Google Acquires YouTube for $1.65bn

I read this over on Scoble’s blog, and he linked to the press release here, and I’m really not sure what to make of it. Google is a damn good search engine/advertising company, and I like it a lot for the work it’s done in searching. I think I’m opposed to the whole Google office thing, partly because I don’t like the idea of having my work stored centrally (ideal on a smaller scale, for multi-site businesses with a WAN), but having software stored centrally as well doesn’t make sense to me. What is wrong with local applications accessing a (locally) central store of data? If you want centralisation, use thin clients and possibly blade PCs. Then there’s the privacy issues. Google is renowned for it’s usage policies, GMail being the most publicised. Talking of which, GMail is wonderful, but should Google have created it, I’m not so sure. YouTube could obviously do with some advanced searching technology, that no doubt Google will provide, but should it be transmuting itself into a “web technology company”. I would prefer Google to remain focused on searching, and offer it’s technology to a whole range of other applications created by others. Obviously advertising has always been google’s main source of income, and I hope it remains that way, but surely they could make more money from developing really innovative search algorithms, Maybe I’m just reluctant to change, but Google is a search company, YouTube is a video repository. If only they could have kept it that way, and integrated google into YouTube.

Technorati Tags: Google – YouTube

Me in AOL search

Just looked at my blog stats, as I’m back a day earlier than expected, and I found one rather humerous result: A referer yesterday visited me after doing an AOL search for rugby posts

Got a response about the WLW UI

Following on from a previous post, I did post on the WLW support forums as promised, and I’ve had a response thus:

Insert Technorati Tags Plugin

The latest plugin I’ve got for WLW is one to insert Technorati Tags into the bottom of a post. I found out about it here, a post by Keyvan Nayyeri which was intended to show how simple it is to produce a WLW plugin. I’m thinking about having a play and creating a very simple plugin to insert the <!–more–> tags into the html after a preset number of words, so that the option excerpt is in a nice place.

Anyhoo, I’ll tell you what I’m listening to, then I’ll try and add some tags, so fingers crossed, this should work:

I’m currently listening to Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) by Green Day

Technorati Tags: Blogging – WLW – Plugins

Problems with IE7 and del.icio.us toolbar

Righty then, I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to replace the little blogroll/links panel in the right hand column with a “Links” page,

Testing An Optional Excert Workaround

I read on the WLW forum today that it’s possible to create an intro by inserting a <!–more–> tag in the html view. Let’s try one here:

Flickr4Writer Plugin

I’ve just installed the Flickr4Writer Plugin, and created me a Flickr account, because…

Currently Listening Plugin for Windows Live Writer

I’ve just added the “Currently Listening” Plugin for Live Writer, and this is really just a test.