Google quietly released a new product via its Google Labs page that quite possibly represents the most significant peek behind the curtains directly at the evil genius planning to take over the world that anyone outside of the Googleplex has ever had.  It is called “Fast Flip“, and to layman’s eyes– it is just a news reader.

Fast Flip provides a nice web page where a user can flip through new stories much like they flip through the pages of a newspaper.  Smart.  That’s what people want, clearly.  But, there’s a little bit more going on here.

Fast Flip takes a publisher website’s content and republishes it within Google’s own domain.  Elsewhere, this is called ’scraping’ and is heavily frowned upon.  Here, Google publishes content with full attribution to its source, and even links to the original publisher site.  But, the site republishes the entire page on the Fast Flip domain.  So, in essence, most readers will never have the need to visit the source publisher’s site at all.  What does this mean?  Take a look at BBC’s page on the exact story I captured in the above screenshot:

On BBC’s own page— there are multiple ads.  There’s an internal leaderboard across the top of the page and an advertiser’s 300×250 on the right side.  Neither of these appear within Google’s scrape of the content. 

So, when a user reads the story on BBC’s own site— these ads will generate some revenue.  But, when a user reads the same story, from the same source (BBC) from within Fast Flip, only Google ads have the chance to win that revenue (and, guess what?  Google does place their own ads next to the page they create for each story).

If I’m BBC, I’m not happy about this.  If I’m any publisher, I’m at least scared. 

Here’s a glimpse into what I see here… I see a world in the not-too-distant-future where Google search results pages for any search no longer take users to a list of links to publisher websites where those publishers stand to make money from showing ads to visitors for providing valuable content, but instead take users to scrapes of those same webpages (ever clicked on ‘cached’ next to a search result?– Google already stores all web pages it crawls) where users never leave the Google.com domain. 

In this world, Google stands to hold all the cards— and can determine which content is worth paying out to publishers to provide, and which content will no longer make money through Google referrals.

Of course, Fast Flip is just for news.  Of course, Fast Flip is just a beta.  Of course, those sites will only lose the ability to monetize a very small amount of their total traffic (even if Fast Flip takes off and makes it out of beta, those sites will still maintain all the revenue except that which starts with a click from Google news).

But, if I’m a publisher of any kind (and, I am)— now is the time I start getting a little worried.  Because maybe, just maybe, this means a whole heck of a lot more than just a nice news reader.

As if things could get any worse for me.  I suggested that my wife sell her antique Schwinn Trike before we moved to California.  My reasoning was that a) she never rode it, b) it was kind of dangerous to ride (it liked to tip over in corners), and c) the thing weighed in at about 200 pounds and would have cost a mint to move across the country (exaggerated, of course, but it was sure heavy).  And, while I appreciated the idea of using it to peddle glow sticks to festival attendees, I correctly suspected that she’d never follow through with getting the necessary licensing.

So, imagine my dismay when the story broke in May that Google had loaded the Streetview camera array on to a tricycle to capture pedestrian-limited areas.

Even worse, while this practice apparently started in the UK, it is now happening in my back yard!  The Google Streetview Trike has been used to index some very, very nearby locations including the Santa Monica Pier.

It seems at this point that it is only a matter of time before she sees one of these trikes riding through our neighborhood, or down the walking path we use quite often.  When she does, I imagine I will have to rejustify my reasoning for making her sell it.

My only other chance to get out of this cleanly might be getting her the job of riding that thing for Google.  Hmmm… maybe that would be easier (and more fun for everyone concerned).

Matt Cutts, if you are reading, can you hook me up?

If you pay any attention at all, you have by now been overrun with all the hype surrounding Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.  If you don’t believe me, go to Twitter and check the trending topics.  Even more interesting, check out all the posts referencing #badabing.  I don’t know if these are all industry insiders using this, but there sure do appear to be a lot of them posting their comments/findings about the new engine.  

Microsoft is calling Bing a “decision engine”.  That’s all well and good, but really Bing doesn’t seem like anything that new or groundbreaking.  Don’t get me wrong, the search seems good.  Better than live.com.  The association of topic-relevant information within the search results pages is new and well executed.  If nothing else, Bing deserves some action for that.  Some of the expanded data (although there isn’t a whole lot of it yet) is interesting.  

But, what makes it a decision engine and not a search engine?  Users are still searching based on keywords.  Users are still looking at the results pages to decide what to do next.  Sure, the user experience has been slightly changed and even improved.  But, this is not a major change.

If you want to see some real rethinking of the basic search premise, I suggest you instead check out Google Squared.  The latest from the Google Labs is a pretty cutting edge and interesting retooling of the entire search experience, essentially combining a series of searches to refine the information presented based on the relationship of those elements.  It also provides some pretty useful data all together on a single page, much like what Bing takes pride in achieving, but in Google Squared’s case it is a column-based layout where each column is customizeable providing the opportunity for really unique results.

I am happy for Microsoft and thrilled to see a decent search product out of them.  I think the launch of a new brand will be successful in getting user adoption and helping people forget live.com, msn.com, and the other marginal efforts of the past.  But, make no mistake in who the real innovators are.  Clearly, Google still holds that honor.

Google recently added a new feature in their SERPs where they featured a public Google profile in the search results for a name search.  I immediately created my own Google profile and within 2 days it was added to the bottom of the search page for ‘Ari Sternberg’ (and, no Google, I didn’t mean “Ari Steinberg”):

So, that got the evil part of my brain to thinking.  If I can create a profile for “Ari Sternberg” and show up right away on page 1 results, couldn’t I do the same if my name was “Mesothelioma Lawyer”?

In the interest of science, I felt it was my duty to test this.  I created a new Gmail user account called “Messielawyer” and set up the profile with the first name being “Mesothelioma” and the last name being “Lawyer”.  I built a nice profile for it packed with great information.  I did enough that the message appeared at the top of my profile that it was now eligible to be featured in Google search results!

Now, there are plenty of awful things you could do with a first page ranking for one of the most expensive terms on the entire web.  There is plenty of money that could be made.  To reiterate, I was only doing this for testing purposes only.

Alas, Google is a smart beast.  Despite my name being Mesothelioma Lawyer, they somehow knew not to trigger the profile in the results page.  I wonder if they don’t show them in any page that has paid results.  Nope, they still show it for “Bob Smith”. 

Maybe for my next test I’ll use something a little less high-dollar.  

Drat, Google is smart.

I have heard that people made their entire income from direct linking arbitrage to Amazon using the Associates (affiliate) program.  I will probably always regret not tossing the dice and just trying it.  For those of you who don’t know what this is (was), here is a brief example (from something I myself did in real life):

1) Find a search term that leads to a good assortment of products on Amazon.  The timelier the better, so there won’t be any competition.  The last time I did this (yes, its been a while) was when the movie Borat came out.  It was a huge hit.  I saw it coming because I was a longtime fan of Da Ali G show on HBO.  Hmmmm… that got me to thinking.  A quick search confirmed that Amazon had all of his shows available on DVD.

2) Search Google and see if there is an ad pointing to Amazon.com.  You don’t have to give up if there is, but it might make the clicks more expensive (Google will only show one ad from each root domain, so you’ll be bidding against other direct affiliate marketers doing the same thing to be on top).

3) Setup an Adwords account.  OK, if you are reading this blog and don’t already have your own Adwords account, that’s a little weird.  Its easy, just do it.  Write a spectacular ad (in the little space you have to do so) that will attract attention from lower position banking on the strength of the Amazon brand name that you get to use as your display URL.  Choose appropriate keywords for the products on the landing page you picked (Ali G season 3, etc).

4) Watch what comes in versus what goes out and adjust your bids to maximize profit.  As long as you picked a good product, and wrote a good ad, the traffic will convert at a predictable rate.  

Voila!  That’s it.  Or, at least it was until Amazon pulled the plug.  Now, you’ll have to find a different way to position yourself as a useless middleman for a few cents profit here and there.  

Good thing is there are ways.  There will always be ways.