Google: World's Largest Translation Company?

Looks like Google is entering another business - translation.

According to the Google explanations on the frontpage and their product overview page, we can see this is meant to be a translation service which offers both volunteers and professional translators... and I suppose at least the professionals will want to get paid. In that regards, the service is in the field of sites like Click2Translate.com (a service by the company which Tony works for, incidentally, and which I’m often using for some of my sites).

But what is really interesting reading at the moment is a translator's view on what Google will do and how it will profit. According to Brian McConnell, a problem for machine translation is its need for pairs of directly (and, presumably, well) translated sentences. The systems then build a statistical analysis to let them swap out phrases to pull together a translation.

Unfortunately, the sources of material are usually governmental bureaucratic meanderings, hence the questionable quality of the results. What Google offers is the possibility of a centralized repository to build an incredibly useful database of translations, which might improve the quality of machine translation. If you've wondered about how writing moves from one language into another, this should be interesting.

Google as Publisher

I ran this on my business blog, BizBlast, but thought it might be of interest here - as I'm convinced that Google is out to become the world's largest publisher.

Gioogle Gives Sources Talk-Back Ability

Google is letting sources quoted in stories that appear on Google News Service the ability to comment on the coverage. My, what a thorny issue this has opened. As the Wall Street Journal reported:

In an experimental project, Google this week began soliciting comments from individuals and groups cited in stories it carries, working to verify the identities of those commenting and displaying the comments alongside links to the original stories.

One big question is how does Google know whether those commenting are actually who they claim to be. This is going to be far more time consuming and expensive than I think they realize.

Some in the news industry are concerned about the chance that Google could become ombudsman to the world. But one good thing - not only will the sources be allowed to respond, but so will the reporters and editors. Also, I don't see why it's necessarily bad for sources and journalists to mix it up. Mistakes are more rampant in the news than I think many insiders realize - or want to know. Some months back I interviewed someone from an educational institution and, in the process, asked out of curiosity how often reporters got things wrong. What I heard back was, in major stories, only one out of five don't have significant mistakes. Granted, her view of mistakes included mischaracterizing the institution, which would seem a PR matter, but, really, if you can't correctly identify what an entity does, what else in the story is questionable?

The other possibilty here is that this could become a way of annotating stories to give fuller context. Here's the last paragraph from the Wall Street Journal story:

Vic Strasburger, a professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico, said Google asked him by email to comment on an Associated Press article about a fast-food study in which he'd been quoted. Dr. Strasburger submitted a comment expanding on what he was cited as saying in the article. "I'll do a 15- to 20-minute interview, and two sentences will appear about what I've said," he said in an interview. "So the Google feature is really a chance to flesh out those two sentences and to include some more of what I ordinarily talk about in a 15- to 20-minute interview."

Coudl it be that this is a key ingredient news outlets have been missing in attracting younger readers, who are used to the back and forth debate that happens on the web?

Deconstructing Google's Choking on Anti-Sicko Campaign Invitation

Yesterday I apparently joined many other bloggers in examining a blog entry from "Google's Health Advertising Team." It seems that the collective heat was a bit much for Google management, which had the blogger fall on her sword, saying that the opinion was hers and not Google's. Well, at least that's the simple explanation. Let's do some deconstruction:

Well, I've learned a few things since I posted on Friday. For one thing, even though this is a new blog, we have readers! That's a good thing.

No, you had one person post a note about the entry in a spot or two that get tremendous traffic and activity.

Not so good is that some readers thought the opinion I expressed about the movie Sicko was actually Google's opinion. It's easy to understand why it might have seemed that way, because after all, this is a corporate blog. So that was my mistake -- I understand why it caused some confusion.

A nice try, but corporations don't work this way. This wasn't one person's sole idea. At best, it was representative of an atmosphere in corporate marketing. Of course the company wants to make money - that's why it exists. And if you're in the business of selling ad space, one type of logical customer is a company in an industry taking a beating of bad publicity.

But the more important point, since I doubt that too many people care about my personal opinion, is that advertising is an effective medium for handling challenges that a company or industry might have.

In other words, her previous entry was correct in the first case. If healthcare is getting slammed, it can buy ads and pretend that the issues the movie raises don't exist.

You could even argue that it's especially appropriate for a public policy issue like healthcare.

Because they get really affected by public opinion and they've got gobs of money - and there is that movie that's out. Maybe you've heard of it.

Whether the healthcare industry wants to rebut charges in Mr. Moore's movie, or whether Mr. Moore wants to challenge the healthcare industry,...

Google is happy to sell ads to anyone.

...advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue.

If you can afford it - like healthcare.

That is Google's opinion, and it's unrelated to whether we support, oppose or (more likely) don't have an official position on an issue.

Because we want to take whatever money comes out way, unfettered by personal opinion.

That's the real point I was trying to make,...

That is, we want to sell you an ad.

...which was less clear because I offered my personal criticism of the movie.

And if I hadn't, you still would have known what I meant, but no one could have pointed out that our main principle is that contained in our bank accounts. Because if I had really been that out of line with company policy, my backside would be leaving divots from here to San Diego.

I think we all got the point the first time around.

Google Ready to Help Corporations Battle Negative Press

Thanks to a Slashdot.org reader for noticing this blog entry from "Google's Health Advertising Team." It discusses the Michael Moore movie Sicko as an entry into discussing how to use Google to counter the force of negative public attention:

We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company’s assets while helping users find the information they seek.

In other words, we can help you try to keep people from noticing what it is that you're doing wrong. Personally I'd say that for a company to try to pretend that it's not doing something wrong is an evil act. Google's corporate code of conduct says that its "informal corporate motto is 'Don't be evil.'" But they never said anything about advertising it.