One of the most sought treasures along the coastline are Japanese glass floats. Discovering a rare color, a different shape or one perfectly intact excites many a beachcomber or treasure hunter. Seaweed, driftwood, seashells and even agates are a dime a dozen when compared to finding a glass float.

Glass floats were used by the Norwegians as far back as 1840. They began by using fishing floats that were the size of an egg, tied to their fishing lines. Glass was used because it was economical and could be found in abundance. The buoyancy also was an attractive draw as the use of nets became much more popula

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Now that Google has acquired DoubleClick–the display advertising feather in its proverbial cap–it’s time to see if the hat fits.

The $3.1 billion acquisition, which finally closed last week upon European regulator approval, gives Google a much needed boost in the market for display advertising.

Google hasn’t offered many clues as to what its plans are with DoubleClick, other than to hint at layoffs. But Google pundits and executives at small ad outfits do have concerns and plenty of opinions about what the search king should do.

Google’s AdSense serves up pay-per-click text ads to Web sites within its publisher network, while DoubleClick, which markets a product called Dart, places banner ads on Web sites. DoubleClick also runs an advertising exchange and a search-engine marketing business called Performics.

There are some basic conflict-of-interest questions with some of the additions to Google. As the largest search engine, Google has kept its distance from search engine optimization, or SEO, which is the science of increasing a Web page’s rankings in search results. But with Performics, Google owns an SEO company.

“Even if Performics is kept completely separate from the Google search team, there’s the impression that Performics might have some special ‘in’ with Google’s non-paid search results,” writes Danny Sullivan in a Search Engine Land blog post in which he urges Google to get rid of Performics.

Granted, Microsoft finds itself in the same SEO-owning boat after acquiring Avenue A/Razorfish and Sullivan poses this question to both companies: “You own the pie; do you really need to sell the pie cutters too?”

There’s another conflict Google bumps up against with DoubleClick–the fact that it risks alienating publishers who don’t want Google to have too much control. Google could integrate DoubleClick’s Dart ad management and serving technology into AdWords to offer one unified dashboard and see into even more Web sites across the Internet.

“Now, if Google owns all the technology they have access to that data, they know what’s being bought and sold. It puts customers in a tough situation.”

–Frank Addante, The Rubicon Project

“A lot of DoubleClick’s customers consider Google a competitor,” says Frank Addante, chief executive of The Rubicon Project, which offers a dashboard for sites to manage the more than 300 online ad networks. (Addante was formerly with L90/adMonitor advertising platform, which was bought by DoubleClick in 2001.)

“Now, if Google owns all the technology they have access to that data, they know what’s being bought and sold,” Addante says. “It puts customers in a tough situation.”

The merger “cements Google’s position as ‘frienemy’ with major publishers,” says Jim Barnett, chief executive of Turn, an automated online ad market.

And there’s the question of whether Google will continue to restrict its customers from working with third-party ad servers. “Advertisers working with Google couldn’t use third-party ad serving, so a lot of people wouldn’t use Google,” says Michael Cassidy, chief executive of online ad network Undertone Networks.

“Our clients on DoubleClick that have contracts expiring with DoubleClick are saying it’s a dead end,” that it will be eclipsed by Google technology, which will impact customers, said Ruben Buell, chief executive of AdShuffle, an ad serving company.

Google also has to figure out what the best business model is for ad serving. DoubleClick charges customers for it, but Google is testing a free ad management service called Ad Manager.

Beyond the technical integration issues, the two merged companies face a culture clash. It’s “Madison Avenue hipsters” meets “Silicon Valley geek types,” according to Addante.

“Display is more brand advertising, more emotional,” he says. “I think it’s going to take Google some time to learn that side of the business because they’re so data driven.”

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What use is saving trees if the very technology that made it possible to go paperless is shipped across continents, non-recyclable and so power-hungry it has a carbon footprint the size of a bear?

At the German tech fair Cebit, the emphasis was very firmly on energy conservation: getting the most out of what you put in.

The German IT association, Bitkom, set out its stall on the issue, pitting a power-hungry office from 2003 against the leaner and greener 2008 workplace.

Energy efficiency

With technology converging, the modern office saves energy and money.

“For example, in the 2003 office there was a printer, a copying machine, there was a fax, maybe there was a scanner. That’s four different products which all need electricity,” said head of technologies and services at Bitkom, Dr Mario Tobias.

“What we see today, and these are the products that are most sold to the customer, it is multi-functional devices, so there is only one product and that can do everything.

“This saves a lot of resources on the hardware side and also on the electricity side.”

New ‘green’ office technology

And some of the best green ideas can be the most simple. Fujitsu Siemens has come up with a screen that, when it goes to sleep, uses absolutely no power. Wolfgang Haid of Fujitsu-Siemens computers said: “Most of us don’t switch off the computer when we leave the office, so a lot of power is used when the switch is on standby mode.

“This product is the first that automatically switches to zero wattage when in standby.”

Cool waters

Water-cooling is being taken seriously by companies like IBM. This is because water can draw the heat out of sizzling data-centres better than air, so now companies can do without the air-conditioning which comprises 40% of their energy consumption.

“Water has a 4,000 times better thermo-conductivity than air and in addition to that we are using micro-technology to create very tiny channels, very much like in our circulation system and that improves the performance of this cooler,” explained IBM’s Dr Bruno Michel.

“Our carbon footprint is now about five times lower, and our goal is to create, in five years, a data centre that has a zero carbon emission.”

Another way of reducing the environmental impact of data centres is to move them near to renewable energy sources such as hydro-electricity or wind-power.

Concentrating on energy consumption makes for a very business friendly shade of green - after all, what company is going to argue with the idea of cutting its electricity bill?

IT waste

Emphasising this side of the debate, however, may obscure some more awkward environmental questions being asked of the IT industry.

Environmental campaigners Greenpeace were tucked away from Cebit’s Green IT Village in a hall marked Peripherals. Their choice. They felt there was not enough emphasis on IT materials, e-waste and recycling at the show.

Greenpeace argue that the production and disposal of IT components poison us and our planet. One of the biggest offenders? PVC

.

“PVC - it’s a chlorine, it’s a plastic. It has many problems all along the life-cycle of the PVC from production to the end, because of dioxins, because of waste, because of it not being recyclable, so we really push manufacturers to get rid of it,” said Yannick Vicaire of Greenpeace.

“What we want to see is a real comprehensive approach, where the consumers don’t have to choose between toxic-free, recyclable or energy efficient. We want all of this in a package.”

Greenpeace also says that IT companies, rather than consumers, should dispose of used IT.

There is currently a hidden unregulated trade in hazardous e-waste, with much of it ending up in the hands of the untrained or children in the developing world, who harvest components and precious metals under poisonous conditions.

“In Europe, to be exact, what we are seeing is a lot of shredding and then you put it in a smelter and the plastic is burnt and the precious metals are recovered. It is not enough. This is not what we want,” said Mr Vicaire.

“We want more dismantling. And before even thinking of recycling, we want people to think of repairing and refurbishing.”

Parts of the IT industry are beginning to take notice. And there are some good ideas out there for energy efficiency.

Perhaps Cebit’s environmental theme will open industry and consumer eyes to the possibilities of an IT revolution in green

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Retailers and publishers have fought hard to work their way up in the ranking of Google’s search results and refine the search features of their own Web sites to help users once they arrive. Now, Google is taking a greater role in helping users search within particular sites. And some of the same retailers and publishers are not happy about it.

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Andrew Shurtleff for The New York Times

A second box, originated by Google, pops up when a search is conducted for some companies’ Internet sites.

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Andrew Shurtleff for The New York Times

Alan Rimm-Kaufman, an Internet consultant, said Google might be asked at times to turn off a new feature.

This month, the company introduced a search-within-search feature that lets users stay on Google to find pages on popular sites like those of The Washington Post, Wikipedia, The New York Times, Wal-Mart and others. The search box appears when someone enters the name of certain Web addresses or company names — say, “Best Buy” — rather than entering a request like “cellphones.”

The results of the search are almost all individual company pages. Google tops those results with a link to the home page of the Web site in question, adds another search box, and offers users the chance to let Google search for certain things within that site.

The problem, for some in the industry, is that when someone enters a term into that secondary search box, Google will display ads for competing sites, thereby profiting from ads it sells against the brand. The feature also keeps users searching on Google pages and not pages of the destination Web site.

Analysts generally praise the feature as helping users save steps, but for Web publishers and retailers, there are trade-offs. While the service could help increase traffic, some users could be siphoned away as Google uses the prominence of the brands to sell ads, typically to competing companies.

“Google is showing a level of aggressiveness with this that’s just not needed,” said Alan Rimm-Kaufman, a former executive with the electronics retailer Crutchfield who is now an Internet consultant. Google’s aggressiveness, Mr. Rimm-Kaufman said, ignores a user’s desire to reach a specific destination and it costs those Web sites visitors.

Take, for instance, a situation last week, when users of Google searched The Washington Post and were given a secondary search box. Those who typed “jobs” into that second box saw related results for The Post’s employment pages, but the results were bordered by ads for competing employment sites like CareerBuilder or Monster.com.

So even though users began the process by stating their intention to reach The Post, Google’s ads steered at least some of them to competitors. Similar situations arose when users relied on Google to search nytimes.com.

While executives of both The Times and Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive declined to comment, plenty of others assailed Google over what they saw as a heavy-handed approach.

Google said it had not received many complaints directly from companies, but some search-engine specialists were quick to pounce when the company announced its service. Ann Smarty, a search-engine marketing consultant who originated the SeoSmarty.com blog, speculated that the new feature “could mean bad news” for sites. Other search-marketing specialists echoed her sentiments, and brands began to follow.

“Eventually this could be a huge problem if Google starts throwing this out there to all brands,” said Pinny Gniwisch, vice president for marketing of Ice.com, an online jeweler. Mr. Gniwisch, who is also on the board of Shop.org, an online retail industry group, said Google’s new feature did not appear when users searched for Ice.com, but he said he would object if it did. “This is essentially giving the customer a way to leave a search for your site,” he said.

Donna L. Hoffman, co-director of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing, at the University of California, Riverside, predicted that Internet users “will really like this because it’s probably a better way to search a site than going to the sites themselves. “

“But as consumers appreciate this more, there’ll be more and more outcry from companies.” Ms. Hoffman said. Consumers who see advertisements on Google when they search The Post’s or The Times’s content might view the ads as carrying the endorsement of those news publishers.

“Why would I advertise on those other sites when I could just advertise on Google and piggyback on the equity of the other brands?” Ms. Hoffman said.

Mr. Rimm-Kaufman said the new Google service also diminishes a Web publisher’s role in helping users find potentially useful content. “You may want to editorialize differently when someone searches, and maybe put a premium on certain reporters or content,” he said. “This moves you further out of the loop.”

Retailers, Mr. Rimm-Kaufman added, should be even more leery of this feature, and not because they will lose sales to competitors whose ads appear in Google’s refined search results. More sophisticated retail sites have search functions that take into account a customer’s past behavior to suggest certain items, as well as more accurate data on which items are in stock.

“Some of our retail clients have pretty horrible site search,” he said. “So for them, this will be a benefit. For our larger clients, we’ll probably ask Google to turn this off.”

That is the route that Amazon has apparently chosen. The retailer declined to comment for this article, but last week Google’s search-within-search function did not appear when users entered “amazon.com” into the initial search box.

According to a Google spokeswoman, the company has honored such requests from “a couple” of unnamed businesses. These companies, however, may not be able to reverse their decisions.

“So we ask them to try it out and see if they want it removed,” the spokeswoman said. “We think it could be a really useful feature.”

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