Sony Ericsson CEO Admits Nexus One Snub

As interesting alternate timelines go, the idea of a cell phone having been built by a different company doesn't exactly rank up there with JFK surviving his trip to Dallas.  Still, the CEO of Sony Ericsson raised more than a few eyebrows by admitting that his company declined the opportunity to manufacture the Nexus One.

If you speak Swedish, feel free to proceed to Sydsvenskan.se and read Bert Nordberg's comments for yourself.  We're stuck with Google's best attempt at a translation, and it implies that the CEO thought Sony Ericsson didn't need Google's help.

"It would be in itself an alternative way out to the market, but we'd rather by their own efforts on the important U.S. market," Nordberg supposedly said.  Meanwhile, the title of the whole Sydsvenskan.se article is translated as "Sony Ericsson refused to build the Google Phone."

This may be a sign that Android doesn't have quite the appeal many people thought it did; perhaps Google has to convince more corporations of the operating system's worth before it can even attempt to woo consumers on a large scale.

Or this may simply be a sign of wackiness within Sony Ericsson.  Vladislav Savov, who deserves a hat tip for the whole story, pointed out that HTC has gotten a lot of compliments due to its part in bringing the Nexus One to market, and also that Sony Ericsson recently arranged to lay off 2,000 employees.

Google Now Showing Suggestions for “Islam Is”

Update: Google is now showing suggestions for "Islam is". They can be seen in the screenshot below.

Original Article: Every now and then, someone spots an oddity in Google's suggestions. Some are funny. Some are disturbing, and some are just weird. Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web has discovered an interesting behavior in Google Suggest involving religion.

With most major religions, you will get suggestions from Google when you type in a query like "example is". If you type "christianity is", or "judaism is" you will get suggestions (which some will no doubt find controversial in themselves), but when you type "islam is", you get nothing.

Here are a few screenshots for different examples of such queries:

 

To be fair, there are other religions that don't yield suggestions, but all of the biggest ones besides Islam do.

The phenomenon has raised a few eyebrows. Wilhem himself says, "Google is systematically blocking, it seems, all search suggestions for Islam. Why? To remove the chance of an adherent of the faith from being offended by a perhaps severe search suggestion? Why not treat all search terms equally?"

He thinks that either "A: Google is horribly broken and this is evidence of that or B: They seem to be tampering with results."

Danny Sullivan, one of the most influential voices in the search industry weighed in on the conversation, saying, "Google is horribly broken. That’s my call. And they do such a piss poor job explaining why these types of things happen (sometimes not even trying at all) that it’s easier to believe B, that they’re tampering with search suggestions."

He points to a piece he wrote about Google Suggest and Climategate, "Many people are convinced that Google messed with the suggestions for that," says Sullivan. "Google was adamant they did not. I still believe they didn’t. I also can only tell you from covering Google over the years that things like this are far more likely to be because they are indeed screw ups than that they are intentionally aiming to do so."

A query for "islam is" returns about 3,140,000 results. Others have pointed out that there are no suggestions for queries like "Larry Page is" or "Sergey Brin is", although Sullivan is careful to point out that there are plenty for "Google is," and they're not all the most positive things in the world.

What do you make of Google's suggestions or lack thereof? Share your thoughts here.

Facebook Stock Maneuver Feeds IPO Rumors

Consider yourself forewarned: the official line is that "Facebook has no plans to go public at this time."  Just the same, a financial maneuver the company's performing has raised a few eyebrows since it seems to point towards that possibility.

Jessica E. Vascellaro reported this afternoon, "The company is in the process of converting all current shareholders to Class B stock, which carries ten times the voting power of Class A stock . . . .  Those shares will remain Class B shares unless the owner sells them during an initial public offering, at which time they will become Class A shares . . ."

This sort of exercise helps ensure that existing stockholders retain control of a company regardless of what happens on an open market.  In Facebook's case, Mark Zuckerberg, who owns many, many shares, would benefit most.  (Important note: It's not necessarily an "evil" move, though, as Google did the same sort of thing for the sake of Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt.)

So what we have here is one more piece of evidence (remember the preexisting enthusiasm surrounding its stock?) that Facebook could be headed towards an IPO.

Even if Facebook doesn't have definite plans to go public, the recession at least hasn't completely scared the company away from the idea, then.

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Google Ignoring Its Own Policy on Desktop AdSense?

It has been discovered that Google is now showing AdSense ads inside Google Earth. While it is not that surprising to see Google putting ads on another one of its properties, it has raised a few eyebrows, given that Google Earth is a desktop application.

Google actually states in its policy that it doesn't allow developers to use AdSense ads in their desktop apps, but it appears that Google is bending the rules for its own product. The company is certainly free to do so, given that it owns the product, but some are beginning to wonder if this could lead to Google changing that policy.

Currently that section of Google's policy reads:

"Currently, we don't permit Google ads or AdSense for search boxes to be distributed through software applications including, but not limited to toolbars, browser extensions, and desktop applications. In order to comply with AdSense program policies, please note that Google AdSense code may only be implemented on web-based pages."

Blogger Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration appears to be the first to point out the ads in Google Earth, and he provides a couple of screenshots here. In one, you can see AdSense ads when you search for a location or business, and the ads can be found in the search results. In the other screenshot, you can see the ad in the window that pops up when you click a placemark (the red pins on the maps).

The interesting part of this find is not so much that Google is placing ads in Google Earth, but what it could mean if the company were to in fact change its policy.

"If that policy changes, we could see more and more of Office 2010 Starter or FeedDemon like applications that are completely free to the end-user but supported by web advertising," says Agarwal.

Joseph Tartakoff at PaidContent adds that "arch rival" Microsoft has already promised to introduce the ad-supported version of Office to come pre-loaded on PCs.

It is possible that there is being too much read into Google's decision to include AdSense ads in Google Earth. It does make for an interesting conversation though. What do you think?


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