Google Launches Traditional Media Blog

Pushes TV, Print, and Audio AdsA lot of people don't participate in Google's TV, newspaper, and radio advertising programs. Others aren't even aware they exist. So Google has launched a new traditional media blog with the aim of changing both these conditions.Fair warning: the blog's name is reminiscent of something pretend tough guys would say, or perhaps online daters who decide to meet in real life. Still, as part of the first post on Let's Take it Offline, Kate Pacher announced, "We've created this blog as a place for you to turn for the latest in feature launches and tips to help you run effective traditional media campaigns."She then continued, "We'll also share recent industry findings, which we think will be interesting and useful for both individuals who are new to the offline advertising space as well as those of you who have been advertising offline for a while."Since we've seen some of Google's blogs get ignored for weeks and even months, a key point will be how well Let's Take it Offline sticks to those "latest" and "recent" guarantees. People are more likely to give Google's traditional media programs a shot if they don't seem like a small side project.Google still has to overcome old giants in several industries, though, and the economy isn't encouraging financial experimentation.

Experiment kept small for nowCarefully weigh how much you dislike typing on cell phones against how much you want to keep private whatever you're researching. Then, if you dare, check out the new voice search abilities connected to Google Maps for mobile.The feature is experimental, and for better or for worse, current tests will limit participation to American owners of the 8110, 8120, and 8130 BlackBerry Pearl models. If you're one, you only need to press "0" to center your map view and then hold "the left-side key . . . while you say the name or type of business you're looking for" to get some results, according to a post on the Google Mobile Blog.

You should cross your fingers, as well - some promises of improvements may not say much about the technology's current state - but the feature's likely to spread, and this is an important step forward for Google.Greg Sterling notes that Google's voice search "is very much like the existing Windows Live Search for Mobile service with voice or Tellme for Blackberry devices (also Microsoft). Yahoo also recently integrated Vlingo's speech technology into oneSearch." ChaCha has something in this arena, too, all of which means Google's an extreme latecomer.With the mobile market looking increasingly significant - desktop search and advertising seem to be pretty much wrapped up, after all - Google will need to accommodate chatty individuals.

"This was an extremely successful meeting that will be remembered as a milestone in the development of the Internet," said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN's Board Chairman. "New generic Top Level Domains and Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) will open up the Internet and make it look as diverse as the people who use it."ICANN also approved top - level domain names in scripts including Arabic, Cyrillic and other non-Latin scripts. It passed a resolution to eliminate domain tasting, a practice of using the grace periods to register domain names in bulk to see which ones are profitable.The new domains could cost as much as $100,000 to register, and will require a large amount of recourses to maintain.

Surprise, surprise: they might actually be desirableSuppose that Steve Ballmer and Jerry Yang miraculously agreed on something: the sale of Yahoo's search department. A new Hitwise report sorts through the pile of properties that would remain, and as it turns out, the leftovers look pretty tasty.A breakdown shows that much more Yahoo-related traffic heads to Yahoo Mail and plain old Yahoo (37.47 percent and 30.62 percent, respectively) than to Yahoo Search (12.10 percent). So in terms of eyeballs, any company splitting things with Microsoft would still be getting quite a lot.

There is the question of whether people would visit Yahoo's properties without nudges from its search engine, of course, but Heather Hopkins supplied statistics on that issue, too. "Most properties receive more traffic from Google than from Yahoo! Search," she states."In particular, Yahoo! Answers received 49% of its US visits from Google last month, compared to 20% from Yahoo! Search," according to Hopkins. "Flickr received 13% of visits from Google compared with 5% from Yahoo! Search. The exceptions are Yahoo! Image Search and Maps, likely because of Google's shortcuts to its own properties in these verticals, and the Yahoo! account pages. Even Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo.com received more traffic from Google than Yahoo! Search."These conclusions lend a great deal of credence to the idea that a split acquisition could occur. Now we'll just resume hoping that something - anything - will bring an end to this mess.