Phil Bradley's weblog

Facebook continuing to position themselves in search

On the Facebook blog there's an interesting post called Searching for Answers? which should be of some concern to Google. If you remember, Google tried Google Answers a while ago now, and was blown out of the water by Yahoo Answers, which was a much more social resource - early evidence that Google didn't (and to my mind still doesn't) fully get social media. This product will allow you to ask the 500,000,000 on Facebook a question about whatever you like, and they're introducing it slowly over time.

Apparently (I've not seen it yet, since it's not reached me) you'll see your friends questions and vice versa you'll receive answers that are more personalised to you. Quite how that works out I'm not sure, because if you're asking a bunch of people it's not going to be personalised - the only personalisation is that you'll see the questions your friends ask, and what if you don't actually want that? Last thing you'll want them to see is a question like 'How can I cheat on my girlfriend?' Of course, if you just want to ask your friends a question you can already do that via status updates and lists.

You'll be able to attach a photograph or a poll to the question as well. You can also tag your question to focus it a little more closely, and you'll be able to volunteer to answer questions in specific areas. This is very much along the Aardvark line of getting almost instant answers via Google chat, though the big difference is that Aardvark questions remain private, while Facebook ones are public. Once again Google has missed out on an opportunity here, which Facebook is grabbing. In a fairly short space of time Facebook will have a huge pile of data that is going to be searchable, and I suspect people will often prefer to stay on Facebook to ask their questions rather than go elsewhere.

The obvious concern of course is that the answers are going to be opinions as much as anything else, so will be open to interpretation. There's a lot of evaluation that will be needed to sift out good responses, but I wonder at the extent that'll happen. If Facebook wants to overcome this they might be well advised to go down a voting route as Yahoo did, ending up with expert answerers. It's a great idea for Facebook to do this, but not so much a great idea for the rest of us though, since I have considerable doubts as to how useful, valuable and accurate the data they get will be. If Google arn't already doing their own 'Google Me' social network, they really do need to get their skates on because they're going to get left behind very quickly in this particular arena.

Google Images - just like Bing!

Google Images have had a make over. Surprise surprise, it's a makeover that makes them look just like Bing. In both cases we have a menu on the left hand side of the screen with a scroll bar that only appears when you mouse over it. The options are size, Bing has the addition of 'shape', both have colour or B&W options, type of image, such as line drawing, faces and so on, but I think Bing wins out slightly on options such as faces or head and shoulders. On the other hand Google gives me an option to search for icons, so perhaps at this point it's level pegging.

The main display of the images is a river, which Bing has had for a long while now - there are no individual pages, it just scrolls. On my screen I get about 15 images in each screenful from both engines. Mouseover gives me file name, size, text, pagelink and a similar option. Bing is virtually the same, except that I get a 'more sizes' option, which I've already found useful in the past. Google on the other hand gives me related searches as well. I'm still giving a draw at this point.

Clicking on an image in Google directly opens up at image to a larger size, gives me a right menu bar to click on the link to the website, a link to the full-size image and a 'may be subject to copyright' line. Closing the image at larger size dumps on the page that contains the image, which is irritating, because if I've got a link to the page, I'd automatically assume that I click on that to get there, but no, forcing me into a double click to get back to the image results. Bing edges ahead slightly however, as it opens up the image in a small size on the results page, with the originating page below, allowing me to scroll around it. I've also got more images in a left hand scroll as well. Consequently, I'm still going to go with Bing over Google on the image search function - but it's a close call. I've deliberately not mentioned the results themselves - in my tests they both produced different images (obviously) but they were all on topic and I was happy with them. So my standard advice still holds - if you don't quickly find what you want with one, try the other.

However, it would be remiss to stop at this point. While I've got you here, let me throw a few more alternatives in your direction.
Nachofoto for real time image search.
Coloralo for printable cartoons and colouring pages.
Panoramio for geobased images.
Seeklogo for er... logos!
Tag Galaxy - a personal favourite.
flickrCC for creative commons images over at Flickr.

Phrases you don't want to hear

"I don't think it's a brain tumor, but you need to get to hospital immediately". Well, ok - that's better than "I think it IS..." but it's not particularly the type of conversation that I'm keen on having with my GP, put it that way. (This is a blog post that some may consider as too much information, so you're free to skip it by the way.)

Let me scroll back a few days, to about Sunday. I noticed that I was having a slight difficulty drinking from a can, or bottle or even a mug come to that; my mouth wouldn't work quite the way that it should, but it wasn't really an issue. Come the Monday my left eye was really sore and I thought I'd picked up an infection, so off I go to the doctor. Waiting in the surgery I felt the side of my face was a bit numb, so mentioned that to him as well. Sent me off to get a blood test, drops for an infected eye and that was that. Thursday I was teaching at CILIP, and I have to say that by the time I got there, I was feeling particularly rough. The numbness around the left side of my mouth had got worse, but I could still speak fairly well, but my eye was stinging something chronic.

It was only when I actually started to speak to the group (who were all wonderful by the way, proving my comments about audiences in a recent post 100%), that I really understand that I couldn't speak properly. Couldn't do it, so I ended up talking out of the corner of my mouth for the day like some New York hoodlum. Things did not improve at all - they got worse and at the last break I had to admit defeat and leave early - straight back to the GP. By this time I'd certainly got a few ideas and I'd been searching while I was on the train, so I was pretty sure that it was a condition called Bell's Palsy, rather than a stroke, since I didn't have any other numbness - problems were limited to above my neck. (Some would say nothing new there!) Got to the surgery and tried to explain to the receptionist that I had a numb side to my face and couldn't talk properly. She brightly suggested that I could have an appointment for the next morning. I demured slightly at this point, and was told I could have an appointment in an hour.

The GP obviously saw on his screen that I was back and saw me at once; we had a quick chat, he came out with his neat little phrase, and basically I then ended up at hospital being checked out by nurses and doctors. I told the doctor what my GP had said and he said 'Yes, that's what I'm checking for now'. This was not good news, not good news at all. Time was ticking. Big Brother was starting in a couple of hours, and I couldn't hang around for all this nonsense! Many tests and the obligatory armful of blood later and I was back seeing the doc. 'This is a strange question' he said 'Have you been for any walks in the countryside recently?' to which I responded 'No, it's not Lyme disease'. He then went off to consult his colleagues, I went back to search engines, PubMed and few other medical sites. We then got back together to exchange ideas, and my initial diagnosis was right on the money.

No-one knows why you get Bell's Palsy. There are ideas, but no-one has proved anything one way or another. Basically imagine you're back from the dentist where you got an injection in your upper gum for some work. You know that feeling of numbness, where that side of your face doesn't work, can't sniff properly, can't see as well as you should since the muscles around your eye are also a bit numb and you can't eat properly? Well, that's it. In most cases it goes away in anything from about 10 days to 3 months, but some people have it for a year or longer. I've got a course of steroids, and have been told to have lots of rest, do as little as possible, no stress (quite how you're not supposed to be stressed in this situation is interesting, especially since you can't pronounce P and B properly, which is a bit of a sod when you try and say 'I'm Phil Bradley and I'm suffering from Bell's Palsy'). Can't really drive much, since I can't close my left eye properly, so my depth perception is shot, and I can't teach, since I can't speak properly either. Other than that, I'm just fine! Apparently about 1 in 70 people get it at some point in their lives, so it's not uncommon; about 20 of the people that I follow will have had it or will have it. Famous sufferers include Graeme Garden, Pierce Brosnan and George Clooney, so I'm in good company, clearly.

I don't think I have it too badly, and I'm doing what I'm told, so hopefully it should start to sort itself out in a few days, but I shan't be around too much for a while - heat is a good thing I'm told, so I'll be sunbathing, purely on medical grounds of course. Here's a good link as well, should you want to know more about it - The Bell's Palsy Association.

Giving a talk in public?

We're at that time of year when there seem to be a whole bunch of conferences taking place. Actually, thinking about it - they're taking place all the time as best I can figure it. I read a couple of blog posts recently where people were talking about speaking at conferences, and I thought that since I've been doing public speaking for uh... a long time, I'd share a few things on the whole tricky subject of speaking in public.

It's daunting isn't it. It's one of things that most people are really scared of - it's up at the top of the list along with spiders. So here is clue #1 - most people can't do it or don't want to do it, and they're amazed that other people can do it. If you have notes (and if you're new to the whole idea you probably will have) include somewhere in the margin something along the lines of 'They all wish they could do what I'm doing.'

Your audience wants you to do well. No-one sits in an audience thinking 'I hope the next speaker really screws up', and as such they will be sympathetic. If you're new to doing this, say during your introduction 'I'm new to this and a bit nervous'. It's not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength to be able to admit to a shortcoming and to be honest - we're going to know you're new at it, because you'll be trembling like a leaf, so just make a feature of it. So view your audience as a group who are friendly, interested and really keen on listening to what you have to say.

Your audience will doubt themselves before they doubt you. Of course, there are exceptions to that - if you say the Battle of Hastings was 1065, you're rumbled, but that's not really what I am talking about. You're unlikely to get anyone stand up and say 'Actually, I think you're getting confused between version 3.1.0.6 and 3.1.0.7 because...' I mean seriously - who cares? If there are facts you absolutely have to get 100% correct - write them down. If you want to look like a real genius, if there's a flipchart available, take a pencil and write your numbers/bullet points down lightly. No-one will be close enough to see, and you'll just be pulling figures out of your head as far as they can tell.

Set up your ground rules before you start. Questions during or after is an important one. If you're confident enough to take a question, go off at a tangent and then come right back on course, go for it. If not, ask that questions remain to the end.

Timing. I'm guessing you'll rehearse. That's good, but don't over rehearse, since it won't do you any good in the long run. A couple of times tops, just to make sure you know your running order. If you're using cards/notes mark your half way point, and then before you get up to speak, mark your half way time. No point in doing it before, since if the start of your talk is delayed, this won't help and you'll get confused.

Write down or note what you want to say. Then create slides to back it up. There's a whole bunch of good stuff out there on using Powerpoint. This is my take on it. Nothing wrong with Powerpoint - as long as you don't actually need to use it. What I mean by that is that you should use your slides to back up your talk, not use a talk to back up slides. No more than 3 bullet points if you're going to refer to them individually, or if there is lots of data on the slide refer to it generically. For example, if I'm talking about how much data goes onto the web I'll pull out lots of stats and throw them into a slide. And then say 'choose any of the stats on the slide. That's what we're talking about here'. Try and use photographs or images instead of words if possible. It's more interesting for the audience.

Tell stories. People like stories, and the best speakers and writers use them all the time. If you don't know a story to illustrate your point, make one up. Who is to know? Obviously you want to keep within the bounds of possibility and a story that starts 'As I was looking deep into the jaws of the Grizzly Bear those sharp teeth reminded me ..' isn't really going to work. Unless of course that actually DID happen, and if you're capable of thinking like that in that situation you'll also have had enough forethought to remember to video it. Seriously - people video themselves in the middle of earthquakes, the least you can do is take a quick snap of the inside of a bear's jaw for heavens sake!

Hopefully you at least smiled at that. Which was part of my intention - humour is good. I don't know of a situation where humour doesn't help. I've spoken at christenings, weddings, funerals, big conferences, small conferences and so on, and humour always has a positive effect. Just make sure the humour is right for the event!

Don't read from your notes! Key words, bullet points are all you should have, in my opinion. If you have more, it's going to tempt you to read what you've written, and that's never going to go down well. That's what rehearsing is for.

Oh yeah - back to the audience. (You can tell this is just a thought stream can't you!) Forget the 'imagine them naked' since it doesn't work, in my experience. If you choose the wrong person, it's going to be a real turn off and you'll be damaged for life. If it's the right hunky guy or gorgeous woman then you're going to go down entirely the wrong road as well. Pick 2 or 3 people dotted around the room and talk to them. Everyone in the same area will thinking you're talking to them, and it makes them feel good. At some point or other do try and ensure that you've looked all around the room.

What if it all goes wrong? You can prepare as best you can - take the presentation with you on a memory stick, burn it to a CD-ROM, upload it to Slideshare, email yourself a copy and maybe have a printed version. That'll sort out most issues, and should set your mind at rest. If it's anything else - projector dying, powercut, it's not your problem - that's what conference organisers are for. Let them get on with it. Depending on when the screw up happens, maybe apologise to the audience, but you're there to do a job, and if you can't do that job, it's up to someone else to fix it. Having said that, you want to be able to offer something, because you're (probably) being paid in some way. Internet connection died - you'll have screenshots available won't you. Have different versions of a presentation for different versions of the software.

Take water. It shouldn't happen, but inexperienced organisers will forget you need to drink, much more than normal. Nothing worse than drying up (literally!) or coughing. Water is great if you get asked a tough question. Take a sip of water while you madly think 'how the £$%^ do I answer that!'

Questions. Depending on the situation, repeat the question, ask for clarification if needed and give an answer. If you're stuck or have no clue ("Tell me, how do you think the recent release of xyz affects your point?" Umm.....) throw it back at them with 'Yes, a very good question - what's your opinion?' and let them doing the running. When you answer, always ask 'Do that answer your question?'

OK, I'm bored now. I'll leave you with one more thing. It's THE thing. Y'know, the one that you have to remember. The one that is the one ring to rule them all, the key point. Numero Uno. Get everything else wrong and get this right and you'll still have done brilliantly. (Bradley, if you don't get on with this I swear I'll slap you...)

Ok, it's this. People won't remember what you said. They won't remember what you taught them. They remember how you made them feel. If you're enthusiastic, keen, interested and having fun, the chances are very high that they will as well. The most informative, useful and valuable presentations are dead in the water if they're poorly presented by someone who doesn't give a f... er.. flying monkey. Take a look at the really good presenters - Clay Shirky, Sir Ken, Steve Jobs, and see how they do it. They're enjoying themselves, and we enjoy it as well.

Google Open House report

I was fortunate enough to be invited to a Google Open House evening last night (thanks to Elspeth from CILIP Update) to talk about search. It was an interesting evening, for lots of reasons. The people at Google were very hospitable and courteous, as I'd have expected, but they were also very clearly in control. There's a particular section of the office that's for visitors and the sign 'Only Googlers past this point' was very clear. The room that we were in was designed like an open space, with carpet looking like grass and a nice little brick path, and images on the wall to emphasis this. Lots of bright primary colours, which again was to be expected.

The evening was with Amit Singhal, one of only 4 Google Fellows, and a senior search engineer. He's been with Google for 10 years and was doing search for another 10 prior to that. The audience was, to be honest, a strange mixture. Elspeth and I, someone from a small provincial newspaper, journalists from a computer magazine, someone from the BBC, and about a dozen others. I just guess that I'm used to being told at the beginning of a presentation if I can tweet, blog, record or whatever, but no. I also expect to be told 'this is where the presentation is on the net', but again, no. So, these are the scribbles that I took during the talk.

Amit wanted to give us a sense of what it takes to run a search engine, and his title was 'The science of search - thoughts on the perfect search engine'. So - what's a perfect search engine? The information that you need instantly. (Even at this point I wasn't really agreeing with him. A perfect search engine wouldn't give me 'information' it would take that information, filter, sieve it and collate it for me.) Amit talked about the dreams that he had many years ago, and took us through them one after another.

Dream #1 Search beyond text. We didn't know how to search for images and video, but that's now possible. Google's vision is to make information universally available (China anyone?) but also to actually create information where it hadn't been before, and he gave the example of Google street view.

Dream #2 Search beyond language. We had a demonstration of how Google can translate data into different languages.

Dream #3 Search that knows me. A search engine relevant to each person. The example given was "tea" which gives different results depending on the country version of Google used. The Google suggest option was also demonstrated as being geographically related. (I did want to point out that this isn't always very helpful, and that Google searches on a public computer will not be much use, but didn't get the chance to raise that.) Amit talked about how much Google knows about us, and pointed out that we control this via the Google profile/dashboard, is very transparent and we can opt out. He didn't mention how long Google retains our search history for which I found interesting.

Dream #4 Search the present moment. Time has shrunk between publishing and availability of data via search. "Anything available now is available in Google real time search" (except of course that it's not, and other search engines out there are doing better and more interesting things) We then had an interesting brief discussion on the position of news results on a page, which we get automatically. The example given was for the Mexico earthquake. The old news at the top of the page, with the more recent material further on down. The point was made that this wasn't the most helpful place to put it, and Amit admitted that it could be better placed on the page.

We then looked at the Timeline option. The point was made from the audience (not me this time) that the tweets that were being shown were tweets, and retweets, and this was simply noise. Amit really didn't want to talk about that, other than to say "our job is to distil relevance". He also said that Google is the only search engine to integrate real time search onto the search page. 

Dream #5 The Holy Grail. What do words mean? Simple examples were GM - General Motors or food related? A better example was 'change' - convert, exchange, upgrade, adjust, switch and so on. We then discussed algorythms for a while. "We don't introduce subjective opinion". (This is of course absolute, total nonsense. Google creates algorythms to provide better results for people. They're constantly changing and tweaking these in order to improve them. This by necessity means a subjective opinion.) Amit gave examples of where Google does manipulate results, or remove results, which isn't quite the same thing - malware, legal content, pornography appearing in safe searches.

He also talked about the Google calculator, Google goggles, translate, trends, images and so on. There was a great question regarding the results page. Someone said 'if you're personalising results, why can't you personalise the fact that I don't want to see images?' I was gobsmacked at the reply which was essentially 'We at Google think that images are important, and you'll want to see the ones we give you, even if you don't think you will'. In other words 'Google knows best'. Amit's dream for the future was search without search - that your mobile phone knows when you have time, what you want to do and basically takes over your life. This is apparently a good thing.

Amit was very nice, very interesting, enthusiastic and engaging. Unfortunately almost everything that he said was so bland as to be valueless. I could have given the talk better and more effectively, and so could you. It was a complete waste of time. He completely ignored the fact that Google is, at a very fundamental level, broken. I got to ask a few questions but since we had to be out at 8pm sharp there wasn't much time. It was however, enlightening. So, my concerns, questions and so on:

If you do a search for cat and dog you get different results to cat AND dog. The same goes for fish or chips and fish OR chips, and with that example, we're talking a difference of about 500 MILLION results. I think it's unrealistic to expect people to realise this. Amit basically said that it's a hangover from the past, and that it's my fault for knowing what I'm doing. He ignored the fact that OR gives a better and more accurate result than the lower case version. He said 'people like you forget we're refering to estimates'. While the search biking italy and biking and italy gives the number of results, the position of the results changes. He wasn't really interested in the fact that if you use capitals with search syntax you get different results, so Site:.ac.uk isn't the same as site:.ac.uk It wasn't until I said that it was a basic flaw that he agreed. He also didn't say that he'd do anything about it. 

A search for "your site here" returns a site in second place which has no use of the words on the page, and no anchor text pointing to it that contains the phrase either. What's it doing there? No idea.

There's another basic syntax problem site:.ac.uk uses the fullstop in order to work properly, yet if you try and do that with filetype:.pdf (which would be consistent) it doesn't work.

This is another fun one. dog and cat and puppy and kitten and frog gives one result; 253,000, but if we then exclude frog as in dog and cat and puppy and kitten -frog to reduce the number of results it INCREASES to 340,000. This isn't a minor issue, it's got nothing to do with estimated numbers. If you exclude words you should get a smaller number, not a larger one. This is basic, yet Google doesn't seem to care, or brushes it off as 'you need to remember we're talking about estimates'.

I did ask a few other questions - why is Google so bad at social media, what about Google Me and Google Games, to which I got 'I just do search.' Which is fair enough, except that he was keen to talk about social search when refering to real time.

It was a great opportunity to have an interesting conversation with one of the Google search experts. Unfortunately it was bland, meaningless 'isn't Google wonderful' rubbish. Bitterly disappointing. 

ScreenToaster back from the brink?

The sad news recently was that ScreenToaster - a cracking little utility - an online screen recorder that capture screencasts instantly. was closing its doors at the end of the month. The sign on the home page said quite clearly that it was shutting shop. It has however been acquired by Veodia, which is a video platform, so that would be a good match.

The 'closing down' sign has now been removed from the site, so does this mean that Screentoaster will continue? I've seen nothing on the site to say anything - the forums are full of spam, there's no reference to anything in the FAQ, so I have no idea. It does look a little more positive, but to be honest, when you get something like this happening the gut reaction is to run away. Unless and until I see something specific to state that it's still up and running, with plans for future expansion, forums cleaned out, FAQ updated and so on, I wouldn't trust it. I've blogged a list of ScreenToaster alternatives and I'd still be inclined to use one of those in preference.

X marks the spot

Just a brief posting about what I’m doing and focussing on in the next few months. For those of you who read my blog regularly, or chat to me on courses or Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve been concerned about CILIP for some time. This originally arose in part out of the ‘CILIP fail’ post that I wrote last year, as I felt that the organisation wasn’t using social media as effectively as it might. I’ve watched and
have been involved with the developing the future profession conversation, and posted a few times about what I think the organisation needs to be doing in the coming years. This led in turn to the suggestion of applying for the CEO position, which I was happy to do, and equally not upset that I didn’t get an opportunity take
that any further. I thought that it was important to apply for it as while I believe passionately in what CILIP stands for, what it tries to do, and have deep respect for its staff and members, I also believe in the phrase ‘put your money where your mouth is’. I didn’t believe then, and don’t believe now, that’s how I can best influence its development in the next few years.

CILIP is entering what I believe to be a critical stage in its development – the Project Board is looking at creating the roadmap to take the organisation forward, and this will I’m sure lead to many positive developments. However, there is still the question of a declining membership, a level of dissatisfaction with its
representation of its constituency, to say nothing of the threats to library services in schools, universities, the commercial sector and of course public libraries. This is simply encouraging me to increase my involvement, and I think that I’ve reached the limit of what I can do from the sidelines.

Consequently, I've been discussing this with friends and colleagues, both in and out of CILIP, and they have encouraged me to again put my money where my mouth is, so I will be putting myself forward for election as Vice President in the 2010 Autumn elections. If elected this would mean that I’d be Vice President for 2011, President for 2012 and Past President for 2013. Hopefully this announcement will please many people, but equally it may also concern others who don’t share my views about the profession. That’s perfectly fine; if everyone agreed with me I probably wouldn’t be saying anything other than bland platitudes.

I’ve decided to ‘go public’ now, rather than waiting for the Autumn because I want to start having more discussions with people about  their opinions, hopes, fears and ideas for CILIP. The more of this that I can do, the better will be my personal understanding; it’s really an attempt to educate me first hand so that, if elected, I can better help the CILIP constituency.

This isn’t the time to start making statements or pronouncements; that’s what the official process is for, but is merely to give people a bit more background about the reason behind the kind of questions that I'll be asking when I’m out and about. I’m also not assuming anything here – it’ll be great if other people stand, because that
will give everyone a good chance to debate wide ranging issues in even more detail than we’ve been able to do so far this year. I’m also not assuming that I’ll win either, but it’s important for me to be able to say ‘I want CILIP to prosper, develop and support the membership, and I’ve done everything I possibly can do in order to assist this’..

Any questions for Google?

I've been invited to go along to a Google Open House evening on Thursday to listen to one of their chief engineers talking about the development of search, and where it's heading. It's not a technical or support evening though, it really is focussed on search. I've got a list of questions that I'd like to ask them, but I thought I'd ask here as well, and I'll include yours in my list.

A few of the questions that I've got are:
How is Google dealing with real time media?
How is the development of their search functionality hampered by their
intrinisically plain style?
Given the failure of the algorythms to identify racist images of
Michelle Obama, while do they insist in their infallibility and refuse
to handcode to eliminate this?
To what extent are they planning on introducing social media elements
into ranking content?
How much of a threat do they see the Facebook 'Like' option?

Anything else? Also, if you've got examples of searches that simply haven't or don't work, any search oddities etc. please let me have those as well. Can't promise I'll get to ask anything, since I don't know how many people will be there, how much time is given to questions and so on, but I shall do my best to ask!

Social media in the workplace

Want to see what people are up against? Try this piece of total tripe: Social media in the workplace. It's produced by the Forum of Private Business (no, I don't know who they are either) and some great snippets in it. Let's deal with the positive aspects of social media that they mention. <Pause briefly>. Right, done that. Now, to be even handed, lets look at what else they say. "You're perfectly within your rights to discourage and prevent employees from using your computer equipment and internet connections for personal use." Or "it is perfectly reasonable to impose a ban on its use at work" Or "Employers can of course monitor all uses of computer equipment" Finally try "disciplinary action including gross misconduct allegations justifying dismissal can result"

Here's another idea, Forum of Private Business. Employ one member of staff for each existing member of staff to monitor what they do, since you clearly don't trust staff, you don't understand social media, you don't realise how this approach can wreck what your companies can achieve and while you're at it, remove all computers because, y'know, they are timewasters, don't provide pens and paper in case staff waste time doodling and telephones are clearly way off limits. Shortsighted, much?

Google Games, anyone?

Interesting gossip piece from TechCrunch entitled Google Secretly Invested $100 Million In Zynga, Preparing To Launch Google Games. There's a lot of logic behind the idea that Google wants to get into the gaming market. After all, there aren't that many market segments that Google isn't into at the moment, and this is a biggie. Farmville has millions of users, and Facebook can rely on them returning to the site every day in order to play, keep up with their friends, and Zynga rakes in about $350 million a year *in profit alone*.

Google could easily add in widgets to let you add a link to a game into your weblog, iGoogle, or even into the left hand sidebar on the search page. This could also link into your friends and contacts, so when you're in Gmail - as you can chat at the moment you'd be able to have a quick game of something with a friend. (Don't forget the recent PacMan game that Google had on their home page recently - anything is possible!)