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Web Directory

Web directory

A web directory is a directory on the World Wide Web that specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. Web directories often allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion. Human editors review submissions for fitness. An alternative portal to the web is using search engines, web sites that index other sites based on keywords. Famous web directories are Yahoo! Directory, LookSmart, and the Open Directory Project. ODP is an important player in the directory market, perhaps because of its open content approach to editorial review and its use by Google. Zeal, also open to contributions from volunteers, is the non-commercial side of LookSmart's directory, and its material is reused on various sites. A debate over quality in directories and databases continues, as search engines use ODP's content without real integration, and some experiment using clustering. There have been many attempts to make directory development easier, whether using a "links for all" type link submission site using a script, or any number of available PHP portals and programs. Recently, Web 2.0 technologies have spawned new efforts of categorization, with Amazon.com adding tagging to their product pages. One product that relies entirely on volunteers is Wikidweb.com. It is a web directory based on Wikimedia's software. Other sites that use Web 2.0 technologies are Wink.com and del.icio.us, although these are not traditional directories.

Web Directories are commonly used as part of a linking structure, for new websites. That is to say that, recently published websites must be noticed by the search engines to recieve any search engine traffic. By being listed on directories, such attention is recieved.

Web site

Website.]] A website, web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of web pages, typically common to a particular domain name or sub-domain on the World Wide Web on the Internet. A web page is an HTML/XHTML document accessible generally via HTTP. All publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. The pages of a website will be accessed from a common root URL called the homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server. The URLs of the pages organise them into a hierarchy, although the hyperlinks between them control how the reader perceives the overall structure and how the traffic flows between the different parts of the sites. Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription sites include many Internet pornography sites, parts of many news sites, gaming sites, message boards, Web-based e-mail services and sites providing real-time stock market data.

Overview

A website will may be the work of an individual, a business or other organization and is typically dedicated to some particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the user, may sometimes be blurred. Websites are written in, or dynamically converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and are accessed using a software program called a web browser, also known as a HTTP client. Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer based and Internet enabled devices of various sizes, examples of which include desktop computers, laptop computers, PDAs and cell phones. A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server, also called an HTTP Server, and these terms can also refer to the software that runs on these system and that retrieves and delivers the web pages in response to requests from the web site users. Apache is the most commonly used web server software (according to Netcraft statistics) and Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) is also commonly used. A static website, is one that has content that is not expected to change frequently and is manually maintained by some person or persons using some type of editor software. There are two broad categories of editor software used for this purpose which are
- Text editors such as Notepad, where the HTML is manipulated directly within the editor program
- WYSIWYG editors such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver, where the site is edited using a GUI interface and the underlying HTML is generated automatically by the editor software. A dynamic website is one that may have frequently changing information. When the web server receives a request for a given page, the page is automatically generated by the software in direct response to the page request; thus opening up many possibilities including for example: a site can display the current state of a dialogue between users, monitor a changing situation, or provide information in some way personalised to the requirements of the individual user. There are a large range of software systems, such as Active Server Pages (ASP), Java Server Pages (JSP) and the PHP programming language that are available to generate dynamic web systems and dynamic sites also often include content that is retrieved from one or more databases or by using XML-based technologies such as RSS. Static content may also be dynamically generated periodically or if certain conditions for regeneration occur (cached) to avoid the performance loss of initiating the dynamic engine on a per-user or per-connection basis. Plugins are available for browsers, which use them to show active content, such as Flash, Shockwave or applets written in Java. Dynamic HTML also provides for user interactivity and realtime element updating within Web pages (i.e., pages don't have to be loaded or reloaded to effect any changes), mainly using the DOM and JavaScript, support for which is built-in to most modern browsers.

Types of websites

There are many varieties of websites, each specialising in a particular type of content or use, and they may be arbitrarily classified in any number of ways. A few such classifications might include:
- Archive site: used to preserve valuable electronic content threatened with extinction. Two examples are: Internet Archive which since 1996 preserves billions of old (and new) Web pages, and Google Groups which in early 2005 was archiving over 845,000,000 messages posted to Usenet news/discussion groups.
- Blog (or weblog) site: site used to log online readings or to post online diaries; may include discussion forums.
- Business site: used for promoting a business or service.
- Commerce site or eCommerce site: for purchasing goods, such as Amazon.com.
- Community site: a site where persons with similar interests communicate with each other, usually by chat or message boards.
- Database site: a site whose main use is the search and display of a specific database's content such as the Internet Movie Database or the Political graveyard.
- Development site: a site whose purpose is to provide information and resources related to software development, Web design and the like.
- Directory site: a site that contains varied contents which are divided into categories and subcategories, such as Yahoo! directory, Google directory and Open Directory Project.
- Download site: strictly used for downloading electronic content, such as software, game demos or computer wallpaper.
- Game site: a site that is itself a game or "playground" where many people come to play, such as MSN Games, Pogo.com and the MMORPGs Planetarion and Kings of Chaos.
- Information site: contains content that is intended merely to inform visitors, but not necessarily for commercial purposes; such as: RateMyProfessors.com, Free Internet Lexicon and Encyclopedia.
- News site: similar to an information site, but dedicated to dispensing news and commentary.
- Pornography site: a site that shows pornographic images and videos.
- Search engine site: a site that provides general information and is intended as a gateway or lookup for other sites. A pure example is Google, and the most widely known extended type is Yahoo!.
- Shock site: includes images or other material that is intended to be offensive to most viewers.
- Vanity site (or "personal site"): run by an individual or a small group (such as a family) that contains information or any content that the individual wishes to include.
- Web portal site: a website that provides a starting point, a gateway, or portal, to other resources on the Internet or an intranet.
- Wiki site: a site which users collaboratively edit (such as Wikipedia). Some sites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a business website may promote the business's products, but may also host informative documents, such as white papers. There are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. For example, a porn site is a specific type of eCommerce site or business site (that is, it is trying to sell memberships for access to its site). A fan site may be a vanity site on which the administrator is paying homage to a celebrity. Many business Websites have the appearance of brochures—that is, an advertisement that can be strolled around. Some websites act as vehicles for users to communicate with other people via webchat. Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g. the computing power dedicated to the Website). Very large websites, such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google and most other very large sites employ several servers and load balancing equipment, such as Cisco Content Services Switches

Mousetrapping

Mousetrapping is a technique employed by some "aggressive" commercial websites, especially ones that are pornographic in nature, which prevents the user from leaving the site, depending on Web browser settings. Typically, this form of trapping is employed by the use of Javascript code (or Dynamic HTML) that detects a user's attempt to either close the browser window or leave the Website to view another site. These attempts may easily fail if the user disabled javascript on their Web browser; however, disabling Javascript may also impact how well certain pages on the current site or other Websites load. Tools such as pop-up blockers can help in preventing this annoyance but by no means will solve the problem entirely. [http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/mousetrapping.html]

Prizes

The Webby Awards are a set of awards presented to the world's "best" Websites.

Spelling

As noted above, there are several different spellings for this term. Although "website" is commonly used (particularly by some newspapers and other media), Reuters, Microsoft, academia, and dictionaries such as Oxford, prefer to use the two-word, capitalised spelling "Web site". An alternate version of the two-word spelling is not capitalised. As with many newly created terms, it may take some time before a common spelling is finalised. (This controversy also applies to derivative terms such as "Web master"/"webmaster".) The Associated Press Stylebook, a guide to newspaper style, suggests "Web site" and "Web page". "WWW site" is rarely used.

External links

- [http://www.w3.org/ World Wide Web Consortium]
- [http://www.isoc.org/ The Internet Society (ISOC)]
- [http://www.icann.org/ Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers]
- [http://www.useit.com Useit.com Internet Usability]
- [http://www.cgisecurity.com/questions/securewebsite.shtml How do I secure my website?] CGISecurity.com - Website Security Portal
- ko:웹사이트 ja:ウェブサイト simple:Website

Editor

An editor is a person who prepares text—typically language, but also images and sounds—for publication by correcting, condensing, or otherwise modifying it. In career terms, the word has four major senses:
- Print media There are various levels of editorial positions in publishing. Typically one finds junior editorial assistants reporting to senior level editorial managers and directors, who themselves report to senior executive editors responsible for project development to final releases. :See related articles at Journalism
- Visual media Editors in the visual mediums, who may be described as film or video editors, perform a variety of tasks. Assistant editors and production assistants perform preliminary screening and logging of motion picture footage; senior editors are responsible for creative placement of scenes and shots, structural placement of major elements and organization of the entire presentation. Other editors are involved with assembly of the final product and preparation for distribution. :See related articles at film editor, video editor
- Sound media Motion pictures have many sound editors, this team works with various aspects of the picture or program's sound designers. These editors construct tracks consisting of assembled pre-recorded dialogue, the audio mixing in of sound effects, foley and music to achieve the desired effect for the motion pictures and television programs. :See related articles at sound recording, sound effects, DAW
- Computer editor is a program used to make changes to files of a particular type. There are computer editing systems for visual and sound mediums as well as still images. Other types of editors are more technical and edit computer code in various ways needed by programmers and technicians. :See related articles at word processor, Avid, electronic journalism Onto these career categories are mapped the categories in which individual professionals specialize, including language, still images, cinema/video, sound, computer programming code, and music scores. These areas sometimes overlap in individual practitioners; for example, language editors may comment on or make alterations to graphics and photographs embedded in a job that mostly comprises language; sound editors may make alterations in the linguistic text of, for example, a sound interview, to improve the intended meaning or reduce the duration of an item. 'Editing', as applied to language, is sometimes contrasted with terms that imply more restricted functions: 'copyediting' (checking for consistency and accuracy) and 'proofreading' (marking errors). The boundaries between the meanings of these terms are not universally accepted.
Etymology
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, editor comes from the Latin phrase e ditus which means "to put forward". The editor ludorum in Ancient Rome was the person who put on the games. In French, editeur means "publisher". Also in Italian editore means "publisher". The word came into English from French. The verb to edit is a back formation from editor.
Print media
Human editors in the print publishing industry include people who are responsible for:
- newspapers and wire services; see below.
- organizing anthologies and other compilations.
- organizing and publishing a magazine —. The top editor may be called editor-in-chief.
- producing a definitive edition of a classic author's works — a scholarly editor.
- organizing and managing contributions to a multi-author book — symposium editor or volume editor.
- finding marketable ideas and presenting them to appropriate authors — a sponsoring editor.
- obtaining copy or recruiting authors — such as the acquisitions editor or commissioning editor for a publishing house.
- improving an author's writing so that they indeed say what they want to say, in an effective manner — a substantive editor. Depending on the writer's skill, this editing can sometimes turn into ghost writing. Substantive editing is seldom a title. Many types of editors do this type of work, either in-house at a publisher or on an independent basis.
- correcting spelling, grammar, and matters of house style — a copy editor. But copy editors at newspapers usually also have greater and higher responsibilities, which may include the design of pages and the selection of news stories for inclusion. At U.K. newspapers, the term is "sub-editor."
- choosing the layout of the publication and communicating with the printer — a production editor. This and similar jobs are also called "layout editor," "design editor," "news designer," or -- more so in the past -- "makeup editor." The smaller the publication, the more these roles run together. In particular, the substantive editor and copy editor often overlap:
- Fact-checking can be the responsibility of either.
- Copy editors who find an inappropriate term or phrase will often suggest or make an improvement.
Executive editor
The top editor sometimes has the title executive editor or editor-in-chief (the former is replacing the latter in the language). This person is generally responsible for the content of the publication. The exception is that newspapers that are large enough usually have a separate editor for the editorials and opinion pages. The executive editor sets the publication standards for performance, and is responsible for assuring the highest standards of ethical conduct in the process of gathering and presenting information, as well as for motivating and developing the staff. The executive editor is also responsible for developing and maintaining the publication budget. In concert with the publisher and the operating committee, the executive editor is responsible for strategic and operational planning.
Newspapers
Editors at newspapers supervise journalists and improve their work. Newspaper editing encompasses a variety of titles and functions. These include:
- copy editors; see above;
- department editors;
- managing editors and assistant or deputy managing editors (the managing editor is often second in line after the top editor);
- news editors, who oversee the news desk;
- photo or picture editors;
- section editors and their assistants, such as for business, features, and sports;
- top editors, who may be called editor in chief or executive editor;
- readers' editors, sometimes known as the ombudsman, who arbitrate complaints;
- wire editors, who choose and edit articles from various international wire services, and are usually part of the copy desk;
- and administrative editors (who actually don't edit but perform duties such as recruiting and directing training). The term city editor is used differently in North America, where it refers to the editor responsible for the news coverage of a newspaper's local circulation area (also sometimes called metro editor), and in the United Kingdom, where (normally with a capital C) it refers to the editor responsible for coverage of business in the City of London and, by extension, coverage of business and finance in general.
External links
Professional associations:
- [http://www.aasfe.org/index.html American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors]
- [http://www.copydesk.org/ American Copy Editors Society]
- [http://www.asbpe.org/ American Society of Business Publication Editors], for trade magazines
- [http://www.magazine.org/Editorial/ American Society of Magazine Editors]
- [http://www.asne.org/ American Society of Newspaper Editors], mainly for top editors at daily newspapers
- [http://www.apme.com/ Associated Press Managing Editors]
- [http://apse.dallasnews.com/ Associated Press Sports Editors]
- [http://www.psu.edu/dept/comm/aope/ Association of Opinion Page Editors]
- [http://www.the-efa.org/ Editorial Freelancers Association], based in the USA
- [http://www.editors.ca/ Editors' Association of Canada]
- [http://www.mssu.edu/iswne/ International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors]
- [http://www.newsombudsmen.com/ Organization of News Ombudsmen] for readers' editors and ombudsmen
- [http://www.wan-press.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=8 World Editors Forum] Online resources:
- [http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Editing EServer TC Library: Editing]
- [http://www.sfwa.org/beware/bookdoctors.html Writer Beware on Independent Editors] Articles:
- [http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1542959,00.html Black day for the blue pencil]
- an extensive article from The Guardian, August 6, 2005 by Blake Morrison suggesting that the art of literary editing is in decline and discussing the relationship between famous authors and their editors. Category:Publishing Category:Media occupations Category:Journalism jobs ja:編集者 nb:Redaktør

Keyword

Keyword may mean:
- Keyword (computer), an identifier in a computer language that indicates a specific command
- Keyword (linguistics), a word that occurs with unexpected frequency in a text
- Keyword (America Online), an addressing scheme used on America Online as an alternative to URLs
- A word describing a concept found in a document such as a Web page, constituting part of the metadata for the document

Yahoo! Directory

The Yahoo! Directory is a web directory which rivals the Open Directory Project in size. The directory was initially Yahoo!'s primary offering. When Yahoo! changed to crawler-based listings for its main results in October 2002, the human-edited directory's significance dropped, but it is still being updated.

External links

- [http://dir.yahoo.com Yahoo! Directory] Category:Yahoo! Category:Web directories

Open Directory Project

The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as DMoz (for Directory.Mozilla.org, the domain name of ODP), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Time Warner that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.

Project information

Motivation and founders

ODP was founded as Gnuhoo by Rich Skrenta and Bob Truel in 1998. At the time, Skrenta and Truel were working as engineers for Sun Microsystems. Chris Tolles, who worked at Sun Microsystems as the head of marketing for network security products, also signed on in 1998 as a co-founder of Gnuhoo along with co-founders Bryn Dole and Jeremy Wenokur. Skrenta was already well known for his role in developing TASS, an ancestor of TIN, the popular threaded Usenet newsreader for Unix systems. Coincidentally, the original category structure of the Gnuhoo directory was based loosely on the structure of Usenet newsgroups then in existence.

Gnuhoo to Newhoo to the Open Directory Project

The Gnuhoo directory went live on June 5, 1998, and was renamed Newhoo after a Slashdot article was posted in which posters claimed that Gnuhoo had nothing in common with the spirit of free software for which the GNU project was known and was simply a commercial enterprise seeking to construct an alternative to Yahoo! using volunteer labor.[http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=98/06/23/0849239] Newhoo became ODP after it was acquired by Netscape Communications Corporation in October 1998 and the content was released under an open content license. Netscape was acquired by AOL shortly thereafter, and ODP was one of the assets included in the acquisition. AOL later merged with Time-Warner.

Directory growth and maturation

By the time Netscape assumed stewardship, the Open Directory Project had about 100,000 URLs indexed with contributions from about 4500 editors. On October 5, 1999, the number of URLs indexed by ODP reached one million. According to an unofficial estimate, the number of URLs in the Open Directory surpassed the number of URLs in the Yahoo! directory in April 2000 with about 1.6 million URLs. ODP achieved the milestone of indexing two million URLs on August 14, 2000, and the milestone of three million listings was reached on November 18, 2001. As of November 2005, ODP had about 5.2 million listings organized into over 590,000 categories derived from the contributions of some 70,000 editors. The number of active editor accounts (that is, those editor logins which had not been removed, voluntarily resigned, or timed out due to inactivity of four months) hovers between roughly 9,000 and 10,000.

Competing and spinoff projects

ODP has inspired the formation of two other major web directories edited by volunteers and sponsored by public companies: The now defunct Go directory (formerly owned by The Walt Disney Company), and Zeal (acquired by LookSmart). However, neither of these web directories has licensed their content for open content distribution, a strategy which ensured ODP's success in a highly competitive market. The concept of using a large-scale community of editors to compile online content has been successfully applied to other types of projects such as Wikipedia. Three open content volunteer projects have been inspired by ODP's editing model: an open content restaurant directory known as ChefMoz (launched by ODP management), an open content music directory known as MusicMoz, and an encyclopedia known as Open Site. However, none of the three have yet achieved success at the level of ODP.

ODP content

Organization and scope of content

ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings. Listings on a similar topic are grouped into categories, which can then include smaller categories. Gnuhoo borrowed its initial ontology from Usenet. For example, the topic covered by the comp.ai.alife newsgroup was represented by the category Computers/AI/Artificial_Life. The original divisions were for Adult, Arts, Business, Computers, Games, Health, Home, News, Recreation, Reference, Regional, Science, Shopping, Society, and Sports. While these fifteen top-level categories have remained intact, the ontology of second- and lower-level categories has undergone a gradual evolution; significant changes are initiated by discussion among editors, and then implemented when consensus has been reached. In July 1998, the directory became multilingual with the addition of the World top-level category. The remainder of the directory lists only English language sites. By May 2005, seventy-five languages were represented. The growth rate of the non-English components of the directory has been greater than the English component since 2002. While the English component of the directory held almost 75% of the sites in 2003, the World level grew to over 1.5 million sites as of May 2005, forming roughly one third of the directory. Ontology in non-English categories generally mirrors that of the English directory, although exceptions which reflect language differences are quite common. Several of the top-level categories have unique characteristics. The Adult category is not present on the directory homepage, but it is fully available in the RDF dump that ODP provides. While the bulk of the directory is categorized primarily by topic, the Regional category is categorized primarily by region. This has led many to view ODP as two parallel directories: Regional and Topical. On November 14, 2000, a special directory within the Open Directory was created for people under 18 years of age. Key factors distinguishing this "Kids and Teens" [http://dmoz.org/Kids_and_Teens/] area from the main directory are:
- Stricter guidelines which limit the listing of sites to those which are targeted or appropriate for people under 18 years of age.[http://dmoz.org/guidelines/kguidelines/]
- Category names as well as site descriptions use vocabulary which is age appropriate.
- Age tags on each listing distinguish content appropriate for kids (age 12 and under), teens (13 to 15 years old) and mature teens (16 to 18 years old).
- Kids and Teens content is available as a separate RDF dump.
- Editing permissions are such that the community is parallel to that of the Open Directory. By May 2005, this portion of the Open Directory included over 32,000 site listings.

Directory maintenance

Directory listings are maintained by editors. While some editors focus on the addition of new listings, others focus on maintaining the existing listings. This includes tasks such as the editing of individual listings to correcting spelling and/or grammatical errors, as well as monitoring the status of linked sites. Still others go through site submissions to remove spam and duplicate submissions. Robozilla is a web crawler written to check the status of all sites listed in ODP. Periodically, Robozilla will flag sites which appear to have moved or disappeared, and editors follow up to check the sites and take action. This process is critical for the directory in striving to achieve one of its founding goals: to reduce the link rot in web directories. Shortly after each run the sites marked with errors are automatically moved to the unreviewed queue where editors may investigate them when time permits. Due to the popularity of the Open Directory and its resulting impact on search engine rankings, domains with lapsed registration that are listed on ODP have attracted domain hijacking, an issue that has been addressed by regularly removing expired domains from the directory. While corporate funding and staff for the ODP have diminished in recent years, volunteerism has resulted in the creation of new and improved editing tools, such as linkcheckers to supplement Robozilla, category crawlers, spellcheckers, search tools that directly sift a recent RDF dump, bookmarklets to help automate some editing functions, and tools to help work through unreviewed queues in multiple ways.

License and requirements

ODP data is made available for open content distribution under the terms of the Open Directory License, which requires a specific ODP attribution table on every Web page that uses the data. However the attribution requirement is often ignored by users of ODP data, and the enforceability of the terms of the ODP license has been challenged by some ODP data users. Such failure to adhere to the terms of the license generates a great deal of ill will among the community of volunteer ODP editors.

RDF dumps

ODP data is made available through an RDF-like dump that is published on a dedicated download server [http://rdf.dmoz.org/]. An archive of previous versions is also available [http://rdf.dmoz.org/rdf/archive/]. New versions are usually generated weekly. An ODP editor has catalogued a number of bugs that are/were encountered when implementing the ODP RDF dump, including UTF-8 encoding errors (fixed since August 2004) and a RDF format that does not comply with the final RDF specification because ODP RDF generation was implemented before the RDF specification was finalized [http://rainwaterreptileranch.org/steve/sw/odp/rdflist.html]. So while today the so-called RDF dump is valid XML, it is not strictly RDF, but an ODP-specific format. Software to process the ODP RDF dump needs to take account of this.

Character encoding

Since early 2004 the whole site has been in UTF-8 encoding. Prior to this, the encoding used to be ISO 8859-1 for English language categories, and a language-dependent character set for other languages. The RDF dumps have been encoded in UTF-8 since early 2000.

Users of ODP content

2000 ODP data powers the core directory services for many of the Web's largest search engines and portals, including Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Alexa and AltaVista. Other uses are also made of ODP data. For example, in the spring of 2004 Overture announced a search service for third parties combining Yahoo! search results with ODP titles, descriptions and category metadata. The search engine Gigablast announced on 12 May 2005 its searchable copy of the Open Directory. The technology permits search of websites listed in specific categories, "in effect, instantly creating over 500,000 vertical search engines".[http://www.gigablast.com/prdir.html] As of May 29, 2005 the ODP listed 341 English-language Web sites that use ODP data as well as 175 sites in other languages.[http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/Directories/Open_Directory_Project/Sites_Using_ODP_Data/] However these figures do not reflect the full picture of use, as those sites which use ODP data without following the terms of the ODP license are not listed. Many replicas of the ODP are using outdated data. Some smaller sites stopped using RDF dumps as they grew increasingly large, choosing to query live data directly from the ODP website.

ODP policies and procedures

Becoming an editor

There are restrictions imposed on who can become an ODP editor. The primary gatekeeping mechanism is an editor application process wherein editor candidates demonstrate their editing abilities, disclose affiliations that might pose a conflict of interest, and otherwise give a sense of how the applicant would likely mesh with the ODP culture and mission. A majority of applications are rejected, but reapplying is allowed and sometimes encouraged.

Editing model

ODP's editing model is a hierarchical one. Upon becoming an editor, an individual will generally have editing permissions in only a small category. Once they have demonstrated basic editing skill in compliance with the Editing Guidelines, they are welcome to apply for additional editing privileges, in either a broader category, or in a category elsewhere in the directory. Mentorship relationships between editors are encouraged, and internal forums provide a vehicle for new editors to ask questions. Over time, senior editors may be granted additional privileges which reflect their editing experience and leadership within the editing community. The most straightforward are editall privileges, which allow an editor to access all categories in the directory. Meta privileges additionally allow editors to perform tasks such as reviewing editor applications, setting category features, and handling external and internal abuse reports. Cateditall privileges are similar to editall, but only for a single directory category. Similarly, catmod privileges are similar to meta, but only for a single directory category. Catmv privileges allow editors to make changes to directory ontology by moving or renaming categories. All of these privileges are granted by staff, usually after discussion with meta editors. In August 2004, a new level of privileges called admin was introduced. Administrator status was granted to a number of long serving metas by staff. Administrators have the ability to grant editall+ privileges to other editors and to approve new directory-wide policies, authorities that had previously only been available to root (staff) editors. A full list of senior editors is publically available. [http://dmoz.org/edoc/editall.html]

Editing guidelines

All ODP editors are expected to abide by ODP's Editing Guidelines.[http://dmoz.org/guidelines/] These guidelines describe editing basics: what types of sites may be listed and which may not; how site listings should be titled and described in a loosely consistent manner; conventions for the naming and building of categories; conflict of interest limitations on the editing of sites which the editor may own or otherwise be affiliated with; and a code of conduct within the community. Editors who are found to have violated these guidelines may be contacted by staff or senior editors, have their editing permissions cut back, or lose their editing privileges entirely. ODP Guidelines are periodically revised after discussion in editor forums.

Site submissions

One of the original motivations for forming Gnuhoo/Newhoo/ODP was the frustration that many people experienced in getting their sites listed on Yahoo!. However Yahoo! has since implemented a paid service for timely consideration of site submissions. That lead has been followed by many other directories. Some accept no free submission at all. By contrast the ODP has maintained its policy of free site submissions for all types of site — the only one of the major general directories to do so. One result has been a gradual divergence between the ODP and other directories in the balance of content. The pay-for-inclusion model favours those able and willing to pay, so commercial sites tend to predominate in directories using it. (See for example the initial impact on Looksmart. [http://www.searchlounge.org/index.php?p=40]) Whereas a directory manned by volunteers will reflect the aims and interests of those volunteers. The ODP lists a high proportion of informational and non-profit sites. Another consequence of the free submission policy is that the ODP has enormous numbers of submissions. The ODP now has approximately two million unreviewed submissions, in large part due to spam and incorrectly submitted sites. So the average processing time for a site submission has grown longer with each passing year. However the time taken cannot be predicted, since the variation is so great: a submission might be processed within hours or take several years.

Controversy and criticism

Allegations of abusive editing practices

There have long been allegations that volunteer ODP editors give favorable treatment to their own websites while concomitantly thwarting the good faith efforts of their competition. Such allegations are fielded by ODP's staff and meta editors, who have the authority to take disciplinary action against volunteer editors who are suspected of engaging in abusive editing practices. In 2003, ODP introduced a new Public Abuse Report System that allows members of the general public to report and track allegations of abusive editor conduct using an online form. [http://report-abuse.dmoz.org/] Early in the history of the ODP, its staff gave representatives of selected websites, such as Rolling Stone magazine, editing access at ODP in order to list many individual pages on those websites. The use of such professional content providers lapsed and the experiment has not been repeated.

Ownership and management of ODP

Underlying some controversy surrounding ODP is its ownership and management. Many of the original GnuHoo volunteers felt that they had been deceived into joining a commercial enterprise. Most of that controversy died down when the project was renamed NewHoo. Moreover, when Netscape acquired the project, renamed it ODP, and released ODP's content under an open content license, criticism of the ODP all but disappeared. However, as ODP's content became widely used by most major search engines and web directories, the issue of ODP's ownership and management resurfaced. At ODP's inception, there was little thought given to the idea of how ODP should be managed, and there were no official forums, guidelines, or FAQs. In essence, ODP began as a free for all. Even after ODP set up its internal editor forums, many editors remained blissfully unaware that these forums existed until they were directed to the forums by one of their fellow editors. Moreover, given that ODP had no official guidelines at first, ODP editors simply hashed out some sort of consensus among themselves and published unofficial FAQs. As time went on, the ODP Editor Forums became the de facto ODP parliament, and when one of ODP's staff members would post an opinion in the forums, it would be deferred to as an official ruling. (In other words, "Staff has spoken.") There was also a short-lived attempt at moderation of the ODP Editor Forums, but it was abandoned as being the antithesis of the egalitarian principles on which the ODP community was supposed to be based. Even so, ODP staff began to give trusted senior editors additional editing privileges, including the ability to approve new editor applications, which eventually led to a stratified hierarchy of duties and privileges among ODP editors, with ODP's paid staff having the final say regarding ODP's policies and procedures.

Allegations that ODP editors are removed for criticizing ODP's policies

ODP's paid staff has imposed controversial policies from time to time, and volunteer editors who dissent in ways staff considers uncivil may find their editing privileges removed. One alleged example of this was chronicled at the XODP Yahoo! eGroup in May of 2000. The earliest known exposé was Life After the Open Directory Project, a June 1, 2000 guest column written for Traffick.com by David F. Prenatt, Jr. (former ODP editor "netesq") after losing his ODP editing privileges.[http://www.searchengineguide.com/traffick/story/06-2000-xodp.html] Another noteworthy example was the volunteer editor known by the alias The Cunctator, who was banned from the ODP soon after submitting an article to Slashdot on October 24, 2000, which criticized changes in ODP's copyright policies.[http://slashdot.org/articles/00/10/24/1252232.shtml] Uninhibited discussion of ODP's purported shortcomings has become more commonplace on mainstream Webmaster discussion forums.

Editor removal procedures

ODP's editor removal procedures are overseen by ODP's staff and meta editors. According to ODP's official editorial guidelines, editors are removed for abusive editing practices or uncivil behaviour. Discussions that may result in disciplinary action against volunteer editors take place in a private forum which can only be accessed by ODP's staff and meta editors, and volunteer editors who are being discussed are not given notice that such proceedings are taking place. Some people find this arrangement distasteful, wanting instead a discussion modeled more like a trial held in the U.S. judicial system. In the article Editor Removal Explained, ODP Meta Editor Arlarson states that "a great deal of confusion about the removal of editors from ODP results from false or misleading statements by former editors". [http://dmoz.org/newsletter/2000Sep/removal.html] ODP has a standing policy that prohibits any current ODP editors in a position to know anything from discussing the reasons for specific editor removals. In the past, this has led to claims that many ODP editors are left to wonder why they cannot login at ODP to perform their editing work. However, ODP is now set up in such a way that when someone attempts to login at ODP using a deactivated editor login, a generic web page is displayed that informs a removed editor that a final decision has been made regarding the deactivation of his or her login and providing a list of possible reasons as to why such a decision might have been made.

Number of editors

At August 15 2005, the ODP front page stated 69,295 editors. However this is not the number of editors currently contributing to the ODP. It is the total number of editor logins ever created, which includes the many which are no longer active. ODP staff has occasionally promoted the ODP by mentioning the total number of editors, without revealing that it is not the number of currently active editors. This could be misleading. The number of active editors tends to range between 9,000 and 10,000.

Size of directory

The current front page totals exclude "Test" and "Bookmarks" categories (and sites in them). As of July 28, 2005, the RDF held 4,602,933 listings and 588,454 categories.

Blacklisting allegations

Senior ODP editors have the ability to attach "warning" or "do not list" notes to individual domains, but no editor has the unilateral ability to block certain sites from being listed. Sites with these notes might still be listed, and at times notes are removed after some discussion.

Private Forums

ODP has its own internal forums, the contents of which are intended only for editors to communicate with each other primarily about editing topics.

ODP software

The ODP Editor Forums were originally run on software that was based on the proprietary Ultimate Bulletin Board system. In June 2003, they switched to the PHPBB system. The ODPSearch software is a derivative version of ISearch and is open source, licensed under the Mozilla Public License. The ODP database/editing software is closed source, although Richard Skrenta of ODP did say in June 1998 that he was considering licensing it under the GNU General Public License. This has led to criticism from the aforementioned GNU project and other proponents of free software, many of whom also criticise the ODP content license. As such, there have been some efforts to provide alternatives to ODP (see below). These alternatives would allow communities of like-minded editors to set up and maintain their own open source/open content Web directories. However, no significant open source/open content alternative to ODP has emerged. See also: List of web directories

References

# CmdrTaco, The GnuHoo BooBoo, Slashdot (June 23, 1998). # Open Directory Project: Kids and Teens Directory. # Open Directory Project: Kids and Teens Directory Editing Guidelines. # Open Directory Project: RDF dump. # Open Directory Project: RDF Archive. # R. Steven Rainwater, ODP/dmoz Data Dump ToDo List. # Gigablast Launches 500,000 Vertical Search Engines (May 12, 2005). # Open Directory Project: Sites Using ODP Data. # Open Directory Project: ODP Senior Editors. # Open Directory Project: Editing Guidelines. # Dave Jansik, When Giant Directories Roamed the Earth, The Search Lounge (March 2, 2005). # Open Directory Project: Public Abuse Report System. # David F. Prenatt, Jr., Life After the Open Directory Project, Traffick.com (June 1, 2000). # CmdrTaco, Dmoz (aka AOL) Changing Guidelines In Sketchy Way, Slashdot (October 24, 2000). # Arlarson, Editor Removal Explained, Open Directory Project Newsletter (September 2000).

External links

- [http://dmoz.org/ The Open Directory Project]
- [http://dmoz.org/Home/Consumer_Information/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Directories/Open_Directory_Project/ Consumer Reviews of ODP]
- [http://dmoz.org/press ODP press]
- [http://resource-zone.com/ Open Directory Project Public Forum]
- [http://dmoz.yklaw.net/DDP/Glossary/ ODP Glossary]
- [http://www.topix.net/tech/odp Topix.net: ODP news]
- [http://www.laisha.com/zine/odphistory.html The History of the Open Directory Project]
- [http://www.dummies-guide-to-dmoz.org/ Dummies Guide to DMOZ.ORG] Category:Web directories Category:Time Warner subsidiaries Category:Netscape ja:Open Directory Project

Google

:For the search engine produced by this company, see Google search; for the underlying technology, see Google platform; for other uses see Google (disambiguation). Google, Inc. () is a U.S. public corporation, initially established as a privately held corporation in 1998, which designed and currently manages the Internet Google search engine. Google's corporate headquarters is at the "Googleplex" in Mountain View, California and employs almost 5,000 workers. Dr. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Novell, was named the Chief Executive Officer when co-founder Larry Page stepped down. The company's overview web page states that "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

History

Beginnings

Larry Page Google began as a research project in January 1996 ^{[http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/history.html]} by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford. They developed the hypothesis that a search engine based on analysis of the relationships between Web sites would produce improved results over the basic techniques then in use. (At the time, other search engines ranked results essentially based on how many times the search term appeared on a page.) It was originally nicknamed BackRub because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance. (A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.) Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu (see the [http://www.archive.org/web/web.php Internet Archive Wayback Machine] search for [http://web.archive.org/web/
- /http://google.stanford.edu http://google.stanford.edu]). The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to a number of other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. Google received a big break in 1999 when one of the most popular search engines, AltaVista, relaunched itself as a user Web entry point, or portal. This unexpected change alienated part of AltaVista's user base. Google quickly outgrew its University Avenue home. After outgrowing two subsequent sites, the company settled into a complex of buildings (referred to by some as "The Googleplex") in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheater Parkway, in 2003. The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users. They were attracted to its simple, uncluttered, clean design — a competitive advantage to attract users who did not wish to enter searches on web pages filled with visual distractions. This appearance, while imitating the early AltaVista, had behind it Google's unique search capabilities. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with the search keyword to produce enhanced search results for the user. This strategy was important for increasing advertising revenue, which is based upon the number of "hits" users make upon ads. The ads were text-based in order to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. It also only cost a very small amount per click to the websites that advertised this way. The model of selling keyword advertising was originally pioneered by Goto.com (renamed Overture, and now Yahoo! Search Marketing)[http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/about/news/mile.jhtml]. While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue. describing Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on September 4 2001. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. In February 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, owner of Blogger, a pioneering and leading weblog hosting Web site. Some analysts considered the acquisition inconsistent with Google's business model. However, the acquisition secured the company's competitive ability to use information gleaned from blog postings to improve the speed and relevance of articles contained in a companion product to the search engine, Google News. At its peak in early 2004, Google handled upwards of 84.7 percent of all search requests on the World Wide Web through its Web site and through its partnerships with other Internet clients like Yahoo!, AOL, and CNN.[http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox21.html] In February 2004 Yahoo! dropped its partnership with Google in order to provide users at its site independent search results and to maintain their loyalty. Google lost user share of the search market. Yet Yahoo!'s move highlighted Google's own distinctiveness and today the verb "to google" has entered a number of languages first as a slang verb and now as a standard word meaning, "to perform a web search". Google's declared code of conduct is "Don't Be Evil", a phrase which they went so far as to include in their prospectus (aka "red herring" or "S-1") for their IPO, noting "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains." IPO The Google site includes humorous features such as cartoon modifications [http://www.google.com/holidaylogos.html] of the Google logo to recognize special occasions and anniversaries, known as "Google Doodles". Not only may decorative drawings be attached to the logo, but as well the font design may mimic a fictional or humorous language such as the Star Trek Klingon[http://www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon/] and Leet[http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/]. The logo is notorious among web users for April Fool's Day tie-ins and jokes about the company. Analysts speculate that Google's response to Yahoo! will be to continue to make technical and visual enhancements to personalized searches, using the personal data that is gathering from Orkut, Gmail, and Froogle to produce unique results based on the user. Frequently, new Google enhancements or products appear in its inventory. Products and demos [http://labs.google.com/ Google Labs], the experimental section of Google.com help Google maximize its relationships with its users by including them in the beta development, design and testing stages of new products and enhancements of already existing ones.

Original Hardware

The [http://web.archive.org/web/19990209043945/google.stanford.edu/googlehardware.html original hardware] used by Google included:
- Sun Ultra II with dual 200MHz processors, and 256MB of RAM. This was the main machine for the original Backrub system.
- 2 x 300 MHz Dual Pentium II Servers donated by Intel, they included 512MB of RAM and 9 x 9GB hard drives between the two. It was on these that the main search ran.
- F50 IBM RS6000 donated by IBM, included 4 processors, 512MB of memory and 8 x 9GB hard drives.
- Two additional boxes included 3 x 9GB hard drives and 6 x 4GB hard drives respectively (the original storage for Backrub). These were attached to the Sun Ultra II.
- IBM disk expansion box with another 8 x 9GB hard drives donated by IBM.
- Homemade disk box which contained 10 x 9GB SCSI hard drives

Logo Evolutions

The [http://www.google.com/intl/en/stickers.html Google logo] has changed over the years. The following are the official Google logos. Image:googlelogo_5.jpg|Late 1996 Image:googlelogo_6.jpg|1998 - July 1999 Image:googlelogo_current.gif|July 1999 - Present Google is also known for its innovative holiday logos; [http://www.google.com/holidaylogos.html see their logo archive]. A website has been created that relives these imaginative logos by displaying them randomly on every page-load: [http://google.abrahamjoffe.com.au/ Holiday Google]. The site [http://www.logoogle.com/ logoogle] contains images users have made about google

Etymology

The name "Google" is a play on the word "Googol", which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nine-year-old nephew of U.S. mathematician Edward Kasner in 1938, to refer to the number represented by 1 followed by one hundred zeros. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the Web. As a further play on this, Google's headquarters are referred to as "the Googleplex" — a googolplex being 1 followed by a googol of zeros, and the HQ being a complex of buildings (cf. multiplex, cineplex, etc). The name has also been interpreted as a merging of the words "Go ogle", though this is widely accepted to be coincidental. The term appears in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake: "who thought him a Fonar all, feastking of shellies by googling Lovvey" [231.12]. To "throw a googly" means to ask a difficult or unanswerable question in British slang, a googly being a tricky ball in the game of cricket. Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary (1972) allows the verb "to google" from this, and the phrase has come to be synonymous with "to search for on the Internet".

Financing and IPO

The first funding for Google as a company was secured in the form of a $100,000 check from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, made out to a corporation which didn't yet exist. After a frantic few weeks, this was topped up to give an initial investment of almost $1 million. Around six months later, a much larger round of funding was announced, with the major investors being rival venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital. In October 2003, while discussing a possible IPO (Initial Public Offering of shares), Microsoft approached the company about a possible partnership or merger; no such deal ever materialized. In January 2004, Google announced the hiring of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group to arrange an IPO. That IPO (one of the most anticipated in history) was projected to raise as much as $4 billion. According to a banker involved in the transaction, the deal would yield an estimated $12 billion market capitalization for Google. On April 29, 2004, Google made an S-1 form SEC filing for an IPO to raise as much as USD $2,718,281,828 (with a touch of mathematical humor as e = 2.718281828...). April 29th was the 120th day of 2004, and according to section 12(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, "a company must file financial and other information with the SEC 120 days after the close of the year in which the company reaches $10 million in assets and/or 500 shareholders, including people with stock options.[http://management.itmanagersjournal.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/21/1934249&tid=103&tid=4] Google has stated in its Annual filing for 2004 that every one of its 3,021 employees, "except temporary employees and contractors, are also equity holders, with significant collective employee ownership", so Google would have needed to make its financial information public by filing them with the SEC regardless of whether or not they intended to make a public offering. As Google stated in the filing, their "growth has reduced some of the advantages of private ownership. By law, certain private companies must report as if they were public companies. The deadline imposed by this requirement accelerated our decision." The SEC filing revealed that Google turned a profit every year since 2001 and earned a profit of $105.6 million on revenues of $961.8 million during 2003. In May 2004, Google officially cut Goldman Sachs from the IPO, leaving Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston as the joint underwriters. They chose the unconventional way of allocating the initial offering through an auction (specifically, a "Dutch auction"), so that "anyone" would be able to participate in the offering. The smallest required account balances at most authorized online brokers that are allowed to participate in an IPO, however, are around $100,000. In the run-up to the IPO the company was forced to slash the price and size of the offering, but the process did not run into any technical difficulties or result in any significant legal challenges. The initial offering of shares was sold for $85 a piece. The public valued it at $100.34 at the close of the first day of trading which saw 22,351,900 shares change hands. Before Google initiated its initial public offering, Larry Page & Sergey Brin faced legal action for giving Playboy an interview about themselves and Google. The SEC (Security & Exchange Commission) forbids giving out information pertaining to a company's specifications before an IPO is launched. After some initial stumbles, Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004. 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. Of that, 14,142,135 (another mathematical reference as √2 = 1.4142135...) were floated by Google and 5,462,917 by selling stockholders. The sale raised $1.67 billion, of which approximately $1.2 billion went to Google. The vast majority of Google's 271 million shares remained under Google's control. The IPO gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited from the IPO because it owns 2.7 million shares of Google. The company was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG. On August 18 2005 (one year after the initial IPO), Google announced that it would sell 14,159,265 (a mathematical joke, see pi) more shares of its stock to raise money. The move would double Google's cash stockpile to $7 billion. Google said it would use the money for "acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies or other assets". [http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=169400356]

Today

Since the IPO, Google's stock market capitalization has risen greatly and the stock price has more than quadrupled. On August 19, 2004 the number of shares outstanding was 172.85 million while the "free float" was 19.60 million (which makes 89% held by insiders). In January 2005 the shares outstanding was up 100 million to 273.42 million, 53% of that was held by insiders which made the float 127.70 million (up 110 million shares from the first trading day). The two founders are said to hold almost 30% of the outstanding shares. The actual voting power of the insiders is much higher, however, as Google has a dual class stock structure in which each Class B share gets ten votes compared to each Class A share getting one. Page says in the prospectus that Google has "a dual class structure that is biased toward stability and independence and that requires investors to bet on the team, especially Sergey and me." The company has not reported any treasury stock holdings as of the Q3 2004 report. On June 1, 2005, Google shares gained nearly 4 percent after Credit Suisse First Boston raised its price target on the stock to $350. On the same day, rumors circulated in the financial community that Google would soon be included in the S&P 500. (Source: ) When companies are first listed on the S&P 500 they typically experience a bump in share price. On June 7, 2005, Google was valued at nearly $52 billion, making it one of the world's biggest media companies by stock market value. With Google's increased size comes more competition from large mainstream technology companies. One such example is the rivalry between Microsoft and Google [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1706872,00.asp]. Microsoft has been touting its MSN Search engine to counter Google's competitive position. Furthermore, the two companies are increasingly offering overlapping services, such as webmail (Gmail vs. Hotmail), search (both online and local desktop searching), and other applications (for example, Microsoft's Virtual Earth competes with Google Earth). Some have even suggested that in addition to an Internet Explorer replacement Google is designing its own Linux based operating system called Google OS to directly compete with Microsoft Windows. Rumors of a Google browser are fueled by the fact that Google is the owner of the domain name "gbrowser.com". This corporate feud is most directly expressed in hiring offers and defections. Many Microsoft employees who worked on Internet Explorer have left to work for Google. This feud boiled over into the courts when Kai-Fu Lee, a former vice-president of Microsoft, quit Microsoft to work for Google. Microsoft sued to stop his move by citing Lee's non-compete contract (he had access to much sensitive information regarding Microsoft's plans in China). [http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-09-02T215817Z_01_MCC278865_RTRIDST_0_NET-MICROSOFT-GOOGLE-DC.XML] The case is still in the courts. While Google is the #1 search engine, the company struggles to keep up with rivals such as the well known Yahoo. Although Google and Yahoo differ greatly in the services they offer, Google is trying to redefine itself from an Internet search company to an Internet media company, similar to Yahoo!. Google is trying to become a jack of all trades for the Internet. They are foraying into other businesses which other companies have recently dominated. On June 21 2005 Google announced it has plans to release a pay service and a classified ads service, to rival companies like eBay [http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/20/business/google.php]. During the third quarter 2005 Google Conference Call, Eric Schmidt said, "We don't do the same thing as everyone else does. And so if you try to predict our product strategy by simply saying well so and so has this and Google will do the same thing, it's almost always the wrong answer. We look at markets as they exist and we assume they are pretty well served by their existing players. We try to see new problems and new markets using the technology that others use and we build."

Salaries

2005 Prior to the IPO offering, typical salaries at Google were considered within the industry to be quite low. For instance, some system administrators earned no more than $33,000 — while $37,000 at that time was considered to be low by Bay Area employment market levels. Nevertheless, Google's excellent stock performance following the IPO has enabled these early employees to be competitively compensated by participation in the corporation's remarkable equity growth. In 2005 Google has implemented other employee incentives such as the [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40C1EFC395F0C728CDDAB0894DD404482 Founder's award], as well making higher salary offers to new employees. Beyond monetary compensation, Google's workplace amenities, culture, global popularity, stellar prospects (relative to most Bay Area companies), and strong brand recognition continues to attract far more applicants than there are positions available. (It is estimated that less than one job offer is made per thousand resumes submitted.) Google reportedly employs one in-house legal recruiter just to assist the legal department in evaluating the high volume of resumes from attorneys seeking to join the corporation.

Management

Position: name, age, compensation in USD (as of June 2005)
- CEO: Eric E. Schmidt, 50, $1 see [http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/08/technology/google_salary/index.htm]
- CFO: George Reyes, 51, $781K
- President of Technology: Sergey Brin, 31, $1 see [http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/08/technology/google_salary/index.htm]
- President of Products: Larry E. Page, 32, $1 see [http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/08/technology/google_salary/index.htm]
- Sr. VP of Worldwide Sales: Omid Kordestani, 41, $572K
- VP of Corp. Development, Secretary and Gen. Counsel: David C. Drummond, 42, $776K Founders Brin and Page reportedly earned $1 billion in 2004, but after the IPO in Aug 2004, their compensation is reported in SEC filings annually. Page, Brin, and Schmidt have all declined recent offers of bonuses and increases in compensation by Google's board of directors. Institutional Shareholder Services ranked Google's corporate governance dead last in the list of members of the Standard & Poor's 500. [http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/24/BUGBU8D46M1.DTL&type=business] According to the Forbes 400 list (2005), the combined net worth of [http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/54/XFXI.html Larry Page] and [http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/54/D664.html Sergey Brin] is $22 billion US. But due to the recent surge in stock price (April 2005-June 2005), their net worth is significantly higher. When recorded on the Forbes 400, Google's stock was around $111. In late 2005 Google shares were valued at $400. Page and Brin, however, had sold $2 billion before some of the largest stock gains.

Analysts

Research analysts covering Google Inc. See also [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/sa?s=GOOG GOOG: Star Analysts for GOOGLE - Yahoo! Finance]
- Mark Mahaney (Citigroup Investment Research)
- John Tinker (Thinkequity Partners)
- Michael Gallant (CIBC World Markets)
- Steve Weinstein (Pacific Crest Securities)
- Imran Kahn (J.P. Morgan Chase)
- Heath Terry (Credit Suisse First Boston)
- Marianne Wolk (Susquehanna Financial Group)
- Nafi Bekteshi (SOS Group)

Technology

Google's services are run on several server farms, each consisting of many thousand low-cost commodity computers running customized versions of Linux. While the company does not provide detailed information about its hardware, it was estimated in 2004 that they were using over 60,000 Linux machines. See Google platform for the details.

Corporate culture

Philosophy

Google is known for its relaxed corporate culture, reminiscent of the Dot-com boom. Google's corporate philosophy is based on many casual principles including: "You can make money without doing evil", "You can be serious without a suit" and "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun." A complete list of corporate fundamentals is available on Google's Web site [http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html]. The company encourages equality within corporate levels. Twice a week there is a roller hockey game in the company parking lot.

"Twenty percent" time

Every Google engineer is encouraged to spend 20 percent (20%) of their work time on projects that interest them. Some of these end up as Google services, notably Adsense/Adwords (which provide the majority of the company's revenue), as well as Gmail, Google News and Orkut.

Googleplex

Google's headquarters is called the Googleplex. The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, and a real-time projection of current search queries. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles. Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center. Recreational amenities are scattered throughout the campus, and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, Foosball, a baby grand piano, a pool table, and ping pong. In addition to the rec room, there are snack rooms stocked with various cereals, gummy bears, toffee, licorice, cashews, yogurt, carrots, fresh fruit, and dozens of different drinks including fresh juice, soda, and make-your-own cappuccino. After eating, people can relieve themselves on digital toilets similar to Japanese toilets.

IPO and culture

Many people have suggested that after Google's IPO the corporate culture will not be able to stay so "fun" and focused on the future.[http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63241,00.html?tw=wn_story_related] [http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2004/104043001.asp] The company may be required to answer to its new shareholders who may press the company to reduce employee benefits and to focus on short term advances. Also, it may be more challenging for the company to maintain a collegial atmosphere when approximately 1,000 (30%) of the employees are paper-millionaires. In a report given to potential investors, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised that the IPO would not change the company's culture. Later Mr. Page said, "We think a lot about how to maintain our culture and the fun elements." In 2005, articles in The New York Times and other news sources [http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/search-giant-may-outgrow-its-fans/2005/08/25/1124562975596.html] began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy. The New York Times article was headlined, "Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain" [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/technology/24valley.html].

Google partnerships

On Sept 28 Google announced a partnership with NASA which would involve Google building an R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center. As reported by SearchEnginejournal.com, NASA and Google were said to be planning to work together on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The new building would also include labs, offices, and housing for Google engineers. Google also has a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies [http://www.vnunet.com/computing/news/2143242/sun-partners-google]. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help the open source office program OpenOffice.org. Google has an unknown partnership with the Mozilla Foundation. They are looking for software engineers to join them (Google) in collaborative development on the FireFox browser. This is confirmed by a [http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=29553 job listing] posted on Google. They also offer a download of Firefox with the Google Toolbar pre-installed.

Google's Acquisitions

2001

- Feb 2001: Deja (the Usenet archive, not the company) was acquired, and was incorporated to become part of the re-launched Google Groups [http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/deja_announcement.html].
- Sep 2001: Google acquired Outride Inc. [http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/outride.html].

2003

- Feb 2003: Google acquired Pyra Labs, a weblogging provider and owner of Blogger [http://www.google.com/corporate/timeline.html].
- Apr 2003: Neotonic Software was acquired as part of Google's plan to bring its CRM technology in house [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=621].
- Apr 2003: [http://www.appliedSemantics.com Applied Semantics] was acquired [http://www.appliedsemantics.com] for $102 Million [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_49/b3962001.htm].
- Sep 2003: Kaltix was acquired to develop and launch Google Personal [http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3085921].
- Oct 2003: Sprinks was acquired to enhance Google's Adwords and AdSense program [http://www.searchnewz.com/searchnewz-12-20031105GoogleAcquiresSprinks.html].
- Oct 2003: Google acquired Genius Labs, another web logging provider [http://www.bizstone.com/archive/2003_10_01_archive.html#106553958799049227].

2004

- Apr 2004: Ignite Logic was acquired [http://battellemedia.com/archives/000653.php].
- Jun 2004: Google made a $10M investment into partial ownership of Baidu [http://english.people.com.cn/200406/16/eng20040616_146493.html].
- Jul 2004: [http://www.picasa.com Picasa] was acquired to provide picture management tools to Blogger [http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/picasa.html].
- Oct 2004: Keyhole was acquired to provide the core mapping capabilities in Google Maps and Google Earth [http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/keyhole.html].
- Sept-Dec 2004, Google revealed in its annual [http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312505065298/d10k.htm 10-K filing] that it had acquired 2 Silicon Valley start-up companies: [http://www.zipdash.com ZipDash] and Where2. The technology provided by ZipDash was used to develop and launch Google Ride Finder. Where2 was a mapping software provider.

2005

- Mar 2005: Web analytics tools provider Urchin Software Corporation was acquired [http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/urchin.html].
- May 2005: DodgeBall [http://www.dodgeball.com], a social networking software provider for mobile devices, was acquired [http://www.dodgeball.com/aboutus_dball_google.php].
- Jul 2005: Google, in combination with Goldman Sachs, and the Hearst Corp., invests a total of $100 Million into [http://www.currentgroup.com Current Communications Group] [http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=76942&WT.svl=news1_5].
- Jul 2005: Google announced in its Q2 quarterly conference call that it had acquired [http://www.akwan.com.br/index_en.html Akwan Information Technologies] as a part of its plan to open an R&D office and expand its presence into Latin and South America. [http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050720-175228]
- Aug 2005: Google acquires [http://www.Android.com Android Inc.], a software provider for mobile devices [http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2005/tc20050817_0949_tc024.htm]
- September 28: both Google and Ames Research Center disclosed details to a long-term research partnership. In addition to pooling engineering talent, Google plans to build a 1-million square foot facility on the ARC campus.[http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2005/05_50AR.html]

Criticism and controversy

Copyright issues

A number of organizations have used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to demand that Google remove references to allegedly copyrighted material on other sites. Google typically handles this by removing the link as requested and including a link to the complaint in the search results. There have also been complaints that Google's Web cache feature violates copyright. However, Google provides mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled (which Google respects; it also honors the robots.txt file which is another mechanism that allows operators of a website to request that part or all of their site not be included in search engine results). On June 2005, Google Watch revealed the details of a contract between the University of Michigan and Google to create digitized copies of the copyrighted materials stored at the University's library. This contract is part of Google Print's effort to digitize millions of books and make the full text searchable. There are claims that it is a violation of copyright laws to use copyrighted material for profit by placing search ads beside the search results of these digitized books. Also, Google is setting a new precedent by making digital copies of copyrighted material on a wide scale without explicit permission from copyright holders. Meanwhile, Google claims that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books. The contract between Google and the U. of Michigan does make it clear that Google will provide only excerpts of copyright text in a search. The contract says that it will comply with "fair use", an exemption in copyright law that allows people to reproduce portions of text of copyrighted material for research purposes.

Dispute with Agence France Presse

In March 2005, Agence France Presse (AFP) sued Google for $17.5 million, alleging that Google News infringed on its copyright because "Google includes AFP's photos, stories and news headlines on Google News without permission from Agence France Presse." [http://news.dcealumni.com/376/20305-googles-news-sued-for-infringing-agence-france-presse-copyrighted-work/] It was also alleged that Google ignored a cease and desist order, though Google counters that it has opt-out procedures which AFP could have followed but did not. It is possible that AFP will make additional arguments in court that it has not yet made in public, but currently, many pundits are confused by the decision to sue [http://weblog.physorg.com/news1362.html][http://www.bayoubuzz.com/articles.aspx?aid=3538][http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/2080.html] because Google does not display the full article on its site, provides a link to one of AFP's 600 online clients such as Singapore's Channel NewsAsia (which presumably benefits AFP because more people view the article and advertising), and because the articles are available via the providers' websites regardless of Google's actions. It was argued that had AFP wanted to prevent free use of its articles, it should have asked its providers to require subscriptions rather than suing Google. Additionally, "in 2002, a federal appeals court ruled that Web sites may reproduce and post 'thumbnail' or downsized versions of copyrighted photographs," so Google News' thumbnails are likely legal. [http://news.dcealumni.com/376/20305-googles-news-sued-for-infringing-agence-france-presse-copyrighted-work/] Still, AFP argues that the headline and first sentence of an article constitutes the "heart" of the work and that reproducing it is copyright infringement. According to the Canada Free Press, "Google Inc. is now attempting to remove all postings of Agence-France Presse material from its site, although AFP spokesmen say that even if this is done, the lawsuit will continue... It seems that the basis of the lawsuit is just the abstract notion of copyright without any real damages to justify the action." The article concluded "It would be a sad day for those who look to the Internet for news if AFP is successful in limiting what Google can display... AFP's lawsuit, if successful, is bound to have a major impact on how news is delivered on the Internet." The lawsuit's outcome will likely depend on whether Google can successfully argue that its use of AFP's material constitutes "fair use" under copyright law. Google could even argue that it "adds value" to AFP's news without harming the French news wholesaler.[http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/03/29/424942b9271ad]

Lawsuit by Authors Guild

On September 20, 2005, the Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, with a children's book author, and a former Poet Laureate of the United States, filed a class action suit in federal court in Manhattan against Google over its unauthorized scanning and copying of books through its Google Library program. The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction that will prevent the company from continuing their very ambitious digitization project. Arguments in the case will hinge around the interpretation of the four factors of Fair Use. Many commentators in the world of copyright law and technology were not surprised by this development as The Authors Guild has also been involved in attempting to make online publishers pay royalties to writers whose stories appear in any number of online databases without their express consent. In a concession to general concerns about the nature of their project, Google had announced plans back in August that they would respect the wishes of copyright holders who contacted the company to inform them that they did not want their works included in this digitization project.
- [http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/2005/scout-050923-inthenews.php#1 Scout Report] "Authors’ group files lawsuit against Google" Sept, 2005
- [http://www.policybandwidth.com/doc/googleprint.pdf The Google Print Library Project: A Copyright Analysis - .pdf]
- [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/20/AR2005092001416.html Washington Post] Sept. 20, 2005 "Google library push faces lawsuit by US authors"

Multinational corporation

Google is a multinational corporation, having offices in over a dozen countries [http://www.google.ie/intl/en/corporate/address.html]. In order to comply with the varying laws of these countries, several versions of Google restrict very specific keyword searches. According to American law, any copyright owner can require material to be removed via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, whereas under French and German law, for example, hate speech and Holocaust denial are illegal. Google complies with these laws by banning keyword searches related to these terms. Google's Terms of Service allow it to comply with the laws of any one country, providing information that was originated (or that Google stores) in another country. Any data stored on Google is therefore subject to being turned over to any country, including China.

China's Censoring

The People's Republic of China, whose human rights record has been widely criticized by the international community, has in the past restricted citizen access to popular search engines such as Altavista, Yahoo!, and Google. The mirror search site elgooG has been used by Chinese citizens to get around blocked content. This complete ban is currently lifted. However, the government remains active in filtering Internet content. In the summer of 2005 Google's name became associated with commercial contracts between the Government of China, Microsoft and Cisco Systems which block access to websites using words like "democracy." Google has been involved with the removal of specific sites that are blocked in China from their Chinese news portal. The French news agency, AFP, reported that Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google have all agreed to cooperate in censoring the Internet from their China based sites by filtering out content objectionable to the Chinese government. The list of forbidden words includes "democracy," "freedom," "human rights," and "Taiwan independence." In October 2005, Blogger and access to the Google Cache were made available in China; however, in December 2005, some Chinese users of Blogger reported that their access to the site was once again restricted.

Legal issues

Google's efforts to refine its database has led to some legal controversy, notably a lawsuit in October 2002 from the company SearchKing which sought to sell advertisements on pages with inflated Google rankings. In its defense, Google stated that its rankings are its constitutionally protected opinions of the web sites that it indexes. A judge subsequently threw out SearchKing's lawsuit in mid-2003 on precisely these grounds. In late 2003 and early 2004, there were rumors that Google would be sued by the SCO Group over their use of the Linux operating system, in conjunction with SCO's lawsuit against IBM over the claimed ownership of intellectual property rights relating to Linux. In May 2004, the Baltimore Sun interviewed Peri Fleisher, a great-niece of Edward Kasner, the mathematician whose nephew coined the word googol, who said Kasner's descendants were "exploring" legal action against Google due to its name. Google recently settled a patent infringement lawsuit with Yahoo! by issuing 2.7 million shares. Yahoo! had earlier alleged that Google's AdSense program violated a patent held by Yahoo!'s Overture unit. The settlement cost Google around $275 million which resulted in the company posting a net loss in the third quarter of 2004.

Personnel issues

Former Google sales executive Christina Elwell, promoted to national sales director at Google in late 2003, accused her supervisor of discrimination against her after informing him of her pregnancy [http://news.com.com/Google+hit+with+job+discrimination+lawsuit/2100-1030_3-5807158.html?tag=nl]. After the loss of 3 of her quadruplets, which she claimed was due to the stressful circumstances created by Google, Elwell sued the company. She also refused an offer from Shona Brown, Google Vice President of Business Operations, to reinstate her to a "low-level operations position".

Partiality

In February 2003, Google banned the ads of Oceana, a two-and-a-half-year-old non-profit organization, which was protesting the environmental effects of a major cruise ship operation's sewage treatment practices. Google claimed that their editorial policy states, "that Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations."

Offensive search results

In April 2004, Google received complaints that a search for "Jew" on its site listed the anti-Semitic website Jew Watch at or near the top of the list. Google responded that this was due to the content-neutrality of the PageRank algorithm, and the fact that racists used the specific word "Jew" (as opposed to "Jewish" or "Judaism") more often than others. [http://www.google.com/explanation.html] As a reaction, some webloggers launched a Google bomb to put the corresponding Wikipedia article at the top of the search results. As of December 2005, Jew Watch remains the #1 link. There is also an option for google account users, who are logged in, to remove offensive search results.

Privacy

Main article: Google and privacy issues Some have pointed out the dangers and privacy implications of having a centrally located, widely popular data warehouse of millions of Internet users' searches, and how under controversial existing U.S. law, Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. government, or any other government of a country which Google serves. It has been claimed that Google infringes the privacy of visitors by uniquely identifying them using cookies which are used to track Web users' search history. The cookies possess notably distant expiration dates and it is claimed users' searches are recorded without permission for advertising purposes. In response Google claims cookies are necessary to maintain user preferences between sessions and offer other search features. The use of cookies with such distant expiration dates is not very uncommon. Some users believe the processing of email message content by Google's Gmail service goes beyond proper use. The point is often made that people without Gmail accounts, who have not agreed to the Gmail terms of service, but send email to Gmail users have their correspondence analyzed without permission. Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the account holder, and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements. Other popular email services such as Hotmail also scan incoming email to try to determine whether it is unsolicited spam email (which Gmail also does). Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC warned that "As courts become more frequent integrators of electronic records, there is a greater risk of Google ... becoming a serious privacy threat."

The PageRank system

Google's central PageRank system has been criticized. Some, such as Daniel Brandt, calling it "undemocratic". Common arguments are that the system is unfairly biased towards large web sites, and that the criteria for a page's importance are not subject to peer review. It must be stated in Google's defense that PageRank is a fully automated system which is impartial insofar as it knows no personal bias. However, it must also be stated that Google's system relies on human oversight, and use of company names on Adwords, or deletion of critical sites from Google results (for example, sites critical of Scientology), is decided by individual human beings according to company policy. It remains unclear whether any process could assert the importance of a page in a way that would draw less criticism than the current PageRank system. The system is also susceptible to manipulation and fraud through the use of dummy sites, an issue which does, however, plague all search engines. See Google bomb and Spamdexing.

Specific searches

Spamdexing See also List of Google services and tools For users searching for more specific results, at the top of Google pages are additional tabs to more narrowly define a user's search results.
- Images: Allows the user to limit a search to images on the Internet; the images are identified by Google by the image name saved on the webpage and context information about the page.
- Groups: Allows the user to create, search and browse groups for discussion.
- News: Brings the user directly to the Google News search page, formatted similar to news websites such as MSNBC or BBC News. The search page provides the option for twenty countries. Google.com.au allows selection criteria for Australia.
- Froogle: Allows the user to shop online searching websites within a user specified budget.
- Local: Searches for places (such as shops or other landmarks) in a geographical area, and displays maps and driving directions. Maps include road maps, medium-resolution satellite images, and "hybrid" maps combining both. See also Google Maps. Currently it provides full service only in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.
- Earth: Allows the user to download a program to have a 3D version of satellite pictures.
- Desktop: Allows the user to search their computer for files, folders, and emails. See Google Desktop.
- Talk: Allows users with Gmail accounts to communicate with each other through instant messaging and have online conversations.
- Videos: Allows the user to limit a search to videos on the Internet; Use Google to find reviews and showtimes for movies playing somewhere near you.
- Blogs: Blog Search allows the user to only search blogs based on RSS feeds. Results can be sorted by relevance or by date. Although it allows you to search specific blogs, this feature is currently malfunctioning.
- Scholar: Allows users to search some peer-reviewed, scholarly journals. Non-peer reviewed material is also included in the index. Clicking on the "More" tab at the top directs the user to even more Google Services such as Blogger, University Searches, Google products in their Labs section, Help and Alerts.

April Fool's Day jokes

Main article: Google's hoaxes Google has a tradition of creating April Fool's Day jokes such as [http://www.google.com/mentalplex/ Google MentalPlex] which featured the use of mental power to search the Web. In 2002 they claimed that pigeons were the [http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html secret] behind their growing search engine. In 2004 it featured [http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html Google Lunar] which featured jobs on the moon and in 2005 a fictitious, brain-boosting drink termed [http://www.google.com/googlegulp/ Google Gulp] was announced. You can find other pranks hidden between google's pages. In the languages list you can find the [http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/ Bork! Bork! Bork!] version. Bork! is the mock Swedish of the Muppets Show's Swedish Chef. Some people thought the announcement of Gmail in 2004 around April Fools Day was actually a joke.

References

- Mahadevan, Jeremy (Nov. 16, 2005). "Googlicious". New Straits Times, p. L12–L13.
- "What's the catch?" (Nov. 16, 2005). New Straits Times, p. L13.

External links

Company websites

- [http://www.google.com Google]
- [http://base.google.com/ Google Base]
- [http://www.google.com/help/features.html Google Help: Search Features]
- [http://www.google.com/sms Google SMS Search]
- [http://www.google.com/ig Google Personalized Start Page]
- [http://video.google.com/ Google Video Search] - Also see: [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3383042311441257769&q=google+factory+tour Google Factory Tour]
- [http://www.google.com/downloads/ Google Software Downloads]
- [http://www.google.com/corporate/ Google Corporate Information]
- [http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html Google's History]
- [http://gmail.google.com Gmail] — Google's e-mail service
- [http://www.ipogoogle.org/ Google's Initial Public Offering]
- [http://www.google.org Google.org] — The philanthropic arm of Google
- [http://googleblog.blogspot.com Google Blog] — Off

Zeal (web)

Zeal is a volunteer-built web directory, first appearing in 1999, and then acquired by LookSmart in October 2000 for $20 million. Zeal now combines the work of Looksmart's paid editors with that of volunteers who profile websites and place them in a hierarchy of subcategories. Paid editors attend to commercial sites and oversee the voluntary work on non-commercial sites. Volunteers work under a defined set of Guidelines and are required to pass an introductory level test on those Guidelines before submitting site profiles or edits. As points and experience are acquired, volunteers may elect to take a further exam which allows them to "adopt" and create topic categories of special interest. They can then move up the organizational structure from Community Member to Zealot to Expert Zealot, acquiring additional tools and oversight responsibility at each level. Expert Zealots, who can move or delete some whole categories, monitor the day-to-day operations of the non-commercial portion of the directory and act as mentors to new members. Active volunteers are found in many English-speaking countries (particularly North America, United Kingdom, India, Australia, and New Zealand) and some other countries such as Switzerland and Japan. By March 2003, Zeal had passed the 250,000 listings mark; it is rapidly approaching the 400,000 mark due, in part, to the [http://www.zeal.com/zeality/features.jhtml?story=2 Zeal Charity Drive contest] of October 2003. Since Looksmart's acquisition of Zeal, its internet traffic as measured by Alexa has fluctuated considerably; since MSN withdrew from the related partnership, Zeal traffic has declined from "usually better than 2000th" (mid-2003) to "about 5000th" (mid-2004).

External links

- [http://www.zeal.com/ Official site]
- [http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&compare_sites=&url=http://www.zeal.com/ Alexa Traffic Chart]
- [http://chinese-school.netfirms.com/computer-article-Looksmart.html Reasons Why Microsoft's MSN Dumped Looksmart’s Search Results - Non-Official Explanation] Category:web directories

Clustering

Clustering can refer to
- Computer clustering - (in Computer science) the connection of many low-cost computers using special hardware and software such that they can be used as one larger computer. The hardware used to link nodes together is usually called interconnect and consists of Network Interface Cards, or NICs, switches and cables. The choice of interconnect depends on many factors. For fine-grained applications, where the nodes need to communicate often, the interconnect must be fast or the application suffers waiting for the network. In terms of software, clustering can either be used to provide reliability (when one machines fails, the other(s) take over its workload) or as a means to inexpensively provide large amounts of computing power. Microsoft's clustering solution for Windows NT systems is called MSCS
- (Also in Computer science) undesirable, contiguous grouping of elements in a hash table.
- Data clustering - a common technique for data analysis, which is used in many fields, including machine learning, data mining, pattern recognition, image analysis, bioinformatics, and search engines. Clustering consists of partitioning a data set into subsets (clusters), so that the data in each subset (ideally) share some common trait - often similarity or proximity for some defined distance measure. When the data is human language text, rather than numbers or symbols, different methods are employed.
- (In demographics) the gathering of various populations based on ethnicity, economics or religion. See Clustering (demographics).

Web 2.0

The term "Web 2.0" refers to what some people see as a second phase of development of the World Wide Web, including its architecture and its applications. It was coined by Dale Dougherty during a meeting between O'Reilly and Associates (a computer book publisher) and MediaLive International (an event organiser) as a marketable term for a series of conferences [http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html]. As used by its proponents, the phrase refers to one or more of the following:
- a transition of websites from isolated information silos to sources of content and functionality, thus becoming a computing platform serving web applications to end users
- a social phenomenon referring to an approach to creating and distributing Web content itself, characterised by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and "the market as a conversation"
- a more organized and categorized content, with a more developed deeplinking web architecture.
- a shift in economic value of the web, potentially equalling that of the dot com boom of the late 1990s. However, a consensus upon its exact meaning has not yet been reached. Skeptics argue that the term is essentially meaningless, or that it means whatever its proponents decide that they want it to mean in order to convince the media and investors that they are creating something fundamentally new, rather than continuing to develop and use well-established technologies. Many recently developed concepts and technologies are seen as contributing to Web 2.0, including weblogs, podcasts, RSS feeds and other forms of many to many publishing; social software, web APIs, web standards, online web services, Ajax, and others. Web 2.0 differs from early web development (retroactively labeled Web 1.0) as it is a move away from websites, email, using search engines and surfing from one website to the next. Others are more skeptical that such basic concepts can be superseded in any real way by those listed above.

Overview

Web 1.0 often comprised static HTML pages that were updated rarely, if at all. The success of the dot-com era depended on a more dynamic Web (sometimes labeled Web 1.5) where content management systems served dynamic HTML web pages created on the fly from a content database that could more easily be changed. In both senses, so-called eyeballing was considered intrinsic to the Web experience, thus making page hits and visual aesthetics important factors. Proponents of the Web 2.0 approach believe that Web usage is increasingly oriented toward interaction and rudimentary social networks, which can serve content that exploits network effects with or without creating a visual, interactive web page. In one view, Web 2.0 sites act more as points of presence, or user-dependent web portals, than as traditional websites. It is interesting in this context to note the public_html folder that has been a feature in most Linux user's home directory for a decade and the Sites directory in Mac OS X users' home directories since its inception. The standard implementation of the Apache web server has always been able to present any site built, by the user, in this folder onto the World Wide Web as http://hostname/~username. Perhaps Web 2.0 will be less under the control of specialised, so-called web designers and closer to Tim Berners-Lee's original DIY and personal concept. Image:Web_2.0.jpg On September 30, 2005, Tim O'Reilly wrote a [http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228 seminal piece], neatly summarizing the subject.

Origin of the term

The term was coined by Dale Dougherty of O'Reilly Media during a brainstorming session with MediaLive International to develop ideas for a conference that they could jointly host. Dougherty suggested that the Web was in a renaissance, with changing rules and evolving business models. The participants assembled examples — "DoubleClick was Web 1.0; Google AdSense is Web 2.0. Ofoto is Web 1.0; Flickr is Web 2.0." — rather than definitions (see below). Dougherty recruited John Battelle for a business perspective, and O'Reilly Media, Battelle, and MediaLive launched the first Web 2.0 Conference in October 2004. The second annual conference was held in October 2005. In their first conference opening talk, O'Reilly and Battelle summarized key principles they believe characterize Web 2.0 applications: The Web as platform; data as the "Intel Inside"; network effects driven by an "architecture of participation"; innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers; lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication; the end of the software adoption cycle ("the perpetual beta"); software above the level of a single device: leveraging the power of "the Long Tail."

Comparison with Semantic Web

An earlier usage of the phrase Web 2.0 was a synonym for Semantic Web. The two concepts are similar and complementary. The combination of social networking systems such as FOAF and XFN with the development of tag-based folksonomies and delivered through blogs and wikis creates a natural basis for a semantic environment.

Comparison with Web 3.0

There is even speculation about "Web 3.0". Some speculate it will be a web based operating system[http://www.kottke.org/05/08/googleos-webos], perhaps a metaverse based on a system like the Croquet project. Web 3.0 will probably be much more distributed than web 2.0 and many of the current web 2.0 services will be gone. Social networking sites such as friendster may be replaced by semantic connections. A large part of Web 3.0 is decentralization of web services. Instead of loading your pictures to the Flickr server you host the pictures on your computer which acts as a web server, or you may choose to use one of many hosting sites using a common standard instead of standalone sites like Flickr today. This again seems to herald a return to the earliest web developers' view that most computer users would have something of value to publish onto a worldwide web of knowledge and information. Perhaps, even in the face of present-day security concerns, and the widespread lack of education about fundamental web concepts like HTML, CSS and HTTP, Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 will encourage everyday people, rather than expensive specialists, to publish their own work.

Present-day web publishing

Of course, with most current Microsoft home computers coming with a free copy of the IIS web server and Linux ones being equipped with Apache, there should be nothing to stop any computer user publishing whatever they like from their own machine. This was the original concept of the web, and that is why these servers are there. Several factors have impeded the widespread uptake of these facilities, however.
- Lack of knowledge Many people do not have the scripting skills necessary to develop a web site in HTML, although the language was designed to be simple enough for this. Most school curriculums are biassed toward teaching pupils the skills necessary to operate commercial office software products, rather than these skills so this seems unlikely to be about to change. Easy to use WYSIWYG HTML and CSS editors have been improving for some time but there are still problems with many of them.
- Security Many users are rightly wary of running a public web site on a home computer. No matter how well set up it is, a web service increases the 'attack surface' that the machine presents to the internet. Whether or not the material presented is in any way controversial or even just popular, there will be those who will try to attack such a service: skills, knowledge and some on-going attention will be necessary to maintain a secure machine.
- ISP limitations Most dial-up or ADSL connections to the internet are issued an IP address upon connection, which may change from time to time. To counteract this, dynamic DNS services are available that connect incoming web page requests correctly regardless of the current IP address of the server. There are two remaining problems: firstly setting this up takes some knowledge, and doing so may well cost the user in fees and charges. Secondly many ISPs would rather people do not do this from home and set bandwidth limitations and quotas that will prevent them from doing so if their site becomes even remotely popular with the public.
- Web space Most ISPs and some other organizations offer free web space to their subscribers. Many take advantage of this already, and have been doing so since the dawn of the web. There are still usually bandwidth, naming and other limitations that can then be circumvented by the payment of appropriate fees. The ISP will look after many of the issues arising from security, backing up of data etc. The service is not offered from a home machine that may contain other sensitive or personal data. On the other hand, other skills are involved such as using the FTP or other connection that allows the upload and alteration of web data.
- Commercial pressure Having said all of this, many think that one of the reasons for a relatively low take up of home publishing to the web, until the advent of some Web 2.0 features such as blogging and flickr, has been commercial. In the last decade it has been to the benefit of the software industry, from Microsoft downwards, to convince ordinary users that they do not want to see even simple, standards-compliant scripts such as HTML in their raw form in a basic text editor, let alone have to type the simplest thing into a command line. This is to the industry's benefit as it encourages users to pay out for the use of GUI and web applications that take these straightforward, underlying technologies and wrap them, one level deep, behind their user interfaces. The tasks are no simpler, merely presented graphically rather than textually and often then available only for some considerable charge rather than free and built in to almost every home machine. Unfortunately at the same time most computer education became centred around learning to use these commercial products rather than learning about the underlying technologies of the web, the internet and the machine. Web 2.0 may be about the maturation of some of these previously expensive commercial tools to the point where they can be sold even more widely.

Technology

The technology infrastructure of Web 2.0 is complex and evolving, but includes server software, content syndication, messaging protocols, standards-based browsers, and various client applications. (Non-standard browser plugins and enhancements are generally eschewed.) These differing but complementary approaches provide Web 2.0 with information storage, creation, and dissemination capabilities that go beyond what was formerly expected of websites. A website could be said to be built using Web 2.0 technologies if it featured a number of the following techniques: Technical:
- CSS, semantically valid XHTML markup, and Microformats
- Unobtrusive Rich Application techniques (such as Ajax)
- Java Web Start
- Flex/Laszlo/Flash
- XUL
- Syndication of data in RSS/Atom
- Aggregation of RSS/Atom data
- Clean and meaningful URLs
- Support posting to a weblog
- REST or XML Webservice APIs
- Some social networking aspects General:
- The site should not act as a "walled garden" - it should be easy to get data in and out of the system.
- Users should own their own data on the site
- Purely Web based - most successful Web 2.0 sites can be used almost entirely through the browser
- Applicable to an emerging generation of game development, proposed as Thin games

Content syndication

The first and most important evolution towards Web 2.0 involves the syndication of website content, using standardized protocols which permit end-users to make use of a site's data in another context, ranging from another website, to a browser plugin, or a separate desktop application. Protocols which permit syndication include RSS, RDF (as in RSS 1.1), and Atom, all of which are flavors of XML. Specialized protocols such as FOAF and XFN (both for social networking) extend functionality of sites or permit end-users to interact without centralized websites. See [http://microformats.org/ microformats] for more specialized data formats. Due to the recent development of these trends, many of these protocols are de facto rather than formal standards.

Web services

Two-way messaging protocols are one of the key elements of the Web 2.0 infrastructure. The two major types are the RESTful and SOAP methods. REST (Representational State Transfer) indicates a type of web service invocation where the client transfers the state of all transactions. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and similar lightweight methods depend on the server to retain state information. In both cases, the service is invoked through an API. Often this API is customized to the website's specific needs, but standard web services APIs (for example, posting to a blog) are also widely used. Generally the common language of web services is XML (Extensible Markup Language), but this is not guaranteed, and proprietary variations abound. A major example of the new messaging protocols is the Object Properties Broadcasting Protocol. Developed by Chris Dockree, this protocol allows virtual objects "things", that exist on the web, to know what they are and what they can do. As a result, these "things" can communicate with other "things" as they need. Recently, a hybrid form known as Ajax has evolved to improve the user experience in browser-based web applications. This may be used in proprietary forms (as in [http://maps.google.com/ Google Maps]) or in open form utilizing a web services API, a syndication feed, or even screen scraping. Broadly speaking, syndication is a type of web service, but this usage is becoming less common. See also WSDL (Web Services Description Language) and list of Web service specifications (aka WS-
- ).

Server software

Web 2.0 functionality builds on the existing web server architecture, but puts much greater emphasis on back-end software. Syndication differs only nominally from dynamic content management publishing methods, but web services typically require much more robust database and workflow support, and become very similar to the traditional intranet functionality of an application server. Vendor approaches to date fall under either a universal server approach, which bundles most of the necessary functionality in a single server platform, or a web server plugin approach, which uses standard publishing tools enhanced with API interfaces and other tools. Regardless of the approach chosen, the evolutionary path toward Web 2.0 is not expected to be significantly altered by these choices.

Social impact

The syndication and messaging capabilities of Web 2.0 have created, to a greater or lesser degree, a tightly-woven social fabric among individuals that would have formerly been impossible. Unarguably, the nature of web-based communities has changed in recent months and years. The meaning of these changes, however, has pundits divided. Basically, ideological lines run thusly: Web 2.0 either empowers the individual and provides an outlet for the 'voice of the voiceless'; or it elevates the amateur to the detriment of professionalism, expertise and clarity. Nicholas Carr is the former editor of the [Harvard Business Review] and a proponent of the latter view. He urges his readers to regard the internet instrumentally, as a tool we use to procure and to share information. The Web in any version, he says, is in the service of an already established canon of knowledge which the internet might help to disseminate. Thus we are apt to compare traditional means of encryption (primitive, mono-directional file-sharing) with the functions described by Web 2.0. And he does, piting together the Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, and deciding in favour of the former. Wikipedia, he writes, is a novel participatory internet phenomenon but not necessarily a good one since "at a factual level it's unreliable, and the writing is often appalling. I wouldn't depend on it [Wikipedia] as a source, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to a student writing a research paper."[http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/12/web_20s_collate.php] Carr extends these criticisms to the blogosphere which he says upholds the following values: "superficiality,...opinion over reporting,...echolalia,...ideological extremism and segregation." The irony escapes no one that Carr is himself blogging these recriminations and being held to task here in wiki-format. But despite our clear if unstated partisanship, we do not mean to undermine Carr's well-reasoned opinion. That just because wikis and blogs exist, they are not necessarily any better than traditional forms of communicdation in the mass media. We need the mainstream media, he says, to uphold opposing values like research, objectivity, precision and authority. There is no reason to think, however, that these values may not be incorporated in a different medium, that is, online. But Carr's arguments are important if only as an introduction to the rhetoric used to define, praise or condemn Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is after all not a product or object, not something we climb into or touch, but a concept, nebulous at that, that describes certain aspirations or internet tendencies. And he wants to undermine the ideology that places the idea of Web 2.0 in the humanist narrative of emancipation.

Business impact

The potential for exponential business growth as a result of the effects of Web 2.0 comes down to the difference between human-instigated value consumption and computer-instigated value consumption. It is entirely possible for identification and consumption of value to occur without human intervention as a result of Web 2.0. Organizations will increasingly syndicate their value propositions using syndication formats such as RSS/Atom/RDF. In addition to value syndication. Web Service endpoint publishing will simplify the process of consuming the syndicated values.

External links

API references

- [http://www.wsfinder.com/ Web Service / Open API Wiki]
- [http://www.programmableweb.com/apis Web 2.0 API Reference]

Example sites

- 24SevenOffice web-based ERP/CRM
- [http://www.43things.com 43 Things, a social network for sharing and achieving goals]
- [http://www.backpackit.com Backpack, 37 signals personal organizing service]
- [http://www.commontimes.org/ CommonTimes, a social network for news]
- [http://www.digg.com/ Digg], a social technology newsnetwork
- [http://www.flickr.com Flickr, a social network for photo sharing]

General coverage and commentary

- [http://web2.wsj2.com/the_best_web_20_software_of_2005.htm best web 2 software awards]
- [http://ifindkarma.typepad.com/relax/2004/10/web_20.html Relax, Everything Is Deeply Intertwingled: Web 2.0]
- [http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_2_for_designers/ Web 2.0 for Designers]
- [http://www.kottke.org/04/10/design-for-web-20 Design for Web 2.0]
- [http://phaidon.philo.at/martin/archives/000298.html A Cumulative Web 2.0 definition] (beyond software)
- [http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html What is Web 2.0 Site]
- [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/21/web_two_point_nought_poll/ Web 2.0: It's ... like your brain on LSD!] Critical commentary
- [http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html Paul Graham on Web 2.0]
- [http://techcrunch.com TechCrunch - Companies and Products]
- [http://web2.wsj2.com/ Web 2.0 Coverage and Analysis] Category:Buzzwords Category:World Wide Web Category:Web services ko:웹 2.0 ja:Web 2.0 th:เว็บ 2.0

Categorization

For Wikipedia's categorization projects, see Wikipedia:Categorization. ---- Categorization is the process in which ideas and objects are recognised and understood. Categorization implies that objects are grouped into categories, usually for some specific purpose. Categorization is fundamental in decision making and in all kinds of interaction with the environment. There are, however, different ways of approaching categorization.

The Classical View

The classical Aristotelian view that claims that categories are discrete entities characterized by a set of properties which are shared by their members. These are assumed to establish the conditions which are both necessary and sufficient to capture meaning.

Cognitive science

Since the research by Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff in the 1970s, categorization can also be viewed as the process of grouping things based on prototypes - the idea of necessary and sufficient conditions is rarely if ever met in categories of naturally occurring things. It has also been suggested that categorisation based on prototypes (see Prototype (linguistics)) is the basis for human development, and that this learning relies on learning about the world via embodiment. A cognitive approach accepts the fact that natural categories tend to be fuzzy at their boundaries and inconsistent in the status of their constituent members. Systems of categories are not objectively "out there" in the world but are rooted in people's experience. Conceptual categories are not identical for every speaker of a language. Categories form part of a hierarchical structure when applied to such subjects as taxonomy in biological classification: higher level: life-form level, middle level: generic or genus level, and lower level: the species level. These can be distinguished by certain traits that put an item in its distinctive category. But even these can be arbitrary and are subject to revision. Categories at the middle level are perceptually and conceptually the more salient. The generic level of a category tends to elicit the most responses and richest images and seems to be the psychologically basic level. Typical taxonomies in zoology for example exhibit categorisation at the embodied level, with similarities leading to formulation of "higher" categories, and differences leading to differentiation within categories.

Web 2.0

Overview

Origin of the term

Comparison with Semantic Web

Comparison with Web 3.0

Present-day web publishing

Technology

Content syndication

Web services

Server software

Social impact

Business impact

External links

API references

- [http://www.wsfinder.com/ Web Service / Open API Wiki]
- [http://www.programmableweb.com/apis Web 2.0 API Reference]

Example sites

General coverage and commentary

Del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking, social software web service for storing and sharing web bookmarks. The site came online in late 2003 and was developed by Joshua Schachter, co-maintainer of Memepool. According to [http://del.icio.us/doc/about del.icio.us/doc/about]: :"del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others." Everything posted to del.icio.us can be made publicly viewable; it was not originally intended to be a tool for storing private bookmark collections. Many people use del.icio.us to publish "linkblogs" on their weblogs. del.icio.us uses a non-hierarchical keyword categorization system where users can tag each of their bookmarks with a number of freely chosen keywords (cf. folksonomy). A combined view of everyone's bookmarks with a given tag is available; for instance, the URL "http://del.icio.us/tag/wiki" displays all of the most recent links tagged "wiki". Its collective nature also makes it possible to view bookmarks added by similar-minded users. The emphasis on recent additions makes it a convenient mechanism for propagating Internet memes and trends. del.icio.us has a simple HTML interface with human readable URLs, as well as a REST API and RSS feeds for web syndication. Use of the service is currently free. The source code of the site is not available, but entered data is freely downloadable through [http://del.icio.us/doc/api the API]. del.icio.us was aided in its rise to popularity by its unconventional domain name. de.lirio.us is an open source clone of del.icio.us. Bookmark spam is currently a problem in [http://del.icio.us/popular/ del.icio.us/popular] as there's no way to trust users and fake users can easily be created thus putting spam links in the most popular URLs. del.icio.us was [http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=2642 acquired by] Yahoo! on Friday, December 9, 2005.

External links

- [http://del.icio.us/ del.icio.us]
- [http://del.icio.us/help del.icio.us/help] - All about del.icio.us
- [http://www.beelerspace.com/index.php?p=890 Us.ef.ul] - A beginner's guide to The Next Big Thing
- [http://lists.del.icio.us/pipermail/discuss/ The delicious-discuss archives]
- [http://pchere.blogspot.com/2005/02/absolutely-delicious-complete-tool.html Absolutely Del.icio.us] - Complete Tool Collection
- [http://skindelicious.blogspot.com/ skin.del.icio.us] - A del.icio.us skin for Firefox
- [http://del.icio.us/toolbar/ del.icio.us toolbar] for Firefox
- [http://dietrich.ganx4.com/foxylicious/ Foxylicious] - A Firefox extension that syncs your del.icio.us bookmarks into your browser bookmarks
- [http://del.icio.us/help/activechannel Internet Explorer Active Channel] - automatically import your tags into Internet Explorer's favorites and keep them updated
- [http://www.bunnyhug.net/blog/projects/deliciousupdater/ BUD (Bunnyhug Updater del.icio.us)] - Import your del.icio.us bookmarks to Internet Explorer
- [http://hybernaut.com/bdv/delicious-import.html Del.icio.us import script] - A Perl script which will import a Netscape style bookmarks file into del.icio.us
- [http://www.scifihifi.com/cocoalicious/ Cocoalicious] - A Cocoa del.icio.us Client for Mac OS X
- [http://www.tumultco.com/blog/index.php?p=21 del.icio.us Smart Tagging Plugin] for WordPress
- [http://del.icio.us/tag del.icio.us/tag] - A list of most popular tags
- [http://del.icio.us/popular del.icio.us/popular] - Today's popular items
- [http://populicio.us/ populicio.us] - Del.icio.us popular sites.
- [http://sandbox.sourcelabs.com/livemarks LiveMarks] - An AJAX application that dynamically loads recently popular bookmarks
- [http://opencontent.org/oishii/ oishii! - ephemeral pheromonal del.icio.us-ness] "kind of a del.icio.us mini-zeitgeist"
- [http://tools.waglo.com/durl Durl], an RSS feed for del.icio.us URL queries
- [http://www.awriterz.org/etcetc/delicioussurf del.icio.us surf] allows "channelsurfing" of del.icio.us posts by specifying a tag or user
- [http://dailymashup.com/ Daily Mashup] A daily zeitgeist of popular things fuled by del.icio.us, furl, flickr, and Yahoo news
- [http://de.lirio.us/ de.lirio.us] - An open-source clone of del.icio.us. The content is licensed under a Creative Commons License
- [http://sourceforge.net/projects/sabrosus sa.bros.us] - An open-source del.icio.us substitute in Spanish
- [http://collabrank.web.cse.unsw.edu.au/del.icio.us/ CollaborativeRank] - del.icio.us search engine Category:Community websites Category:Social networking Category:Yahoo! th:Del.icio.us

List of web directories

This is a list of unique directories listing World Wide Web sites.
- Best of the Web Directory
- Gimpsy - A directory organized by activity.
- IllumiRate - An internet directory created by a group of volunteer editors.
- LookSmart - Operates a mainly commercial directory, with some free content from its Zeal community program for non-commercial entries.
- Open Directory Project (aka DMoz) - The largest directory of the web, licensed to mirror sites, such as the Google Directory.
- Qango - A directory of other directories, search engines and search resources.
- Touch Local - A local business directory focusing on UK businesses.
- World Wide Web Directory Project - Collection of Industry Vertical Web Directories.
- World Wide Web Virtual Library (VLIB) - The oldest directory of the Web.
- Yahoo! Directory - Their directory was their principal founding service.
- Pick of India - Features a regional Directory focusing on India.

Category:World Wide Web

category:internet ja:Category:World Wide Web

Category:Knowledge representation

Significant articles:
- Library classification
- Ontology (computer science)
- Semantic network Representation Category:Information science th:Category:การแทนความรู้

Roche Pharmaceuticals

Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd. is a Swiss global health-care company which operates world-wide under two divisions: pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. It belongs to the Roche Holding AG. The headquarters are located in Basel. Roche Holding AG (ticker ROC.S) is listed on the London-based virt-x stock exchange (virt-x is a company of the SWX_Swiss_Exchange). Roche's revenues during fiscal year 2002 were $9400 million, ranking 13th amongst the pharmaceutical companies of the world. Founded in 1896 by Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche, the company was early on known for producing various vitamin preparations and derivatives. In 1957 it introduced the class of tranquilizers known as benzodiazepines (with Valium and Rohypnol being the best known members). Its acne drug isotretinoin marketed as Accutane® and Roaccutane® is a market leader in treating severe acne. It has also produced various HIV tests and antiretroviral drugs. It bought the patents for the important polymerase chain reaction technique in 1992. It manufactures several cancer drugs. In 1976, an accident at a chemical factory in Seveso (Italy) owned by a subsidiary of Roche caused a large dioxin contamination; see Seveso disaster.

Vitamin price-fixing

In 1973, Stanley Adams, Roche's World Product Manager in Basel, contacted the EEC with evidence that Roche had been breaking anti-trust laws, engaging in price-fixing and market sharing with its competitors. Roche was fined accordingly, but unfortunately a bungle on the part of the EEC allowed the company to discover that it was Adams who had blown the whistle. He was arrested for unauthorised disclosure - an offence under Swiss law - and imprisoned. His wife, told that he might face decades in jail, committed suicide. Adams was released soon after but arrested again more than once before eventually fleeing to Britain, where he wrote a book about the affair. In 1999 Roche was the world-wide market leader in vitamins, with a market share of 40%. Between 1990 and 1999, the company participated in an illegal price fixing cartel for vitamins. Other members of the cartel were BASF and Rhone-Poulenc SA. In 1999, Roche pleaded guilty in the United States and paid a $500 million fine, then the largest fine ever secured in the U.S. The European Commission fined Roche 462 million euros for the same infraction in 2001, also a record fine at the time. Roche sold its vitamin business in late 2002 to the dutch group DSM.

Bird flu antidote monopoly

In a recent meeting of regional health ministers, Dr. Francisco Duque III, Secretary of the Philippines Department of Health, accused Roche of "monopolizing" the production and distribution of the drug known as Oseltavimir (brand name Tamiflu). Oseltavimir is considered to be the primary antiviral drug used to combat avian influenza, commonly known as the bird flu. Roche is the only drug company authorized to manufacture the drug. The Philippine health secretary complained that the supply of the said drug is only concentrated in First World countries even if the disease is ravaging bird and poultry populations in Southeast Asia as of this time. Dr. Duque proposed that even if Roche is the only one who has the patent for the drug, special patents or licenses should be granted to other drug companies to manufacture the drug and make it more accessible to avian flu-vulnerable countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia and the Philippines. Duque and Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has already communicated with the representative of the World Health Organization in the Philippines asking for assistance in calling for greater production and distribution of Oseltavimir. World leaders, such as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, have expressed a desire to have more generic versions of Tamiflu made, especially for Third World countries too poor to buy the brand name drug. On October 20, 2005 Hoffmann-La Roche decided they would license other companies to manufacture Oseltavimir.

Additional key persons

In addition to key executives mentioned in the summary information box
- Rebecca Taub, Vice President Research, Metabolic Diseases (source: "Obesity Drug Development Summit" conference program, sponsored by the Center for Business Intelligence, held July 2005, Arlington, VA, USA)

Company profiles

- [http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/41/41787.html Roche Group] (Yahoo!)
- [http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/43/43933.html Hoffmann-La Roche Inc.] (Yahoo!) Category:Companies of Switzerland Category:Pharmaceutical companies Category:Multinational corporations th:ฮอฟฟ์แมน-ลา โรช

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