Overnight success takes years, admits Will Critchlow. In fact, it took years for search company Distilled to grow well past $1 million in annual revenue. Now Critchlow wants to share what he knows. Some of its common sense such as "business friends rock" and "hang out with people who are smarter than you." Some of the most important input that Critchlow provides, in my opinion: remain committed and don't overstate the importance of alignment.  

Snapchat's move to open its platform to third-party developers will help it build an independent platform to generate a broader offering of ad revenue through what Re/code calls a "new ecosystem that can benefit everyone, especially those who don’t want to depend solely on the two giants as internet usage evolves toward mobile and video." It will move more dollars into the mobile ad space and offer partners a different way to get ads to audiences.

Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence (AI) is now taking on the 3D navigation and puzzle-solving game that teaches an ant to play soccer in which it has learned how to chase down a ball, dribble, and then score a goal. In a blog post, DeepMind's David Silver explains how the AI is capable of solving the ant soccer challenge without any prior knowledge of how to play. It builds on the AI's experience of playing Go, as well as the ability to learn similar to the way human learn -- by making judgement calls.

Go Fish Digital SEO Experts Bill Slawski in a Google Hangout asks about penalties around duplicate content on Web sites that Google says doesn't exist. Ammon Johns points to semantics and perception as being the culprit because the duplication filter, which only needs to show one of a handful of results, will only show the highest-ranked one. It may seem like a penalty to the company with the second-ranked piece of content, but it's not. A group of experts debate the issue around a variety of scenarios such as when a retailer uses a brand's exact description of a product on …

In a new marketing campaign, Microsoft plans to highlight the power-saving capabilities of Edge -- its built-in Windows 10 browser. “Company officials are publicizing results of its own controlled lab tests which show Edge bests other browsers, including Chrome, Opera and Firefox,” ZDNet reports. “Microsoft execs also blogged about the processes and the lab set-up the company used to test the battery life of Windows machines running various browsers.”

A startup called Evie wants to solve the problem of not being able to discover app users' needs and accessing them at the perfect time, so the founders are introducing a new interface for Android that enables users to search across all their apps from the smartphone’s home screen. Evie cofounder also cofounded another startup called Voxel in which he designed an app streaming technology that allows apps to work more like Web sites, reports TechCrunch. 

Google is opening a new research group in Europe focused on machine learning. “Based in Google Research offices in Zurich, Switzerland, the new group will focus on three key areas of artificial intelligence: machine intelligence, machine perception, and natural language processing and understanding,” PCWorld reports.

Bing added the ability to check advertising disapproval notifications, as well as the ability to edit text ads and landing page URLs in its iOS and Android apps. Jamie Chung explains how to edit text ads and URL, and the many ways to review the disapproved ads. Once identified, Bing lets marketers drill down and see the ads that did not meet Bing's guidelines. The mobile app also allows marketers to request exceptions inline, so there's no waiting to submit updates or changes. 

Why should Apple bring iMessage to Android? iMessage recently gained a ton of features that David Pierce believes should become available in Android devices. These include “invisible ink” that hides a message until it’s swiped, in-line Apple Music links that play in-app; and “digital touch,” which lets users send images they draw. It’s like Facebook Messenger, which recently became available to third-party developers. The biggest issue, Pierce writes, is Apple will need to make some adjustments to its strategy if it wants to become a software and services company like Tim Cook claims. Here's why.

Google has added a the ability to compare one query with another in the Search Analytics report. Initially spotted by Jonathan Jones, Jennifer Slegg details the feature in a post. She tells marketers that it doesn’t seem to support wildcards to broad match type keywords. She says marketers will need to include the exact keywords or keyword phrases to compare the two. Here's how.