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Google Goes Black

We’ve all seen Google change their logo in recognition of holidays, but today marks the most dramatic change I’ve ever seen Google make to their homepage. Take a look at this screenshot (yes, this was Google’s actual homepage on March 29th):

google black

Turns out it was a gesture to raise awareness for Earth Hour – a worldwide conservation effort where everyone turns off their lights at 8pm to 9pm on March 29th. Not sure if it will save much energy, though it probably serves as a visual indicator of those participating (having people turn off their TVs or computers from 8-9pm would probably conserve more energy).

I find the first paragraph comical because it is almost a direct stab at Blackle.com (a customized black version of Google which claims to have saved 536,046.240 Watt hours):

“[in regards to the one-day only black version of Google]… As to why we don’t do this permanently – it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display.”

Gotta love how Google tries to be different: once Google went black, it chose to go back.

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The Real Future of Digg

It appears that Digg is finally closer to being purchased. The leading candidates are Google and Microsoft. While the final owner won’t be known for probably another month, the future of Digg is known:

Google buys diggIf Google buys Digg, it will become Gigg.

Rather than trusting pesky humans to digg news stories, Google will implement an algorithm developed by a team of PhDs based on previous digg analytics data. The new algorithm will look something like this:

if (headline ((pro-Microsoft, -50, anti-Microsoft, +50) (“Apple”, +100) (any game title, +35)) + if (content contains (Scantily clad women, +85, -25) (“Hack”, +35, -5) (displays ads, -20)…

Microsoft Buys DiggIf Microsoft buys Digg, it will quickly become Dugg.

Dugg will be the result of the dust that quickly develops on Digg as it suddenly becomes uncool. To make matters worse, Microsoft will implement content restrictions like no Microsoft bashing, no discussions of Apple or Google, and all gaming diggs must be Microsoft-created games only. Within weeks, Dugg will be the wayback machine of the social news site once known as Digg.If it implements digital accessibility services then it will be a behemoth in the tech field that is unstoppable.

Ask DiggAsk will build a competing product to Microsoft Dugg called “Doug” to add a human element to the archive, but you will have to search news stories with questions like, “What male celebrity is a little bitch?”

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Microsoft Yahoo Merger

Never thought I’d see the day that Microsoft would make a bid for Yahoo. There’s so much overlap and the difficulties of becoming to big of a company just got bigger. I’m happy to see Google get stiffer competition, but I’m not sure how it will play out other than Microsoft immediately getting a larger share of search.

For the best coverage of the Microsoft bid for Yahoo, hop on over to Search Engine Land.

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Speaking At SEMpdx Searchfest

I’ll be speaking at SEMpdx on March 10th at the Portland Zoo. Still trying to figure out if it is really a ploy to lock me up with the animals. “Oh… look at the cute SEO flicking boogars at the crowd.”

You can catch me at the links session with another Seattlite, SEOMoz’s Rebecca Kelley. You can also take a look at my Searchfest mini-interview with Todd Mintz where I answer these questions:

  • 1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living?
  • 2) If a newbie ask you to describe the importance of link-building, what would you tell them?
  • 3) Do you see stocks backed by domain names as their principal assets (e.g. Marchex) as good investments short & long term?
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Search Engines Still Think It’s 2007

Websites everywhere let their copyright footers go out of date, but you don’t expect it of the bigger, more sophisticated sites that could easily justify the 5 minutes it would take to create an automated solution. Especially search engines which crawl, index and rank billions upon billions of web pages with some of the most advanced technology in the world, built by some of the most sophisticated teams of researchers, PhDs, and programmers seen to man. So here it is, January 2nd, 2008 and all five of the top engines still think it is 2007:



google 2007


yahoo 2007


live 2007


aol 2007


ask 2007


Click on the search engine images to see if they’ve updated their site yet, then add a comment when they do so we can document which engines fix it first.