According to Google, email and instant messaging were both designed in the 1960s, yet haven’t changed much in the last forty years or so.

Until Google Wave.

“Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.”

The website details their plans for the product, platform and protocol, and then asks the following question:

“So, this leaves one big question we need your help answering: What else can we do with this?”

So to recap: Here’s our plan. This is the tool. Any idea how we can use it?

There’s a YouTube video that explains the concept, but it’s 90% hype and 10% waffle. But if I filter through the sludge (a good example being when one of the speakers describes how email works), I think I get what the product is, and what it does.

But I still don’t get why we would use it.

We already have email, Instant Messaging, bulletin boards, wikis, voicemail, Twitter, blogs, video/voice conferencing and more. Do we really need another platform?

Are Google fixing something that isn’t broken? Or are they building a nice idea that’ll never really catch on?

If you get to 10 minutes 45 or so of the video, you’ll start wondering why they don’t use the phone, text messaging or video conferencing.

Am I missing something here? Or am I just too old to “get it”?

Microsoft’s Kumo should be launched any day now – in fact I’m expecting it to go live either today or tomorrow.

The question is whether or not it will succeed?

There’s no doubt that Microsoft have the means, muscle and motivation to give Google a run for their money, but are they about to do so? Or are we going to see little more than a fancy Windows Live?

Time will tell.

Andy Beal notes that Google’s strength can also be its Achilles heel:

“Attack the herd mentality. Suggest that we’re not getting the very best search experience. Cause doubt to creep into our minds.

Microsoft doesn’t need to convince us that it has the best search solution. It merely needs to sow the seed of doubt in our minds as to whether Google really is the best.”

I suspect that Google are waiting with baited breath. And I suspect that you’re not.

Why Microsoft Needs to Spend $100M to Make Us Doubt Google

From the Silicon Alley Insider:

“For the first time since the dot-com bust, the U.S. online ad market is shrinking, including search. That’s a stunning drop in growth from a year ago, when the market was still growing more than 20%.”

As a person who spends a large amount of time handling Google AdWords accounts, this reinforces what I already knew.

There’s never been a better time to know how to work the Google AdWords system to your advantage.

CHART OF THE DAY: U.S. Online Ad Revenue Now Shrinking

As a long-term user of Google’s AdWords Editor, I have a strong (but treasured) love-hate relationship with the software.

I love it because it saves me time and makes my life easier. And I hate it because it’s quirky, ugly and feature-limited.

But as is often the case in a love-hate scenario, love wins. And I wouldn’t be without it. At least not at my own choosing.

However I’m starting to think that the life of AdWords Editor may soon be over.

It’s been more than five months since version 7.0 was released, and since then there hasn’t been a single update.

Version 6.5 was released in October 2008, and version 6 in June of the same year.

So we had a major release, four months later an update, two months later another major release, followed by 5+ months of silence.

I also get the feeling from Google’s Support that they handle a lot of AdWords Editor problems, but seem to have limited resources to deal with them. I myself have had some serious problems with Editor over the years, and Support were never once able to help me.

I’d also like to present my second piece of evidence: the new AdWords interface.

Buried in the midst of a small ocean of changes, we can also find the ability to copy keywords and ads into different ad groups, the ability to set up a new campaign based on existing settings and more. We can also see quite a lot of new information and settings, none of which are included in Editor.

The new interface, whether you love it or hate it, certainly looks new.  AdWords Editor looks like a Windows 3.1 application.

From Google’s point of view, why should they continue to support and update a free piece of software? It isn’t going to convince people without an account to sign up, and ultimately, Google have us right where it hurts.

If they withdraw support for AdWords Editor, and announce that it will no longer work as of a certain date, what are we going to do? Close our accounts and defect to Yahoo?

I suspect that Google have decided when they’re going to kill AdWords Editor. I hope I’m wrong.

He may be a little odd, and he’s certainly ugly to look at, but he’s nice to have around.

Long live AdWords Editor.

I just came across a very useful tool from Microsoft, that allows you to see the URL of your choosing in IE6, 7 and 8. The final release will apparently include support for Firefox and Safari too.

“How many times have you had to debug your web pages on multiple machines running different versions of Internet Explorer? Or had to wait for a slow web service to return renderings of your pages?

You don’t have to do that anymore. Now you can debug your pages on multiple versions of Internet Explorer on the same machine that you use for development.”

Expression Web SuperPreview for Internet Explorer

Okay so I’m getting a little carried away. Google are lifting one of their layers of secrecy within AdWords. Allow me to explain.

Google have a complex and incredibly effective strategy in place within their AdWords system.

With one hand they calm their advertisers down and gently point them towards the information they need. And with the other hand they hurl massive quantities of information at their advertisers, confusing them and leaving them drowning in data.

And at the same time, behind the scenes, they are also quietly hiding away some of the information that advertisers would find incredibly useful in managing their accounts.

An example:

Many searchers will click on multiple ads from their results. They click on one ad, the results aren’t what they’re looking for. They go back, click the second ad and so on.

Wouldn’t it be useful to know which ads people clicked on and then remained on your website? Wouldn’t it also be useful to know how long people remained on your website before going back and clicking on your competitor’s ads?

Google know this, but for obvious reasons won’t share this information with their advertisers.

Another example is the search query report. If you’ve used this report, and I hope you have, you’ll have noticed the teeth-grinding “other unique entries“. Well your teeth grinding days may be over:

From Inside AdWords:

“If you’ve used the Search Query Performance report before, you may have noticed that some of your traffic was grouped under a line item called “other unique queries.” This line encompassed queries with very low volume, often occurring triggering your ad only one or two times. However, some advertisers found that a significant portion of their spend was grouped under this heading, which made it difficult to manage keyword variations.

Starting today, the Search Query Performance report will show all queries that resulted in a click, where the user has not specifically blocked their referrer URL.”

In the interests of not criticising a gift, I won’t dwell on their idea that this only applied to “queries with very low volume” – WHO ARE THEY TRYING TO FOOL? But this is a great step forward, and anyone managing an AdWords account should find this to be very useful indeed.

So why did they do it? The same blog entry pointed out that this information was already within server logs and/or Google Analytics, so Google were forced into lifting this particular veil by the use of their own software. Continuing to hide this information for so long was ridiculous.

One more thing:

“As a result of this update, you will likely see longer lists of queries in your Search Query Performance reports, many of which will have very low traffic. We encourage you to focus your decisions about the performance of your keyword variations on those variations that occur most frequently and have a significant amount of performance data.”

Remember that the people advising you to do this are the people who take your money from you. It’s worth remembering that the idea of the Long Tail applies equally well to Google AdWords. And with the new enhanced search query reports, that tail just grew to be very long indeed.

Enhanced Search Query Performance reports

The Inside AdWords blog details an update to Google’s US ad text trademark policy:

“Imagine opening your Sunday paper and seeing ads from a large supermarket chain that didn’t list actual products for sale; instead, they simply listed the categories of products available – offers like “Buy discount cola” and “Snacks on sale.” The ads wouldn’t be useful since you wouldn’t know what products are actually being offered. For many categories of advertisers, this is the problem they have faced on Google for some time.”

It strikes me as more than a little amusing for Google to ridicule the situation – the situation that they themselves have imposed on their advertisers.

And while the next paragraph begins with the obligatory “in an effort to improve ad quality and user experience” statement, the already murky waters of their trademark policy are muddied further, with a little black paint added for good measure.

In a nutshell:

“…we are adjusting our trademark policy in the U.S. to allow some ads to use trademarks in the ad text. This change will bring Google’s policy on trademark use in ad text more in line with the industry standard.”

Some ads? Which ads? And will these ads be allowed to use all trademarks? Or only some of them?

It should go without saying that Google’s trademark policy only serves to protect Google. If they could shift all liability for displaying trademarked terms onto their advertisers, I’m quite sure they would do so. But understandably, they have no wish to clash swords with the legal resources of some of the largest companies in the world.

In the interests of being, very, very generous, a small amount of credit should go to Google for trying to loosen the reins a little, but advertisers have to be aware that the situation is far from resolved. At some point we can expect a high-profile legal case where a company will take an aggressive stand to protect their trademarked items. Until then, the issue of trademarks in online content and ads is an extremely gray area, and advertisers need to be aware of the possible risks of bidding on trademark terms, whether knowingly or not.

And Google’s new terms are more open to interpretation and speculation than ever before.

Google appear to be getting a little too comfortable sitting on the fence, and rightly or wrongly, advertisers are starting to feel that firmer guidance is required. If they do not receive the explicit rules they need, they may simply start to play it safe. Left to run its course, this could eventually lead to advertisers too afraid to bid on any trademarked terms, and users of Google unable to find what they are looking for.

Google have been the undisputed Kings of Search for so long that they may be unaware of the fractures appearing in their throne.

Update to U.S. ad text trademark policy

According to a recently released report by the Business Software Alliance, worldwide software piracy rose from 38% to 41% in 2008 (meaning that 41% of all software in use is pirated).

This is the second year in a row that software piracy has increased.

Although some progress in combating global software piracy has been made, those gains were negated by a large increase in the number of PCs in high-piracy countries such as China and India.

The scale of the software piracy problem is evident when the total monetary value of unlicensed software is examined.  In 2008, the global software market accounted for approximately $88 billion in revenue, compared with $50.2 billion in losses due to piracy.

Although the United States has the world’s lowest rate of software piracy, it accounts for the largest losses in terms of dollar amount, $9.1 billion, because it is the world’s largest software market.

According to the study:

• The lowest-piracy countries are the United States, Japan, New Zealand, and Luxembourg, all near 20%.
• The highest-piracy countries are Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia, and Zimbabwe, all over 90%.
• The lowest regions are North America (21%) and the European Union (35%).
• The highest-piracy regions are Central/Eastern Europe (67%) and Latin America (65%).

The BSA study also found that software piracy’s negative impact reaches far beyond the software industry as it has been shown to lower revenues and eliminate  jobs for local IT providers, increase cyber crime and reduce tax revenues.

Google are renowned for their incredibly long BETA testing cycles, but it appears that the new Google AdWords interface is now more or less live.

I have to admit to being surprised by this, as our own experiences have uncovered many issues with the new system, often resulting in the interface “crashing”, kicking us out of the client’s account and back into our MCC account.

Hmmm.

Many AdWords account holders will today be greeted by an email that begins with the following:

“***Important news regarding your account***

Before we convert your account, you can switch between the new and previous interfaces at any time. Click the “Previous Interface and “New Interface (Beta)” links in the top corner of your account (next to your email address) to switch back and forth.”

The email also lists some links to details of the new interface.

Our company has been working with the new interface for some time, and can summarise our main findings as follows.

The good:

- It’s faster. Navigating through campaigns and ad groups is quicker, and it’s easier to get a feel for what’s happening at an account, campaign or ad group level.

- It’s clearer. There are some useful performance graphs that allow you to compare two different metrics at different levels within the account.

- It’s quicker to work with. Bids and keywords can be edited “live” without having to go to a new page to do so.

The bad:

- It’s more confusing than ever before. Google have added new data, new options, new terminology and found new places to move things that will overwhelm most account holders. As a long-time believer that Google try to overwhelm their advertisers with data and options, the new system is more complicated and confusing. Good job on the confusion strategy.

- It’s unstable. There are more bugs than I would expect to see if the system were still in beta.

- It’s huge! I run my system at a rather large 1680 x 1050 resolution, and I still have to use my horizontal scrollbar in the browser for the new system. This is the only website I know that forces me to do so.

- Some of the update is little more than a “pretty” face on the old system. Go to Tools, More Tools for example, and you’ll see the same old options underneath the new nav. Why the rush?

Overall:

You judge for yourself. But I think that a lot more people are going to be wasting more money under this system.

If you’d like to know how much money your AdWords account is wasting, you may be interested in our Google AdWords Report Service.

Keep your eyes peeled, and watch where that spending is going.

Software developers, product designers and manufactures can learn a lot from Google.

They churn out new features at an incredible rate. Their new ideas are (mostly) useful. They don’t wait too long before releasing their offerings to the world (Gmail is still in beta). And they don’t dilute a great product with superfluous features.

Their latest most visible development has been the addition of a discrete link at the top of the search results:

Click it and you’re offered a number of options to refine your search:

However it’s the options themselves that are most interesting.

Videos already exists on the top navigation, yet they’ve seen fit to include this in the new options too. Stranger still is that clicking the top link gives slightly different results than the options.

Forums and Reviews also strikes me as an interesting development, as they suggest that an increasing number of people are searching for people’s experiences of a product, as opposed to the manufacturer and people selling it.

And the Any time options suggest that searchers are more interested in what’s being said now – as opposed to what was last indexed. Google will of course be monitoring which of these options are popular, and my guess would be that if recent results are in high demand, Google will be looking at indexing and displaying new content more quickly than at present. Three cheers for that idea.

And while I can see how Images from the page may be useful for recognising a site, I’m very intrigued by the More text option, which simply displays more text for each of the results.

Compare the two:

It’s worth noting that Google strive to stay ahead of their competition, and don’t simply try to copy and improve their better ideas. They also use the vast amounts of data that they have access to for their own ends. The canny online business won’t just be looking at Google’s new features and smiling or grimacing at them. They’ll be working out how to use them to their own advantage.

Read the signs.