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It’s common knowledge in the U.S. search industry that Google has a market share of about 65 percent.  Lots of people know (or at least know how to check) the search giant’s market cap, too (it’s currently at $180 billion).  But another measure of Google’s size was presented yesterday, and it turns out that Google is on par with all but the biggest ISPs.

Craig Labovitz, Chief Scientist of Arbor Networks, stated on his company’s blog, "If Google were an ISP, it would be the fastest growing and third largest global carrier.  Only two other providers (both of whom carry significant volumes of Google transit) contribute more inter-domain traffic.  But unlike most global carriers (i.e. the ‘tier1s’), Google’s backbone does not deliver traffic on behalf of millions of subscribers nor thousands of regional networks and large enterprises.  Google’s infrastructure supports, well, only Google."

Those are some fairly astonishing observations.  Then here’s another fascinating tidbit: Labovitz continued, "Based on anonymous data from 110 ISPs around the world, we estimate Google contributes somewhere between 6-10% of all Internet traffic globally as of the of summer of 2009."

It’s hard not to see Google’s fiber network experiments in a different light after absorbing this information.  The company might not just thrill the residents of a few towns and make ISPs nervous; Google really does appear capable of changing how the industry works, and may even be able to do so without breaking a figurative sweat.

We’ll be sure to keep an eye on ISPs’ reactions as Google moves ahead with its tests.

Facebook’s search suggestions are about to get significantly better.  Rather than just suggest the names of people, events, groups, and Pages a person’s already connected with, suggestions are going to draw from users’ networks of friends and the entire site.

It is, of course, nice not to have to type out your closest pal’s 17-letter last name multiple times a day.  But this change overcomes a significant flaw in Facebook’s existing approach to making suggestions, considering that it’s the things people aren’t familiar with they probably need the most help spelling and/or tracking down.

As for how the upgraded system will work, Wayne Kao, a Facebook engineer, explained on the company blog, "[I]f you start typing in ‘MGM’ to find the Facebook Page for the band MGMT, you may see it as the first result in the drop-down menu because you or one of your friends is a fan of MGMT on Facebook."

Or, "If you are searching for something else, like the MGM Grand Las Vegas hotel or the movie studio MGM, you can select one of those instead from the drop-down menu."

Look for this change to roll out over the course of the week.  Then enjoy spending less time typing all sorts of stuff, and not just your best friend’s name.

In a move that investors and marketers alike should applaud, Google’s figured out another way to make money off the site it bought for $1.65 billion three and a half years ago.  Today, Google explained that it’s come up with a tool to help small organizations advertise on YouTube.

Emily Williams, a member of the Inside AdWords team, explained on the corporate blog, "[W]e’re announcing another new feature in Display Ad Builder that lets advertisers use simple templates to create InVideo overlays and companion ads on YouTube."  (FYI: "An InVideo ad is an animated flash overlay that appears at the bottom part of a video that a user is watching.")

Williams later continued, "Now, any advertiser can use Display Ad Builder to turn their image ads into overlays and run a campaign on YouTube in minutes.  Depending on the type of campaign an advertiser wants to run, overlays can be bought on a CPC (Cost Per Click) or CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) basis, and can be matched to YouTube videos based on numerous criteria (like demographics or content categories), or even on a video by video level."

This could prove to be a very popular option, considering that takeover ads on the YouTube homepage are said to be sold far in advance for hundreds of thousands of dollars.  And the move also earns points for being low risk, since it probably didn’t take much in the way of resources to execute and doesn’t cut any privacy corners.

Now we just get to guess how much Google will actually make from the new feature.  One slightly relevant note: earlier this month, a Citigroup analyst estimated that YouTube will pull in about $1 billion in gross revenue this year.

Investors and online advertising experts may want to consider for a moment what, exactly, has contributed to Google’s stupendous financial success (current market cap: $180 billion).  Now consider this: Google thinks mobile ad rates might surpass what’s come to be deemed the industry standard.

According to Reuters, Vic Gundotra, a vice president of engineering at Google, announced during a webcast, "We hope and believe that there’s even a chance that we could exceed desktop in the future."

Of course, this isn’t the first time someone representing the search giant has spoken highly of the mobile market; CEO Eric Schmidt and CFO Patrick Pichette, among others, have emphasized its importance before.  Earlier this month, a VP of advertising even claimed that desktops will be irrelevant in three years’ time.

Still, Gundotra’s comment may signify just how much Google is betting on the success of Android and mobile advertising, and how seriously it will take threats posed by Apple, Microsoft, and other companies.

Here’s one last interesting tidbit: with regards to China, Pichette said during the same webcast that the country’s "another great market in which Android should flourish."

The clash between Google and the Chinese government appears to be coming to a head.  Various sources have reported that Google ignored a cut-off date to reregister as an Internet content provider in China, and more importantly, that the company has stopped censoring search results.

Let’s get the paperwork-related story out of the way first.  Charles Arthur wrote this morning, "Google missed a deadline to re-register as an ‘internet content provider’ (ICP) in China last night, which observers say is a sign that it is preparing to shut down its search engine there."

As for the news related to Google.cn and a lack of censorship, something has definitely occurred.  Following some tests, Adrienne Mong wrote, "Web sites dealing with subjects such as the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, Tibet and regional independence movements could all be accessed through Google’s Chinese search engine Tuesday . . ."

Other people have seen uncensored results, too, although filters apparently kick in on occasion.

Google’s stayed pretty tight-lipped during all of this.  One spokesperson told Arthur that the company actually has until the end of March to reregister.  Another told Mong that nothing’s changed.  So it’s possible that we’re just seeing a case of deadline confusion strike at the same time as some technical problems.

Google may have finally taken a stand with regards to censorship in China, though, and is just daring the Chinese government to challenge its position.

We’ll be sure to stay on top of this situation as it develops.

There’s good and bad news for Google this morning with respect to Android and the mobile market.  In terms of how many units were sold during their first 74 days of availability, it seems the Droid beat the iPhone to the million-unit mark, but the Nexus One is lagging far behind.

That’s the state of things according to Flurry, which claims that applications using its analytics tools have been embedded in more than 80 percent of iPhones and Android devices.  And anyone who’s suspicious of the firm’s stats should know that Goldman Sachs has used them as the basis for some forecasts, too.

So on to the comparison.  You can see the results below.  FYI: Flurry picked a 74-day period because that’s how long Apple said it took for one million iPhones to sell.

Flurry noted that the Droid enjoyed several advantages here.  First, the iPhone had already taught consumers about the benefits of smartphones.  Verizon also boasted more subscribers than AT&T, and the Droid launched towards the start of the holiday shopping season.

Android can definitely compete with the iPhone, then.  The Nexus One’s lack of success just makes it hard to judge what sort of circumstances are needed to even the odds.

There is no shortage of interesting sessions going on at SXSW Interactive in Austin, but one that was especially interesting was "Can Wikipedia Survive Popular Success and Community Decline?" – a presentation from USC Professor of Journalism Andrew Lih. The session explored factors that contribute to the declining rate of Wikipedia entry editing, although Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation told WebProNews a few months ago, that growth in editing had slowed, and the number of editors was just flat, and not declining.

Either way it’s ceratinly not a money issue. The Wikimedia Foundation doesn’t appear to have too many problems raising money. "Every year, the number of people donating to the Wikimedia Foundation has increased, and the total dollar amount has increased too," Gardner told us. Google alone recently donated $2 million. Not that the money goes to editors (this is where it goes).

It’s quite interesting that Wikipedia’s success has come at the price of a community decline (even if in just growth). One of the biggest reasons there has been such a drop off in new editors is that it has simply gotten harder to edit entries. That’s not just because of exclusivity reasons. It has actually become more technically difficult to edit entries over the years. There is a huge usability issue, and this is much of what Lih discussed.

Lih talked about how the editorial language has gotten more vague over the years. Wikipedia used to flat out ask people to edit articles. Then it eventually got to where "anyone CAN edit."

Another factor he mentioned is that of eventualism – the belief in the Wikipedia community that people will eventually fix articles. Someone else will get to it.

Yet another factor is that there are way more rules than there used to be. It’s not that this is necessarily a bad thing. As Lih says, there is kind of more resonsiblitlity for Wikipedia to be up to quality standards now, as it has become one of the most popular sites on the web, and is often at the top of Google search results. But with more rules, comes less ease and in some cases, less enthusiasm.

If a potential editor does want to go through with playing by the rules, they have to go through an extensive interrogation process in which Lih says they are asked twenty to thirty questions.

Perhaps the biggest reason people don’t want to edit Wikipedia articles is that the markup on the actual edit pages has become much more complicated over the years. It used to be simple, and most people could easily figure it out, and now, as Lih explained, it looks like a SQL database. He referred to a usability study from the Wikimedia Foundation, in which every user struggled to get a basic grasp of the editing interface. Users largely failed to make edits correctly without repeated attempts and efforts. Not even the most tech-savvy participants were able to do it right.

Lih presented the idea of looking at lessons from other communities. He focused specifically on DMOZ. "DMOZ chose to place editorial control in the hands of a small cabal of editors, and in doing so made the directory opaque, unresponsive and outdated – the editorial policy of DMOZ killed DMOZ," he said.

Possible scenarios that could play out, as Lih suggested, include a slow, steady quality decline, flagged revisions leading to a quality increase, the inability to update in a timely manner, or the trickling in of spam, PoV/non-neutralcontent.

There is much research being put into Wikipedia and it’s continued success. Google’s relationship with Wikipedia (whatever the extent of that may be, Lih simply calls it an interesting one and pretty much leaves it at that), appears to be helping keep Wikipedia in the forefront of search results for many, many queries. That’s now though. Things change. There are other Wiki-style information sites out there, some of which have much more user-friendly editorial processes. Is it possible that Wikipedia will go the way of DMOZ?

It has become easier for researchers to obtain more data about Wikipedia in the last few years, and researchers are exploring a variety of ways to improve the process. Perhaps Wikipedia will be able to correct some of its issues before they snowball too much.

Read our interview with Gardner here.

Twitter should soon become more ubiquitous across the Web.  Today, the company’s cofounders announced something called @anywhere that should help integrate the Twitter experience into standard sites, and a number of impressive organizations have agreed to take part in the initial rollout.

Evan Williams essentially handled the SXSW side of things this afternoon, discussing @anywhere during his keynote address.  You can read our liveblogged coverage of that talk here.

As for what Biz Stone was up to, he explained on the official Twitter Blog, "We’ve developed a new set of frameworks for adding this Twitter experience anywhere on the web.  Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com."

Stone then continued, "Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we’ve created something incredibly simple.  Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript."

Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, MSNBC, The New York Times, Yahoo, and YouTube are among Twitter’s first partners in this effort.  Target dates and many other details remain unknown, but it looks like Twitter’s set to give its own version of Facebook Connect a solid start.

Although the "thud" wasn’t verified until this afternoon, it seems that an online giant fell a couple of days ago.  According to new data from Hitwise, Facebook managed to beat Google in terms of visits between March 7th and March 13th, becoming the most visited website in the U.S. for the week.

The graph visible below makes the changeup pretty clear (blame the sloppy enlarged bit on us, not Hitwise).  What’s more, it doesn’t look like Facebook’s going to relinquish its lead anytime soon.

Heather Dougherty explained, "The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame."

Then here’s one more interesting fact, courtesy of Dougherty: "Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week."

Anyway, this development represents a major win for Facebook.  The ability to represent the social network as the number one site should count for a lot as corporate representatives talk to advertisers and investors, and could result in a direct boost in revenue.  A further snowball effect in terms of user interest might occur, too, since most people like to be part of something that’s popular.

We’re here at SXSW Interactive waiting for the keynote with Twitter CEO Evan Williams who will discuss "The Next Generation of Social Media." There has been some speculation that an announcement of Twitter’s ad platform could occur at this event, but that may or may not happen. We’ll see.

Either way, I’ll be liveblogging the keynote below. Please forgive the inevitable typos.

Williams will be interviewed by Umair Haque of the Havas Media Lab."

Liveblogging starts

02:00:  Still waiting…

02:01: Introduction beginning…

02:03: Here we go…

Evan Williams announces…A new platform for integrating twitter into websites: it’s called @anywhere

Signin using twitter id, your own publications can be followed starting with amazon,huffpost youtube yahoo,….a bunch of others.

Umair asks – if i’m at newspaper and i want to read one of fav columnits

 

ev: @anywhere reduces friction – not strict rules lleaves alot of innovation up to devs and third parties…a lot to be done with it

easily tweet from column itself. you may just want to follow the columlnist….straight from byline

"one of the things we’ve found with twitter is discovery is one of the hardest challenges…"

twitter is very easy way to keep in touch.

 

Umair: what are key benefits to site?

ev: give you connection back to users that you didn’t hav before – twitter drives tons of traffic, so should reslt in more followers for a site than just sending out links…

 

hopefully result in more people who are your fans using twitter, talking about you content…

you can bring in users’ tweets into your site, and create a sub community with it

Umair: people and organizations build stronger relationships?

about lowering barrier to that according to Ev.

03:13: Ev: We’re still focused pretty much on how do we create the best experience for users and businesses…

How do we create a business out of this? There’s tons of business users on twitter today..

We just want to make that better, easier, and faster.

What is Twitter? Maybe the right question is what is twitter evolving to?

It’s always been a difficult question to answer. We think of it as an information network to help people discover what they care about (in the world)

You can follow the flaming lips if that’s what you care about….you can be smarter and make better choices…that’s valuable…

its like saying "what’s the internet?" it’s about who you are. what you need at the time.

02:16. As we grow, one of the things that becomes painful is having a lot of centralized decision making and forcing poeple through slow processes, so we have teams and try to give them the resources they need…

Role for interacting with teams?

I don’t get into the nuts and bolts of code…I personally like to get inovled in product and strategy…what we should be doing…the nitty gritty, work wth product teams. half my time. the other half think about company and right culture internally…

been thinking a lot lately about how to scale the company and adopt the characteristics we want…how to define these characteristics..paralllel between service and the company we want to create – openness big value of twitter . transparency. a company that behaves by that as well. easy to say and harder to do as you grow…

02:19 Openness means a lot of things. we debated whether openness or transparency is the right word. you can let people see what you’re doing, but a door lets people come in and mess with what you’re doing ..users have taken twitter and morphed it into what they want it to be. ….we’ve encouraged and supported that. a core part of being open.

Your basic assumptions are usually wrong. "Openness is a survival technique."

We talk about nine assumptions you should have one of them is assume there are more smart people outside the compay than inside. it’s a key thing to remember as you get bigger…

  02:21:   Deals with Bing/Google first guys we shared full stream of public twitter data with. a lot of debate…people inside twitter…if there’s all this data that could be highly moentizable., does it make sense to give this data away? We came to the decision by going to the principle by how do we create the most value for the user….the reason google/bing could help that – ther’es valuable knowledge within the twitter network. there’s a lot of valuable tweeting that people don’t necessarily see…it’s a way to bring more valuable to the tweets.

02:24: It was a tough decision to come to….big partners aren’t who they want to limit it too..announced a couple weeks ago that they would license the data to other partners…

One of the exciting next things to happen with the ecosystem …creating core experiences that fill holes in user expereince…sharing photos, shortening links, apps, etc.

Real businesses built off twitter – cotweet,etc. we know twitter can be used for customer support, but twitter.com interface isn’t built for that. cotweet recently got acquired who wants to focus on that more.

We’d love to see much more focus on creating those deep experiences.
 
"We’re pretty open." THere is some control we need to employ. if we were completly open, it could hur the users in time….it has to be managed a lot – being open and having an open api makes it much easier to build apps to spam twiter. sending cease and desists every day to spammers – using the twitter brand…

One reason third parties are so important – a lot of people falling for these guys’ tricks…we have to assert some kind of control.

02:29: An email i recently got…to support – someone in chile thanking twitter for helping communication…this is very gratifying for us because we’ve always held it important to make twitter reach the weakest signals in the world…because twitter’s so simple….sms still really important to us…

We’re really happy we’ve been able to get sms coverage…not as easy as just providing a service on the internet.

02:21: To me it comes back to is someone getting value out of twitter. if they’re search google and they come upon a tweet and get value out of a tweet, we consider them a user…ther is a curve for adoption. "we have a pretty wide definition of user." we’re trying to lower the barrier…at the beginning a lot of focus was on telling the world what you’re doing…now we’re getting to the point where there’s something interesting on twitter for almost everybody…mentions flaming lips again…critical that it’s a two way medium, but this could be as simple as a retweet or a reply…

02:35 Press secretary of the white house started using twitter in an authentic way from inside the white house in a way that you wouldn’t usually see things….official channel, but they’re using it in a new way. "very fun" to see.  It’s about reducing the walls beween people who have a lot of influence and the people they influence. That’s the most profound promise of the Internet, and we’re riding the wave I started on ten years ago with blogging…"

02:41: There’s more and more stuff every day you may want to follow and search for…our goal is not just to maximize that. We understand that people have limited time/attetion. We have no interest in increasing just the amount of time you spend on the Twitter site. "If anything, we’d like to decease it."

The open exchange of info has a positive impact on the world…

02:46: The obvious stuff will be just signing in and tweeting more stuff, but there’s another level of value created by lowering frition (@ platform)

If the channel helps the business get better, that tha’s very powerful.

02:49: If you live on the web, you’re used to having a relationship with companies/services you use..

A lot of people walked out of this keynote. I’m pretty sure the guy next to me fell asleep. No joke.