Here’s some more stuff you should know about.
- I did a monster-long interview with Eric Enge. I think the interview lasted an hour or something like that, and we covered several areas in depth.
- Next, take a break and go read this post by Rhea Drysdale. Heck, maybe send her a donation by Paypal. Rhea took on a big fight for the benefit of the SEO industry, saw it through to the end — and won! In the process, she earned the sort of credibility that you just can’t buy.
- We continue to answer webmaster questions over on the YouTube webmaster video channel. My recent favorite video is an eight-minute discussion of “What are some good link-building techniques?”
We now have over 200 videos live on the webmaster video channel, including topics such as “Is it worth spending time on tags and categories?”
You might want to check out the video channel; there’s a lot of good material there. You can also follow me or the Google webmaster account on Twitter; we often tweet when new webmaster videos are released.
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More material for web site owners
[Just as a reminder: everything below is my personal opinion. I haven't sent it to anyone else at Google for a review, etc.]
Valleywag used a recent podcast I did as material for two points in Six Delusions of Google’s Arrogant Leaders. The two assertions that used my comments as material were “Google’s wealth means Google ‘gets it’” and “Google must sacrifice user privacy to grow.”
Valleywag has either misinterpreted what I said, or I didn’t express myself clearly, because I don’t believe either of those claims. I’ll try to explain the intent of what I said, in case I wasn’t clear during the podcast. I’ll address the latter claim first (“Google must sacrifice user privacy to grow”), because I certainly don’t believe that “Google must sacrifice user privacy to grow.” I think Google benefits the most when users understand what Google is doing and why; I also think that user trust in Google (and by extension our privacy policies) is paramount to our success.
A good example is our Google Ad Preferences page. As one blog concluded a couple days ago: “Google’s Ad Preference Manager, with its persistent opt-out plug-in, offers precisely the kind of robust opt-out that privacy advocates have always demanded.” And it’s not that we’re shy about talking about privacy; Googlers Alma Whitten and Nicole Wong recently talked privacy for an Ars Technica article that came out earlier this week. It’s a long article, but an example useful fact is that if X is the number of people who visit the Ad Preferences page and opt out, 10X people don’t opt out and 4X people actually edit their categories to improve the targeting relevance of the ads they see. Let me say that again: four times as many people change their settings to make their ads *more* relevant than opt out of interest-based targeting. I think the Ad Preferences page is a good example where users get more transparency and control regarding their privacy.
Another example where Google helps your privacy (rather than sacrificing it) is the Google Dashboard. This is a single site that gives you an overview of what information Google has from various services, and allows you to edit and to manage settings. This is another example where Google is trying to give more information to users, not less. I could point out lots of examples where we try to debunk privacy misconceptions. Where we actively fight for our users’ privacy. Or where we talk about privacy and engage in debates about user privacy. And of course there’s Google’s full privacy center (with videos!) at http://www.google.com/privacy.html . Suffice it to say, I don’t believe that Google “must sacrifice user privacy to grow.”
Okay, what about the other claim that Valleywag used me for: “Google’s wealth means Google ‘gets it’”? Ryan Tate wrote “It’s a truly bizarre moment, in which Cutts defends some horrendous management decisions based on Wall Street trades.” I don’t agree with that either, so let me try to clarify. Eric Schmidt joined the company in 2001. The first time I got to meet Eric was at the weekly TGIF meeting where he was introduced to the wider company. He answered questions for an hour, and I thought his answers were spot on. He was one of the original authors of lex, a well-known Unix utility that I had used in the past, so I knew that he was also a solid engineer and technologist. Schmidt also had experience at large companies (Sun and Novell).
All in all, I was very happy and impressed that Eric was joining Google. When I went home that day, my wife asked what had happened at work. And I replied with something like “I think the value of our stock options just went up a lot.” What I meant by that was that I thought Google had recruited the perfect person to lead the company from start-up to the next level. I still believe that. Eric has been a truly great CEO–and I’m not just saying that because for the last several years he has worked for $1 a year. 
Maybe I didn’t tell the anecdote well or clearly, but my intent was to explain that I think Eric Schmidt has been a great CEO right from the beginning of this decade, not to defend any decisions “based on Wall Street trades.”
If you want to listen to the full podcast, it’s available, but I hope this post helps to clarify.
Source:
Clarifying a couple points
Google has been working on some new algorithms and tools to tackle linkspam and we’d like to ask for linkspam reports from you. If you’d like to tell us about web sites that appear to be using spammy links (e.g. paid links that pass PageRank, blog spammers, guestbook spammers, etc.), here’s how to send us more info. Go to
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport
and tell us about the site that appears to be employing link spam. Be sure to include the word “linkspam” (all one word, all lower-case) in the textarea (the last field in the form).
If that’s too hard to remember, you can also use the shortcut
which will pre-populate the text area field to say “linkspam” in it. Note: to use these forms, you must sign in with a Google account. We’re moving away from using the anonymous spam report form.
Thanks in advance for any data you’d like to send our way!
The rest is here:
Calling for link spam reports
Last year I tried to limit my travel but still ended up making about ten (!) trips in 2009. This year I’ve resolved to travel less for work. Right now, here’s my current speaking/travel plans for 2010:
March 2-4, 2010: SMX West, Santa Clara, CA. I’m doing a “Ask the Search Engines” panel.
May 19-20, 2010: Google I/O conference in San Francisco. I’m doing a site review session.
June 8-9, 2010: SMX Advanced in Seattle
November 8-11, 2010: PubCon in Vegas
I was gone last week (February 9-13) for the TED conference, but that was attending, not speaking.
The rest is here:
My speaking plans for 2010
I wanted to play with writing Android apps on my home Linux computer, which is currently running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). These are mostly notes for myself, so don’t feel guilty if you skip this post.
- Make sure your system is up-to-date:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
- Install Java
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
- Switch Sun to be the default version of Java. It’s much faster than the built-in version, at least when I tried it.
sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun
- Make a directory, e.g. mkdir ~/android
- Download Eclipse from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ (I chose the “Eclipse Classic 3.5.1″ version). Move the code into that directory, then unpack it. Unpacking is enough–the software runs in place and doesn’t have to be installed onto the system other than unpacking it.
mv eclipse-SDK-3.5.1-linux-gtk.tar.gz ~/android
cd ~/android
tar xzvf eclipse-SDK-3.5.1-linux-gtk.tar.gz
- Download the latest Android SDK from http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html and move it into that directory, then unpack it. I believe unpacking is enough–the software runs in place and doesn’t have to be installed onto the system other than unpacking it.
mv android-sdk_r04-linux_86.tgz ~/android/
cd ~/android/
tar xzvf android-sdk_r04-linux_86.tgz
- Edit your ~/.bashrc file and add a line to the bottom:
export PATH=${PATH}:/home/matt/android/android-sdk-linux_86/tools
Okay, now Java, Eclipse, and the Android SDK are installed. Now you need to install the Android Development Tools (ADT) for Eclipse.
- Run Eclipse. If you installed Eclipse in ~/android/eclipse then you can cd to that directory and run ./eclipse to start the program.
- Install the Android Development Tools (ADT) for Eclipse. Follow the excellent instructions at http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html to get and install the ADT. Don’t forget the “Window > Preferences” step to tell Eclipse where the Android SDK is, so when you click “Browse…” you might navigate to /home/matt/android/android-sdk-linux_86 for example.
- Next, I installed a bunch of packages. In Eclipse, click “Window->Android SDK and AVD Manager.” In the resulting window, on the left-hand side will be an “Available Packages” option. I clicked on that, then clicked the checkbox beside the “repository.xml” package to select all available packages and then clicked “Install Selected.” 12 out of the 14 packages installed for me.
- Now you’re ready to create your first Android program . You’ll discover how to make an Android virtual device (AVD) along the way.
- If you want, you can get custom skins, e.g. a Nexus One skin for Android. You can unpack the .zip file in <your-sdk-directory>/platforms/android-x.y/skins/nexusone for example. Then create a new Android virtual device (AVD) and select the Nexus One as the skin.
- If you want to run your Android program on your own Android device, you’re pretty close. Follow step 10 of this walkthrough. When you’re done and the phone is disconnected from your Ubuntu machine, you’ll still have the executable, called an “android package” or .apk file on your phone. So you can show your friends your “Hello, World!” program.
Some resources that I found helpful (other than the official Android developer site) are below:
- http://www.futuredesktop.org/developing_android_apps_on_ubuntu.html
- http://www.softwarepassion.com/setting-up-android-development-platform-on-ubuntu-linux-904/
- http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-google-android-sdk1.0-on-ubuntu8.04-desktop
- http://androidforums.com/developer-101/2321-installing-eclipse-android-sdk-ubuntu-8-04-8-10-a.html
- You might also want to watch this O’Reilly video or some of the official videos.
If you found this post at all interesting, you might also be interested in Google I/O too. Google I/O happens on May 19-20, 2010 in San Francisco.
Excerpted from:
Installing Android development environment on Ubuntu 9.04