Marketing Pilgrim

This is interesting timing for me personally regarding the release of a report from Gartner regarding its predictions for the future of smart phones once Android finds its stride. I have noted here before that I am a BlackBerry Storm user on the Verizon Network and I am underwhelmed. I like the network and chuckle regarding the AT&T lapses in service that I hear iPhone users gripe about. At the same time the Storm is just not that great.

It’s so ‘not that great’ that I went out and bought a 32GB iPod Touch just so I could enter the world of apps. At the same time Verizon announced its offering of Android phones in the near future. I got a little giddy at the thought of having the Touch for Apple apps and then the Android phone for all things Google because I suspect that the offering will be on par if not better than Apple’s.

The next time you suspect Google has manually adjusted your search results, you can do more than simply complain at WebmasterWorld, you can snitch to Yahoo.

The #2 search engine was just awarded a patent for its "Method and apparatus for search ranking using human input and automated ranking." In other words, Yahoo holds a patent on human editing of search results.

Now, I admit that I’m somewhat stirring the pot here–can I get Matt Cutts to comment two days in a row?–but when you read the summary of Yahoo’s patent, you can see how the company could file a claim against Google–should it ever conclude the search giant is manually editing its search results:

It’s time for Microsoft to put the champagne back on ice: Bing’s market share gains are starting to evaporate.

StatCounter was the first to dare suggest that Bing was losing its sting, but now new Hitwise data suggests both Bing and Yahoo have lost US audience share in the past month:

At first glance, it looks like Bing has lost 5 percentage points of market share, but the "-5%" represents a 5% decline in its share. It dropped from 16.96% to 16.38% (not 16.96% to 11.96%).

We should note that Ask.com deserves some credit for increasing its search share by 8% (from 2.37% to 2.56%).

Of course, this could be a blip–or perhaps Bing’s earlier growth was the blip–but what’s you take on this reversal of good fortunes?

A phishing attack is targeting thousands of web-based email users, according to the BBC and Read Write Web. Tens of thousands of users of each site have already been victimized, with the usernames and passwords available on lists.

The scam to entice the users to offer up their private passwords, phishers imitate legitimate sites and ask for login information. The reports didn’t indicate what site the phishers were imitating.

This comes hot on the heels of Gmail dabbling with showing favicons from a few trusted senders. Maybe they should start considering

The first list of 10,000 usernames covered users of Hotmail sites, AOL, Gmail, Yahoo, Earthlink and Comcast email services. But only usernames starting with A and B were included—meaning that there could be hundreds of thousands of other victims.

Two and a half years is a long time for any court case. And in the case of Viacom vs. YouTube, it’s long enough for a lot of discovery and posturing. The latest round comes as anonymous Viacom sources tell CNET their evidence includes internal Google emails between employees who uploaded copyrighted videos. Even more indicting, they content the emails also say other employees, knowing the videos were violating copyright, decided to leave them up.

If this is true, this may invalidate YouTube’s defense under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. With DMCA, site owners aren’t accountable for copyrighted content uploaded to the site if they don’t know about or have no facts about copyrighted material on the site, and once they find out, they must take it down quickly.

The big news this morning is a CNET report quoting Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s admission that he paid around $1 billion too much for YouTube.

Here’s an extract from Schmidt’s deposition in the ongoing Viacom suit:

Schmidt: I believe YouTube was worth somewhere around $600 million to $700 million.

(Viacom Attorney) Baskin: And you communicated that to the board?

Schmidt: I did.

Baskin: What methodology did you use to come up with that number?

Schmidt: My judgment.

Baskin: Was it based on cash flow analysis? Comparable companies? What were you using as the basis for your judgment?

Schmidt: It’s just my judgment. I’ve been doing this a long time.