[Sigcr-l] Weblogs and communities of Practice

[Margie Hlava]

#2

Search Technology Acquisitions and Mergers**

In mid-February, Google announced that it had acquired Pyra Labs, surprising
analysts who follow the search technology giant.  What connection had this
acquisition to Google's primary focus on search?  Pyra Labs is chiefly noted
for its Web log editing and hosting services, Blogger and Blogspot.com.

Two weeks later, Google announced an enhancement of its existing AdWords
paid placement program, an enhancement that, in the words of Chris Sherman
of SearchDay, gave webmasters "an unprecedented level of control over both
placement of an ad, and the amount of an advertising budget spent to
maintain that placement".

According to Sherman, the acquisition of Pyra looks as if it will allow
Google to generate revenue by welding paid listings to searches of near
real-time news reports from corporate online news sites (as Google currently
does with its News segment) and brief reports posted on individual Web logs.
If Sherman's analysis is correct, Google would appear to be crafting a
business model that closely parallels the current model for broadcast
advertising sales, ie. matching ads to content with a targeted demographic.

In late February, Overture (which had been the industry leader in paid
placement or "content targeting technology") announced that they had agreed
to purchase the search engine Alta Vista from CMGI as well the FAST search
engine, AllTheWeb.com, and the rest of the Web search unit of FAST Search &
Technology.  Together these two acquisitions cost Overture just under $250
million.  Depending upon which industry analysis you saw, this move by
Overture to combat Google's entry into their niche of paid placement was
either disastrous or, conversely, an intelligent strategy.  It would appear
that competition between Google, Overture and Yahoo is going to be intense
in the forthcoming months, despite the fact that all three mutually draw on
each other's content to enhance their own business offerings.

For more on these mergers and acquisitions, consult back issues of Searchday
at http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/.  Press releases regarding the
acquisitions, although well buried in some instances, appear on the Web
sites of both Overture and Google.  Note that the Blogger site has the FAQ
on the Pyra Labs acquisition (see
http://www.blogger.com/about/blogger_google_faq.pyra).   A paper discussing
particulars of what and how Google is indexing with regard to news in near
real-time can be found at:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~milch/papers/www2003.pdf

k