How Google plans to chance social networking

From The New York Times



"Google’s vision — “Social Will Be Everywhere” — is more compelling than anything Facebook could possibly devise. Who wouldn’t prefer the unlimited freedom to take one’s own trusted circle anywhere on the Web, as opposed to the cramped confines of island life?...
The decision by MySpace, the No. 1 social networking site in the world, with more than 100 million unique visitors in September, to join OpenSocial gives Google an impressive assembly of social networking partners. The group includes Bebo, the No. 1 networking site in Britain, as well as SixApart, Hi5, Friendster, LinkedIn and Ning — and Orkut, of course. Google also signed up some other participants, like Salesforce.com, that are not social networking sites but which welcome social widgets. If Facebook chooses to remain a holdout, it will not be as the head of a countercoalition but as a cranky recluse."

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Google and Youtube

From The New York Times:

Google to Put YouTube Videos on Its Ad Network
By MIGUEL HELFT
Published: October 9, 2007

"SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 8 — Google is taking the first steps toward turning its powerful advertising network, which places ads on hundreds of thousands of Internet sites, into a system for distributing content — and more ads — across the Web.
The Internet search giant is expected to introduce a service on Tuesday to allow Web sites in its ad network to embed relevant videos from some YouTube content creators. A Web site or blog specializing in hiking, for instance, might choose to embed hiking videos from YouTube.
The service, which represents the first major combination of a Google product with YouTube, will give video creators wide distribution beyond YouTube via Google’s network, known as AdSense. Since the videos will be surrounded by ads, the service is another way for Google to cash in on the huge number of video clips stored on YouTube.
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See also The Guardian on the same story...
"Google has begun allowing advertisers to "embed" clips from YouTube into their promotional messages, a sign of the search company's strategy to make money from its video streaming arm."

Google & Privacy

Here are some links to reports and discussions of Google in relation to privacy.

Two that have appeared this week:

- privacy concerns and Google's acquisition of advertising company, DoubleClick: Stuff,
c/net news, a Techworld blog that discusses it in relation to conglomeration

- 'StreetView' and Canadian privacy laws: here and here

Here is a BBC report on Google in China.

Here is the discussion of the dispute with the US govt from silicon.com

And this is a link to googlewatch.org, a website that publishes critiques of google's technology, practice and monopoly.