Here is a nice post from Google about their new policy to anonymize search info from users. Like many I have been critical in the past of Google and others for storing this information with little regard to who owns it or saying what they’ll be doing with it. Yahoo and MSN do not (yet) have similar policies so I think Google can rightly claim a higher road since they have also been the one who has fought Government attempts to nab search data. (I have mixed feelings about that since, unlike folks like Battelle, I fear commercial abuses more than I fear the Government will use my data in illegal and harmful ways.
Time has an insightful visit with Dr. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO and a pleasant fellow as well based on my brief chat with him last year. I like his point that it’s a great strategy to ask lot of questions, get a conversation going, and from that conversation harvest innovation. You can really see the power of this when talking to the remarkable folks who work at Google. I’m always impressed by how open they are to criticism and new ideas, and how clearly they see that it’s best to keep the conversation going and the pathways open because the future….could find us all almost anywhere.
Barry and his SEOroundtable associates offer links and some of the best coverage of the search scene at SES as well as many other search events. A careful reading of this coverage often gives you more insight than you’d get at the conferences.
I’m very excited about the upcoming Mashup Camp 2 down in Silicon Valley July 12 and 13, and it’s NOT just because Yahoo is expected to have free martinis with blinking fake ice cubes at their party.
Mashup 1 was one of the most interesting and intense conferences I’ve ever done with about 300 wildly enthusiastic mashers showing off, watching, trading tips, and more. Mashup 2 promises to be wildly interesting as well. Mashup University will precede the two camp days and hopefully be a close up look at great stuff coming in from many API providers. As always I’m looking for the travel holy grail, and I think we are getting closer as Bonosearch skeleton is now in place,ready for some travel related mashup inclusions and our travel focused search using Kinosearch.
Of course as Caterina Fake observed some time ago you Who’s talking to the users, writing the code, tweaking and retweaking the UI? [hey, easy for Caterina to say – her (superb) company – Flickr - already got bought up by Yahoo for tens of millions and she made the cover of Newsweek AND she gets to hang out with the amazing tech developers team at Yahoo.
But of course one can get so wrapped up in conferences that it’s hard to get work done. I’ve done that this past year, so before Mashup Camp I’m getting off my butt and … painting our house! How’s that for techno convergence?
Looking forward to Sunday’s trip to Las Vegas to attend the Mix06 conference at the Venetian Hotel. Thanks to MS and Scoble I got a free ticket to the convention saving me $995. With airfare at 300 and the Imperial Palace for only $65 nightly this will be a cheap trip and hopefully a very informative look into the future of Microsoft. At other conferences the Web 2.0 pecking order seems clear – Google and Yahoo are getting it and MS is not. However I think people are really underestimating Microsoft in both the search and the Web 2.0 space.
Google is conspicuously absent at MIX06. Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, and others there, though I think this is going to be a very Microsofty experience.
