Google launched a version 2 of their Desktop Search product. My new computer has a bunch of RAM & raided high speed hard drives, so the additional load has not been noticable.

Gary Price has his usual good coverage of the new product. I think the Sidebar idea makes it easier to consume massive amounts of information. Sometimes when I am bored I look at stock prices or financial news to find scoops. You still have to click through to Google News to find the news, but the numbers are easy to see in an instant, although sometimes they don't make sense (not sure why the two THK prices are different).

You select what channels you like, and it gives you information on from that channel / type. As you click on a category it pops out a sub box with more information.

They also have a box for web feeds, and sites that you visit often automatically have their web feed added to your feeds box.

I think it is a fairly cool product thusfar. There are also a wide array of plugins available, including one for AdSense.

Speaking of AdSense, Google has been busy on that front as well. Allowing publishers to apply extra weight and / or ignore parts of a page, and also giving publishers search terms (which may help them make additional profitable content).

Rumours are also flying about a new Google IM launching tomorrow, and they may pop VOIP into it. With people having contacts on so many different messengers I think the first mainstream messenger that lets people login to all accounts at once will probably kill the others in marketshare, especially if it is feature rich.

I still am not so high on audio though, I have grown accustom to the pause for thought that instant messaging allows.

And why would Google leave the search results alone? No reason. May as well try inline search suggestions as well.

Google is changing stuff all over the map, including a new Address Geocoding patent. Some of these patents may be bad stuff down the road for consumers.

Yahoo! is working harder on the relationship front, partnering with Verizon for $14.95 DSL services.

I posted about this before, but recently Google updated the AdWords system to the quality based minimum bids system.

Old disabled words remain disabled, and in about a month or so they intend to purge the disabled terms from the accounts. To re enable your disabled terms

• go to edit your keywords

• copy the list
• delete the disabled terms from the active account
• go to add the words and past the whole list from before. It will enable most of the disabled terms, although some may also require you raise your bids to meet the new quality standards. Also I found that sometimes I had to post the keywords into the ad groups twice for them to load.

Google software engineer Matt Cutts recently started a blog. I thought I had the scoop since I just talked to him, but it looks like others have already mentioned it.

I think I am also going to be able to do an interview of Matt pretty soon :)

I usually get about 1 to 1.5 hours of email a day, so I can only imagine how much he gets. Cool to see he has comments enabled, but his blog would be a bad one to comment spam ;)

A friend had a Google AdWords ad group waiting for review which was waiting for about a month. There was a glitch in the system to where the group did not get reviewed.

I called the Google customer support phone number (1 866 2 GOOGLE) and the Google employee told me ads should be showing by tomorrow, and they were on syndicated content sites in under 5 minutes.

I can't imagine how tedious it is reviewing all those ads, but they sure are quick on it when they throw your site at the top of the stack :)

Compare that with Verizon DSL customer service:

• Verizon charges me for a full DSL service even though they are down like 20% of the time.

• Verizon has sent people out to my house multiple times and still has crap service.
• Verizon has typically had over a half hour wait on the support phone line.
• Verizon has no option to call you back.
• Verizon randomly hangs up on you while you have been on the phone waiting for like 30 minutes.
• The only phone number with quick and useful customer service is the signup for a new account number. Out of sheer frustration when they waste my time this is the only number I call because I want to help cause attrition at their company and make their workers less efficient. Screw them.
• Two days ago I got told that I needed to talk to their consumer advocacy department and to call before 8 pm.
• Yesterday I called Verizon at about 5 pm. They transfered me through to consumer advocacy department, without giving me any sort of a wait time suggestion, even though I asked for one. I waited for about a half hour or so and then it randomly hung up on me.
• I called back a bit later and they told me to call before 4 pm, stating they were from New York taking Pennsylvania overflow, and that only sales reps are availiabe in the evening.

Yesterday driving around town I found the Verizon office. Next time their service sucks I am going directly to the local office.