Steve Bryant

Google’s acquisition chief says the best acquisitions are crazy acquisitions. “The crazy ones mean they ignore the usual restraints of investment levels required or design parameters or ‘Gee I need more servers than anyone ever thought was possible’,” Salman Ullah, Google’s director of corporate development, told Bloomberg.com. “When you free yourselves from these constraints, you […]

CBS announced today that it has made several online video distribution deals to AOL, MSN and Joost, among others. CBS is also in talks to have a new NBC Universal-News Corp. venture distribute its shows on a nonexclusive basis. Google had to be expecting this. According to director of television advertising Michael Steib, the G […]

This recent post from Jeff Jarvis–about whether Obama or Clinton is mentioned more often in the media–got me wondering what Google Trends has to say about the matter. As Jarvis notes, the latest Gallup poll shows Hillary ahead, while Google News shows more articles about Obama. Blogpulse shows the candidates neck and neck. (None of […]

Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels wishes NBC would let him put more clips up on YouTube. “I think that YouTube is great, because if you do something like ‘Dick in a Box,’ someone in Pakistan can see it,” said Mr. Michaels in an interview with Felix Gillette at the New York Observer. “YouTube has […]

Yahoo scored a win today by corralling 33 Viacom broadband sites — including MTV.com, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central — into its new Panama search advertising system. Viacom, of course, is currently suing Yahoo competitor Google for $1 billion in a copyright infringement lawsuit, a fact to which Viacom alluded in its press release: “Viacom is […]

So my Mac Mini died on Sunday. Hit the power and got the gray screen of death. The Applecare plan had run out six months previously. The folks at Tekserve said a new hard drive for the $600 Mac Mini would cost me … $600. Arg. Anyway, I didn’t lose my documents. Everything important, from […]

I stopped by the New York Search Engine Strategies conference this morning to chat with a few folks. Along the way I copied down some tips and tricks I heard. Some of this will be old hat to you folks, but it’s always good to reprise the important stuff. Viral videos do not transfer value […]

Google has apologized to competitor Sohu.com after its Chinese rival complained its data was used by the U.S. search leader in a new tool for entering Chinese characters. Sohu, which controls about 6.5 percent of the Chinese search market, complained Sunday that Google’s tool for inputting Chinese characters appeared to copy material from Sohu’s Sogou […]

YouTube has offered to help Thai officials block specific videos on the video-sharing site in order to prevent the country from blocking the site altogether, reports the AP. Thailand blocked YouTube on Wednesday after YouTube owner Google refused to remove a slide show that superimposed offensive images over photos of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. “While we […]

Not sure what’s going on here. I was, admittedly, wasting time a few minutes ago and decided to look for videos about Google on Google Video. The top 10 results (with personalized search turned off): Colbert roasts President Bush “All Marketers are Liars” — Seth Godin speaks at Google russian climbing American Freedom to Fascism […]

Google released a version of Desktop for Macs today. Some Mac users (not including this one), despite already having the use of the excellent Spotlight app, asked for a Mac version of the popular PC app. Google Desktop for Mac is only available for Intel-powered Macs. PowerPC users need not apply. Or they need to […]

A group of Google stockholders has proposed that Google adopt an anti-censorship policy but Google’s board is against the idea, according to a statement filed with the SEC.The Office of the Comptroller of New York City, custodian for several city pensions, including police, firefighter and teacher funds, will ask Google’s board to consider the proposal […]