Google Universal Search Reviewed for Bias Toward Google Verticals

Late Friday Google disclosed it is facing another probe into its business practices. The Texas attorney general is reviewing Google's methods for recommending websites in search results. The focus of the review seems to be on whether Google is manipulating its search results to eliminate competition. This complaint is another sign that every move by the Search Behemoth is raising the intensity and scrutiny by legislators and litigation worldwide.

Sphinn is dead! Sphinn is dead!... oh wait, I mean ..... the Sky is falling!the Sky is falling! Or at least that seems to be the consensus if you watch the twitter-sphere and blog posts that are popping up all over.

To my fellow Sphinners, I figured I would take a brief moment to post my thoughts. I have invested 3 years and many, many hours over there. Enough to be in the top 10 for pretty much every category. When things went south (engagement died after 2.0 launch) I even suffered the slings and arrows of mates asking, “Why do you still bother with the place”. In short, it is one place that has had a major affect on my life from many angles.

SocialDeck: The Key to Cross Platform Gaming For Google.me

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Yesterday I wrote Is Google's Social Gaming Strategy a Facebook Killer? and today with the purchase of Waterloo Ontario based SocialDeck the Search Giant moved further along in its' plans to create a cross device Social gaming platform. SocialDeck’s experienced engineers have been porting games across multiple devices and developed a non-game product called Spark which provides social networking for players across Blackberry, iPhone, and Facebook.

Google Buys Social Startup Ångströ

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Friday Seems to be Announcement Day At the GooglePlex

Since July Google has been on an acquistion spree buying Social Networking services including its  3 rd consecutive Friday Purchase of social search startup Angstro, In the post announcing the sale there are a few hints about the reasons for and what the the fit is with Google. The bolded text below was added by me for emphasis.

Almost four years ago I set out to solve a deceptively simple problem: 95% of the Google Alerts I received about the entrepreneur Adam Rifkin were about the Hollywood movie director instead.
I worked with Salim Ismail, another “pub/sub” pioneer with a disturbing doppelgänger to co-found Ångströ and unlock the power of your social graph.

With the help of investors like CommerceNet and advisors such as Avery Lyford, our team shipped apps to discover hot new photos on Facebook, improve Caller ID by using LinkedIn profiles, adding style and links to Twitter, create a real-time social address book, and a slew of other services (some of which are open source).

Which would seem they mostly bought Ångströ out for their experience as engineers. There definitely seems to be a pattern to what Google have been buying the last three or 4 months. Small social startups with experienced engineers at scaling Social platforms.

Google made its 25th acquisition since CEO Eric Schmidt’s declaration nearly a year ago that the company was looking to make a purchase a month. Google’s early purchases were spread across many businesses—from mobile to video compression. The company is on an even brisker pace of acquisitions if you include the mobile and other assets being purchased in VC's held by Google or Google Principles.