益智游戏Chromon=Chrome+Simon

Simon是一款上个世纪七八十年代流行的益智游戏，因为Google Chrome的图标长的太像Simon的图标了，现在就冒出来一个Chromon，一款基于浏览器的利用Chrome图标做出来的游戏，在游戏中，红黄蓝绿四个图标变成了按钮，游戏开始时会有一个按钮的动一下，并且会发出声音，每个按钮的声音都是不一样的，你就根据游戏里按钮动的顺序按一遍，没完成一遍会得一分，游戏也会越来越复杂，到这里 来看看你能得多少分吧。

Drawing the Google Homepage With Eyes Closed

闭着眼睛画出来的Google的主页

I asked a couple of people to draw the Google homepage with their eyes closed during the whole drawing process. Here are the results:

我邀请了一些人画Google的主页，不过整个过程要闭着眼睛。这儿是画出来的成果：

Brinke Guthrie’s minimalist approach.
Brinke Guthrie的极简抽象派画法

Pascal of the German GoogleWatchBlog created this one. He says that “...schland” ended up on the table.
德国GoogleWatchBlog的Pascal作品。他说最后德国给画到桌子上去了。

Google’s Matt Cutts created this one with eyes closed...
这是Google的Matt Cutts 闭着眼睛画的...

... and this one with eyes opened, but from memory.
这张是看着画的，是根据记忆画的。

To my defense, immediately when I started drawing the search buttons I realized they belong below the input box (and I realized I misplaced the privacy link at first!). Only on search results is the search button placed to the right side.
先解释一下，我开始画搜索按钮的时候就意识到了他们应该在输入框下面的（我也意识到了隐私条款的链接放错位置了）。只有在搜索结果页面上搜索按钮才会出现在右边。

Drawing by my sister Judith.
我姐姐Judith的大作。

TomHTML of the French Google blog Zorgloob.
法语Google网志Zorgloob的TomHTM。

Feel free to join with your drawing in in the comments (but don’t look at the paper during drawing)!

Also see Google recreated from memory.

你也可以在评论里秀一下你的大作，千万不要客气（在画的时候不要偷看）！

更多好玩的看记忆中的Google 。

Photosynth Launches

微软的照片合成服务Photosynth上线
没有想到啊没有想到微软也会折腾出来这种好玩的东西，在想是不是先找个地拍一堆照片传上去试试看。下面的截图是泰姬陵的图片，我第一次看到的时候非常非常的震撼啊。虽然Google的街景地图也有同样的效果但是远不如这个好玩啊。想一下，这是用户自己拍的，从各个角度，太真实了。

Two years after the first technology preview, Microsoft officially launched Photosynth, an interesting way to combine overlapping photos from a place and explore the place in detail from different angles. "Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point the photos were taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos."
第一次技术展示后过去了整整两年微软photosynth终于正式上线了，这项服务非常有趣的功能是可以把一个地方的照片叠起来，这样可以从不同的角度欣赏一个地方了。“利用电脑成像技术，Photosynth分析照片中的相似点并利用这些信息创建一个物体的外形和照片拍摄的最佳位置。有了这些信息我们可以再现空间并且把它变成一张画布，在上面可以展示浏览这卸照片。”

PhotoSynth requires a Windows-only plug-in that also lets you create synths, but the results depend on the number and quality of your photos. Microsoft suggests to "start by taking a panorama of your scene, then move around and take more photos from different angles and positions. When moving around objects, try to get one photo every 25 degrees or so. That will make the synth work better."
Photosynth 需要一个只能在Windows上运行的插件，有了这款插件你也可以合成自己的图片，但是合成的效果就要看你照片的数量和质量了。微软建议先拍一遍全景，然 后从不同的角度和位置再拍一些照片。在移动的过程中，最好每25°d哦样子拍一张照片。这样合成时效果会更好一些。
There are some interesting places that can be explored, but this technology will become really useful in conjunction with geocoded photos from sites like Flickr or Panoramio. Google Maps already overlays photos from Panoramio, so the next step could be to combine these photos using "Panoramio Look Around", but the results won't be anywhere close to Photosynth.
现在已经有一些好玩的地方 逛了，如果和Flikr或Panoramio等带有地标的网站结合起来这项技术就非常的有用了。Google地图已经把Panoramio往上堆了，下一步就是逛利用Panoramio的到处逛把这些图片整合起来了，但是效果和Photosynth根本没法比。

Panoramio地图相册，是一个全球定位系统带坐标特征地理及地方相片上载分享网站。Panoramio 采用Web 2.0，免费会员制，可以上载及下载自拍照及网上留言及互相品评对方的数码照片。

Why Google Buys Companies

Google为什么买人家的公司

这篇文章的结构使我想起当年高中文科的政治，先把一些乱七八糟的原则规律背下来，然后分析试卷上的案例，根据文字表面和背后的意思把乱七八糟的原则规律以更乱的方式归类后堆在一起就可以拿分了。
Why Google Buys Companies by Philipp Lenssen
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-02-25-n19.html

Watching Google from the outside – with the limited information that offers – it seems they buy companies mainly to get more:

从旁观者的角度看-在非常有限的信息的基础上-他们收购公司主要为了获得更多的：

• Data. Like articles, meta data, digital archives, photographs.
• Users. Or in more general terms, customers or market share.
• Technology. Mostly, that’s software, like web or desktop applications.
• Developers. Or, in more general terms, call it employees.
• 数据。比如文章，元数据，数字存档，图片。
• 用户群。或者更广泛一些，客户或者是市场份额。
• 技术。大部分是软件，比如网上的或者是桌面的。
• 开发人员。或者通俗一点讲，雇员。
  

Some of above items are interrelated; especially with technology and developers, there’s not always a clear distinction.

上面有的内容本身就是重叠的；特别是技术和开发人员本来就没有清晰的区分。

Furthermore, Google sometimes invests in foreign partners out of legal or political necessity, like when they partner with Tianya or Ganji in China; or they may subsidize a company to skew the market in disfavor of competitors... e.g. when they pay Mozilla developers to progress Firefox, or pay Mozilla when users search Google using Firefox, to balance the market against Microsoft Internet Explorer. While there isn’t a lot of evidence it may also be possible they sometimes buy companies just to silence a competitor, or to prevent a competitor from acquiring it and growing too strong. The philanthropic arm of Google, called Google.org, also invests in green energy and more to improve the world at large. But again, as we don’t sit inside Google’s strategic company meetings, much of this is just speculation.

此 外有时候Google投资国外的公司还出于法律或者政治上的需要。比如他们在中国就和天涯和赶集网进行合作；或者他们在一家公司上砸钱就是为了让对手的日 子不好过...比如他们资助Mazilla的开发者开发Firefox，用户在使用Firefox的时候通过Google搜索Mazillo也可以拿到 钱，为的是平衡几乎被微软IE吞并的浏览器市场。还有一种可能，虽然拿不出多少证据，他们收购一家公司目的是威慑竞争对手，或者不要让竞争对手抢去变得异 常的强大。Google博爱之手称作Google.org，主要是在绿色能源和改进世界等方面投资。但是我们不是坐在Google公司战略会议上，这些仅 仅是推测。

The end goal of acquiring a company may be aligned with Google’s overall mission. We can paraphrase it as 1) grab all the world’s data, 2) make that data useful and accessible in order to direct user attention towards it, 3) profit from ads displayed with the data. Google’s hardware business aside, the company indeed just sells attention. If you look at it from a bird’s view, you could perhaps split up Google’s goals into the two philosophies make money (more the manager or ad sales types) and build the ultimate AI (the developer types). Ideally, these two camps work hand in hand, as the ultimate AI would generate the ultimate user attention generating loads of money.

收 购公司的终目的可能都可以和Google的使命挂上钩。我们可以从下面几个方面阐释：1）搜刮世界上所有的数据，2）把这些数据利用起来并对外开放目的是 把用户的注意力吸引过来，3）在显示数据的同时投放广告，并从中获利。Google的硬件生意就是为了赚眼球。如果像上帝一样审视Google你可能会把 Google的目标分解成两个理念挣钱（更多是是经营者或广告销售的想法）和建造终极人工智能（更多是开发者的想法）。幸运的是这两个阵营是齐头并进的， 终极人工智能可以吸引超多的用户注意力然后就是哗啦啦的银子。
This whole mission is then accompanied by a moral framework that started with “do no evil” and changed to “do good,” a more traditional but less powerful construct as it transcends from a restrictive consideration to a potentially restriction-free justification... a self-referential “do Google.”

这一使命和公司的道德框架紧密联合在一起，公司信条也慢慢从不干坏事变成做好事，一个更传统但不是那么张扬的概念，也证明他们从自我约束阶段向无约束的转变...自卖自夸的“Google一下”。

Looking at past acquisitions

回顾一下之前的收购

Here is a limited selection of Google’s many past acquisitions, checked mainly against the four parameters data, users, technology, and developers:

这儿有一份Google收购公司的不完全清单，主要是从数据，用户群，技术和开发者几个方面分析。

• In 2001, Google acquired Deja’s usenet archive. This seems to have been done simply to get more data... the archive contained over 500 million discussion group postings, Google stated back then, saying that “Usenet and its thriving community is one of the most active and valuable information sources on the Internet.” Today, Google displays advertisements next to these messages. They also utilize the archive as a bit of a lure to get people to sign-up with Google Groups, a discussion group tool merging usenet and Google’s own groups software. A good groups search was also beneficial for Google’s search engine soul, though they removed the link from the main homepage links after some time (currently putting it in the “more” menu on the homepage).
• 2001 年Google买下了Deja的usenet的存档数据。这次收购好像纯粹是冲着数据来的...这份存档中有超过5个亿的小组讨论帖子。在那个时候 Google说Usenet和他们高速增长的社区是互联网上最活跃也是最有价值的信息来源之一。今天Google在这些帖子旁边推出广告。他们还利用获得 的存档吸引人们加入Google Groups，一款整合usenet和Google自己的讨论组软件的服务。一款优秀的讨论组搜索对Google自身的看家搜索引擎也非常的有利，尽管过 了一段时间他们把这一讨论组搜索链接从主页上拿掉了（现在可以在主页上的更多目录下找到）。（译者注：了解usenet请参见阮一峰的网志USENET简介 ）
  
• In 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs/ Blogger. Having a working blogging technology might have given Google a chance to be ahead of competition, but I would find it hard to imagine that was the actual reason they acquired this company. Moving the software, which worked sluggish for years, to their own system might in fact have caused more trouble than building an in-house application would have. Rather, it’s more likely Google simply acquired blogger to get the existing users (all those who signed up with Blogger and produced posts) as well as the data (every word written on a Blogspot blog resides on Google’s servers, so they may more easily index and analyze it).
• 2003年Google买下了Pyra Labs/ Blogger。 把一家正在运行的博客服务商收归旗下可能使Google在竞争中领先一步，但是很难讲这是Google收购这家公司的真正原因。事实上把原来漏洞百出的软 件搬到他们自己的系统上比自己建一个博客系统麻烦更大。更靠谱的是Google买下Blogger只是为了拿下已有的用户（所有在Blogger注册并发 帖的用户）和数据（在Blogspot博客上写的每一个字都到了Google的服务器上，这样更便于他们检索分析 ）。
• Also in 2003, Google bought Kaltix. Larry Page at the time stated, “Kaltix is working on a number of compelling search technologies, and Google is the ideal vehicle for the continued development of these advancements.” This seems to be an example of a technology as well as developer acquisition.
• 还是在2003年Google买下了Kaltix。当时Larry Page说Kaltix在研制一些非常尖端的搜索技术，Google正好给这些正在开发的先进技术提供一个大显身手的舞台。这应该是一个技术加开发者收购的例子。
• In 2004, Google acquired a stake in Baidu. The shares are sold by now, but finding a local partner in China might well have been out of political reasons, indirectly triggered by legal restrictions of not being able to simply offer their own technology due to China censorship.
• 2004年Google买了Baidu的股份。现在这些股份已经卖出去了，但是在中国找一家当地的合作者主要是出于政治原因考虑，因为中国的审查制度的在法律上的限制，他们无法把自己的技术拿到中国来，只好这样绕个圈子。
  
• In 2004, Google acquired the Picasa desktop software. The application is for photo management. I find it hard to tell what this acquisition was good for; the technology of photo management seems trivial in relation to some of Google’s other undertakings. Perhaps this was a bulk developer acquisition, in terms of quickly adding the right team for Google’s photo management strategy. In a press release from mid-2004, Google argued, “Picasa is an innovator in the field of digital photography, and we’re excited that the Picasa team is joining Google.” Out of Picasa’s offline suite at Google grew Picasa Web Albums, a product not unlike Flickr.
• 2004 年Google买下了Picasa桌面软件。这款软件是用来管理照片的。我想不出这次收购会带来什么好处；和Google别的项目比较起来管理照片有点太 小儿科了。可能这是一次大规模的对开发者的收购，在短时间内的向Google照片管理策略中补充合适的团队。在2004年7月份的新闻发布会上 Google说：“Picasa在数字成像技术方面独具创新，我们非常高兴的是Picasa的开发团队能加入Google。”从Picasa的离线版本发 展出来的Picasa在线相册和Flickr倒是有点神似。
  
• In 2004, Google also acquired Keyhole Inc. In a page copyrighted to 2004, Keyhole advertises its product that was later turned into Google Earth: “Keyhole 2 LT is a software application that you download and install. It’s only 9MB, but with an annual Keyhole subscription, you can fly through 12+ Terabytes of Earth imagery and data – spinning, rotating, tilting, and zooming. Think magic carpet ride.” More than a data acquisition – Google still needs to license satellite data from e.g. Tele Atlas, DMapas, Navteq, Geographic Data Technology Inc, MapData Sciences, Georoute IGN France – this was possibly a developer and technology acquisition.
• 在2004Google还收购了Keyhole Inc.在 一份可以追溯到2004年的一份版权声明上Keyhole是这样宣传后来变成Google Earth的软件的：“Keyhole 2 LT是一款你可以下载安装的软件。软件大小只有9MB，但是只要每年在Keyhole进行的订阅你就可以纵览超过12TB的地球图片和数据-旋转，翻转， 倾斜放大缩小都在弹指间。想象一下魔毯的神奇之旅吧。”这次除了获得了数据，Google还需要从诸如Tele Atlas, DMapas, Navteq, Geographic Data Technology Inc, MapData Sciences, Georoute IGN France等公司得到卫星地图使用的授权-这次是对开发者和技术的收购。
• In 2005, Google snapped up Dodgeball. Like the addition of many other mobile companies – Reqwireless, Android, AllPay, Zingku – this seems to have been Google trying to get a foothold in a market area where they might not feel positioned strong enough. In the case of Dodgeball it seems hard to imagine they did it for the Dodgeball user base; perhaps it was just to get the Dodgeball developers on board to speed up Google’s own mobile projects (existing Dodgeball technology may have been a reason as well). The Dodgeball founders weren’t too happy with what happened to them at Google, though. When they called it quits in 2007, they gave the company a thumbs-down and said, “It’s no real secret that Google wasn’t supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us – especially as we couldn’t convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space.”
• 2005 年Google把Dodgeball收归旗下。就像后来出现的好多针对移动领域的公司 -Reqwireless，Android，AllPay，Zingku-这好像是Google为了在一个自己没有太大把握的市场环境里站住脚的举动。从 Dodgeball的情况看很难想象他们居然会这样对待Godgeball的用户群，或许他们主要的目的是把Dodgeball的工程师拉过来开发 Google自己的移动项目（现有的Dodgeball技术也可能是收购的原因之一）。但是Dodgeball的创始人对于Google这样的对待不是很 开心。2007年他们离开的时候他们对这家公司的评价并不怎么样，他们讲，“”Google不像我们想的那样支持Dodgeball已经不是什么秘密了。 对我们来说真是一次意想不到的糟糕经历。-特别是我们无法说服他们Dodgeball是一项值得开发的项目，他们只是让我们眼睁睁地看着别的刚起步的公司 在移动+社交领域大显身手。”
  
• In 2006, Google acquired YouTube. According to an ex-Google employee, many people inside Google were surprised at the acquisition of the video site at the time, saying “But they have no technology!?” Google already had the technology in-house, named Google Video (superior, too, just considering technology and not the social side). However, YouTube was also ridiculously popular with many people, and a whole lot of YouTube videos were embedded in blogs, directing a whole lot of attention towards them (with attention being Google’s main product, in a way, as mentioned above). So this was both a video data and video user acquisition. And considering the YouTube team continues to work partly separated, perhaps it was also a developer/ employee acquisition – Google buying a company that “gets” communities. Today, YouTube continues to thrive and YouTube video results are more visibly integrated into Google web search results (receiving special rating stars in the seemingly neutral web search results). The Google Video program director Jennifer Feikin, on the other hand, left the company last year.
• 2006 年Google买下了Youtube。据一位前Google员工说不少Google内部的人对这次视频网站的收购感到吃惊，他们说“他们没有什么技术 啊！？”Google已经有自己的技术了，就是Google视频（如果不考虑社交因素但从技术层面上讲还更强大）。但是Youtube却令人难以置信的火 爆，很多Youtube的视频被嵌在网志里，这一点就给他们带来不少关注的眼球（就像上面提到了，从一方面讲关注度也是Google的一大主要产品）。因 此这是一次视频数据和视频用户的收购。再加上Youtube团队会继续单独在原来的项目上工作，这也算是一次开发者/员工的收购-Google会买可以带 来社区氛围的公司。今天Youtube继续告诉增长Youtube的视频结果在Google网页搜索结果中的位置更加醒目（在看似中立的网页搜索结果中享 受特殊的排名）。但是Google视频项目的主管Jennifer Feikin却在去年离开了Google。
• In 2006, Google also announced the acquisition of Neven Vision. The company focuses on image object recognition. As such, it is most likely to have been added to Google’s repertoire due to technology and Neven Vision developers. The Picasa product manager in 2006 said Neven Vision comes to Google with “deep technology and expertise”.
• 2006年Google还宣布收购了Neven Vision。这家公司专注于图像物体识别技术。就这点而论凭技术和Neven Vision的开发者他们最可能被加到Google的产品目录里。2006年Picasa的产品项目经理说Neven Vision给Google带来了深层次的专业技术。
• Google also acquired Writely in 2006. This product was turned into the Google Docs documents editor, so it was likely a developer and technology acquisition. For similar reasons, Google acquired Tonic Systems to help develop their Powerpoint web app clone Google Presentations. With acquisitions like these, you get to wonder what would be the more successful strategy for someone to develop a product for Google: to apply for a job with them and then launch something in-house, seeing it potentially repeatedly shredded apart by the many management layers of this 16,000+ people company... or to just start-up your own company outside, and then get acquired by Google. If the latter would turn out to be easier, it’s probably not the best motivator for Google employees.
• 2006 年Google还收购了Writely。这款产品后来变成Google文档编辑器，这可以算是技术和开发者的收购。处于同样的原因Google买下了 Tonic Systems以促进他们的幻灯片在线克隆Google展示的开发。有这样的收购先例你可能会想如果有人打算给Google开发产品走哪一条路会更成功： 先是到Google工作然后在内部发布一款产品，看着它不停地被这家拥有超过一万六千名员工的公司管理层肢解...或者先在外面创建自己的公司然后被Google买去。如果后者做起来更容易一些但是对Google自己的员工来说不是一个很好的激励做法。
• In 2007, Google started the acquisition of DoubleClick. This seems to be a good example of acquiring a user base, though here the word customer base – all the advertisers using DoubleClick – may be more appropriate. Also, with DoubleClick Google snapped up a lot of employees with good connections in the market, growing their web ad presence closer to the size of a monopoly.
• 2007 年Google开始了对Doubleclick的收购。这是一以用户收购为目的的例子，客户群这个词用在这儿更合适一些，所有的广告商都在用 Doubleclick。有了Doubleclick Google还淘到不少市场人脉挺旺的员工，发展了自己的网络向行业垄断霸主的地位又近了一步。
  
• In 2007, Google also acquired Gapminder’s Trendalyzer and the team. It seems the motivations to get more user and data can be ruled out almost completely for this acquisition. And while the technology of the software might have been a reason, I would guess Google was mostly interested in grabbing these Scandinavian developers. When Google’s Marissa Mayer welcomed the Gapminder team to Google, she wrote that “[b]uilding flexibility into search, email, and other Google products is critically important”.
• 2007 年Google还买下了Gapminder’的Trendalyzer和他们的开发团队。这次的收购动机可以完全排除用户数据因素。这款软件的技术可能是 一个原因，我想Google最感兴趣的还是这些斯堪的纳维亚的的开发人员。Google的Marissa Mayer在欢迎Gapminder团队来到Google的时候写道“在搜索引擎，邮件和Google其他的一些产品里加入灵活性是非常重要的”。

Trends in Google’s acquisition strategy

Google采购公司战略的趋势

As the chess master once replied when asked about his favorite piece on the board: “My favorite piece is whichever wins the game.” Google seems to be getting more and more pragmatic about acquisitions in terms of buying whatever advances their strategic interest. Formerly, the focus was slightly more on technology and data acquisitions, while nowadays it’s also often about mere land-grab of user base. But even one of the earliest acquisitions – Blogger – was a lot about users, albeit in a more technical and geeky space (blogging) than e.g. the acquisition start of DoubleClick (hit-the-monkey ads). If Google starts focusing too much on land grab acquisitions though, they may get into legal troubles due to accusations of being a monopoly – just buying market share does not progress technology, which in the end hurts users.

就 像在被问到棋盘上最喜欢哪个子时围棋高手回答说“我最喜欢的是赢棋的那个子。”Google会收购任何可以促进他们战略利益的东西，他们的收购也变得越来 越现实。之前他们的重点是收购技术和数据，而现在他们做的更多是在用户群方面攻城略地。但是最早的收购之一-Blogger-也是针对用户的，尽管比 Doubleclick（点击付费广告）的收购更有技术性和更极客。如果Google开始太关注攻城略地式的收购，他们可能会因为涉嫌垄断惹上官司-只是 花钱买市场份额不会促进技术的发展，到最后倒霉的还是用户。

When looking into the future to understand which companies Google might buy next, it still helps to check against all four main parameters. Some companies sole reason of existence seems to be trying to create “Googlebait,” wanting to be snapped up by Google. This hardly seems to work because the goals of a company which has time to think about being acquired are apparently not sufficiently directed towards data, users and technology, perhaps due to a lack of great developers on-board.

要推测将来Google会收购哪些公司还是要参照我们的四条考虑因素。有些公司就是为创建Google饵而存在，幻想着被Google买下来。这基本上行不通因为如果一家公司有时间想着怎样被收购很明显不会太注重数据用户和技术，或者是因为本来就缺乏有能力的开发人员。

Some companies also try to make it seemingly really easy for Google to acquire them, by already working a lot within Google frameworks: RememberTheMilk’s todo suite (which works on top of Google Calendar) or the Zoho office suite (using Google Gears) come to mind. Indeed, Google may look at these companies in terms of adding new good developers to their own teams in that space. However, in many acquisitions Google may also want precisely the opposite, namely to increase their developer knowledge delta. Just buying a team that understands Google may not help Google tackle new problems.

有些公司好像把收购变得更容易一些，他们已经开始研究使用Google的架构：RememberTheMilk的日程安排套装（在Google日历上运行的）或者是Zoho办公套装（使用了Google Gears）就是这一类型的。Google在打算补充一些优秀的开发人员到他们的自己同一领域的团队时确实会在这些公司里找找看。但是在很多时候Google想要的却恰恰相反，说是为了增加他们开发人员的知识三角洲。只是买一支熟悉Google的团队可能对解决新的问题不会有太多帮助。

Word Visualization on Search Marketing Blogs

搜索引擎市场相关博客的文字形象视图

Posted by Lee Odden on Aug 12th, 2008 in Blogging, Online Marketing, Search Engine Strategies

The Google Black Hole

Google黑洞

Sergey and Larry just bought my company. Uh oh.
Sergey和Larry刚刚买了我的公司。哦.

By Farhad Manjoo
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008, at 5:12 PM ET

Late last month, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reported that Google was in the final stages of negotiations to purchase Digg, the popular user-vote-counting news site. A few days later, Arrington, citing unnamed sources, posted an update: For unknown reasons, Google had walked away from the deal. Digg's dalliance with Google wasn't much of a surprise—just about every major tech company has flirted with buying Digg in the last few years—but to some of the company's fans, the deal's breakdown represented a real blow. "Google is really the only company I can think of that could actually improve Digg," went one much-dugg comment.

上个月月底TechCrunch的Michael Arrington报道说Google已进入收购Digg谈 判的最后阶段。几天后Arrington援引不愿透漏姓名的消息来源报道了最新情况：不知出于什么援引Google放弃了这笔交易。Digg这次玩弄 Google完全在意料之中-就像最近几年里每个大的科技公司都有收购Digg的传闻一样-但是对于一些Digg迷来说这次交易的失败确实是一个不小的打 击，“Google是唯一我能想到的能改进Digg的公司，”一条评论这样写道。

The comment is revealing—among techies, selling to Google has never been considered selling out. In Silicon Valley, Google is seen as an entrepreneurs' paradise, and not just because of the free food and fancy toilets. With its flat organization chart and the freedom employees get to work on creative side projects, Google is said to run much like a start-up: a company that heaps money and engineering resources on restless innovators who want to create the next big thing.

这 条评论表明-在IT爱好者眼里卖给Google并不是卖了出去。在硅谷Google是创业者的乐园，不是因为免费食物也不是因为那些奇妙的厕所。凭着他们 平行的内部结构组织和给员工在开发业余项目上的自由，Google被认为还是像一个刚起步的公司那样运作：一个愿意把金钱和开发资源投在永不安分的开发者 身上的公司，他们的目标就是创造下一个传奇。

On the other hand, may I present Jaiku. Google purchased the "micro-blogging" company last year—think of it as a rival to Twitter—and then promptly closed it down to new users. Or look at JotSpot, a start-up that built a wiki collaboration tool for office workers. Google bought it in October 2006. Sixteen months later, it relaunched a radically different version of the service, Google Sites, to much criticism from longtime JotSpot users, who felt abandoned and betrayed.

另一方面，我还是把Jaiku拿出来看看，去年Google收购这一微型博客后-一款被认为是Twitter对手的服务-很快就不再对新用户开放了。再看看JotSpot，一家刚起步的为办公用户提供wiki协作工具的公司。Google在2006年十月份买下了这家公司，十六个月后推出一款版本完全不同的服务，Google Sites，非常不受JotSpot老用户欢迎，他们觉得被无情的抛弃了。

Jaiku and JotSpot are examples of a phenomenon I call the Google black hole. Despite Google's reputation for fostering new companies, many services that nestle into Mountain View's welcoming bosom are never heard from again. The pattern: Company gets bought out. Users rejoice. Company lies fallow for months. Users grow impatient. Company's employees get farmed out to other Google projects. Company lies fallow for more months. Users get even more impatient ...

Jaiku 和JotSpot是我称之为Google黑洞现象的代表。尽管Google一向以促进新公司的发展而闻名于世，不少投入这家山景城公司欢迎的怀抱的服务就 从人间蒸发啦。其中的规律：公司被收购。用户们欢呼。公司休耕几个月。用户有点不耐烦了。公司的员工被寄养到别的Google项目上。接下来的几个月公司 继续休耕。用户更不耐烦...

Consider the fate of Dodgeball, an innovative mobile service that was a predecessor to Twitter, Jaiku, and the many "location-aware" apps that now clog up the iPhone. The company, which launched in 2003, enabled people to send texts indicating where they were hanging out. In response, you'd get texts telling you which of your friends (or friends of friends) were nearby. In 2005, Dodgeball's creators, Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert, had just finished up grad school at NYU and were looking for investors in their service, which had become popular among techies in Manhattan. Of all the prospective offers they heard, Google's seemed to come with the fewest strings. Google paid Dodgeball a small outlay of cash and stock—the exact terms weren't disclosed—and Crowley and Rainert moved into Google's New York office.

想想Dodgeball的 命运吧，非常有创意的移动服务公司，Twitter，Jaiku和不少依附在iPhone上的定位程序的前辈。公司2003年开始运营，利用他们提供的服 务用户可以发送定位自己所在位置的文字信息。作为回应，你也会收到一些信息，显示附近出现的你的朋友（或朋友的朋友）。2005年Dodgeball的创 建者，Dennis Crowley和Alex Rainert，刚刚完成在纽约大学的研究生学业，正在寻找看好他们服务的投资者，当时他们的服务在曼哈顿的IT人士中间很受欢迎。在所有可能的投资者 中，Google提出的要求是最少的。Google付给Dodgeball一小笔钱和股票-具体的数目没有披露-然后Crowley和Rainert就搬 进了Google设在纽约的办公室。

Immediately, Dodgeball's founders saw that their corporate overlords didn't want much to do with the acquisition. It took six months for Google to assign a single software engineer to Dodgeball. After a while, execs began pushing Crowley and Rainert to work on other things. The founders started to believe that Google had bought Dodgeball simply to acquire their savvy in the mobile social-networking business, not for the service they'd built. The pair quit Google in April 2007. The Dodgeball site is still alive, but no one runs it.

Dodgeball 的创始人很快就发现他们新的公司的头根本就不对这次收购怎么看好。Google花了六个月才安排了一位软件工程师到Dodgeball。过了一段时间公司 的头头们开始催Crowley和Rainert去做其他的事。两位创始人才明白Google买下Dodgeball只是看重了他们在移动社会型网络商业方 面的理解力，而不是他们所提供的服务。这两个人在2007年五月份离开Google，Dodgeball网站还在，但是没有人在打理。

In many ways, Google's Dodgeball acquisition was atypical. It was among the first after Google went public, and Crowley stressed to me that the amount of money that changed hands was very, very small. (Google declined to comment on Dodgeball.) But some aspects of the story seem applicable to other Google purchases. One difficulty Dodgeball faced was technical: It took time to move Dodgeball's relatively simple codebase onto Google's complex internal infrastructure—and after the transition, much of the system's code became too complicated for Dodgeball's founders to understand. Moreover, there were bureaucratic hurdles. As a start-up, Dodgeball had grown used to adding new features every week; under Google, the founders were told to get approval from layers of managers (though the Dodgeball crew began sneaking in small feature changes without alerting higher-ups).

从 许多方面说Google收购Dodgeball一事只是一个特例。他们是Google上市之初收购的一批公司中的一家，Crowley对我强调说当时转手 的钱非常非常的少。（Google拒绝对Dodgeball进行评论。）但是这个故事的一些方面也发生在了其他一些Google的收购上。 Dodgeball面临的一个问题就就是技术上的：要把Dodgeball相对简单的代码库移植到Google复杂的内部基础架构上来需要花很长的时间- 在移植后，系统的代码会变的非常的复杂，复杂到Dodgeball的创始人无法理解的地步。此外还有官方的障碍。作为一个刚起步的公司Dodgeball 已经习惯于每个星期增加一些新的功能的做法；在Google，两个创始人被告知首先要得到各层主管的认可（尽管负责Dodgeball的小组已经开始背着 高层领导偷偷地插入一些小的功能上的改动）。

Technical problems appear to be hampering other recent acquisitions. Last October, when Jaiku announced that it had been purchased by Google, the company's founders said that they would close the site to new users "for the time being" in order to work with Google's engineers. Three months later, new sign-ups were still down, and Jaiku offered another update on its blog: "To be honest, a lot of our time in the early going was spent on getting to know Google," wroteApril, Jaiku said again that its troubles were almost over. And then in May, after users complained that Jaiku was slow, Engeström promised, once more, that the service would ride high. "We feel the short term pain, too," he wrote. "Thanks for sticking with us!" Now, 10 months after the acquisition, Jaiku still remains closed to new users. In that time, both Twitter (which is hampered by its own legendary tech problems) and FriendFeed, another here's-what-I'm-doing start-up, have been signing up new people. Both, incidentally, were founded by former Googlers. co-founder Jyri Engeström. In

技 术问题也在困扰着最近收购的一些公司。去年十月份Jaiku宣布被Google收购的时候公司创始人说他们的网站在短时间内将不会在对新用户开放以配合 Google工程师的工作。三个月后，新用户申请还是无法用，Jaiku在博客上发出一条更新：“实话说，前期我们的大部分时间都花在了解Google上 了，”创始人之一Jyri Engeström写道。四月份的时候Jaiku说他们的问题基本上都得到解决。五月份的时候一些用户抱怨Jaiku速度太慢Engeström又一次保 证说他们的服务会好起来的。“我们也感受到了短时间内的痛苦，”他写道。“十分感谢和我们在一起！”现在收购已经过去十个月了，Jaiku还是没有对新用 户开放。在这段时间内Twitter（它也被自己颇具传奇色彩的技术问题所困扰）和Friendfeed，另外一个这就是在做的事的起步公司，新的用户都 在增加。两家碰巧都是前Google员工创建的。

A Google spokesman assured me that Jaiku's delays had nothing to do with the merger; he suggested that they were the normal troubles faced by any company trying to build a popular service. In an interview, David Lawee, the Google vice president in charge of acquisitions, outlined the rigorous steps Google takes after it buys companies. All prospective deals are approved by Google's executive management team, and every merger is assigned an executive "sponsor" who marshals the resources—engineering, PR, sales, etc.—necessary to get the new company running within the Google infrastructure.

Google一位发言人向我保证说Jaiku的延迟和收购没有任何关系；他认为这是任何尝试做热门服务的公司都会遇到的问题。在一次采访中Google负责收购的副总裁David Lawee大略的介绍了一下Google在买下公司之后采取的严格措施。所有预期的交易都会得到Google执行管理团队的同意，每次收购都会有专人负责整合相关资源-设计，公关，销售等等-保证新公司在Google的基础架构上正常运行的一切。

While Lawee acknowledged that it takes work to move a new company onto Google's systems, he said that Google is "pretty accurate" at predicting how difficult that technical transition will be. Usually, Lawee said, the move takes three to six months, and its benefits are significant: YouTube, one of Google's largest acquisitions, now slurps up 13 hours of video every minute, a scale that it would have had a tough time achieving on its own.

Lawee 也承认把一家新的公司搬到Google的系统里非常费劲，他也表明Google在预测移植技术难度方面是非常精确的。Lawee提到一般的移植要花三到六 个月的时间，但是移植带来的效益也是巨大的：YouTube，作为Google的大宗收购之一，现在每分钟会收到12个小时的视频，如果单靠 YouTube自己这个速度是根本想都想不到的。

Lawee also pushed back against the idea of a Google black hole—even if the public doesn't immediately see the results, the companies that Google acquires change the firm in big ways, he argued. Early in 2006, Google bought Measure Map, a much-beloved tool for bloggers to check traffic on their sites; the service has been closed to new users ever since. But Google didn't buy Measure Map for Measure Map, Lawee said. It bought the company so it could add its features to another Google traffic program, Google Analytics—"and we did that." Google had similar shape-shifting intentions for JotSpot, a company Lawee characterized as being "midway through a pretty exciting development plan." JotSpot's users might not like changes to the service, he said, but behind the scenes, JotSpot's employees are hard at work throughout Google.

Lawee还反对Google黑洞的说法-尽管公众不会在短时间内看到结果，被收购的公司在大的方面对Google还是有所影响的，他讲到。早在2006年Google收购了Measure Map， 一款颇受博客用户欢迎的查看自家网站流量的工具；这项服务从收购之日起就不再对新用户开放了。但是Google不是为了Measure Map才收购Measure Map，Lawee说。他们收购这家公司这样他们可以把上面的功能用在另一款Google查看流量的程序上了，Google在线流量分析-“并且我们真的 这样做了。”Google也在为JotSpot做同样的转型打算，据Lawee描述，“这家公司正在进行的开发计划非常令人振奋。”JotSpot用户可 能不喜欢对这项服务的改动，他说，但是在台下，JotSpot的员工正在Google努力的工作。

Considering Google's history, Digg fans should probably be celebrating rather than lamenting the company's nonacquisition. Diggers who were excited about a potential Diggoogle argued that such an arrangement would be preferable to Digg under Microsoft or another tech giant. But there's little reason to believe that would be the case. TechCrunch's Arrington reported that Google wanted to integrate Digg into Google News—not an indication that the Big G would have let Digg be Digg.

想 想Google的历史，Digg迷应该为交易的失败高兴而不是失望。迫切期望看到Diggoogle的Digg用户说相对于被微软或者是别的科技巨头收 购，这种境遇要好的多。但是这种说法没有任何根据。TechCrunch的Arrington报道说Google打算把Digg整合到Google新闻里 -这意味着大G并不想让Digg保留原来的样子。

It's important to note that acquisition hiccups aren't unique to Google: In general, merging a start-up with a big company creates more problems than it solves. I called up Jason Fried, the head of 37 Signals, a successful Web company that makes software for small businesses and that has been adamant about staying independent. "You take great talents and you put them in this big company and they get drowned out by all this policy stuff," Fried argues. "Putting a small company in a big company kills what was good about the small company."

需要注意的是收购消化不良问题不只发生在Google一家：一般说来把一家刚起步的公司整合到一家公司引起的问题比解决的问题更多。我打电话给Jason Fried，37 Signals的头，非常成功的网络公司，主要业务是为小公司制作软件，他们就坚定不移的要保持独立。“你招到非常不错的人，然后你把他们放到大公司里，但是那些政策就把他们给搞晕了，”Fried解释说。“把小公司放到大公司里他们本来的好东西也都给抹杀了。”

Is that what's happening to Jaiku? Is it working on a supersecret social site that'll blow away its competitors—or has it been left to wither? And what about GrandCentral, that great telephone company start-up Google bought a year ago—why is it still closed to new users? Nobody really knows. For now, all of those details are stuck inside the black hole.

这就是发生在Jaiku身上的事吗？他们正在做一个超级秘密的可以一下打倒对手的社交型网站-还是成了没人问没人管的苦孩子了？还有那家Google一年前买下的挺不错的刚起步的电信公司GrandCentral-为什么还不对新用户开放？没有人知道真正的答案。现在所有的细节都牢牢地粘在黑洞里了。

URLs Everywhere

到处都有网址

Google analyzes backlinks posted on web pages to calculate PageRank, which in turn influences the search results ranking of pages. But web pages aren’t the only places to find URL pointers. Whether or not Google evaluates any of these, I don’t know:

Google通过贴在网页上的链接计算网页排名，反过来也会对搜索结果页面的排名有所影响。但是网页不是唯一可以发现网址链接的地方。Google是不是对这些进行评估，我不知道：

• There are URLs on billboards (some of which Google already stores in Google Street View)
• 广告牌上有网址（其中有些已经被Google存储在Google街景地图中了）
  
• There are URLs scribbled on walls using black marker
• 在墙上用记号笔胡乱写的网址
  
• There are URLs mentioned in books (some of which Google already scanned as part of Google Book Search)
• 书上提到的网址（有些Google已经扫描下来放在Google图书搜索里了）
  
• Besides books, there’s URLs in other print media like magazines, newspapers, comic books
• 除了书籍，在一些别的印刷业比如杂志报纸漫画书上也会有网址
  
• URLs are sent around in emails (some of which Google already stores in Gmail)
• 通过邮件发送的网址（有些已经被Google收在Gmail里了）
  
• URLs are sent around in chat programs (and when you’re using Google Talk, Google could analyze this)
• 通过聊天工具发送的网址（当你使用Gtalk的时候，说不定Google就在分析）
  
• URLs are sometimes pasted in the chat rooms of IRC (or in the 3D worlds of Second Life, Lively and others)
• 互联网中继聊天室中贴出来的网址（或者是在第二人生，Lively等三维世界里）
• URLs are sometimes appearing in text documents, spreadsheets, presentations (Google knows those stored in Google Docs)
• 有时网址还会出现在文本文档，表格和幻灯片里（Google知道这些都在Google Docs里面保存着）
  
• Sometimes, URLs are mentioned on web pages but not linked, like in certain news reports; also, URLs may appear in Flash files, JavaScript files and so on, some of which Google say they already crawl
• 有时网址会在网页里提到但是没有链接，就像在一些新闻报道里，动画文件，JavaScript中也可能出现网址，有些Google说他们已经开始进行检索了
  
• URLs appear on TV in spoken or printed form; they are also named on radio
• 电视上可以会说出或者是显示一些网址；有些也会在收音机里提到
  
• URLs are sometimes sent as SMS
• 有时候网址也会通过短信发送
  
• URLs are sometimes talked about
• 网址有时会在谈话中提到
  
• URLs are sometimes thought about
• 网址有时会在人的脑海里出现
  

Whether accessing any of these makes sense is another issue. Billboards would be ads, so they would probably be excluded. Links sent in emails are often spam (though Google has ways to find out about certain spam and could exlude those mails, or conversely, add penalty pointers to the linked pages); links sent in emails are also sometimes private; so are some of the URLs talked about, or thought about (and the latter is hard to scan with today’s technology in any case). In other instances, the sample would be skewed as it would only be the “Google property” sample (e.g. when analyzing URLs in Google Spreadsheets but not in MS Excel files). Links in books could be more authoritative, though they might also be outdated. But sometimes, analyzing a URL outside of a web page may also give a better, because more diverse and fine-tuned, ranking.

把 所有这些网址都利用起来是不是有道理属于另外一个问题。广告牌一般都是广告，它们可能会被排除在外。电子邮件里发送的网址常常是欺骗信息（尽管 Google有办法发现一些欺骗信息，并把这些邮件排除在外，或者是相反，对这些链接的页面扣分）；电子邮件中发送的链接有时是个人隐私；有些在谈话中提 到的在人的脑海里想到的网址也是这个情况（最后一种情况以现在的科技还扫描不出来）。在另一些情况下一些例子会被误解因为看起来像是只属于 Google（比如在Google表格而不是微软Excel里分析网址）。书籍里出现的链接更有权威性，尽管它们可能已经过时。但是有时分析网页之外的网址能提供一个更好的排名，因为这些网址更多样化也更精确。

Search Life Meets Real Life -- Tell Me Your Thoughts!

当搜索遇见现实
或许有一天我们身边的东西都会被个性化的搜索引擎所检索，房间的钥匙找不到了Google一下，电视遥控器不见了也Google一下，这一天会实现吗？

I was thrilled when I got invited to speak at Chris Pirillo's Gnomedex event happening in Seattle this August 21-23. Gnomedex is legendary to me, and to present at it -- well, wow! Plus some nervousness, which I hope this post will help with. I'm looking for some thoughts on my topic of "Search Life Meets Real Life." Want to help? Then read on -- and comment!

非常荣幸的被邀请在Chris Pirillo的Gnomedex活动上发言时我高兴的差点跳起来，今年的活动安排在八月21到23日在西雅图举行。对我来讲Gnomedex太具有传奇色彩了，能收到他们的邀请，太棒了！有点紧张的，我希望这个帖子能帮我一些忙。我在寻找一些关于我的话题“当搜索遇见现实”的想法。要帮忙吗？接着看吧--然后发表一下自己的意见！

While most of my writing is about search marketing, I've been most fascinated with how search collides with real life or society. One survey from a few years ago always has stuck with me, how people turned to search for advice over things they'd used for years -- decades - centuries -- like friends, family and libraries. Search engines are our confessionals, our confidants, our trusted friends that help us.

尽管我的大部分帖子都是讨论搜索市场，但是我最着迷的还是搜索是如何与现实和社会相冲突的。我总会想起几年前做的一个调查，人们如何从他们千百年来咨询的对象--朋友，家人或图书馆转向搜索的。搜索引擎变成了可以帮追我们的忏悔室，知己，信得过的朋友。

But sometimes our friends can be scary -- like when it's YOUR house that's showing up in Google StreetView, or that feed you thought was private ends up appearing in a listing, or those photos -- well, what happens on Flickr doesn't necessarily stay on Flickr.

但是有时候我们的朋友也挺吓人的--比如不知道什么时候你的房子出现在了Google街景地图中，或者那条不公开的帖子竟然出现在了列表中，或者那些图片-那些本应该呆在Flickr没有老老实实的在Flickr上呆着。

It can also seem absurd when people want things removed. Really, you want Google to start blocking houses that anyone walking down a street can see and take photos of? If so, will StreetView eventually look like one of those redacted CIA reports? But then again so what if something's public? That doesn't mean people want material to be so easily out there -- or that they shouldn't have some voluntary controls to remove it.

当人们希望移除一些东西的时候事情也比较荒唐。事实上，你真的希望Google把每个人都可以看到都可以拍照的房子拿掉吗？如果是，街景地图最后会变成中央情报局编造的报告的样子吗？如果还是，那些公共的东西怎么办？这并不是说人们希望材料就这么简单的显示出来--或者他们不应该有一些可以移除那些内容的随意控制吗？

I don't have the answers here. That's part of what my talk is about, to explore issues like these -- plus fun and weird stuff, such as:

这儿我没有拿出大拿。这就是我的谈话里讲到的一部分，还探讨了一些这样的问题--有劲的奇怪的，比如：

• The guy who fakes his death and gets found through Google
  捏造死去的家伙通过Google被揪了出来
• The town that's wiring itself to Google Maps
  把自己标注在Google地图上的小镇
• The fact that Google has to figure out a policy on how to label bodies of water in dispute
  Google必须制定一项划分有争议的水域的划分原则
• The US Navy having to change buildings because through online maps, it was discovered they look like swastikas from the air
  美国海军不得不改掉他们的建筑，因为通过在线地图，他们很容易被发现。从空中看下来就像一个纳粹的十字标志。

There's plenty more like this in our Search Stats category and especially our Search & Society category.

我们的搜索现状类别里有很多类似的例子，搜索和社会类别里也有很多。

Another thing that struck me was a post I did about maps of the Southern California fires last October. It was a quick thing I did more out of personal interest than expecting many others to be curious. But nearly 50,000 people came in to that post over the course of two days. Maps are another form of searching, and the ability for anyone to contribute and build up real-time resources is remarkable. One person I know even told me how she depended on my post to find the maps, as she had a tough time seeking them out in other ways. A few years ago, you got your map each morning in the newspaper or waited for whenever TV decided to flash one up for a few seconds. Now you can study them, shape them -- or get frustrated if they're not out there.

另一件使我感到震惊的事是关于去年南加州大火地图的帖 子。起先完全是出于个人爱好，而不是期望吸引很多的人。但是在发布的短短两天时间内就有50,000人浏览过那个帖子。地图是搜索的另一种形式，任何人都 可以贡献都可以创建实时的资源时的能力是非常值得关注的。我认识的一个人告诉我说她都是从我的帖子找到那些地图的，换个方式去把这些地图找出来就非常的困 难。就在几年前你在每天早晨可以在报纸上看到类似的地图，或者等电视决定把这些地图露几秒钟。现在你可以研究它们，修改它们--哪天它们不在了还会感到很 郁闷。

Things are changing even more as search continues to jump off the web browser and into devices such as TV and our phones. While I'm no fan of many visual and weird search metaphors, UrbanSpoon for the iPhone blew me away with its intuitive "shake and discover" interface:

搜索跳出我们的浏览器进入到电视手机等设备的时候搜索的变化就更大了。我对一些奇奇怪怪可视化的搜索象征物一点都不感冒，但是iPhone上UrbanSpoon凭着简单易用的“摇一摇找一找”的界面还是让我大吃了一惊。

That made sense -- that suited both the content and device, and we're going to see more unique interfaces like this to come. But as I wrote to Chris as part of my talk...

这非常的合适--既考虑到了内容又考虑到了设备，我们会看到更多这这类独特的界面。但是就像我写给Chirs的谈话的一部分...

What happens as search continues to jump off our web browser and into our televisions, iPhones and GPS units. These bring us a world of new search opportunities, such as location-specific restaurant search — but they also open new concerns about the search records and profiles left behind. After exploring some of the issues, plenty of time for audience discussion.”

当搜索继续摆脱浏览器的束缚进入到我们的电视，iPhone和GPS设备上时会发生什么。这些会带给我们一大堆新的搜索机遇，比如机遇地点的饭店搜索-但是同时也引起一些忧虑，留下的搜索记录和资料怎么办。在探讨过这些问题之后会有大量的时间留给观众讨论。

Possibilities and issues. And as I also told Chris when I first suggested this as a talk:

可能性和问题。我开始向Chris建议把这个作为谈话内容的时候我还和他讲：

I guess the big trend I'd say is that search has revolutionized our lives, made us expect that anything should be searchable from anywhere and that I think we'll get more disappointed if it's not. And that access to all this information is reshaping our lives in ways we'd have never imagined, from the private trails we leave that aren't so private to political disputes. And that in the turmoil of all these changes, I'd guess I'd conclude I have a sadness that practically no one really focuses on the society issues of this stuff. Look at how much is written about Microsoft and Yahoo – yet how we interact with search, what policies should emerge, where it is taking us – little coverage of that tends to be done, little research. I think there are all of two universities with single professors that look at it.

我猜大的趋势是搜索完全变革了我们的生活，我们会认为任何东西在任何时候都是可以搜索的，我认为如果不是这样我们会更加失望。能获取所有这些信息正在以一种我们想象不到的方式重 塑我们的生活，从我们留下的隐私的尾巴到政治上的争议。在这一片变革的混乱中我的结论是比较伤心，事实上没有人关心这些改变带来的社会问题。关于微软和雅 虎写了很多-但是我们是如何和搜索互动的，应该出台一些什么样的政策，未来是什么样子-关于这一趋势的讨论少的可怜，基本上也没有什么研究。我了解只有两 所大学的两位教授在研究这一问题。

On the research front, I'm hoping to perhaps do a college class of my own on the topic next year (Marti Hearst who is one of the few I know of looking at search and society up at Berkeley is an inspiration in this). But for now, I'm starting with this talk and especially looking forward to what comes from the discussion with the Gnomedex audience. But I'm curious what folks here on Search Engine Land and from anywhere on the web think. So please give me your comments via our Sphinn forum below.

关于研究的前沿，我希望或者是在明年开一门自己的关于这个话题的班。（Berkeley 的Marti Hearst是我认识的为数不多的几个关注搜索和社会的人之一，他想出的这个主意）。但是现在我做这个演讲特别想了解Gnomedex观众讨论会有什么结果。我也很想了解来自网络各个地方的Search Engine Land的读者怎么看待这一问题。请在下面的Sphinn论坛上留下你的观点。

On a side note, if I'm not responding, that's simply because I'm going on vacation for the next week and will be completely offline. But I'll be eagerly reading what people say. I'd hoped to do this post before I left so I could respond to comments, but I ran out of time!

旁注，如果我没有任何回应，我下个星期很可能在度假，断网。但是我会非常期待看到你们的评论。我希望在我出发之前把这个帖子发出来，这样我就可以回应了，但是时间不多！

Google April Fool’s Jokes Galore

Google愚人节玩笑大合集

Japan started early with the April 1st specialties, but the jokes continue. Thanks to everyone who helps collecting Google’s April Fool’s pranks in the forum (or sent in things via mail)! Here’s the list of Google’s jokes and Google-related pranks from over the web, which I may update during the day (for all items I’ll add the disclaimer that it’s likely it’s a hoax, but some of the items may not be!):

日本会首先出现愚人节特别网页，但是玩笑还在继续。感谢每个在论坛里（或者通过邮件）帮助收集这些笑话的朋友！这些就是网上出现的Google的玩笑或者是Google相关的玩笑，今天我会继续更新（我要说的是这些基本上都是恶搞，当然也有例外！）：

• Google Book Search now supports reproducing the smell of scratch-and-sniff based books. “Using special equipment and tricky JavaScript, we’re now able to capture some of the smells during the scanning process and then embed them in your web browser when you preview these titles in Google Book Search,” their blog says, pointing to severalexamples.
• Google图书搜索现在支持再生成原来味道的书籍了。“利用特殊的工具和巧妙的JavaScript，我们现在在扫描的过程中可以获取一些味道，当你在Google图书搜索中预览这些书名的时候我们会把这些味道嵌入到你的浏览器里，”他们在日志 里写道，并且链接了一些例子 。
  
• The Google Talk blog reports wants to help lower CO2 emissions and starts reducing the characters you send... by converting them to instant-messenger-speak. For instance, the sentence “As far as I’m concerned, you can give me the twenty dollars you owe me when I see you later.” will be automatically translated to “AFAIC, U can gve me the 20 $$ YOM whn I CUL8R.” before it reaches the other person. You can already see how your texts will translate thanks to the working en2im@bot.talk.google.com bot.
• Google Talk日志报道说他们打算开始减少你发送的字符数量以帮助降低二氧化碳的排放...把你发送的文字转化成简化的聊天语言。比如这一句“依我看回头你可以 把欠我的二十块钱还我。（As far as I’m concerned, you can give me the twenty dollars you owe me when I see you later.）”在另一个人看到之前就会被转自动译成“AFAIC, U can gve me the 20 $$ YOM whn I CUL8R.”。多亏了working en2im@bot.talk.google.com bot你现在就可以看到你的文字是怎么转译的。
• Google started Virgle, a team-up Google Inc and the Virgin Group. The goal? To establish a permanent human settlement on Mars, because as Virgin’s Richard Branson writes on the official Google blog, “Larry Page, Sergey Brin and I feel strongly that contemporary technology is sufficiently advanced to make such an effort both successful and economical, and that it’s high time that humanity moved beyond Earth and began our great, long journey to explore the stars and establish our first lasting foothold on another world.” In a video, Sergey Brin announces “We’re going to select the very first settlers of the planet Mars.” The apparent reason for launching this project now seems to be that “Earth has issues,” as the Virgle homepage states.
• Google发起了Virgle，Google 公司和Virgin集团合作的项目。目标？在火星建立人类永久居住地，因为Virgin的Richard Branson在Google官方日志里写道，“Larry Page, Sergey Brin和我认为要成功经济的实现这个目标现在的科技完全足够了，是人类迈出地球，开始星际伟大征程，在另一个世界建立永久立足点的时候了。”在一个视频 里，Sergey Brin宣布说“我们打算筛选一些将要定居火星的先行者。”启动这一项目的直接原因是Virgle主页上显示的“地球出问题了”。
• The German Google Watch Blog announced they’ll be shutting down to launch a competitor to Google Street View for Germany. Image samples from Berlin and other locations are provided in the post. Called CityMap, the service has a nice feature of overlaying people’s faces with smileys to better protect their privacy.
• 德国的Google观察日志宣布他们将要关掉自己的日志发布一款与Google德国街景地图竞争的产品。该帖子还提供了一些柏林和其他一些地方的图片。这款称为CityMap的服务比较好的一个特征是用图标盖住人的脸以更好的保护他们隐私。
• Ionut Alexandru Chitu got the scoop on OpenGoogle. The product sounds nice – “The project ... will allow anyone to create a search engine that uses Google’s index, but has a custom ranking algorithm and a personalized interface. You’ll be able to select from a list of approximately 100 ranking signals like: the page’s self-importance, the number of original ideas, the IQs of their authors, the number of links from Wikipedia, and decide their importance.” – but I get a feeling Google and the web at large is over-using the “open” word. On a side-note, the OpenGoogle system determines that Ionut’s IQ is 125; when I asked Ionut for a statement he told me it’s “off by 50” though he didn’t say in which direction.
• Ionut Alexandru Chitu拿到了OpenGoogle的独家新闻。这款产品听起来非常的不错-“这个项目...允许任何人使用Google的索引创建自己的搜索引擎，同 时使用定制的排名算法和个性化的页面。你可以从一个包含100中排名方式的列表中选择：网页自身的重要程度，独创观点的数量，作者的智商，维基百科链接的 数量，然后决定他们的重要性。”-但是我的想法是Google和这个网络滥用了开放这个词。在一个旁注里OpenGoogle系统认为Ionut的智商是 125；我问Ionut怎么解释时，他说起码差了50，但是他没有讲是多了50还是少了50。
• YouTube is rickrolling its users big-scale. All the featured videos on the YouTube.com frontpage are currently linking to Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up. Or, as a commenter at YouTube puts it in the comments to the video, “HAHAHAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA lol nice youtube”.
• YouTube故意大规模的错误引导用户。YouTube首页上所有特色视频都链接到Rick Astley的 Never Gonna Give You Up。“HAHAHAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA youtube放声大笑吧（lol laugh out loud）”。
• Over the next days, Google Documents will roll out a Google Gears-powered offline version (I can’t see it yet). Straight from the official Google Docs Blog announcement and as discussed in our forum, this has to be the silliest joke of them all, because in this day and age, nobody is ever offline, so it’s a useless feature. “When I lose my connection, I sacrifice some features,” the Google Docs blog writes, putting up a straw man argument, “but I can still access my documents... Everything I need is saved locally ... When my connection comes back, my documents sync up again with the server.”
• 在接下来的几天里Google文档会推出Google Gears支持的离线版本（我还没有看到）。Google Docs官方日志 宣布了这一功能，我们的论坛也在讨论，这是他们的最过分的一个玩笑，因为到现在为止没有人离线过，因此这是一个无用的功能。“没有网络的时候有些功能会用 不起来，”Google Docs日志写道，开始一个二人转式的争论，“但是我还可以看到我的文件...所用我需要的东西都保存在本地磁盘了...当我可以上网的时候我的文件会同 步到服务器上。”
  
• Google Australia delivers gDay with MATE technology to “search content on the internet before it’s created,” i.e., from the future. From the page: “Google spiders crawl publicly available web information and our index of historic, cached web content. Using a mashup of numerous factors such as recurrence plots, fuzzy measure analysis, online betting odds and the weather forecast from the iGoogle weather gadget, we can create a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from now.” I saw this yesterday already and tried to search for “Google Blogoscoped” and indeed, found this post and opened its Google Cache version – I was then able to copy the full text of the post, which saved me a lot of writing today.
• Google 澳大利亚发布了采用即时机器推断科技可以用来搜索网上尚未被创建的内容的gDAY，比如，未来的事件。该页面上写道“Google蜘蛛会检索公共的网络信 息，比如保存的历史记录的检索内容。通过整合大量的因素，比如重现的细节，模糊分析法，在线投注赔率和iGoogle天气插件的天气预报，我们开发了一款 复杂的系统预测未来24个小时内网络发展。”昨天我就看到这个了，还试着搜索了一下“Google Blogoscoped”，真的发现这个帖子了并且打开了Google缓存的版本 -还好我把整篇文章都拷了下来，省了我今天的不少写作时间。
• A website covering alternative search engines urges people to make April 1st the new Annual Day Without Google. “Choose one, choose several, but for One Day give the Alternative search engines a fighting chance and see what life would be like without Google. It will be alright. Really.” (I’ll pass – while I could probably imagine to stop use Google search entirely, I’m totally addicted to Google Shared Stuff, which is way better than Friendfeed.)
• 有一个包含了其他搜索引擎的网站呼吁把四月一号变成无Google日。“选择这一个或者是另一个，就在这一天给别的搜索引擎一个翻身的机会。看看没有Google的生活是什么样子。其实地球还会继续转下去的。”（我会挨过去的-我可以完全不适用Google搜索。但是我对Google Shared Stuff非常的着迷，这种分享方式比Friendfeed好多了。）
  
• Also, if you open a new Google Document – log-in to Docs and pick New -> Document – you can then pick File -> “New airplaine” from the menu. This will result in a document pre-loaded with a paper airplane folding layout.
• 还有，如果你打开Google Docs，登陆上去，选择新建->文档-你可以选择文件->然后选择“创建新的飞机”。结果就是你可以看到一个事先准备好的纸飞机的折叠图案 。
• As reported, Google Japan now delivers special “Dajare” (Japanese puns) onebox results. This search will show one of them, for instance.
• 据报道Google日本现在提供特殊的“Dajare”（日语双关语，维基词条 ）的盒子搜索结果。这个搜索 会显示其中的一条。
  
• Jon Henshaw reports that cars of the Google Street View fleet are now forced to paint road lines while driving the streets of Nashville. The Nashville Mayor is quoted to have said, “These Google cars ride up and down our streets, sometimes 12 or 5 times back and forth. They’re making pot holes, causing wrecks and costing our city millions of dollars ... If they’re going to ruin our streets, then they’re going to fix them at the same time.”
• Jon Henshaw报道说Google街景地图车队在纳什维尔行驶的时候被要求粉刷路上的标志线。纳什维尔市市长说，“这些Google的车在我们的街上开过 来开过去，有时候来回十几趟。他们把路都弄的坑坑洼洼的，引发不少交通事故，害我们花掉数百万美元...如果他们再把我们的大街弄的一团糟，他们要立马修 好。”
• Gmail now offers a “custom time” feature. The Google custom time help page explains you need to click “Set custom time” from the Compose view. Then, “Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient’s inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.” According to their explanations, Gmail utilizes an “e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality.” Finally – I was wishing for this exact thing back in August 2004!
• Gmail现在提供指定时间的 功能了。Google定时功能帮助页面上解释道你只要在写信视图上点“设置指定时间”。然后你发往过去的邮件也会按时间顺序出现在收件人的收件箱里。你可 以勾选相应的选择框把邮件设置成已读或未读。“根据他们的解释Gmail使用一种e-flux电容解决了因果关系问题。”最后-我在2004年八月份 期待的东西终于推出了。
  
• PC World describes a new Google effort to organize all of human ignorance. Google CEO Eric Schmidt says, “Admittedly, human ignorance is vast – perhaps unlimited – but our goal is to organize all of it. Consistent with our mobile strategy, we aim to provide anytime, anywhere ignorance.” Eric adds the feature may not be for everyone, but that “Here at Google we just want to give people options. Ignorance is an option and we want people to have that option.”
• 个 人电脑世界描述道Google新的目标是组织全人类的无知。Google首席执行官Eric Schmidt说，“不得不承认，人类的无知多么的巨大-可能是无限的-我们的目标是把这些都组织起来。”Eric补充道这项功能不是每个人都会用到，但 是在Google我们要给人们这一选择。无知是一个选择，人们也要拥有。
• Google China invests in human search. Google’s automated translation of the homepage sheds more light on this (in a you’re-in-a-dark-cellar-wearing-sunshades-and-your- tiny-flashlight-is-half-empty kind of lightshedding way): “Not only can people search meat in the shortest possible time to expose the truth behind a certain door for a three public recognition of a seven find the moral position, but also not in the reach of the network, and explore the jungle found the most beautiful girls, the most moving mountains pastoralists, the most mysterious desert cave, the ultimate romantic encounter…… meat search pursuit of the highest goal is: do not seek the best, but for the most meat.”
• Google中国投资人肉搜索 Google的机器翻译可以让我们了解一些眉目（就像你戴着墨镜走在地窖里小小的手电筒又快没有电了那种了解）：“人肉搜索不仅可以在最短时间内揭露某某门背后的真相， 为某三某七找到大众认可的道德定位，还可以在网络无法触及的地方， 探寻并发现最美丽的丛林少女，最感人的高山牧民，最神秘的荒漠洞窟，最浪漫的终极邂逅…… 人肉搜索追求的最高目标是：不求最好，但求最肉。”(该段翻译来自人肉搜索介绍 )
  
• Google competitor Microsoft in the mean-time came up with a plan that’s so crazy it just might work, Search Engine Land reports. Instead of buying Yahoo to beat Google, they will pay people in the US $1 million per year to not use Google. A special program will monitor their web activitiy to ensure this. Danny Sullivan comments, “Absurdly expensive? It can seem that way at first, but consider the math. There’s an estimated 300 million people living in the United States. If you pay each one $1 million for the next three years, that’s just under $1 billion. That saves Microsoft $39 billion compared to what it was going to spend on purchasing Yahoo.”
• 据Search Engine Land报 道Google竞争对手微软想出了一个非常疯狂但是可行的计划。他们决定不要通过收购雅虎打败Google，他们每年给不使用Google的用户100万 美金。一款特殊的程序会监视他们的网络活动保证他们不去使用Google。Danny Sullivan评论道，“非常贵是吧，咋一看来好像是这样，但是打打算盘就清楚了，美国有3亿居住人口，下面的三年里每年每人付给他们100万，还不到 1万亿。和收购雅虎比起来一下省下来39万亿。”（译者注：仔细算过之后发现这笔买卖不划算，因为连续3年每年付给每个用户100万要花掉900万亿，收 购雅虎是40万亿，微软的玩笑开的有点大了。）
• In case you have trouble getting out of the bed in the morning, Google Calendar’s “Wake Up Kit” uses notifications which are “progressively more annoying” to wake you up. From the description: “First it will send an SMS message to your phone. If that fails, more coercive means will be used. The kit includes an industrial-sized bucket and is designed to be connected to your water main for automatic filling.”
• 如果你早起有困难Google日历的叫醒工具包会使用逐步升级的提醒把你叫醒。描述里说：“首先它会发一条短息到你的手机。如果短信不管用将会采取强硬手段来解决问题。该工具包包含一个标准尺寸的水桶，可以直接连接水管，自动灌满。”
  
• Google’s social network site Orkut turned into Yogurt today, according to their logo.
• 从他们的图标 来看Google的社交网站Orkut今天变成了Yogurt。
• The Virtual Tourism blog found out that Google Street View censors the logos of competing companies, like Yahoo, Microsoft or Apple. In a live demo, you can reproduce how when you near towards the Apple store, the view goes black, noting “The image is no longer available.”
• Virtual Tourism blog发现Google街景模式移除了竞争对手公司的图标，比如雅虎，微软和苹果。在一个现场演示中，你可以再现你朝苹果专卖店走，会突然黑屏，显示“该图片不存在。”
• Google Calendar has a new “I’m feeling lucky” button. Just log-in to your calendar, click on a day, and in the box that pops up, hit the Feeling Lucky button. Now a random new event will be added, like one reading “Date with Anna Kournikova” (or George W. Bush, Lois Griffin and others).
• Google日历添加新的“运气不错”按钮。登陆到你的日历上，选择一天，然后在跳出来的标签点击运气不错
  按钮。一个随即的事件就会添加进来，就像有人看到“和安娜·库尔尼科娃约会”（或者布什，Lois Griffin（Family Guy中的角色）或其他人）。
• Search Engine Roundtable has not one but four news items today. Including “Microsoft Buys Yahoo So Google Buys Microsoft in Hostile Takeover” and “Matt Cutts Transfers to Performics - Will Assume Lead SEO Role”. In regards to the latter item, Barry Schwartz writes, “Google has decided to reinforce Performics, a company that came with the Doubleclick Acquisition, by transferring long time search quality lead Matt Cutts into a role with the search engine optimization firm. This immediately strengthens the perceived value of working with Performics, since Matt is obviously very familiar with the Google algorithm”.
• 搜索引擎圆桌日志今天出现了4条而不是一条新闻。包括“在恶意收购中，微软收购了雅虎，Google收购了微软”和“Matt Cutts ”
  
• The Google Sightseeing blog reports on two new view mode in Google Earth and Google Maps. One is x-ray, the other is thermal imagery; with these new modes, you can literally see inside buildings.
• 据Google观光日志报道 Google地球和Google地图上添加了两个新的模式。一个是X光模式，还有一个是红外模式；有了这两种模式你甚至可以看到建筑的内部了。
  
• Questions and answers service Uclue shows proof that Larry and Sergey grabbed their April Fool’s ideas from their site. “Every year we run an April Fools gag at our site, in an attempt to gain a bit of publicity,” the Google co-founders post on the site, “We’re a bit short of ideas to use for this year. Could you provide a few suggestions for us to choose from?”
• 问答服务网站Uclue拿出证据说Larry和Sergey从他们的网站得到愚人节的主意。“每年我们的网站都会有愚人节玩笑，也是为了吸引更多的人，”Google的创始人在这个网站上写道 ，“今年要推出什么内容还没有定。能不能给些建议供我们选择？”
• The Rimm-Kaufman Group say they cracked Google’s press release server, uncovering news of several “open platform" releases; refresh their page for more news.
• Rimm-Kaufman Group说他们破解了Google新闻发布服务器，发现了一些开放平台的发布新闻；更多新闻参看他们的最新新闻。
• The Google Russia blog announced the release of Google Cash. Ihar in the forum explains, “Since everyone is used to cash in Russia, that’s the most convenient way for them ... The machine doesn’t actually collect money, it destroys them, after scanning the bill and sending the number to the Central Bank.”
• Google俄国日志宣布了Google兑现服务的发布。Ihar在论坛里解释道，“在俄国每个人都使用现金，对他们来说比较方便...这台机器实际上不会收集钱，它会在把扫描到的金额发送到中央银行，然后把钱粉碎掉。”
• Google AdSense introduces AdSense for conversations. These ads will be displayed on top of the head of others as you talk, making Google context-relevant money. Google remarks that ads can be turned off depending on who you talk with. “Yes; we understand that there’s a time and place for ads in conversations, as a chat with a friend isn’t quite the same as an interview with a prospective employer or parole officer. That’s why we let you choose which conversations to target using the ’Allowed Conversations’ feature, located under your AdSense Setup tab.”
• Google Adsense推出了交谈AdSense。在你讲话的时候广告就会出现在别人头上，通过内容相关帮助Google挣钱。根据我谈话的对象广告也可以关掉 的。“是的；我们理解显示广告也是要分时间和地点的，朋友之间的聊天和你未来老板的面试或者和假释官的谈话是完全不同的。这就是为什么我们在你的 AdSense 设置标签下提供‘允许的谈话’功能选择允许出现广告的谈话。”
  
• The French Abondance blog announced that Google is the new main sponsor of the Paris Saint Germain football club, showing photo proof, too.
• 法国的Abondance blog宣布Google成为巴黎圣日耳曼足球俱乐部新的赞助商，还提供了图片证明。
  
• The French Google blog Zorgloob is showing their new “Google Blogoscoped” logo. I’m sure they will write an announcement post soon.
• 法语Google日志Zorgloob 展示了他们新的“Google Blogoscoped”图标。我确信他们会写个帖子。
• ReadWriteWeb is the first to report on Google DreamAds. According to their post, DreamAds are one of the most ambitious Google projects yet: it integrates AdSense into dreams. “It may sound far-fetched, but an inside source at Google told us that it is very possible thanks to the latest in cheap magnetic resonance scanning and mind-reading techniques developed at Stanford University.”
• ReadWriteWeb第一个报道了Google DreamAds。从他们的报道来看DreamAds是Google最具野心的项目：它会把AdSense集成到梦里。“听起来像是天方夜谭，但是据Google知情人士透露利用斯坦福大学最新开发的磁谐振扫描和心灵感应技术这完全是可能的。”
• Google’s Matt Cutts said he’d skip April Fool’s this year, though he got a Firefox tattoo instead!
• Google的Matt Cutts说他会跳过今年的愚人节，但是要做一个Firefox的纹身。
  
• The Yahoo chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen in a video tells employees that starting next week, they should discreetly board one of the 694 Google shuttles to get to work. Valleywag has more.
• 雅虎财务主管Blake Jorgensen在一个视频里对他们的员工讲下个星期开始他们要慎重考虑乘Google的694架航天飞机中的一架上班了。更多细节参看Valleywag。
• Frank Taylor writes that if you zoom out far enough, Google Earth’s continents will merge into one, just as they “may have appeared hundreds of millions of years ago.”
• Frank Taylor写道，如果你缩的足够小，Google地球上的大陆会合成一体，就像几千万年前的那个样子。
• The Googlified blog seems to be closing shop; it currently replaced all articles with a LOLCAT-flavored Google search engine. A button reads, “I can has lucky?”
• Googlified blog好像要关掉了；现在所有的文章都被一个搞笑猫版本的Google搜索引擎替代了。一个按钮上写道，“我有好运吗？”

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