Chris Liddell to Exit as Microsoft CFO; Peter Klein to Take Over Role

Chris Liddell will be leaving his role as Microsoft’s Chief Financial Officer at the end of 2009. Replacing him will be Peter Klein, who has been corporate vice president and CFO of Microsoft’s Business Division (MBD).

Here’s the official Steve Ballmer statement on the matter:

Chris and his finance team have accomplished a great deal over the past four and a half years. The team is deep and strong, and has an excellent record of building value for our shareholders. Peter brings great finance and operations expertise and a deep understanding of the company, and I am looking forward to a smooth transition that continues our commitment to cost containment and finance excellence.

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AdWords Makes Product Extensions Available to All U.S. Advertisers

Google has unleashed a new feature in AdWords and is making it available to all U.S. advertisers. The feature is called Product Extensions and it uses information from an advertiser’s account in Google Merchant Center.

Product extensions allow images to be shown with your ad. However, unlike Product Listing Ads which are available on a Cost-Per-Action (CPA) basis, product extensions are available on a Cost-Per-Click (CPC) basis. The ads include a plusbox, which expands the ad. Advertisers will not be charged when a user simply clicks the plusbox – only when a user actually clicks through to the site.

Additionally, product extensions offer more control than product listing ads. For example, product extensions will only be triggered for ads by keywords set up in your campaign. And you can control which products appear in an ad. With Product Listing Ads, Google chooses these options for advertisers.

In order to use product extensions, go to your Google Merchant Account and add your AdWords account ID. Then, under the “Campaign Settings” in AdWords, look for “Ad Extensions” and choose “Use product images and information from my Google Merchant Center account.”

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Bing Mobile App Now Available for BlackBerry Curve

A few weeks ago, Bing made its mobile application available for BlackBerry Storm devices. Now, the BlackBerry Curve is getting the mobile app treatment from Bing.

If you buy the new BlackBerry Curve 2 (8530) from Verizon, the app will come pre-installed in the device. If you have a different model Curve or carrier, then you can download the app at m.bing.com/download.

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If you aren’t at SES Berlin, go to SES Chicago for 11 topics breaking

Search Engine Strategies Berlin is being held this week at the Crowne Plaza Berlin City Centre, and SES Chicago 2009 gets underway in two weeks at the Hilton Chicago.

During the past 10 weeks, I’ve shared 10 important reasons for going to these must-attend events. For those of you who want to join in the chorus, they are: 10 authors speaking, nine trainers training, eight days a-learning, seven tracks amazing, six booths astounding, five brand new things, four keynote themes, three key trends, two early birds, and a ranking in the top three.

This week, I’ll share an eleventh significant reason for attending Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009 — and it isn’t “11 pipers piping.” You should attend SES Chicago 2009 for “11 topics breaking.”

According to recent research by Tradeshow Week, the top reason for attending conventions and tradeshows this year is to “keep up-to-date on trends and issues.” And a close look at the conference agenda for Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009 shows that the conference sessions will help you keep up-to-date on trends and issues — big time.

When the conference agenda was first posted back in August, 11 out of the 65 sessions were totally new. In addition, another 11 sessions were “reserved for late-breaking topics.”

Since then, Incisive Media has appointed of Mike Grehan as VP and Global Content Director for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ, and Search Engine Strategies. And Grehan has identified these late-breaking topics and speakers have been invited to keep you up-to-date on these trends and issues.

Together, these 22 totally new sessions represent the “bleeding edge” of opportunities and threats in the search engine marketing industry. And some of them aren’t even about search engines — they’re about social media and social networking sites.

This is why savvy search industry veterans who have attended each and every SES Chicago since 2003 keep coming back year after year. They know this Search Engine Strategies conference gives them a sneak preview of the latest topics two to three months before their direct and indirect competition.

Below is the list of 22 sessions which are totally new to SES. You can’t attend them all, but you’d be smart to attend as many as you can.

Totally New Conference Sessions on Day 1: Dec. 7, 2009
Search: A Real Time Paradigm?
YouTube & Video Optimization
New Exporters: How Search Marketing Can Be Used to Build Trade overseas
Online PR: Where to Next?
From Search to Discovery
Point/ Counterpoint: DIY SEM – The Pros & Cons
20 Secrets of Top Converting Websites
The Quest for Perfect Information: How Network Intelligence is Transforming Search
Customer Insights Via Search Engine Tools
Ghost Blogging, Tweeting, Content Production: Is it Ethical? Does it Matter?
What’s the Link between Search & Social?

Totally New Conference Sessions on Day 2: Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009
Developments in Information Retrieval on the Web
Social Media Checklist
Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News
PR, Social Media and Search

Totally New Conference Sessions on Day 3: Wednesday, Dec. 9
PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle
Advanced Paid Search Brain Candy
Facebook Rockstars Roundtable: Marketing For the Other Internet
How to Cut Your Corporate Budget Without Cutting Leads or Sales
The Oprah Winfrey Litigation: What Affiliate Marketers MUST Know
Eye Tracking Research Update
M2M: Cracking the Code on Marketing to Marketers

Next week, we’ll look at a final reason for going to Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009. In the meantime, just keep singing “11 topics breaking, 10 authors speaking, nine trainers training, eight days a-learning, seven tracks amazing, six booths astounding, five brand new things, four keynote themes, three key trends, two early birds, and a ranking in the top three.”

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Bing and Google Both Gain Half Point in October 2009 comScore Rankings

comScore has released their search market share rankings for October 2009 and the news is good for both Google and Bing – they both gained 0.5% in search share. This came at the expense of Yahoo! who lost 0.8% and AOL, which lost 0.1%. Ask.com stayed steady.

After experiencing a slowdown in the rate of growth in September, Bing is back on the momentum it was gaining since launch last June. Bing has now gained 1.9% share since launch.

At first, Bing’s growth came at Google’s expense. As of this new report, Google has recouped all losses, while Bing keeps growing.

This is mostly problematic for Microsoft’s partnership with Yahoo! They’re stealing share from a competitor set to become a partner.

Still, Microsoft has to be thrilled with the headway they’re making with Bing.

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Revised Google Book Settlement Addresses Rightsholders Issues

The Google Book Settlement has finally been revised. There are two main changes that have been made: how the settlement pertains to other countries and unclaimed works.

Here’s Google’s official statements on those two issues:

International Scope:

As revised, the settlement will only include books that were either registered with the U.S. Copyright Office or published in the U.K., Australia, or Canada. After
hearing feedback from foreign rightsholders, the plaintiffs decided to narrow the
class to include only these countries, which share a common legal heritage and
similar book industry practices. British, Australian, and Canadian rightsholders are
joining the case as named plaintiffs and will also be represented on the Board of the
Book Rights Registry.

Unclaimed works:

The amended settlement agreement requires the Book Rights Registry to search for rightsholders who have not yet come forward and to hold revenue on their behalf. The settlement now also specifies that a portion of the revenue generated from unclaimed works may, after five years, be used to locate rightsholders, but will no longer be used for the Registry’s general operations or redistributed to other rightsholders. The Registry may ask the court after 10 years to distribute these funds to nonprofits benefiting rightsholders and the reading public, and may provide abandoned funds to the appropriate government authority in compliance with state property laws. The Registry will now also include a Court-approved fiduciary who will represent rightsholders of unclaimed books, act to protect their interests, and license their works to third parties, to the extent permitted by law.

Google also took the opportunity of the revision to emphasize and reassure on other points of concern. They reiterated that the settlement didn’t prevent books from being sold at other retailers such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Additionally, they will have agreements with libraries to provide access to Google Books.

Rightsholders also have the ability to limit what Google previews in book search results. You may have noticed this if you’ve ever accessed a book from Google Books. You’re happily reading along and then you get a notice that pages or chapters are missing. This is because the author wants you to buy the book and Google is complying with that reasonable request. If an author wants to make a book available for free or under Creative Commons licenses, they are free to do that as well.

Overall, the agreement is largely intact, with the exception to those two big changes mentioned above.

What to you think of the Google Books settlement revision? Will this be the final version or will they have to go back to the drawing board again? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment.

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Leapfish Launches Portal, Search For “Living Web”

Leapfish has launched an entry portal for web users to what they are calling “the Living Web” as they show in their impressive YouTube commercial below. Basically Leapfish offers a start page for web users where they can watch their Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as set up feeds for news, entertainment, sports and other services.

The site offers some very interesting possibilities. It has some similarities to iGoogle but has managed to integrate social media faster than the search giant that recently signed a data share agreement with Twitter. Bing also has access to both Facebook and Twitter so it will be interesting to see if they launch something similar.

Leapfish is part of DotNext a company devoted to innovation. Their CEO Ben Behrouzi gives some insights in to Leapfish in a Fast Company interview below.

Leapfish combines the social media into the search process to create their results. “There remain major aspects of the Web that have not yet integrated “searching” and “sharing” of the Real Time Web, including traditional search. But as filtration and integration progress the Web will take the form of a living breathing database,” their blog notes.

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Nielsen Rankings Show Google Up at Yahoo! and Bing’s Expense

Earlier today, Greg Jarboe informed us about Hitwise’s search share data and how it showed Bing continued to have momentum. But Nielsen has released their search share data for October 2009 and it’s painting a different picture.

The data shows Google gaining 2 points in the past two months. This came at the expense of Yahoo! and Bing, which both lost a point since Nielsen’s last search report in August.

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Google Adds World Bank Public Data to Search Results

Last April, Google launched the integration of public data into its main search results. Now, they’re adding even more public data – this time from the World Bank.

You can search 17 World Bank data indicators:

CO2 emissions per capita
Electricity consumption per capita
Energy use per capita
Exports as percentage of GDP
Fertility rate
GDP deflator change
GDP growth rate
GNI per capita in PPP dollars
Gross Domestic Product
Gross National Income in PPP dollars
Imports as percentage of GDP
Internet users as percentage of population
Life expectancy
Military expenditure as percentage of GDP
Mortality rate, under 5
Population
Population growth rate

Here’s a screenshot for the results of searching “gdp growth rate zimbabwe”

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Google Dashboard Aims to Alleviate Privacy Fears by Showing Data Collection

Google has released a new product called Google Dashboard. This allows users to see what data has been collected on an account associated with a number of Google products. So, if you use GMail, YouTube, and Reader on the same account, you’ll see the data collected for each service.

You can check the data collected for your Google account at Google.com/dashboard. You’ll have to sign in, even if you’re already signed into your Google account. Also, it can take several seconds to load all of the data – and while 20 products are available to view in Google Dashboard, not all of Google’s services are included just yet.

To learn more, check out this video:

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