Okay, so I don’t exactly need a little yellow fish in my ear for this … perhaps a version that gives my eyes the ability to see and comprehend in the way the fish does for speaking!

Are you wondering what I’m babbling on about?

It’s to do with a Google ad I noticed tonight in my Google Mail — reading an email about Adobe InDesign magazine, this ad below somewhat caught my eye!

Now, I’m “guessing” it is in Arabic or similar — my visual recognition of languages gives me a hint — but I’m willing to admit I could be wrong here!

Why place an ad this way? Is there a setting that controls the ad for the language of the recipient? Because if there is, in this case, it’s way off the mark.

Curiosity got the better of me and I clicked through — it’s a firm that does design and web hosting (99% of the site is not in English, but the source code is and a couple of graphics), so they obviously had keywords relevant to my Google mail message … but I can’t image how this gets them a good response.

Unusual, but I don’t think profitable!

Wow, seen these latest search engine figures?

Despite “only” having 62 percent market share and an estimated 5.1 billion searches, that’s a 35.4 percent year-on-year increase for Google.

Keep in mind there’s 38 percent of searches going on elsewhere (mainly Yahoo and MSN/Live, with a combined estimate of 2.2 billion searches) — so while Google does have the lion’s share, there are other marketplaces worth considering.

I notice that in my stats too even for this website — while Google rules, Live is still sprinkled liberally through the stats and sending a good bit of traffic. Actually in this case, Web Wombat also figures quite well in the search engine referrers.

I’d still be making my website as Google-friendly as possible, given both their overall share and growth.

I am doing a holiday cleanup of my workspace at the moment – and that includes email accounts and settings. I’m trimming the stuff that I don’t read much. I confess to subscribing to a LOT of lists, but then losing interest after some time.

And that’s how I happened across a graphics.com newsletter subscription — one I haven’t looked at in a long time (18 months).

However, given the content I’d be happy to stay a member, but move the messages over to my private Google mail account — which I use for mailing list things. My primary work inbox is no longer used for any lists. I prefer to separate out the list messages so I can view them at a time of my choosing, without a bunch of filters in my primary inbox.

Graphics.com had only two options at the bottom of the message: to either cancel/unsubscribe, or go to the members area. As I only wanted to change my address, not cancel, I tried the members area. But I was presented with a nickname/password login. Nickname? Password? I can’t remember my nickname — I haven’t been reading the messages or to the site in 18 months. The only way to retrieve the password is with the nickname — which I probably created 4 or 5 years ago when I first subscribed.

My only option: to cancel. One click, done.

The EASIEST option presented was the one for me to cancel! No easy option to change address… clearly that process needs more thought to keep rather than lose customers off your list.

Would you rather your clients disappear easily in one click, or work out a way to easily have them self-manage their email address on your list?

The answer is a social community website: Facebook (f8 for short).

F8 gets more than 50% of its users on the site DAILY. It’s active userbase (logged in during past 30 days) is growing towards an estimated 50 million by the end of this year. In late May 2007, f8 had 24 million users — of which 12 million logged in to f8 EVERY day.

Facebook was described by Ed Dale as “MySpace for grownups” and as I get into f8, I can see why.

F8 “apps” mean that the way in which you can connect, interact, network, broadcast and communicate via f8 are hugely powerful. Applications enable anyone to build social applications to develop or support their online f8 network/community. The ways in which f8 can be tailored to a user’s own needs helps it go well beyond something like MySpace.

It’s no wonder F8 is currently valued at US$15 billion, based on recent investments on companies like Microsoft, who put in US$240 million for a tiny stake in the company.

PS: Here’s my f8 profile.