Groovle 1 Google 0 Over domain name claim fight

Groovle 1 Google 0 Over domain name claim fight

When search giant Google Inc filed a claim against small Canadian search engine Groovle.com, Google lawyers probably thinks is a forgone conclusion that Groovel.com will be transferred to them as indicated in the case Google inc filed against Groovel.com, after all, in the previous 64 cased filed by Google about domain names, 63 has been upheld in Google’s favour.

Google argue that Groovel.com owned by 207 Media, was too similar to its own, however mediators in the case disagree with Google and refuse to grant the transfer of Groovel.com to Google, the 3 Judges at the body that arbitrated on the case were unanimous in their decision, they added in their statement that the name was not similar enough to confuse people and the word ‘groovle’ was more closely linked to “groovy” or “groove” rather than Google.

Google also brought other claims against 207 media claiming that the domain was registered in bad faith, the judges refused to examine Google’s claim that the Canadian business had no “legitimate” interest in the domain name and had registered it in “bad faith”.

You can discuss this and other domain name related issues at UK webmaster forum.

Bing begining to dent Google’s dominace

According to figures released by ComScore today, Bing is finally making gains at the expense of Google in the US search engine market. Though the percentage point gain, which is not even up to 1% of the search market, it was deem to be significant gain by search market analyst, especially for a new entrant like Bing which was launched by Microsoft only in June 2009.
According to ComScore figures released today, Bing’s share of the search market has grown from 8.9% in July to 9.3% in August, this is way behind Yahoo share of the search market and a drop in the ocean when compared with Google’s share of the market at 65%. The release of this figures by ComScore was greeted on the stock market with Microsoft share raising and Google share dipping slightly.
Search expert John Batelle said on his blog at the release of ComScore search figures “The fact Google is losing any market share to Microsoft could indicate that it is no longer the immediate choice for everyone.
Another respected online statistics provider Nielsen said that in August the number of searches on Bing increased by 5%, while Google searches were down 1.7%. Its still early days to see whether Bing will take any significant share of the search market from Google, but it it keeps going at the present rate, its a matter of time before Google’s run away lead in the search market is cut down.

You can discuss this and other search engine related issues at UK Webmaster Forum

Google challenged to make Gmail more secure

Recently and open letter was sent to Google CEO Eric Schmidt by security experts, lawyers, and privacy advocates asking why Gmail users are “needlessly” being put at risk.The 38 strong signatories want Google to start using the secure version of the HTTP protocol to protect Gmail users.

Ben Edelman, one of the signatories to the letter argued that because more people use insecure Internet access – such as wi-fi in coffee shops, libraries, there’s a real risk of session hijacking,” Edelman argue further that though Gmail login process is done on HTTPS but once the user login session is completed, all data transmission is done on regular HTTP which is not secure, hi-tech criminals using sophisticated snooping devices can capture sensitive data or even hi-jack a Gmail account users session and send messages pretending to be the user.

Google responded to the open letter by saying that it will look into whether it made sense to use HTTPS all the time in Gmail but a trial on a small number of its users will be carried out to ensure user experience is not markedly changed by turning on HTTPS all the time.

Google’s Gmail users are not the only email account users exposed this way, most other leading free email services providers are guilty not placing the entire email using session on HTTPS. The main reason providers give for this is that HTTP slows down user experience because a lot of encrypting and decrypting goes on from users computer trough the email services provider servers thereby slowing down user experience.

You can discuss this post and other email and Internet related issues at UK Webmaster Forum

Usability and Your Website, Final Part

Basic Implementation of Usability Testing

You have done all the hard parts, planning, analyzing, and designing. Now comes the implementation of usability testing. Throughout the previous analyses, there were most likely several negative findings. So many that it may be difficult to implement the changes to fix them all. In fact, you may not want to regardless of budget or time issues.

Develop Priorities

The next step is to create a list of priorities on what needs fixing first. Look for simple easy fixes, or try finding the ones that can affect most of your users. Fixing a poor Terms of Agreement page hardly compares to poorly done new user form or confusing navigation bar. A common side effect of fixing the larger issues first is that lesser issues become resolved on there own.

Another reason you might want to hold off on making all the fixes at once is that it may be difficult to determine what new changes made, make the greater impact. It’s easy to see improvements if all you did was move a menu to the left instead of the right versus moving the menu, redoing the menu’s organization, and changing the header all at the same time. Take little bites. It could be that moving to the left did work better for your users, but now using another feature has become more complex. Maybe the fix needed to be not moving the menu, but reorganizing it.

Test Again

Now comes the fun and ongoing part. Test and test again. A site is never really ever done. Even the big guns like eBay, Microsoft, or Google are constantly testing. I have been lucky enough to participate as a test subject for Google’s Adwords and AdSense. It’s the advantages to living nearby that I got to participate at Google I guess. Don’t forget, testing is one of the most important steps to building a website, and if you don’t do it don’t expect much. I’m guessing not everyone will like it.

This article was written for Temi by Rob Campbell of Best Web Image. Rob is a usability and web design consultant. You can contact Rob via the contact page on Best Web Image. You can discuss this article and other web design related issues at UK Webmaster Forum .

Google UK – The Queen and I

If the queen was to award royal seal of approval to Google UK, it could read something like this “By Appointment To Her Majesty the Queen, Google UK, purveyor or Internet information” this would have entitled Google UK to join royal warranty holders association, and use the queen’s seal on their website. As customary to Google, they commemorate special occasions with a discreet alteration to their logo, on the occasion of the Queen’s visit to Google’s UK premises, the Queen’s head replaces the ‘g’ in the logo on their website.

While at Google’s UK headquarters, the Queen and Prince Phillips were given a virtual tour of Big Ben and Windsor Castle using Google Earth. The Queen also uploaded a footage to her YouTube channel. Prince  Philip ask Google staff to show him their own office using Google Earth, they could not find it, it happen that the aerial phone that powers Google Earth is yet to be updated since Google’s head office on Buckingham Palace road was built.

The Queen, compared with other monarchs is at the cutting edge of technology, she is on record as the first monarch to send an email way back in 1976, her website went online  21 year later in 1997 and her own YouTube channel was launched in November 2007.

« Previous Page — Next Page »