Damien Mulley

Despite how the 1000s of amazing and brilliant people they have, Google really have not done anything innovative in years and years. They might tweak their algorithms but they are still an ad company with a search engine. That’s what has made them the megabucks and allowed them to buy into being ad partners with mySpace and AOL and to buy YouTube.

They’ve branched out and bought radio ad companies and are even trying to serve ads to cable customers but frankly have so far made no impact at all. (While this was in draft they announced a deal with radio monopoly Clearchannel.) Blogger/Blogspot is a total piece of shit and is full to the brim with spam (77% of all blogs on Google’s Blogspot service were spam) and yet they do nothing about it. As was pointed out, WordPress.com seems to be quite spam free, possibly because they don’t allow ads.

It seems Google can’t keep the people they bought in through various acquisitions with the blogger people leaving, the dMarc people and most recently the Dodgeball founders left while making a scathing statement about Google as they did.

I’m still a big fan of Google but it seems nowadays they are doing nothing more than adding new coats of paints to their service, more than doing anything fantastic. Big company disease as Robert Scoble points out. Fred Wilson makes a very valid (and sad) point.

Google’s lawyers are going to become their most important asset and when lawyers are more important than engineers to a company, you lose.

Are Google just a one-hit wonder who are still gaining because of the long-tail? Are they already at the nadir of innovation? Video search is still shite unless you tag, as in audio. 10 years later and Google has not nearly tackled this. Maybe their freephone directory service will allow them gather enough voice samples so that they’ll be able to tackle audio. I’m actually a fan of Google but more and more they are looking just like Microsoft and other big tech corporations. I wonder does that scare the shit out of them because what it means is they’ll be out-Googled themselves some day. Perhaps they should split the company into a Search/SearchR&D company and an ad/content creation company.

Update: John Ward in the comments puts it succintly:

Google is built around search working, google’s revenue model is built around search not working.

The Irish Politics Awards have been announced.

Bjork videos and interviews about her new album Volta.

You can now watch Aljazeera on YouTube. RTE will eventually submit to distributing their content this way. Yes, you will.

Space Invaders doormat. oooh.

Nah, it’s the Pussy Wagon or nothing. 🙂 Sorry Suzy.

This is how easy it is to have YouTube videos taken down.

Patricia McKenna – the Bill O’Reilly of the Irish Green Party.

Watches made from debris from the Titanic.

Here’s a nice techy idea. Fading out no-follows.

Just read over on IrishElection that Fine Gael think Internet users won’t vote, lads and ladies, maybe they won’t for you. Lots of non-Internet voters won’t either. Probably the majority.

Online is cheap, but the people who are looking at it aren’t likely to vote on election day.

This is for you lads:

So it seems the megachurches are coming to Second Life and now also comes the idea of selling Jesus via Twitter. Hmmm

Via Tom – This is a nice bit of sign-hacking in Cork. Sex is now on the tourism signs?

Joanna Newsom rocked in Dublin on Saturday. Amazing music and very very talented band that played with her. She’s also the cutest thing ever.

Can’t get broadband? Your dial-up bill could be up to €240 for two months, even with a “flatrate” package.

Interesting use of Twitter for marketing a TV programme.

What Keith said. NoFitState Circus, go see them when they are in Dublin this summer. They’re well well worth going to see.

Jaysus, the Sindo really are out to get Bertie.

More Twits on the block: Uldis Bojars and Jonathan Hill

Final plug (this week), don’t forget to register for ShareIT on April 28th in Dublin.

Just like a man.

A blog on men’s issues and non-issues by Irish Times columnist Padraig O’Morain, author of Like A Man – A guide to men’s emotional wellbeing.

No standing ovation for Mary it seems.

Best band evar, ever, EVURRR. Nialler is totally unbiased. 🙂

Hemingway, Dietrich letters reveal 30-year relationship. That’s some unrequited love going on there. Ernie was a bit of a charmer alright:

“What do you really want to do for a life work? Break everybody’s heart for a dime? You could always break mine for a nickel and I’d bring the nickel.”

Scoble gives TV tips. Handy ones they are. Nice one Roberto!

Hooray for NewKlur power. Thanks Andy!

This lad gets married today and I’m there to feel all single and miserable and get drunk afterwards and become abusive to random strangers and then jump into the water fountain outside. Well that’s what the invite said is expected of me.

7 is the magic number.

Don’t forget to register for ShareIT on April 28th in Dublin.

Don’t forget to come to Silicon Valley in November. Register your interest.

Democracy they deliver or might!

More flashy advertising.

Meanwhile, they want us to be a knowledge economy but we run Windows98 in the schools. FFS.

Children of Men, long shots explained:

Top Gear, where would my fluffy links be without you? Eh?

Off to a wedding in Knock, ceremony is tomorrow but heading there this evening. Fluffy posts will be on auto-publish. Heading to Dublin on Friday some time and there til Sunday. Going to see a concert on Sat evening. If you are about Friday or Saturday and want to meet up, give me a shout. By shout I mean text or ring me as email is probably not going to be checked. Must visit the Spar near Jervis for Hortons and see what this fuss is about.

This morning the site ticked over to 400,000 unique visitors since June 2005. In November the counter showed it was at 300k. Here’s the graph:

Thank you to everyone that reads the site and leaves constructive comments. Again, as before, thanks to Blacknight and the obsessive compulsive Michele for keeping the site up.

Don’t forget to register for ShareIT on April 28th in Dublin.

Also, don’t forget to come to Silicon Valley in November. Register your interest.

Seems one of the kidnapped/sell your story to the Sun sailors has a Bebo and bebo are encouraging people to “share the luv” with the guy. How patriotic.

I still miss the Show with Ze Frank. Bring out the DVD already!

Colin Whittaker works for Magnet (who despite their assurances, have abandoned consumer Local Loop unbundling) and is giving a talk at BarCamp Dublin about Local Loop Unbundling. He gave a talk on the same subject in the UK recently and his slides (7MB pdf) are a must-view on how unbelievably fucking complicated and expensive LLU is. I’ll be sending the presentation to some journalists I know and I’d recommend they go to this talk actually. Pity some politicians can’t be made go.

Seems a cheap beauty cream from Boots is so in demand in the UK that people are paying 5 times the retail value on eBay for it. More on Beaut.ie here.

Real fake watches. Woo.

Oops, instead of swapping porn, some idiot swapped the designs of a missile system.

Marketers don’t need ads or ad agencies anymore? Having direct conversations with customers instead.

Nice stats on American political websites.