Googlers Get Kinky On Wikipedia

Warning: presume all links in this post are NSFW.

Users of Google registered IP addresses contributed to Wikipedia entries including “Amateur Pornography“, the “List of male performers in gay porn films” and “Mutual Masturbation” according to data pulled from Wikiscanner. Other sexually related edits include the pages for sex show and the talk:Fuck sex; a particular person is using a computer with a Google IP address to share the details of his sex life with the world.

Another user decided to clean up one Wikipedia entry by correcting the definition to read “”Motherfucker means to fuck your mother also known as incest,” which of course made the entry that much more clearer.

User’s of IP addresses registered to Google’s Corporate IT Department edited a page pertaining to something called “Breast expansion fetishism” and these two which I won’t name lest I haven’t upset enough people with the language in the post already.

Overall though, people using Google IP addresses are a fairly tame bunch, with no evidence that they have been editing the pages of Google competitors, the story I had initially looked to research. However, there were two edits by people using Google IP addresses to pages relating to Google; the first removes the term Googly from the Google (Verb) Entry, the second bizarrely deletes mention of Google having an office in Ireland.

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Google: You ain't seen nothin' yet

Forget iPhone, BlackBerry, Bell and Telus. Google is preparing to be the next giant of telecommunications

Anyone can get the Web on their cellphone these days. But now it seems Google is interested in so much more than that. It has reportedly approached the Federal Communications Commission recently about obtaining wireless spectrum, the base upon which mobile-phone networks are built, in the U.S. agency's next auction.

Never mind the potential buyout of Bell Canada Inc. or Apple Inc.'s much-hyped introduction of the iPhone yesterday, there's a much larger, game-changing force in telecommunications lurking just around the corner.

Search engine giant Google Inc. has been putting together a massive cable network to provide customers around the world with telecommunications services ranging from broadband Internet to home and mobile phones.

Google has publicly denied plans to get into the lucrative business, valued at US$1.3-trillion globally, but industry experts say it is inevitable. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company already has its toes in it with offerings such as Google Talk and the hugely popular YouTube video service. A major splash is only a matter of time, and when Google -- with its mammoth US$163-billion market capitalization -- does dive in, phone company takeovers and Apple gizmos will look like quaint curiosities.

"It's not an if, it's a when," says California-based technology analyst Rob Enderle. "Different parts of this are coming in at different speeds, but once they're done what they plan to do is offer comprehensive services through their own backbone and effectively lock a lot of the traditional players out of the market. A lot of them don't even see it coming."

Google's plan has been underway for some time and is now gaining momentum. For at least the past three years, the company has been buying up swaths of unused fibre-optic cable -- so-called "dark fibre" -- around the world. Telephone and cable companies overbuilt these lines, which form the basis of the Internet, during the tech boom in the early part of this decade and Google has been only too happy to take the unused infrastructure off their hands.

The company is secretive about exactly how much fibre it owns, saying only that the cables are needed to connect its data and storage facilities, which power its various search and Internet services. Experts, however, estimate the company has far more fibre than it needs for such purposes.

"They have enough potential capacity to compete in wholesale telecommunications or as an Internet service provider," says Eric Schoonover, senior analyst at Washington, D.C.-based TeleGeography Research, a consultancy that tracks fibre holdings.

Google has been equally secretive about the massive data centres it is building around the globe, with one blogger who follows the company quipping that "getting information on these facilities is harder than getting info on Bigfoot."

The company is estimated to have between 40 and 70 data centres filled to the brim with computing and storage power, with at least five new facilities under construction in the United States alone. By comparison, Canada's second-largest telephone company Telus Corp., has eight.

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google blackmailers

Amy Polumbo did not follow Bonnie Zybergold's warning on the dangers of google and its all-seeing eye (Look Who Is Googling).

Miss New Jersey, 22, is now paying dearly for posting private pictures on a website. Apparently these "scandalous" pictures were found and used by a skillful googler.

The blackmailer demands that Amy relinquish her crown and not go to the Miss America competition.Is it just me - or should we look into who will benefit from the scam.

Maybe a certain individual who finished second in the 2007 Garden State beauty pageant? Meanwhile Amy is standing strong and refuses to give in.And last piece of advice - do check what kind of pictures you might have posted on your MySpace page.

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Who Will Google Buy Next?

Google is the new Internet behemoth, snatching up small companies left and right. So, in this article, I ask: what tech gems are in the running for Google's growing subsidiary menagerie? To help predict, I will first take a look at who Google has acquired in the past and what Google has done for them, and then I'll throw out a few possibilities for Googlification and discuss where they might fit into Google's strategy.

Google's past conquests have been varied, but they have all been smallish Internet companies that are doing cool stuff. I'll go through them here, with a brief blurb about how they were acquired, and what has changed in the post-Google era.

Deja News (Google Groups) - This web-based Usenet archive started life in 1995. Between 1999 and 2000, Deja overexpanded into a comparison shopping portal. Losing money, Deja sold the shopping component to eBay in late 2000, and it became part of Half.com. In February 2001, the big G entered the game and snatched up the Usenet archives, reintroducing them as Google Groups and extending them back to 1981 with the help of private collections. Today, Google Groups features Deja's Usenet, mailing lists, and Yahoo! Groups-esque features with a Gmail-like interface.

Outride - Outride, Inc. was an information retrieval spin-off from Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Google acquired certain technology assets in September 2001 and quickly integrated them into its search engine. Outride.net currently forwards to Google.

Applied Semantics - Google bought up this contextual advertising company in April 2003 and used it for its AdSense/AdWords services, allowing it to compete with Yahoo!'s Overture.
Kaltix - This 3-person personalized search startup company was quickly picked up by Google in September 2003. Kaltix formed the foundation of Google Personalized Search. Kaltix.com currently forwards to Google.

Blogger - Blogger was the flagship product of Pyra Labs. For a long time, Blogger was free of fees and ads, but it wasn't making money. After the original capital for Pyra dried up, a number of employees resigned, including the co-founder. In an effort to become profitable, Pyra introduced the ad-powered Blogspot hosting and the pay Blogger Pro service. It wasn't quite enough, and Pyra needed more resources, so Google stepped in during 2003. Blogger was redesigned by professional web designers in May 2004, and is now one of the most-used blogging tools.

Picasa - Picasa, a $30 photo organizer program, was first released in October 2001. In May 2004, Picasa announced integration with the Google-owned Blogger, and in July 2004, Google bought the company. Soon, Picasa was free, and it featured Google trademarks like an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. The software routinely wins awards from leading PC publications.

Keyhole - Keyhole is a digital mapping company founded in 2001. Presumably to cut out the middleman for the not-yet-released Google Maps, Google bought them in October 2004. Since then, there has been an immediate price reduction for the Keyhole software (from $69.95 to $29.95), and integrated satellite photos in Google Maps.

Zipdash - Google acquired this traffic/mapping company in 2004 and put it to work in Google Maps. Although the acquisition was not publicized, Zipdash is mentioned in Google's 2004 annual report.

Where2 - This Australian mapping company was also mentioned in the 2004 annual report, but not much is known about it. It also had something to do with Google Maps.

Urchin - In March 2005, Google acquired Urchin, a web analytics and statistics company. Though we haven't yet seen what they're up to with it, it will probably be used with AdWords/AdSense, with statistics about clickthroughs and such.

Dodgeball - Google acquired this two-person cell phone social networking company in May 2005. The company was looking for investors, and Google apparently fit the bill. So far, nothing has happened with this company, but it will probably have something to do with Google Mobile.
So those are the companies Google has acquired. A common misconception is that Google has only been acquisitive since its (in)famous IPO. As shown here, however, the IPO has only made it easier for Google to buy companies it likes. Pre-IPO, from 2001 to August 2004, Google acquired 6 companies. Post-IPO, from August 2004 on, Google has acquired 5 companies. In the year since the IPO, Google has almost matched the number of companies it acquired in the prior three years.

Now that we've taken a good look at the past, here are my picks for the companies Google should, could, will, may, perhaps is considering to, would be cool if they were to, might acquire.
Sensible AcquisitionsThese companies are tossed around quite a bit by bloggers as possible Google fodder, and they would integrate well with Google's current offerings and its future strategy. They're all pretty small companies, but quickly becoming popular among web users in the know. No surprises here.

Technorati - If Google is the average person's homepage, Technorati is the homepage of the underground, tech-savvy web user. Technorati is a blog portal whose average visitor enjoys podcasts, Wikipedia, and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Providing more cutting edge results than a normal search engine, Technorati would integrate well with Google News and/or Blogger, and could perhaps feature blogs on the Google Personalized Homepage. Technorati is somewhat similar to Bloglines, which was purchased by Ask Jeeves recently.

Buzznet - Yahoo! beat Google to the punch by acquiring Flickr, one of my candidates in the first draft of this article. Like Flickr, Buzznet is a photo hosting and sharing service that features unique tagging features. It is possible to browse by tag and see all sorts of interesting stuff. Buzznet would probably jibe with Picasa's Hello photo posting service, perhaps include some sort of photo-Blogger, and integrate well with Orkut.

Koders - Koders is a search engine for open source code that works remarkably well. With the recent push for plugins for Google Desktop search, Koders would be an interesting addition to Google's software initiatives. It would make sense to combine with Google Code and Google Linux Search in some way.

GuruNet (Answers.com) - Recently, Google stopped linking to definitions on Dictionary.com, and started linking to Answers.com instead. Answers features a wealth of information about different topics, and uses Wikipedia for much of it. Since Wikipedia's non-profit status rules it out as a potential Google acquisition, Answers.com would be the next best thing. It also would help improve Google Q&A quite a bit. Interestingly, GuruNet is a publicly traded company (AMEX: GRU) with a market cap of about $100 million.

del.icio.us - This social bookmarking and tagging application could be used to improve Google search results, and perhaps integrate with Orkut in some way. Were Google to buy Buzznet as suggested above, this would work well with it.

StumbleUpon - This unique browser plugin and service would probably improve Google results and add a new level to the venerable search engine. It would probably combine with the Google Toolbar in some fashion, since the two have some similar functions.

Propel - Similar to Google Web Accelerator, Propel claims to speed up your browsing experience. The company is run by optical mouse inventor Steven T. Kirsch, who is no stranger to buyouts: his Frame Technology Corp. was purchased by Adobe, and his Infoseek was bought by Disney. This could help Google out with Web Accelerator, which it has been having trouble with.

From Left Field Here are some companies you probably haven't heard of, and some companies you know very well that fit in less well with the Google plan. It is not too likely that any of these will be bought by Google, but keep in mind, most of Google's past acquisitions have been unexpected.

Audioscrobbler/Last.fm - So far, Google hasn't made any inroads into the music industry. However, these sites together form an interesting, Google-ish service that uses algorithms reminiscent of PageRank to calculate the top artists and similar info.

TiVo - TiVo is a little too big and a little too well-known to be bought by Google. Also, Google's experience with hardware is limited to Google Search Appliances and similar. But, TiVo would work well with Google Video. TiVo seems to fit better with Apple Computer's media plans than it does with Google's geek mentality, though.

Icosystem - This swarm intelligence company might be useful for radical new spidering algorithms or some new form of PageRank. It's only peripherally Google-ish, though.

Monster - Monster is the most popular job search site. Some bloggers have tossed this idea around, touting various forms of integration with other Google services. They also mention that Yahoo! owns HotJobs. However, one wonders whether Google is interested in this market at all.

Coral - This caching service would probably be interesting and useful for Google's own cache. However, it is run by NYU, so it's not a commercial company, and may not be up for grabs.

The Open Directory Project - The definitive web directory has long been partnered with Google for the Google Directory. But the Google Directory hasn't been updated in a very long time, and it still sports the old tabbed Google design, which lacks links to Froogle and Google Local. Although the ODP is owned by Netscape, Google should have sufficient cash to acquire it since the IPO.

Stayhealthy/Fitness Expert - This online health company doesn't offer content a la WebMD, instead providing health and fitness hardware, self-test kits, and a kiosk joint-ventured with IBM. The hardware interface is web-based. As with TiVo, Google's limited hardware experience may be a problem, and one wonders whether Google is interested in the health and fitness space.

World66 - World66 could be Google's answer to Yahoo! Travel, with some work. Its Wiki style, however, might be too wild for Google's liking.

My Way - This image ad and popup-free page is very Google-like. However, it's redundant to existing Google offerings, and these days having no popups isn't as big a deal as it was 3 years ago. It might compete with Yahoo!'s portal, though.

So there you have it, my picks for Google's next additions, and some less likely, but nonetheless interesting, possibilities.

There are also a number of other companies that would appear to be a good match for Google, but cannot be for various reasons. Many of these include non-profits like The Internet Archive or Wikipedia. Others like IMDb are owned by other larger companies which would not sell them (in this case Amazon.com), and still others are open-source driven like BitTorrent or the Mozilla Foundation (also a non-profit) and would not make a good fit in a corporate environment.
Many of the companies listed above might not be considered by Google alone. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon.com, Adobe, and Yahoo! are just a few of the web giants that have made it a habit of buying attractive Internet companies. I bet they're regretting that they never approached Google itself with an offer!

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Google Acquires Zenter - online slide presentations

Google has seemingly put the last piece of the jigsaw in place for their suite. Today Google announced it has acquired the assets of Zenter, “a company that provides software for creating online slide presentations.” This technology will be added to Tonic Systems, a technology for presentation creation and document conversion. Tonic Systems was acquired in April by Google. Nick Gonzalez says that “Zenter was focusing on the front end of the application, as well as community/sharing features”, so it will be a nice complement to Tonic.

Prior to the acquisition, Zenter’s homepage noted it was “preparing for private beta” and it had the usual email form for interested beta testers to fill out. They were also looking for people with “serious JavaScript and/or Java programming skills”.

So it is likely that Presentations capability will be added to Google Docs & Spreadsheets soon (meaning Google will have to re-think the name for that product!). As GigaOm notes, Google still needs to work on its overall product integration - i.e. making it a true suite offering - and the UI/brand needs work too.

Google Apps at this point is a fairly higgelty-piggelty product offering, as indeed is its closest suite competitor Zoho. Both have plenty of Web Office apps, but there is nothing from either company that jumps out and says “I’m a Suite!”. Therefore both Google and Zoho have a ways to go to compete with Microsoft Office.

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Google to Buy Apple?

Rumors have circulated over the last couple days that Google may be interested in buying Apple. The rumors stem from a recent New York Magazine article, in which the author cites a source close to Steve Jobs implying that because of his past health battles (pancreatic cancer) and Apple’s stock back-dating options scandal, the iconic leader may be worn down and looking for an exit.

While unlikely, the companies have a similar culture, the same nemesis (Microsoft), and Google CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple’s Board of Directors. With Apple’s biggest product launch since the iPod just days away, the timing also seems awkward, but the rumor has been reported in several sources, including Channel Register in the UK.

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