LiveSide - News blog : Google

Descent into the video posting maelstrom

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:39:00 GMT

Yesterday I drove out to Redmond (which can take anywhere from 25 minutes to 2 hours depending on traffic - actually made great time) to meet with Mike Torres and talk a bit about Windows Live Movie Maker, which was released as version 1.0 on a couple weeks ago. I purposely travelled light, no laptop, no messes of wires, just a pocket sized video camera. Not only did I want to talk about Movie Maker, I wanted to try it out, as many more people will be doing in the next weeks and months.

Since the demise of Soapbox, we've been scrambling a bit to get our hosting strategy in order, but as much as it pained us to do it, we thought the easiest thing would be to click on the YouTube upload link from within Movie Maker, grit our teeth, and use the "G-word". Well that didn't go so well.

I had checked the video quality both from within Movie Maker and also on Windows Media Player locally, and did a quick spot check once the video finished processing, but to be honest I didn't watch it once it was up. This morning I headed out for a few hours, and while I was out I started getting text messages, emails, direct twitter messages, and phone calls about the audio quality of the video.

Sure enough, the audio sync was all fouled up. I tried uploading the video again, same issue. I tried uploading using the YouTube uploader, same thing. Tried a different .wmv video (one that hadn't been processed with Movie Maker), same audio sync problems. Tried it from another computer (with a brand new Windows 7 install from Technet), same same same. Searching on Bing for "youtube audio sync wmv" seemed to point to audio codec issues, meaning that, for me, on our LiveSide YouTube account, wmv files weren't working.

The video I edited using Windows Live Movie Maker is fine. There aren’t any problems with it viewed locally. I've posted a self hosted Silverlight player version in the original post, and also posted it to our LiveSide Facebook page (by the way, log in and become a fan of LiveSide on Facebook, if you haven’t already!). They both work fine (no guarantees on our self hosting bandwidth, though, but we should be ok).

UPDATE: Yay, figured out how to embed the Facebook video into a Community Server post :)

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Google had its share of other problems today, and this looks like it’s a Google issue and not Movie Maker. They are supposed to support .wmv files, so maybe this was just some weird glitch. Still, what was supposed to be a fun exercise with Windows Live Movie Maker turned into a bit of a nightmare, and if success with YouTube can’t be guaranteed, maybe the upload link from Movie Maker shouldn’t be there in the first place. Anyway, sorry for the bad experience, believe me it wasn’t near as bad as mine ;).

Hotmail adds POP – GMail makes hay

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:08:00 GMT

Well it was probably only a matter of time, but GMail has introduced a new feature that makes it easier for users of other email services with POP access to migrate their accounts.

Of course Hotmail, after what seemed to be an eternity, recently added in POP3 access for free to all its users. Now we may know why it took so long. The POP3 access allows GMail to forward messages from the other POP3 accounts, making a transition easier.

One of the things that makes free web based mail services interesting is “stickiness”: that is because it is such a pain to change email addresses (along with the actual migration, you have to let everyone know your new address, reprint business cards, change settings on mailing lists, etc. etc.), you’re more likely to stick with the service you have rather than go through all the trouble to change.

And while it’s not a new idea, GMail’s new migrator, which should be available for new accounts no, and then rolling out to existing accounts in the coming weeks, tries to make that whole process easier. Google is using TrueSwitch, which Windows Live users may remember as the 3rd party manager used to move email accounts from Hotmail to @live.com addresses over. However Google has taken it a step further, allowing switchers to bring their contacts along with them, which wasn't available during the hotmail to live.com switch.

GMail has had its share of downtime lately, and has what might be the ugliest interface of any web based mail in existence, so we're not sure why anyone would want to switch, but there you go.

Image search for “the north face”: Bug, or Feature?

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 09 May 2009 18:49:54 GMT

Sometimes on Twitter Search you see a bunch of re-tweets, a “twitmeme”, if you will. Right now a big one is “Microsoft embraces Open Source Big Time for Kumo” (eh, what?, more on that later). Another one that caught our eye was this:

Just clicking on the links gives you this (click through to get the live queries):

Google:

(defaults to “any content”)

(set to “faces”)

Live Search seems to return with a completely different set of results, however.

Live Search:

(defaults to portraits only)

(set to “show all results”)

Which of course set off the naysayers. However, as it says right at the top, Live Search defaults to portrait images in this case. Now a number of people pointed this out to Avinash, by clicking on “Show all results for the north face” (or by quoting the search term: “the north face”, or by using the parameter +the north face), Live Search gives us this:

So from what we can surmise, a couple of basic differences. First, Live Search defaults to portrait search, while Google defaults to “any content”. Either can be reset. Also, when comparing the faces queries, note that Google returns images with “north” in the image description or page where the image was found, and Live Search returns (mostly) with images with “north” in the image name.

Did Live Search get it wrong? or did it provide a wider range of choices? Which do you prefer?

Google patches Chrome browser to work with Hotmail

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:59:42 GMT

We’ve been seeing lots of complaints on Twitter and elsewhere about Hotmail not working in Google’s new browser, Chrome. So today, rather than waiting for Hotmail to address the problem, Google patched Chrome to work with Hotmail, by adding support for User Agent spoofing and appearing to Hotmail as if it were a Safari browser instead. A quick check using the latest Chrome install seems to work fine with Hotmail (truthfully been to busy playing with Windows 7 to spend much time with Chrome, but there have been lots of mentions of problems):

Prolific Google social networker Matt Cutts pointed to the fix on Twitter this evening:

with a link to the “Chromium Code Reviews” page with the fix noted. If you’ve been using Chrome, you should be able to now use it with Hotmail (again, haven’t played with Chrome much so not sure of the update details).

Live Search gains with advertisers (so does Google)

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:56:31 GMT

According to search marketing firm AdGooroo, first page advertising activity on the top three search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Live Search) was up sharply in the first two months of the fourth quarter.

We estimate that Microsoft has increased their advertiser share from 11.5% in Q3 to about 15.8% in Q4 (37% increase), dramatically narrowing the gap with Yahoo! for second place as the engine of choice for search marketers. (For comparison, Yahoo! Now stands at about 22.1% and Google at 80.3%)

These numbers are different than the usual search share numbers, tracking advertising on the search engines rather than end user share. Marketing news site Marketing Vox pointed out the significance of the numbers for Microsoft and a potential deal with Yahoo!:

Microsoft advertiser share leapt to 16.4%, three percentage points away from closing the gap with Yahoo, which last quarter led by nearly 18 percentage points.

Because Microsoft and Yahoo have little overlap among top advertisers (which generate 80% of all ad impressions), a merger of the two would increase large advertiser count by 157%, AdGooroo noted.

That means more relevant ads, which would lead to more competitive bidding and higher monetization levels, not to mention the emergence of a "real credible competitor" for Google, Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer explained last month.

While seasonal swings for the holiday shopping (and advertising) season account for some of the increases, AdGooroo notes that “the increase in active advertiser counts is surprising given the current environment of gloom and doom”. The chart below, from AdGooroo, shows the increases:

(click for larger picture)

You can get the complete report by requesting it free from AdGooroo.

Google Maps: We’re not evil, just not very good

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:32:00 GMT

Apparently there’s been a bit of a stir around what Google Maps did/didn’t do to their maps of the country of Georgia. In a blog post today, Google says they haven’t done anything to their maps in relation to the conflict currently affecting Georgia, that they’ve just never had any good information on the country to begin with:

Some of our customers have asked if we removed map data from any of these countries in response to the recent hostilities in that region and I can assure you that is not the case. Data for these countries were never on Google Maps in the first place.

Here’s what you get today from Google Maps:

Of course if you wanted information on Georgia, or South Ossetia, you could try Live Search Maps:

And then, in an unrelated but kind of funny aside, one of my favorite blogs PhotoShop Disasters posted what appears to be (poor) photoshopping of a Google Map of a part of the Netherlands, near Brummen:

(note the repetition of the white tree, etc)

Live Search Maps has a nicer picture (of course):

We doubt the black helicopter assertion, as the patch of trees is next to a golf course, and we’re not saying that any and all map offerings probably aren't fixed up somewhere along the line, just funny that PhotoShop Disasters picked up on it.

Google Maps Street View “drive-bys” Microsoft and Live Maps

Kip Kniskern — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:30:26 GMT

A Google Maps Street View car was spotted on the Microsoft campus the other day, according to a post over on Gizmodo. Apparently the “GooCar”, as Gizmodo calls it, got a little too close to Building 116, where Live Maps resides:

the Google guys were driving around the team that does Windows Live Maps, like nothing was wrong, when other Microsoft guys were laughing and yelling at them. Much nerd hilarity ensued.

Click through to Gizmodo for a picture of the GooCar (dang, no harassment in evidence).

Google Maps is expanding its Street View offering, in spite of some privacy concerns. Live Maps had at one time tested a similar service, but although the site remains up, it hasn’t been expanded. Whether or not that is because of privacy concerns, or just an emphasis on Birds Eye, which Google does not offer, or some other reason isn’t clear.

Red Dog: Ray Ozzie's answer to the Google App Engine?

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:09:00 GMT

(Note: while we've been serving up a number of potential new Windows Live logos recently, this isn't one of them. I just happen to like Clifford the Big Red Dog)

Much has been made recently about last night's announcement of the Google App Engine, along with some discussion of the seeming lack of a counterpart coming from Microsoft. For those of you not accustomed to frequent visits to Techmeme, Google App Engine is, according to the Google App Engine Blog:

...a developer tool that enables you to run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. The goal is to make it easy to get started with a new web app, and then make it easy to scale when that app reaches the point where it's receiving significant traffic and has millions of users.
Google App Engine gives you access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications, making it easier to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data. (...) Google App Engine packages these building blocks and takes care of the infrastructure stack, leaving you more time to focus on writing code and improving your application.

Amazon has a similar service, although perhaps not as neatly bundled, called EC2. So with all the talk from Microsoft about cloud services, what are they up to? Well we did a little digging, and although nothing specific has been announced yet (and we don't have a timetable), new set of services, part of Ray Ozzie's four layer platform of services, is indeed being readied. One of these, the Microsoft Utility Computing Platform, code named Red Dog, sounds very much like a platform for building a Google App Engine type service (except maybe quite a bit better). In a job posting for an SDET, the Cloud Infrastructure Services (CIS) team has provided us with some of the juicy tidbits we found. The posting itself is a little dense, written to appeal to seasoned developers looking for new challenges. But to paraphrase a bit, here's what the (CIS) team is building with Red Dog:

an "efficient, virtualized" environment
a "fully automated service management system" (like the Google App Engine, you won't have to worry about managing the system)
on "highly scalable" storage services (you only use the storage you need)
the service will "scale to millions of machines" across Microsoft's data centers (geo-located, easy to maintain data centers, remember?)
"will lead the marketplace as the best platform for rapid development, deployment, and maintenance of internet services and applications"
SDK and tools will be included for external and internal customers
V1 for external customers in the coming year

We don't know a whole lot more about Red Dog at this point, or even, truthfully, how closely a go to market product will resemble the Google App Engine. But the job posting, along with some other indications, seem to point to a Microsoft response sometime "in the coming year". Clifford will be so happy.

New Compete.com search share numbers show surprising surge for Live Search

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 12:49:00 GMT

Compete.com released their version of March US search market share numbers on Friday, showing a surprising surge for Live Search, up nearly 4 percentage points from February (a notoriously slow, and short, month), and up .7% year over year. In addition, search volume (the number of searches performed) was up significantly as well. Also notable was that for the first time in nine months, Google lost market share.

Overall volume of search in March exploded, with total queries increasing over 6% and surpassing the 9 billion mark. That’s the biggest month-over-month increase in total search volume since July of last year. Interestingly enough this growth was not driven by our perennial search leader Google. In fact Google actually underperformed the market for the first time in 9 months and saw market share decline more than ½ a point.

Yahoo! continued it's nosedive, and while Compete.com wasn't sure how to explain the numbers, it could very well be that Yahoo! Search users are sensing the end is near for their product, and giving Live Search a try. A wild guess, granted, but there's not much else to explain the rapid rise of Live Search numbers.

In another interesting note, John Battelle, author of "The Search" (and founder of Federated Media), hinted that Microsoft may have something up their sleeve:

Regardless, offline marketing of search can, no doubt, boost share. Why? Because honestly, there's not much further down Yahoo's share can go. With Ask all but throwing in the towel, Yahoo is one notch closer to the bottom (yeah, I know, Microsoft is lower, but I sense they could be, as many in the industry have said to me, lying in the weeds for a reason....).

(emphasis mine - kip)

The last time Microsoft saw a significant surge in market share numbers, it was traced easily to Live Search Club, a word game attempt to artificially inflate the numbers, which the ratings services quickly factored out. We're not aware of any such campaign going on now (at least not one so blatant), which makes these numbers a little eye-opening. Of course one month's numbers, by one of the three big rating services, does not mean that the game is changing, but this may be the first significant change in share for quite some time.

comScore posts January 2008 search share numbers, Yahoo takes a hit

Harrison Hoffman — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

comScore just posted their search share numbers for January 2008 and it's bad news for Yahoo. Yahoo took a 0.7% hit, while Google got a small 0.1% bump. Windows Live remained the same as last month, so there is not much to report there. Even though Google's search share rose, it appears that Yahoo's lost share went mostly to AOL and Ask. The real question is whether Yahoo's share will continue to fall, or if this is just a fluke. After all, Yahoo was up 0.5% the month before. With a potential acquisition on the horizon, you can bet that everyone will be watching these numbers closely in the months to come

Nielsen Online Web stats for UK in 2007: Google, WL Messenger in lead

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:37:00 GMT

Nielsen Online released some interesting web statistics for 2007 in the UK last week, which we found via Mess.be. Google Search was the most popular website in the UK in 2007, averaging 25.1 million British visitors each month, with MSN/WL Messenger in second place with 14.7 million monthly visitors, and eBay third, with 14.5 million.

Messenger fared better, as you would expect, in engagement - that is the time spent on each app/site:

and in sessions - the number of times the site was visited including multiple visits by the same visitor, Google led, followed by MSN/WL Messenger, and MSN/WL Hotmail:

We've presented a number of US based statistics, including some running totals on search share, so it's nice to be able to present some statistics from other parts of the world, as well. We'll keep an eye out and try and bring you more non-US centric stats as we find them.

Microsoft, Yahoo!, the merger and Google - Online Video

Sunshine — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:48:00 GMT

First let's take a look at some comScore statistics on this one:

Google Video Sites:
Google Video
YouTube

Yahoo! Video Sites:
Yahoo! Video
Yahoo! Live

Microsoft Video Site(s):
MSN Video (includes Soapbox)

Note: YouTube.com accounted for more than 97 percent of all videos
viewed at Google property.

So what does the above tell us? First it tells us that Google dominates in this area, both in number of videos viewed and unique video viewers. Biggest share in it is taken by YouTube. I have cut out other sites in the above stats (to watch the full table in the source article, click on the table), but a combination of Yahoo! and Microsoft sites would pass the current number 2, Fox Interactive Media (U.S. share: videos watched 3.5%, unique video viewers 23.9%). Fox Interactive Media (MySpace, Photobucket Image Hosting) is owned by News Corporation. News Corporation you say? Isn't Yahoo! in negotiations with them? Yes, they are. More about what's happening in the negotiations area can be found on our Microsoft - Yahoo! Page.

Lots of buzz around online video lately, in particular about live streaming. Yahoo! has recently launched Yahoo! Live. This is an experimental release and got announced on their blog, Y! Live Blog, in Y! Live – The world is watching:

Y! Live was dreamed up as a way to make it possible for anyone to create their own live video experience. Broadcast the concert you’re at. Webcast your own live DJ set. Lifecast....

For viewers: How is Y! Live different from other online video sites? That’s simple: it’s live. What you’re watching, right now, is what other people are watching, right now. We wanted to create an experience that takes us back to live television, where things are happening now, in real time.

For broadcasters: You’ve been posting your stuff to MySpace and YouTube. Now, connect with your fans in real time on Y! Live. There is something intangible about a live performance – an excitement that you can’t replicate in pre-recorded format. Broadcast a performance, interact with your fans with video and chat, embed your broadcast anywhere - it’s all possible on Y! Live.

For developers: Check out our developer preview of our API and embeddable components, and well as a sample app and tutorial we threw together.....

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch writes about Yahoo! Live:

Given all the chaos this week surrounding Microsoft’s bid to take over Yahoo, it’s not surprising that a new Yahoo product launch wouldn’t have an abundance of exuberance attached to it....

It is very similar to existing live streaming services like Stickam, Justin.tv and Ustream and Blogtv. Users create a channel, authorize their webcam and start broadcasting to the public. Other people can drop by and watch, or choose to participate via video, sound or text chat.

We’re still testing it, but for now the service is very unstable and keeps going down. It’s also clearly got a ways to go with features - videos are not archived for playback, for example, meaning once it’s broadcast live, that’s it.....

I've found an interesting article about one of the live streaming services Michael mentions: Microsoft Looking To Purchase Ustream? Now if this is going to happen it would most certainly boost Microsoft's share in Online Video Land. Yahoo! has only just started experimenting with live streaming and Ustream has established itself as the leading platform for live, interactive microbroadcasting already. Even though Ustream focuses more on broadcasts of events (fits in perfectly fine on MSN Video), rather than streaming individuals, I can see this technique being used for Soapbox (user videos) too. If incorporated fast they may even beat Google to bringing live streaming, as there are rumors Google may offer live streaming from YouTube later this year.

Another factor that will greatly improve MSN Video/Soapbox is the use of Microsoft Silverlight (benefits, such as offering - up to HD quality video on the Web for Mac and Windows today, and Linux later on), which is planned already (probably before this summer according to Nathan Weinberg in the Ustream purchase article).

Can a Microsoft/Yahoo combination compete with Google? I believe so, certainly if Microsoft buys Ustream. What do you think?

Microsoft, Yahoo!, the merger and Google - Instant Messaging

Sunshine — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:42:29 GMT

Time to take a closer look at IM.

Here we can see that worldwide MSN-Windows Live Messenger is taking a big lead, whereas Yahoo! Messenger is taking the lead in the U.S. Google is way behind.

Some features compared:

Instant Messaging Clients	MSN-Windows Live Messenger*	Yahoo! Messenger*	Google Talk*
Add your own emoticons	yes	no	no
Video (webcam)	yes	yes	no
Appear Offline	yes	yes	no
Status per contact	no	yes, stealth online and offline	no
Leave Offline IM	yes	yes	no
Block	yes, right click menu and from conversation window	yes, ignore list hidden in preferences	yes, right click menu
Personal Message**	yes	no	no
Personalized Status**	no	status message with online or busy status	custom message with online or busy status
More	features	features	features

* not taking into account beta versions
** a Personal Message is not directly tied to a status, a Personalized Status is

With Windows Live Messenger you can talk to Yahoo! IM users and vice versa.

One feature Windows Live Messenger users have been asking for for a long time is already available in Yahoo! Messenger, the ability to set your status per contact (be it limited to online/appear offline). Of course you can temporarily block contacts but that would also mean you can not talk to them as opposed to Yahoo! Messenger's Stealth feature:

So should Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger co-exist after a (still possible) merger or....

Microsoft, Yahoo!, the merger and Google - Mail

Sunshine — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:43:00 GMT

Last time we took a look at Search, let us take a look at Mail now.

Looking at the above, the rankings are:
1. Yahoo! - Yahoo! Mail
2. Microsoft - Windows Live Hotmail
3. Google - Gmail

In this area, what would a Microsoft/Yahoo! merger mean? Google is far behind (user base) wether there will be a merger or not. Can Google catch up? Let's compare some (main) features:

Web Mail	Windows Live Hotmail	Yahoo! Mail	Gmail
Storage	5/10 GB (Plus)	unlimited	6 GB+
Attachment size	10/20 MB (Plus)	10/20 MB (Plus)	20 MB for total message
Email Client Access*	Free Windows Live Mail Microsoft Office Outlook Connector Pay Hotmail Plus, MSN Premium	Free retrieval in some countries, SMTP requires Plus Pay Yahoo! Mail Plus	Free
More info	Homepage/wikipedia	Homepage/wikipedia	Homepage/wikipedia

*Not taking into account third party software retrieving mail from webmail services not supporting POP3 access.

What's going to happen with these two (free) webmail services? Will they co-exist, or will Yahoo! Mail disappear into Windows Live Hotmail? If the latter, current Yahoo! Mail users will not be pleased as their online storage will decrease from unlimited to 5 GB. Unless of course Microsoft is going to offer the same for Windows Live Hotmail. If Microsoft does not, do you think that would drive current Yahoo! Mail users to Gmail? And what if Microsoft is going to offer at least the storage space Gmail offers now?

Microsoft, Yahoo!, the merger and Google - Search

Sunshine — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:05:00 GMT

Lots of talk about the Microsoft proposal to Yahoo. Google has made an offer to Yahoo! now too. Looks like the battle over Yahoo! and it's services has begun. Let us take a look at Search.

Search - December 2007	Microsoft	Yahoo	Google
Searches million/share percentage	1,940/2.9	8,505/12.8	41,345/62.4
	source	source	source

Search: Web, Images, Video, News, Maps, MSN, Academic, Classifieds, Feeds, Spaces, Macros

Search: Web, Images, Video, Local, Shopping, Answers, Audio, Directory, Jobs, News

Search: Web, Images, Maps, News, Video, Groups, Books, Scholar, Blogs

In this area, does Google really have to be scared about a merger between Microsoft and Yahoo!? Looking at the numbers Microsoft will have to fight really hard to become the number 1, but how about the features? What do you think?