Nexus One - A Smart Move by Google?

 Although Google and Apple appear to have very different market strategies - one sells phones, the other sells ads - the Nexus One smartphone, which was officially unveiled on Tuesday at Google's Mountain View headquarters, is seen as a game changer by some market analysts.

"Google's Nexus One is the first Android phone that may make Apple nervous because it does a few things better than the iPhone," Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal says on his Personal Technology video.

However, the New York Times cited Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin as saying that "It looks like a really cool phone, but it is not a game changer."

According to an NYT report, SearchEngineLand's editor Danny Sullivan said: "It would have been nice to see them roll out something really unique...It is more evolutionary than revolutionary."

Opinons differ, but the Nexus One aka the "superphone" looks like a serious competitor to Apple's iPhone. Most analysts are looking at a scenario where Google and Apple are on a collision course.

It remains to be seen how the marketplace pans out in the coming months.

The Nexus One is seen by analysts as a move to ensure Google remains relevant as people search the Web using mobile phones rather than typing queries into a PC.

If indications are true to form, Google is apparently setting its sight on the hardware market, starting with the much anticipated Nexus One which it will sell exclusively to consumers through its new online store.

On the one hand, Google is already facing a grudge match with old-school media baron Rupert Murdoch over the contentious issue of copyright and payment for online content.

Now, on the hardware front, Google's plan to sell the Nexus One on the Web could affect sales of Apple's iPhones and the Cupertino company is not expected to sit tight and not do anything while Goog intrudes into its territory.

According to a NYT report following the unveiling of the Nexus One, Apple has announced that it had acquired mobile advertising start-up Quattro Wireless, indicating that it has plans to attack Google's core advertising business. A tit-for-tat scenario looms large.

Try New Search Engine Cuil for Size

A search result by Cuil

Size does matter for the folks at Cuil.com. If being the "biggest search engine on the planet" with an index of more than 120 billion pages is not cool, then who else is cool?

Cuil (pronounced as COOL) is the new search engine that was launched on July 28 with great fanfare and, according to some pundits, it has the potential to nudge market leader Google down a peg or two. Google has seen off a long line of search challengers and it will be interesting to see whether Cuil will pose a real threat this time.

Cuil is an ancient Celtic word for Knowledge, reflecting the background of co-founder and CEO, Tom Costello, who hails from Drogheda, Ireland.



The other co-founders of this exciting new search engine are former Googlers Anna Patterson and Russell Power of the TeraGoogle Project.

According to Cuil, their goals are to index the whole Web which has been growing exponentially in the last 15 years. Cuil scour the Internet, indexing more pages than anyone else, Google included. They are doing it with a new approach in search, creating an entirely new architecture and breakthrough algorithms.

One good aspect coming out of Cuil is that they don't collect data of users unlike Google.


Of related interest:
Google is Goog but Cuil IS Cool

Microsoft gives up bid for Yahoo

A shotgun marriage that appeared to be boiling up eventually fizzled out. We are talking about Microsoft's ongoing three-month flirting with Yahoo. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, according to the BBC website news, had formally pulled back the $47.5bn offer to buy Internet company Yahoo. The main reason was that the two parties could not agree on an acceptable sale price.

The Seattle company that dominates PC usage with its Windows operating system was rebuffed by Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang who had insisted on at least $53bn or $37 a share before any deal could be closed.

Microsoft had earlier offered to buy Yahoo at $44.6bn but raised the offer to $47.5bn at $33 per share - but, obviously, Yahoo was not keen to take the bait and instead demanded more.

The lucrative Internet advertising market was worth $40bn in 2007 and is predicted to double to $80bn by 2010. Microsoft has been looking for a good buyout as it seeks to counter the dominance of Google in Internet advertising.

According to the BBC's Peter Bowes, analysts believe the breakdown in talks may have an adverse affect on Yahoo shares and generate uncertainty among investors about the company's management.

Can Jerry Yang Turn Around Troubled Yahoo?

Jerry Yang: Taking the reins

Come to think of it, people don't "yahoo" for something on the Internet, instead they "google" for something on the Net.

That just about sums up why Yahoo is playing second fiddle to Google.

That's why Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel has been axed for not being able to take the company, founded by Jerry Yang and fellow-student David Filo 13 years ago, to the next level.

So now former Stanford University undergraduate student Jerry is taking over as CEO. The company has a reported turnover of $3.2b.

It has 12,000 employees on its payroll and its Internet portal attracts more than 500 million users.

But still, Yahoo is just an also-ran compared to Google, the market leader with sales that's 50% higher and its profits four times that of its older rival.


Semel: Dismissed

Where Semel has failed thus far, the question being asked in the industry is: Can the 38-year-old Yang pull all the stops and revitalize Yahoo?


Related article:
Can Yahoo revive its digital dreams?
(An analysis by Tim Webber, Business editor, BBC News website)

Google, YouTube: The Ghost Of Copyright Returns

It's all coming back to haunt Google and YouTube.

When the Mountain View search engine kingpin gobbled up YouTube, Inc. for $1.65 billion in October last year, the acquisition shook up the dotcom landscape.

It was the most expensive takeover in Google's eight-year history.

At that time, industry pundits were wondering how Google would deal with copyright issues in view of the "freeloading" of videos on YouTube.

Now, entertainment giant Viacom Media is suing both Google and YouTube for $1 billion for illegally using its TV programs.

The BBC News website reported that the lawsuit seeks more than $1 billion in damages and an injunction to prevent copyright infringement.

Last month, Viacom, which owns cable networks MTV and Nickelodeon, told YouTube to remove 100,000 "unauthorised" clips.

Read more...

Related topics:
Google's copyright nightmare
Viacom Sues Google, YouTube
YouTube removing Viacom TV shows

Google's UK Revenue On A Roll

Once again, the Google empire is sending out positive tidings from outposts. From the UK, it was reported that the Google ad panzer is rolling on relentlessly.

They will soon overtake Britain's main commercial TV channels in ad revenue, according to the BBC News.

A recent study reported that the US Internet search giant's UK revenues for 2006 are about to leapfrog over Britain's Channel Four's forecast of £800m (USD1.5bn) returns. Next to be overtaken by Google is ITV1.

> More on the Google steamroller...

Serving Up A Google Hurricane

Looks like Google is never out of the news. After the celebrated marriage with YouTube, the Mountain View kingpin is believed to be cooking up something big again.

The rumour mill is getting the adrenalin flowing. So, what's cooking?

According to WebProNews, there's gonna be a hurricane (Not Katrina, again) swirling right up by Monday. They got wind of this from DM News associate editor Giselle Abramovich.

According to her, Google is set for a corporate restructuring and are about to launch an Adsense for Audio service.

For those who envisage the coming of the online video age, this has got to be huge. And that's the main reason for the sensational Google/YouTube marriage.

Think of this as a recipe that includes podcasts, streaming media like YouTube, MP3 player, radio and TV plus a few other new media technologies...and throw in Adsense for Audio for good measure, what do you get?

Voila, a Google Goodie Dish, of course!

To read more...

> WebProNews: Google to restructure

> Blog.dmnews.com: Rumour has it...

Bubbling Dotcom Bubbles

Your snoopy wiredhound was caught napping while Google Inc. was gobbling up YouTube Inc. for a cool USD1.65 billion.

This is the most expensive acquisition in Google's eight-year history and it really shook up the dotcom landscape.

After Monday's coup by the Internet's leading search engine company, some are rubbing their eyes and wondering whether this is the beginning or the end of the dotcom craze.

Certainly it brings back memories of the dotcom boom in the late 1990s. So has the dotcom boom come back with a vengeance?

If we take Google CEO Eric Schmidt's word for it when he told investors that YouTube would be "one of many investments" the company plans to make in the video field, then be prepared for more splashy news in the near future.

Last year, Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace - a hot social networking site popular with teenagers - for USD580 million and got tongues wagging about the acquisition.

The way things are moving, online video seems to be the next big thing 'cause there's a huge market out there for the taking.

As YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen had proven, their video site turned out to be a cultural phenomenon. It appeals to the young.

Born August last year in Hurley's garage, YouTube captured about 2.8 million users a month but today its audience had shot up to 72 million users, according to a BBC news report.

Is this the theoretical "Long Tail" effect that Chris Anderson wrote about in his book whereby the future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream?

Here's a quote from YouTube's CEO Hurley reported in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"We're in the middle of a shift in digital media entertainment. Users are now in control of what they want to watch and when they want to watch it. They decide what rises to the top, what's entertaining."

Here's a hypothetical USD1.65 billion question to Yahoo and MicroSoft: What're you gonna do about this Google-gobbling? You ain't gonna take this lying down?