Google es una fuente muy importante de tráfico para cualquier site. Recuerdo que en OcioJoven entre el 20-40% de nuestro tráfico venía de Google y que fué nuestra única forma de promoción durante la larga travesía por el desierto, tras el crack puntocom.

El SEO es todo un arte y es divertido ver como influencia el diseño de algunas páginas, llegando incluso a impactar negativamente en la usabilidad si los gestores se dejan llevar por el lado oscuro. Esto genera un dilema de tráfico vs usabilidad, que pone trabas a los interfaces sencillos y limpios, como por ejemplo el del buscador de Google.

Pero como sería Google, si Google tuviese que hacer SEO? Una interesante pregunta que de forma muy divertida han respondido los chicos de Kango/Uptake.  Menudo cambiazo…

Proceso de transformación muy divertido desde el interfaz limpio y funcional de GMail hasta un imaginario interfaz “marca de la casa” de Microsoft.

Bingo, the rumour becomes truth!

Several blogs and newspapers (NYT/WSJ) are hinting at the possibility of a large acquisition of Youtube by Google for 1.6 USD billion.

This would be a huge change to the online video market, allowing Google to be number one in this fast growing category, getting an improved position to extend its text-ads/search domination to video-ads, which is the definitely the next big growth frontier.

While some analysts think of Googletube as the result of a perfect match, I definitely understand there would be benefits from structuring the deal as an extended alliance (MySpace style) – certainly a safer option for Google (see Mark Cuban’s opinion)

A Myspace style deal would have following advantages:

• EXTRACTING THE SAME ECONOMIC ADVERTISING VALUE (blocking its competitors from showing ads on the site and revenue sharing for less USD)
• AVOIDING DOWNSIDE RISK OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT (check this polemic previous post about how Youtube would face its end soon).

However my feel is, that there is a high chance of the acquisition going through in the end, despite Google never having made any such large-scale acquisition in its entire history. The last 6-12 months have been a collection of deals by Google attempting to pre-empt Yahoo and MSN to get distribution: From the Dell deal to have the Googlebar preloaded for 2 USD per PC, to the multi-year exclusivity deal with MySpace worth 900 USD million.
I believe Google will decide to aggressively bet on user-generated videos, believing it will have to face copyright issues and confront being sued by 3rd parties anyway with Google Videos, so why not bet on a positive outcome thanks to it excellent lawyers and go for full market leadership if everything goes right.

Aggressive? Yeah, but hey we are talking about the same company that:

- offered 2GB free mailspace for anyone (300-500 times more than competitors),

- is building a gigantic proprietary computer network with 10s of thousands PCs running its own OS

- is starting to offer free Wifi for the full city of SanFrancisco (and soon NY?)

This move would certainly not come as a surprise to me.

Good luck Google

Ultimamente varias personas me han comentado que las búsqueda de Yahoo les parecen mejores que las de google.

Yo ya había hecho mis pruebas cuando Yahoo lanzó su campaña “blind test” al estilo Pepsi-Coke y llegué a la conclusión de que Google seguía batiendo en cuanto a utilidad de los links ofrecidos.

Aunque sea un ejemplo anecdótico acabo de tener otra demostración:

Tengo que renovar mi NIE y para ello necesito un certificado de empadronamiento que me dan en la Junta de Hortaleza. Necesito saber los horarios.

En el PC de la casa de mis suegros tiene el Yahoo toolbar. Así que meto: “junta municipal distrito hortaleza horarios”

Resultado Yahoo: Top 10 links irrelevantes

Me mosqueo y voy a Google -

Top1 en Google:  La ficha de la Junta con todos sus detalles incluyendo horarios. BINGO!

Resumiendo:

Google rulez!

(y los de Yahoo – seguid esforzándoos)

I had heared about this service before, but it seems they are really rolling it out this time:

https://www.google.com/hosted

It is basically gmail (2Gb webmail) but with your own domain name.

For fans of gmail this could be setup as your corporate webmail application. Safes a lot of headaches on the mail application server.

And with the labelling option I have found gmail to be at least as good as outlook for retrieval of data.

Will have to think about it for my next startup…