Google buys Pyra Labs 186
Argyle writes "SiliconValley.com reports that Google has bought Pyra Labs. Pyra Labs is the creator of the Blogger software and runs the blogger.com and blogspot.com services. In weblog fashion, founder Evan Williams reported the news on his weblog in the middle of the Live from the Blogosphere event."
I think (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only could you search the Internet, but you could refine your searches just to other people's thoughts, etc.
Mark another one up for Google being one of the best tech companies in the business world.
I bet this'll be good. (Score:3, Interesting)
Google has never done anything that hasn't redefined what went before it.
Re:I think (Score:4, Interesting)
Look, Google is a great search engine, but that doesn't mean that everything it touches turns to gold. It's not "the next big thing," nor is it a silly buzzword that you can bander around randomly.
just me or .. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:just me or .. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yahoo is obviously the quintisential "portal site" and Google will never approach them in the level of functionality to the ordinary user.
I hope this works out for the good. (Score:4, Interesting)
more even more people participating because of the
google tie-in. It would be very very nice if it got
so big that all kinds of news that our mostly
corporate influenced media didn't report on got out
and about and all around. I hope this turns into
one very huge good thing.
Re:I think (Score:3, Interesting)
They did this for a reason. I can think of many cool things they could do with this. They, I'm pretty sure, can think up more.
I'm going to make a guess -- backed up, mind, by both their past performance and the general attitude that they exhibit -- that whatever they're up to -will be- the next big thing.
Or something that darn well could've -been- the next big thing and deserved to be explored.
Re:just me or .. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yahoo, as an example of a portal site, uses Google as a web-searching tool. Frankly, I don't see why Google would want to move towards being a portal site, when that niche is already filled by a number of quality sites.
google...the *in thing* for CS folks (Score:2, Interesting)
i wanted to post anonymously but what the heck.
a related thing came up recently in our research group chitchat that google is actually sucking up quite a few of the top notch CS folks - rob pike anyone?:)
and it so happens that a couple of weeks back a bunch of lets say "highly talented" folks left the company i work for to google....:)
this acquisition seems to revalidate that they sure seem to be quite active and healthy and i am darn proud because the founders are our alumni......
Re:Nothing so big (Score:3, Interesting)
As of today, blogging population is quite small (considering the size of the general internet users). But what if blogging becomes one of common features that free directory service offers? Typical directory service today is just email and maybe address book you might get home page address, but that's it. No blogging (typically). What if blogging becomes widely available? AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, and all these crap providers offer blogging? People want to express their thoughts and opinions. It's just that stuff like making web page was too damn hard for most people to express their thoughts and opinions and also it was difficult to communicate with others. Blogging is much easier. It has potential (I think).
Re:I think (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on their past performance...
Google image search? Hoo yeah.
Maps, phonebooks, toolbar, search-term
spellchecker? Good ideas all, if not earthshattering, but it shows a consistent effort to improve the utility and relevance of their product.
Google News? Big pluses here.
Google Answers? Heh. Okay. But like I said, it deserved to be explored.
Google AdWords? They found -advertising- that -doesn't suck-. Yeesh. What does it take to impress you?
If your opinion differs, so be it, but I'm not sure you're basing it on -anything- other than reflexive avoidance of a perceived agenda.
Buying and selling the wisdom of the masses (Score:5, Interesting)
They bought Deja News, or whatever it was called, giving them direct access to the wisdom of the masses, as encoded in newsgroups. Except that newsgroups seem to be a fading concept, supplanted by mailing lists and blogs. Well, Google can't very well buy mailing lists (from whom would you buy them?) but they just bought most of the blogs. Note that they haven't bought or apparently even tried to buy any traditional mass-media company (CNN, NY Times, Knight-Ridder, etc). In the business world, nobody has placed much value so far on the collected, shared knowledge of the masses, so Google can buy Deja and Pyra for cheap.
The big question is what owning the major information conduits of the masses gets Google. Google didn't just buy Atrios [blogspot.com] or Dave Barry [blogspot.com], they bought the medium everyone is using to blog.
This kind of gets me back to an idea [dsl-only.net] I blogged about a little while back--that you could probably make a business out of aggregating blogs into an ersatz net magazine and selling advertising space on the result. Google presents the advertisers with the combined traffic of the top 20 blogs, shows them a prototype of a salon-style magazine and asks how much they'd pay for ad space, then goes to those top 20 blogs and asks them whether they'd agree to publish regularly in exchange for some (smallish) cut of the ad revenue.
Makes me wonder how long we have until Google buys LiveJournal [livejournal.com]...
adeu,
Mateu
Ubiquitous Google Blogging (Score:2, Interesting)
Amongst other things, I imagine users of Google being able to "gab" through Google blogs about anything on the Internet and have Google keep track of all of the references. Brilliant!
Search for: Cowboy Neal
Result 1: How does cowboy neal scrub his shoes..
Blogs associated with this topic: bla bla
Result 2: bla bla...
Could be very interesting...
Re:Think of the back-end info this gives them (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why I am puzzled (Score:3, Interesting)
But crawling the 200.000 active Blogs doesn't cost much resources. It's only a few gig of data. Why bother to buy a whole firm for that?
Yes you could crawl the blogs easily enough, but the magic of blogs is the ability to instantly gauge the zeitgeist of the net. If you have to crawl them periodically to do that then you lose the time advantage.
Crawling constantly would overload the blog servers and make Google unpopular. This way they get access to the backend and can index and load links straight into the crawler as people post.
Trackbacks can be used to provide realtime ratings of a blogger's ranking within the community and thus ratings of the pages they link to. With blogs, Google can harness a huge distributed realtime relevancy filter.
Re:Why I am puzzled (Score:2, Interesting)
Crawling constantly would overload the blog servers and make Google unpopular. This way they get access to the backend and can index and load links straight into the crawler as people post.
Should Google crawl every possible weblog constantly? Most of the popular blogs have in common that they update at least once a day or more. Google crawls those sites already more then once a day without problems, catching Zeitgeist.
Trackbacks can be used to provide realtime ratings of a blogger's ranking within the community and thus ratings of the pages they link to. With blogs, Google can harness a huge distributed realtime relevancy filter.
But Google has a big relevancy filter, PageRanking.
Your remarks make me think though. Google could use Pyra's Blogger for a dedicated search engine like Daypop, but with faster updates and perhaps better filters (although the PR in combination with keyword density and other factors does a good job). Those results can also be integrated in the normal engine.
But I'm wondering if they do this at once, or wait till Blogger has more then active 200.000 users. What do you think?
Re:Ten years later... (Score:1, Interesting)
This [ftrain.com] describles the scenario.
---
Google stole my mind.
Switch the Strategy Around (Score:3, Interesting)
But it's likely google wants to improve blogger's services, and that may be the main game: if google's own resources can dramatically improve blogger, then a strong synergy exists after all.
What do people blog about? Recent events.
What is the world's best source of info on recent events? Google.
Google can integrate its data into the blogger UI to structure blogs, possibly link between them, etc. This in turn will improve google's own services. As you say, that part could be done by spiders. BUT by no means as effectively as a situation where the blog data itself is directly linked to google's records before it is is even published to the web.
Re:Read what "Google Village" says (Score:2, Interesting)
There's another good article on boingboing: Gbloogle: what it all (may) mean [boingboing.net]
Re:Bloggle or Bloogle? (Score:2, Interesting)
This brings about a new type of content organization -- Google's Alternative News -- not dependant on the other news organizations.
Now couple these ideas with what jefu is saying, Google has some real muscle in the world of information. Coupled with search engine, news breaking on blogs, Google could have a million or so sources that can be automatically indexed, so people can search fresh seconds after the news has broken.
Sites like mine Google Village as a Bloogle could be indexed and on the main news page in seconds. Now I think there is the business model for Google. If each person pays for their News Site to have access to the Google-News-Machine . . . I know I would pay!
Re:Why I am puzzled (Score:2, Interesting)
Mateub suggests that Google could make a magazine out of the blogs, complete with ads.
But they can do that already. Have a close look at news.google.com. Search for, hmm, Google At the right side, there's enough space for ads. Google could index just the weblogs, like Daypop, and make a new product out of it (without buying Pyra).
True enough, but I think Google could do a much more planned, coherent version with some actual cooperation from the bloggers.
For example, Google could tell their "preferred" bloggers they want to do an editorial section on, say, Afghanistan--$50 to anyone who writes a piece we use. Or perhaps change blogger.com to use RDF [w3.org] so that Google can more knowledgeably (sp?) format a "Blogzine" page.
It's easier for Google to do this when 500 newspapers go online with a story, but blogger interests are more diverse. I think Google would need something more than their current news system to place, for example, the talking points memo series on the GOP Marketplace trying to swamp Democrat phone banks with calls [talkingpointsmemo.com]. Interesting story (to me at least), but apparently only 1 newspaper was reporting it. How would a Google blog news service know what to do with that series today?
In any case, you're probably right in the sense that I think the odds of Google doing something like what I imagine are slim. I still think it could work, but they'll probably come up with something more clever than this. Must be a joy to work in their research lab...
adéu
Mateu