Category Archives: Google

Google Maps to carry ads

Google employees confirmed in person today plans for local advertisements within Google Maps, including their Web APIs. Google will overlay blue markers on the map to highlight local business advertisements directly within the graphical search result. A corporate logo and advertising message will be displayed inside of marker info windows complete with a paid link. API developers will have the option to display the ads or to signup for a commercial relationship with Google. Combining local search targeting with graphical ads should yield extremely high payouts for Google. Google is currently paying data fees for maps used in a…

Story of Google Reader

I had lunch today with the Google Reader team and learned a bit more about the group, their success and challenges, and how new projects at Google are sometimes formed. This is the story of how a side-project intended for someone’s blog became a feed aggregator integrated into one of the largest Web properties in the world. It all started with a love of blogging. Jason Shellen and Chris Wetherell were both members of the Blogger team and working on different ways to trick out their personal blogs. Jason kept various blogs including a link blog and wanted a way…

Google Toolbar API

Google Toolbar version 4 allows developers to create custom buttons using a custom XML descriptor and extended functionality using RDF, RSS, and Atom feeds. The Google toolbar button API can be used to display the latest entry titles from a feed, execute a keyword or URL search, or continuously communicate data at a glance. I created custom buttons for this blog and Technorati. The Google Toolbar can now serve as a feed reader for any feed with a custom Google Toolbar icon. You can even specify in your button file a different icon you would like to display when new…

Google Bookmarks

Google just introduced version 4 of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer including support for centralized bookmark tagging and notation from multiple computers. The new feature allows any toolbar user with a Google account to store bookmarks within their Google search history for synchronization and editing. Google bookmarks can also be added and edited via a web interface. You can add a new Google bookmark anywhere on the web when logged in by passing Google a few URL-encoded values. http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark title the title of the bookmark bkmk the bookmark URL labels comma separated labels or tags annotation A note or…

Google at CES

Google co-founder Larry Page is a keynote speaker at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. The Los Angeles Times reports that Google has been in talks with large retail stores such as Wal-Mart to carry a computing device called the “Google Cube” running a Google customized operating system and applications. Page was a late addition to the keynote roster, so Google might actually be ready to announce something. This week will be full of announcements for sure. Update 1/03: News.com reports both Google and Wal-Mart denied the rumor. Google issued a statement saying “we see no need to…

Marissa Mayer on OneBox

John Battelle had conversation with Google’s Marissa Mayer this morning about the affect of the deal between Google and AOL on Google’s search results. John posted a loose transcript of the conversation, but what interested me most was the discussion around OneBox results on Google’s search result pages. What we normally do on the OneBox, like on our stocks page or travel, where we have links to a few providers, we look at Media Metrix or PageRank data, and generally they agree and corroborate themselves (as to) who are the top three or five providers. And those are who we…

Exclusive: Google to offer feed API

Google plans to offer a feed reader API to allow third-party developers to build new views of feed data on top of Google’s backend. The new APIs will include synchronization, feed-level and item-level tagging, per-item read and unread status, as well as rich media enclosure and metadata handling. Google Reader PM Jason Shellen and engineer Chris Wetherell both confirmed Google’s plans after I posted my reverse-engineering analysis of the Google Reader backend. The new APIs will allow aggregator developers to build new views and interactions on top of Google’s data. Google currently has at least two additional Google Reader views…

How Google search works

Matt Cutts wrote a quick primer explaining Google search to librarians. He walks readers through how Google discovers pages, indexes, and later analyzes a user’s query across a network of analytics servers. For each search that someone types in, over 500 computers may work together to find the best documents, and it all happens in under half a second….

Technorati Web Comments for Firefox

I may have a Technorati version of the Blogger Web Comments Firefox extension running on my machine right now. Google directs users through a terms of service for the extension that asks users to agree to not modify the code, so I can can’t confirm my hacking… You can download the Blogger Web Comments Firefox extension directly without passing through the terms of service if you would like. Under part 4 of Google’s Firefox tools terms of service, proprietary rights, they claim full ownership over all released plugins and prohibit all modifications and derivative works. Except as expressly authorized…