Google CFO to retire by year-end

George Reyes has served as chief financial officer since 2002.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -- Google Inc. said Tuesday that George Reyes plans to retire as chief financial officer by the end of the year, and that the company will begin a search for a replacement.

Reyes, 53, has served as CFO of Google (Charts, Fortune 500), the world's leading provider of Web search and online services, since 2002. He helped spearhead the company's initial public offering in August 2004.

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A veteran of Silicon Valley high-tech companies, Reyes previously served as interim CFO of optical networking equipment company ONI Systems before it was sold to Ciena Corp. (Charts) in 2002.

For 13 years, he held various financial executive positions at computer-maker Sun Microsystems Inc. (Charts)

Reyes serves on the board of directors of two Silicon Valley-based software makers: Symantec Corp. (Charts) and BEA Systems Inc. (Charts)

CNN & Google Sign Multi-Year AdSense Deal

Google announced that CNN has partnered with them on a multi-year deal for displaying Google AdSense contextual ads on CNN.com.

Under this deal, "Google will serve as the exclusive provider of auction-based text advertisements throughout CNN.com," according to the press release. AdSense is available to both large and small publishers. However, one would assume that Google is giving CNN a larger share of revenue than a typical AdSense publisher.

Google already powers search on the CNN.com site, though the international version uses Yahoo, as ResourceShelf's Gary Price reminded us of. Yahoo signed a deal with CNN back in 2004 to power search results, but that deal may have expired at some point without notice.

The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced that they now officially support adding non-English domain names to Google Webmaster Central.

The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced that they now officially support adding non-English domain names to Google Webmaster Central.

So if you have a domain that looks like http://北京大学.cn, you will be able to add it and very the site in Google Webmaster Tools. Now Google supports Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) within the tool. If you used a workaround in the past, you do not have to update anything. Google will do that for you.

Google buys stake in Chinese social Web site

SHANGHAI, China (Reuters) -- Google Inc revealed on Monday that it had acquired a stake in Chinese community Web site Tianya.cn, indicating a foray by the global search leader into social networking in the world's second-largest Internet market.

A Google spokeswoman confirmed the stake holding by email, but declined to give further details. Various local media reports on Monday put the estimated size of Google's stake at anywhere from less than 10 percent to up to 60 percent. Other media reports have said Google may be eyeing acquisitions in China.

Google is rushing to close the gap with rival Baidu.com Inc , which dominated the search market in China in the second quarter with a 58.1 percent share, according to research firm Analysys International. Google followed with a 22.8 percent share and Yahoo China with 11.6 percent, Analysys said.

China is the world's second-largest Internet market after the United States, with around 162 million Web users. Venture capital investment in Chinese social networking sites has bloomed since Google bought top online video-sharing site YouTube for $1.65 billion late last year.

In another move to diversify its platform in China, Google -- which recently established an engineering research center in Shanghai -- has also won preliminary approval from Beijing for a licence to provide Internet content in the country.

Baidu recently won approval to do its own reporting rather than simply show news search results, while Google is promoting a Chinese-language map search service and online word processing programs. Both are trying to build online library services.

American Airlines seeks damages from Google

The airline says it doesn't want to prevent the display of search terms but wants Google to stop selling its trademarks.

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- American Airlines, the world's largest airline, said Friday it was seeking damages from Internet search leader Google Inc. for selling search words involving its name.

The dispute relates to Google's practice of selling search terms, such as "American Airlines" or "AA.com," to other companies for advertising.

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American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp. (up $0.14 to $22.61, Charts, Fortune 500), said it does not want to prevent the display of search terms, but wants Google to stop selling its trademarks and related terms.

"We are seeking relief for the damages such practices are creating," the company said in a statement. It didn't estimate the amount of damages.

Google (up $8.29 to $499.81, Charts, Fortune 500) believes it's on solid ground.

"We are confident that our trademark policy strikes a proper balance between trademark owners' interests and consumer choice, and that our position has been validated by decisions in previous trademark cases," Google said in a statement.

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Google Launches Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center

Google announced the launch of the Google Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center.

This center will educate both novices and experts on click fraud, Google's prevention methods, what Google considers click fraud, as well as links to other resources to learn more about recent updates on click fraud and traffic quality.

On the Tech Talk page, they link to Google's official blog, Inside AdWords blog plus to Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder's blog and Matt Cutts' blog.

Last week Yahoo launched their Traffic Quality Center.

Fast Search To Fire 148 Employees

Fast Search & Transfer lets go of 148 employees from Pandia reports that Fast Search and Transfer will be letting 148 employees go this year.

The employees who are being fired are reportedly being compensated for the downsizing. Fast Search & Transfer have reportedly hired 400 employees in 2006 and 2007. The company's CEO, John Markus Lervik, feels the downsizing will help the company improve their overall bottom-line.

Google Hiring Independents To Collect Business Info For Maps

The Google Local Business Referral Program is an initiative to gather contact, business hours and other information on businesses for listings in Google Maps - where Google is using independent contractors to gather their information. Basically they are paying $10 a confirmed listing.

The information gathering job requires people to sign up for it through their Google accounts and to have access to a digital camera to take a photograph of the business. At $10 an entry organized people could be making $30 plus dollars an hour - great salary for people in lower cost of living communities.

Google Tests New "Show More" & Related Words AdSense Units

Google AdSense has been busy testing new AdSense units this weekend, with two new formats spotted in the wild.

The first comes via a DigitalPoint Forums thread, where dozens of publishers are noticing related words at the bottom of their normal AdSense units. Here is an image of one ad in action. Notice the related words at the bottom of the ad:

These resemble AdSense link units placed in the bottom of regular text ad units.

The second Google AdSense test is a "show more" link found at the bottom of Google ads. I found this at iBrowseHere.com , and here is a screen shot of it in action.

Clicking on the "Show More" link takes you to a new page with related ads.

In a related now, there was a outage that took down all Google PPA ads over a 24+ hour period this weekend.

Gmail Is Looking For Videos

Gmail is looking for creative people with a video camera and the Gmail M-velope to help illustrate how an email message travels around the world.

Take a look at the collaborative video they started, and then film what happens next. A selection of the clips will rotate and add the best ones to the video. The final video will be featured on the Gmail homepage and seen by users worldwide.

Yahoo Adds Search Suggestions To Toolbar

The Yahoo Search Blog announced that downloads of the Yahoo Toolbar for Internet Explorer will now have "as you type" search suggestions functionality.

Yahoo has been on a search suggestion frenzy lately, last month launching search suggestions on Yahoo.com and beta testing Yahoo Search Assist.

It's Not Just Google That Treats Underscores Like Dashes

Last week's news that Google is now is treating underscores URLs as word separators, as it does with hyphens, quickly spread through the SEOs and webmaster communities. But what about the other search engines?

I immediately contacted them to find out how they treat underscores and hyphens. Finally, the results are in. Yahoo and Microsoft (and now also Ask.com), the other two of the big three, confirmed that they do treat underscores the same as dashes or hyphens in the URL.

Let me step back and explain this a bit more.

Some SEOs believe that the keywords in the URL of a page have some limited impact on the ranking of that page in the search engines. So if you sold blue widgets, and you had a page at www.domain.com/blue-widgets.html, those keywords are sometime perceived to help - while keeping all the other factors in ranking a page equal.

In the past, Google treated hyphens but not underscores in a URL as a word separator. So in our example above, the blue-widgets part would be seen as two different words: blue & widgets.

If it were like this, blue_widgets, then Google would have seen it as one single word: blue_widgets.

Now Google treats underscores the same way as hyphens. As for Microsoft, Ramez Naam told me:

We treat underscores as word separators in URLs. Always have.

Priyank Shanker Garg from Yahoo told me:

For URL tokenization (separating words in URLs), we treat dashes or underscores identically, but these are not our only tokens and we take a more general approach to finding words in URL.

I also asked Ask.com, but they've yet to send a reply.

Postscript: Peter Linsley of Ask.com has now given me a response, they treat underscores as word separators also.

For the record, we also treat underscores as word separators in URLs.

LookSmart CEO David Hills Resigns

A recent SEC filing reports that LookSmart CEO David Hill announced his resignation on July 26th, to be effective as of yesterday.

LookSmart swiftly appointed Edward F. West, the current chair of its board of directors, to take over for the time being.

LookSmart loses its head from the Australian IT has some more details on the loss, explaining that Hills became the CEO in October 2004. He decided to leave LookSmart to start his own online media advisory services firm.

Edward West, the interim CEO, said:

We are deeply appreciative of Dave's industry experience and contribution to LookSmart during his tenure with the company.

He has guided the company through many challenges and successfully restored the quality and growth of its Advertiser Solutions business.

Here is Mr. West's bio from the SEC filing:

Mr. West is 54 years old and currently serves as Managing Director of Sage Partners LLC, an advisory services firm, where he started a global venture development practice for promising early-stage companies in 2003. Mr. West served as Chief Executive Officer of Colarity Corporation, a customer knowledge management services company, from January 2001 to December 2003. From December 1999 to December 2000, Mr. West served as Chief Executive Officer of RealNames International, the global development subsidiary of RealNames Corporation, an Internet names and navigation platform provider. From May 1998 to December 1999, Mr. West served as Executive Vice President, Business Development, Sales and Marketing, at RealNames Corporation. From January 1996 to April 1998, Mr. West served as Chief Operating Officer of Softbank Interactive Marketing, a provider of marketing services and sales representation to Internet sites seeking interactive advertisers. Mr. West received an A.B. in Architecture/Urban Planning from Princeton University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Hat tip to Gary Price for spotting the SEC filing.

Google hires browser hacking guru

Google has snapped up one of the sharpest minds in the hacker community, luring Michal Zalewski to help lock down its long list of Internet facing products.

Zalewski, a 26-year-old computer security whiz from Poland, joined the search engine giant about a week ago to work as an Information Security Engineer. He confirmed the move via e-mail but declined to discuss specifics about the new gig.

[SEE: Google’s anti-malware team comes out of the shadows ]

The Zalewski hire is significant on several fronts. It adds a brand-name hacker to Google’s security team (the company has been looking for talent at hacker cons) at a time when it is struggling to cope with gaping holes in its line of products and, in a roundabout way, stops the public release of zero-day browser vulnerabilities.

Zalewski, who has been credited in the past with finding several major vulnerabilities (buffer overflow in SendMail, weaknesses in TCP/IP ISNs, code execution hole in IE’s JPG rendering) has spent most of 2007 releasing details of severe holes in Internet Explorer and Firefox — constantly cracking the browsers’ security models.

In February, Zalewski paid special attention to Mozilla Firefox. On an almost-daily basis, he published proof-of-concept exploits for zero-day bugs in the open-source and forced Mozilla security engineers to constantly work on creating patches.

[SEE: Gaping holes exposed in fully-patched IE 7, Firefox ]

Microsoft’s IE did not escape Zalewski’s scrunity. Last month, he dropped exploits for several serious IE vulnerabilities, some of which remain unpatched.

Google Launches Campaign Optimizer For Automated AdWords Tips

The Inside AdWords Blog announced the launch of AdWords Campaign Optimizer. This is an automated AdWords tool that gives you tips on how to improve your campaign, in just minutes.

When you run the tool, Google says it will "automatically analyze your budget, keywords, and landing page, and create a customized proposal for your campaign." You can then go through the suggestions in the proposal and pick and choose which ones you want to accept.

Some of the ideas that you may see in your proposal includes:

• Change daily budget
• Add new keywords
• Change keyword matching options
• Adjust keyword maximum cost-per-click bid
• Change ad text

You should be able to access the campaign optimizer feature while in the campaign detail page. Just look for the "Optimize Campaign" link on that page.

Sprint Nextel to Use Google Applications On Its "WiMax" Mobile Devices

Sprint Nextel Corp. said it would include a range of Google Inc.'s Web and communications applications on its coming "WiMax" mobile devices, a boost for Sprint as it rolls out the new technology and a breakthrough for Google in the U.S. wireless industry.

Sprint, the nation's third-largest wireless carrier by subscribers, recently announced it is teaming up with Clearwire Corp., of Kirkland, Wash., to build a nationwide WiMax network. The companies plan a rollout that will reach 100 million people by the end of 2008. WiMax is a long-range wireless technology that Sprint says will allow consumers to access the Web wirelessly from cellphones, laptops and other devices at speeds and prices similar to cable connections.

Sprint plans to offer a home page on its WiMax devices that will serve as a gateway for consumers to access the Internet and a variety of multimedia services. Under the deal, Google will provide the Web-search capabilities for that portal. Sprint also will integrate a suite of popular Google mobile applications, including Gmail email and Google Calendar.

Gates sees no Google threat in phone software

Bill Gates does not see Google Inc. becoming a successful competitor in the market for software for cellular phones.

Gates told the Times it was unlikely that Google would be able to make inroads into Microsoft's share of the market for mobile phone software. "How many products, of all the Google products that have been introduced, how many of them are profit-making products?" the Times quoted Gates as saying.

"They've introduced about 30 different products; they have one profit-making product. So you're now making a prediction without ever seeing the software that they're going to have the world's best phone and it's going to be free?" the paper quoted him as saying.

AOL Buys an Online Ad Company

The AOL unit of Time Warner said yesterday it had agreed to buy Tacoda, an online advertising company that uses behavioral targeting techniques to track Web user habits.

The deal is the latest acquisition by AOL to bolster its online advertising tools after its decision to move away from its Internet access business and instead offer consumers free services supported by ads. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by the companies. A person familiar with the situation said AOL was paying $275 million in cash for Tacoda.

Tacoda’s technology allows brand advertisers to aim messages to specific audience segments based on the kinds of sites they have visited on the Web. The capability aims to help Web publishers capture one of the next big waves of growth for Internet advertising, which is drawing marketing dollars from other media outlets. The industry tracking firm eMarketer has forecast the market for behaviorally targeted advertising will increase to $3.8 billion in 2011 from $350 million last year.

Tacoda, based in New York, employs about 100 people.