Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Why has LostGoggles stopped working?

Thank you for sending me your comments and feedback regarding LostGoggles; I’ve been a little quiet about the future of LostGoggles, and here’s a little background.

LostGoggle’s thumbnail images were provided by Alexa, but I never actually asked them to use their images; I just did and thought that I’d "compensate" them by linking back to their site, therefore bringing them traffic. Geoff Mack, the product manager of Alexa web search, immediately recognized the benefit of preview images in search results, got in touch with me and gave me permission to use the images for free.

Things changed around mid-2006, when Amazon decided to integrate parts Alexa into their Web Services platform and began charging for the thumbnail images. The problem was that LostGoggles was/is a free product. I made a few hundred dollars from the integration of Amazon links, but that would hardly have financed the fees required to license Alexa’s thumbnails through Amazon’s Web Services programme - and that’s why LostGoggles stopped showing preview images.

So, I am currently looking for a new provider of thumbnail images - and it seems I have found one. I’m talking with my friends at snap.com to integrate their Preview Anywhere.

I’d love to update LostGoggles! If you want to stay up-to- date, please join the LostGoggles Discussion Group - thanks!