Watching Google from the outside – with the limited information that offers – it seems they buy companies mainly to get more:
从旁观者的角度看-在非常有限的信息的基础上-他们收购公司主要为了获得更多的：
Some of above items are interrelated; especially with technology and developers, there’s not always a clear distinction.
上面有的内容本身就是重叠的；特别是技术和开发人员本来就没有清晰的区分。
Furthermore, Google sometimes invests in foreign partners out of legal or political necessity, like when they partner with Tianya or Ganji in China; or they may subsidize a company to skew the market in disfavor of competitors... e.g. when they pay Mozilla developers to progress Firefox, or pay Mozilla when users search Google using Firefox, to balance the market against Microsoft Internet Explorer. While there isn’t a lot of evidence it may also be possible they sometimes buy companies just to silence a competitor, or to prevent a competitor from acquiring it and growing too strong. The philanthropic arm of Google, called Google.org, also invests in green energy and more to improve the world at large. But again, as we don’t sit inside Google’s strategic company meetings, much of this is just speculation.
此外有时候Google投资国外的公司还出于法律或者政治上的需要。比如他们在中国就和天涯和赶集网进行合作；或者他们在一家公司上砸钱就是为了让对手的日子不好过...比如他们资助Mazilla的开发者开发Firefox，用户在使用Firefox的时候通过Google搜索Mazillo也可以拿到钱，为的是平衡几乎被微软IE吞并的浏览器市场。还有一种可能，虽然拿不出多少证据，他们收购一家公司目的是威慑竞争对手，或者不要让竞争对手抢去变得异常的强大。Google博爱之手称作Google.org，主要是在绿色能源和改进世界等方面投资。但是我们不是坐在Google公司战略会议上，这些仅仅是推测。
The end goal of acquiring a company may be aligned with Google’s overall mission. We can paraphrase it as 1) grab all the world’s data, 2) make that data useful and accessible in order to direct user attention towards it, 3) profit from ads displayed with the data. Google’s hardware business aside, the company indeed just sells attention. If you look at it from a bird’s view, you could perhaps split up Google’s goals into the two philosophies make money (more the manager or ad sales types) and build the ultimate AI (the developer types). Ideally, these two camps work hand in hand, as the ultimate AI would generate the ultimate user attention generating loads of money.
收购公司的终目的可能都可以和Google的使命挂上钩。我们可以从下面几个方面阐释：1）搜刮世界上所有的数据，2）把这些数据利用起来并对外开放目的是把用户的注意力吸引过来，3）在显示数据的同时投放广告，并从中获利。Google的硬件生意就是为了赚眼球。如果像上帝一样审视Google你可能会把Google的目标分解成两个理念挣钱（更多是是经营者或广告销售的想法）和建造终极人工智能（更多是开发者的想法）。幸运的是这两个阵营是齐头并进的，终极人工智能可以吸引超多的用户注意力然后就是哗啦啦的银子。
This whole mission is then accompanied by a moral framework that started with “do no evil” and changed to “do good,” a more traditional but less powerful construct as it transcends from a restrictive consideration to a potentially restriction-free justification... a self-referential “do Google.”
这一使命和公司的道德框架紧密联合在一起，公司信条也慢慢从不干坏事变成做好事，一个更传统但不是那么张扬的概念，也证明他们从自我约束阶段向无约束的转变...自卖自夸的“Google一下”。
Here is a limited selection of Google’s many past acquisitions, checked mainly against the four parameters data, users, technology, and developers:
这儿有一份Google收购公司的不完全清单，主要是从数据，用户群，技术和开发者几个方面分析。
As the chess master once replied when asked about his favorite piece on the board: “My favorite piece is whichever wins the game.” Google seems to be getting more and more pragmatic about acquisitions in terms of buying whatever advances their strategic interest. Formerly, the focus was slightly more on technology and data acquisitions, while nowadays it’s also often about mere land-grab of user base. But even one of the earliest acquisitions – Blogger – was a lot about users, albeit in a more technical and geeky space (blogging) than e.g. the acquisition start of DoubleClick (hit-the-monkey ads). If Google starts focusing too much on land grab acquisitions though, they may get into legal troubles due to accusations of being a monopoly – just buying market share does not progress technology, which in the end hurts users.
就像在被问到棋盘上最喜欢哪个子时围棋高手回答说“我最喜欢的是赢棋的那个子。”Google会收购任何可以促进他们战略利益的东西，他们的收购也变得越来越现实。之前他们的重点是收购技术和数据，而现在他们做的更多是在用户群方面攻城略地。但是最早的收购之一-Blogger-也是针对用户的，尽管比Doubleclick（点击付费广告）的收购更有技术性和更极客。如果Google开始太关注攻城略地式的收购，他们可能会因为涉嫌垄断惹上官司-只是花钱买市场份额不会促进技术的发展，到最后倒霉的还是用户。
When looking into the future to understand which companies Google might buy next, it still helps to check against all four main parameters. Some companies sole reason of existence seems to be trying to create “Googlebait,” wanting to be snapped up by Google. This hardly seems to work because the goals of a company which has time to think about being acquired are apparently not sufficiently directed towards data, users and technology, perhaps due to a lack of great developers on-board.
要推测将来Google会收购哪些公司还是要参照我们的四条考虑因素。有些公司就是为创建Google饵而存在，幻想着被Google买下来。这基本上行不通因为如果一家公司有时间想着怎样被收购很明显不会太注重数据用户和技术，或者是因为本来就缺乏有能力的开发人员。
Some companies also try to make it seemingly really easy for Google to acquire them, by already working a lot within Google frameworks: RememberTheMilk’s todo suite (which works on top of Google Calendar) or the Zoho office suite (using Google Gears) come to mind. Indeed, Google may look at these companies in terms of adding new good developers to their own teams in that space. However, in many acquisitions Google may also want precisely the opposite, namely to increase their developer knowledge delta. Just buying a team that understands Google may not help Google tackle new problems.
有些公司好像把收购变得更容易一些，他们已经开始研究使用Google的架构：RememberTheMilk的日程安排套装（在Google日历上运行的）或者是Zoho办公套装（使用了Google Gears）就是这一类型的。Google在打算补充一些优秀的开发人员到他们的自己同一领域的团队时确实会在这些公司里找找看。但是在很多时候Google想要的却恰恰相反，说是为了增加他们开发人员的知识三角洲。只是买一支熟悉Google的团队可能对解决新的问题不会有太多帮助。
Lists and ranking resources can be tough and controversial. A while back we ranked top blogs on the topic of search engine marketing (SEO and PPC) that publish their RSS subscriber counts via Google’s Feedburner.
列表和资源排名做起来比较困难也比较有争议。不久前我们通过计算在Google的Feedburner上的订阅量对关于搜索引擎市场（搜索引擎优化和按点击付费）的热门博客进行了排名。
With changes in the search marketing industry, one can logically wonder, “How many SEM blogs really still post about search marketing?” To help answer that question, we took a look at 10 of the top search marketing blogs by RSS subscriber counts using the Wordle “word cloud” tool:
搜索引擎市场在改变，我们会很自然的问，“还有多少关注搜索引擎市场的博客在写搜索市场引擎市场相关的文章？”为了方便回答这个问题，我们用Wordle的文字云工具研究了一下下订阅量排名前十位的关注搜索引擎市场的博客：
What do you think? Interesting results.
你的看法如何？结果很有趣吧。
Keep in mind of course, that these Wordle word cloud images are based on a single day snapshot of the home page, not the entire site. However, it’s still interesting to see the visualization.
需要注意的是，这些Wordle文字云是基于主页一天的快照创建的，而不是整个网站。但是看到这样的形象视图还是很有劲的。
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
Wordle是一款根据你提供的文字声称文字云的小玩意。文字云对源文字里出现频率较高的词醒目显示。你可以使用不同的字体，版式和色调。创建的图片你可以爱怎么用就怎么用，或者是保存在Wordle的画册里和朋友分享。Worldle.net好像打不开，翻墙过去可以看到Wordle的主页，这段介绍就是主页上的，但是没有办法创建自己的文字云。
Late last month, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reported that Google was in the final stages of negotiations to purchase Digg, the popular user-vote-counting news site. A few days later, Arrington, citing unnamed sources, posted an update: For unknown reasons, Google had walked away from the deal. Digg's dalliance with Google wasn't much of a surprise—just about every major tech company has flirted with buying Digg in the last few years—but to some of the company's fans, the deal's breakdown represented a real blow. "Google is really the only company I can think of that could actually improve Digg," went one much-dugg comment.
上个月月底TechCrunch的Michael Arrington报道说Google已进入收购Digg谈判的最后阶段。几天后Arrington援引不愿透漏姓名的消息来源报道了最新情况：不知出于什么援引Google放弃了这笔交易。Digg这次玩弄Google完全在意料之中-就像最近几年里每个大的科技公司都有收购Digg的传闻一样-但是对于一些Digg迷来说这次交易的失败确实是一个不小的打击，“Google是唯一我能想到的能改进Digg的公司，”一条评论这样写道。
The comment is revealing—among techies, selling to Google has never been considered selling out. In Silicon Valley, Google is seen as an entrepreneurs' paradise, and not just because of the free food and fancy toilets. With its flat organization chart and the freedom employees get to work on creative side projects, Google is said to run much like a start-up: a company that heaps money and engineering resources on restless innovators who want to create the next big thing.
这条评论表明-在IT爱好者眼里卖给Google并不是卖了出去。在硅谷Google是创业者的乐园，不是因为免费食物也不是因为那些奇妙的厕所。凭着他们平行的内部结构组织和给员工在开发业余项目上的自由，Google被认为还是像一个刚起步的公司那样运作：一个愿意把金钱和开发资源投在永不安分的开发者身上的公司，他们的目标就是创造下一个传奇。
On the other hand, may I present Jaiku. Google purchased the "micro-blogging" company last year—think of it as a rival to Twitter—and then promptly closed it down to new users. Or look at JotSpot, a start-up that built a wiki collaboration tool for office workers. Google bought it in October 2006. Sixteen months later, it relaunched a radically different version of the service, Google Sites, to much criticism from longtime JotSpot users, who felt abandoned and betrayed.
另一方面，我还是把Jaiku拿出来看看，去年Google收购这一微型博客后-一款被认为是Twitter对手的服务-很快就不再对新用户开放了。再看看JotSpot，一家刚起步的为办公用户提供wiki协作工具的公司。Google在2006年十月份买下了这家公司，十六个月后推出一款版本完全不同的服务，Google Sites，非常不受JotSpot老用户欢迎，他们觉得被无情的抛弃了。
Jaiku and JotSpot are examples of a phenomenon I call the Google black hole. Despite Google's reputation for fostering new companies, many services that nestle into Mountain View's welcoming bosom are never heard from again. The pattern: Company gets bought out. Users rejoice. Company lies fallow for months. Users grow impatient. Company's employees get farmed out to other Google projects. Company lies fallow for more months. Users get even more impatient ...
Jaiku和JotSpot是我称之为Google黑洞现象的代表。尽管Google一向以促进新公司的发展而闻名于世，不少投入这家山景城公司欢迎的怀抱的服务就从人间蒸发啦。其中的规律：公司被收购。用户们欢呼。公司休耕几个月。用户有点不耐烦了。公司的员工被寄养到别的Google项目上。接下来的几个月公司继续休耕。用户更不耐烦...
Consider the fate of Dodgeball, an innovative mobile service that was a predecessor to Twitter, Jaiku, and the many "location-aware" apps that now clog up the iPhone. The company, which launched in 2003, enabled people to send texts indicating where they were hanging out. In response, you'd get texts telling you which of your friends (or friends of friends) were nearby. In 2005, Dodgeball's creators, Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert, had just finished up grad school at NYU and were looking for investors in their service, which had become popular among techies in Manhattan. Of all the prospective offers they heard, Google's seemed to come with the fewest strings. Google paid Dodgeball a small outlay of cash and stock—the exact terms weren't disclosed—and Crowley and Rainert moved into Google's New York office.
想想Dodgeball的命运吧，非常有创意的移动服务公司，Twitter，Jaiku和不少依附在iPhone上的定位程序的前辈。公司2003年开始运营，利用他们提供的服务用户可以发送定位自己所在位置的文字信息。作为回应，你也会收到一些信息，显示附近出现的你的朋友（或朋友的朋友）。2005年Dodgeball的创建者，Dennis Crowley和Alex Rainert，刚刚完成在纽约大学的研究生学业，正在寻找看好他们服务的投资者，当时他们的服务在曼哈顿的IT人士中间很受欢迎。在所有可能的投资者中，Google提出的要求是最少的。Google付给Dodgeball一小笔钱和股票-具体的数目没有披露-然后Crowley和Rainert就搬进了Google设在纽约的办公室。
Immediately, Dodgeball's founders saw that their corporate overlords didn't want much to do with the acquisition. It took six months for Google to assign a single software engineer to Dodgeball. After a while, execs began pushing Crowley and Rainert to work on other things. The founders started to believe that Google had bought Dodgeball simply to acquire their savvy in the mobile social-networking business, not for the service they'd built. The pair quit Google in April 2007. The Dodgeball site is still alive, but no one runs it.
Dodgeball的创始人很快就发现他们新的公司的头根本就不对这次收购怎么看好。Google花了六个月才安排了一位软件工程师到Dodgeball。过了一段时间公司的头头们开始催Crowley和Rainert去做其他的事。两位创始人才明白Google买下Dodgeball只是看重了他们在移动社会型网络商业方面的理解力，而不是他们所提供的服务。这两个人在2007年五月份离开Google，Dodgeball网站还在，但是没有人在打理。
In many ways, Google's Dodgeball acquisition was atypical. It was among the first after Google went public, and Crowley stressed to me that the amount of money that changed hands was very, very small. (Google declined to comment on Dodgeball.) But some aspects of the story seem applicable to other Google purchases. One difficulty Dodgeball faced was technical: It took time to move Dodgeball's relatively simple codebase onto Google's complex internal infrastructure—and after the transition, much of the system's code became too complicated for Dodgeball's founders to understand. Moreover, there were bureaucratic hurdles. As a start-up, Dodgeball had grown used to adding new features every week; under Google, the founders were told to get approval from layers of managers (though the Dodgeball crew began sneaking in small feature changes without alerting higher-ups).
从许多方面说Google收购Dodgeball一事只是一个特例。他们是Google上市之初收购的一批公司中的一家，Crowley对我强调说当时转手的钱非常非常的少。（Google拒绝对Dodgeball进行评论。）但是这个故事的一些方面也发生在了其他一些Google的收购上。Dodgeball面临的一个问题就就是技术上的：要把Dodgeball相对简单的代码库移植到Google复杂的内部基础架构上来需要花很长的时间-在移植后，系统的代码会变的非常的复杂，复杂到Dodgeball的创始人无法理解的地步。此外还有官方的障碍。作为一个刚起步的公司Dodgeball已经习惯于每个星期增加一些新的功能的做法；在Google，两个创始人被告知首先要得到各层主管的认可（尽管负责Dodgeball的小组已经开始背着高层领导偷偷地插入一些小的功能上的改动）。
Technical problems appear to be hampering other recent acquisitions. Last October, when Jaiku announced that it had been purchased by Google, the company's founders said that they would close the site to new users "for the time being" in order to work with Google's engineers. Three months later, new sign-ups were still down, and Jaiku offered another update on its blog: "To be honest, a lot of our time in the early going was spent on getting to know Google," wroteApril, Jaiku said again that its troubles were almost over. And then in May, after users complained that Jaiku was slow, Engeström promised, once more, that the service would ride high. "We feel the short term pain, too," he wrote. "Thanks for sticking with us!" Now, 10 months after the acquisition, Jaiku still remains closed to new users. In that time, both Twitter (which is hampered by its own legendary tech problems) and FriendFeed, another here's-what-I'm-doing start-up, have been signing up new people. Both, incidentally, were founded by former Googlers. co-founder Jyri Engeström. In
技术问题也在困扰着最近收购的一些公司。去年十月份Jaiku宣布被Google收购的时候公司创始人说他们的网站在短时间内将不会在对新用户开放以配合Google工程师的工作。三个月后，新用户申请还是无法用，Jaiku在博客上发出一条更新：“实话说，前期我们的大部分时间都花在了解Google上了，”创始人之一Jyri Engeström写道。四月份的时候Jaiku说他们的问题基本上都得到解决。五月份的时候一些用户抱怨Jaiku速度太慢Engeström又一次保证说他们的服务会好起来的。“我们也感受到了短时间内的痛苦，”他写道。“十分感谢和我们在一起！”现在收购已经过去十个月了，Jaiku还是没有对新用户开放。在这段时间内Twitter（它也被自己颇具传奇色彩的技术问题所困扰）和Friendfeed，另外一个这就是在做的事的起步公司，新的用户都在增加。两家碰巧都是前Google员工创建的。
A Google spokesman assured me that Jaiku's delays had nothing to do with the merger; he suggested that they were the normal troubles faced by any company trying to build a popular service. In an interview, David Lawee, the Google vice president in charge of acquisitions, outlined the rigorous steps Google takes after it buys companies. All prospective deals are approved by Google's executive management team, and every merger is assigned an executive "sponsor" who marshals the resources—engineering, PR, sales, etc.—necessary to get the new company running within the Google infrastructure.
Google一位发言人向我保证说Jaiku的延迟和收购没有任何关系；他认为这是任何尝试做热门服务的公司都会遇到的问题。在一次采访中Google负责收购的副总裁David Lawee大略的介绍了一下Google在买下公司之后采取的严格措施。所有预期的交易都会得到Google执行管理团队的同意，每次收购都会有专人负责整合相关资源-设计，公关，销售等等-保证新公司在Google的基础架构上正常运行的一切。
While Lawee acknowledged that it takes work to move a new company onto Google's systems, he said that Google is "pretty accurate" at predicting how difficult that technical transition will be. Usually, Lawee said, the move takes three to six months, and its benefits are significant: YouTube, one of Google's largest acquisitions, now slurps up 13 hours of video every minute, a scale that it would have had a tough time achieving on its own.
Lawee也承认把一家新的公司搬到Google的系统里非常费劲，他也表明Google在预测移植技术难度方面是非常精确的。Lawee提到一般的移植要花三到六个月的时间，但是移植带来的效益也是巨大的：YouTube，作为Google的大宗收购之一，现在每分钟会收到12个小时的视频，如果单靠YouTube自己这个速度是根本想都想不到的。
Lawee also pushed back against the idea of a Google black hole—even if the public doesn't immediately see the results, the companies that Google acquires change the firm in big ways, he argued. Early in 2006, Google bought Measure Map, a much-beloved tool for bloggers to check traffic on their sites; the service has been closed to new users ever since. But Google didn't buy Measure Map for Measure Map, Lawee said. It bought the company so it could add its features to another Google traffic program, Google Analytics—"and we did that." Google had similar shape-shifting intentions for JotSpot, a company Lawee characterized as being "midway through a pretty exciting development plan." JotSpot's users might not like changes to the service, he said, but behind the scenes, JotSpot's employees are hard at work throughout Google.
Lawee还反对Google黑洞的说法-尽管公众不会在短时间内看到结果，被收购的公司在大的方面对Google还是有所影响的，他讲到。早在2006年Google收购了Measure Map，一款颇受博客用户欢迎的查看自家网站流量的工具；这项服务从收购之日起就不再对新用户开放了。但是Google不是为了Measure Map才收购Measure Map，Lawee说。他们收购这家公司这样他们可以把上面的功能用在另一款Google查看流量的程序上了，Google在线流量分析-“并且我们真的这样做了。”Google也在为JotSpot做同样的转型打算，据Lawee描述，“这家公司正在进行的开发计划非常令人振奋。”JotSpot用户可能不喜欢对这项服务的改动，他说，但是在台下，JotSpot的员工正在Google努力的工作。
Considering Google's history, Digg fans should probably be celebrating rather than lamenting the company's nonacquisition. Diggers who were excited about a potential Diggoogle argued that such an arrangement would be preferable to Digg under Microsoft or another tech giant. But there's little reason to believe that would be the case. TechCrunch's Arrington reported that Google wanted to integrate Digg into Google News—not an indication that the Big G would have let Digg be Digg.
想想Google的历史，Digg迷应该为交易的失败高兴而不是失望。迫切期望看到Diggoogle的Digg用户说相对于被微软或者是别的科技巨头收购，这种境遇要好的多。但是这种说法没有任何根据。TechCrunch的Arrington报道说Google打算把Digg整合到Google新闻里-这意味着大G并不想让Digg保留原来的样子。
It's important to note that acquisition hiccups aren't unique to Google: In general, merging a start-up with a big company creates more problems than it solves. I called up Jason Fried, the head of 37 Signals, a successful Web company that makes software for small businesses and that has been adamant about staying independent. "You take great talents and you put them in this big company and they get drowned out by all this policy stuff," Fried argues. "Putting a small company in a big company kills what was good about the small company."
需要注意的是收购消化不良问题不只发生在Google一家：一般说来把一家刚起步的公司整合到一家公司引起的问题比解决的问题更多。我打电话给Jason Fried，37 Signals的头，非常成功的网络公司，主要业务是为小公司制作软件，他们就坚定不移的要保持独立。“你招到非常不错的人，然后你把他们放到大公司里，但是那些政策就把他们给搞晕了，”Fried解释说。“把小公司放到大公司里他们本来的好东西也都给抹杀了。”
Is that what's happening to Jaiku? Is it working on a supersecret social site that'll blow away its competitors—or has it been left to wither? And what about GrandCentral, that great telephone company start-up Google bought a year ago—why is it still closed to new users? Nobody really knows. For now, all of those details are stuck inside the black hole.
这就是发生在Jaiku身上的事吗？他们正在做一个超级秘密的可以一下打倒对手的社交型网站-还是成了没人问没人管的苦孩子了？还有那家Google一年前买下的挺不错的刚起步的电信公司GrandCentral-为什么还不对新用户开放？没有人知道真正的答案。现在所有的细节都牢牢地粘在黑洞里了。
Google analyzes backlinks posted on web pages to calculate PageRank, which in turn influences the search results ranking of pages. But web pages aren’t the only places to find URL pointers. Whether or not Google evaluates any of these, I don’t know:
Google通过贴在网页上的链接计算网页排名，反过来也会对搜索结果页面的排名有所影响。但是网页不是唯一可以发现网址链接的地方。Google是不是对这些进行评估，我不知道：
Whether accessing any of these makes sense is another issue. Billboards would be ads, so they would probably be excluded. Links sent in emails are often spam (though Google has ways to find out about certain spam and could exlude those mails, or conversely, add penalty pointers to the linked pages); links sent in emails are also sometimes private; so are some of the URLs talked about, or thought about (and the latter is hard to scan with today’s technology in any case). In other instances, the sample would be skewed as it would only be the “Google property” sample (e.g. when analyzing URLs in Google Spreadsheets but not in MS Excel files). Links in books could be more authoritative, though they might also be outdated. But sometimes, analyzing a URL outside of a web page may also give a better, because more diverse and fine-tuned, ranking.
把所有这些网址都利用起来是不是有道理属于另外一个问题。广告牌一般都是广告，它们可能会被排除在外。电子邮件里发送的网址常常是欺骗信息（尽管Google有办法发现一些欺骗信息，并把这些邮件排除在外，或者是相反，对这些链接的页面扣分）；电子邮件中发送的链接有时是个人隐私；有些在谈话中提到的在人的脑海里想到的网址也是这个情况（最后一种情况以现在的科技还扫描不出来）。在另一些情况下一些例子会被误解因为看起来像是只属于Google（比如在Google表格而不是微软Excel里分析网址）。书籍里出现的链接更有权威性，尽管它们可能已经过时。但是有时分析网页之外的网址能提供一个更好的排名，因为这些网址更多样化也更精确。
I was thrilled when I got invited to speak at Chris Pirillo's Gnomedex event happening in Seattle this August 21-23. Gnomedex is legendary to me, and to present at it -- well, wow! Plus some nervousness, which I hope this post will help with. I'm looking for some thoughts on my topic of "Search Life Meets Real Life." Want to help? Then read on -- and comment!
非常荣幸的被邀请在Chris Pirillo的Gnomedex活动上发言时我高兴的差点跳起来，今年的活动安排在八月21到23日在西雅图举行。对我来讲Gnomedex太具有传奇色彩了，能收到他们的邀请，太棒了！有点紧张的，我希望这个帖子能帮我一些忙。我在寻找一些关于我的话题“当搜索遇见现实”的想法。要帮忙吗？接着看吧--然后发表一下自己的意见！
While most of my writing is about search marketing, I've been most fascinated with how search collides with real life or society. One survey from a few years ago always has stuck with me, how people turned to search for advice over things they'd used for years -- decades - centuries -- like friends, family and libraries. Search engines are our confessionals, our confidants, our trusted friends that help us.
尽管我的大部分帖子都是讨论搜索市场，但是我最着迷的还是搜索是如何与现实和社会相冲突的。我总会想起几年前做的一个调查，人们如何从他们千百年来咨询的对象--朋友，家人或图书馆转向搜索的。搜索引擎变成了可以帮追我们的忏悔室，知己，信得过的朋友。
But sometimes our friends can be scary -- like when it's YOUR house that's showing up in Google StreetView, or that feed you thought was private ends up appearing in a listing, or those photos -- well, what happens on Flickr doesn't necessarily stay on Flickr.
但是有时候我们的朋友也挺吓人的--比如不知道什么时候你的房子出现在了Google街景地图中，或者那条不公开的帖子竟然出现在了列表中，或者那些图片-那些本应该呆在Flickr没有老老实实的在Flickr上呆着。
It can also seem absurd when people want things removed. Really, you want Google to start blocking houses that anyone walking down a street can see and take photos of? If so, will StreetView eventually look like one of those redacted CIA reports? But then again so what if something's public? That doesn't mean people want material to be so easily out there -- or that they shouldn't have some voluntary controls to remove it.
当人们希望移除一些东西的时候事情也比较荒唐。事实上，你真的希望Google把每个人都可以看到都可以拍照的房子拿掉吗？如果是，街景地图最后会变成中央情报局编造的报告的样子吗？如果还是，那些公共的东西怎么办？这并不是说人们希望材料就这么简单的显示出来--或者他们不应该有一些可以移除那些内容的随意控制吗？
I don't have the answers here. That's part of what my talk is about, to explore issues like these -- plus fun and weird stuff, such as:
这儿我没有拿出大拿。这就是我的谈话里讲到的一部分，还探讨了一些这样的问题--有劲的奇怪的，比如：
There's plenty more like this in our Search Stats category and especially our Search & Society category.
我们的搜索现状类别里有很多类似的例子，搜索和社会类别里也有很多。
Another thing that struck me was a post I did about maps of the Southern California fires last October. It was a quick thing I did more out of personal interest than expecting many others to be curious. But nearly 50,000 people came in to that post over the course of two days. Maps are another form of searching, and the ability for anyone to contribute and build up real-time resources is remarkable. One person I know even told me how she depended on my post to find the maps, as she had a tough time seeking them out in other ways. A few years ago, you got your map each morning in the newspaper or waited for whenever TV decided to flash one up for a few seconds. Now you can study them, shape them -- or get frustrated if they're not out there.
另一件使我感到震惊的事是关于去年南加州大火地图的帖子。起先完全是出于个人爱好，而不是期望吸引很多的人。但是在发布的短短两天时间内就有50,000人浏览过那个帖子。地图是搜索的另一种形式，任何人都可以贡献都可以创建实时的资源时的能力是非常值得关注的。我认识的一个人告诉我说她都是从我的帖子找到那些地图的，换个方式去把这些地图找出来就非常的困难。就在几年前你在每天早晨可以在报纸上看到类似的地图，或者等电视决定把这些地图露几秒钟。现在你可以研究它们，修改它们--哪天它们不在了还会感到很郁闷。
Things are changing even more as search continues to jump off the web browser and into devices such as TV and our phones. While I'm no fan of many visual and weird search metaphors, UrbanSpoon for the iPhone blew me away with its intuitive "shake and discover" interface:
搜索跳出我们的浏览器进入到电视手机等设备的时候搜索的变化就更大了。我对一些奇奇怪怪可视化的搜索象征物一点都不感冒，但是iPhone上UrbanSpoon凭着简单易用的“摇一摇找一找”的界面还是让我大吃了一惊。
That made sense -- that suited both the content and device, and we're going to see more unique interfaces like this to come. But as I wrote to Chris as part of my talk...
这非常的合适--既考虑到了内容又考虑到了设备，我们会看到更多这这类独特的界面。但是就像我写给Chirs的谈话的一部分...
What happens as search continues to jump off our web browser and into our televisions, iPhones and GPS units. These bring us a world of new search opportunities, such as location-specific restaurant search — but they also open new concerns about the search records and profiles left behind. After exploring some of the issues, plenty of time for audience discussion.”
当搜索继续摆脱浏览器的束缚进入到我们的电视，iPhone和GPS设备上时会发生什么。这些会带给我们一大堆新的搜索机遇，比如机遇地点的饭店搜索-但是同时也引起一些忧虑，留下的搜索记录和资料怎么办。在探讨过这些问题之后会有大量的时间留给观众讨论。
Possibilities and issues. And as I also told Chris when I first suggested this as a talk:
可能性和问题。我开始向Chris建议把这个作为谈话内容的时候我还和他讲：
I guess the big trend I'd say is that search has revolutionized our lives, made us expect that anything should be searchable from anywhere and that I think we'll get more disappointed if it's not. And that access to all this information is reshaping our lives in ways we'd have never imagined, from the private trails we leave that aren't so private to political disputes. And that in the turmoil of all these changes, I'd guess I'd conclude I have a sadness that practically no one really focuses on the society issues of this stuff. Look at how much is written about Microsoft and Yahoo – yet how we interact with search, what policies should emerge, where it is taking us – little coverage of that tends to be done, little research. I think there are all of two universities with single professors that look at it.
我猜大的趋势是搜索完全变革了我们的生活，我们会认为任何东西在任何时候都是可以搜索的，我认为如果不是这样我们会更加失望。能获取所有这些信息正在以一种我们想象不到的方式重塑我们的生活，从我们留下的隐私的尾巴到政治上的争议。在这一片变革的混乱中我的结论是比较伤心，事实上没有人关心这些改变带来的社会问题。关于微软和雅虎写了很多-但是我们是如何和搜索互动的，应该出台一些什么样的政策，未来是什么样子-关于这一趋势的讨论少的可怜，基本上也没有什么研究。我了解只有两所大学的两位教授在研究这一问题。
On the research front, I'm hoping to perhaps do a college class of my own on the topic next year (Marti Hearst who is one of the few I know of looking at search and society up at Berkeley is an inspiration in this). But for now, I'm starting with this talk and especially looking forward to what comes from the discussion with the Gnomedex audience. But I'm curious what folks here on Search Engine Land and from anywhere on the web think. So please give me your comments via our Sphinn forum below.
关于研究的前沿，我希望或者是在明年开一门自己的关于这个话题的班。（Berkeley 的Marti Hearst是我认识的为数不多的几个关注搜索和社会的人之一，他想出的这个主意）。但是现在我做这个演讲特别想了解Gnomedex观众讨论会有什么结果。我也很想了解来自网络各个地方的Search Engine Land的读者怎么看待这一问题。请在下面的Sphinn论坛上留下你的观点。
On a side note, if I'm not responding, that's simply because I'm going on vacation for the next week and will be completely offline. But I'll be eagerly reading what people say. I'd hoped to do this post before I left so I could respond to comments, but I ran out of time!
旁注，如果我没有任何回应，我下个星期很可能在度假，断网。但是我会非常期待看到你们的评论。我希望在我出发之前把这个帖子发出来，这样我就可以回应了，但是时间不多！
Japan started early with the April 1st specialties, but the jokes continue. Thanks to everyone who helps collecting Google’s April Fool’s pranks in the forum (or sent in things via mail)! Here’s the list of Google’s jokes and Google-related pranks from over the web, which I may update during the day (for all items I’ll add the disclaimer that it’s likely it’s a hoax, but some of the items may not be!):
日本会首先出现愚人节特别网页，但是玩笑还在继续。感谢每个在论坛里（或者通过邮件）帮助收集这些笑话的朋友！这些就是网上出现的Google的玩笑或者是Google相关的玩笑，今天我会继续更新（我要说的是这些基本上都是恶搞，当然也有例外！）：
You can also add your comments in the respective forum threads.
你可以在相关的论坛帖子上跟帖。
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