Steve Johnston
The Google Blog of a Google Consultant

Hubble Space image now on the Immediart site. Just a quick, off search-engine topic post, to point to the fact that we are starting to trial NASA and Hubble images on the Immediart site. First print is the incredible, recently released Hubble Ultra Deep Field optical survey, identifying 10,000 (yes, 10,000) galaxies in an otherwise considered empty and very small patch of the night sky, some of which are 13 billion light years away! If this remotely gets your goosebumps going, have a look now at the Hubble Space print on the Immediart site.

I am finding working in London for the day more and more successful, thanks to the roll out of wireless hotspots. My current favourite spot between meetings is the first electrical outlet on the right in the Starbucks coffee shop under Charing Cross station, with wireless access provided by T-Mobile. The bit I don't quite understand, is why T-Mobile cannot provide access to an SMTP server with the package. My use of the hotspot is fully auditable, complete with my credit card details (�10.00 for 3 hours is the current rate), so why not allow me to send mail from Outlook, instead of having to log into a web mail account. Anyone from T-Mobile listening? C'mon I gave you a plug!

Google SERPs protected by First Amendment. This news is a little old now (Jan 13, 2004) but in a case brought by Search King against Google, it was deemed that Page Rank is an opinion of the significance of a particular web site as it corresponds to a search query. And that Google's ranking of Search King's site was deemed privileged speech. So there you go, don't waste any more of your time complaining about your right to be in a better position than you are.

Yesterday, Yahoo confirmed that both AltaVista and AlltheWeb, two of the search technologies it acquired during it's acquisitive spell last year, will be moving over to the new Yahoo Search platform in the coming weeks. This is a significant, if not wholly surprising, move that will produce a consistency across Yahoo's properties.