Google Wants to Preserve Yahoo Competition

The Yahoo and Microsoft merger will ruin the healthy competition market for Google. The leading search engine marketing company wants to preserve the competitive market.

The latest buzz in online marketing is that Google is willing to prevent Yahoo from being swallowed by Microsoft, this will ruin the competition that Google and Yahoo healthily share. Once the last bid of $US47.5 billion is accepted by Yahoo. Microsoft's share of US Internet search queries will expand massively which will also include profitable business of selling graphical and video ads. This might pose problem for Google who is merrily enjoying the leading seat for many years now.

Google also confessed that it is a 'relatively small' part of the advertising world and that Yahoo is the leader. Hence, it's only successful market area is search ad which is giving it the position of aleader. But if two of his major competitors join hand, the competition will double of the leading online marketing company, who will probably not be able to face the blow.

Google planned to construst R&D campus at NASA

Larry Page and Sergey Brin's dynamic duo gears up for materialising their SPACE dreams. But is that really the final frontier? Find out!

Google's Page and Brin are settled for the 40-years lease term agreement with NASA, which has been a development for building a high-tech R&D campus at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View. As of now, Google reserves the choice of extending this term to 90 years because the construction is estimated to be set off from 2013. Reportedly, Google would pay $3.66-million per annum initially.

The initiative has been extolled by the officials of both the esteemed organizations, i.e. NASA and Google. The layout too seems to be impressive, as the leased campus space of 42.2 acres would be efficiently utilized by Google. According to Google's plan, the area of 12 million square feet would be dedicated to offices. Whereas, the expansion phase could bring in housing for talented brain pool of the organization.

Throwing some light on this association, we come up with the fact that Google and NASA have also worked together for Google Earth and other projects of similar nature. So, this association would not be new, but is really helpful for NASA in their tryst with development of Research Park, which is dedicated to space exploration, scientific discovery and other similar projects.

Changes in Google Fevicon

Our favourite Google seems to be on an updation spree. Last Friday, a change has been seen on the fevicon of Google. instead of the capital G which it normally uses for all its services, this fevicon is appearing as a small cursive 'g'. the updation process, it seems is still on, since not all the Google servres reflect the change. It looks Good, so hoping that the change will soon be visible on all Google servers.

Online marketing: Waiting For The Hot Deal

The day of 19'th May, 2008, would be a memorable day for the online marketing, search engine advertising and social networking. There are two reasons for this.

First reason is that, on this date AOL is completing its takeover of social networking site Bebo, which means that Yahoo is going to loose a key deal to supply advertising to the social networking site.

And second reason is that Yahoo has confirmed its willingness to discuss a new and more limited deal with Microsoft over combining the two companies. The combination is likely to affect online marketing and advertising businesses.

Both of these happenings may bring great changes in the worldwide environment of online marketing, Internet advertising and social advertising.

Earlier Microsoft had proposed an online advertising deal with Yahoo, two weeks after the failure of talks about a takeover of the Silicon Valley firm for 47.5 Billion USD or £24.4 Billion.

The buzz is that Yahoo has said that it will evaluate each of their alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties. The firm would focus on maximising stockholder value. At the same time Yahoo and its board of directors would consider a number of value maximising strategic alternatives.

Meanwhile, buzz is also that talks between Yahoo and Google are intensifying. Two are trying to push an online marketing and online advertising deal through ahead of any renewed approach from Microsoft.

Yahoo and Google might explore an open platform on which the two firms could jointly bid to serve ads alongside search results. The project could be announced within two weeks.

Online Ad Network Tyroo launched Gaming channel for advertisers

Tyroo Media, one of the online ad network, launched a Premium Gaming channel which consist of inventory like Miniclip.com, UltimateArcade.com and Cheatcodes.com. It targets an age-group of 13-25 years with high speed broadband connections and good spending power.


Aditya Khanna, business head, Tyroo Media said, “Gaming is one of our strong sub-categories as part of our complete entertainment bouquet that also includes Social Networking, Movies, Music and Downloads among others. It is typically being used by advertisers in the FMCG, sports, manufacturing, and personal technology industries”

According to Aditya Khanna, Tyroo is currently offering Premium Technology, NRI, Entertainment, Education, Auto, Cricket, News and Regional inventories making the company one of the largest horizontal inventory accumulator in India.

Google New online backup Services Soon

According to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, GOOGLE may launch a new backup service.

Google's Online backup services allow user to use the internet like a hard drive, usually on a subscription basis. This is part of a shift towards "cloud computing", or moving data onto the web so it is accessible from anywhere.

A Google Australia spokesperson could not confirm Mr Calacanis' prediction.

"The applications Australians use every day, such as email, photo sharing, and word processing, are moving to the web because it's easier to share and access your data from anywhere when it's online, in one place," the spokesperson said.

"Storage is an important part of this move towards 'cloud computing'. That's why we've always offered a lot of free storage.

"However, we don't have anything new to announce right now."

Mr Calacanis said the move towards online backup will help make data storage issues a thing of the past.

"I think backup is going to be one of those problems that was a huge problem yesterday and will not be a problem at all tomorrow."

IBNLive.com launches Mindgames and Active Search

News portal IBNLive.com, has added two new features in the website named Mindgames and Active Search. As per the company, these two features have been added to increase more participation of users and to present them daily news and new stories.

In Mindgames section, it contains Daily Crosswords with five categories general, business, sports, cricket and entertainment and with a Sudoku puzzle, powered by mindgame developer Core Crosswords & many More. The Crosswords are based on current happenings and stories which are found on IBNLive website.

In the Active Search application users can search the news, videos, blogs and the web sections of the news portal with the help of sub topics which are related to the original search term. For example, if you search film in the News section, it will give results that were divided into sub categories such as ‘Sharukh khan with the Knight Riders’, ‘Ricky Ponting’ and ‘Shah Rukh Khan’.

Neeraj Sanan, marketing head, Web18, has said, “Web 18 has always aimed at providing highest level of interactive experience to its users on its various portals. With these newly added innovative applications at IBNLive.com, we are confident that the users will have great online experience as these features will serve as ideal tools for information as well as recreation.”

Online marketing: To Know is to Believe

Marketing via Internet. How does it sound to you? 'Not very interesting' would be the answer of many people. 'Highly profitable' would be the comment of some other group of people. Now what is the difference between these two groups. Obviously the difference is 'knowledge.'

Some have knowledge about the strength of online marketing and some have don't. This knowledge makes all the difference. Do you know that according to the research group Forrester, European Internet users now spend 14.3 hours a week online, compared with 11.3 hours watching TV, and 4.4 hours reading newspapers or magazines.

Now, how does it make a difference. It does, because online marketing is the core activity while using the Internet. That is why the annual value of pan-European online advertising is set to reach 16 Billion Euro or $22 billion or £10.8 billion by 2012, more than double that of 2006, says a study of Forrester.

The research further says that UK will continue to see the most online advertising in the next 4 years, ahead of Germany and France and search engines would continue to dominate online advertising spend, followed by display advertisements and e-mails.

Now, after knowing this small piece of information, I hope that the mindset of the first group of people would have changed. Really, the online marketing growth is mammoth and it is growing day by day.

Chananges in Google Translator

If you are usinig google translator, you will find some slight changes in the design of it ie redesign the site. Earlier it containg a single HTML combo box showing the listed language list, now you will get two DHTML combo boxes, each containing a language for more free combining of source and target languaes.

Google’s meta description of the service explains, “This translator supports: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish”.

Online marketing: Experiments For Advertising

Experiments are the key of any marketing campaign and online marketing is also not an exception in that case. So lot of happenings are occurring in the advertising field also.

The latest buzz is about DoubleClick Mobile and mobile ad networks. DoubleClick enables media sellers to manage their display campaigns in tandem with emerging platforms, such as mobile advertising, in a single location.

DoubleClick has announced that DoubleClick Mobile, the company’s advertising delivery system for mobile devices, is mixing with mobile ad networks including AdMob, which is the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace, and Google’s AdSense for mobile and Millennial Media’s premium MBrand network as well as its Decktrade performance network.

The upgrade would help mobile publishers fill more of their available inventory and ultimately earn more revenue, which is the main aim of online marketing campaign. Now, publishers using DoubleClick Mobile can sell mobile display inventory indirectly, through automated access to networks of mobile advertisers. Publishers can continue to sell directly as they have always done.

In fact, DoubleClick Mobile provides an accurate view of what inventory is available to sell, what has been sold directly and what has been filled by ad networks. And by managing inventory across direct and indirect channels, DoubleClick Mobile helps publisher better monetise their mobile web content.

VoiceCloud offers a real-time, voice-to-text transcription service.

With the help of VoiceCloud's patent-pending streaming audio technology users can access and read their voicemail messages -- transcribed in real-time -- either on a mobile device or online. Users can access either on a mobile phone, iPhone, Blackberry or online. User can immediately track who has called and what was said.

It is compatible with major US carriers and support from both fixed and mobile networks, VoiceCloud's innovative solution also have unlimited voice/transcription storage and retrieval. Its interface is specially designed for the iPhone and 24/7 customer service and support.Keeping these things in mind, VoiceCloud was established to bring affordable, real-time, audio and voice transcriptions to enterprises,developers and consumers.

SMS-based route finder service launched by RouteGuru.com

RouteGuru.com, which offer services i.e landmark-based driving directions in India, has established RouteGuru On-the-Go, a SMS-based service that would help users in the Delhi-NCR region to find direction hints as well as approximate auto-fare while they are on the move.

To get benifited by their service i.e to find direction hints, just write an SMS in the ‘rg source-location-name to destination-name’ format (for e.g., ‘rg india gate to rohini’) and send it to 56767, according to the company. The SMS request would cost Rs 1 to Rs 3 as per the mobile operator.

On receiving the SMS, RouteGuru.com would send an SMS response that contain provided information like major roads to take or landmarks to pass-by, approximate distance to go after each hint for the next hint, and approximate auto-fare in rupees.

Avinash Agrawal, founder and CEO, RouteGuru.com, has said: “Now, you don't need to feel helpless at a busy roundabout, hoping for a stranger to stop-by and guide you to your destination. You don't also need to be at the mercy of the auto-drivers for which route they should take or how much you should pay,”

Orkut Users will Soon get Access to Scrabulous

Orkut users will soon get access to Scrabulous, an online word game developed by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla. This application which is very popular among the people and have 3 million registered users. Scrabulous currently runnining on Face book, where it become the fifth - most popular application.

“We will be releasing Scrabulous and ChessPro on Orkut next week and I believe it to be equally successful on Orkut, if not more,” said by rajat aggrawal

Scrabulous was recently in news when Hasbro and Mattel, who jointly own the rights to the Scrabble board game on which Scrabulous is based, asked Facebook to pull down Scrabulous as they claim it’s infringing on their intellectual property rights.

Googles Updats Pageranks and Backlinks on 29th April

For all those anticipating and eagerly waiting web masters annd site owners; the wait is finally over as Google has updated the Pageranks and Backlinks for your web sites. It is time to see the results and how good you have been in deciphering the secret code. The update came on 29 April, 2008.

check your Google PageRank by Google PageRank toolbar. You can download it from here


or check your page rank here

http://www.pagerank.net/pagerank-checker/
http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker
http://pr.blogflux.com/
http://www.googlepagerankchecker.com/

Goggle Charges for Unrequested Ads

While you are placing ad display pay per click campaigns with Google AdWords be very careful. You might just be charged for something which you have not opted for.

Google, the leading search engine and the best pay per click ads provider was taken to court recently for charging its customers for ad bookings which they had not requested at all. The trick which the ad provider had been playing with its customers was in the Google's Online auction based advertising system. Ideally the system requires customers to specify what they would be willing to pay for the words or phrases they select for their advertisement.

This form also contains an option to bid on ads that appear on the third party websites. But the issue was, even if the bidders did not select a third party site ad option, Google was automatically selecting it as payment due and charging its clients for same.

Later it was discovered that if the advertisers were placing a 0 in the third party ad bid, they were not being charged but if it was left blank charges were automatically ebing credited to the advertisers Pay Per click account.

This I believe should have been caught much earlier by the Google's Quality Check department. Well guys remember the phrase: “To Error is Human” but if the Error is from Google and is stealing hefty amount from its client's pocket, then “To Error is Humongous”

source by http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9925715-7.html

Xbox Game Ad Banned due to voilance

On 9th April, 2008, Guardian.co.uk announced that an Xbox game ad was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority on the ground of showing excessive violence in their ads. According to the news:

“The ASA has ordered the game's publisher, Eidos Interactive, not to print or broadcast any of the ads again after upholding 26 complaints and ruling that the poster was "graphic and too shocking to be seen in an untargeted medium".”

Video or computer games, which is also called the ‘second life’ as per the terms of social networking sites, are increasingly using violence as their USP have penetrated deep into the markets.

Now the growing concern is – with so much violence all around us, isn’t this yet another drastic approach to spreading more animosity and malice across different sections of people?

New content network with HTML enabled - Tipzu

A New network called Tipzu is online. It is based on content. You can submit your content here and positive point is that it is HTML enabled. Here you can link link out in any way you like from the content you publish there. It accepts articles with full HTML control and has a ton of other great features like:

* Publishing Multiple Articles
* Full HTML control
* Revenue Sharing
* Add Video’s, Opt-In Forms
* Build Multiple Landing Pages
* Blog Platform
* RSS
* Title Tag Control
* Comments
* Build A User Base Community
* Newsletter with RSS

It’s Squidoo, Hubpages + Blogspot in one….

I think it will help a lot of publishers with SEO and the network will attract a good deal of traffic as word grows and it comes out of beta.

To check it out and become a beta tester, join http://tipzu.com/ to get benifited by its feature

Google Doesn’t Seem To Be Going With EU Report

According to Reuters Google has defended the user data policy, which says that there is no need for search services to keep the personal data further than 6 months. This development came up on Monday, as a response to the EU report. It seems to be adhering to the policy, which allows retaining the data up to 18 months. Google believes that it is essential for enhancing the search results.

However, the data protection commissioners from European Union suggest that search services should make efforts to protect personal information.

To know more read http://in.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idINIndia-32911820080408

Adobe merges business which is serving PCs, Mobile

According to Reuters Adobe Systems Inc is merging business units under one roof which serves PCs, Mobile, software for computers and consumer electronics to meke them run on a single technology platform.


The move represents the further consolidation of its 2005 Macromedia acquisition with the broader Adobe organization while also recognizing the growing convergence of once-distinct software and the need for it to run across a range of devices.

The merging of the different business units may appear on its face to be simply an organizational restructuring, where the Mobile and Devices Business Unit will be folded under Adobe's Experience and Technology group.

But the changes also are part of Adobe's effort to create a unified technical underpinning for software that serves everyone from Japanese phone users to YouTube watchers.

Adobe said its mobile and devices business unit is joining the experience and technology group led by Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch, a former Macromedia executive.

Gary Kovacs, vice president of product management and marketing for the mobile and devices unit, has been promoted to vice president and general manager of the business unit and will report to Lynch from May 1.

Kovacs takes over for Senior Vice President Al Ramadan, who is leaving Adobe effective April 30, after nearly 10 years with Adobe and, before that, Macromedia. Kovacs was previously vice president of product marketing at Macromedia.

To know more visit http://in.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idINIndia-32908220080408

Yahoo India Maps – In Your Language

Yahoo! India, for the first time in India, started their new service by enhancing the Yahoo! Maps to show results in different languages. The new strategy is to attract more Indian customers to use internet. With this service, Yahoo! wishes to penetrate the local markets and influence varied target customers.

Some of the salient features in the enhanced Yahoo! Map are:

1. Use of local languages and user friendly features.
2. Proper walking directions displayed.
3. Flexibility to access via SMS, email, and web.
4. Well-known landmarks displayed.
5. Location of ATMs, Hospitals, restaurants, Malls etc are mentioned.
   

Yahoo selected 9 different languages like Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, and Malayalam to start with the Yahoo India Map. They may add more languages later.

The users of Yahoo! India can search for different destination across 179 cities, 4,767 towns, and 226,114 villages. Also there is a facility for users to search for over 3 million points of interest. It’s really a good strategy to penetrate the market.

As India is the second largest country in world regarding population with an economic growth that is maintaining good pace, therefore it would be a good idea to penetrate into more local and niche markets to reap more benefits. This is perhaps what Yahoo! is now trying to do by influencing the general people and habituating them with Internet and the web.

It’s a good strategy to compete with the world’s leading search engine service provider Google. But will the Yahoo Map be able to compete with Google maps. Think about it.

Development teams at Google are testing new enhanced features. They are coming up with new technology based additions, which they intend to include in its feature rich services.

Today, I noticed a new feature in Google Analytics. The graphical statistics placed over the dashboard has now been enhanced to its beta Version. It categorizes the graphical representation of metrics according to day, week and month. This new feature would surely upgrade the user experience.

On the other side, I noticed that Google Analytics did not track the visitor for around 5 hours on 2nd of April, but today it was updated.

Adobe Share (beta) - Heralds the New Age of Presentation

The newly revamped Adobe Share (beta) 1.3.5 can safely be called the next step to better and smarter way of presentation of data and knowledge sharing. It is based on Alfresco, which is a very popular ECM (enterprise content management) platform. The new version of Adobe Share promises a richer experience of content aggregation and syndication.

Now you can get better features and more sophisticated looks while creating PDF files. The Flash presentations have also got updated – this supports the full screen mode. Developers also have the benefit of web services that will help them to create desktop or online applications. Basically, you can feel an improvement in the overall performance.

This new version of Adobe Share, which was out on March 28th, this year promises great user friendly applications and also updates tools of daily use to make them more interesting and feature rich.