Archive for google
Battle for future of books hots up as Kindle goes international
Both Amazon and Google have unveiled major developments in their plans to dominate the future of e-books. These moves will not only see the two internet giants compete head-to-head but will also see the traditional book publishing industry and authors face the dilemma of whether to see these developments as a welcome new outlet for [...]
A reminder of how little most people know about online campaigning
My first thoughts about today’s BBC report of the Google-sponsored fringe meeting at Conservative conference weren’t wholly complimentary. “Google sponsored meeting says route to electoral success is to give money to Google; gosh, shock!” But on reflection the real lesson of the story is the reminder of how little most people know. I suspect most [...]
Ten top internet tips for councillors
Cross-posted from Dave Press, where I did a guest slot last week: It is pretty rare these days to find a councillor who doesn’t use the internet, at least occasionally. However, in part because the average age of councillors means that the vast majority are not ‘internet natives’, that often does not amount to much [...]
Is "What Would Google Do?" the right question?
The title of Jeff Jarvis’s What Would Google Do? book is a deliberate echo of the American phrase, “What would Jesus do?” Whilst for Christians asking what Jesus would do in particular situations makes sense, does Google have a similar role of authority over everyone’s business lives for Jeff Jarvis’s question to make sense? At [...]
Facebook's challenge to Google: as predicted
A brief piece of trumpet blowing, if you’ll excuse me. The BBC and others are running stories today about how Facebook’s take over of FriendFeed is making it into a serious challenger to Google. And a quick rustle through the archives on this site gives this from earlier in the year: A bigger risk, though, [...]
Libel good news: Justice Eady rules in favour of Google
There was good news for people who operate search engines – and by extension for the users of search engines, which is pretty much everyone on the internet – with a ruling last week from Justice Eady in favour of Google. The case involved a UK training company, Metropolitan International Schools (MIS), who viewed comments [...]
If Google is so great at usability, why…
If you go to Google’s search engine front page – probably its most important web page – you’d expect to find a page that’s been carefully design and tested and tweaked to get the very best performance. Every little detail will be carefully refined so that it’s spot on, right? Google’s reputation is certainly very [...]
Famous lost messages get lost
Wow. Both Google and Bing tell me at the time or writing that there is nothing, zilch, nada on the internet which contains the exact phrase “famous lost messages”. I guess all the references must have been, er…, lost.
How can you check how many backlinks there are to your site?
A handy YouTube clip from Google addresses this backlink question:

