There are rumors flying around the web about the possibility of a new Google service - Google Finance.
This was first noticed by Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal on the basis of some curious findings in his referral logs.
If they are planning a new Beta product, we certainly hope that they do a better job of launching it than the last couple big launches. Just recently, the launch of Google Page Creator had a very promising start - but only about 6 hours of it. We tend to assume that Google has a very strong infrastructure, since it is managing core services such as Google Search (the very basic tool!) with incredible efficiency. Although I understand that a Beta service is not expected to run perfectly, it would be nice if they could plan at least a sufficient infrastructure for it not to crash immediately.
Gary Price, formerly of Search Engine Watch, opined that this
may be intentional on Google’s part - a way of keeping the buzz going after the initial launch. This may be true. Regardless, it has a lot of potential to backfire on them if they keep it up! After Google Earth, Google Analytics, and now Google Page Creator, a fourth crashed Beta could be a weakness. The invitation system they used to launch Gmail seemed very effective - and although many people had a long wait before being able to get started, nobody ever had the frustration of a product which just wasn’t working.
Of course, maybe what they really wanted to do with Page Creator was run a load test.
Google has AdSense. Yahoo has the Yahoo Publisher Network. Finally, MSN is catching up with their soon-to-be-launched ContentAds. The new offering will probably not provide full-scale ad service for awhile, but even a beta launch in 2006 is a big step forward.
Scooped by JenSense.
Google is used to charges of copyright violation at this point, having frequently come under fire for that digital archiving of books involved in Google Book Search, but today they’re running into a new barrier with their image search.
The problem comes from a lawsuit against Google by the pornography company Perfect 10, Inc., which accused Google of copyright breach through their presentation of derived thumbnail images of their copyright images. The ruling by US District Judge Howard Matz states in part that the use of these images is not lawful because Google is profiting from keyword advertising and therefore stands to gain from this image search.
Of course, this could, if extended, be quite a revelation for Google. After all, the entire basis of the company’s success comes from profits from keyword searching. And why is this different when it’s text rather than images? It seems that Google’s ability to find your site is a violation of copyright, since they may make a profit.
And there’s another little problem - Google does not place ads on its image search results. So is this ruling stating that Google stands to profit from its use of these images because it uses ads elsewhere on the site? This seems a rather broad interpretation of gain, to me! That’s like saying that a scholar making fair use of a copyright image may be sued because they have ALSO written a complete unrelated bestseller which did not contain any copyrighted images.
The full 48-page court order is, of course, quite a bit more complicated than this. It addresses whether or not a thumbnail image is, in fact, less valuable than the full-scale image and also whether or not Google’s use of frames to display the full image is also a violation of the company’s copyright, since the visitor, in essence, never visits the actual site. If you want to learn more, I’d suggest reading the document. [PDF]