There will always be twisted people who make it their mission to spoil or deface an image or content that is not intended to be offensive. I think we all shake our heads in disbelief that this content still shows up in searches and most of the time shows up on the first page results. None of us wish to dwell on content that disturbs or offends, so many of us just move on and try to forget about it. But just because offensive content disappears from our brains, it doesn’t mean that it vanishes into thin air. The question that we find ourselves asking when the thought of offensive content pops into our minds is who regulates the search results and how do the powers that be decide on what is offensive and what is not. This question raises many opinions owing to the fact that we live in such a diverse world with different religions, political associations and sexual preferences.

Yesterday was the busiest day ever for internet shopping. More than £300 million was spent as shoppers flocked online in search of Christmas gifts. For the last two years, spending on presents has always peaked on the Monday closest to the start of December. Deloitte estimates the online market to be worth £20bn this year – an increase of more than 10% on 2008.

Visa Europe was handling up to 1,600 transactions per minute, up 25% from last year. Commercial Director at Visa Europe, Dr Steve Perry, was quoted saying that “In the past year, we’ve seen a continued increase in online spend on Visa cards, despite the recession. In fact on November 2, 2009, we surpassed our busiest days for spend in 2008 in the UK.”

It is predicted that the busiest day for high street retailers this year will be Wednesday the 23rd of December.

A couple of weeks ago it looked very much as if Google would acquire Digg (at the not insignificant price tag of $200 million). Many people in the search/social marketing world thought that the deal was pretty much done and dusted, people such as Gyutae Park, from Winning The Web, who went so far as to compose a list enumerating the ways in which the Google-Digg deal would affect the internet. Even though the deal fell through or was called off, or whatever (who knows what`s going on the world of virtual acquisitions?), Park still believes that a Google-Digg is on the cards, and he is not alone.

Advertisements are not my favourite things in the world. It`s not that I find them intrusive (aside from pop ups and unsolicited emails), and it`s not really that I find them annoying (aside from pop ups, unsolicited emails and property pamphlets), it`s that by and large I find ads to be bland, insipid and uninspired. In some instances it`s very difficult to believe that the ideas were actually sanctioned and given the go-ahead by a committee of supposedly informed decision makers. The thing that makes it all so much sadder is that you just know that someone was very excited and very proud of the concept. Take the Meerkat in the South African Vodacom ad, for instance, many people thought that it was brilliant, cool, funny and marketing genius. But an equal number of people, myself included, thought that it was ridiculous, inane and epitomised the gunk that is scraped off the bottom of the barrel of creativity.

In mid-June, an NBC host died of a heart attack, and not unusually, the network delayed reporting it so that his family could be alerted. But the news broke on Wikipedia prior to the announcement on television, because a junior network employee updated a Wiki biography – and changed it to the past tense. The story probably got out of hand because people who heard the rumour Googled it, landed on the Wiki biography on the first Google SERP, noted the tense, and spread the news.

This raises a number of issues: of all the places to update news, why was Wikipedia the obvious and most effective choice; how did the nature of search affect the story; and what impact did Wikipedia as a source have on the framing of the news?

Nicholas Carr wrote a very long, very interesting article in which he posed the question: Is Google making us stupid? In it he alleges that the way in which Google structures its information encourages us to skim over data rather than absorbing it. He says that after years of chasing down information on the Net in this way, his attention span is such that he can no longer read long bits of text, that his mind starts to wander after 2 or 3 pages, and that deep reading has become a chore, not a pleasure.

We live in an age of gizmos and gadgets, where the people with the latest and most expensive toys get to lead a growing group of technophiles. Technophilia, far from being the depraved practice it sounds, is a much coveted and envied state throughout the world. As revealed in a report by consumer and media research firm, Scarborough Research, these are the people who drive trends and influence the behaviour of others, especially online. According to the report, this makes them important people to watch.

Scarborough Research set about determining who the technophiles, or as they called them, the digitally savvy, are in the United States. To start off with they defined “digitally savvy” as those who are likely to own high-tech equipment such as DVRs, satellite radios and VoIP phones. They are likely to rely heavily on wireless technology and use their cell phones for email and internet access. They are also likely to engage in a variety of online activities such as blogging and social networking.

When Google first began, no one knew quite what to make of it. They had a policy of “Do no evil”, they didn`t conform to traditional business practices, had unique hiring practices and took pride in their inherent quirkiness. For instance, they`re now famous for their dedication to staff satisfaction with their free lunches, massages and relaxation rooms. They also allow employees one day a week to work on whatever project they want.

From being a media darling in its phenomenal first phases of growth, Google now faces a barrage of negative press, as it loses high-powered staff and continuously fails to impress in all areas other than search. In an article called “Where does Google go next?”, Fortune, takes a hard look at all things Google, including whether it can maintain it`s enormous growth and still function with the same eccentricities and pioneering attitude that set it apart from all other IT start-up companies.

It looks like Google have pulled out some contradictory rabbits from their own black hat. They accuse others of following ‘black hat` tactics, while it appears they are following similar procedures themselves. Should we believe everything they say? It appears that soon, SEO specialists will have to change their job title just to stay under the radar of Google`s incongruent accusations.

They appear to have set these rules and guidelines for online marketers and the entire industry to follow, especially when gathering backlinks, and then left evidence of being the biggest culprits by not obeying their own rules. Google have been bartering off backlinks to their own blog, an act which they say is ‘not best practice`. So is the ground that they are setting for us all that trustworthy?

It`s refreshing to see a company stick to their ethos and honour their mission statement.

Of course, Performics was never going to be a massive moneyspinner for the giant, but the signal sent out to the SEO industry of impartiality is to be commended.

More often than not, spin teams are wheeled out in these situations to justify sitting on both sides of a corporate fence, but G has taken the high road and sold it off.

There was a huge buzz in the industry when they first announced that they were going to acquire DoubleClick, and therefore Performics (the rants that ensued were justified to a degree), but that`s all a storm in a teacup now, and the industry can move on.

Tom Phillips, who is handling the acquisition, said in his Google blog: “It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission.”