There was 5% dip in the number of U.S.-based Web searches from October, according to the latest comScore qSearch analysis. Now, November does have one less day than October, and nearly all the big players showed it ( with Yahoo showing a 7% drop, one that's hard to explain based on a single day off. But the rankings are the same: Google 59%, Yahoo 23% and Microsoft 10%. Ask and AOL round out the pack. AOL's MapQuest numbers dropped 17%, even with Thanksgiving a big driving holiday in the month.

- MediaPost
- raw data from comscore

That's the good word from a company, Webmetrics, that measures such things and wants to sell you its services to monitor commonly used vendor APIs. Oh, and the geocoder got the same score.

- press release

It's time to look back on the year with Directions Media's editors Joe Francica, Adena Schutzberg and Nora Parker. The industry watchers pick out a few themes and explore what they mean today and look a bit into the crystal ball. Among the topics: the value ($$$) of geo, the new geodata, "neogeography," convergence, the quick-deciding user and the GPS-enabled ski jacket. The podcast is 27 minutes long and was recorded on Dec 17, 2007.

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Per AdRants (a site about ads):

In Brazil, LIVE launched Google Maps with a Google map pin-shaped hot air balloon and tracked its flight on a map.

I'm not sure what "LIVE" is but the site referenced shows a video of the red teardrop shaped balloon, what it saw on its voyage and its route along a Google Map.

"Julien's method is so complete, and his players so adherent to the defensive mind-set, that opposing teams soon will have to Google "Mapquest" directions to find the Boston net."

- Kevin Paul Dupont, writing in the Boston Globe about the Boston Bruin's coach, Claude Juien, and his method of obscuring the net in a game against the Blue Jackets. The Blue Jackets for other non-hockey fans, are from Columbus, Ohio. And, no I didn't "Google Mapquest" to find that out; I just Googled.

From Google PR:

Almost 500 photographs by French photographer and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand have been unveiled in Google Earth today. The photographs are presented as a layer in Google Earth with striking facts and figures about the state of the globe today. Yann Arthus-Bertrand and his non-profit organization GoodPlanet.org aim to promote environmental sustainability by highlighting the beauty of the planet and the issues it faces through his photography.

The layer, which is called "Earth from Above," will be regularly updated with new photographs plus facts and figures by GoodPlanet.org, using data from various agencies around the world. It will be accessible from the Global Awareness folder in Google Earth, home to a number of layers highlighting environmental and humanitarian issues.
To access the Global Awareness folder, users should go to the Layers folder in the left hand toolbar in Google Earth. Google Earth can be downloaded for free here.

The stunning Yann Arthus-Bertrand photographs can also be accessed on iGoogle, the personalized Google homepage. By adding the "Earth from Above" gadget to their homepage, users can discover a new photograph each day and pinpoint its location on Google Maps.

The layer, iGoogle gadget and an introductory video can be accessed from the "Earth from Above" microsite: www.google.com/earthfromabove. The Earth from Above layer will be available in 14 languages: French, English, German, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Czech and Russian.

Read more on the Official Google Blog.