Advertising & Marketing News

Take a look at the Google Analytics chart to the right.

Now imagine yourself waking up one day to see your web site’s traffic taking such a dramatic drop.

Did you get banned by Google? Is your site down?

Nope! But everyone just opted out of Google Analytics–rendering your dashboard useless.

Far fetched? Not too much. Not when you consider that Google has decided to build a browser plugin that will allow web users to prevent their data being collected by Google Analytics.

Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to make it globally available to our users in the coming weeks.

Say it with me: crap!

Why would Google cripple a product that doesn’t really reveal any personal information about a visitor to your site. OK, so in theory, you could track down an IP or network host and possibly string together their browsing habits and maybe figure out where they live, but does that warrant such a move?

What I don’t get is the double standards Google is displaying here. Basically, us site owners can’t be trusted with anonymous data, but Google can continue to invade a user’s privacy by keeping their search history? Where’s the plugin that lets me opt-out of Google keeping–and analyzing–my search history? Heck, there’s not even an easy way to opt-out of personalized search results!

C’mon Google. What’s good for us, is good for you. If you’re truly taking a stand on protecting a user’s privacy, let’s not keep one foot planted on a big ole rock of hypocrisy!

The rest is here:
Why Your Web Traffic is Going to Nosedive Thanks to Google

Mark your calendars for April 10!

That’s the day that Google is reportedly going to officially pull out of China, with the announcement coming as early as Monday.

According to Bloomberg (via China Business News) this is all based on a tip from an anonymous sales person inside Google’s Chinese office–I could make a bad joke about the game of Chinese Whispers, but I won’t.

Anyway, I really can’t help but ponder the real reason Google is pulling out. Is it because of the security issues? Is it because the search engine is struggling to dominate the search market? Surely its decision isn’t purely a stance on censorship. After all, China’s not the only country that requires Google to censor its results:

In Turkey, it’s a crime to defame the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk or to ridicule “Turkishness.” So Google restricts access to videos that the government of Turkey deems illegal on google.com.tr.

In Germany, France and Poland, it is illegal to publish pro-Nazi material or content that denies the Holocaust. To comply with those countries’ laws, Google does not display links to those sites on its search results pages on the company’s German site google.de, French site google.fr or Polish site google.pl.

Yet, Google’s not pulling out of those countries anytime soon. Which makes me think that “censorship” is a nice clean–publicly supported–reason to quietly noisily shutter its China operations, without having to admit defeat.

PS. There’s one search engine that can’t wait for Google to exit China–Baidu’s shares are skyrocketing!

Read more here:
Google China Plans to Wave White Flag on April 10?

Remember like 10 years ago when the “cool” thing to do was WebTV? A computer on your television set, with a keyboard and a mouse that worked (sometimes) with no wires?! Okay, so it was never really that cool—maybe watching TV and computing simultaneously hadn’t been invented yet—and yet Google is partnering with Sony to bring the Internet back to the television.

Right now there are a few set-top boxes that offer access to limited Internet content. Google & Sony’s box, with the Android OS, would allow users to access the full Internet, possibly with apps for popular sites like Twitter and Picasa, according to the New York Times.

Google and Sony have already tapped Logitech to make some auxiliary devices, including a remote control with a mini keyboard. Isn’t it great? All the inconveniences of your other devices—the tiny keyboard on your phone, the constant distraction of the Internet and the mind-numbing power of the tube—combined into one ultimate time-wasting device. (YouTwitFace?)

And before we all start begging that this is a joke and not seriously what Google’s planning to pursue next, apparently this project is several months under way. (But knowing the business world, that probably means they’re still in the paperwork stage, if they’ve even got that far.)

(In case you were wondering, WebTV was purchased by Microsoft and eventually rebranded as MSN TV. While they continue to support existing customers, Microsoft finally gave up on selling the hardware last year.)

What do you think? Are all things old new again? Or is this another money pit for companies that really don’t need it?

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See original here:
Google + Sony + TV = 1997?

Foursquare was all the rage at SXSW this year. And they had a killer party with Ashton Kutcher in attendance. Now a new, location-based app, CauseWorld, allows you to check in to a box of Tampax. And other products. For charity. So it’s all OK.

Original post:
YouTube Overlays, Foursquare Plays, American Apparel Displays

Believing the Cheltenham Race has more drama than the whole of Hollywood combined, online betting site Paddy Power erected a Hollywood-sized sign of their own for the event.

Excerpted from:
Paddy Power Goes Hollywood