George Reyes To Retire As Google CFO

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that George Reyes has informed the company of his intention to retire as Chief Financial Officer. Reyes indicated that he will remain to assist in the search for a new CFO and to assure an orderly transition, which Google expects will occur by the end of the year.

"I've known and admired George since our days together at Sun," said Google Chairman and CEO, Eric Schmidt. "As Google's CFO, George successfully navigated our innovative IPO, the regulatory demands of Sarbanes-Oxley, and the management challenges of scaling a global finance organization. Though we fully appreciate his decision to step back from active management, we'll miss his thoughtfulness, good humor and wisdom."

"Working at Google these past 5 and a half years has been an extraordinary ride," said George Reyes. "I'm honored and flattered to have been a part of this great management team. I know I'm leaving the company in good hands with a remarkable team of professionals that will continue to build on Google's tremendous achievements."

"George has been a full partner in Google's global growth and development," added Google co-founder, Larry Page. "He has done an excellent job in keeping us financially disciplined while protecting the best of our entrepreneurial culture."

About Google Inc. Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
Source: W3Reports

Live Search Webmaster Portal

Our New Webmaster Portal and an Invitation to the Private Beta
Shortly after that day in March when we had to take the "link:" operator offline, a small team was formed in Redmond. Its singular focus: to build the next-generation set of tools, content and resources for SEO professionals and webmasters (and get "link:" back in your hands). Creatively named Webmaster Portal (we’re really good at marketing), it will be a single, friendly place to find all tools and information relating to Live Search SEO. Initially we’ll support these scenarios:

1. Troubleshooting tools to ensure MSNBot is effectively crawling and indexing your site
2. Sitemap creation, submission and ping tools
3. Statistics about your website
4. Consolidation of content submission resources
5. New content and community resources

While we expect the tools to be available publicly in late Fall, we still have some polishing to do. In the meantime we’ve created a private beta program to let adventuresome folks get their hands on the tools sooner – and help polish things by providing feedback. If you’re interested in participating in the beta program over the next few months, please send a mail to lswmp@microsoft.com to apply!

-- Nathan Buggia, Sr. Product Manager - Webmaster & Developer
-- Ryan Burkhardt, Group Program Manager - Webmaster & Developer

Source: MSDN

Your Small Business Needs a Web Solution

Why Your Small Business Needs a Web Solution Not a Website
By Ilene Rosoff (c) 2007

Raise your hand if you have a website for your small business. Now keep it raised if it is generating a significant volume of prospects or sales. Not holding your hand up anymore? You are not alone.

Just a few years ago, small companies flocked to the web in droves, rushing to post their first website, anxious at the prospect of low-cost instant exposure. The web was going to be the great equalizer, putting small business on par with the big brand names, dangling the promise of visitors flocking to a company's site to purchase its wares or partake in its services. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, for most small businesses and organizations, the promise fell short and company sales did not skyrocket from an unending march of site visitors.

So, what happened? For one, the web quickly became ultra competitive. Millions of sites sprang up in every business category making it virtually impossible to be found in the search engines. What little bit of traffic the businesses may have enjoyed when the site was first launched began to dry up. Also, as the web evolved to become a more interactive user experience, it became more technologically complex and many small business websites did not keep up.

The other part of the problem was in the approach; not understanding that just putting together a website, even a pretty one, and finding some faceless company offering cheap web hosting services is not likely to make you the next great success story. A large hurdle that many small business owners and managers face is the tendency to compartmentalize the web into a few oversimplified tasks: grab a cheap domain name, find a budget small business website design and development person, look for some impossibly low-priced website hosting, and then expect their website to magically appear on page one of Google. Unfortunately, this ends up being a waste of time and money.

Originally published in SitePronews.com
Read the Full Story

Microsoft Reveals First Vista Gadget Bugs

August 15, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Microsoft Corp. yesterday patched several Windows Vista gadgets, the first time it's had to fix the small applications, prompting one researcher to mark the date as the real "arrival of the next-generation of vulnerabilities."

The three bugs detailed in one of the nine bulletins issued yesterday could let attackers inject their own malicious code into a victim's Vista-powered PC, said Microsoft. Three of Vista's bundled gadgets (the RSS, contacts and weather gadgets -- the small applications that sit on the desktop, usually pulling information from other programs or off the Web) are flawed. The vulnerabilities in the RSS and weather gadgets are particularly dangerous, since both are enabled by default in a standard Vista installation.

"If a user subscribed to a malicious RSS feed in the Feed Headlines Gadget or added a malicious contacts file in the Contacts Gadget or a user clicked on a malicious link in the Weather Gadget, an attacker could potentially run code on the system,"

Microsoft reported in the bulletin.

Although the bugs can result in remote code executing on the target machine -- a characteristic that usually pegs the vulnerability as "critical" -- Microsoft ranked them one step lower, as "important," in part because Vista's revised account rights settings should deflect the worst kind of damage.

Most third-party researchers, however, fixed attention not so much on the bugs themselves, but on the fact that they lived inside Vista's gadgets.

"Six months ago, around the time of [the] Vista [release], we started talking about the new types of vulnerabilities we might see,"

said Amol Sarwate, manager of Qualys Inc.'s vulnerability research lab.

"These vulnerabilities are a testament that this next generation has finally arrived."

Tyler Reguly, a Toronto-based researcher at nCircle Network Security Inc., also tapped the gadget vulnerabilities as among the most interesting of yesterday.

"There was actually an article almost two years ago quoting a researcher at Trend Micro who said that RSS would be the botnets' next stomping ground,"

said Reguly in a posting to the nCircle blog.

"This vulnerability could be proof of that. When you subscribe to an RSS feed, you are implicitly trusting that feed. This vulnerability takes advantage of that trust relationship, inserting malicious code into something that you are 'blindly' trusting."

Like Sarwate, Reguly thinks that the RSS gadget bug is a harbinger of bad things to come.

"It's a scary thought. This isn't like clicking a link in Internet Explorer ... this action has been preapproved. I'm interested to see where this will lead us."

VeriSign iDefense, which originally reported the RSS bug to Microsoft in March, also spelled out how a hacker could wreak the most havoc with the vulnerability.

"If an attacker can find some way to inject data into a trusted feed, then they will be able to exploit any subscribers to the feed,"

the company said in its own advisory, also published yesterday. The company credited Aviv Raff, a security researcher who works at Finjan Inc. and is noted for rooting out bugs in Web browsers. In the past, Raff has disclosed vulnerabilities in Apple Inc.'s Safari and Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox.

But while these patches are the first to fix Microsoft's tools, flawed gadgets aren't new. Late last month, for example, Yahoo Widgets, a competing gadget platform, was tagged with a critical vulnerability in an associated ActiveX control.

Microsoft's gadget patches can be grabbed via one of the developer's update services.

MySQL Changes Draw Ire

MySQL AB has made it harder for developers to use the enterprise edition of its database software for free, sparking a debate about whether the company has strayed from its obligation to its open-source community.

Kaj Arno, MySQL vice president for community, announced in his blog this week that the company will no longer host the code for MySQL Enterprise Server in binary form on its public FTP servers, and will offer that version only to paying customers.

The goal is to make it clearer that the enterprise edition is aimed at paying customers, who also receive support and other services, and that another version of the product, MySQL Community Server, is for developers who use the software for free, he said.

The source code for MySQL Enterprise Server will still be freely available from the MySQL Bitkeeper repository, but not as a single, executable file, also known as a "tarball," which means it will take more time and effort to install.

The change conforms with the terms of the open-source GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) that MySQL uses, Arno wrote, "something that we've verified with the FSF (Free Software Foundation) to eliminate any doubt."

Nevertheless, the change sparked criticism. Some developers said MySQL should maintain free access to the enterprise product, since the MySQL community helps to test and develop the software voluntarily. Others argued that MySQL has a right to make business decisions that allow the company to make more money.

The move may comply "technically" with the GPL, "but it doesn't seem to fit with the spirit of open source," MySQL developer Mike Kruckenberg wrote in a blog post about the changes. "When I think open source I think freely available source, not source I can get once I've paid for a license."

He speculated about a "MySQL master plan" to eventually close off the source code for its enterprise product and "cripple" the community edition, forcing all users to pay for the software.

Kevin Burton [cq], CEO of the Internet company Spinn3r, which uses MySQL in its business, said the changes will achieve the opposite of MySQL's goal. "It's just going to make it harder for the Open Source community to work with MySQL and end up pushing them into the hands of PostgreSQL," a rival open-source database, he wrote in his blog.

But others were more sanguine.

"I don't see this [being] as much of an issue as some of the open-source zealots and evangelists are making out," said Andrew Poodle, the founder of the U.K. MySQL user group. "MySQL aren't closing the code, they aren't becoming 'evil', they are just separating out their commercial side of the business from the community side of the business."

The concerns over the changes stem partly from the fact that MySQL introduced new features to the Community Server that made it unstable, Poodle said. The idea was to test and debug the new features before they were added to the enterprise product, but it led to a perception that the enterprise edition is better and more stable.

But MySQL addressed that problem with another part of its announcement this week, Poodle noted. MySQL's Arno wrote that new features will no longer be applied to a current general-availability version of the Community Server, to ensure its stability. Instead, they'll be added to alpha and beta releases of the product.

"MySQL is a business, and I don't believe anyone at the FSF or anyone who supports the GPL would say that making money, even out of open-source software, is wrong," Poodle said.

Arno respondedto the criticisms himself Thursday afternoon.

"I argue that while this may feel or appear like a step away from open source, the real effect on the core MySQL community member is minuscule," he wrote. "And this is by design. We don't intend for the change to adversely affect core MySQL community members' usage."

He added that the company had "no intention" of moving MySQL Enterprise Server to another license. "Yes, we are evaluating GPLv3 instead of GPLv2, but our plan is for both Community Server and Enterprise Server to remain GPL," he wrote.

Source:
James Niccolai, IDG News Service
Sat Aug 11, 7:00 PM ET
PC World

Anti-Spam Software

Tired of ALL THE SPAM!
Here is a list of what I believe are the top anti-spam software products and services out there.

1. McAffee SpamKiller Anti-Spam Software
SpamKiller's "self-learning" technology for identifying and blocking future spam works well and this anti-spam software has some added features that I really like, such as a Dictionary Attack filter that defeats name-generating software, One-Click Block and the ability to filter email from multiple accounts. And although it integrates fully with Outlook, it also works with other (PC) email programs.

2. Symantec Norton AntiSpam Software
There's not a lot of difference between Norton's AntiSpam software and McAffee's SpamKiller. Both work the same way, using an "intelligent" spam-filtering engine to learn what spam to block in the future. Both programs automatically create a whitelist, let you set up friends and/or block lists, and both integrate with Outlook and work with other Pop-3 email programs. One minor drawback; this anti-spam software is not as configurable as SpamKiller.

3. CA Anti-Spam Software
This is Qurb Anti-Spam Software under new ownership. Qurb won PC Magazine Editors' Choice for three years running. It works differently from the other anti-spam software here; instead of using a spam-filtering engine, Qurb only allows mail from your whitelist of approved senders to reach your inbox. I don't normally like whitelist anti-spam software, but this program is elegant. However, CA only works with Outlook or Outlook Express email programs.
Manufacturer's Site

4. Aladdin SpamCatcher Anti-Spam Software
It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, but this anti-spam software works well at the main job - blocking spam. SpamCatcher works with any POP-3 email program and integrates with Outlook well. You can customize your spam protection from "Lenient" through "Exclusive" and the SpamCatcher Network is a fun feature that gives you more of a sense of control; once you report the spam, it will be filtered for all other SpamCatcher Network users.

Please comment if you are aware of some anti-spam software that is just as good (or better) and I may add it to this blog post. This is for those annoying spambots: Anti-Spam - Spammbot Killer

Top Paying Keywords for Google Adsense

Ever wonder what the top paying keywords for Google's Adsense are?
Well I certainly have. I would never suggest creating unrelated web pages and websites just for Google AdSense...It is against Google's AdSense Terms of Service...and it is very annoying when I come across these sites as well. I was just looking for a way to find out the AdSense campaign effectiveness if my own site's targeted keywords...and if I could "tweek" them slightly for better AdSense payouts on currently running ads, then why not.

Well today I found a little jewel. The website is Top Keywords for AdSense Search. You can literally search any keywords you wish and find the highest paying terms...but just a warning. Do not go against Google's AdSense TOS or you will get banned. But you could do a little "tweeking" to see if there are any positive results...but don't do too much or you could lose search engine rankings for formerly targeted terms. Good luck!

AdSense Filters can Hurt or Help Earnings

Google AdSense Filters can be a very positive or negative way to effect your earnings. Being an optimist, I'll start with the negative and end with the positive sides of Google's AdSense filters. Be very careful what sites you filter out of your AdSense campaigns. You may be filtering out AdSense ads with hi click through rates! The positive side is you can edit out LCPC (low cost per click) sites and the annoying MFA (made for ads) sites. One great site I found is AdsBlackList.com which will generate lists of these sites that you simply cut and paste into your AdSense Filter. Also see this experiment from a member named Nitrous at WebmasterWorld. He eliminated all of his filters to see what would happen, and his AdSense earnings decreased by 1/3.

I have added the generated filters myself, now I will wait and see what happens.

ODP Continues to Sleep

While Google still holds some regard for DMOZ by continuing to use their directory results, DMOZ is still at a stand still.
Many webmasters say the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) is dead...I disagree, ODP is just sleeping...and has been for some time now. There seem to be less and less "volunteer" editors, and fewer actually participating in the "project", minus added their own websites (and friends websites).
So the questions I have is "when will ODP wake up?"
And when this "once giant" awakes, what changes will be made?
The other side of it is ODP may go into "a comma", get dumped by Google, then...die.

Life at Google from a Former Employee

Article Source: WordPress.com

What is the culture really like? How many hours are people actually working? What are the least amount of hours you can work before you are looked down upon?

The culture at Google is very much like the old culture at Microsoft – back when the company felt like most employees were in their mid 2's. These kids don't have a life yet so they spend all of their time at work. Google provides nearly everything these people need from clothes (new T-shirts are placed in bins for people to grab twice a week!) to food – three, free, all-you-can-eat meals a day. Plus on-site health care, dental care, laundry service, gym, etc. Imagine going from college to this environment and you can see how much everyone works. People are generally in the building between 10am and about 6pm every day, but nearly everyone is on e-mail 24/7 and most people spend most of their evenings working from home.

This culture changes a bit with more experienced folks. They generally work 10a – 6pm like the new hires, and most of them are on email until around midnight. I's pretty common for them to be working most of the evening, too.

20% of your time on personal project. How many people actually get to use it? If so, how do they use it? Does Google own your personal project?

"20% is your benefit and your responsibility."
In other words, it's your job to carve out 20% of your work week for a project. If you don't carve out the time, you don't get it. Your project needs to be tacitly approved by your manager. Whatever it is, is owned by Google. If you’re organized, you can "save up" your 20% and use it all at once. It's not unheard of for people to have months and months of "20% time" saved up.

Most people don't actually have a 20% project. Most managers won't remind you to start one.

What are the office arrangements like? Do you have an office or cube space?

Google believes that developers are, with few exceptions, interchangeable parts. This philosophy shows through in their office arrangements which in Mountain View are all over the map. There are glass-walled offices, there are open-space areas, there are cubicles, there are people who's desks are literally in hallways because there's no room anywhere else. There are even buildings that experiment with no pre-defined workspaces or workstations – cogs (err, people?) just take one of the available machines and desks when they get to work.

In terms of employees per square-foot, every Microsoft Building 9-sized office is a triple at Google.

Google doesn't seem to think that private offices are valuable for technical staff. They're wrong.

What is the management structure like (hierarchy)?

There are front-line developers, and then their manager. My manager had over 100 direct reports and is the common case for managers at Google. Managers quasi-own products and their employees tend to work on their projects, but not always. It's possible for a developer on your product to actually work for a manager in research (a completely different division). This makes it really interesting at review time. Oh and conflict resolution between team members is very complex – the product's manager isn't involved day-to-day, probably doesn't actually manage all of the peers who are trying to resolve a conflict, and likely hasn't spent any time with their employees anyway.

The overall structure is:

Tons (a hundred or more) of individual contributors report to

1. a middle manager who reports to

2. a division v.p. who reports to

3. the management team (Larry, Sergie, etc.

Do they actually have plans for career development?

Not really. There is no career development plan from individual contributor to manager. Basically if you get good reviews, you get more money and a fancier title ("Senior Software Engineer II") but that's about it.

Who would you recommend Google to? Is it for the college kid or family type, worker bee or innovator?

College kids tend to like it because it's just like college – all of their basic needs are taken care of. In fact, even most of your personal-life can get tied up in Google benefits. Google provides free or subsidized broadband to every employee. Google runs its own, private, bus lines in the Bay Area for employees. Google provides free or subsidized mobile phones. A college kid can literally join Google and, like they did as freshman at university, let Google take care of everything. Of course, if Google handles everything for you, it's hard to think about leaving because of all the "stuff" you'll need to transition and then manage for yourself.

Mid-timers, people who've worked at other places for a few years tend to be a mixed bag. For some, this is the first stability they've seen after a few failed startups. For others, this is the company that represents a "better" way to run a company than the company they worked at before. Either way, for these folks to succeed at Google they have to drink the cool-aid and duke it out with the college kids because Google doesn't place any value on previous industry experience. (It puts tremendous value on degrees, especially Stanford ones).

"Old-timers" tend to like Google because they're the ones who know to take the most advantage of the perks. These are the people who religiously take their 20% time, use as many of the services as possible, and focus on having a "peaceful" experience. They're here to do a job, enjoy the perks, and that's about it. They still put in a lot of hours, but the passion of the college kids isn't there.

Please provide any additional information that you believe will help in our battle for talent against Google?

Make the food in the café free. If an employee eats an average of $15 of food per day (the actual average at Google which is closer to $10) it would cost Microsoft $3,750 per year per employee to offer 3 meals a day. Instead of increasing starting salaries, switch to free food. Give everyone else half the merit increases we would have gotten AND ANNOUNCE THE FREE FOOD AT THE SAME TIME. For that quoted $10 average Google provides free soda, free organic drinks (odwalla, naked juice), breakfast, lunch, and dinner (most people only eat lunch), free sport drinks (vitamin water, etc.), and free snacks (trail mixes, nuts, chips, candy, gum, cereal, granola bars).

That single benefit gets people to work earlier because hot breakfast is served only until 8:30. And since dinner isn't served until 6:00 or 6:30 the people with a home-life tend to skip it.

Google actually pays less salary than Microsoft.

Google's health insurance is actually not nearly as good as Microsoft's.

Google has no facility for career growth. Microsoft has more, but could do better. Continuing Microsoft-specific education for things like project management, managing people, communication skills, etc. should be promoted. A structured career plan for each discipline would be great – e.g. training, experiences, milestones, etc. Paths like "Developer to Development Manager" "Developer to Technical Architect" which show what courses and experiences (e.g. being a mentor) are encouraged for the different paths.

Private offices for employees is a big benefit. See http://joelonsoftware.com/oldnews/pages/March2007.html. Play this up. Take a cue from Google and loosen up a little about offices. Let people call facilities and have their office painted any color they want. Have the standard office come with a guest chair and a brightly colored Microsoft branded bean-bag chair.

Google has the concept of "Tech Stops." Each floor of each building has one. They handle all of the IT stuff for employees in the building including troubleshooting networks, machines, etc. If you’re having a problem you just walk into a Tech Stop and someone will fix it. They also have a variety of keyboards, mice, cables, etc. They're the ones who order equipment, etc. In many ways the Tech Stop does some of what our admins do. If your laptop breaks you bring it to a Tech Stop and they fix it or give you another one (they move your data for you). If one of your test machines is old and crusty you bring it to the Tech Stop and they give you a new one. They track everything by swiping your ID when you "check out" an item. If you need more equipment than your job description allows, your manager just needs to approve the action. The Tech Stop idea is genius because:

1. You establish a relationship with your IT guy so technical problems stop being a big deal - you don't waste a couple of hours trying to fix something before calling IT to find out it wasn't your fault. You just drop in and say, "My network is down."

2. Most IT problems are trivial when you're in a room together ("oh that Ethernet cable is in the wrong port")

3. The model of repair or replace within an hour is incredible for productivity.

4. It encourages a more flexible model for employees to define their OWN equipment needs. E.g. a "Developer" gets a workstation, a second workstation or a laptop, and a test machine. You're free to visit the Tech Stop to swap any of the machines for any of the others in those categories. For example, I could stop by and swap my second workstation for a laptop because I'm working remotely a lot more now. In the Tech Stop system, this takes 5 minutes to walk down and tell the Tech Stop guy. If a machine is available, I get it right away. Otherwise they order it and drop it off when it arrives. In our current set up, I have to go convince my manager that I need a laptop, he needs to budget for it because it's an additional machine, an admin has to order it, and in the end developers always end up with a growing collection of mostly useless "old" machines instead of a steady state of about 3 mostly up-to-date machines.

Google PR Update...so who really cares?

Google backlinks are updating on several data centers. A PageRank update is due, and some say it is occuring. Why this post? I'd like to say that too many webmasters are way too concerned about Google PR. PageRank has very little to due with Google's SERPs, or Search Engine Result Pages. Unfortunately PR has become a "tool for SEO companies" that offer empty promises and for webmasters to sell links for PR purposes only. Worry more about backlinks, good content and design (with users in mind) and just forget about PR. Enough said.