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Tooth Regeneration Coming Soon
Ponca City, We love you writes "For thousands of years, losing teeth has been a routine part of human aging. Now the Washington Post reports that researchers are close to growing important parts of teeth from stem cells, including creating a living root from scratch, perhaps within one year. According to Pamela Robey of the NIH. 'Dentists say, "Give me a root and I can put a crown on it."' In a few years dentists will treat periodontal disease with regeneration by using stem cells to create hard and soft tissue; they will take out a tooth that is about to fall, and reconnect it firmly to the regenerated tissue. Although nobody is predicting when it will be possible to grow teeth on demand, in adults, to replace missing ones, a common guess is five to ten years. Baby and wisdom teeth are sources of stem cells that could be 'banked' for future health needs, says Robey. 'When you think about it, the teeth children put under their pillows may end up being worth much more than the tooth fairy's going rate. Plus, if you still have your wisdom teeth, it's nice to know you're walking around with your own source of stem cells.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Carefully Timed Jerks Could Power Space Elevator
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC has an interesting article on the long-standing issue of how to power the 'climber' that would ascend a space elevator into space. Previous ideas have included delivering microwave or laser power to the climber beamed from the Earth's surface, but now European Space Agency ground station engineer Age-Raymond Riise has demonstrated a device that could provide a "lift into space" for cheaper space missions along a 100,000-km long tether anchored to the Earth. Riise demonstrated sending power mechanically by providing carefully timed jerks of the cable at its base with a broomstick to represent the cable held in tension, an electric sander to provide a rhythmic vibration to the bottom of the stick, and three brushes representing the climber with their bristles pointing downwards allowing the climber assembly to slide upward along the broomstick as it moved slightly downward, but grip it as it moved slightly upward. 'It would be possible to make a suspension system that completely decouples the cabin where the passengers are,' says Riise. 'For them it would be a linear movement with very little disturbance.' Riise says that he has been approached by commercial elevator companies, who are researching new ideas for elevators in superscrapers where the simplicity of the approach makes it attractive when compared to other ideas for powering lifts, such as compressed air."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Puppy's Picks - January 5th, 2009

by Jennifer Laycock

I scan hundreds of feeds and read dozens of articles each day so you don't have to. From a great year end compliation of posts to simple reminders of the need to focus on the basics, find out which articles I dubbed as must-read for the small business crowd today.

Beth Harte has put together a great list of things to look for in a social media marketing consultant. It was spawned by her earlier post on the Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert is a Carpetbagger and does a great job of shining some light on what companies should look for when entering this brave new world of marketing.

Karon Thackston has a post offering a great reminder of the need to look beyond your optimization and toward the conversion abilities of your site and your copy. Karon offers up an example site and shows how they've gone completely overboard in their use of keywords and destroyed the site's ability to convert. She also points out the site's complete lack of rankings for the phrases in question, making the sacrifice on the conversion potential side even more frustrating.

One of the biggest challenge I have in dealing with small businesses and social media marketing is the journey to convince them of SMM's value without letting them go overboard. Anyone who has spent time engaged with social media knows it can be addicting. I have to work to keep myself in check on getting too excited about things, so it comes as no surprise those new to it find it difficult to establish balance as well. David Armano had a great post over at Logic + Emotion on New Year's Day that poignantly explains the process of companies coming into the social media space. Here's hoping the new year will be rife with companies who quickly move from "new convent" to "evolving true believer."

If you're a fan of year end "best of" style complications, you won't want to miss Tamar Weinberg's "Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008" list over at Techipedia. From search to social media to blogging to the major social media networks and platforms, Tamar segments out some of the most useful and insightful posts from last year. Even if you don't plan on reading them all, this is a great one to bookmark

Paid Search campaigns are one of the biggest offenders in online marketing in terms of wasted dollars rushing out the door. Common mistakes and misperceptions can cost a company tons of money and mismanaged campaigns often lead companies to pull the plug on what could have been an excellent profit center. Brian Carter tears down five common myths about Google AdWords in a post over at Search Engine Journal today. If you're advertising via paid per click now or plan to in the future, it's a must read.

Check out our small business news site.

Ubuntu Kung Fu
Lorin Ricker writes "Back in the dark ages of windows-based GUIs, corresponding to my own wandering VMS evangelical days, I became enamored of a series of books jauntily entitled Xxx Annoyances (from O'Reilly & Assocs.), where "Xxx" could be anything from "Windows 95", "Word", "Excel" or nearly piece of software which Microsoft produced. These were, if not the first, certainly among the most successful of the "tips & tricks" books that have become popular and useful to scads of hobbyists, ordinary users, hackers and, yes, even professionals in various IT pursuits. I was attracted, even a bit addicted, to these if only because they offered to try to make some useful sense out of the bewildering design choices, deficiencies and bugs that I'd find rampant in Windows and its application repertory. Then I found Keir Thomas, who has been writing about Linux for more than a decade. His new "tips" book entitled, Ubuntu Kung Fu — Tips & Tools for Exploring Using, and Tuning Linux, and published by Pragmatic Bookshelf, is wonderful. Having only recently wandered into the light of Linux, open source software, and Ubuntu in particular, this book comes as a welcome infusion to my addiction." Read below for the rest of Lorin's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Survival Techniques for Yahoo
Jawad Shuaib wrote a guest post for ReadWriteWeb today called What Yahoo Must Do to Survive, and I thought it was worth some comments as I have some disagreements with it. First, for disclosure purposes, I work for Yahoo! running the product marketing for our display ad platforms. This gives me some internal perspective, but also may leave me somewhat biased for many reasons.

Survival Techniques for Yahoo

Additionally, I have no special insight into what the search business at Yahoo is doing, nor do I control overall company strategy. Display ad platform strategy is a different story.

That being said, the summary of Jawads article is that Yahoo! should abandon many of its efforts in multiple areas in order to refocus on search (and I assume search monetization).

Ive heard this strategy a few times. My main thoughts accompanied with some questions are:

1. Is search a battle Yahoo! can win and gain back significant market share?
I think Yahoo! has done some great things recently like opening up search with BOSS, but Google has effectively become the consumer brand of choice. It will take something major to change that. It can happen, and perhaps Yahoo! can do it, but is it the most likely bet for the company to succeed?

Im not sure succeeding in search is a matter of Yahoo! not putting enough resources against it or a lack of focus. Perhaps it was a lack of resources and focus three years ago when the market share gap was closer, but I think now it will take a radical innovation that changes the way people search to unseat Google. Yahoo! could do it, but I dont think it needs the entire companys focus to make that happen.

2. Yahoos strength and success over the past couple of years has been in building amazing web properties that lead their vertical and then monetizing those properties through display ads. These properties also help drive/maintain search market share from users visiting the properties using Yahoos search which is integrated into them. One common business theme is that a company should focus on its strengths. Would abandoning those things to focus on search satisfy that?

Now to address some of Jawads specific points:

To remain a profitable business, Yahoo! needs to refocus on the search market. The primary revenue generator for both Yahoo! and Google is search and its highly coveted advertising space. The search market, in other words, is the lifeblood of the companys business model.

Lifeblood is too strong a word. The display and services businesses at Yahoo! are not small potatoes. Of course Yahoo! should be concerned about search market share dropping, but its not the only thing going.

Worse yet, the company seems to be everywhere at once, investing in a dizzying array of services that do little to enhance its search standing. What does a search and advertising company need with Flickr, Yahoo! Greetings, Yahoo! Personals, Del.icio.us, Yahoo! Pets, Blo.gs, Upcoming.org, Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! 360, or Webjay?

Id agree that the company has invested in too many areas. A couple of the aforementioned properties have already been shuttered, others got hit hard in recent layoffs, and I expect 2009 will trim it up even more. One thing to remember though, is that many of the properties and services dont require massive investments to keep them operating and profitable.

These services have, thus far, offered little value to Yahoo!. The company has spent its time and resources maintaining services with a huge, financially unjustified overhead; all the while, its search market share continues to dwindle. In contrast, Google, realizing its product line was stretched too thin, has spent the past 2 years aggressively vertically integrating its various product offerings as features ported across its services. While Google has certainly expanded its horizon, advertising and search technology remain its unwavering focus.

Some of the services may have not offered a ton of value, but others have added tremendous value. Id argue Google has also expanded beyond their core focus. Google Docs isnt really search or advertising related, etc. Yahoo! has also always been more of a consumer portal from the start. It didnt start as a core search business like Google.

Yahoo! needs to refocus on the search market. The digital dinosaur is simply not in the position to continue experimenting or investing in markets that it doesnt already have a significant command of. By spending time and money building a gamut of Web 2.0 services, Yahoo! is unnecessarily competing with hundreds of companies, when it should be competing with just two: Google and Microsoft. The company should let users build the content and focus instead on helping others effectively find it.

I dont think Yahoo! is really heavily investing in Web 2.0 technologies at this point, and didnt really in 2008 either. The companies it did buy before that like Flickr and Delicious have continued to be successful assets that were bought very cheaply. Letting the users build the content is also very much a Web 2.0 idea that Jawab is arguing they should move away from. I think the right path there is to focus on high value audiences and combine the creation of good unique content with also empowering users to contribute content. Im not in the audience business either though

Should Yahoo! continue to lose market share in search, the company will be unable to continue its operations elsewhere. Shutting down or selling off ineffective segments of its operation, such as Yahoo! Music, would go a long way towards retaining profitability and reigniting the search effort. Such cuts would undoubtedly require significant staff reductions; unfortunately, though, with dwindling profits and a bad economy, Yahoo! simply cannot afford to continue operating like the bloated behemoth it is today.

Again, many of these properties dont require much investment, but I agree with the general statement here that Yahoo! should cut properties that arent profitable and focus on a smaller number of areas. The company has already been making this move throughout 2008 and I suspect it will continue through 2009. Probably every technology company should listen to that advice in 2009.

This is not to say that Yahoo! is doomed. Apple found itself in much the same situation around 1997, only to see a resurgence under the leadership of the resurrected Steve Jobs. Yahoo! is in desperate need of fresh direction under a leader like Jobs if it is to win the battle against other giants. Yahoo! does not need a new religion. In fact, it needs to rediscover what it lost to ambition. It isnt too late yet, but Yahoo! needs to get off its butt and start fighting for its life.

I imagine a new CEO will provide some of this leadership, but Im also not sure Apple is a great comparison. I think Jobs actually helped provide new innovation at Apple, but Im not an expert on their story.

Jawabs theme is correct that Yahoo! does need to think hard about what it wants to do and streamline and focus on that. I just disagree with the conclusion that focusing only on search is the answer.

Included links: ReadWriteWeb

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Ill-Advised Ads For Google
Some critics maintain that Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) can give away Gmail, Google Docs, Google Analytics, and all sorts of fabulous free tools, but the company's only really successful business is paid search ads. Those critics would not be surprised by Googles latest attempt to make some money from their massive investment in YouTube Inc.: paid search ads.

Ill-Advised Ads For Google

OK, even if youre not surprised by that move, you may be surprised by Googles decision to make the new paid search ads video ads. Some early customers claim to be satisfied.

But Im not sure YouTube video advertising is such a great idea.

Advertisers accustomed to the effectiveness of paid search in driving sales are unlikely to be happy with YouTube video ads for several reasons:

Video ads are harder to make. Paid search ads are plain text -- just a title and a description. While it takes skill and effort to craft a good search ad, I think it takes more to create a decent video. When its more difficult to make the ads, fewer advertisers will be successful.Fewer people will click video ads. Even if you create a good video ad, its worthless unless you get folks to click on it. Because watching a video requires more of a time commitment than looking at a Web page, not as many people will look at a video ad.Fewer people will buy from video ads. Its not that the video ads will be less persuasive -- perhaps theyll be more emotionally riveting and be even more effective than their plain text counterparts. No, the real reason that video ads will drive fewer sales is that they are being shown to the wrong people.

Why do I claim that video ad watchers are the wrong people? It all has to do with qualification. Think for a moment about the folks looking at paid search ads. Why are they searching in the first place? They are often trying to buy something. Not always, for sure, but often enough to make a paid search ad extremely timely. Youre reaching a potential customer at exactly the right moment with your message.

On the other hand, what are people doing when they watch YouTube? A cynic would claim they are wasting their time, but even a proponent of Web video like me would admit that they are looking for entertainment, not for products and services. In short, they arent qualified prospects. If youre showing your ads to the wrong people, it doesnt matter how interesting or inexpensive the ads are. What do those qualities matter if your ads are driving few sales?

Now, understand, video ads make sense for some businesses. I mean, if you are marketing a new movie, then it makes sense that youd be trying to get people to view your trailer. Thats how you get people to decide to go to the theater.

But most of us arent marketing movies. So, sure, go ahead and try video ads. Run an experiment to see if you increase sales based on video. But dont get carried away. If video ads dont carry their weight because other marketing tactics are more effective, shift your spending to tactics that work.

After all, youre better off driving sales than being innovative.

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2009 Search Trends to Keep an Eye On
Between the economy affecting stock prices and the potential mergers and acquisitions discussed among several of the major search engines, there is a lot of uncertainty as we head into 2009. Yet we can anticipate several shifts in search based on what we've seen over the past decade and other signs in the media ecosystem. Here are some major changes to anticipate:

2009 Search Trends to Keep an Eye On

Holistic -- In Every Sense

The word "holistic" should play out in a number of ways:

First, any significant media campaign or offline event drives search volume, so marketers must capture that demand by integrating search with other media planning.

Next, paid search and SEO should be planned in tandem for the best results. Several studies show that by integrating search engine marketing with search engine optimization, results are greater than the sum of its parts.

Lastly, expect the major search engines and others to push forward with new ways to infuse paid search listings with display and video media. This will make search also about engagement and not just clicks and conversions. To some degree, these new search engine offerings will be motivated by more concentrated efforts to attract large brand marketers . Additionally, given how effective search engine marketing is, the engines and portals will want to have a steady stream of upsell options. In the coming year, consumers may experience the most dramatic shift in the format of search engine results pages since the basic template was established roughly a decade ago.

Search Fragmentation

While the search engine landscape continues to be dominated by one player, new complexities keep emerging as search migrates far beyond the traditional engines.

This fall, comScore and Ad Age reported that YouTube surpassed Yahoo as the second-largest search engine; within days, YouTube announced its new search advertising platform. What's more, MySpace (563 million U.S. queries in October 2008, according to comScore) is a bigger search engine than both AOL (424 million) and Ask.com (362 million). Queries on eBay, Craigslist, and Amazon combined (980 million) nearly rival MSN.com (1.04 billion).

What does all of this mean for marketers?

It's true that not all queries are created equally. A searcher on a social network or video sharing site often wants something different than what theyre looking for on a standard search engine. But given the volume of consumer search activity (among other interactions) on these nontraditional search sources, it's important for marketers to be positioned the best way possible where those searches are happening.

New Models for SEO

These other search sources don't just operate in a vacuum; they impact the major search engines, too. Search engine optimization is shifting, from a focus of entirely maximizing a site's rank in the engines, to maximizing a site's reach across all the top-ranked listings on a search engine's results page. While many consumers go directly to a marketers' site, which should be positioned as prominently as possible in search engine results pages, many more consumers reach marketers through intermediary properties. These include blogs, social networks, photo sharing sites, Twitter, Wikipedia, and countless other social sites that tend to rank increasingly well in search engines. That means marketers have to shift their mindset from optimizing their Web site to optimizing their Web presence.

Your Car Engine's Your Search Engine

The biggest change in 2009 and beyond is that the device consumers search from will start to matter even more than which engine they use. Image via Wikipedia

The most obvious manifestation of this is mobile consumption. New mobile devices and platforms such as the iPhone and Google Android are focused on improving the search and Web experience. This will fuel searches from mobile devices; iPhone users enter a disproportionate number of mobile search queries, though other devices are catching up.

Marketers need to adapt their strategies to reach their target audiences on these devices, such as by optimizing messaging and landing pages, and providing more consumer value by leveraging the unique features of these devices. For instance, mobile devices support integration with SMS (text messaging), click-to-call, mobile couponing,
and location-based services, all of which take advantage of the mobile platform in ways that aren't as natural for PC-based Web advertising.

Over time, this trend of searches shifting beyond the PC will encompass far more than mobile phones. Consider the new set-top boxes and television models that make it easier to search from the TV, while delivering a hybrid TV-Web experience. Then there's vehicle telematics -- anyone who's searched for a restaurant, attraction, or drug store via a GPS device on the road will appreciate how valuable that can be. With all of these examples, and others to come, the device plays a significant role in how and why consumers search.

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Google Blog Search Fixes Link Issue But Still Requires Help!
Google recently confirmed that the search engine is in the process of fixing blogroll issue and will continue to use RSS feed to index the pages. At the same time it will try to exclude blogrolls and navigational elements of the blog as well.

Google Blog Search Fixes Link Issue But Still Requires Help!

The biggest issue under this aspect was that if you conducted a link command in blog search, such as link:http://www.pagetrafficblog.com/, Google Blog Search started to show blog posts that do not have any connection with your posts. Why?

It was due to the fact that a lot of blogs out there have this particular blog on their blogroll. But according to Google, that post should have a link within their post!

Now Google Blog Search is making certain changes to improve. What has Google really changed? Jeremy Hylton of Google Blogsearch said:

The basic approach is to analyze each blog to look for text and markup that is common to all of the posts. Usually, these comment elements include the blogroll, any navigational elements, and other parts of the page that aren't part of the post. This approach works well for a lot of blogs, but we're continuing to improve the algorithm. The search results should ignore matches that only come from these common elements. The indexing change to implement it is deployed almost everywhere now.

Forum discussion going on at Google Groups. So if you have any kind of issue, let Google know about it! This is the help they are asking from you!

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Yahoo! Sets 90 Day Data Policy - Does Google Care?
It seems like Yahoo! is going around in circles at the moment, with the once mighty search engine and portal unsure how to resurrect its corporate lustre. The PR team have just announced a new data retention policy which they claim, "sets an industry-leading approach to user data privacy"...

Yahoo! Sets 90 Day Data Policy - Does Google Care?

..."This new policy strengthens Yahoo!'s relationship of trust with its 500 million users world-wide and enhances its longtime leadership on privacy."

Okay, there are some people who are concerned about how long their "user" data is stored and tracked by search engines. So for these people, the change in policy will be welcomed.

But what about the rest of us? Do you really care?

Chances are most users have no idea how long their information is stored. Did you know that Google tracks and retains your behavioral data for 9 months? Probably not, and I would suggest that 80% of you wouldn't change search engines because of it.

So while I think it's all "fine and dandy" for Yahoo! to be proclaiming that they've reduced their data retention policy - it's hardly going to impact the big picture. Let alone stir concern or action by Google.

Yahoo! seem to clutching at straws to recover lost market share and reputation. What do you think. Do you care that they've changed their data retention policy? Or even more importantly, will it have a positive impact on their user numbers?

Share your thoughts below.

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Find Out if Google Has Penalized Your Site
Having your site penalized by Google can be one of the biggest problems for your site in its efforts to be seen in the SERP's - exposure in the world's most popular search engine is a must. Recent discussion from Google users have focused on ways in which webmasters can tell whether their site is being penalized by Google. To help you discover if Google is penalizing your site, here are comments and suggestions to come out of the discussion:

Find Out if Google Has Penalized Your Site

"Google says that if you search on your domain name and it doesn't appear at or near the top of the results, it's a sign of a penalty. On sites penalized for selling links, the internal pages will all show gray bar in the Toolbar PageRank meter, which will often be reflected in poorer rankings sitewide."

"Occasionally they do notify, but I think for real simple stuff like hidden text. I have never heard of a letter to anyone for selling links or other more complicated issues."

"Past performance is also not indicative of future returns. Things do age, become less relevant as time passes and trends change, new sites are put up every day, link graphs are constantly being updated, old stuff starts to fail. One of the most annoying thing to me is when someone says that they've always been #1 or #2 for the last 3 years, didn't change a thing, and the site has always had 350 keyword stuffed navigation links stuck at the bottom of every page so that can't be the problem. While their site has been sitting there collecting dust Google has updated its ranking methods a few thousand times and 10's of millions of new sites, billions of new pages, have been introduced."

"If aboutus.org outranks you for your domain name, you've got problems and it probably has something to do with links, how you manipulated them, got them, or distributed them."


If you would like to read more of the discussion around this topic, then check out the Google Groups thread here.

In the end, it can be hard to determine whether your site has been penalized. Google are very unlikely to ever send you a nice little letter informing you of the penalties, instead you just need to keep on top of your site and use some the suggestions above. Good luck!

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Google Penalizing Your Site?
A new thread has surfaced at the Google Groups that talks about the ways webmasters can tell if their site is penalized by Google or not. Thanks to Barry for noticing it. One person says that Home page will not appear unless you use site:www.domainname.com. JohnMu further elaborates on the whole issue:Here's one test that seems to work about 90% of the time...

Google Penalizing Your Site?

...(only my opion after looking at thousands of sites). If aboutus.org outranks you for your domain name, you've got problems and it probably has something to do with links, how you manipulated them, got them, or distributed them.If entire chunks of extremely long tail searches go missing then it's probably because the content is available at 50 other websites, generally this is for your weak travel affiliate type stuff where they just republish hotel descriptions provided by their affiliate provider. I don't consider that a penalty but rather a crap website that deserves to not being seen because it's not bringing anything new to the party, and better ways to sort that information, better graphics, and a cooler template don't constitute anything new.

So it is recommended that one should always check Google Webmaster Tools for any error messages.

A glance at the issues:

Basically search under your domain name.A sudden drop in traffic, can be a hint and can often lead to other reasons that can be discovered at the later stage, but is surely a bad sign that something may be penalized.If aboutus.org outranks you for your domain name, then don't take it lightly!

Forum discussion continues at Google Groups

Included links: Search Engine Roundtable

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Yahoo Data Retention 3 months - And Google?
Its not often that Yahoo makes a move bold enough to put pressure on Google. Today it does just that, with news that it will reduce its data retention policy from 13 months to just 3. At a time when Google is pushing ahead with actively using personalized data to improve search results, Yahoo is banking on our fears that search engines know too much about us already.

Yahoo Data Retention 3 months - And Google?

Under Yahoos new policy, the company will strip out portions of users IP addresses, alter small tracking files known as cookies and delete other potential personally identifiable information after 90 days in most cases. In cases involving fraud and data security, the company will anonymize the data after six months.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo also said it will expand the scope of data that it anonymizes to encompass not only search engine logs, but also page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks. That information is used to personalize online content and advertising.

Google has been reluctant to make a similar move, claiming that it needs at least 9 months worth of data"in order to keep improving its search results.

Heres what Id like to hear from you. Are you really that worried about the data kept by the search engines? For me, Im not exactly buzzing with excitement over this announcement. Now, if Yahoo were to allow me to export all of my data, that would be a cool move.

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Sponsored Listings in Google Search Suggest
It's started - Googles working overtime to ensure that their billions in advertising revenue continue irrespective of global economic conditions. Their strategy: place sponsored listings everywhere. Last month reports came out that Google was adding sponsored listings to its finance site with plans to include advertising on Google News in the not too distant future.

Sponsored Listings in Google Search Suggest

Well now Google are testing the placement of AdWords ads in its recently launched Search Suggest, which appeared in August this year after years of testing in Google Labs. Google Suggest is a search feature that provides real-time suggestions while you search.

Danny Sullivan has collected screen shots of the various Search Suggest Sponsored Listing incarnations that Google are testing which include Title and Link only ads, conventional ads, ads at the top, ads at the bottom and variations in between.

According to his post, Google are also trialling links to websites, links to news articles and access to answers direct from the suggestions area also.

Itll be interesting to hear the feedback on the ad trial. I wonder whether search engine purists will see the ad placement as going too far. Especially when the sponsored listings appear above the suggested searches (see sample above).

From a marketers point of view, its definitely prime ad real estate and will surely command some serious bidding wars.

What do you think? Has Google gone too far by placing sponsored listings in search suggest? Or do you welcome the advertising opportunity?

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Google and WSJ Arguing Over Net Neutrality
The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was steering away from Network Neutrality. A neutral broadband network, Wikipedia says, is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed. The WSJ writes: Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies...

Google and WSJ Arguing Over Net Neutrality

...that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content

At risk is a principle known as network neutrality: Cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines are supposed to treat all traffic the same " nobody is supposed to jump the line.

But phone and cable companies argue that Internet content providers should share in their network costs (...) Carriers say that to keep up with surging traffic, driven mainly by the proliferation of online video, they need to boost revenue to upgrade their networks. Charging companies for fast lanes is one option.

One major cable operator in talks with Google says it has been reluctant so far to strike a deal because of concern it might violate Federal Communications Commission guidelines on network neutrality. (...)

If companies like Google succeed in negotiating preferential treatment, the Internet could become a place where wealthy companies get faster and easier access to the Web than less affluent ones (...)

Googles proposed arrangement with network providers, internally called OpenEdge, would place Google servers directly within the network of the service providers, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. The setup would accelerate Googles service for users. Google has asked the providers it has approached not to talk about the idea, according to people familiar with the plans.

Google begs to differ, calling the WSJ piece hyperbolic (i.e. exaggerated) and confused, explaining:

Google has offered to colocate caching servers within broadband providers own facilities; this reduces the providers bandwidth costs since the same video wouldnt have to be transmitted multiple times. Weve always said that broadband providers can engage in activities like colocation and caching, so long as they do so on a non-discriminatory basis.

All of Googles colocation agreements with ISPs " which weve done through projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache " are non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements. Also, none of them require (or encourage) that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic. In contrast, if broadband providers were to leverage their unilateral control over consumers connections and offer colocation or caching services in an anti-competitive fashion, that would threaten the open Internet and the innovation it enables.

Google argues they remain strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality.

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Microsoft Rumored To Lay Off Thousands Worldwide
nandemoari writes "It seems not even Microsoft is impervious to the effects of this increasingly painful recession. According to reports, the Redmond-based company is preparing to lay off about 17 per cent of its entire workforce in the coming months. Despite its portfolio diversity — including operating systems, antivirus software, and video game consoles — Microsoft is clearly feeling the pressure applied by a tightening global economy. In fact, there seems to be a sense of emergency to the massive cuts (about 15,000 workers out of 90,000), which rumors suggest should be made official by January 15."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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