Google, MySpace and WebSideStory

Three interesting stories I came across while reading my usual 25 or so blogs…

Firstly, that Google is one step closer to world domination. They have just launched a newly redesigned navigation system at the top of every page, and over the next few weeks they will be embedding relevant videos, images, local listings and news in the search results. This makes total sense to me – its about time they started to make full use of the YouTube acquisition. Many don’t see the value in that purchase, but I think it makes total sense. They already dominate adverts on the internet, so why not dominate adverts on videos? Here’s the full skinny:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/013524.html

Secondly, this relates to social networking, and the biggest one out there. Strangely, MySpace never offered there own profile editor – you had to rely on external websites to do this. Well today, they finally saw sense, and launched their own profile editor, thus probably killing off many of these profile editor websites. And its actually pretty good (even though it only works in IE!) Go check it out:
http://mashable.com/2007/05/16/myspace-profile-editor/
Now that just leaves the mess that is MySpace News – seems like they are barely even touching  or promoting this! Personally, I could have done a way better job than this amateurish effort.

And lastly, I was kinda taken aback today to see that WebSideStory is no longer called WebSideStory. They have lost this powerful, industry reknowned name – mistake number 1. What did they replace it with? They recently purchased a company called ‘Visual Sciences’ last year, which sounds very geeky and non web analytics related. And what did they name the new company? Yep, you guessed it – mistake number 2 – they named it ‘Visual Sciences’. This makes them seem nothing like a web analytics powerhouse! Very strange…