From The Register:

Google's internet library project will face competition from Yahoo!, but also from a less predictable rival: the European Commission announced its own plan on Friday. And it has an advantage: if copyright laws interfere with its plans it can change the laws.

Why do so many people care about who controls what databases?

"Without a collective memory, we are nothing, and can achieve nothing. It defines our identity and we use it continuously for education, work and leisure," said Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding.

For historical perspective check out The Royal Library of Alexandria, which is also covered in the always ever recommendable Cosmos series, although the Carl Sagan site could sure use some SEO.

The LED Digest is having another one of the is SEO dead debates.

In last issue Ken Evoy made a blatent self promo SEO is dead post::

If you are not ready for the future, for what's coming big-time, you do not understand why SEO is dead and has been for a while. Oh sure, the corpse is still walking, and SEOers get real upset when they read a book that is normally only for our Site Build It! customers but that has leaked out and I'll share it here with you. It's called "The Tao of CTPM"

Tao of CTPM? Tao of ZYJQ? Talk about dropping an advert, eh? He even added a link, and this dislaimer:

Please understand that it's been written for normal business people, not geeks. But also please understand that these people, unskilled in the Net but who know their BUSINESS, outperform as a group, SEOers

How can he prove that on average his customers outperform the average SEO?

When you say how another field is full of crap you have to expect them to question your own tactics. Like the advert posts or paying affiliates 3 weeks late.

I am both surprised and happy to see Shari Thurow stick it to him:

Ken, stick to sales. That's what you're good at. Please do not make blanket statements about a field in which you have limited knowledge.

Where Shari falls short is her next line:

Search engine spammers have limited knowledge, too. Their goal is to exploit the engines. Ask a spammer to build and write a user-friendly AND search-friendly site that converts? They don't have the skills.

For those SEOs who talk down algorithm chasers and talk up user friendly conversion friendly etc etc etc... out of those sites, how many of their sites do you find yourself regularly linking at?

I don't think SEO is in any way dead, just more that there are enough quick acting feedback networks to where it is becoming more efficient and more useful for some to do holistic marketing instead of just focusing on algorithm busting. As far as what is best goes, it sorta depends on your personality though.

AdAge asks IS BUZZ MARKETING ILLEGAL?

As marketers more frequently look to recruit consumers brand agents to spread goodwill for brands, industry attorneys view buzz marketing as a likely area of regulatory involvement, especially around the issue of compensating people to participate in buzz programs when they fail to disclose their connections to marketers and agencies. While there is no legal precedent specific to word-of-mouth marketing, there are Federal Trade Commission guidelines for ads that are likely to apply.

How far can they stretch this line of thinking? Is affiliate marketing a paid endorsement? Does every affiliate link need to be identified? How the hell would they enforce that?

In the offline world when you read a billboard it does not usually say SPONSORED BY in huge red letters. Celebrities endorse products they never use. What makes one type of advertising legit and another illegal?

Sometimes big fans of a company who love their products are great people to employ, and sometimes you only find those people after they state how wonderful your products are. Proving causality will be tough.

Viral marketing might be illegal, but some of the true web gurus think it is what drives the web:

It is a truism that the greatest internet success stories don't advertise their products. Their adoption is driven by "viral marketing"--that is, recommendations propagating directly from one user to another. You can almost make the case that if a site or product relies on advertising to get the word out, it isn't Web 2.0.

Some of these same people talking up buzz marketing being illegal during the day are probably working on buzz marketing campaigns at night.

So Gmail created an autosave feature, which saves your email drafts.

What is scary about that is that sometimes you may start writing stuff that you did not want to send...you may have been blowing off steam in a random form box only to find it got cached and later winds up in court.

I think Google makes many of these features with genuinely good intent, but some of the people in positions of power may have bad intent.

Having recently read the WSJ today to find Drug Maker Under Fire for Sharing Data and DeLay was indicted again and spending many thousands of dollars on an ongoing lawsuit that I think is without merit makes me wish some of the new features were widely mentioned and easily opt outable before they were live launched.

Some of the pressures Google will feel are not internal. Just look at the maps, or think of how absurd 38,514 hours of wiretapping the wrong line sounds.

Books:
Open Content Alliance - Yahoo! fights Google on book front. Gary has commentary from the founder of Project Gutenburg. And there is Wikibooks. I have not read any of them, but it sure takes a ton of effort to write a book.

As more and more people realize how easy it is to publish Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.

And it was all Yellow...
Consolidation on the yellow pages front. R.H. Donnelley to buy Dex media for 4.2 billion. How does a company worth 2 billion buy another company for 4.2 billion and assume 5.3 billion of their debt as well? They have to be getting squeezed by search, and it is only going to get worse ahead.