The Googlefication of the mobile industry will begin a bit later than expected. When the search giant announced its Android mobile platform last November, it said devices running it would arrive at market by the second half of this year. Well, turns out that deadline was a bit aggressive. Android-based handsets may not be available until the fourth quarter of this year–if Google’s lucky.
Coming as it does after news of Microsoft’s plan to bribe consumers to use its search engine, reports of Google’s continued dominance in search aren’t all that surprising.
My God … Bill Gates really is sharing his fortune. But not with folks who help out with that infamous Microsoft email “beta test.” He’s sharing it with consumers who use Microsoft’s Live Search engine to find and purchase products online.
If the old media advertising economy is in the toilet, then its new media counterpart is sitting atop it. According to figures compiled by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, spending on Internet advertising in 2007 rose to $21.2 billion, up 26 percent from the prior year.
Ask, the little search engine that can’t, but someday hopes to, is committed to becoming a viable competitor in a market overwhelmingly dominated by Google and Yahoo. It has not, as CEO Jim Safka vehemently points out in an interview with Forbes today, ceded the search battle to anyone.
They’re not the competition; they’re the environment in which you compete. The IT industry used to say that about IBM, but today the adage seems equally applicable to Google, which dominates the search market just as IBM once dominated the computer industry. According to new metrics from Hitwise, Google’s share of the U.S. Internet search market grew to 67.9%–a 4% increase year-over-year.
Who says Google is hoarding Silicon Valley’s tech talent? In July of 2007, Gideon Yu, a Valley train-hopper with stints at Yahoo and then YouTube, resigned from his position at the video-sharing site shortly after it was acquired by the search engine to become CFO of Facebook. A few months later, Benjamin “bling” Ling, described as one of “Larry and Sergey’s golden boys,” left Google to run Facebook’s platform program. Then this past March, Sheryl Sandberg, Google’s vice president of global online sales and operations, bailed to join the social network as chief operating officer.
Here’s the full text of Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer’s letter to Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang.
Mr. Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Dear Jerry:
After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo.
I first want to convey [...]
Microsoft may launch a hostile bid for Yahoo as early as today. That’s the big news this morning from those mysterious “people familiar with the situation” who are quick to note, as they always are, that the “situation” is still fluid and Microsoft may also drop the bid entirely or sweeten it a bit.
If power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, what does absolute information awareness do?
That’s a good question to ask in light of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s call for “omnibus” Internet surveillance. In testimony to the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Mueller suggested legislation be passed that would give the bureau [...]
Yahoo’s exploratory advertising deal with Google has given it an alternative to Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid after all–the possibility of a federal antitrust investigation. The Justice Department is reportedly examining the companies’ dalliance amid concerns that it violates antitrust laws.
Which isn’t surprising at all, really. Together, Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG) control more than 80% [...]
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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