Google Sneeze: Favicon Controversy – Is Anything Sacred?

Last week Google had the audacity to change their “favicon” (the icon that shows up next to the name of the Web site at the top of your browser bar) without prior approval from the Google fan base. This arrogant and confrontational move naturally set off an explosion of harsh criticism from Google watchers. Here’s a snippet of the complaints the change wrought:

Danny Sullivan (who usually has far better things to write about) notes on Search Engine Land: “C’mon Big G lovers, tell Google to go back to what worked before. They’re looking for feedback here. That form also lets you submit your own favicon for consideration. I’m disappointed this is a requirement — that you can’t just say, go back to the old one.”

Rusty Brick (again, someone who usually avoids such inaneness) at least was a little self-conscious in writing about this story, but nonetheless blogged away: “Personally, I miss the old one. I wonder if this is a long term change or someone at Google decided to have some fun. Or maybe Google wanted to see if the smallest, most insignificant change can drive up buzz about the company. Heck, Google can hiccup and people will not stop talking about it. Case in point?”

Mashable.com tried to find the controversy in all of this, but seemed to be stretching a bit: “Surely you’ve noticed the company’s shift from a big, brawny capital ‘G’ to a more reserved, accentuated and scripted lowercase ‘g’. How does it suit you? Well? Does it not appeal? Does the move not concern you in the least?”

The Guardian in London chimed in with typical British cynicism: “Google changes its favicon, works really hard to find something worse. Google is making feeble excuses for its horrible new favicon.”

And finally, the Google official blog succumbed to pressure, promising a better favicon in the future: “By no means is the one you’re seeing our favicon final; it was a first step to a more
unified set of icons. However, we really value feedback from users and want to hear your ideas that we may have missed. If you have your own notions about the Google favicon, please send them to us.”

Well, at least one good thing has come out of this – I now know what a favicon is.

 

A New Google Sneeze: Google Sky

It would be easy to write an entire blog focused on the press’ slobbering over every new Google press release, but I try to limit myself to a few of these stories a year, which I have named “Google Sneezes” (the point being that someone at Google could sneeze and a reporter would want to write about it).

The latest Google sneeze is Google Sky, basically Google Earth but for outer space. Google Sky seems pretty worthless to me – astronomers have far more sophisticated tools and the average joe doesn’t much care to explore thousands of obscure stars and galaxies. That basically makes the addressable market for this product high school science classes and suckers who “named a star” for a loved one.

What’s next for the brains at Google – Google Bird, Google Cubist Art, and Google Periodic Table? Whatever fascinating “20% free time” project is released, no doubt the press will lap it up. My sense, however, is that even the lapdog tech press was pretty bored by this release. Still, they had to write about it – missing a Google product release – no matter how lame – could cost you your tech journalist street cred!

So here’s some of the amusing attempts at trying to make this lame product newsworthy:

Steven Levy in Newsweek, talking about Google and Microsoft’s astronomy releases: “Both efforts offer a means to embark on celestial explorations that skillfully integrate astounding images from telescopes that capture galaxies, star systems and even evidence of black holes from thousands of light-years away, including three of the most celebrated satellite-based probes: Hubble, the Chandra X-ray and the Spitzer Infrared (no hooker jokes, please).”

PC World spent a few pages on Google Sky and concluded: “Errors aside, Google Sky is a terrific way to kill some time and learn about the vast universe.”

The Register writes: “if you’d rather be sucked screaming into a black hole than download an application from the world’s fave search monolith, then this alternative offers hours of fun for all the family. Happy intergalactic surfing.”

TechCrunch noted: “I couldn’t immediately figure out how to zoom in and out. But I’m no rocket scientist. The best part about it is you can search the galaxy by typing astronomy terms into the search box.”

And finally, the Dallas Morning News concluded: “This doesn’t look as cool as the WorldWide Telescope site that Microsoft plans to launch in the very near future, but it should be enough to tide over astronomy buffs.”

Ha . . ha . . . ha . . . choo! You’re excused, Google.

 

Google Sneezes! Google Plane Lands in Mountain View

When my old college buddy Owen posted a story on Valleywag about Google’s plane landing at Moffett Field, I forgave him, since the entire purpose of Valleywag is to write gossipy stories about Silicon Valley culture. But when the New York Times picks up the story and actually calls sources to try to confirm or deny the rumor, that, my friends, is a Google sneeze.

All the news that’s fit to print? I think we might have saved a tree on this story.

 

I’m Going to Google Tomorrow – SNEEZE

Tomorrow I’m going to the Googleplex for an all day training at something they call “Conversion University.” As far as I can tell, conversion university is basically a full-day sales pitch on why my company should use Google Analytics, with a few usability and product betas thrown in the add some excitement.

I actually do think it will be valuable. My company currently does not use Google Analytics but we’re intrigued by the price (free). If the value it provides is 75% of our current provider, I’m inclined to save tens of thousands of dollars annually and go with Google Analytics.

Of course, the ever-present danger with Google Analytics is that Google has yet more of my company’s information. Combine Google Analytics (sales data), Conversion Tracker (more sales data), Checkout (sales and customer data), Google Base (product data), AdWords (marketing data), Gmail (email data) and even Google Desktop (my computer’s data!) and Google could learn a lot about me and my business if they wanted to.

Right now that doesn’t bother me too much, but at some point in the future when Google decides to migrate from a search engine to an actual merchant, I may be regretting the day that I saved tens of thousands of dollars and gave Google the keys to my business data.

This is a difficult dance for any online marketer to make these days – it’s dumb to stick your head in the sand and avoid all the innovation that Google pumps out (most of which is free to use). But it also feels like I’m on a street corner in some bad part of town and a pusher is offering me my first hit for free. The pusher knows the value of that first loss-leader.

Those of you who don’t religiously read this blog (shame on you) may be wondering why there is a “Sneeze” reference in the title. A few months back, I coined the concept of a “Google Sneezes” post, which is basically any blog post that either parrots a really lame Google press release or is some form of bragging about interaction with a Google employee.

A search on blogsearch.google.com, for example, reveals more than 200 posts that reference “visiting Googleplex.” In many cases, it’s a bit nauseating to hear the writers coo over their close encounters with Google luminaries. A recent poster wrote: “We arrived at Google around 1pm and had our car valet-parked (a great new feature at the ‘plex). Matt Cutts, Brian White, Aaron D’Souza and several other folks from the search quality team treated us to a fantastic lunch (including flawlessly cooked duck breast) and a tour of the many wonders of the Googleplex.”

It’s sad that lunch with a smart engineer is newsworthy (and this post comes from a very well-subscribed blog). Perhaps an interview with some SEO secrets or a philosophical discussion of the ethics of quality score would be OK, but any post that simply brags about a visit to Googleplex is a Google Sneeze, plain and simple.

So I of course recognize that it might seem that I’m criticizing bloggers who brag about their Google interactions as a way for me to brag about my own upcoming Google interaction. To set the record straight, I will simply say that there is really nothing to brag about with respect to my visit. I’m not getting any access to an inner-sanctum, nor am I meeting with anyone above a product manager, nor does Google care who I am or what I have to say (nor do they care about the bloggers who think that they care about them, but that is another story altogether).

Believe me, if I was to brag about a trip to Googleplex, you’d know it.

 

Google Sneezes, Part #2

The front page of the San Francisco Chronicle business section, as well as several prominent search blogs, has this breaking news: Google to Launch Data Center in North Carolina. I don’t recall ever seeing this much publicity around, say, United Airlines opening a maintenance center, or even Yahoo opening a regional office. But because Google launched the data center, it makes the news.

I think the best job in the world has to be working for Google PR. In fact, if Google wants to save some money, I have a novel idea: fire the PR team and create a simple “Mad Libs” program that spews out new press releases every day. Here’s an example of how it would work. Let’s say Google launches an application, like Google Calendar. The system uses a template to create a press release in seconds:

“Google today announced an (positive adjective) initiative to provide new (any technology related phrase) to the people of (geographic region). The free service – launched in beta – will be available via invitation only by (three months from today).

The service will revolutionize (aging service industry). To support this effort, Google plans to hire (number) new employees in (impoverished geographic location with good tax breaks and no concept of stock options).

Google CEO Eric Schmidt remarked, “We are proud to be (positive verb) people find information easily and efficiently with the launch of (product name).”

 

Google Sneezes! Part One of an Infinite Series

I started this blog because I felt that too many other blogs simply re-posted news stories without commentary or analysis. And the one type of “news story” that annoys me the most is what I call the “Google Sneezes” story.

Basically, if Google does anything, many bloggers feels compelled to write about it. For example, if Google built a new volleyball court at the Googleplex, this would definitely be blogged about on many prominent blogs.

I think there is a psychological aspect to this sort of ‘reporting’; when a blogger “breaks” news about a happening at Google, the blogger feels a sense of closeness to Google, and a sense of self-importance for knowing something about Google others don’t. It’s like getting an autograph from a celebrity – the autograph is proof that you were near that person, that for one moment in time, your path and their path crossed.

Going forward, I’ll occasionally add posts that call out these ridiculous “Google-love” articles. Trust me, I could do it full-time if I wanted to.

Without further ado, this week’s “Google Sneezes” stories:

Search Engine Watch: Google Sending Out AdSense Holiday Gifts (I also heard Google is sending out holiday invoices which are about 4500X more expensive than whatever their $35 holiday gift is).

John Battelle’s Searchblog: Google Hits $500 (Um, do I need to read a blog to figure this one out? Anyone ever heard of http://finance.yahoo.com?).

JenSense: Video from the AdSense Booth at SES San Jose (Stop the press! Google owns video cameras, and they filmed me!).

Matt Cutts: Google vs. Yahoo at Sports (This is a pre-emptive Google Sneezes story. I expect many blogs to cover this breaking news about Matt Cutts’ bowling skillz).

 

Google Goes To Mars – This is News?

This is news? I for one am really sick of Internet news sources reporting any information about Google as news. Folks, the fact that Google has created a map about Mars is about the dumbest news story I have seen in the last year. And amazingly, this is being covered – covered seriously – I might add, by Pandia, WebProNews and others?

C’mon people – save your keyboard and write about something that matters.

Tags: Google Mars, google mania