Google minimum Adsense payout.

One of the reasons that AdSense is such a cash cow for Google is that its terms of service mean that as a Google AdSense publisher you will not receive a payment from them until your account has accrued $100. Now for many small scale publishers it can take a long time to reach this amount. In fact for the less serious blogger of website publisher it might seem like a lifetime!

Google holds back these amounts less than £100 until the publisher reaches this amount and then makes payment. Until payment is made this money is held in Google's own accounts and it shows on Google's balance sheet as "accrued revenue share". At the end of 2006 the amount held back by Google in this way amounted to over $370million. Google of course earns interest on this amount. Many will feel that this money actually belongs to Google's publisher customers and that Google is profiting at their expense.

There are Ad programs that sell themselves on the basis of not having a minimum payout like this and this may often be a selling point in their favour. ( check out a list of Adsense alternatives. For Google it may seem that, apart from the welcome extra revenue for them, there are also genuine reasons for holding payment in this way. They might argue for example that this puts a delay in the system which makes the detection of click fraud more likely.

Google may be shortsighted in this. If they reduced the minimum amount they would be likely to further stimulate interest in their program. Google clearly feel they do not need to stimulate their AdSense program further in this way. Maybe the $370million bird in the hand is better than the bird in the bush.

Google Adwords redirect exploit

In a worrying development for Google Tuesday , Roger Thompson CTO of Exploit Prevention Labs in a blog post reported exploits of the Google Adwords system.

Exploits such as these unless prevented threaten the whole structure of Adsense and Adwords.

Exploiting the Google presentation of Ads
When Google serves sponsored sites ads the URL that the user sees in the advert is not the URL that the user is directed to when they click the Ad. This is the normal functioning of the Adwords system. It allows Advertisers to show their main URL on their advert but to direct users to a specific page when the user clicks the Ad.

Normally when you roll your mouse over a URL you will see the URL address that you are about to click through to. For sponsored Ad results however this URL is not shown.

Better Business Bureau and Cars.com exploit
Users encountering the exploit would find that clicking on the exploit Ads for the Better Business Bureau or cars.com will take them to a real site - but - in passing they are first taken to a malicious site www dot smarttrack dot org which tries to install a backdoor keylogger which would give access to information about the users online banking transactions for certain online banks. This redirect via the malicious site will not be apparent to the user before they click the Ad because Google Adwords URL's are not shown as explained above.

This must be a worrying development for Google because any loss of customer confidence in the safety of Ad links could potentially send click through rates crashing and cause major problems for not only for Google but also for many webmasters who have income streams from Adsense and who rely on Adwords click throughs for site visitors.

It is vital that Google deals with this exploit threat robustly both for their sakes and for the sake of those who depend on Click through from the Adsense/Adwords advertising model

Microsoft takes on Google

Well Google clearly has Microsoft rattled. Microsoft which at one time appeared to be rolling over everyone else and to have the Internet at its feet has fired a salvo at Google with the release of a statement raising concerns about Google's acquisition of DoubleClick. The statement read;

"This proposed acquisition raises serious competition and privacy concerns in that it gives the Google-DoubleClick combination unprecedented control in the delivery of online advertising, and access to a huge amount of consumer information by tracking what customers do online. We think this merger deserves close scrutiny from regulatory authorities to ensure a competitive online advertising market."

The suggestion that anti-trust regulators have a look at Google is of course a bit rich coming from Microsoft which has been the subject of so much scrutiny for its business practices. It would seem that the Microsoft cash cow is not happy that someone else is grazing its fields.


Microsoft of course had problems with the U.S. Justice Department which accused it of monopolization. It has also had long running antitrust disputes with European regulators. Microsoft would of course not be doing this just to give Google a headache and spoil the party. Perish the thought.

Microsoft was itself an unsuccessful pursuer of DoubleClick. So no sour grapes there then.

Its unlikely that Microsoft can make much of a case against Google if we take a cool look at facts. Google and DoubleClick were never direct competitors so how can it be argued that their combination will harm competition?

Google's forte is online search and contextual advertising while DoubleClick specializes more web display advertising especially video. DoubleClick arguably supplies more sophisticated advertising.

According to Microsoft's general counsel a combined Google and DoubleClick would handle over 80% of the ads online. even if that is true the online advertising business is still only a fraction of worldwide advertising activity.

They may get Google one day but it doesn't look like this will be it. So for now the Google Cash Cow grows fatter still.

And Microsoft - it makes you wonder - are they beginning to lose their way? Just what are they going to do with all that money?

Google and AOL

An agreement betwwen Google and Aol will mean that companies will be able to use Google's Adwords system to purchase ads targeted exclusively to AOL sites. This agreement should benefit both companies involved and also advertisers who will be able to deliver more tragetted advertising.

On MondayAOL began selling search ads thus extending its arrangement with Google to allow AOL’s advertisers to buy ads directly on AOL’s Google-powered search engine.

Matt Van Wagner, president of FindMeFaster, a privately held, self-funded search engine optimization agency in Nashua, New Hampshire, argues that AOL’s consumers behave differently than general Google users and that this could mean a big difference in the way they react to ads. This may provide opportunities for additional niche marketing which have not so far been open to Adwords users.

Google aplogy to Chinese firm.

The inexorable march of Google continues, mostly to the benefit of web users and particluarly in the form of Adsense which of course allows web publishers to make earnings from contextual advertising along with their content.

Google is not of course a prefect beast and the mighty Google itself occasinally comes unstuck and is accused of unfair practices. Business in China Reports that Google has had to apologise to chinese internet firm after it was accussed of using that firms information in a new tool Google had developed to improve the input of chinese written characters. Google appears to have backed down and apologised straight away.

Google executives earn only $1 - maybe

Googles 2006 accounts have shown that the search engine giant only paid its three executives salaries of $1 (50p) .

We read this and felt really sorry for them. However it may be a small consolation to them that they have shares in the company. Since the shares were listed in August 2004 shares they have risen from $85 to $460.48 last year. Mr Brin, president of technology has shares in Google worth $13.2bn, Mr Page has shares of $13.4bn and Mr Schmidt's has $4.9bn. Their combined Google shares were worth $31.5bn at the end of the year.

Mr Schmidt's recieved "other compensation", of $555,742 and Larry Page's was $36,795. For both of them most of this went towards personal security.

Four vice presidents - George Reyes, Shona Brown, David Drummond and Jonathan Rosenberg - had salaries of $250,000 last year.

We were going to suggest that we start a collection for them but it looks like they'll not be needing it.