What does Peter, a 79 year old World War II radar technician and Noah, the man who took a picture of himself every day for 6 years have in common? They were both common people who shared their life experiences on YouTube and became internationally famous.

Time Magazine recently named YouTube “Best Invention of 2006″. Totally manipulating the word “Invention” as video sharing has been around since early 2001. YouTube should have won something more like “most successful website in 2006″. Being less then 1 year old and selling to Google for $1.65 billion, is defiantly one of the best developments on Web 2.0

Since Google’s taken over the site, YouTube has made partnerships with Sony BMG, NBC, CBS, Sony BMG Universal Music, and Warner Music. Not to mention increasing in pagerank.

Expect to see more and exciting things with YouTube in the near future.

What do Google, Kleenex, Band-Aids, Jell-O, Q-Tips, and Xerox all have in common? They’re all trademarked terms that are commonly used to refer to everyday items or tasks.

The search engine’s dominance and success has led its own brand name to become synonymous with search. In fact, this year the term “google” was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as a transitive verb with the lower case “g”. The dictionary defines it as: “to use the Google search engine to obtain information (as a person) on the World Wide Web”.

But to much of the world, to “google” something not only refers to searching on Google, it is understood to mean to search for information online using any search engine.

Google is not too happy about this usage of the word, and has recently taken to publicly scolding the masses on the Official Google Blog:

A trademark is a word, name, symbol or device that identifies a particular company’s products or services. Google is a trademark identifying Google Inc. and our search technology and services. While we’re pleased that so many people think of us when they think of searching the web, let’s face it, we do have a brand to protect, so we’d like to make clear that you should please only use “Google” when you’re actually referring to Google Inc. and our services.

Here are some hopefully helpful examples.

Usage: ‘Google’ as noun referring to, well, us.  

Example: “I just love Google, they’re soooo cute and cuddly and adorable and awesome!”

Our lawyers say: Good. Very, very good. There’s no question here that you’re referring to Google Inc. as a company. Use it widely, and hey, tell a friend.

Usage: ‘Google’ as verb referring to searching for information on, um, Google.

Example: “I googled him on the well-known website Google.com and he seems pretty interesting.”

Our lawyers say: Well, we’re happy at least that it’s clear you mean searching on Google.com. As our friends at Merriam-Webster note, to “Google” means “to use the Google search engine to find information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web.”

Usage: ‘Google’ as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google.  

Example: “I googled him on Yahoo and he seems pretty interesting.”

Our lawyers say: Bad. Very, very bad. You can only “Google” on the Google search engine. If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to “search” on Yahoo or any other search engine.

In my opinion, Google doesn’t need to be scolding us like little childen. Like the companies mentioned above, whose brand names have also become synonymous with everyday things, Google will not suffer as a result. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Google should be honored that they’ve become not just a brand name, but also a verb. Doesn’t that say something for what they’ve accomplished? I think so.

Over the past few years, Google has been pumping out product after product, most of which are still in “Beta” stage at the time they are released.  Eric Schmidt admits that Google has been so aggressive in introducing “a blizzard” of new products that “it’s confusing to almost everyone.”

Google co-founder Sergey Brin is leading an initiative to see fewer products launched, but with more features. The concern is that with so many new offerings, “You’ll have to search for our products before you can find them,” Brin said.

Could this mean that Google will start releasing things NOT in Beta stage, but in a final fully functional version? Personally, I think this is a good move by them, and it shows that they are maturing as a company. Many people don’t know even half of Google’s product offerings, and they could afford to spend more time getting the word out about them to people other than just us techies.

 

In a press release issued late this afternoon, Google confirmed the rumours swirling around since last week that they would be acquiring the popular online video service, YouTube.  Google will be acquiring YouTube for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction.  Following the acquisition, YouTube will continue to run independently in order to preserve the community already built up.

The two companies will, however, work together to create a more enhanced and comprehensive user experience.  YouTube will retain its brand identity, and compliment Google Video.  This news is sure to please skeptics who have wondered if the YouTube brand would be diluted and merged with the acquisition. 

According to the press release:

“When the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and complementing Google’s own fast-growing video business. YouTube will continue to be based in San Bruno, CA, and all YouTube employees will remain with the company. With Google’s technology, advertiser relationships and global reach, YouTube will continue to build on its success as one of the world’s most popular services for video entertainment.

The number of Google shares to be issued in the transaction will be determined based on the 30-day average closing price two trading days prior to the completion of the acquisition. Both companies have approved the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2006. “

A conference call discussing the acquisition is scheduled for 1:30pm PST.  Interested parties may call 888-203-1112 domestically and 719-457-0820 internationally to hear a replay of the conference call. The confirmation code for the replay is 2260624.

The newest member of Google Labs, Google’s playground for new ideas, is Code Search, an ambitious project that aims to index billions and billions of lines of code.

Code search gives users the ability to search for publicly accessible soruce code.  According to Google, source code lives in two ways on the internet: in things like zip files and gzip, or in software control repositories such as SourceForge, Google’s code hosting, and other places.  They aim to index source code found in all of those places.

Google won’t just be indexing the zip file, but they’ll also be opening it up, unzipping it, and indexing all the individual files within in it.  

The regular Googlebot crawler is being updated to recognize these zip files, and although they are unable to give an exact figure, Google says that Code Search already contains billions of lines of code.  Such a staggering number makes you wonder how easily this code will even be able to be searched. But fear not, the smart people at Google have set it up so that Code Search can be searched by software license, programming language, and by file name.  With all three of those in place, you should be able to find the code that you are looking for. Users may also search by regular expressions and patterns of words.

Launching alongside Code Search is the Code Search API, which will allow coders and programmers to further extend the project. 

There will be no AdSense ads in the Code Search results, at least at first, and the results will not show up in regular Google searches.

Some potential uses of Google code is for developers to look and see where there code is being used. This may help to combat plagerism and software license use infractions.

Most of the code indexed by Google is open-source, and they believe that very little of it is proprietary since it is all posted in public places.  However, with anything, there does remain the possibility that some people may post other people’s code illegally.  Therefore, there may be some proprietary content included in the Code Search index.  Luckily though, they have created a way for such instances to be reported so that they can be removed from the index.

You can access Code Search directly at http://www.google.com/codesearch,via the Google Labs page, or by clicking “Advanced Search” on the Google web search.

Analyst Robert Peck of Bear Sterns described in a report for clients, a new feature that Google will be rolling out in time for the holiday season.  The new product is based off of Google Base, a service Google launched last October that many believed was taking a direct shot at eBay.

Google also plans to de-emphasize Froogle as a stand-alone product, and integrate it into other search products. Its listings would instead be absorbed by other search features (perhaps Google Base?).

The new feature hasn’t yet been fully disclosed, by either Peck or Google. Google has declined commenting on the report, however, it is believed that the new feature will rattle a number of electronic merchants, including eBay who has dedicated a significant amount of time ensuring that their listings appear in Froogle search results. As Froogle’s exposure declines, so does the ability of eBay to benefit from the Froogle listings.

A spokesman from eBay said that just as the work to make sure eBay listings appear in Froogle, the company is sure to do the same with the new Google Base set-up, should it occur.  Apart from that, he declined to comment any further.