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Every once in a while, I do a vanity check and run my name and URLs through Google. I don’t aspire to any level of Social Media Stardom, but it’s nice when someone reads my rants.

This Google gadget by Chris Anderson automates the process, and uses Google’s PageRank system to provide some metrics. I found the gadget in a Wired article called Internet Famous.

When I ran “Bill Sodeman” through that Vanity Validator gadget, I got a score of 54%.

Not bad, considering the scores I obtained for some very well-known bloggers:

• 67%: Julia Allison
• 61%: Dave Winer
• 59%: Ze Frank
• 59%: Robert Scoble
• 57%: Chris Pirillo
• 54%: Gina Trapani
• 54%: Bill Sodeman
• 47%: Cory Doctorow

But there’s room for improvement.

Paul Ohm, a law professor at the University of Colorado, is arguing that ISP content filtering is a violation of the Federal Wiretap Statute. That’s a five-year felony sentence for the ISP, and perhaps for any ISP network administrators who actually set up and performed the monitoring, because the statute personal and corporate responsibility.

This seems like a steep price to pay for monitoring traffic, throttling P2P apps and serving up highly targeted advertisements on web pages, but AT&T, Charter and Comcast seem willing to take the risk. Perhaps they are betting on amnesty from President McCain.

Verizon hasn’t implemented content filtering because of the legal issues. Read this article on Wired for more information.

Will video kill broadband?

According to another Wired article, ISPs and telecoms are growing more concerned about IPTV - television over the internet - as a potential showstopper. Content filtering a la Charter and Comcast is a good example of bad blocking by ISPs. Demand for Internet video keeps rising while bandwidth growth hasn’t kept pace.

If ISPs do get to use deep packet inspection (DPI) to insert their own ads in web pages, Google and other web advertisers may retaliate by using SSL to encrypt their web pages. That prevents content filtering, but the cost in the server farm may be worth the effort for Google.

The rank-and-file residential user may not like a slower, encrypted search engine, however. Jakob Nielsen pointed out in this BBC article that Internet users are becoming more aware of latency and search accuracy. Users want faster, more relevant search results so they can go straight to a web page without visiting the target site’s home page first. Users have alredy learned to ignore banner ads, according to Nielsen’s discussion in this 20 June 2007 Wall Street Journal article. Content filtering won’t help matters.

Image courtesy of bryankennedy through a Creative Commons license.

Related posts on billso.com

• 14 April 2008: Virgin Media CEO claims net neutrality is “bollocks”
• 9 April 2008: The all-seeing advertising cookie
• 3 September 2007: When users block the ads, should web sites block the users?
• 19 March 2007: About e-commerce part 2: US ISPs sell web analytics data
• 28 July 2004: Stalking the P2P users

Rumors are swirling today that Microsoft may partner with Yahoo - specifically, the search company’s search advertising business, which matches Internet searches to targeted advertisements.

Lesson: If at first you don’t succeed, just make a deal with the most valuable part of Yahoo and leave the rest to wither and die. See Silicon Alley Insider, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times for more details.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang may be willing to listen, if only to keep Mark Cuban off the Yahoo board. Yang developed a strong dislike for Cuban after the Broadcast.com founder years ago - Kara Swisher has more details in this different article.

Of course, Jerry has to keep his Yahoo employees and managers focused during all of this turmoil. Read his internal memos and some comments from Silicon Alley insider here.

Related pages on billso.com

• Microsoft and Yahoo

In February 2008, Microsoft made a takoever bid for Yahoo. The bid was withdrawn in May, but both companies continue their nervous dance around each other, with Google and other competitive rivals waiting in the wings.

• 18 May 2008: Microsoft may partner with Yahoo’s search business
• 13 May 2008: Carl Icahn may start a proxy fight for Yahoo
• 5 May 2008: Microsoft gives up on Yahoo - for now
• 30 April 2008: Microsoft-Yahoo deal possible in the next few days
• 18 April 2008: Antitrust regulators would fight a Yahoo-Google combination
• 5 April 2008: Microsoft’s offer for Yahoo may disappear
• 17 February 2008: Shareholders may bring Microsoft and Yahoo together
• 4 February 2008: Microsoft acquistion of Yahoo faces roadblocks
• 1 February 2008: Microsoft makes offer for Yahoo
• 25 January 2008: Oracle, BEA and middleware

According to this Reuters article, a Yahoo-Google combination would face more antitrust scrutiny than a Yahoo-Microsoft merger:

Google held a 59.2 percent share of the U.S. Web search market in February, compared with Yahoo’s 21.6 percent and Microsoft’s 9.6 percent, according to research firm comScore.

Those numbers would give a Yahoo-Google combination an 80.8 percent market share.

Combine Yahoo and Microsoft and their market share is only 31.2 percent, which is less than Google’s numbers.