Google's Press Day: Google Coop, Google Trends….& Google stock drop
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Google Press Day was yesterday, and our colleague Elise Ackerman attended. She writes up her account in today’s Mercury news. Google, she notes, is disorganized. We knew that, but she says the disorganization has increased. Wonder if that explains Google’s stock drop today (steeper than the overall market)?
Elise summarizes the new products, including the following:
1) Google Coop — This is where Google incorporates feedback from you through something called “labeling,” which allows you to influence some search results. Fans of a Web site can label it with information that alerts others to its specific usefulness, for instance adding a “side effects” label to a site about penicillin. It is like Yahoo’s “My Web” service. You should go and tinker.
2) There’s a new Google Desktop.
3) Google Notebook — Not out yet (next week), but it will allow people to easily copy snippets of info they find online, similar to a feature included in Microsoft’s toolbar.
4) Google Trends — This goes beyond the Google Zeitgeist feature you may be familiar with. It is noteworthy, because you can type in a series of terms, and see how popular they are over time, via a chart, and the chart is marked showing the events/news that contributed to the rise or fall of the term’s popularity. More info here.
Take, for example, the chart below showing Friendster vs. Facebook. (We don’t show the news events because our screen is too small — you can see the live page here)
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The “city,” “region” and other features here are noteworthy. Note that Friendster actually beats Facebook for the top cities mention. Here is what Google Trends seems to indicate: While Facebook has surpassed Friendster in overall world popularity, Friendster enjoys stronger “density” of use in those places where it is still used, such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
