It's all about the game. But Google's Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette, and Senior Vice President Jonathan Rosenberg didn't tell analysts, investors and media on the Q2 2010 earnings call what I wanted to hear. Although not expecting it, I wanted to hear that the Mountain View, Calif., search engine opened the door to launch an Internet games network based on a social media platform, something that would support advertising and casual games through a cloud computing platform and Android operating system.

PageRank is a community-derived ranking scheme for search. I find crowd sourcing campaigns fascinating, but hadn't thought about Google's search engine technology as a measure of community acceptance until Digg Chief Scientist Anton Kast mentioned it from the audience during a DigitalLA panel Wednesday night. The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles provided the perfect location for the discussion that delved into crowd sourcing and curating. I'll tell you why later.

SEM doesn't live in a vacuum. Mapping the funnel to understand all points along the way, from search to display to video, where consumers touch the brand should become a priority for search engine marketers. It helps to understand options for increasing the success of paid search and SEO campaigns.

The next wave of technology platforms for the online advertising industry will combine social and search engine metrics. As the two mediums become the "new metric" to determine media buys for campaigns, a variety of companies like SearchIgnite will release dashboards and tools. Some like Covario and Involver already give a clear view of social and search click paths and sentiment.

Marketers and advertisers say Google made it easier to do business with them; Microsoft and Yahoo didn't. But now the Binged-out MicroHoo has made it a priority by providing continual updates and asking SEM agencies for advice on features offered in Yahoo's ad platform Panama not previously available in adCenter.

Google chose a rather quiet way to announce what's been big news. It updated a June 28 blog post Friday to say the Chinese government renewed its Internet Contact Provider (ICP) license, which gives the search engine the ability to operate with a "cn" domain name, but it does not give approval to operate an uncensored search engine in China.

Twitter can't seem to do anything about the constant appearances of the fail whale, but it has begun to get serious about making money. Promoted Tweets, designed to post at the top of streams for relevant searches, appears to have become a stepping stone to the service introduced Tuesday, @earlybird. Don't take this service at face value. There's more to come. It will give paid search adverting on engines real competition as these streams are indexed in Google and Bing/Yahoo search queries

A disconnect between Google and users could push advertising budgets toward paid search ads on Bing and Yahoo search by the end of this year. The Mountain View, Calif., search engine redesigned its News page, but it appears some aren't happy with the new look. MediaPost first sited and reported the changes in May, but Google began rolling out the update in July.

Facebook has long debated with reporters and bloggers, contending that the social network does not match or track search keywords and terms to advertisements on the site. Nor does it target ads based on behavior, it says. In recent years I've kept an eye on anything that remotely resembles technology that would allow the site to serve up and match ads based on search terms, but those who support Facebook media relations insist the site's algorithms do not make the match. Well, maybe not today, anyway.

Google's acquisition of ITA Software will shake up the online travel industry, despite Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt's attempt to convince press and analysts on Thursday otherwise. Insights into the travel purchase funnel could push the engine past services for consumers and advertisers, and into online sales. Schmidt told those on the call that the search engine intends to tap the data from the $700 million ITA Software acquisition to build out search tools allowing consumers to discover and compare information on air travel flights. And while he likely believes that today, stopping at this search-and-discover model would present …