Wired: Google vs. Evil

This is an interesting interview piece with Sergey Brin discussing Google's struggle to remain true to its core beliefs.

Google has succeeded by adhering to one, pure principle: Do good by users. Now, for the first time in its history, Google is facing rifts between what's good for users and what's good for Google. And Sergey Brin is finding that purity just doesn't scale.

searchengineblog: Interview with Kenneth Norton of Inktomi

Following on the debate last week here as to whether Google's Froogle is heading in the right direction, this interview with Ken Norton of Inktomi sheds some light on the whole issue of paid placement versus paid inclusion.

In order for marketers to tap into the remaining 70 percent of Internet searches for more specific items, such as particular book titles or product models, it is more efficient and cost-effective to turn to paid inclusion. With paid inclusion, subscribers do not bid on keywords for preferential placement within a results set, but instead feed their most current, deep Web site content directly to the search engine for consideration in a search. Since paid inclusion ranking is driven by relevance, the marketer's pages returned to users truly meet their needs and translate into higher conversion rates than paid placement. Not surprisingly, someone searching for a very specific product is more likely to complete a transaction than someone searching for a general phrase.