What is Toluu?
Toluu is a free service for sharing the feeds you read and discovering new ones.		 Get Invite

Google, the World, and the World Wide Web, Weblogged

Google, the World, and the World Wide Web, Weblogged


Content Owners Profiting From YouTube UploadsToday

Google’s YouTube has a video identification system available to find copyrighted content. Google says there are currently 300 content-owning partners available who can be alerted by the system and who then face the choice of blocking the video, promoting it*, or getting a share of the ad revenues from YouTube (money from which the one who uploaded the detected video will not see a share, according to the New York Times, though I guess they can display some of their own links and so on in places like the video description snippet). Interestingly enough, Google says content owners participating here choose the third, seemingly more sensible model, around 90% of all times... making money from their content which was not uploaded by them.

[Via Andy.]

*I asked Google what exactly that option means (will it be pushed as partner video?) and will add an update if there’s a reply. If you know please comment.

Update: By “promoting it”, Google means to “leave up on YouTube, but without monetizing”, they say.

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Content Owners Profiting From YouTube Uploads |

Google Video Onebox SpottedToday

When Ron (of Totlol.com) searched Google.ca for iphone recently, he hit upon what looks like an experimental video onebox result. Instead of the usual thumbnailed videos displayed in list format, this box was showing two videos results side by side below the headline “Video results for iphone”. Both in this search as well as in a search for love, all videos part of that onebox were from Google-owned YouTube.

In 2006, briefly before the YouTube acquisition another type of video onebox was showing, displaying 3 thumbnails with the video titles below the thumbnail.

[Thanks Ron!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google Video Onebox Spotted | Comments]


[Advertisement] Find the right keywords for your campaigns at KeywordDiscovery.com
Obama08.com Redirecting to a Google SearchToday

When you enter obama08.com into your address bar, you’ll end up on a Google search for [Barack Obama]. This isn’t any browser fallback for a non-existing domain or something... http://obama08.com actually has a temporary HTTP redirect towards that Google search URL. (Anyone could set this up, but I’m curious who did this and why – I can’t seem to find any good info in a Whois query or on the Wayback Machine.) [Thanks Andreas Schneider!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Obama08.com Redirecting to a Google Search | Comments]


[Advertisement] Find the right keywords for your campaigns at KeywordDiscovery.com
Google Suggest To Become Default, Google SaysAugust 25

Google just announced they will start to roll out Google Suggest as a default feature for the Google.com homepage over the next week. For instance, when you enter “presid” with Suggest, below the search box choices like “presidential polls, “presidential election” and more will pop up, to be selected and then searched for using e.g. the arrow and return keys.

Already, besides the Google Labs experiment which started in 2004, auto-complete features are available on the homepage of Google China*. As I’ve never been a regular user of Google Suggest I’m curious if that feature will be useful or annoying in the long run during daily usage. Google is convinced that it 1) helps formulate queries, 2) reduces spelling errors, and 3) saves keystrokes.

Also see the Google Suggest FAQ.

[Thanks Martin Porcheron!]

*Among other Google places. In China, the suggestions also work as transliterator from Pinyin to Chinese, though that’s not the case with the main Google Suggest.

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin:

Drawing the Google Homepage With Eyes ClosedAugust 25

I asked a couple of people to draw the Google homepage with their eyes closed during the whole drawing process. Here are the results:


Brinke Guthrie’s minimalist approach.


Pascal of the German GoogleWatchBlog created this one. He says that “...schland” ended up on the table.


Google’s Matt Cutts created this one with eyes closed...


... and this one with eyes opened, but from memory.


To my defense, immediately when I started drawing the search buttons I realized they belong below the input box (and I realized I misplaced the privacy link at first!). Only on search results is the search button placed to the right side.


Drawing by my sister Judith.


TomHTML of the French Google blog Zorgloob.

Feel free to join with your drawing in