Google Print now allows you to search full text of books in their Google Print program.

After you search you can click on a result and enter your Google Accounts password to view a full page and the two pages before and after it.

The WSJ stated:

The company said it won't display advertisements on public domain book pages or any book pages Google scans from a library.

Perhaps Google realizes being the default search means they can have a few loss liters, and not monetizing the public domain works undermines the Google is a greedy company statement cried far and loud by critics of the program. Google Print is facing numerous pending lawsuits.

The most recent blog meme is Google's Blogger is a mass spam system.

David Sifry says he thinks that between 2 & 8% of blogs are spam, but I think just like people his systems are not good at detecting much of the spam.

Google maintains that they care:

When spam goes up, it directly affects the quality of those results. I'm exceedingly sympathetic with these folks because, well, we run one of those services ourselves.

But do they really care?

Think of blog search as a form of vertical search. If blog search is less useful and filtering through the spam

• kills profit margins

• slows blog search innovation

then more people will opt to use general search.

While Jeff Jarvis thinks Google should share it's tricks for not indexing blog spam I don't see why they would want to. Since Google has not put much effort into making their blog search anywhere near as good as their regular search I don't think they mind if nearly all blog search engines are full of spam.

Blog search full of spam = user may as well use general search = $ for Google. And, on another front, that helps Google ensure blog search sucks really bad until they create the solution, and then they get credit for doing right what their competitors could not :)

Just as a curiosity question, how hard would it be to attenuate trust, only trusting new blogs if they were co-cited by multiple trusted sites? There has to be an algorithmic way to do it. If you were worried about new sites being locked out then you could offer multiple search options:

• the filtered trusted version

• the unfiltered version
• perhaps people could even enter their own trusted friends, levels of trust, minimum trusted citations, or make trust a slidable scale & use AJAX to reorder the results as the trust score is adjusted

On top of owning general search Google also wants to be the first port of call for vertical search. Just look at their recent desires on the real estate front.

Through monetizing spam production with AdSense and making publishing free and easy Google pollutes competing information systems for personal profit.

The same thing that is going on in vertical search scene is also going on in general search. Google has an algorithmic probationary period for most new sites. The same sites tend to rank MSN Search & Yahoo! Search quicker and easier.

By paying search spammers via AdSense Google is funding the information pollution that undermines the usefulness of competing search products. As I have stated in the past, Google generally does not give a shit if AdSense is on spam sites or sites that make money stealing other's copyrighted work.

Now what happens if Google ends up indexing AdSense spam sites? Well suddenly it is a real issue then, and they pull out the we care card. Matt Cutts recommends you report it to Google, but the hidden message there is that Google cares only when the spam ranks in Google.

Meanwhile all the A list bloggers are asking Google to fix the problem when they fail to realize the profits this problem brings Google.

Maybe a large part of being the company that organizes the world's information is encouraging entrepreneurs to stuff garbage in rich competitors databases.

Not good, Google:

Google Inc. has quietly patched a potentially dangerous security flaw in two of its business-facing services after a private security research outfit warned that malicious hackers could exploit the bug to hijack sensitive user information.

The vulnerability was 'flagged and fixed' in the Google AdWords and Google Services subdomains.

Because both sites use data from the Google Accounts username/password system, security experts said the flaw presented a major identity theft risk.

As if click fraud wasn't a bad enough issue. As they continue to collect and cross reference information they need to be careful with that user privacy issue.

All your ads are belong to us^TM, so say Google.

Google is looking to get feeds from classified sites, according to Paid Content:

CIR's John Zappe writes: "Commercial classifieds sites such as CareerBuilder, Cars.com and others have to weigh the additional audience Google could deliver against the potential loss of revenue. Analysts, including us, predict that advertisers will move to free sites if they become convinced that they will reach an audience as large - or larger - on a search engine than on a paid advertising site."
Baker told CIR that's why the company and some of its larger clients are looking at alternatives including pay for performance rather than pay for distribution.

As Google (and others) gather data and Google makes advertising easier many hollow underperforming businesses will have their business models destroyed.

Those who are unwilling to share their data with Google will likely lose marketshare to smaller, newer, and more efficient competitors who have nothing to lose by partnering up with Google.

This makes heavy investment into vertical search much more risky, especially considering how shoddily some of the more established players are operating.

As Google gets more efficient at selling ads (with advertisers helping other advertisers free) you can bet they are going to get more and more ad dollars, directly & indirectly.

Sorry MSN, no AOL for you - at least not yet (or Richard Parsons is using the media to increase your offer price)...

AOL portal leaves beta & Time Warner sees AOL as the way forward, but is it?

I think Yahoo! & MSN are spot on with their search strategy. Going forward you are best off owning your own search service. Why? Because if you ever become too strong your search provider can give you inferior quality stuff. It is oh so easy for Google to bolt on a remove this URL feature that makes users feel like they own the results and are making the web a better place. It is a lot harder for AOL to do stuff like that without locking them into using a specific provider and getting a lower cut on future revenues as they become more reliant on that partner.

You need a Google account to be able to use the remove result feature. Remove this site adds a quick and easy way for surfers to give Google feedback without needing to file a needless spam report.

When Google first created their accounts many people were afraid to sign up because they did not want Google knowing what sites they owned. I sorta think that having a number of Google accounts with a long search history will be a great way to help influence search results.