BigMouthMedia did an interesting survey in the UK asking “do you trust search engines to keep your search behavior private?“.

The answer is simply: no.

38% feel sure Google will keep their records private. Interestingly enough Yahoo and MSN are trusted even less: 26% and 23% respectively feel confident those engines will respect their privacy.

Unknown but not private

The survey seems to reflect fear of the unknown more than anything else. It seems as if there is something new, possibly scary, under the sun.

After yesterday’s post, my boss a friend and I had a discussion about what it all meant.

His take is that while the IAB is predicting significant slowing in online advertising in the coming year, this is just a pause so everyone can take a moment to stop and catch their collective online advertising breath.

It plays out like this, states he: The mindshare for Internet usage is give or take 25% of time and as such, the online advertising budget should be approximately 25% of the total advertising/marketing mix, not the scant 8% it currently is.

MSNBC and the David C. Churbuck article Google and the Rebirth of Banner Ads provided not only some interesting insight into the Google Doubleclick deal, but also this little nugget way, way, way, way down the article, and it’s a long article so perhaps if reading it, you might have zoned out. It is after all Friday.

On the heels of the Google Doubleclick story, and the Google Clear Channel story and the Yahoo print story and the ebay TV story and the Spotrunner tv story and the…

Well, you get my point.

Onilne advertising is only beginning to heat up. And while traditional advertisers have their eyeballs askance and their eyebrows furrowed at the antics of the upstarts, the upstart as looking at traditional advertising models with disruptive technologies in mind and rate cards in sight.

Red Herring announce today in its YouTube Lining Up Summer Ads article that pre-roll and post roll ads will become a part of the YouTube experience this summer.

As reported last week in the ComputerWorldUK article, Major corporations post sensitive data on Google calendar it appears that you can tell two friends and they can tell two friends, and so on and so on.

Or, you can just make the entry public in your Google Calendar and the whole world can know.

Again I wonder how much information we’re giving Google, exactly.

Or how much information we’re giving our competitor’s via Google.

And Google’s defense is “well, just don’t make it public”. Except the default setting makes it public, the settings being Default, Public and Private.

The Big Buzz is that eBay might or probably will acquire StumbleUpon.

Part of the big buzz is of course that Google lost out and is starting their own version instead.

Sure.

But isn’t it amazing that MySpace is going social content by adding headlines from around the web which can then be voted up or down by its users?

As the Times Online puts it:

This approach blends elements of Google News and sites such as Digg and Netscape, which rely on readers to submit stories and determine their prominence. It also marks the site’s ambitions to become a web portal like Yahoo!, providing its users with a front door to the Internet.

The hallmark of Web 2.0 is supposed to be user generated content, wherein users contribute their own text, pictures and video content.

But according to Bill Tancer of Hitwise and the Red Herring article, Web 2.0: More Voyeurs than Creators.

According to Tancer, only .16% of visits to Google’s YouTube are by users with the goal of uploading material. .16%. One has to wonder, as well, how much of that is truly original material.

Tancer further details that the numbers for Flickr are similar, with .2% of visitors destined to the site are there with the intention of uploading photos.

I’m already tired. Here we go again: Google has announced that it will, this Summer, release an presentation tool a la simplified PowerPoint.

Now the obligatory “we’re not aiming this at Microsoft” statements and what not; and this is just the announcement that somewhere this Summer they will release it.

Hands up everybody who’s waiting for an online presentation tool. I see one in the back, yes… ah, and there’s another one. Oh wait, that’s my dog.

Well that’s interesting… Lifehacker reports that the manager of Google’s enterprise products, Rajen Sheth, has done an 18 minute video showing how a company can increase productivity by using Google Apps.

The video appears on the Official Google Channel and was added this Monday.

It’s on YouTube

Why does Google prefer to use YouTube over Google Video?

• YouTube draws 4 times as much visits as Google Video (HitWise)
• YouTube visitors stay twice as long as visitors at Google Video (HitWise)
• YouTube reaches 20.5% of the US Internet population against Google Video’s 6.7% (comScore)

Here at Search Engine People we spend hours doing serious research, testing hypotheses, tracking their outcome, etc.

Occasionally we come across a GG (Google Glitch) which either makes us smile or frown.

Read these travel directions from Toronto to Paris – and pay attention to step #26.