Attack of the Ads: Yahoo and Microsoft muscling in on Google's turf

Filed under: Business, Internet, News, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!

Attack of the Ads: Yahoo and Microsoft muscling in on Google's turf

by Victor Agreda, Jr. Aug 3rd 2005

So, Monday we saw Ask Jeeves (remember him?) announcing an ad-brokering system similar to Google's. Then Yahoo decided to ramp up its Yahoo Publisher Network, which is another ad placement/keyword system. Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft will announce next week it's flavor: MSN Keywords.

According to the article, MSN's implementation is almost identical to Google's, using an auction system for keywords. It's essentially an extension of their beta product MSN adCenter. At first it will be an invitation-only system, and no doubt will ultimately spread to all MSN sites (especially Spaces, where I think the personalization really reaches critical mass).

This puts the heat on Google, which derives over half of its revenue from the ad placement and brokering service. Personally I love all these systems because they really do a good job of targeting markets. My wife was on a breast-feeding board on a major women's site (which shall remain nameless) and was seeing ads for things like diet pills, sports cars, and stuff that most new moms couldn't care less about (never mind being dangerous). Quite frankly I'm surprised everyone doesn't do this sort of thing.

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Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

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