Well Done Trade Doubler!

Opodo and Trade Doubler signed an exclusive affiliate marketing deal, that will cover EMEA.

Opodo and Trade Doubler started working together in 2002, but Opodo is now ready to take affiliation to the next level and chose the network for its European reach and flawless account and affiliate management.

Well done to the TD team, well deserved

David vs Googliath

Google pledge to be no evil so why so many enemies?
An article from the San Francisco Chronicle claims Google has created numerous “David” who really want the company badly hurt.
The Davids are companies like Yahoo! or Microsoft (recently caught discussing an alliance against the G beast), but also ISP, privacy experts, advertisers….
Building a near-monopoly is less than 10 years is an acheivement that only MS managed so far but Google is following their steps.

If a monopoly is the most efficient way of providing web searching, perhaps Google is serving this purpose.

I understand what companies are so worried about but from an individual perspective here are a few reasons why I can understand people can be scared:
- In 5 years time Google may know more about me more than I do (combining my Gmail account, Google cookies, Buying patterns, surf behavior, demographic targeting, wikis, twitters and blogs entries)
- Google has nearly 80% Marketshare in Europe (90% in France where I come from), this can make me question results relevance. Plus everybody will agree it is pretty dangerous to be depending of one source only.
- Privacy, how can I make sure Google is protecting my information? : well I can’t and I guess behavior targeted ads are going against privacy. (even if from a marketer perspective, this is such a powerful advertising tool)

What can be done? Nothing I guess, building a Google like engine is just utopic, so we will have to go with the flow and make sure Google respects his “no evil” policy.

One way or another we will always depend on the search giant. I would still be more comfortable with some sort of oversight of information, particularly with respect to the protection of privacy.