Google Signals Upcoming Algorithm Change, Asks For Help With Scraper Sites. Google is calling for help in identifying a long-running problem: scraper sites in its search results — and particularly scraper sites that are ranking higher than the original page.
Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s spam fighting group, put out the call for help on Twitter this morning: The link leads to a Google Doc form that asks for the exact query where there’s a “scraping problem,” along with the exact URLs of the original and scraper pages. The form explains that Google “may use data you submit to test and improve our algorithms.” It’s not entirely unusual for Google to call for help like this, but it’s noteworthy because the issue of scraper sites has been particularly prominent in recent months. Google vs. Google has always had critics but, within the last year, many of them grew more vocal about what they perceived as a decline in quality of Google’s search results. Panda Update vs. But the scraper problem didn’t go away. Solar struggles: Calisolar lays off 80 — Cleantech News and Analysis. Thiel vs. Khosla on Cleantech: Who is Right? Battle Over the Definition of Success in the ‘Cleantech’ Industry This past week PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel — who was also an early investor in Facebook — made headlines when he declared that “Cleantech is an increasingly large disaster that people in Silicon Valley aren’t even talking about any more.
The failure in energy and transportation points to a larger failure in clean energy — we aren’t moving any faster, literally, than we were when modern airplanes first came out.” VC legend Doerr: Tech is booming, not in a bubble. SAN FRANCISCO--In a "fireside chat" at TechCrunch Disrupt today, Silicon Valley venture capital guru John Doerr announced the launch of Erly, a new social network built around "experiences.
" Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner who is considered among the most important VCs in Silicon Valley, said during an interview by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington that Erly was built around the idea of "a different kind of interaction, an experience graph. " Erly was founded by Eric Feng, the founder of Hulu (who was also a Kleiner, Perkins partner).
Erly's first product is called Collections, and is designed to give people a way to contribute all kinds of content around events--such as a baseball game, for example--to a shared archive that anyone can edit, but no one can delete. On its Web site, Erly says of Collections that it is "the fastest and easiest way for a group to build an album together. Facebook puts off IPO until late 2012.
Facebook is preparing to launch its blockbuster initial public offering in the US towards the end of next year, a later public debut by the social networking site than had been widely anticipated, say people familiar with the company.
The IPO, expected to be one of the world’s biggest with recent private share sales valuing Facebook at more than $66.5bn, has been expected by April 2012, with persistent speculation that it could even come this year. However, people close to the company have told the Financial Times that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, wants to wait until next September or later in order to keep employees focused on product developments rather than a pay-out. Other other internet companies, Groupon and Zynga, have been holding back on their IPO plans amid recent market turbulence. But Facebook’s plans have been set according to internal interests, people close to the company said. “It was a good competitive strategy,” he said. Mike Arrington Introduces Us to the “First F*cking Amendment” By Ben Popper 9/15/11 9:42am Share this: Mr.
Arrington flashes his "first amendment" gang sign. Betabeat published a story yesterday about the ways in which tech investors who write about private companies on public blogs might run afoul of SEC regulations. It focused, naturally, on Mike Arrington, who saw the post around 2 a.m. this morning and responded with this tweet: “Screw that.
Mr. “I do agree with Ralph Ferrara that the rules established by the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 apply to public discussion of private companies in the same way it does to public companies,” said Prof. Prof. The argument, should a case go to court, says Prof. The portion of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 on which all this hinges is section 10 b-5: Employment of Manipulative and Deceptive Practices: So the answer is, yes and no. But by blogging publicly about the investment, and knowingly omitting a material fact about the company’s finances, Mr. In Mr. Silicon Valley Watch.