A post on the Official Google Blog announced that the newly created wireless network will be a combination of Clearwire’s existing WiMax business, Sprint’s broadband infrastructure and the 2.5 GHz spectrum. The company will be 51% owned by Sprint but will be headquartered in Clearwire’s premises in Washington state.

Michael Mace, a principal at Rubicon Consulting reports that Google will provide search and applications such as Gmail, Maps and YouTube to the network’s users, in exchange for their contribution of $500 million. Clearwire will sell Google Android handsets. Google and Clearwire will also form an open Internet Protocol, which will be coordinated with mobile broadband devices and also Android powered devices.

Google has got a very good deal out of this partnership. If thing go according to plan, they could have direct access to a US-wide network of mobile Internet users for a fraction of the amount Verizon paid for the 700 MHz wireless spectrum.

This new network will allow its customers to choose their software applications, content and handsets as per their requirements. Users will thus be free to employ the openness principles of the Internet and have a mobile broadband experience that isn’t dictated by operator or handset manufacturer limitations.

Clearwire will build and maintain a WiMax network that will be able to support these new open standards for spectrum as well as wireless handsets. This new network will afford its users high-speed wireless Internet access throughout the United States. Users will be free to utilise any lawful applications, content and devices without any kind of censorship or blocking of Internet traffic.

According to Sprint, the WiMax network is not expected to be widely accessible until 2010. These are all forward looking statements and the end results may differ substantially from current projections.

The United States government are buying AdWords units that link to a page on the America.gov portal,  telling America’s side of the story:

http://fpolicy.america.gov/fpolicy/security/

This page shows various subjects of international interest such as America’s foreign policy matters, the up-coming U.S. presidential elections, human rights stories, Middle East topics, peacekeeping, confronting terrorism and the US’s work with NATO.

The (rather unrealistic) intention might be to try and lure terrorists who show an undue interest in these stories and thus crack down on terrorism. The ads are visible to Internet visitor on the content network and to searchers looking for keywords such as “terrorism”, “Middle East peace”, “human rights”, “press freedom”, “renewable energy”, “food aid” and “US elections”. The ads are only shown to Google users in Canada, the UK and the UAE.

Jonathan Margolis from the Bureau of International Information Programs, which has released these ads says, “We are trying to engage, inform and influence foreign audiences. Before you can do either of the last two you have got to find some way to engage them . . . We found that when you launch a website and if you want to attract a target audience, Google ads are a very effective way of drawing people to the site.”

The U.S. government is spending $25,000-$30,000 per month on these ads and and additional $15,000 per month on ads in Farsi and Arabic, which have generated about 300,000 impressions per month.

Surely the US could have thought of better ways to spend that money rather than trying to buy a change in public opinion?

According to market research, 37% of people who conduct online searches, do so after seeing a new product being advertised on the TV. Pinny Cohen reports that television has a 98% reach across the U.S.A. and is watched by 112 million households across the country.

TV advertising services on Google AdWords will provide a higher level of accountability than most television advertisers are used to, but not as good as the level of accountability and ROI tracking that online advertisers using Google AdWords expect. The service will include tools to provide data and functionality such as:

1. Reports on the number of times an ad was aired
2. Setting CPM rates to out-bid others for a slot
3. Running national, local and demographically based TV ad campaigns
4. Selecting the time day and network to run the ad on
5. Estimates of the number of people who see the ad
6. Approximations of the average length of time for which the ad is seen, and
7. Determining at what point viewers lost interest in an ad.

To avail of this facility, though, advertisers will first need to create an ad for television. This in itself could automatically exclude a large number of small and medium businesses. Google has, however, set up an ‘Ad Creation Marketplace’, which offers professional help in various departments such as, script writing, editing, voice-overs and filming at reasonable rates. Advertisers can ask for quotations from the various specialists registered on the marketplace and then decide whom to work with. As a special incentive to promote this service, Google will subsidise costs, upto $2,000 per ad, for the creation of ads through the Ad Creation Marketplace initially.

Once the ad is ready the advertiser can choose the networks and timing for display of the ads. TV ads will offer information about audience demographics in order to help advertisers maximise the impact and reach their target audience. A free customised campaign will also be available on request. Advertisers will also be able choose to run the ads during broadcasts that are related to their products or services.

Advertisers who promote their products and services using Google TV ads will be able to decide the maximum cost-per-thousand impressions that they are willing to pay, and pay only when the ads are aired. Google will hold online seminars, featuring experts from TV advertising and AdWords speaking, to help advertisers to convert viewers into clients. Advertisers who have already worked successfully with Google TV Ads will also give tips on how to maximise advertiser earning potential.

Get started with Google TV Ads

Yahoo! stuck to its demand of $37 per share. The option of a hostile takeover bid does not seem desirable at this point as it would clearly involve a long drawn out proxy war between the parties.

Also, in view of Yahoo!’s imminent deal with Google, Microsoft feel that the acquisition of Yahoo! would involve tremendous headaches with anti-trust laws - a combined Google and Yahoo! ad platform would control over 80% of the U.S. search market - which would bring hassles that are quite clearly unwanted by any purchaser, including Microsoft.

In his letter to Jerry Yang, CEO and founder of Yahoo!, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, clearly mentions that Yaho!’s deal with Google would mean harming the effectiveness of Yahoo! Search Marketing’s paid search platform, Panama. It would make it difficult to retain Yahoo!’s talented engineers, and also give complete dominance to Google, with regard to search advertising rates.

Steve Ballmer’s letter to Yahoo! CEO, Jerry Yang

Yahoo! shares fell only 15% on Monday, to $24.37 per share, from Friday’s close of $28.67 per share. This is still higher than the stock price before Microsoft announced their acquisition bid, largely due to the market’s expectation that Microsoft may still come back and buy Yahoo! at their weakened share price.

Jerry Yang will undoubtedly have to shoulder the responsibility of proving, to his shareholders, that he has acted in their best interests and done the right thing by not accepting Microsoft’s offer. If he is unable to raise the stock prices within a few months, he may find himself compelled to accept a lower offer or find a new job.

At present however, Yang remains convinced that the company is on the right track and share prices will improve shortly with the new strategies they have put in place. In the meantime Microsoft shares fell by $0.16, While Google shares rose by $13.61. As of now, it would seem that Google is having the last laugh, especially if their new ad deal with Yahoo! comes through.

This announcement will be good news for mobile publishers. It will eventually improve their income through automated access to various networks, thus helping to fill available inventory. The earlier practice often tied down publishers to a single network. Now they are in a position to choose whichever network offers them the best deal.

Ari Paparo, DoubleClick’s product manager says, “This integration is a great example of how DoubleClick is working with key industry players, to bring value to publishers by enhancing the liquidity of mobile display inventory. Publishers who have a tie up with DoubleClick Mobile will be able to sell mobile inventory indirectly through any of the above networks.

DoubleClick Mobile will provide details about what inventory has sold directly, what has been taken up by the ad networks and what is still available for sale. Publishers will have better income earning potential through direct and indirect sale of ads.

Paul Palmieri, President and CEO of Millenial Media, believes that the tie up with DoubleClick Mobile will allow publishers to accept ads from their own roster of leading advertisers without limiting their right to direct sales, thereby bringing more publishers into mobile advertising. Although DoubleClick is a part of Google, they have decided to remain neutral (for now) in order to benefit their publishers.

With the number of mobile Internet users increasing, publishers are naturally expected to try and use this opportunity to the best possible extent to maximise both direct and indirect sales.

In a bid to retaliate, some Chinese citizens demonstrated against and decided to boycott the French hypermarket chain Carrefour in China from May 8 to 24, the time during which the Olympics will be held in Beijing. Soon after that, it was found that searches carried out on Google.cn for the word “Carrefour” did not show any results even though Google.com has over 6 million results on the subject and they are available in Hong Kong, which is outside China’s national network.

Searches for Carrefour on Google China bring up a message that informs us that ‘this information cannot be accessed and one should return to google.cn for other information’. News and video searches for Carrefour have also been blanked out.

Censorship of domains is quite a common practice in China, but censorship of keywords is something relatively new. It is believed, that if this censorship has been carried out by Google under instructions from the Chinese government, it is more likely to have been ordered with a view to appease the agitating public rather than to hurt Carrefour per se.

While the Chinese government encourages a show of patriotism, it is not in their best interests to encourage huge hordes of angry protesters, as this may eventually harm their own set up - they intend to use the Olympics to project an image of tolerance and non-dictatorialism to the world.

In the past Google has often cooperated with the Chinese government and agreed to impose a degree of self-censorship. For example, some satellite imagery is not available on Google Maps, and a number of domains relating to human rights organizations are missing from the search index. Anti-government sources have also been removed from Google News.

It is not absolutely certain, though, whether this ban is from Google or the Chinese government. It is quite possible that the Chinese have developed some system to block specific search queries, perhaps based on the specific URL returned for individual queries. At present, neither part has commented on the ban.

At present search engines rank images based on the presence of keywords in text associated with the image, rather than the image itself. Results are often unsatisfactory and inappropriate. Image analysis results remain poor in spite of decades of research in the field.

The New York Times reports that search geniuses intend to introduce a system for image searches that is similar to PageRank, which is used for Web search. The new PageRank for product image search, or ‘Visual Rank’ as it is called, will actually try to understand the picture or analyze the visual link structure.

Image recognition, which is expensive and time consuming, usually breaks down with any images other than faces, alphanumeric characters and very specific objects. The new technology will instead try to identify more objects and also perform a link analysis with image processing. In this system, a numerical weight will be allotted to all images, thus weighing its relative importance vis-à-vis other images.

Classical image recognition methods can only compare images with a known image. However, with VisualRank, Google will use “visual themes”, to rank each image from a given set of images, based on how well it matches the theme. For example, when the word McDonald’s is used, the algorithm would identify the famous golden arches from their logo as the theme. A picture where the arches are prominently displayed would then be ranked higher than one in which the arches are in the background.

During a recent study Baluja, Jing and 150 panelists surveyed 2,000 of the most popular products search on Google. It was found that the VisualRank algorithm reduced irrelevant results by 83%. As of now all this has been done only on an experimental level and it remains to be seen whther Google can scale the technology and apply it to their entire database of images.

A range of popular products, their user ratings and price comparisons will be made available to users whenever and wherever they needs them, via Mobile Live Search. Detailed reviews and consumer opinions will also be available, allowing the user to thoroughly research the product before buying it.

Feature ratings through consumer reviews from across the web will be incorporated into the Live Search product listings. Henceforth, whenever consumers notice a new product in a store, they can use the Microsoft service to find out details about its performance, special features, compare it with similar products and also search for better prices before actually buying it on the spot.

Another interesting feature of Live’s Mobile Search offering will be made available to users in the U.K. and Japan - the ability to automatically ponpoint one’s location, based on the nearest mobile communication towers. Customers can then locate whatever they are searching for in the vicinity. However, the service currently works only on Vodafone, O2, Orange and T-Mobile’s networks.

Product search on mobile has been available on Google since September of last year. Microsoft’s service is not yet actually available in the Europe, as of the time of writing this story. However, the Mobile Live Search team will probably roll it out in time, a fact they have not considered important enough to mention in their announcement.

According to Balogh, they are “rewiring Yahoo! from the inside out, to create a development platform at Yahoo! that will literally open up all of the assets of Yahoo! to developers across the Web in a way that [they] have never done before.”

The open strategy aims to make the consumer experience throughout Yahoo! a social one. As a first step towards doing so, they have invited a select group of developers to start using SearchMonkey - the Yahoo! Open Search project that was officially launched in February.

Yahoo! SearchMonkey

TechCrunch has provided a detailed write up about creating applications and enhanced search results with SearchMonkey.

Y!Open, the first stage of this strategy is due to launch sometime later this year. The overall strategy, though, is not limited to just search. It aims to open up all parts of Yahoo! such as Yahoo! Mail, Frontpage, MyYahoo!, Mobile and others.

All these services will be available through a single unified profile, and Yahoo! Mail will be its centerpiece. This way all existing customers from its various sites will automatically be integrated into the new social area, instead of having to sign up for multiple sites.

A central application platform will be the base on which developers can host or hook in applications. Current APIs will be developed further, along with OpenSocial, so developers can build more applications and distribute them across the Yahoo! spectrum.

Yahoo! Application Platform (Y!AP) is also due to be launched soon and is expected to give direct competition to the Google App Engine. Y!AP will allow developers to host a certain number of applications for free. Developers will be able to move data from within the network to other networks. E.g. The Yahoo! contact list could be integrated with Plaxo.

Eventually all of Yahoo!’s properties will be amalgamated into one macro social site and this will optimize usage of its underutilized social graph. This will be a rewiring of Yahoo!’s properties in a big way. The idea is to make it easier for users to share information with other users on other sites and thus keep up with social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

No definite time frame has been set for all these initiatives, so only time will tell how much of this will actually occur and whether it will really be serious competition to Google. Talks of these open initiatives have been heard off and on since last September. Critics think the new announcement are just futile attempts from Yahoo! to try and maintain their foothold in the market. One also wonders if all this will make any difference to Microsoft’s takeover plans.

A line of text with the word “[AD]” attached to the banner will identify it as an advertisement to users. Google is not the first ad platform, nor the first search provider to offer this format of advertising. Yahoo!, Microsoft’s Screen Tonic, AOL’s Third Screen Media and AdMob already provide mobile display ads.

AdWords, though, is the only integrated platform offering mobile display advertising alongside a host of other formats. Moreover, it is not too late for Google to enter this market, as mobile Internet usage is still not very widespread and advertisers are still testing the waters.

Mobile image ads on AdWords are currently only offered on a pay per click basis and not on the CPM basis where advertisers pay for ad impressions. Mobile text ads are also available on a pay per phonecall basis, but this option is not enabled for mobile display ads.

The mobile image ads are similar in principle to ads on the content network for PC users, but are smaller in size, in order to be accommodated on the mobile screen, and will run on mobile content network. The ads can be in JPEG, GIF or PNG format and will be in the following sizes:

• 305 x 64 Banner (3k max)
• 215 x 34 Banner (2k max)
• 192 x 53 Banner (2k max)
• 167 x 30 Banner (2k max)

Keywords will be used to contextually target the sites in the mobile content network. Google will only show one image ad per mobile page. Publishers will be allowed to maximise profitability by choosing between text ads, image ads or a combination of the two. Google will then automatically run the ad that is expected to best serve the user’s purpose.

Mobile image ads are currently functional in several countries including The U.K., U.S.A., Russia, Australia, France, India, Italy and Japan. The screenshot below shows how advertisers can use the new service.

Adding image ads to Google AdWords Mobile

Net revenue for the quarter came in at $1.35 billion (compared to a consensus of $1.32 billion). The overall revenue growth has gone up from 8% to 9%, which can be referred to as marginal at best. However, the revenue and cash position have both been boosted by one-time payments from AT&T ($350 million) and a non-cash gain of $401 million related to Alibaba Group’s initial public offering of Alibaba.com. The actual adjusted cash flow is about 20% less than that of last year.

Yahoo! President Sue Decker and others in the company seem to be quite satisfied with the results and tend to blame the economy for the weakness in finance and retail. The net earnings, however, are 11% below those of the first quarter of last year, and the stock price fell by 8% ($0.15), during after-hours trading on Tuesday, just after the results were declared.

The advertising system, Panama, is yet to start showing positive results. In the meantime, the higher operating cost incurred means the overall revenue gains have come down from $160 million to $142 million. Terry Samuel, CEO and Chairman of Yahoo! feels they have made good progress with their outlined goals, and are set to capture major growth opportunities in the future.

Analysts’ Opinions

Wall Street does not seem to be blinded by the superficial increases in revenue or cash. The underlying truth is quite plainly visible for all analysts to see - Yahoo! cannot continue to grow on its own.

Jim Friedland analyst at Cowen &Co. said, “Microsoft is breathing a sigh of relief. Even though these are solid results, given long and short term challenges, there’s been no overall shift in Yahoo!’s business. Microsoft’s offer is still the best offer on the table.”Mike Binger, fund manager at Thrivent Financial says, “I would say at this point, Microsoft would stay their bid.” Susquehanna Financial Group analyst, Marianne Wolk, also shares that opinion. She says “This doesn’t change the picture much at all.”

Blake Jorgensen, CFO of Yahoo! says the results are “right on track”, despite the distraction of Microsoft’s offer. He adds that they are not opposed to a deal with Microsoft, but only to a value which discounts the underlying value of the company.

Yahoo! has declared their first strong quarter in a while. Microsoft could wait to let their steam drop, rather than raise their bid price. Yahoo! could pull out all the stops in one quarter or two, but they just aren’t good enough to keep the results up, and when they fall, Microsoft will swoop in for the kill.

However timing is of the essence, and if shareholders see through the overall revenue increases and realise that Yahoo!’s core business is not improving, the sale could be imminent. Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer had said before the results were declared that their resolve would remain unchanged, irrespective of the results. Sources at Microsoft said there was no reason to revalue their offer of $43 billion.

Will They Act Or Will They Go?

Bloomberg News speculates that Microsoft’s bid to take control of the Yahoo! board may start as early as this weekend. Meanwhile, PC World reported that Steve Ballmer threatened to walk away from the deal, when speaking at a conference in Milan on Wednesday.

Is this just acquisition politics? Will the board of directors at Yahoo! be ousted? Or will Microsoft give them the cold shoulder and just move on?

Brandz Top 100 identifies the most powerful brands in the world. The ranking is based on results from a survey conducted across 1,00,000 people and financial data from the ranked corporations.

Google’s total brand value has increased 30% and is now estimated to be worth around $86 billion. Peter Walshe, global account director at Millward Brown says, “Google’s rank has been driven by fantastic financial performance and equity value.”

Microsoft did not fare badly either, ranking third, with a 29% increase in brand value. Yahoo!, however, fared very badly, being one of only four brands in the technology sector to lose brand value. The Yahoo! brand fell 13% to make it worth just $11.5 billion.

The top five brands, Google, General Electric, Microsoft, Coca-cola and China Mobile (in that order), are therefore the same as last year, and each company has increased its estimated value by 15% to 39% in the year.

Apple is a new entrant in the top 10 list at number 7. Its value is $55.2 billion up a whopping 123% from last year, when it was at number 16. The jump in Apple’s brand value has been largely owing to the success of its new products iTouch and iPhone.

Mobile Operator, Vodafone, was the top ranking British brand, up 12 places from last year, with a 75% increase in value to $36.9 billion. It was followed by Tesco, HSBC, Marks & Spencer and Barclays in the ranking of the top UK brands.

Overall, the mobile sector showed the strongest growth in brand value, followed by technology, personal care, fast food and luxury. Porsche topped the ranking of brands with the highest brand momentum, while Louis Vuitton had the highest brand contribution.

Download Brandz Top 100 2008 Report

The minimum bid amount for each keyword may now be above or below $0.10. Account holders will be informed about the changes in due course.

Sources at Yahoo! explain that the new minimum bids will be like the reserve prices held at auction houses. This price will be based on a variety of features such as quality and value. If the quality of an ad is good and it receives more clicks than those of its competitors, it will receive a higher ranking and the minimum charge will be lower.

If the ad quality is poor Yahoo! will charge more by raising the minimum bid, but will still keep running the ad, which seems to show that they do not really care about quality if the advertiser can pay for it.

Keyword value is calculated using the number of advertisers bidding on the word and the amount they are willing to pay for it. Ads will be displayed for a keyword when the advertiser’s bid equals or exceeds the minimum bid fixed for it. If the advertiser’s bid falls below the minimum amount required the keyword will be inactivated.

Account holders will be informed via the Yahoo! Search Marketing dashboard about these changes and they will be allowed a grace period to make the necessary bid adjustments to keep their keywords active. The new system will be similar to Google’s and is likely to increase Yahoo!’s revenue at least in the short term, as it seems unlikely that the minimum bid for any word will be set below $0.10.

In the long run, however, it is possible that advertisers may go elsewhere rather than pay an exorbitant charge for ad placement on Yahoo!, in which case Yahoo! may end up being the ultimate loser. Advertisers will also have no way of knowing what their competitors are being charged and the level playing field that most advertisers liked about Yahoo! Search Marketing will now be completely lost.

A number of advertisers are already complaining that the new bids have overnight been increased by 2 to 4 times the earlier price and they think it is especially wrong to do so in the given market conditions.

Jim Phillips, one of the many unhappy customers that commented on this announcement, said “I will eventually pull ALL my business from Yahoo! if this is the same as Google. What they are really doing is punishing the advertisers for a slow economy and poor ad revenue from click through. So you pay a LOT more for the few clicks you might get vs. all the impressions you get.”

A number of advertisers also saw the move as a poor way to induce Microsoft to increase the amount they pay to acquire Yahoo! While that may not actually be the case, it has still left the few advertisers that still use Yahoo! Search Marketing quite unhappy.

Twitter, the fast growing social networking and micro blogging site, has been banned in Dubai. The official reason given is that its content is not consistent with the religious, moral and political values of the region. The event however, seems to have been triggered by equally interesting event…

James Karl Buckley, a student of journalism at the University of California in Berkeley, was arrested last week by the Egyptian law enforcers for photographing some noisy demonstrators. Buckley who had access to Twitter through his mobile phone, typed in the word “ARRESTED” and sent it out through the ubiquitous mobile messaging service of Twitter

Buckley’s message reached all his contacts in the U.S.A. and many anti-government bloggers in Egypt, on whom his journalism project is based. The next day he not only had an Egyptian lawyer hired by UC Berkeley, but also the support of the U.S. Embassy, and he walked out a free man in no time.

Web 2.0 sites like YouTube and Twitter are gaining tremedous popularity in the East as a vehicle for repressed individuals to broadcast their plight and gain international sympathy. Protesters in Tibet used YouTube to show the world Chinese governmental heavy-handedness and an individual in Egypt used Twitter to draw international attention to himself.

These social media websites are turning into a real threat to the oppressors. It is just easier for certain governments to ban such sites in order to prevent the spread of any anti-government propaganda, or a threat to their sovereignty.

Internet users in Dubai saw a notice saying “Site Blocked” when they tried accessing http://twitter.com. Interestingly enough, the government was also polite enough to say “If you think this site should not be blocked, please visit the Feedback Form available on our site.” One does wonder how safe anyone who questions such a government’s motive, by filling in this feedback form, would actually be?

Live News Search originally served as a plain search service that focused on news stories. The Live News Search homepage contained no more than a search box and a short list of popular current news searches. However, since the growth in popularity of Google News as a news portal, Microsoft has decided to expand the capabilities of their News Search site.

News stories will now get categorised into ten sub-topics in the USA. These are: Top Stories, World, U.S., Local, Business, Politics, Entertainment, Sports, SciTech and Health. The updated version is not currently available to UK users.

Several new features have been added to the News search service to satisfy customer needs and to improve the overall user experience. Some of the highlights are:

1. Aggregated news
   Users can now browse through the latest headlines in a manner similar to that on Google News. Breaking news is placed prominently so that users are always informed of the latest developments. Stories will be grouped according to categories.
2. Localisation
   Local news will be presented across all states in the U.S.A. When the update is rolled out in Europe, the local news feature will provide information specific to individual countries.
3. Multimedia
   Various forms of multimedia including video and images will be accessible through smart-motion thumbnails, so that visitors can read the headlines and watch video footage at the same time.

In effect, the news search page will now contain local, national and international news along with multimedia all at once. For those interested in further details, they can either click ‘more on this story’ or query a topic in the search box. The news search results can also be filtered according to the user’s location and by source.

Suggestions on related topics will also be offered. Articles will be grouped by date. Related videos will be directly available. Further innovations such as the inclusion of blogs are in the planning stages. RSS support is also planned in the near future.

Coverage will also be improved drastically, as Live News will now be powered with information from over 2,000 sources as against only about a 100 in the past.

Live News Search

Needless to say, if this deal does go through, it would help Yahoo! avoid Microsoft’s bid to buy them over. The benefits of such a deal for Yahoo! in the long run, though, are extremely limited. Yahoo! would be handing over control of its most important asset - Yahoo! Search Marketing - to Google and would turn into a sitting duck in the future.

Shareholders should be worried about the competency of Yahoo!’s board of directors if this information is true. They are either taking desperate measures to avoid being acquired by Microsoft at all costs or are trying some really poor tactics to get Microsoft to raise their bid. Either way, their actions seem puerile and selfish with little or no thought to raising shareholder value.

Analysts have reported that a Google-Yahoo! deal would increase Yahoo!’s revenues by about 33% and Yahoo! shares would likely gain $5. Such a deal could raise an additional $1 billion for Yahoo! annually, according to Citigroup Global markets analyst Mark Mahaney. However Microsoft’s offer of $45 billion might seem far more enticing to shareholders.

It is almost certain that if such a deal were to take place, Microsoft would make its displeasure known by invoking antitrust laws. Microsoft’s top lawyer Brad Smith has said, “Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90 percent of the search advertising market, in Google’s hands. This would make the market far less competitive, in contrast to our own proposal to Yahoo.” Smith further mentioned that Microsoft would closely assess all its options.

ValleyWag suggests that in order to avoid antitrust issues, Yahoo could set up an ‘open market place’ and invite both Google and Microsoft to make bids for advertising there. This system could work well if Google were really interested in keeping Yahoo! out of Microsoft’s clutches which seems like a reasonable belief.

It is highly likely that the creators of Twitter plan to start monetise the fast-growing and already popular social media platform by displaying ads on a commercial scale and what users have seen may be the initial preparations for doing so.

Since its inception in March 2006, Twitter has followed the policy of ‘build an audience first’. Due to this Twitter has developed a very loyal fan following, as a social networking site, but is yet to make any money. So far Twitter has provided its services free of cost, and if they are to continue doing so, they may have to monetise it in some way, shape or form.

Running ads within the twitter streams is the most obvious way for them to monetise the service. Another idea for monetisation would be to charge users who wish to include links within their Tweets.

Twitterific, a desktop application built to interface with Twitter from Macs, already includes ads in the Twitter timeline in its free version. Biz Stone of Twitter however, denied that Twitter has been testing ads, when asked by Silicon Alley Insider. He said, “We’re not putting ads on Twitter.com. As far as I can tell, a customised background image had some folks confused and speculating.”

Conceptualisation of a Twitter stream with ads

According to latest reports from Forrester Research, the vast majority (83%) of marketers think that mobile advertising will grow several fold in about 3 years from now, and to be able to make the most of the boom when it occurs, advertisers should start preparing themselves from now.

One of the biggest obstacles advertisers will have to deal with is the lack of awareness among the masses about mobile ads. It is reported that only about 7% of users trust mobile ads.

Advertisers will need to start analysing data on how clients use their mobiles. Prior research and data from network operators indicates that 42% of users use their mobiles for SMS, 25% for picture messages, and just about 15% use it for email, apart from making and receiving phone calls.

33% of users have come across some form of marketing on their phones, and this figure is expected to increase with time. According to data collected by Forrester, only 1% of users said that they had clicked on a banner ad, while using their mobile phones, although new arrivals on the mobile market such as Blyk have made claims of very high click through rates.

Acceptable Advertising

Marketers can use the ’send to a friend’ feature and referral incentives to improve the acceptability of mobile ads. They can also distribute branded logos and graphics that can be used as screen savers or wall paper by customers. Using ads containing keywords that are common in that region or local language would also be a smart move.

Sponsored links are prefered over ads that appear while the page is loading, as most users find the latter to be quite tiresome. Marketers can also put in pre-roll ads before mobile video clips and games, as this seems to be the most acceptable video ad format on mobile. Advertisers must remember that it is extremely important to keep their ads short and sweet – preferably under 15 seconds.

It is also necessary to consider that the size of the mobile screen is small in this case and users make use of the mobile to collect information while on the move. As of now, only 23% of mobile users feel that accessing the web through their mobiles is a pleasant experience. Advertisers should use fast-loading content and use only miniature versions of their regular sites on mobiles.

According to sources, 89% of complaints about web-based child pornography in the country were related to Orkut. Needless to say, this is a very serious offence. The Brazillian government had initially approached Orkut to cooperate with them on this issue but were turned down because the personal details of the perpetrators was supposedly held by Google Inc. in the U.S.A.

A feature introduced on Orkut that allowed the creation of private albums, only accessible to a user’s contacts, has been abused to spread child pornography. According to a federal prosecutor from Sao Paulo, Sergio Suiama, “the dissemination of Orkut in Brazil has turned the country into a distributor of child pornography, and Google doesn’t seem to be worried by that.” He further added that about one-third of Internet users in Brazil are between 10-15 years of age, and hence it is urgent to put an end to this problem.

Google has agreed to develop image filters on Orkut that will detect and prevent the uploading of child pornography. They have also decided to keep records of any data that looks suspicious for a period of 6 months instead of the usual 1 month.

Considering the seriousness of the issue at hand, Google defended their earlier refusal to hand over personal data of the paedophiles using Orkut by saying that handing over the required information was not an issue, but they had not received any official communication in this regard so far.

Brazilian police will be given access to 3,261 private photo albums on Orkut that may contain child pornography. So far, user IPs and navigation logs of over 1,000 cases have been handed over by Google to the Brazilian authorities.

For now, the Brazilian government seems to be satisfied by Google’s efforts to curb the problem, and is willing to see if these measures will suffice. Some prosecutors have threatened civil and criminal suits against Google, though, if details are not revealed soon.

Several moves and counter moves are working simultaneously in the Microsoft-Yahoo! battle. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Yahoo! is negotiating with Time Warner and seems to be very close to concluding a deal whereby Time Warner would amalgamate AOL into Yahoo! and make a cash investment in return for a 20 percent stake in the newly formed alliance. The deal reportedly values AOL at $10 billion, excluding their dial-up business. Yahoo! could then use the cash to buy over large amounts of its own stock, for somewhere between $30-40 per share.

Concurrently, it appears that News Corp, who was wooing Yahoo! a while ago, has turned the tables and is believed to be trying to cut a deal with Microsoft. If this deal goes through, the AOL-Yahoo! deal would not take place and Yahoo! would instead have to settle for a Microsoft-MySpace-Yahoo! deal.

Yahoo! also announced last week that that they will conduct a limited 2-week trial run featuring Google AdSense ads in Yahoo! search results. Google will place its ads in about 3% of Yahoo! search results (instead of Yahoo!’s own ads.) The AdSense ads will be limited to the U.S. only and will not be featured on the Yahoo! Content Network.
While all of the above mentioned deals would throw up practical difficulties during the integration phase, a 3-way deal between Microsoft, MySpace and Yahoo! could be especially big and would attract enormous amounts of traffic and advertising revenues.

According to Yahoo! all of this is being done with a view to improve its stock holder value. However, the deal with Google reeks of their top executives’ stubborn dislike of Microsoft, regardless of what would actually benefit shareholders. They are clearly indicating that they would prefer to let go of their biggest asset (Yahoo! Search) rather than let Microsoft buy them over.

The New York Times reported that Yahoo!’s board met on Friday to discuss their options and have decided to continue talks with Microsoft and Time Warner this week. No decisions have been reached, though.

In fact, a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo!, with or without AOL or MySpace, appears to be the only possible way to check the growth of Google. Yahoo!’s quarterly income results are due to be announced shortly, and a lot will depend on them. If the results are bad, Yahoo! may want to grab Microsoft’s offer, but if the results are good they may give Microsoft the cold shoulder and keep them waiting in the wings.

Conversion actions can be classified as:

• Purchase/Sale
• Signup
• Lead
• View of a key page
• Other

Actions can be used with pay per click as well as pay per action campaigns. Google launched the pay per action beta test just over a year ago in March 2007.

The new conversion tracking tool allows more sophistication for pay per click advertisers who have for the longest time only been able to track overall conversion volumes. Advertisers using the pay per action system will benefit much more, though, as they can now determine which keywords lead to more valuable actions and are worth bidding more for.

The ‘Campaign Summary’ page still shows the total number of conversions, cost per conversion and conversion rate. However, a new ‘Conversion Tracking’ page has been developed, which provides a breakdown of the number of conversions by conversion type.

Strangely enough, the various actions cannot be viewed for individual campaigns and Ad Groups just yet. The reports have not been updated either, so the Conversion Tracking page offers the best, albeit extremely limited, view of the types of actions visitors from AdWords have taken on the site.

Developers can use the Google App Engine to write new web applications, which will continue to be based on GFS and Bigtable. The Engine will allow creation of scalable applications, that is, developers can first build their applications on a small scale and then expand them as they gain in popularity.

Each application built using the Google App Engine will be allotted a quota of 5 million free page views per month. Bandwidth, storage and CPU use will be free. It is expected that this capacity will increase in the near future, and its users will then be able to buy additional resources as per their requirements.

The App Engine from Google will compete wiith Amazon’s S3 service. According to the InsideGoogle blog, it may also compete with social networks such as Facebook since now anything that can be done on any social network will also be possible without using a social network.

According to some, Google’s App Engine may come to be viewed as one of Google’s most revolutionary products because it will be a web host that will be well configured, well connected and well tested without being phenomenally expensive. The preview will be available to the first 10,000 people who sign up for it and download the SDK. The product is still in its trial stages and further improvements will be made on it based on feedback received from its initial applications developers.

If the ease of use of Google’s Gadget builder is anything to go by, the App Engine may well change the way information gets organised and delivered to users in the future. However, it is one of the many Google products that will never be popular with the masses due to its technical nature and specific functionality.

appengine.google.com/

Yahoo! recently announced that they have been working hard on this aspect of advertising and will shortly come out with a new format called AMP! (Advertising Management Platform) They believe that AMP! Will revolutionize the way the ad industry functions, and make it much simpler to advertise while saving a lot of time and effort.

Yahoo! Press Release for AMP!

Google launched a similar ad management system last month - Google Ad Manager. Yahoo!, as always, is lagging behind. Their new system is not even ready, but they have announced its launch to either give the market a reason to believe in their lofty goals or to give another reason for Microsoft to increase their acquisition bid.

In a statement released on 6th April, Sue Decker, president of Yahoo! blogged about how innovations have changed the world, from old-fashioned postal services to email and VCR to DVR. She believes that the ad industry is in dire need of an innovation to smoothen out the way it works, while cutting out the unnecessary “paper work” and clutter.

A team of dedicated engineers, strategists and managers from the online ad industry have been working to improve this system and Decker thinks that they have achieved their target of creating a system that allows advertisers to book inventory, negotiate pricing, seek approval, find the right audience, create test sheets, test ads and do even more in an efficient manner, without unnecessary faxes and phone calls.

AMP! has been designed to automate advertiser processes, allowing tasks to be completed in a few minutes, rather than weeks, by working through one interface, to buy, search, and display local, mobile and video ads. Yahoo! has already used this format with some of their partners from the Newspaper Consortium, with excellent results.

Yahoo! expects to release AMP! by the next quarter with some of their publishers, advertisers, ad networks and agencies, with the process gradually rolling out over the next year. A video demonstration of the AMP! system can be seen at:

advertising.yahoo.com/amp/

Ads run before and after videos on the service. While Sony BMG provides the music, Rhythm New Media is in charge of selling and serving the ads. The music video service was officially launched on the 31st of March. According to 3, the response to their free-to-access mobile video scheme has been excellent, with about 1 million users (25% of their clientele) signing up for the service by October 2007.

Signing up for free ad-funded music videos on 3 is quite simple. When a subscriber wants to start using this facility, he/she needs to simply visit the 3 music page, select the ‘opt-in’ option on the mobile screen, enter their age and gender.

Users can browse to select videos. A short pre-roll ad gets displayed before the video plays, followed by the music video the users selected and after that a post-roll ad gets played. In order to encourage customers to use this service without fear of exorbitant data charges being levied on them the word ‘FREE’ is prominently displayed next to each link.

Ads are shown to suit the demographic profile of the user according to the gender and age group they specified when opting into the service. Hence different users may see different ads before and after the same video. In order to check the efficacy of the system, a special link is provided on the main page for viewers who may be interested in participating in a survey that asks users of the service what brands they think they have recently seen being advertised on their mobile, what ads they have seen and the main message of an ad that they were shown.

Responses to the service have been very encouraging, with viewers viewing 3 videos per day on an average. 25% of them had spontaneous ad recall and 75% reported total message recall. 95% of users are happy with this service. Some top brands like Microsoft, Unilever Lynx, Nivea and Paramount pictures have already advertised through this format.

3 Official Press Release

The service has been launched primarily on university networks, which was Facebook’s initial target market. The service is geared to keep users logged onto the social network longer, thereby increasing opportunities to sell more advertising on Facebook.

A new chat bar has been introduced at the bottom of the page, which will always be present by default. This bar enables users to access their online friends list, chat settings, current chat window, online status etc. The service is AJAX based and does not require users to install any new software.

Conversations get highlighted in the chat bar with a red bubble whenever a contact comes online and sends the user a message. A user interested in pursuing the conversation can then open up the chat window by clicking on it. To get out of it, one just needs to minimise the window. To reopen a particular conversation, the user can just reopen ‘recent chat history’ with the same contact.

Privacy concerns have been considered by the Facebook development team. The post on the Facebook blog announcing the launch of the chat service explains that recent chats are saved across login sessions but not permanently. Users can instantly delete message history by clicking on the ‘clear chat history’ link in a particular chat