The overall public perception of Google in Germany is quite negative, but it wasn’t always. In the early years, Google was seen as a great company, very much like the “don’t be evil”-claim suggests. Over the years yet, this attitude has shifted towards an, in my opinion, overly critic one. The main concerns are privacy and the fear of an uncontrollably huge enterprise with almost unlimited power in the internet. While all of these fears are at least partially reasonable and justified, they are nothing more but a result of an organic development and the business model of Google. This development has only been possible by a number of components working together brilliantly: the idea, the team, the environment, and the time in which all of Google happened.

Contrary to other big players in the industry, no one was ever forced to use Google. Although this is a weak point, it’s still important in understanding why government programs to limit Google’s influence are set to fail. Google dominates the market not by a policy in which all other competitors are either bought or killed, it dominates the market by being the best. This is valid for GMail, the Google Search, Maps and many other applications. The consequence is simple: Users tend to use the best, that is, Google. A very high market share at the end is just a symptom for the lack of knowledge of other players involved, but no consequence of some evil tendency on Google’s side.

What about privacy? First of all, there is a discrepancy. While searching for people and last names is super-popular, this is only valid as long as the own name is not represented in any ( negative, compromising ) way. So basically, Google should fix the stuff people mess up on the internet, be it by uploading pictures or by writing private sex-blogs. Something Google will never do, because it’s simply not possible, and a search engine can’t be replacement for a responsible and conscious use of this medium.

The other privacy concern is the usage data Google gathers. This happens e.g. when you use GMail, the Google Search, Google Documents, and virtually all other products provided. This data is collected to improve the overall experience, e.g. by providing recommendations or remembering settings, by customizing results and so on. But this data is only collected once you start using Google. Google Analytics, using also cookies to track unique visitors, is by the way just a product provided by Google for Website owners. In case you feel offended by that, you should therefore contact the staff of any website in question, rather than Google.

What is clear to me after writing these few paragraphs: the Problem is not Google, the problem is the non-existence of any kind of competitor on this continent. Having been unable to create a sustainable Internet business in the last ten years ( help me if I’m wrong ) on the continent, instead of improving the conditions for IT-Startups, the education, this problem shall now be solved by reanimating the poor idea of protectionism.

The question should be, why we are simply unable to be a successful country when it comes to non-copied, innovative startups and great companies. And how to solve that.. I don’t know.

Being the one I am, I dropped the responsible organisation in Germany a line applying for one, and got one back. The essence is that Blogs in the EU don’t get an ISSN. For your interest

Back to Piwik: the two main advantages over Googles solution are that you keep the data local and can do whatever you want with it, and for the curious, statistics are realtime.

The installation went down without any problems, as expected. Unfortunately, another PHP software requiring MySQL, though Piwik uses DataObjects, so porting it to work with any other DBMS shouldn’t be a big deal.

The snippet to include is a bit larger than Google’s one, Piwiks one is this:

While Googles snippet looks something like this:

Note that Google updated their snippet recently to include now a try-catch blog. Read the Analytics page for more info here. If you want to try out Piwik, just drop me a line and I’ll give you an account here if you want.

I’m quite curious on how the stats look like, I feel better to host them here than anywhere else, and I’ll also post some comparison of the actual stat results. Stay tuned!

First of all: it’s fun. It’s really, really fun. I spent an estimated hour or two a day reading blogs and trying to write down some thoughts and opinions, and from what google analytics tell me, some people like it. Though comments are still rare ( I guess that’s just normal ), there are already, please don’t laugh, about 40 unique visitors a day, and I’m happy about each and everyone of them. 

At first it was hard to change from writing in German to English, but I think I made a good start, and although I may sound a bit too self-confident, I’m not, but that’s just my impression, please correct me if I’m wrong.

And one thing I really started to do seriously is to link other, related posts. I guess this is to build and keep up the famous blogosphere.. so let’s roll.

I’d be glad to have some feedback on my first month as a pretend-to-be-good english writer! Moritz.

Could a similar system be also built for free blog-to-blog linking? I guess there are many blogs out there dealing with almost the same topics from time to time, and I think it’s a pity that there is no automated way ( i know of ) to link these blogs based on the post contents. While a hard restraint for such a service to work would be that it is free and easy to customise, many bloggers focusing on their readers would embrace such a system. Once again, free and without any commercial background.

Edit: I guess someone’s done some cool work here, the plugin is called Ping Crawl and links to related posts and also pings them. Nice! Edit, 2: Ping Crawl to be quite uncontrollable and since it actually just looks at your tags, it’s not working well. Though text analysis is certainly hard to do, it’s the only way, I’m afraid.

This is another one of my ideas, and I’d be really glad if I could only realise one of them. If you want to help me out, please please please contact me.

What is metablogging? For me, it’s blogging about blogging. It’s like singing about singing or books explaining how to write books. Necessary, sometimes. But mostly, it’s just annoying SEO stuff feeding my reader, I know enough about it, enough to know that the blogosphere is certainly about content, it’s quality, viewpoints, good posts, but not necessarily only about search engine rankings. Of course, if you want to earn some money it may matter, but most blogs ( including this one ) are not in a position enabling them to do so, careless of what fancy technique of optimisation used. 

I’m afraid that by weighting the public opinion and certain trends too much, the real goal of blogging gets lost, and of course, the benefit the web got from it. In the beginning it was some people just sharing thoughts or writing about rather personal stuff. Watchblogs have become an important source in regions lacking a working system of free speech. This development changed at some point because some smart people figured out that money could be made, it’s nothing new, and of course, the world just works like that. 

And rather than desperately asking for backlinks and so on, people should go back and concentrate on their content. Quality content will increase your ranking, too. The guys over at google are smart enough to know how things work, and adapt. 

I’m convinced that the best blogs are still the ones both written and read with passion. Works here, and some people like it. No meta-blogging anymore!

Maybe you’ve heard that the music industry finally decided on dropping charges against individuals, and that from now on the strategy is to work with ISPs to simply cut off unprofitable users. This reminds me of ancient laws ( that are, unfortunately, still used in some parts of the world ) where a criminal would get his hand cut off if he used it to steal something with it. 

While some countries like France are already in the process of passing such a law, elsewhere lobbyists are still busy convincing politicians to do so. If you want to get into the topic, a good place to turn to is certainly the Electronic Frontier Foundation, featuring an article covering the topic.

If you are just like me, and many other folks, just follow a specially created twitter-user called #ourrights. This account will link nowhere, it’s just a statement to follow it. Please also spread the word by posting an update on your tweed. Thank you, and always keep in mind that we are the masses.

Why do you have a blog? Is it because you are seriously interested in sharing your opinion on some special topic ( like programming and usability here ) or just because you think that everyone should have a blog, just like a linkedin or facebook account. There is no need to have a blog, seriously, and if you have nothing to share, don’t force yourself to. Commenting on someone else’s posts can be very satisfying, too. 

And even if you really do have something to share, be prepared to be just one of many. It’s hard to really distinct yourself from the tons of bloggers out there. You can do so, of course, by choosing a different language, a different style, a yet uncovered topic ( though I guess that’s hard to find ) or some other factor I didn’t think of. If you do so, because you just feel like, chances you will be successful in monetizing your blog aren’t bad. Most of the time, however, blog posts are mostly generic in terms of style and content. 

So now we’re passed that point: Be very unique. That’s certainly a way to attract visitors, and most of all keeping them. But even if you do generate a certain amount of traffic each month, you still don’t earn money. Once again: interested users will find your blog, and if not, the blog is not interesting for them. Simple truth. 

Now, assuming you’ve got your few thousand impressions each month, you really need to monetize it. And it’s been a long road already. Start thinking about Google’s AdSense, though it doesn’t seem to generate amounts bloggers sometimes think they might get. Be prepared to earn just some dollars, nothing spectacular. Remember, people still need to click on a link actually. 

There are other ways of selling your blogging soul. One is to do paid product reviews. Another is the old-school banner. Decide for yourself what you are willing to give up. Because visitors will notice change, and advertising or the attempt to monetize your writings may offend them. Think about that too. 

Or just be happy without all the money-hassle and, assuming you are working like 5 hours a week on your blog, it’s pretty fantastic to believe that 5 hours a week can generate enough money to make it worth mentioning. And even if you want to earn money, keep in mind that even one of German’s top bloggers, Robert Basic, gets an income from about 3000€ each month. And he certainly has traffic…