Focus on the User: The real winners and losers of Don't Be Evil

Engineers from Twitter and Facebook got together to hack out a bookmarklet called “Don’t Be Evil”. You can grab it from a site called Focus on the User. These engineers are being pretty direct with their choice of names.

The goal of the bookmarklet is to show that Google could have done Search+ differently. Twitter and Facebook say that Search+ is not fair. They say Google are using their search market share to bully their way into social.

If you read this blog then I’m sure you’re already familiar with the bookmarket but, just in case, here’s the video.



As it happens, Focus on the User also shares the code to the bookmarklet and this reveals there are a simple whitelist of social networks which “qualify”.

When Google rolled out Search+ they only qualified Google+ for special promotion. Twitter and Facebook complained. I do think the Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet has been a big PR win for Twitter and Facebook but, for me, it opens a can of worms. If you want Google to include other social networks in Search+ then which other social networks should be included and who decides this?

The Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet “favours” the following networks. These are the winners.

• Crunchbase
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Foursquare
• FriendFeed
• GitHub
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Google+
• Quora
• Stackoverflow
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• YouTube

That’s a pretty good list and some other Google properties in there as well.

There are some sites that are missing, though, and I accept “missing” is subjective. Here are the losers:

• Bebo
• About.me
• Cyworld
• Delicious
• Foursquare
• Fotoblog
• GetGlue
• LiveJournal
• Orkut
• Plurk
• Renren
• Xing
• Posterous

There will be some technical reasons why some of these sites weren't easily included. There will certainly be some geographical reasons too – Xing, for example, is far bigger than LinkedIn in places like Germany but were these American engineers to know that? The fact there are reasons why some sites weren't included in "Don't Be Evil" only serves Google's point, I think, rather than Twitter and Facebook.

If Twitter and Facebook wanted into Search+’s new promotional areas – an understandable wish – then they also need to tackle suggesting ways by which Google could make these decisions.

I don’t think it’s arrogant of Twitter and Facebook to expect to be in Search plus Your World’s special zones but there are other social networks out there. If Search+ isn’t exclusively for Google properties then it’ll be a huge challenge to work out who else qualifies. Would social networks expect Google to publish requirements for Search+ inclusion?

Google's new privacy changes and tracking are a good thing

Google has announced a new simple and connected privacy policy. We already have large sites like the Washington Post writing on this and wheeling out concerned experts. Had Apple not announced amazing financial details at the exact same time Google just happened to publish this news then it would surely have been a bigger story.

Gosh. Fancy that.

Putting my cynicism aside; I actually support the changes.



I buy the story. That helps. There are too many Google privacy variants and I welcome a single and easier to understand one.

Do I worry about Google’s cross site tracking? No. I welcome it. I do believe it’ll improve the service.

I’m pretty sure it’s the cross site tracking that Google is really after here. The improvements to privacy transparency is a sugar coating for both internal Google consumption as well as external.

I accept there are some risks in putting more eggs in a single basket but this feels more secure than the sort of behind the scenes deals Facebook signs with the like of Yelp for instant personalisation.

I look forward to some of the products that Google could make with the result of this tweak. The video above teases us over the possibility of adding geo-data to Calendar alerts. There are a lot more. For example, what about Google News giving me prompts or alerts for areas I’m due to travel into – if Google knows I’m flying from Heathrow on Friday then I’ve no problem with Google Alerts for potential travel tips for Friday. Alternatively, if Google knows I like to try and catch viral videos on YouTube before they go viral then I have no problem with their creators being recommended as Google+ connections or surfaced in search.

Users can't opt out? Of course not. How could it work if users could pick and choose the T&Cs of sites they use? I don't see a two tier privacy system being a good thing - one, simple, set of privacy rules for most people and yet Google serving up complex and separate rules for each of their sites for a small percentage of users? The opt out is a red herring.

Google's new games promo brings fully fledged ads to Google+

Games have been part of Google+ for a while. They were not a launch feature but Google understands how important social gaming is and was quick to introduce them to their must-succeed platform.

It's also been the case that Google has been happy to promote individual games too. Games have traditionally lived in the sidebar to the left and Google+ would know to remind you of those games you've already looked at or even tried.

File this as "new to me" but the most recent games promotion on Google+ is different. We're talking about banner promotions here and left to speculate how games score this prime slice of real estate. Does Google get paid for this? Is this an editorial choice?

The new game promotion lives in the sidebar to the right. That's the same column that Google typically reserves for calls to action - such as Circle suggestions and prompts to send Google+ invitations to your friends.

Why Wikipedia is using JavaScript for the blackout

Today Wikipedia is supposed to be "offline" with a blackout to support the protests against SOPA and PIPA. Buzzfeed already has a collection of angry students who can't do their homework due to the content being unavailable.

There's a catch.

Wikipedia's content is still there and it's easy to get at. Just disable your JavaScript. Wikipedia are simply using JavaScript to open a layer over the main content. If you disable JavaScript, that layer does not render and you can navigate and read Wikipedia as usual.

I don't think this a weak protest. The type of people in favour of SOPA, for example, are unlikely to figure the 'hack' out.

It does raise a question; why are Wikipedia using this blackout tactic?

One answer is loud and clear to anyone with experience in search marketing. This approach should not impact Wikipedia's awesome SEO. There are no redirects here. No 404s, 503s or other server side rejections. Google can still index the full page of content.

Caution! This does not mean you can copy Wikipedia. Google is unlikely to let other sites away with this - it's not good form to have too a high percentage of a page's content accessible to spiders and not immediately visible to users. You risk falling into the 'hidden text' trap which has been part of Google's guidelines for years.

There's a second reason why the Wikipedia charity has adopted the JavaScript approach. JavaScript is a client-side script. In other words; it runs on your PC (or tablet, smartphone, etc) rather than Wikipedia's own servers.

Wikipedia is hugely popular and not cash rich. They make heavy use of caching in order to serve up their pages (millions of which go untouched for days). The beauty of the JavaScript blackout approach is that it will not corrupt Wikipedia's content cache with lots of black pages. This approach helps ensure that the blackout only lasts for a day and that we're not discovering protest pages on Wikpedia for days to come.

Searching by similar image, repeat nearly 3000 times

This video shows what happens if you start witha 400x225px blank and transparent PNG and use Google's search to find a similar image. That similar image and use Google's image search to find a similar image.

Rise and repeat that cycle some 2,951 times and put those images into an animation that runs at 12fps. What do you get? You get this! Surreal.



This bit of insightful insanity comes to us from Sebastian Schmieg, in The Netherlands, who put this together in December 2011.

Always on ambient social connections and hardware

This design by Kairi Eguchi caught my eye. It won the LG Mobile Design competition last year. LG, of course, are now dabbling with Google TV.

In essence the "Finestra" is a charging cradle for a smartphone. Just as the Motorola Atrix (also now Google-y) is designed to be plugged into a keyboard and screen so is the Finestra more than just a power charger.

Once the smartphone is in the wall mounted Finestra the system turns into a rather nice ambient display for your social activity. It can also interact via the laser keyboard. Laser keyboards have been available for years.

I'm rather reminded of the work Dentsu did with Berg on media surfaces and incidental media.

Google+ images dominates SERPs

I noticed that many of the 2012 predictions for SEO agreed that Google+ would be important. We also know that Google+ Pages for businesses and brands have started to appear in the search results pages.

This, however, is a new (for me) way to incorporate Google+ content in the web results and it utterly dominates the SERPs. Look at just how much of the screen those images take up. Clicks take you to the Google+ page and not the URL you can clearly see associated with the post.

Geek Tyrant is also an especially interesting Google+ Page for Brands as with just over 500 followers it is one of the smallest I know that has qualified for Google Direct.

To get this result I searched for [geektyrant].