Rattleblog: Tales from the blogosphere

04-12-2006

by Damien Mulley

While the web giants are starting to falter, it looks like it is going to be a Merr-Wii Christmas for Nintendo.

There was a lot of blog chatter recently following an internal memo from a Yahoo VP listing all the things that Yahoo needed to change to stay competitive being published on the Wall Street Journal. Some suggested it was a "Jerry Maguire" moment, but it inspired a lot of external feedback and constructive advice on what needed to be changed if Yahoo didn't want to be obliterated by Google.

The suggestions however could equally apply to Google and others. Possibly the first act of contrition by Google was seen when it announced on its blog that it was shutting down Google Answers.

Unlike most things at Google, which are run by servers and automated processes, Google Answers was a people-powered project. For all of Google's abilities, it doesn't seem to be able to work with people, just other computers. According to Michael Arrington, the winner in this is Yahoo, which has a competing version that's turned out to be a major success.

The friction between Yahoo and Google seems to be growing too, with legal letters moving back and forth between the two giants, this time in relation to the Google Book Search project. It appears that Yahoo is bank-rolling some organisations that are suing Google over its book search programme. Google is not impressed.

Staying with Yahoo, and showing its deepening relationship with publishers, the Marketing Pilgrim blog says Yahoo has struck a deal with 150 major newspapers to use their content and distribute their classified ads.

Meanwhile, the download squad blog reports that Google's YouTube property, which became so popular due to the hundreds of millions of videos being uploaded, the vast majority not being approved by their copyright holders, is now itself sending takedown notices to other sites that have reused content that was on YouTube. TinyTube, which allowed you to access YouTube videos via a mobile phone, has had the legs cut under it by Google lawyers. Many are enjoying the irony.

The other giant of the web, AOL, apparently is about to come crashing down, at least according to John Battelle who suggests it will be cut into pieces and sold off.

In other blog news, Michal Switala reports that the creator of the "million dollar homepage" idea has come back with a new money making idea. This one is similar to the original idea except he'll be charging more, and those who click on the ads on the page will be entered into a lottery to win money. That's not really a new idea though, more like putting go-faster stripes on your car.

The Wii is getting a serious amount of attention on blogs worldwide, and while most agree that the Xbox360 and PlayStation 3 are superior in technology and power, it is Nintendo's console that's gaining the affections of many bloggers. Jason Kottke gave a massively favourable reveiw of it, like thousands of other bloggers.

According to the Wired blog, Yahoo seems to have given the most attention to the Wii by creating a dedicated portal for the gaming console that incorporates all Yahoo's various properties including Flickr photos, del.icio.us links, Yahoo MyWeb and Yahoo Games.

Lastly, we leave with some more salacious rumours. This time we're back to the Apple iPhone, which according to the Engadget blog, will be out soon after Christmas. At long last some stylish phones, but at what price?

Damien Mulley is an Irish blogger and works as a technical writer in Cork.