run the electric cars of the future. Because of his passion for that project, it’s doubtful he would want the U.S. CTO gig.

9. Larry Lessig

Lessig, a Stanford Law professor, is the founder of Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society and has been an outspoken commentator on U.S. technology policy. Although Lessig has a conservative background, he publicly endorsed Obama for president. At times, he has even been rumored as a candidate for numerous political offices himself. He would be an excellent tech policy wonk and a decent visionary, but he does not have a traditional tech background and that would likely hurt him in gaining the respect of the federal tech executives that he would have to lead.

8. Padmasree Warrior

Warrior is one of only two candidates on this list who is currently serving as a CTO. She was previously CTO at Motorola and in 2008 moved over to the CTO job at Cisco, where she is tasked with driving technology strategy and innovation and serving as an evangelist of what’s possible in the future. She’s also demostrated an interest in politics, having attended the Democratic National Convention in August and expressed enthusiasm for Obama’s vision of America.

7. Shane Robison

The other current CTO on this list, Robison is the executive vice president of technology and strategy at Hewlett-Packard. All of the CTOs of the various HP business units report up through Robison, as does the forward-looking HP Labs and the company’s corporate marketing department. That kind of breadth of experience would serve Robison very well as U.S. CTO. He’s also a visionary who understands the larger context of the current technology revolution and its impact on business and society. It’s unclear whether he has any interest in politics or if he could be wooed away from HP.

6. Vint Cerf

Cerf is sometimes called the “Father of the Internet” because he and Bob Kahn designed the TCP/IP architecture that made the Internet possible. Cerf, who currently works as Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1997 by President Clinton and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005 by President Bush. He has outstanding technical chops and extensive experience working with government technology agencies, but his leadership and management credentials aren’t quite as strong as some of the other candidates.

5. John Chambers

One of the technology industry’s most passionate characters, Chambers has a will of steel that would help him cut through the bureaucratic stone walls in Washington. The Cisco CEO is a terrific visionary and one of tech’s most effective leaders when it comes to getting a team to execute. Chambers has also shown an interest in politics — even being rumored for an eventual run at political office. He endorsed John McCain for president and was a significant donor to the McCain campaign, so that could hurt him in being considered as Obama’s CTO.

4. Ed Felten

A Princeton computer science professor, Felton founded Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy and is a leading researcher, commentator, and blogger on technology law and policy. He famously served as the Department of Justice’s leading technology witness in its antitrust suit against Microsoft. He would be an excellent policy wonk, but doesn’t have as much experience leading technology teams.

3. Bill Gates

The biggest name that nearly everyone is forgetting is Bill Gates, the former Microsoft leader who retired from his full-time gig at Microsoft in June so that he could devote his energies to the Gates Foundation. He obviously has his sight set on larger societal impact. What better way to make that happen than helping define the critical technology policies of the next decade? Melinda can handle the foundation. Gates has the vision, the iron will, and the ability to rally the troops that would make him a successful CTO. The only problem is that he is still technically the chairman of Microsoft and it would be a conflict of interest to continue in that roll while serving as U.S. CTO. Plus, the government uses a lot of open source solutions and Gates has never been an open source fan.

2. Julius Genachowski

Genachowski went to Harvard Law School with Obama and served as an advisor to the Obama campaign on technology issues, even helping to draft Obama’s technology platform. He previously served as chief of business operations at InterActive Corp, was an FCC advisor during the Clinton administration, and founded his own company, LaunchBox Digital, to help tech startups. Since the election, Obama has named Genachowski to his transition team. It’s likely that he will have a role in the Obama administration, either as the first CTO or, more likely, as head of the FCC.

1. Eric Schmidt

The Google CEO endorsed Obama in October and has served as an unofficial advisor on economic and technology issues throughout the campaign. Since the election, Schmidt has served on Obama’s newly-formed economic advisory board. Schmidt is a pragmatic, low-key leader who can successfully work in collaboration with other leaders. He is not as much of a visionary or a bulldog, but his temperament might be the right fit for this position. At the end of last week, Schmidt denied that he is interested in the position, and no one could blame him for not wanting to leave Google, which is at the top of its game and still has an excellent future. Nevertheless, don’t rule him out just yet. He remains the most likely candidate for the job.

Internet’s most frequent problem is the big brother. We all know that all our movements on the web can be seen by, service provider, the site we visit and the goverment. But now there is  a real problem appears. Web will be indexed by you not robots. So the trojan is your browser for that!

It’s now over a month since Google released its open source web browser, Chrome. An interesting theory we heard recently is that Google will use Chrome to index the password protected Web – a.k.a. the ‘dark web’.

Right now the Chrome Terms of Service (TOS) prevents Google from indexing private data. But when you consider that Chrome was initially presented as a browser for applications, instead of just web pages, this theory begins to make more sense.

Most web apps are password-protected and so there’s no way for a normal search engine to index the data – even data that’s generalized and doesn’t identify individual users. But with a full-fledged browser to complement its search engine, Google now theoretically has the means to index this previously inaccessible data.

So is Google planning to use Chrome in the future to index password protected data on the Web? This needn’t be a sinister question to ask, because the Web has evolved into something that is not easily indexed. Neil McAllister wrote a great article back in July entitled Is the Web still the Web? (via Slashdot), that delved into this subject. Neil wrote:

“Is it still the Web if it’s not really hypertext? Is it still the Web if you can’t navigate directly to specific content? Is it still the Web if the content can’t be indexed and searched? Is it still the Web if you can only view the application on certain clients or devices? Is it still the Web if you can’t view source?”

As he also pointed out, RIA Flash and Silverlight content can now be searched – see our own writeup of this in July.

So the next step is to be able to search and index web applications that rely on user-generated content. Chrome is the perfect vehicle to do that. There would have to be a change in the TOS to allow it, because indexing private data is of course still a no-no among search engines – especially the market leader Google. And there would be a big privacy issue with indexing your personal browsing history. But what if Google could convince users of the value of indexing web app data without identifying the individual user…

What do you think of this theory – too far out? Remember that Chrome has already become by most accounts the 4th leading browser, after IE, Firefox and Safari. It’s already usurped Opera and it’s only 1 month old, still in beta and there’s no Mac version. In ReadWriteWeb’s stats for September, Chrome was used by 6.3% of our readers – not bad when you consider we have a higher proportion of Mac users than mainstream sites.

When Chrome is 2nd or 3rd in the browser market, then it may be in a position to start implementing some grand plans – like indexing password protected data. Let us know if this is too crazy, or you can forsee a socially acceptable use case for this scenario.

Update: Chris Messina notes that Flock already does this:

“Flock already DOES index every page you visit with Lucene and keeps the data in an offline cache. I could imagine that if I were to want to use Flock on another computer, I wouldn’t want to limit my search result to only what I visited on THAT machine — I’d want to pull from my entire browsing history.

We simply need protections to enable this kind of circumstance to be offered safely — or at least with minimized risk.”

Alexa, webtrends, google analytics. The measurement and the degree of trust of websites, is becoming a problem for all the web for years. Google’s CEO is also have some problems about it.

Google’s Schmidt Says Internet ‘Cesspool’ Needs Brands

Says the Solution Is Quality Content; Tells Publishers and Editors to ‘Increase Your Relevance’
The internet is fast becoming a “cesspool” where false information thrives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday. Speaking with an audience of magazine executives visiting the Google campus here as part of their annual industry conference, he said their brands were increasingly important signals that content can be trusted.

“Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”
Google CEO Eric Schmidt: ‘We don’t do content. You all create content.’
Welcome words
Those were welcome words for the editors and publishers who have been watching the internet draw more and more ad spending every year. Mr. Schmidt took aim, however, at the Association of National Advertisers for opposing Google’s planned ad deal with Yahoo. The association has said the deal will diminish competition and help Google and Yahoo increase ad prices.

“If you’re going to criticize us, criticize us correctly,” Mr. Schmidt said. “We’re guilty of many things, but that’s not one of them.”

In a talk that he structured mostly as an invitation for questions and ideas, Mr. Schmidt declined to advise magazines on looking more popular to Google’s page-ranking programs.

“We don’t actually want you to be successful,” he said. The company’s algorithms are trying to find the most relevant search results, after all, not the sites that best game the system. “The fundamental way to increase your rank is to increase your relevance,” he added.

On the subject of print, especially newspapers as we have known them, Mr. Schmidt was decidedly gloomy. “The evidence is not good,” he said, guessing that the print business will eventually comprise a smaller piece of publishers’ much larger online businesses.

A ‘natural partnership’
That said, magazines and other professional content creators are essential for Google’s efforts to help people find desirable content, he explained. “We don’t do content,” he said. “You all create content. It’s a natural partnership.”

But when asked where the industry ends up if there aren’t outlets willing to pay journalists to create quality content, Mr. Schmidt was a bit Palin-esque, saying that he didn’t have an answer but one thing to look at is whether journalism should be a for-profit enterprise.

The future of quality editorial is, moreover, hardly certain. “It’s a huge question in the world,” Mr. Schmidt said, “particularly in the United States.”

Branding, on the other hand, may be an essential element that helps people navigate the world, he said. “Brand affinity is clearly hard wired,” he said. “It is so fundamental to human existence that it’s not going away. It must have a genetic component.”

His talk came as part of a broader program organized for the magazine executives by Google. Eileen Naughton, Google’s director of media platforms, spoke first — greeting many people she knew from her years as a magazine executive. She joined Google after Time Inc. eliminated 105 jobs, including hers, to cut costs in December 2005. Attendees also listened to tutorials from Twitter’s chairman-chief product officer, Evan James; YouTube’s head of client solutions and ad programs, Jamie Byrne; and RockYou’s CEO and founder, Lance Tokuda.

In 1994, I was very supprised to see the windows 95 (yes one year ago and yes we were the beta testers) … After that time well it is maybe becouse of my age, I’ve ever never suprise on anything about the internet.. Except today. Well it was my first look to google chrome_the brand new browser.. And I see that they solve somany windows problems. And I told to myself, yes they did it. Congrutulations google and the people who works on that project… And thank you for your help to new internet revolution. 

One week ago I had 2 mbps and IE 7.0 and now on I have 100 Mbps and google chrome. That means now I am flying….

About noon Pacific, the download site for Google’s new open-source browser, Chrome, will go live. In a press conference held today at the Google headquarters, some of the Chrome team went through what makes Chrome new and different. While we’ll have a hand-on as soon as possible, here’s a quick rundown of what makes Chrome special.

Update 12:11 PM PDT: The installer is about 7 Mbytes, according to Google.

Tabs:: First and foremost, the team said that they wanted to make tabs special. Firefox and Opera introduced this concept to the world, and they’re now part of everyday browsing life. In Chrome, tabs are objects; they can be dragged and reorganized, split off into separate windows, and then rejoined. Even better, if one tab crashes, the other don’t. Chrome is a multiprocess rendering engine, so if one tab dies, the others don’t. And the browser doesn’t die, either. It’s even better with a dual-core CPU.

Security: And it has security implications, too: normally processes on the desktop can mess with your files. But to render Web pages, you don’t need those processes. Google calls this technology the “Sandbox”. Google also will make the browser’s “task manager” transparent to the user, so you can see if a Flash process, for example, is monopolizing your browser. And if a tab dies, it can be restored.

The “Omnibox”: A browser without a Google search box? Yes. Like the Mozilla “Awesomebar,” the address box can be used as the search box, too. But that’s not all. Chrome includes a feature that “knows” what you’re looking for: type “a”, for example, and if you’re a frequent Amazon user, the bar will auto-suggest “amazon.com” — a feature that has been in the Google search box for some time. But if you use Amazon’s own on-page search engine, for example, Chrome can sniff that too, and will offer you the option to use that directly in future searches. But, if you already have a preference to use IE or Yahoo’s search, Chrome will recognize that and build that in. There are no intrinsic ties to Google services, according to Google executives — probably a dodge against an antitrust investigation.

Tabs as apps: For some windows, such as Gmail, users don’t often move away from the page. In this case, there’s a special option to “save” the application as a desktop shortcut. When it’s opened, the browser will eliminate the search/address box.

“Incognito window”: Want to search for a new job? A racy novel? An “incognito window” not only offers the same safety features as the other tabs, but it also prevents any sort of cookies or Web history from being stored on the browser. Internet Explorer 8 also offers a similar technology.

Transparent downloads: This looks like a bit like a Mozilla plugin called Download Statusbar. Downloading a file prompts a little arrow pointing down to a notification bar that is created at the bottom of the screen, where you can select how to handle the file: save it, run it, etc.

Performance: Google executives showed off a test that rendered many typical We pages about three times faster than Internet Explorer. But tests will have to confirm this. Google’s Chrome uses the Webkit rendering engine used in Safari, and a custom “V8″ Javascript rendering engine.

What Web applications and trends will make it big in 2008? In this post the RWW authors ruminate on the current trends in Web technology and look forward to what 2008 might bring us. Topics include Google, semantic web, online advertising, recommendation systems, Facebook, digg, open standards, Mobile Web, search engines, and much more!

So check out our predictions for ‘08 and please contribute your own in the comments. Also you may want to review our track record for 2007 Web predictions.

Richard MacManus, Editor, ReadWriteWeb:

1. Semantic Apps will become popular in 2008, due to their ability to get better content results and make better data connections. Think search engines like Hakia and Powerset, wikipedia-like efforts like Twine and Freebase, and apps that use semantic technologies under the hood (such as AdaptiveBlue and Snap).

2. In tandem with #1, Google will experiment more with Semantic Apps in ‘08. The Knols project, although not overly semantic, is a hint of this direction.

3. Web Services platforms will be a fierce battleground in ‘08, with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and others competing to provide ‘Web OS’ and online storage to consumers. Unfortunately this may spell the end of a number of startups in this space.

4. Zoho and/or ThinkFree will be acquired by big companies wanting to leapfrog into the Web Office space.

5. The online advertising market will consolidate, after the spate of acquisitions in 2007. CPM will continue to dominate for media brands and CPC for niche sites, although there will be experimentation in VRM and other forms of highly specific targeting of ads. Privacy issues will prevent the latter from becoming mainstream though. The much-hyped CPA (Cost per Action) will continue to be a pipe dream, because publishers simply don’t want it.

6. The big Internet companies will surprise us all by embracing open standards, and attempting to compete with each other with features instead of data lock-in (OK, this could just be wishful thinking!).

7. The most interesting innovations on the Web in 2008 won’t happen in Silicon Valley, but in Asia (China, Japan, Korea). At least one startup from China will break through in the US market with Twitter-like success in 2008 – and it will almost certainly be a Mobile Web app.

Marshall Kirkpatrick, Lead Writer, ReadWriteWeb:

1. Twitter will be acquired.

2. Most ad networks will start producing their own content to advertise against; and some content companies today will get acquired by ad networks.

3. Online video will become so ubiquitous, including live and mobile, that everyone will wonder how the internet existed without it. It won’t feel like a big deal, though.

4. A handful of big companies will let you start logging in with an OpenID associated with your account.

5. The value of recommendation engines will become all the more clear; the era of data will be celebrated.

6. People will rebel against Google, at least a little bit. Maybe.

7. People engaged in the new web will do some really awesome stuff that we’ll all be in awe of.

Josh Catone, Lead Writer, ReadWriteWeb:

1. Tumblr will be acquired.

2. Privacy will be a growing concern in the mainstream, but ultimately people won’t really take any action and for the most part, things won’t change. Some companies and groups (think Mozilla) will push for better privacy controls for users, while others (think Facebook) will continue to push the envelope and continue down a slippery slope. Users will eventually push back, but I am hesitant to say that proverbial “straw that breaks the camel’s back” will come in 2008.

3. OpenID will be adopted by more startups and larger web companies, but most people (mainstream users) still won’t use it – that’s a couple of years off.

4. Facebook will continue to grow and their platform will be adopted by other large social networks. Google will sweat.

5. Mobile web usage will be a big story in 2008. It’s already big in many parts of the world; and Westerners are about to get hooked. With new mobile devices that makes web surfing less painful, people will be more and more connected away from their computers.

6. Mainstream media coverage will be a catalyst for the adoption of Web Office apps by consumers; and Microsoft will eventually be forced to change their Web Office strategy and offer a fully online office suite (but that latter won’t happen in 2008). Offline mode (Gears, AIR, Silverlight, etc.) will be what really tips the scales and causes mainstream users to to embrace the as-of-yet unfamiliar world of Web Office applications.

Alex Iskold, Feature Writer, ReadWriteWeb:

1. 2008 will be slow and cautious, with the first half dominated by recession or fear of recession.

2. Facebook is going to see the same kind of decline in popularity in 2008 that MySpace saw in 2007.

3. Digg is going to be acquired by one of the mainstream media conglomerates.

4. Implicit applications, which monitor our habits and automatically infer our likes, will rise.

Emre Sokullu, Feature Writer, ReadWriteWeb

1. Facebook will acquire companies that do the following, in order to strengthen their advertising unit: personalization, behavior tracking, image recognition (Riya?)

2. Facebook will release a browser.

3. However, despite all that… Facebook will decline.

4. Google OpenSocial will be a failure; Google will try to create its own social networking empire by making acquisitions in this space.

5. Microsoft will become more aggresive and buy many popular companies at once (remember Ballmer’s quote). Candidates include SixApart, Technorati.

Sean Ammirati, Editor, ReadWriteTalk (our podcast show):

1. Google will really start looking vulnerable in 2008. While the ‘one trick pony’ comment by Steve Ballmer drew sarcastic responses, this will begin to look prophetic. While they’ll maintain market share in the search industry, the lack of traction in any other of their other initiatives will start to cause frustration. Plus, they will increasingly be perceived as the ‘evil’ company in many of these new initiatives.

2. Closely related, Yahoo’s Hack strategy (see ReadWriteTalk’s podcast with Bradley Horowitz) will start to bear fruit and things will look much more optimistic in Sunnyvale this year.

3. Facebook will start to feel pressure from two trends that will emerge on the web: distributed social networks and distributed commerce systems. For distributed commerce systems, look to see a first proof of concept from the VRM project. Chris Messina’s diso project with WordPress will be a great proof of concept for distributed social neworks.

4. Non-search advertising on the web will increase in value significantly. This will be done through a lot of innovation in the ad targeting systems (both behavioral and contextual) and new metrics being adopted by Madison Ave beyond CPC and CPM.

5. There will be a lot of innovation in the hyper-local space, putting the final nail in the newspaper industry’s coffin. This will include companies like Outside.in and Yelp moving toward widespread use and new web properties (from both startups and big Internet Cos) emerging.

6. Finally, a 3G iPhone! OK, I don’t know if this is a prediction, but I really really want it to be true

Charles Knight, Editor, AltSearchEngines (RWW network blog)

1. In the 1st Q 2008, the true “Google Killer” in search will be in Stealth Mode. In 2nd Q 2008 the first prototype will begin in closed Alpha mode. In 3rd Q 2008 it will be ready for the final closed Beta testing. In 4th Q 2008 it will launch and “Rock and Shock” the world!

2. The classic Vertical Search Engines (Job Search, Health, Consumer Electronics, Shopping, Video, People, more…) will continue their dominance over all other Search Engines in their various niches.

3. The Alternative Search Engines will pick up the pace of partnerships and cooperation, for their solid mutual benefit.

4. Mainstream Media interest in the Alts will increase until it begins to rival coverage of the five major search engines.

5. The trend towards ‘widgetization’ of the Alts will continue. Approximately 2 in 10 Alternative Search Engines (20%) have widgets now, and that number will double in 2008 to 4 in 10 or 40%.

Atıf Ünaldı,

1. A new web boom will be held.

2. Video, privacy and security is the most important issues on 2008.

3. Open ID becomes the most important web site but ppl will look for alternative solutions which are more physical.

4. Microsoft wants to bite google while google wants to bite facebook. None of them make a great deal to bite

5. As Seth Godin explains in his book purple cow, Yahoo will fall down.

6. Adobe Air will be an important developing era.

7. Also pay attention to freebase….

If you know anything about Microsoft history, you can easily see that, the battle between Microsoft and Google is just begin. Google, last week, agreed with yahoo about web-ads. That is probably people thinking is the end of the Microsoft absolutely wrong. Microsoft has a battle between, Netscape, ICQ, linux, which makes Microsoft stronger. In all these cases Microsoft wins the battle with absolutely the same way. Take the battle from technology to economy, which is their profesionality. As I said to Bill Gates on his last visit to Turkey, in my point of view Microsoft is not a technology company. They are a marketing company. They don’t produce technology, but selling technology. If Google try to fight with Microsoft in the market. They will probably lose the fight…

As Microsoft Walks Away, Yahoo Enters Google Ad Pact

Microsoft Corp. abandoned its pursuit of Yahoo Inc., opening the way for Yahoo to complete a search-advertising pact with rival Google Inc. that pits the industry’s two biggest forces against Microsoft.
Yahoo says talks with Microsoft are off, and it’s also not interested in selling parts of its business to the software giant. This means Yahoo’s future probably isn’t heading in the direction most investors would like. John Letzing reports.

Microsoft told Yahoo that it was no longer interested in pursuing a takeover, even at the $33 a share it offered for the Internet company last month. That price would have valued Yahoo at nearly $50 billion.

Microsoft also unsuccessfully floated an alternative proposal to acquire Yahoo’s search business for about $1 billion, a person familiar with Microsoft said. As part of that deal, Microsoft said it was prepared to acquire an additional 16% of Yahoo for $35 a share, or about $7.73 billion, according to people familiar with the situation.

Yahoo said Thursday that under the new Google pact, it will display some ads sold by its rival in a deal Yahoo estimated would generate $800 million in annual revenue through improved monetization of certain types of searches. Both companies said they were looking at ways to expand the limited partnership, possibly into display advertising.

Yahoo will control how Google’s ads are displayed alongside its own advertising. The pact is sure to face regulatory scrutiny. The companies agreed to delay its implementation for as many as three and a half months to allow regulatory review. In an interview, Yahoo President Susan Decker described the deal as “a bridge” that will help the company build up a converged display and search business.

The agreement seemed to leave room for Yahoo to pursue another deal, including a sale to Microsoft. Yahoo said either party can end the agreement in the event of a change in control. If that happens in the next 24 months, Yahoo would have to pay a termination fee of $250 million, minus some of the revenue Google had earned through the deal.

Yahoo said Friday that Google may terminate the agreement if it can’t generate a certain minimum revenue amount. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said Google can terminate the agreement if after 10 months — and each month after that — the gross revenue recognized by Google is less than $83.33 million for the four prior calendar months.

The Google-Yahoo collaboration is likely to get a hard look by regulators in both the U.S. and Europe. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.), chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, said the deal “raises important competition concerns” and promised a close examination.

“The consequences for advertisers and consumers could be far-reaching and warrant careful review, and we plan to investigate the competitive and privacy implications of this deal further in the Antitrust Subcommittee,” Sen. Kohl said in a statement.

The latest moves portend a period of deep uncertainty for the Internet sector, as the biggest players look for strategic footing against Google and smaller upstarts. Yahoo’s future also remains unclear. It must prove to impatient investors and employees that its independent strategy can work while competition heats up.

In retrospect, Microsoft’s tactics appear to have badly backfired. Instead of winning Yahoo’s huge audience and online search capabilities, Microsoft has driven its quarry into the arms of its archenemy — Google.

Yahoo resisted Microsoft from the beginning. Microsoft later raised its bid from $31 a share to $33. When Yahoo demanded even more, Microsoft said it was walking away.

A few weeks later, Microsoft re-emerged, saying it was willing to discuss an alternative transaction with Yahoo that wouldn’t involve a full takeover. But it also said it wasn’t ruling out pursuing a full-scale deal. That gave Yahoo investors hope that a deal was possible.

Chief among those hoping for a deal was investor Carl Icahn. Mr. Icahn said Thursday that he was studying the situation but otherwise declined to comment.

The negotiations between the two companies unraveled June 8 during a meeting at a private airport in San Jose, Calif. The Yahoo contingent included Chief Executive Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock. Microsoft’s team was led by Chief Executive Steve Ballmer.

At the meeting, Microsoft made it clear it no longer wanted to pursue a larger deal, the people familiar with the matter said. The Yahoo camp wasn’t interested in the smaller deal.

Two days later, Yahoo’s board met to evaluate its options and decided to pursue a deal with Google. Thursday, Mr. Yang notified Microsoft of Yahoo’s decision. Yahoo and Google signed the new deal.