They were never going to win this.

American Blind & Wallpaper Factory Inc  agreed to abandon the nearly 4-year-old case against Google. The truce also stipulated that Google wouldn’t change its long-standing policy that let advertisers place ads tied to a rival’s trademark.

No company has successfully sued Google in this area.

If you’re using Google Apps, you might find the fine print a little curious, as reported on News.com:

“I am a lawyer, but I don’t want to believe the words I’m reading and am trying to find an alternative rendering of the language to make Google seem less grasping.“

The passage in question is this:

” you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. Google reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any service offered by Google”

However, Google followed up in the comments:

 ”I’m the engineering director on Google Docs. I posted on the original thread, but I’ll repeat it here… we state in our terms of service, we don’t claim ownership or control over your content in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, whether you’re using it as an individual or through Google Apps.”

Looks like yet another case against Google Adwords, this time brought to you by American Airlines.

 ”American Airlines, the world’s largest airline, has sued internet search leader Google for selling search words involving its name. The Web search company has prevailed in at least two similar US cases, including a lawsuit brought by auto insurer GEICO, but still faces trial later this year in California by American Blinds and Wallpaper as well as overseas claims“

Once again, the argument will likely center around generic term matching.

Google say they are reluctant to track too much user behaviour when it comes to advertising:

” Susan Wojcicki, Google vice president of product management for advertising, said on Tuesday Google was shying away from the industry race to deliver tools for advertisers that stitch together a user’s various online actions into one profile“

Perhaps they’re trying to avoid mounting concerns around data privacy, which could potentially affect their text link selling business.

“Google’s planned acquisition of advertising tools supplier DoubleClick Inc. and the growing level of integration between its various services have raised concerns among privacy advocates over the potential to abuse its growing power”.

Or maybe past searches just don’t reveal that much about a users needs in the present.

Interesting bit:

” Google has been testing for several weeks a new advertising feature that delivers ads based not simply on a specific search term, but also on the immediately previous search, she said.”

Article in Forbes entitled: “If Trust Is Lost, Google Will Crumble“. The article reasons that Google’s business model is built on trust. If users’ perception of the company changes, its business perspectives and profits will come under threat.

“Google’s rise owes much to its engineering prowess (the capacity of its PageRank algorithm to deliver the pages users want), but also the “two kids in a garage” myth: two Stanford students turning a small start-up into a multibillion-dollar business.“

They came under greater scrutiny when they went public, however.  They certainly need to be transparent and and as open as they can be when it comes to the storage, and use of, personal information.

100 grand is always nice.

Marrissa explains how, and annouces some other stuff, at the Searchnomics Conference today.

 ”Google Gadget Ventures is a new Google pilot program dedicated to helping developers create richer, more useful Google Gadgets. Inspired by the success of iGoogle, which has been driven by the creation by 3rd-party developers of a broad range of gadgets, Gadget Ventures provides two types of funding:

1. Grants of $5,000 to those who’ve built gadgets we’d like to see developed further. You’re eligible to apply for a grant if you’ve developed a gadget that’s in our Google gadgets directory and gets at least 250,000 weekly page views. To apply, you must submit a one-page proposal detailing how you’d use the grant to improve your gadget.
2. Seed investments of $100,000 to developers who’d like to build a business around the Google gadgets platform. Only Google Gadget Venture grant recipients are eligible for this type of funding. Submitting a business plan detailing how you plan to build a viable business around the gadgets platform is a required part of the seed investment application process.“

A glitch, perhaps.

Anyone else?

Well, kinda.

In this article, Yahoo suggest that “search is history”.

“Yahoo!, one of the two names most synonymous with search on the internet, has surprised Silicon Valley by suggesting that the future of the web is not about search…The future of the web is about personalisation“

Google have obviously won the search engine war, helped in no small part by Yahoo! displaying Google search results, which played a part in building Google’s brand.
Thing is, Google are in the personalization race, too.

Will Yahoo! be able to outpersonalize Google?

“ Jeff Clavier, a managing partner at the venture capital firm SoftTech, said: “The problem with Yahoo! is that they’re trying to be all things to all people but they don’t do any one thing particularly well.“

Scott Rafer of MyBlogLog, which was bought by Yahoo! for a reported $10 million, said web companies are moving from search to personalisation.

“Google’s founders made a lot of money essentially with an algorithm,” he said. “The next trick is people. The next web will be dominated by someone who does a great job with people manipulations.”

Check this out…

“ This report fetches the headlines from Google news on a schedule. Only headlines on the home page are fetched.

These results are then ranked by score. The score is determined by a combination of factors: appearance day and time, prominence on the google news page, number of appearances, and others, all weighted using a custom algorithm. The algorithm is designed to estimate referer traffic to the source.

Listed are the top scoring stories in recent time periods, followed by a ranking of sources. You can bring up more detailed reports by clicking on the links at the bottom of each table “

This is pretty cool.

Google Trends is showing the top 100 search trends of the day. It only covers the US, for now.

Provides a great insight into what people are looking for on any given day….

What’s “Google Smart Ass“?