Marketing Pilgrim

Google announced today that they have improved their flash indexing capabilities. Last year they announced an update to their flash indexing, and let’s just say it wasn’t well received. This time around, Google claims to be able to index external flash resources. For those non-Flash experts out there, SWF files use an external file to load content. This content can be in the form of HTML, XML  or even another SWF file. Google’s update analyzes and extracts the content in that file, and then they index it.

CNET announced today that AOL has purchased two local-oriented sites: Patch and Going.com. As CNET pointed out, the acquisition of Patch isn’t a big surprise, as newly appointed AOL CEO Tim Armstrong founded and invested in Patch while working as Google’s sales chief. Armstrong believes that “Local remains one of the most disaggregated experiences on the Web today—there’s a lot of information out there but simply no way for consumers to find it quickly and easily.”

Google claims we can expect to see at least 18 phones with the Android operating system by year’s end, possibly 20. Which phone carriers they will be on has yet to be determined, according to the New York Times. Currently T-Mobile’s G1 and a phone available in Europe called “Magic” by HTC are the only phones that give Google credit for using their Android OS.

If the Android phones can be released sooner rather than later, it should provide some interesting competition for the summer phone war against the iPhone and Blackberry, among others. The applications available for the Android will play a major factor in consumer’s buying decisions.

UPDATE: Looks like there won’t be a Twitter TV show.

In an effort to capitalize on its increased attention, Twitter has agreed to a TV deal with Reveille Productions and Brillstein Entertainment Partners. And not just any TV series, friends, a REALITY TV series (cue the hallelujah chorus). I think we’ve all had this void in our life, and in our TV lineups in particular, that was missing something . . . something AMAZING. The Twitter reality TV show is just that.

Some exciting news in the world of Twitter. According to Reuters, Twitter will be rolling out revenue-generating features by the year’s end. I know what you’re thinking: “Great, here come the ads.” Well you are wrong, my friend. Twitter believes they can stay ad-free by developing various add-on tools and services for the businesses and professional users of Twitter.

“There are a few reasons why we’re not pursuing advertising — one is it’s just not quite as interesting to us,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told the Reuters. “There are no people at Twitter who know anything about advertising or work in advertising. So we don’t have anyone there to make or take those calls.” How comforting.

It can be a huge pain to change your cell phone number. These days, it’s just as complicated as changing email addresses. Gmail is making it easier for us all. Google announced yesterday that Gmail now migrates email and contacts from other email providers, including Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL, and many more. Taking it one step further, Gmail also gives you the option to forward your email messages for up to 30 days while you test it out.

After 18 months on the job, current Ask.com chief executive, Jim Safka, will be leaving the company.

The decision to leave was difficult for Jim, and it came about under very unfortunate circumstances. Jim’s brother recently passed away, causing Jim to re-evaluate his life. Marketing Pilgrim wishes Jim best of luck in his future endeavors.

Jim’s departure won’t be easy for Ask, as they are already far behind competitors in the search engine realm (only a 2.1% market share in March). Jim was originally hired to replace Jim Lanzone as part of the company’s shake up back in January 2008.

Someone is finally stepping up to the plate. I’ve been longing for Yahoo to care enough to challenge the Google empire, but it looks like Microsoft’s CEO is the one with the stones to do it. Steve Ballmer, in his speech at Stanford, says that Microsoft is going to have to become “more disruptive in search” in order to attempt to catch up to Google.

Ballmer realizes how big of an underdog Microsoft really is to Google. Microsoft doesn’t have the economies of scale or the money that Google that has helped keep them where they are in search.