Goongee Blog

Never fear, Google is up to “doing no evil” and protecting the privacy of searchers and their search queries.

Today Google announced that they were adopting new privacy measures that would protect users by providing anonymity about the vast amounts of information they collect from searchers around the world.

By doing this, they retain the information about users and agencies like the government, another company or a third party will have more difficulties in obtaining it from Google.

Privacy advocates are pumped by the news.

“This is an extremely positive development,” said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It’s the type of thing we have been advocating for a number of years.”

This move could help to increase trust in the very lucrative search engine business.

How concerned are you about your privacy on the internet?

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AOL recently announced that they are teaming up with Pointroll to offer interactive advertising within the AOL search portal.

This will give AOL the ability to use several media rich advertising platforms for the next two years.

Under the deal, AOL will be able to incorporate video within regular banner ad spaces, exclusively for several months.

Financial terms of the agreeement weren’t disclosed.

Like many dial-up internet service providers, AOL is trying to boost revenues after seeing a rapid decline in subscribers as the availability and affordability of high speed internet has become more widespread.

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It’s no big surprise that larger media outlets are looking for popular sites to distribute their
video content.

This time, News Corporation is considering Myspace.com, one of the largest social networking sites on the internet today to distribute their content.

Peter Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media, News Corp’s digital division which includes MySpace.com, said yesterday that the talks were aimed at creating the “most robust video offering on the web”, an ambition shared by its rival YouTube.

Do you have a favorite site for watching video content?

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Video Sharing has become a hot topic as of late and Google and YouTube are once again under fire for user generated video content.

This time Magnolia Pictures hit them with a subpoena to reveal the identity of a user that uploaded 3 videos. One at Youtube.com and two on Google video. Once Magnolia obtains this information, they can decide whether or not to sue this person over copyrighted content.

This isn’t the first (nor do I believe the last) time that Google and YouTube are going to be called upon to cough up user information. I believe as more people broadcast things on the internet, the more they are going to get called out for their actions.

Do you watch televised programming on Youtube? If so, do you think it’s a crime?

This year spring comes a little earlier or at least the time change does.

In order to prepare for the upcoming time change this Saturday, you might want to scoot over to Microsoft’s website to download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Time Zone Data Updates (KB 925874) and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Update Time Zones Wizard (KB 932984) which will synch your personal computer to the updated time.

There is no charge for the download and is recommended, especially for those that run appointment books or calenders from their PC. You don’t want to be an hour late, do you?

Being a criminal isn’t as easy as it used to be. The internet is so vast that it can reach out to millions of people for very little money and some police departments have turned to the popular video sharing website owned by Google to help find wanted criminals and suspects in crimes.

This method could be hit or miss because of the amount of videos uploaded daily to the website.

“You’ve got to ask yourself, ‘What’s the penetration? How many people are going to watch it? What would make people watch it?” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former police officer and prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

Perhaps the most-publicized example was in Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada, where police in December posted a 72-second surveillance video on YouTube in hopes of locating a suspect in a fatal stabbing outside a hip-hop concert. Detective Sgt. Jorge Lasso said the video ultimately received more than 35,000 “hits,” and police had enough information within two weeks for an arrest.

Lasso said it’s hard to know exactly what role YouTube played since the clip generated so much media attention. While other departments that posted on YouTube simply relied on a press release to let the public know, Lasso went straight to the population that mattered and announced the clip on Web sites frequented by hip-hop fans.

Although this sounds like a revolutionary way to hunt down and find criminals, I have a sneaking suspicion that it won’t be able to compete with the more mainstream outlets like AMW. I would think that most people aren’t going to want sit around watching grainy security camera videos.

I suppose it’s worth a shot if you can spread the word, though.

Do you think that YouTube is a viable way to search for suspects and criminals?

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Today the BBC announced that they inked a deal with Youtube to feature clips of BBC content.

The Agreement is non exclusive and set to run for several years. Here are the specifics:

One of the BBC’s two entertainment channels will be a “public service” proposition, featuring no advertising.

It will show clips like trailers and short features that add value – for example, video diaries of David Tennant showing viewers around the set of Dr Who or BBC correspondent Clive Myrie explaining how difficult it is to report from the streets of Baghdad.

The channel’s main purpose is to popularise current programming and drive traffic back to the BBC’s own website, and point the audience to the BBC’s pages, where they can watch or download programmes in full, once the BBC Trust approves the corporation’s catch-up television proposal, called iPlayer.

BBC Worldwide: The second entertainment channel will feature self-contained clips – about three to six minutes long – mining popular programmes in the BBC’s archive. Excerpts from Top Gear, The Mighty Boosh and nature programmes presented by David Attenborough are top candidates for this channel.

This YouTube page will carry advertising such as banner adverts, and possibly pre-roll adverts (shown as part of the video clip) as well. Controversially, the BBC Worldwide page – adverts and all – can be seen in the UK.

BBC Worldwide insists that this is not a new departure, as BBC magazines like Top Gear and channels like BBC World and UK Living (which shows mainly BBC content) already do carry advertising.

BBC News: The news channel, which will be launched later this year, will show about 30 news clips per day. It will be advertising funded like a similar deal with Yahoo USA. BBC News is also offered to non-UK subscribers of Real Networks.

Because of the advertising, these clips can be seen outside the UK only. Any UK users clicking on a link to one of the news clips on YouTube will get a message that they have no access to this clip.

The General Manager of the BBC called the rev share deal “ground-breaking partnership” that would “engage new audiences in the UK and abroad”.

Many other large media companies including Fox and CBS already have similiar agreements with Youtube, which is owned by Google.

Google knows no boundaries as if comes to making profits and I imagine more companies will be making the move to make more revenue from their own content, or building their own networks like Viacom to support it.

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