Google is moving into your market.

For tech companies, few words are more frightening, and yesterday we saw why. The mere announcement of Google Maps Navigation sent shares of established GPS device makers like Garmin (GRMN) and TomTom into an ugly downward spiral.

Shares of Garmin lost 16 percent of their value and shares of TomTom plummeted more than 20 percent to a new 52-week low. This, despite the fact that Google’s (GOOG) new turn-by-turn mapping service is currently only available for Android 2.0 smart phones like the Droid from Motorola (MOT).

Clearly, investors already see where this is headed. Who will pay for a Garmin or TomTom unit when they’ve got an Internet-connected smart phone that offers turn-by-turn voice guidance for free? It might be a bit slow coming out of the gate given the current paucity of Android-based smart phones, but once more handsets arrive at market, Google Maps Navigation will undoubtedly have a significant impact on sales of dedicated GPS units.

And if Google brings the service to Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, as the company hopes to, it’s going to be even worse.

“With this product, Google injects itself into a new market and has the potential to cause serious pain for the existing players, like Garmin and TomTom, while giving potential customers one more solid reason to switch to a Google-powered phone,” said Gabriel Consulting Group analyst Dan Olds. “It’s a lot easier to justify the switch to a new device if it takes the place of two devices, like a phone and a navigation device, and if it does the job better.”

BoomTown was abuzz with Pixis, Plums and power this week as Kara focused on tech that wasn’t Apple, and reminded us that lady geeks hold the power in Silicon Valley.

While Apple was gathering clouds for its Rock and Roll storm, Palm (PALM) released the teeny Pixi, designed, Palm hopes, to steal some of that Apple (AAPL) thunder. The Pixi smart phone, while smaller and thinner, reported Kara, has fewer features and less power than the already available Pre.

Small can be good in the world of tech, and BoomTown reported that a certain Nordic tech behemoth thinks so too. Nokia (NOK) announced that it had acquired “microsocial networking” start-up Plum, whose signature offering allows users to build smaller, more intimate electronic social networks.

Kara did it “like a boss” this week and highlighted the tech sector mavens from Fortune magazine’s annual list of most powerful women. Ursula Burns of Xerox (XRX), IBM-er (IBM) Ginni Rometty and Oracle (ORCL) President Safra Catz were among those at the top. BoomTown will be at the upcoming conference associated with the Fortune list, so look for Kara’s Flip video interviews with these Titanias of tech.

It was nice of Apple to release new iPods just in time for John’s birthday this week, and Digital Daily returned the favor with high-bandwidth, hard-rockin’ coverage of Apple’s music-themed event, complete with live photos and blogging. John liked the video feature of the new iPod nano, but focused on the biggest news of the week–Apple’s upgraded CEO.

Digital Daily’s Apple coverage didn’t stop at The Steve. Ever since announcement of the exclusive Apple-AT&T (T) partnership, current and would-be iPhone freaks have speculated as to what kind of deal will be struck when that contract expires. John reported that iSuppli prognosticators think the agreement may be extended when it runs out in 2010.

John closed out the week with Twitter leaks about the newest incarnation of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Google-toppler (GOOG), Bing. Microsoft showcased Bing 2.0 at the annual company meeting, which some employees took as a green light to tweet away about the unreleased product. Microsoft HQ was more tight-lipped, telling John only that the rollout would happen over the next few months.

MediaMemo followed the money this week–specifically advertising dollars. A year after the Lehman collapse, Peter cited a MediaPost survey that showed some growth in ad spending. In a down market, Peter reminded, sometimes the only place to go, is up. Let’s hope so.

Not to be left out of Apple’s party, MediaMemo covered the release of an iPhone app from RealNetworks (RNWK) that brings all-you-can-eat music for a monthly fee. Wall Street barely blinked at the deal, but changes may come if the service catches on as competitor Spotify has in Europe.

And while the NFL won’t let players tweet from the end zone, it is upping its tech quotient by bringing blacked-out games to your Internet browser. MediaMemo reported that the lower-attendance games would be available to tech-savvy sports nuts–after midnight on game day. Get out the Fritos and espresso, guys, its game time.

True to form as the Lincoln of our very own Mt. Techmore, Walt’s address this week was aimed at helping the wayward get back on track with a bevy of new iPhone navigation apps. This new breed of high dollar apps harnesses the power of the iPhone 3GS to replace those ever present dash top GPS navigation units.

Walt extended his techno-presidential benevolence with another installment of Mossberg’s Mailbox. Networked storage, Quicken for Mac and the ominously impending switch to Windows 7 were all up for discussion.

At the Mossberg Solution, Katie tested Postbox, software designed to bring novel management solutions to your inbox. Developed by some of the guys from Mozilla, Postbox does offer lots of great features, Katie said, even if the switch to the new tools might not be easy for all.

Lots more shiny new tech talk next week. Stay tuned.

Gabriel Stricker, Google’s Director of Search Communications kicks things off by noting that the company will be sharing a number of new developments that cater to the growing demands of its users. With that, Udi Manber takes the stage to offer a big-picture overview of search.

Manber says what Google does is the new “rocket science.” Search has to be fast, relevant, and fresh, he explains. But even that’s not enough. The real goal is to solve users’ problems. If users can’t spell, it’s our problem. If the content is there but in a language the user doesn’t speak, that’s our problem. If the Web is too slow, it’s our problem. Manber offers a few examples of how Google works to address these challenges: real-time data, translation, etc. With these services nailed down, he says, Google can move on to the more important task of working on “understanding.”

Manber invites Pat Riley, senior search quality engineer, to the stage to talk a bit about Google’s “did you mean” link. Lots of people use the link, Riley says, and Google has been working to improve it. Called “spellmillion,” the project provides not only related results for a misspelled query but for alternate ones as well (think labor as in “work” and labor as in “pregnancy”). But it requires Google to process multiple searches for a single query and demands a lot of processing power.

Riley notes that the project has been somewhat contentious because it also potentially questions user intent. He offers the example of “Macy Ray.” Some users might be searching for “Macy Gray,” the singer, others for a person actually named “Macy Ray.” How do you address those two potential queries on a single search results page?

Riley is followed by Engineering Director Scott Huffman, whose subject is mobile search. Huffman starts things off with a few truisms. Mobile search is often local. It should be easy to use. Effortless. And it should provide all that Google has to offer. Huffman notes that this is quite a task since Google must optimize its search for different mobile experiences and different user interfaces: Google’s own Android, Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, etc. Some of these platforms require gestures–touch, swipe–others use a keypad. All must provide access to the Web and the mobile Web–sites that have been optimized for mobile devices. On the screen behind him, Huffman displays an example of Google search that displays desktop Web results and mobile Web results, the latter denoted by a red square.

Mobile search must also be easy. Huffman demos a shared desktop-mobile search for a flight number. Since he’s logged into his Google account, his search for “ba 284″ SF-London on the desktop is immediately shared with the Google app on his mobile device. An unreleased feature, but it’s on its way. A quick look at local listings automatically delivered to devices on the basis on GPS/cell tower location, and then Huffman brings Mayer on stage.

Mayer talks a bit about universal search before moving on to Google’s “bento box” of search results. She talks about Google’s focus on the importance of presentation and its efforts to make search results more usable for the user. An example of this SearchWiki, a tool that allows users to annotate their searches, to “keep their train of thought,” says Mayer. We need to help our users find more and do more with it, she says, noting that the company is still working to address some longstanding user problems:

• Finding recent information
• Expressing that you want just one type of result
• Assessing which results are best
• Knowing what you’re looking for
• Expressing your searches in keywords

Mayer introduces Google Search Options, a feature that appends a search option panel to results, allowing users to “slice and dice” the results as they choose. A demo of the feature, in a search for “Hubble Telescope,” allows for search calibration by time, pages that include images, etc. Another search for “solar oven” is filtered down to specific genres–videos, discussion forums, reviews. Click on those links and that new search context is immediately displayed on the page.

Interestingly, the reviews feature uses something called “sentiment analysis” to extract sentiments from a review and present them in displayed snippets.

Search Options also includes a timeline feature that allows users to visualize results over time. And there’s something called “Wonder Wheel,” which presents a visual representation of a query surrounded by potential refinements (hence “Wonder Wheel”). Click on a refinement and results update automatically. Search Options should be going live now, says Mayer.

A bit of geometry monomania here today at Google Searchology. First the Wonder Wheel and now “Google Squared,” a sort of spreadsheet visualization of search being cooked up in Google Labs. Unstructured data pulled directly from search and organized according to the whim of the user. A search for “small dogs” pulls up a lists of–wonder of wonders–small dogs organized by size, weight, breed, etc. Click on an individual cell and you can change its source. Pretty slick. Still a work in progress, though. It should be available later this month, Mayer says during the Q&A.

Another new feature: Rich Snippets. A search for “drooling dog BBQ” returns your standard Google results along with a list of metadata–average user reviews, for example. A search for a GPS system includes an additional pointer to a recent CNET review of the unit in question. Rich Snippets is open API, incidentally.

Last up, an Android star map app that uses GPS to create a star map “local to your place on earth” and to your position. Move the phone and the map adjusts to your view–essentially the app transforms the device into map overlay for the sky. And how does this tie into search? Search for “Gemini” and a sort of pointer appears onscreen directing you to its location in the sky. And with that, Mayer wraps things up.

According to BoomTown’s reliable sources, the elusive Microsoft (MSFT)-Yahoo (YHOO) deal is making “meaningful” progress. Accordingly, BoomTown wondered whether Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer planned on visiting Carol Bartz, Yahoo CEO, on his trip to the Bay Area this week or if the proximity of Stanford to Yahoo was just chance, given that Stanford was his main destination. At least one of his reasons for being in the area was to give a talk at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium for the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar. BoomTown liveblogged the session and attempted to determine Ballmer’s soul-mate status. Given some of the acquisition rumors flying around this week, BoomTown decided to conduct a little experiment. Would the same sort of “Brangelina”-esque mystique apply as well to the combination of two incredibly hot tech companies? Would it create the same hysteria, and sell as many magazines (figuratively speaking)? (Non) results on BoomTown.

MediaMemo had a Kindle-ish kind of week. Amazon (AMZN) unveiled the latest iteration of the device on Wednesday in New York, and MediaMemo was there to liveblog the whole thing, including the crazy demo, during which the location’s facilities prevented Jeff Bezos from demoing pretty much anything. Also, Bezos forget to mention the fact that Amazon will be conducting a Kindle pilot program at six colleges starting this fall. Forget about getting your hands on one, though–only five students per school will be carrying their textbooks around in a Kindle instead of a backpack. MediaMemo’s advice for cash-strapped students once the devices do become available? Wait three years until the price drops. $489 is a lot to shell out on a student’s budget.

News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch had some news this week during the company’s earnings call (besides earnings)–he believes that while the state of the economy is still dire, “the worst Is over.” He also noted that although he plans to extend WSJ’s online pay model to his strongest properties soon, News Corp. will not be selling any of its content via the Kindle, as some of its competitors will. All this and more on MediaMemo.

On Thursday, Digital Daily liveblogged a press event hosted by Google (GOOG) in advance of its annual shareholder meeting. Some of the topics covered? Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL, the econalypse, YouTube, netbooks, China, antitrust issues and the Apple (AAPL) Board. CEO Eric Schmidt was most forthcoming about the Federal Trade Commission’s just-opened inquiry into Google and Apple’s overlapping boards: When asked if he’d resign from the board, he replied that the thought “hasn’t crossed his mind.” Elsewhere, Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison probably ruined a few people’s mornings over at IBM (IBM) and HP (HPQ) when he told a Reuters reporter that part of his plan for Sun (JAVA) is to create an integrated hardware and software solution, effectively making their competition a little bit steeper. As such, it will be extra interesting to see how the little matter of Sun and a possible violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act plays itself out in the courts. Details on Digital Daily.

Over in Personal Technology, Walt Mossberg reviewed Quickoffice, a program that brings some full-fledged word processing capabilities to the iPhone, but has its limitations. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answered questions about using Macs and PCs together on the same home network, backing up and transferring Outlook Express data and whether it’s possible to find a GPS program for the iPhone that will speak its directions. In the Mossberg Solution this week, Katie Boehret reviewed the Sidekick LX and found it a little out of touch with its market. More in-depth discussion, of course, on the section of the site containing Walt’s columns.

More next week. RIP Dom Deluise.

A Dell laptop, believe it or not. The Latitude E6400 XFR is Dell’s (DELL) first true entrant into the so-called “rugged” laptop category, and its an impressive one. Targeted at the military and first-responder market, the machine is encased in a chassis made of ballistic armor–one Dell claims has twice the impact strength of magnesium alloy. It’s powered by Intel’s (INTC) Core 2 Duo processor, runs Windows Vista and supports Wi-Fi, 3G mobile broadband and GPS. Perfect for military contractors, and more importantly, for the state and local governments currently lining up for billions of dollars in stimulus money. Said Dell spokesman Patrick Burns, “With the stimulus package under way, we’re getting lots of interest.” I’ll bet you are, because at $4,299, you’ll need a stimulus package to afford it.

BoomTown provided continuing coverage of the Yahoo (YHOO) merry-go-round. This time, PR head Jill Nash announced her departure. As the company’s chief communications officer, she’s had a challenging two-year run. New CEO Carol Bartz definitely has some PR ideas of her own, including offering cash prizes to employees who provide info on their colleagues who leak information to the press. Not a huge deterrent yet, apparently–it didn’t take long for BoomTown to get info on both Nash’s farewell memo and Bartz’s bounty system. Next, New Networks, the publisher behind BarelyPolitical and its hugely viral Obama Girl videos, has widened its purview to include the tech sector with BarelyDigital, which the online network has envisioned to include regular shows, tech news remixes and the like. It’s rumored that Obama Girl will be making a cameo appearance or two. If the first two features are any indication, the future looks pretty funny. In another round of executive musical chairs, Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL ad head Lynda Clarizio will be leaving the online service, to be replaced by former Yahoo ad exec Greg Coleman. Microsoft (MSFT) is launching a slick new celebrity site on MSN called Wonderwall, created, designed and produced by BermanBraun Interactive, a Hollywood company run by former Yahoo media chief Lloyd Braun. And speaking of musical chairs, MSN is clearly upping its content ante–earlier this week, it hired Yahoo’s recent media head Scott Moore, who used to work at Microsoft.

MediaMemo asked: What happens when one of the world’s richest men lets loose a swarm (a small swarm) of mosquitoes at a high-end conference? Nothing too exciting, really, but when you consider that the stunt was the publicity-generating part of Bill Gates’s talk at TED, which was a discussion of malaria and some of the problems the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is facing head-on, it gets pretty compelling. Kindle 2.0, the new generation of the device dubbed the “iPod of the book world” will be unveiled Monday at a New York press event, but how many of the devices have been sold thus far? Amazon’s (AMZN) not telling, but Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney estimates the number at 500,000–and believes that the Kindle will be a $1.2 billion business next year. Obviously, a lot will depend on Monday and the new device’s reception. MediaMemo also took some time out this week to wish Facebook a happy fifth birthday, and to stack its track record next to Google’s at the same age, with interesting results. Even the pros are getting hit hard these days–in its quarterly earnings report this week, News Corp. (NWS) missed its estimates, recorded an $8.4 billion write-off and lowered its guidance. CEO Rupert Murdoch admitted that the downturn is worse than he thought. He also admitted that he spent $2.8 billion too much for Dow Jones. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones and this Web site.)

Digital Daily followed the trial of four Google executives this week on criminal charges of defamation and breach of privacy after a much-publicized two-year investigation. Google (GOOG) insists the charges are unwarranted and “akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post.” Clearly, the ultimate outcome will have a huge impact on the future of a free, open Internet. MySpace said this week that it has identified and ousted 90,000 registered sex offenders–and those are just the ones brilliant enough to use their real names. There’s no way of knowing how many are actually using the service or how to prevent them from re-registering once they’re deleted. A free an open Internet, indeed. DD also pondered the future (or lack thereof) of the Motorola (MOT) handset division. Co-CEO Sanjay Jha says the company is committed to making the business work, but its products are looking boring and outdated, and a turnaround would be prohibitively expensive to execute. In the words of one analyst, the company’s problems are “gruesome.” On the other end of the spectrum, Microsoft continues to vehemently deny reports that it’ll be producing its own smartphone. In a report this week, analysts from Broadpoint.AmTech speculated that the device could be uncrated later this month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Meanwhile, it’s been up in the air for two years whether or not iPhones will ever be uncrated in historic Georgetown. Apple (AAPL) has been around the table a few times now with preservationists wary of the architectural impact of an Apple store, no matter how much the business traffic is needed in the neighborhood. Looks like perseverance may have finally paid off, though–Georgetown’s Apple store could open later this year.

In Personal Technology this week, Walt Mossberg took a look at a program called Foxmarks, which sets out to synchronize bookmarks among all of your browsers and all of your machines. Sound a little too handy to actually work well? Walt found it does a pretty good job, with a few caveats. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt responds to readers who want to know more about doing “techie” maintenance on their PCs to keep them running well, whether or not to buy a 15-inch MacBook Pro, and options for email within Windows 7, which won’t ship with a built-in email program. In the Mossberg Solution, Katherine Boehret tests Google Latitude, an opt-in program that lets users track one another’s movements on their smartphones using GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell towers. Kind of like Gawker Stalker, only with permission and without Lindsay Lohan (unless you happen to be Lindsay Lohan).

Last but not least, Silicon Valley lost one of its own this week. The widely admired and much loved Mike Homer, whose rare, severe illness was a rallying point for many over the past months, passed away last weekend and was laid to rest on Thursday.

More next week.

By all appearances, the Pre is a slick little device. But is it formidable enough to stand its ground next to Apple’s iPhone, Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry and the groaning board of Android devices currently in the handset market product pipeline? Palm (PALM) certainly seems to think so. In fact, the company is so confident in the Pre that CEO Ed Colligan seems to think it won’t need a sub-$200 price point to pull share from Apple (AAPL), et al. “Why would we do that when we have a significantly better product,” he asked ATD’s Peter Kafka earlier this afternoon.

Well, here’s one reason: To stay in business. Because despite Colligan’s claims of a “significantly better product,” Palm hasn’t raised the smartphone bar much (if at all) with the Pre. In fact, the device is as noteworthy for the features it may not include as for those it does. Absent from today’s grand unveiling was any mention of video. Also missing was a rival to Apple’s App Store and the robust developer-consumer ecosystem Apple has created around the iPhone and iPod touch. Even Google’s (GOOG) Android OS debuted with that. And the name; well, “Pre” isn’t likely to do very much for Palm’s already much diminished brand recognition.

Now, perhaps video and an app store are coming. But even if they do, will the Pre really be worth paying a premium for, as Colligan suggests? I’m not so sure–especially when the inevitable updates to the iPhone and BlackBerry remove the few advantages it does have over those devices. “Fast Web browsing” and “efficient multitasking” just aren’t big differentiators anymore.

That magnetized conductive charging platform sure is nice, though.

UPDATE: Turns out Palm is planning an App Store rival. According to the Pre press release, “The platform’s flexible environment will also allow developers to distribute their applications over-the-air via an on-device Palm application store.” And though no mention was made of video during Thursday’s Pre unveiling, the device will support it–both on the device and streaming. Said a Palm spokesperson, “The Pre has video playback, including YouTube video from the internet.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Yeah. Those PC Guys Never Stood a Chance, Palm.
• Palm: Spare Change for Financial Viability?
• Alms for Palm?
• Palm New-ness: A Target Price of Zero
• Palm: Hey … Hello? Excuse Me … Over Here!

The first: iLife ‘09. iPhoto now offers a new feature called Faces, which categorizes photos by faces. The software uses a technology called “face detection” to ID the subjects of photos. It asks you to identify the subjects first and then scans the remainder of your photos; using face recognition, it identifies other photos in which those subjects appear.

Another new iPhoto feature: Places. It does the obvious. Using the GPS geotagging built into newer cameras and “the best cellphone in the world,” iPhoto identifies the location at which photos were taken and categorizes them accordingly. What about photos that don’t include those geotags? Manual entry solves that problem with a little help from Google Maps.

Apple has also added Facebook and Flickr support to iPhoto. Set up your accounts in iPhoto and the software will automatically send your photos to those services and allow your Facebook friends to tag them if you so choose. Beyond these features, iPhoto includes a slick new slideshow and book themes.

But Japan is one of the world’s largest and most demanding mobile phone markets. Perhaps even a bit too demanding for the iPhone. According to market-research firm MM Research Institute, Apple (AAPL) sold just 200,000 iPhones in Japan in the device’s first two months on the market.

And now demand is declining. So much so that analysts say sales are unlikely to top 500,000 units, let alone two million. The reason: The iPhone, even with its multi-touch screen and elegant design, pales a bit in comparison to the typical Japanese handset, which boasts not just a high-end color display, but a video camera, GPS and digital TV and electronic currency support as well. Said MM Research analyst Eimei Yokota, “The iPhone is a difficult phone to use for the Japanese market because there are so many features it doesn’t have.”