The information was given to The New York Times by unnamed sources who have not yet been authorised to talk about the upcoming feature.

It is likely that Facebook may announce this feature at f8, their yearly developer conference, which is due to be held next month.

One of the reasons why rumours about this feature sound more credible could be the fact that Facebook changed their privacy policy last November. The policy now says, “When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.”

However, in anticipation of protests by the advocates of user privacy, Facebook also said, “If we offer a service that supports this type of local sharing, we will present you with an opt-in choice of whether you want to participate.”

It is believed that Facebook has been working on this location sharing feature for almost a year now. However, when questioned about the service, official spokeswoman, Meredith Chin said, “We’re constantly experimenting with new things around here, but we don’t have any details to share right now.”

The location sharing feature will supposedly be offered directly by Facebook to its users and will also have a set of software tools for developers to offer location-based services.

The fact that 50% of Facebook users log in at least once a day and 100 million users (25%) use their mobile phones to do so, makes location sharing an important feature for Facebook.

While this feature will give competition to smaller location-based networks like Foursquare and Loopt, it is more likely to compete with Google for a share of the revenue from the small business local advertising sector.

According to Jessica Vascellaro of The Wall Street Journal, the new search service will run on set-top boxes and will allow users to search for TV shows and Web content, including YouTube videos.

Dish Network, which is currently the second largest satellite TV provider in the U.S., will allow Google to offer TV searches of a very high quality to its viewers. In return, Google will be able to drive more advertising revenues as subscribers are bound to see its display ads while conducting searches.

The service will make use of some features from Google’s Android Operating System. New set-top boxes will have to be loaded with Google software and Dish Network subscribers will be able to search content and even create their own show line up or playlist using a keyboard.

The service is already being tested by families of Google employees.

Studies have shown that more and more users are interested in viewing online content on their large-screen TV sets. Some companies like Apple, Yahoo! and Microsoft already offer similar services.

One hurdle that Google will have to overcome is that users will need new set-top boxes, and they may not want to spend money on them. Google will have to devise some enticing offers to encourage users to get a new set-top boxes.

Google Public Data

The Trendalyzer software allows users to access various statistics in an interactive and animated format, which is definitely much more interesting than just having to read dull details from a table. This technology is also used in motion chart gadgets, such as the Google Visualization API and Google Docs.

Google Public Data Charting Minimum Wages In Europe

Google has now launched the Public Data Explorer, which will allow users to analyse statistical data on a wide variety of subjects ranging fromunemployment rates to the fertility rates in various countries. The data is provided by reliable authorities such as the World Bank, EuroStat, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisitics and U.S. Census Bureau.

The tool was generally expected to supplement data already available on Google Maps. While it isn’t currently available directly on Google Maps, it does make it easy and interesting to not only visualise and explore the data on a map or a graph but also to share it by embedding it or posting a direct URL to a particular data set.

The animated charts will be updated automatically so users will always receive the latest data available at the time. Users can also click on the play button to visualise the changes in data over a period of time.

According to Mahaney’s estimates, YouTube will generate about $945 million this year, of which $614 million will be net revenue or profit. He further expects that the largest online video site will continue to grow and will generate over $1.1 billion next year, of which over $700 million will be net profit.

Mahaney explains that he has arrived at these figures by applying the same revenue-to-page view ratio on the stats available for YouTube that fellow video sharing site, MySpace, uses.

Patrick Walker, who is a director of video partnerships for Google and YouTube, also believes that YouTube is doing pretty well for itself. According to him, the fact that YouTube has the ability to make lots of users see its ads makes the site inherently very profitable. Also, the fact that they help to sell a lot of CDs and DVDs is very helpful to build a marketing case for YouTube.

Google, as usual, has not yet made any official comment on the matter.

Picnik allows users to edit and share their photos like several other sites, but what is especially significant about them is the fact that unlike the other sites, users of Picnik do not need to download any special software to edit the photos. They can do so directly in the cloud.

At present, Google will not make any changes to Picnik. The entire team of 20 employees will continue to work for Picnik. They will introduce some new features and integrate the service with Google’s existing products in future. Google may incorporate Picnik’s technology into Picasa Albums, which they also own. Google will also continue to support all existing partners of Picnik.

Details regarding the terms of the deal between Google and Picnik are not available at present.  Picnik is currently among the fastest growing photo editing sites and is already integrated with Flickr, SmugMug and some other sites.

Flickr, which is owned by Google’s competitor Yahoo! will most likely discontinue using Picnik as its default photo editor. Why Yahoo! hadn’t acquired Picnik in the first place is not quite known.

Jonathan Sposato, CEO of Picnik has already worked with Google in the past, when he sold PhatBits to them in 2005. He will now be back with Google.

In the recent past, Google has bought over reMail, the email app for iPhone, and a social search startup, Aardvark, in addition to some smaller companies. Maybe, they have decided that the global recession is over and have started spending again.

Left to right: Peter Fleischer, David Drummond and the incriminating video

Peter Fleischer, David Drummond and George De Los Reyes were accused of defamation and violation of privacy. A fourth employee, Arvind Desikan, the product manager, has been acquitted.

The judge, Oscar Magi, has absolved them of defamation, but has convicted the three for violation of privacy. Each of them has received a suspended six month sentence.

Needless to say, executives at Google are enraged by this sentence, which they consider to be arbitrary and frivolous. David Drummond, the Chief Legal Officer says, “I intend to vigourously appeal this dangerous ruling. It sets a chilling precedent.”

Google further clarifies that Google and its employees had nothing to do with the harassment of the teenager, the filming or uploading of the video. If the consent of the teenager concerned was to be taken, it was the responsibility of those who uploaded the video to do so.

Google withdrew the video as soon as it was brought to their notice. They also cooperated with the authorities to identify the people who made and uploaded the video. Their responsibility ended there.

As far as censorship is concerned, it is not possible for Google to screen every video that is uploaded on their site, before it is available for public viewing, simply because of the sheer volumes involved.

If this sentence is allowed to run unquestioned, then Google claims that most sites will be liable for some violations of law. Under such circumstances, many sites may be forced to shut down, and the losers will be the general public, which derives many benefits from the services provided by the internet.

Their aim is to increase the speed of the Internet by over 100 times the present speed that most Americans have. They will introduce 1 gigabit per second fibre-to-the-home connections.

Google’s goal in doing so is to help make the Internet better and faster than it is at present for all users.

Some of the features they hope to be able to achieve are as follows:

• Next Generation Apps: They believe that developers and users may be able to create new bandwidth intensive “killer” apps with the ultra high speeds.
• New Deployment Techniques: They will test new ways to build fibre networks and to help in informing and supporting deployments elsewhere. They will also share this know-how with others.
• Openness and Choice: They will operate an open access network, which will give users a choice between several service providers.

Google is yet to identify the appropriate communities in which to set up and conduct this trial. They intend to offer this service to anywhere between 50,000 and 5,00,000 people at very competitive prices.

Currently, ’staying connected’ means having to check status messages, tweets, update streams etc. all of which can be pretty time consuming and at times confusing for users.

Google is making use of its experience in the field of organising information, to sort out the mess that users often find themselves in.

Google Buzz has been launched as a news service built into Gmail on PCs and mobiles. Buzz makes use of the users list of contacts, in their address book, and thus automatically lets users follow the people whom they email or chat with most often. The service integrates photos, videos and links that can be shared in real-time, either publicly or privately as per the users requirements.

Buzz, when first introduced a few days ago, did not give users a choice, thus inviting criticism regarding the lack of privacy, since users do not always want all their contacts to receive all their updates and vice versa. Google has now introduced an auto-suggest feature, instead of the earlier auto-follow feature.

Other services like Flickr and Twitter can also be accessed through Buzz.

While it seems like an interesting service, there are many who feel that Google Buzz will not really simplify the process of social networking. Moreover, the poor choice of name – Google Buzz sounds like a rip-off of Yahoo! Buzz – and the initial teething problems seem to have put people off the service already.

The fact that Buzz is integrated into Gmail, though, might make it win fans and users in the long run, simply because it’s already there , so long as Google continues to make improvements and doesn’t alienate any more users.

It now turns out that the speculations were true. Peter Burrows at BusinessWeek reported that Microsoft had made Yelp an offer of over $700 million, while the original offer they had received from Google had been in the region of $550 million.

To everyone’s surprise, Yelp, which hosts reviews of local businesses, has gone ahead and rejected the offer from Microsoft as well!

Instead, the company has accepted an investment of $100 million from Elevation Partners, which values the company at just $475 million.

On being questioned about this decision, Yelp CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman told Peter Burrows, “Yelp has the chance to become one of the great internet brands… That for me is the chance of a lifetime.”

Critics and supporters are shocked at the decision. Most believe that this was a colossal mistake, and while Yelp might be doing well right now, they are more than likely at the pinnacle of their success.

Google and Microsoft could very easily build such technology and both are sitting on enough cash to be able to even pay real users to post reviews on their services instead of Yelp.

Only time will tell, though, whether Stoppelman’s hopes will come true and the risk he has taken will be worth it or not.

According to a post on Search Engine Land, a nut and candy retailer in New York reported that some people from Google approached them to take detailed pictures of the entire store.

The pictures were taken at intervals of 6 feet in all directions. They also took photos of the products available in the store.

These pictures will supposedly be used on the new feature on Google Maps called Store Views. As the name suggests, this will enable Google Street Views users to virtually look into the stores on that street, just as if they had walked into it in real life.

When users see a store in a street view, they can click on its door and enter it and then walk through it, to actually see its set up and the products available in it.

While this feature could be useful in larger stores selling lots of products, like all good things, it could be misused. It will make it very easy for individuals or groups with the criminal intentions to misuse this feature.

In fact, some cynics might even wonder if this particular store was not just being cased for a burglary by some really innovative robbers!

A number of store owners would be likely to object to the feature on grounds of privacy and security, especially if Google does not make specific provisions to avoid inadvertently disclosing the location of intruder detection systems, security cameras and other systems or personnel that might make the store more vulnerable to attack.

As of now Google has refused to confirm whether or not they are actually working on such a project. One does hope, though, that if they were not, they would have been smart enough to warn the public to prevent any further such activity.

The software available in this online store will be from Google’s business partners, and it should help Google to increase the sale of Google Apps, which are not doing as well as their competitors are currently.

Google already has a website, called the ‘solutions marketplace‘, where Google Apps users can access several different add-on tools and support services such as Identity Management, Securities and Compliance, Migration and Sync. Services such as Medium/Large Deployment, Small Business Setup and Support, Custom Development, Training and Google Analytics are also available to download from this site.

The source reveals that the new store is being setup with the intention of providing better integration between Google Apps and the software provided by Google’s partners. Buying add-ons and services will thus become easier for end-users.

The solutions marketplace is just a site where users of Google Apps can connect with third-party developers. However, the business store will be likely to charge a nominal fee for whatever services or products are sold through it.

At present, about 20 million people are believed to use Google Apps, but only a small portion of them pay for these services.

In contrast, Google’s rival, Microsoft, has a far larger market share in the software sector, and almost 500 million people have paid for Microsoft Office.

Google refused to confirm or deny the setting up of a store. A statement issued by them says, “We’re constantly working with our partners to deliver more solutions to businesses, but we have nothing to announce at this time.”

The Wall Street Journal, though, believes that Google may make a formal announcement about the Apps Store by March.

Photographs, illustrations and Flash videos have been uploaded onto Chromium, which is the open source project behind Chrome and Chrome OS.

While Google hasn’t specifically stated so, it is assumed that the photographs indicate what the tablet version of Google Chrome will look like. Certain bloggers are quite convinced on this point, simply because the illustrations were uploaded by Glen Murphy, who is the designer for Google Chrome.

It is widely expected that there will be several versions of the Chromium user interface for tablets, since Chrome OS has to be compatible with several different types of devices. These devices will have to meet with certain minimum specifications laid down by Google, in order to ensure the OS performs optimally.

One particular type of tablet could potentially become Google’s flagship tablet computer, just as the Nexus One has become The Google Phone.

It is likely that the first Chrome OS based notebooks will be launched by the end of the year. They will be manufactured by third party hardware manufacturers.

Advertisers can now add a location specific business phone number in mobile ads that appear on mobile devices with full Internet browsers, such as the iPhone. When users want to call a business, instead of visiting its website, they needs to simply click on that phone number.

Since customers on mobiles are more likely to prefer to call a business than to browse through a big website, this feature will be an added convenience users. The feature will be good for advertisers as well, as it enables customers to contact them more easily.

For businesses with outlets in several locations, the number of the outlet closest to the user’s geo-location, as determined by the mobile phone’s location detection service or via Google’s My Location service, will appear on the screen. If a user wishes to call an outlet in any other location, he can do so by entering that location in his search query.

The cost per call will be the same as the cost per click for the advertiser.

Advertisers have already reported better click-through rates and increased phone calls during the beta tests of this service.

To show this ‘click to call’ number alongside their local business ads, advertisers will have to set up location extensions and then add their business phone number. They must then check that the option to show ads on smartphones has been selected in their campaign’s settings.

AdWords reports will show the number of calls they receive, thus allowing them to judge the effective the service is. In order to see click to call statistics separately, advertisers must go to the ‘Campaign Summary’ tab in the AdWords account, click on ‘Filter and Views’, then select ‘Segment by’ from the drop down menu and ‘Click Type’.

Social search started as an experiment in Google Labs, undertaken to try and make search more social and personalised. Based on the number of sign ups to try this feature, Google has now released it in beta on their regular search results in the USA.

With this new feature, when users query Google, they will receive all the relevant results as usual. Google will additionally search for information on the subject that has been posted by the users’ contacts on their blogs and social networks and add that information as “Results from your social circle” in the search results page.

Users might give more weight to these social results in some cases, as they already know and trust the opinions of the contacts these results were based on.

The social feature has now also been implemented for Google Images. When a user does an image search, Google will include photos from the user’s contacts’ accounts on public sites like Picasa and Flickr. These results will also be shown under the heading “Results from your social circle”.

Two new links are visible alongside every set of social search results – “My Social Circle”, which shows the extended network of the user’s online contacts and how they are connected  and “My Social Content” which lists the user’s public pages that might appear on other people’s social results.

Where Social Search Stops Being Social

The last point mentioned above, though, might be the single biggest shortcoming of social search. Google relies on social information that is public. Unfortunately for them, the largest social network in the world, Facebook is largely closed off to search spiders. Public information on Facebook is sparse, at best.

Since these services are still in beta, Google probably expects to be able to improve upon them further in due course. If social search is to be truly social Google’s improvement efforts might need to focus on obtaining content from Facebook without violating user privacy.

Using Social Search

To start using social search, a user must first create a Google profile, and then add links to his / her other public online social network accounts.

Analyst Katherine Egbert, of the investment bank Jefferies, wrote in a note to clients, “Our recent industry checks indicate Microsoft will be debuting its own phone, in the next two months. We expect the new phone to debut soon, either at the Feb 15-18 Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona Spain, or possibly at CTIA in Las Vegas one month later.”

Egbert believes that the phone, which is expected to be Zune-like, will be made through an OEM partnership, much like Google has with HTC for their Nexus One.

It is rumoured that the project for this new phone has underway for a while, under the codename ‘Pink’. A mobile handset release would complete Microsoft’s trilogy after Windows and the Xbox. The phone is expected to have a five mega-pixel camera and support 720p HD video and some form of music subscription or buying service.

Microsoft might have decided to make their own phone, irrespective of Google’s mobile strategy, to augment the revenue generated by Windows Mobile, which is currently not very large. They might also feel that they can deliver a better mobile software experience if the hardware is also their own.

There is no information as yet about the cost or service partnerships in place for this new phone.

If the phone is actually released any time in the near future, people are bound to think that Microsoft has lost all originality and is now merely following in Google’s footsteps.

187 million users are the equivalent of 91% of the total U.S. Internet audience. AOL’s reach reportedly grew by 8% compared to the same month in 2008.

Yahoo! Network, which reaches 180.9 million U.S. users, was ranked second place and grew by 9% in the same period. The Google Ad Network occupied the third place with a reach of 178.1 million U.S. Internet users, and grew by 13% in that period.

Microsoft Media Network has turned out to be the fastest growing ad network, with a growth of 31% compared to the same month one year ago. Collective Network, which grew by 22%, was the second fastest grower and Audience Science, which grew by 16%, was placed third in that category.

According to comScore senior Vice President, Jeff Hackett, “Ad networks continue to be a powerful mechanism for delivering a large audience online with eight different networks reaching 75% of the entire U.S. online population.” Hackett believes that in 2010 ad-networks will continue to innovate and perform well.

Top 10 US ad networks ranked by total unique visitors in December 2009

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, has made it clear during an interview with CNBC & Bloomberg that Microsoft plans to continue working in China, and they will toe the line as is expected of them.

Following a meeting with President Obama at the White House, he told Bloomberg, “There are cyber attacks on all companies, of any size, from all parts of the world, not just China, at all times, so it’s hard for me to understand how that got tied into the whole notion of doing business in China.” He further said, “China’s the second largest market in the world … [Pulling out of China] is not something we’re thinking about. That’s not part of the way for us to grow.”

Google’s announcement stated that the company had been the direct victim of highly sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks that had originated in China. The attack not only resulted in the loss of corporate infrastructure and intellectual property, but also targeted various human rights activists.

Microsoft, on the other hand, said that they had not been affected by any such attacks and their email system has not been breached. The ethics of bowing to the Chinese government’s cesnorship requirements don’t seem to bother Microsoft.

Microsoft’s market share in China, which is currently estimated at just 0.25%, may grow if Google quits the Chinese search market.

U.S. Government officials have clearly stated that they support Google’s decision to pull out of China. White House spokesperson, Robert Gibbs said, “Our concern is with actions that threaten the universal rights of a free Internet.” While the White House has not yet taken any action against China, Philip Crowley of the State Department said that they will issue a formal message to Beijing and ask for an explanation.

If Google is to be believed, freedom of expression on the Internet is at stake here, as is the future of several companies who wish to do business in China, which is the world’s largest Internet market. Though, that is little more than grand-standing on Google’s part.

Human rights organisations in China have asked other companies to follow Google’s lead and withdraw from China if censorship continues.

So far, however, there is no indication that other companies will withdraw, and China seems adamant on maintaining their policies, since they know that the Western world will not be able to withdraw from their country very easily.

Once this feature is available, users will be able to upload and store any type of file in Google Docs.

This feature is not entirely new, as others such as Box.net and Dropbox have offered similar facilities, which allow users to store their files in the cloud and then share them as and when required from any computer, for quite a long while now.

All users will get 1GB of storage space for free. Users can buy more storage space at $0.25 per gigabyte per year. However, enterprise customers will have to pay $17 per gigabyte per year.

This facility has one restriction, though. Each individual file will have to be less than 250 MB. It will not be possible to store larger files, such as full-length feature films.

Users will have the option to keep the files private or public or share them selectively. They will be able to use Google Viewer to view most types of files, but not for videos.

Three third-party apps were also made available with the launch of this service. They were:

• Memeo Connect – where users can sync files between desktop and Google Docs.
• Syncplicity – This offers automated backup and file management to businesses.
• Manymoon – This is an on online project management application and has been integrated with Google Docs.

Rumours about Google launching an online file storage system nicknamed the GDrive circulated on the blogosphere early last year. The file storage facility on Google Docs is what the GDrive was expected to be, except that this offering is tightly integrated with Google Docs, thereby prompting users to use Google Docs if they wish to use Google’s online data storage.

Search results that would have previously been censored now show on Google.cn

When Google was first launched in China, in January 2006, the company received a lot of flak for agreeing to censor some of their search results, in keeping with China’s political policies. However, they felt at that time, that it would be better to provide at least some services in China, rather than none at all. Google was also hopeful that the situation would improve gradually.

Following a series of hacker attacks last month, Google found that at least 20 other major corporations from diverse fields had been attacked. They was also found that apart from stealing corporate infrastructure, the hackers tried to illegally access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Google has taken a very serious view of these attacks and decided to stop playing ball with the Chinese government by refusing to censor search results in China. They will hold talks with the Chinese government regarding this and will shut down their Chinese operations if necessary.

China is currently the largest Internet market and although Baidu is the largest search engine there, Google has a 35% online advertising market share, worth about £620 million last year. However, according to Goldman Sachs, Google’s China earnings are only about 1% of its total revenue, and hence the decision to shut down is likely to be financially inconsequential in the short run.

It is possible, that these developments may affect Microsoft’s plans to operate in China.

While Google’s decision was appreciated by some, many criticised it as being opportunistic, empty posturing and just another blackmail tactic.

Advertisers who started advertising on Google long before the company went public might remember the times when support for AdWords was abysmal, at best. It looks like Google is repeating this performance with their mobile handset offering.

Customers who rushed to buy the new Google mobile handset are facing some initial, rather regular difficulties with the product. The only real problem, though, seems to be the fact that Google is ill-equipped to deal with these complaints.

One customer on the Google forums claims to have been shuttled between the manufacturer, HTC, and the service provider, T-mobile, four times before being ultimately turned over to Google, where customer problems are not resolved.

Unlike most other companies that launch a new product, Google does not have a customer service group in place, where users can actually talk to someone and sort out problems they are facing with their newly purchased phone.

Google only offers an online / email service for Nexus One customer complaints, and they say that they will get back to the customers in 48 hours, which is not only too long compared to any other telephone vendor, but quite unacceptable in this day and age.

One common source of complaints is people who feel that they are eligible for the subsidised version of the phone, while Google says that they are not.

Other complainants say they have not received an order confirmation even 3 days after placing the order.

Google seems to reply to complaints via some sort of automated system or by having an employee simply copy and paste standard replies from the help documentation.

Android developers are also complaining that they are unable to test their software without buying a Nexus One phone, and hence they are unable to solve any service related complaints.

Users are clearly annoyed at the state of affairs and they are justified in making a noise when they do not get good customer service after paying $529 for a product.

Google has now launched a beta search platform that provides a list of these certified professionals.

Google Professionals Search

Individuals or agencies that have been certified by Google can help businesses to better manage their AdWords campaigns and thus advertise their products or services more effectively.

An interested business owner or marketing person can go through Google’s list of certified professionals and select any one of them according to the location and weekly budget that their campaign runs on.

These certified professionals offer various services such as online display advertising, search engine optimisation, web design, web analytics, affiliate programs, advertising on traditional media such as print and TV, as well as on new media like mobiles and social networks.

Professionals who are certified by Google have to keep appearing for periodic tests, which Google conducts, and they also have to pay a fee of $50 every 18 months.

In the past, many people who have been certified have neglected to renew their certification. With the introduction of this new list, agencies and individuals who want to to be featured by the programme will have to renew their membership by taking the exam and paying the fees regularly.

While big agencies are automatically listed in multiple cities, individuals and small shops will have to register separately for each location.

To be fair to Google, their Learning Center does provide very thorough information on the subject, and certified professionals are definitely able to make up the money they spend.

Mobile search has grown 5-fold for Google in the past year. A slew of Android-based devices are hitting the market this year, and the Nexus One aims to be one of the best. Google’s mobile phone’s features include:

1. Nexus One phone hardware includes a 3.7-inch (diagonal) widescreen touchscreen interface with 800 x 480 pixel resolution, Wi-Fi, GSM EDGE, Bluetooth and a trackball
2. The phone will run on the Android 2.1 mobile platform
3. Basic features include a compass, gps, accelerometer, light sensor, proximity sensor
4. 2 microphones on the Nexus One allow noise cancellation
5. The phone is 11.5mm thin and weighs just 130 grams (with battery)
6. 5 megapixel cam + LED flash. 1-click upload to YouTube
7. 5 home screen panels to add more widgets
8. Live wallpapers – including animation – will sit behind widgets on the home screen
9. Live wallpapers are interactive and react to touch!
10. 3D framework introduced into the Android platform
11. Quick photo loading, 3D gallery and photo clustering
12. Google Earth for mobile due to be released soon
13. Voice activated searching and GPS-based search localisation
14. Voice enabled ALL text fields in the device, which means you can speak your emails, tweets, facebook updates

The Nexus One will be sold exclusively online via the Google website:

www.google.com/phone

Unlocked phones will be sold for $529. Alternatively, users can buy a subscription to T-Mobile and get the operator-subsidised phone available for $179.

Pricing of the Nexus One is disappointing, and this sentiment was reflected by some of the attendees at the press conference. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, had in the past voiced hopes that we may one day see an ad-supported mobile phone. They seem now to be falling short of their own hopes.

Vodafone will be the first operator to sell the phone in the UK. Spring 2010 is the estimated time Google has given for the UK launch of their new mobile phone. Users on other networks can simply plug in the other netowrk operator’s  SIM card.

At the Q & A session following the press conference, Google mentioned that the core revenues and income they aim to gain from the mobile phone business is not meant to be from sales of the hardware but from the usage of their mobile search service and the ensuing mobile advertising.

Google has been working on the new method of indexing their search results for a while now, and many SEO professionals are well aware of the upcoming update, code named “Caffeine“. Representatives from Google have maintained that the Caffeine update wouldn’t go live before 2010.

2010 is here, now. The search engine has already been testing Caffeine in one of their data centres since last summer, and it may be rolled out very soon.

In fact, there are some bloggers who claim that they have already noticed faster search results.

As far as most users are concerned, the official launch of Caffeine will not make much difference to the search results, as Caffeine is more of a behind-the-scenes worker. There will be no visual changes in the search results.

Only the overall speed with which the search results are received is expected to change for the better. This factor will be especially useful in searches for photos and videos.

A study of Google Caffeine conducted by an SEO firm found that it will give more importance to news and social media for generic search terms, but specific keywords will show more regular websites on the subject. In general, they found that search rankings are not very likely to change, except for some websites, which may not have updated their content for a very long time. It will, therefore, be beneficial for websites to remain up-to-date and refresh their content regularly once the Caffeine update is launched.

Google base their claim to openness on the fact that they have opened up the source code for the Android mobile operating system, Chrome Web browser and Chrome operating system and a few other products so that the larger developer community can improve on them.

Rosenberg says, “at Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant profitable and competitive ecosystem for businesses.”

While all this discussion about openness is fine, one cannot help but notice the fact that Google’s largest source of income is their search engine, which ranks web pages to create relevant search results for user queries. And nobody really knows how the algorithm for this ranking system works, apart from the few people at Google who are in charge of the algorithm.

Google’s argument against making this algorithm public is, of course, that spammers would misuse this information if it were easily available to all.

This argument seems weak, however, as it has been proved by other open source projects such as the Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox, that while an open algorithm may seem to help spammers, there would be an army of developers ready to combat the spammers.

If anything, all of Google’s talk about the importance of being open seems to be a cheap dig at Microsoft, and an attempt to make Microsoft seem like the bad guys just before Google launches a full-blown attack on Microsoft Windows by launching their own operating system.

Yelp, which was founded in 2004 by two former employees of PayPal, is a local review website that allows users to read or write reviews about various businesses. Their revenues in 2009 will be around $30 million and are expected to touch $50 million in 2010.

comScore has estimated that Yelp receive nearly 9 million unique monthly visitors, though the company claims that they get close to 25 million unique visitors per month.

Google has been developing its own local business directory, with Place Pages and Google Maps, wanted to have Yelp on their side, and were believed to have offered them around $550 million plus earnouts to do so.

Talks were believed to be at a very advanced stage and the deal looked almost certain to go through. But, almost at the last minute, something made CEO Jeremy Stoppleman change his mind, and he has turned down Google’s offer.

It is not yet known what influenced this turn around, but speculations are rife that some other big company, possibly Apple or Microsoft, made a counter offer or a strategic deal with Yelp, which has caused this sudden change of heart.

Chrome, which was launched just over a year ago, certainly does not compete in terms of popularity with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox, both of which have been around a lot longer.

It looks as though Google has decided to take up the challenge to change the situation, and has started actively promoting the browser through some rather unexpected channels in the UK.

Just yesterday, the Metro newspaper, which is distributed for free on the London Underground was “wrapped” in a cover that advertised Chrome.

On the front page of the wrapper, Chrome was described as “A fast new browser. Made for everyone”. On the inside of the cover details about the browser’s unique features, such as its stability and the incognito tab handling methods, were mentioned. On the rear page of the wrapper were ‘notes’ made by a supposed user of Chrome, followed by the line “6 tabs. 0 crashes. 1 browser”.

The Metro is distributed free on all weekdays and readers generally read it during their morning commute. It has a circulation of 1.3 million of which 738,000 users are based in London.

Twitter users have also reported spotting billboards advertising Chrome in London and Manchester. In fact, one such hoarding was placed right across the front gate of the head quarters of Google’s recent critic, Rupert Murdoch’s company, News International.

Magazines, television and blogs are also propagating another Google campaign, promoting Chrome as a free Christmas gift accompanied by a slick flash micro-site that “wraps” the Chrome logo and sends it as a gift with a personalised message to anyone a user wishes to forward it to.

These advertising strategies point to the fact that Google is either trying to advertise Chrome to people who are not yet hooked on the Internet, or they’re running out of ideas to boost Chrome’s popularity.

A number of marketing specialists have criticised the campaign, saying that Google should know better than to target advertising for a product in a medium where prospective adopters cannot convert into users easily. In other words, people reading a newspaper or seeing a billboard will not be likely to go online and download the Chrome browser. However, what the ads will do, is build brand presence in consumers’ minds, which might then help Google when they launch the Chrome operating system.

Chitika recently conducted a study that revealed that users of Microsoft browsers and operating system have a tendency to click on advertisements more than users of other services such as FireFox, Safari, Chrome etcera. Not only that, even users of Windows click on ads far more frequently than users of other operating systems such as Mac OS or Linux.

The findings of this study are significant as it was conducted using a sample of over 130 million impressions across 80,000 sites.

The details emerging from the study are as follows:

• Internet Explorer users on average have a click-through rate (CTR) of 1.05% compared to 0.66% for Firefox users, 0.50% for Safari users and 0.21% for Chrome users
• Windows users have a CTR of 0.92%, while Mac users have 0.52% and Linux users have 0.46%

These findings have been indirectly validated by TechCrunch, where reports that users of Microsoft’s search engine Bing have a higher CTR than users of other search engines. Bing users have a CTR of 1.74% as opposed to 0.98% for Google users and 1.37% for Yahoo! users.

TechCrunch insinuates that the higher CTRs from Microsoft users is because these users are more gullible and easier to dupe than others, which has ruffled a few feathers, even though it is probably true.

Microsoft users don’t click the most, though. AOL, which is a much smaller network has the highest CTR of 2.5%.

The confirmation has come through none other than the Wall Street Journal.

While it was earlier speculated that the new phone would be launched before the end of this year, it has now been confirmed by sources close to the matter that the phone will in fact be launched early next year, possibly in January itself.

The new phone has been given the name Nexus One, and the hardware required for it is being built by HTC. The phone has actually been designed by Google. This new phone may be similar to the forthcoming HTC Passion or might in fact be a renamed version of the same.

The operating system for this phone will of course be Android. The other features expected on this phone are that it will have a capacitive touch screen, on-screen keyboard, a thin scroll ball and animated desktop wallpaper.

It will be sold in the unlocked state and will be sold without any subsidy from a wireless partner. At least initially the phone will be available directly from Google online.

The launch of this new phone by the Internet giant will not only give competition to all other smart phones in the market, but it also highlights Google’s ambitions of expanding their own horizons further.

It is believed that they will use Google Maps and Street View in a manner similar to what they are already offering in Australia since a few months ago. Early reports show that the Australian real estate search service is getting a good response. Estate agents list the sites available to them, along with all details for free, and Google provides a picture of the front of the property via Street View.

If Google does launch a similar service in the U.K. they could earn a lot of revenue from the advertising potential that this service would generate.

Spokespersons from various agencies who have heard of this service, have said that this move could be interesting and it is likely to affect other property listing sites, especially if Google offers this service for free.

It is also likely that the newspaper industry may suffer further losses as a result of such a service. The newspaper industry is already suffering from loss of advertising in their real estate classified section, due a combination of a fall in the real estate market and due to similar services being offered on other websites.

Google has so far refrained from making any comment on the subject.

Google Real Estate Search Australia

The first of these features, called ‘Site Performance’ is available through Google Webmaster Tools. It provides information to website owners about the speed of their site and will also offer some suggestions that can help to make the site load faster.

In the past too, Google has offered advice on how webmasters can help make their pages load faster, through several articles on best practices and via posts on discussion forums.

Through Site Performance, users will be able to find out how fast their pages load, and how their site is faring compared to other sites over a period of time. These performance charts and tables will, however, only be available to sites that have sufficient traffic to collect enough data for such details.

Individual users may, of course see a site at a faster or slower pace than the average depending on their location and network.

The other feature introduced is called ‘Google Public DNS’.

DNS, which is short for Domain Name System, is an essential part of the Web that converts domain names into unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers.

While using the Internet, users often access DNS several times without even being aware of it, as the service is usually automatically handled by the Internet Service Provider. However, when multiple DNS lookups are required together, the service can be slowed down considerably.

Google’s Public DNS hopes to be able to solve this problem and make the surfing experience faster, safer and more reliable for users.

Google’s recent emphasis on speeding up the Internet accompanies hints dropped by Google representative, Matt Cutts, about the importance site speed might play in ranking considerations in the future.

This makes perfect sense, in general, because it is a known fact that faster sites lead to better user retention and activity, thus leading to higher revenues. However, companies that don’t have the money to invest in top-notch infrastructure could lose out against big businesses that have the money to invest in dedicated server stacks and advanced Web architecture.

Principles that Cutts mentioned back in 2006 are more likely to still apply: So long as websites load within an acceptable time frame, which is determined by Google, it is unlikely that the site will be disadvantaged for loading a few milliseconds slower than its competitors.

This integration will allow users to access Friend Connect directly when they log in to their Twitter account. In other words, a user will have access to any of the over nine million sites using Google Friend Connect, through their Twitter accounts.

The Twitter profile of the user will be automatically linked to Friend Connect and it will be possible to tweet about the new site membership, without leaving the site. Users will now be able to hold discussions by posting comments on third-party sites and they will also be able to invite new friends to join the site / group through Twitter.

If a site is already linked to Friend Connect, users can now access it via their Google login as well as through Twitter.

This move will now make Friend Connect fairly similar to Facebook Connect, and it will also provide some competition to Yahoo!, which has recently announced integration with Facebook Connect.

Mobile devices are predicted to “Eclipse the PC” next year. While the report does not actually predict the death of the Personal Computer, it does say that the mobile Web will grow, to the extent that it no longer remains subservient or secondary to the PC. Mobiles will become the primary source of Web browsing for many.

It is expected that the number of mobile Web users will cross the 1 billion mark in 2010, while the number of PC users will be around 1.3 billion. The growth rate of mobile devices will be 2.5 times that of the PC.

The growing numbers of smart phones, such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Google Android powered devices, along with good mobile operating systems, are responsible for this explosive growth.

200 million more smart phones are expected to hit the markets in 2010.

IDC also predicts that the iPhone, which currently has about 1,00,000 applications, will have about 3,00,000 applications by the end of the next year, while Android, which has just 10,000 applications will have 50,000 to 75,000 applications by then, further boosting the mobile Internet.

Google’s open operating system, Android, will also provide stiff competition to the iPhone.

The typically over-hyped Apple tablet, which they have called the ‘iPad’, and Microsoft’s own tablet device, which is expected to launch in the coming year as well, will further contribute to this growth.

At an event in Google’s Mountain View office, members of the press and some developers got their first official glimpses of the Chrome OS and an introduction to the search giant’s latest product, so that developers could start building applications to contribute to it.

Google V.P. of Product Management, Sundar Pichai, and Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS, Matthew Papakipos, were the main speakers.

Chrome (the browser), which was launched about a year ago, already has 40 million users. Chromium OS will focus mainly on 3 factors. Speed, Simplicity and Security.

While the average computer takes at least 45 seconds to start, Chrome OS is expected to start in just about 10 seconds.

Also, all applications on the Chrome OS will be Web applications. There will be no native applications. That means that most work done by a user will be saved on the Internet, instead of being saved on the computer. It will thus be possible to access all data from any computer. Even if a user loses his computer, he does not lose any of his data.

All Web apps will be stored within individual “security sandboxes”. Each tab on Chrome OS will be locked down and handled individually by the system, just as tabs in the Chrome browser are, thus making it difficult for hackers or viruses to access the user’s data and corrupt it.

Google already supports the Android OS, so it is only natural for people to wonder why they want to develop another OS, and whether it will continue to support the Android OS. Apparently it will not.

Speaking at the press conference, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “Call us dumb businessmen, but we really focus on user needs rather than think about strategies relative to other companies and whatnot.”

What is Google Chrome OS?

Google Chrome OS Open Source Project Announcement

In addition to traditional sponsored links, users will soon be able to view lists of targeted products, retailers offering those products, their prices and a product image when they search for shopping related terms on Google.

The best part of this ad format is that it is based on a Cost-Per-Action (CPA) pricing model. This means that the merchant only has to pay Google when a user clicks on his ad and completes a purchase on the site.

Product Listing Ads will be especially useful to merchants selling a large variety of products. Advertisers don’t actually need to create any additional ad text or keywords.

Whenever a user enters a search query relevant to an item in an advertiser’s Google Merchant Center account, Google will automatically show the most relevant products along with the associated image, price and product name.

While this new system would make it very easy for merchants to advertise all their products on Google, it could also take control away from the advertiser. Google has not currently specified any details about how participating retailers will be able to specify CPA bids or exclude certain products from being included in Listing Ads.

The service is in beta at present, but will gradually be made available to more and more advertisers. The launch has been timed to gain popularity very quickly, with the approach of the holiday shopping season.

Realtime search service OneRiot, which is in talks with Yahoo! to provide them with realtime search, is also tying up with mobile search engine, Taptu, to deliver realtime search services to mobile Internet users. Taptu will make use of OneRiot’s API to provide these realtime search results.

OneRiot has already started developing additional APIs that will be able to provide relevant ads on mobile handsets, thus monetising the service. The service collects realtime results from various sources such as Twitter, Digg and Facebook.

Taptu has added a new feature on it homepage, which is essentially a search engine interface compatible with mobile browsers. The homepage has a search box with options to search the Web, Images and now, ‘Buzz’, which is where the realtime search results will be provided.

Buzz search is currently available on all iPhone, iPod Touch, G1 (Android), Blackberry Storm 1, Nokia N97 and 5800 handsets. All other devices still show the old search interface, which provides the option of ‘All’, images, video and music searches.

Until now, mobile users could access realtime search results by searching for trending topics on Twitter. However, this new service will certainly be more direct and efficient.

Mobile users with compatible handsets can test the service at:

www.taptu.com

Best Buy Mobile will install these apps on all compatible smartphones including BlackBerry, Windows Phones and S60 (Symbian OS)  phones for free in their stores at the time of purchase. This program has been branded ‘Walk Out Working’.

Google has even created a new micro-site to provide details of this new method by which users can get the Google Mobile App installed on their phones. The site includes a Google Maps application that allows visitors to find the nearest Best Buy stores.

While it is already possible for users to download the Google Mobile search application from the Google Mobile site, m.google.com, directly, it is expected that this new alliance will drive adoption of the application to more regular (non-technical) consumers.

The main features available on the mobile search app are:

• One-click access to Google search
• Voice querying – users can just speak their query into the phone
• ‘My Location’ – allows users to search for local businesses, without having to type in their location
• Google Suggest – provides suggestions for queries and local businesses even as the user types his query
• Links to other Google apps such as Gmail and Google Maps.

Users will also be shown a demo of these apps in action by a Best Buy Mobile representative.

Scott Moore, the Vice President of Best Buy Mobile says, “We know that consumers want smartphones and increasingly, they want to use applications. The challenge is that people still need help understanding what is available to them and how they can bring it to life on their device.”

The partnership between Google and Best Buy Mobile is obviously a step in that direction.

A total of 3.920 billion hours were spent by users on Microsoft sites in September 2009, which is approximately 14.5% of the total online time by all users in that month. Of this, nearly 70% was on Windows Live Messenger.

In contrast only 2.512 billion hours were spent on Google sites, which is about 9.3% of the market share.

Google can take consolation in the fact that the usage of their sites has grown by 48% when compared with the usage in September 2008. Microsoft has grown by 44% in the same period.

Yahoo! sites, which accounted for 1.699 billion hours of online use have actually lost 14% in the same time frame.

The greatest (but not really surprising) growth was shown by Facebook. They clocked 1.387 billion hours in September 2009 compared to 474 billion hours in September 2008, which is a growth of 193%.

Graph showing change in user hours clocked on Top 4 Internet sites

A total of 27 billion hours were spent on the internet by 1.2 billion users over 15 years of age. The total population accessing the internet has grown by 20% in the last 1 year and is growing further.

Analysis of time spent online on a regional basis shows that Microsoft sites are largely preferred in Europe (16.8%), Latin America (35.9%), Middle East and Africa (33.1%), while Yahoo! has a sizable fan following in North America (11.2%) and the Asia-Pacific region (7.9%). Google sites are prominent in Latin America (19.4%), Middle East and Africa (9.7%), Europe (9.6%), and North America (9.1%).

AdMob is based in Silicon Valley and was founded by Omar Hamoui in 2006.

Google has agreed to pay $750 million for this acquisition which will help them to improve their mobile advertising technology. So far Google has been concentrating on Mobile search ads, while AdMob’s specialty is mobile display ads and in-application ads.

Besides helping improve Google’s technology, this deal is sure to bring cheer to publishers of mobile websites and applications as it will provide them with better tools for monetization, thus helping them to offer better services to their users.

It will also help advertisers to reach out to their audiences on the mobile web by providing them with more relevant ads through engaging formats.

Eventually these changes are good for the user, who will receive better mobile content, information and ads which will be useful to him for free or through low-cost mobile apps.

In other words this deal is a win-win situation for all concerned and will be good for the future of the mobile web which has already been gaining in importance in the recent past.

While both Google and Microsoft’s Bing, have made separate deals with just Twitter, Yahoo! is reportedly in talks with OneRiot for a much broader real time search offering.

Reuters reports that Yahoo! Inc is looking to match its rivals in providing up-to-the-minute Internet search results. The company is supposed to be running tests with several real time search partners, according to sources familiar with the matter.

According to Reuters, Yahoo! is currently holding talks with several companies to provide users with realtime search results on a trial basis. OneRiot is one of those companies.

However, there have been no official announcements on this score from either Yahoo! or OneRiot.

OneRiot, which is based in Boulder, Colorado, taps into several sources including Twitter, Digg and their 3-million-strong user base to collect real time information.

Initially, Yahoo! will provide the real time search results in a separate box at the top of the search results page, to see how their users react to this service.

While Yahoo! and Microsoft have already signed a 10 year search deal last July, it is not expected to turn operational until next year. Until then, Yahoo! needs to fend for itself. Understandably, they would not like to be left behind in the real time search race, and hence this trial with OneRiot seems like a good option to pursue.

Go Mobile! provides tips to help marketers realise how best to reach their mobile clients. Google aims to make the site helpful to both new comers to the mobile marketing as well as to experienced marketers.

At present, the Go Mobile! site merely provide a one-page write-up with tips on mobile marketing, as follows:

Mobilise your website – if pages are specifically formatted for the mobile browsers, it becomes easier and faster for the user to see the highlights of the products or services being offered, thus saving the user’s time and improving the chances of making a sale.

Know your place – instead of asking the user for his location, make use of information from the mobile browser, or use Google Maps or other applications to know the customer’s location, thus impressing customers and providing more locally relevant information.

Offer ways to engage at any time – Since the mobile handset is always with the user, the marketer can engage them by providing a QR code or a phone number on a bus, for example, or by creating a downloadable mobile game to reinforce the brand.

Help customers spread the word – Encourage users to take part in events and ad campaigns etc. by sending MMS, IM, email etc to their friends.

Help them find you – make use of the ad products which Google offers to place relevant ads alongside the mobile search results when a customer is looking for something.

These basic steps are more common-sense than strategy, but could help marketers focus their mobile marketing initiatives more effectively.

Google Go Mobile!

The rumour originated on TheStreet.com, which said that an official handset branded by Google is to be launched soon. The rumour further suggests that the handset is being made by Google in partnership with an as yet undisclosed manufacturer of smartphones.

It has also been mentioned that the said phone is most likely to be launched before the end of this year, and will be made available to users through retailers instead of carriers, as has been the practice so far. It is also believed that this phone will be compatible with any service provider in sharp contrast to the exclusive tie-up which the iPhone has with AT&T.

The article mentions that the source of this rumour is one Mr. Ashok Kumar of Northeast Securities, who claims to have spoken with Google’s design partners about the said phone, and its product release strategy.

The article says “If talk of the Google phone plan is true, the entrance of a unlocked, low-cost, web friendly touchscreen device will probably undercut other Android phone efforts by players like Motorola, Samsung and Dell.

Obviously, if these rumours turn out to be true, the new phone will provide stiff competition to existing as well soon to be launched handsets. While this news does seem too good to be true, only time will tell, whether this is just another rumour or fact.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has laid down new guidelines which will come into effect from December 1 2009. These guidelines are being revised after nearly 30 years during which the world has obviously undergone a sea change.

Until now it had not been necessary for bloggers to reveal that they were being paid to reveal their views on a product. This is now about to change and the policy will include celebrities as well as research firms, and popular social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook etc.

The penalty for flouting this rule could be as high as $11,000 per violation.

With consumers increasingly depending on the internet for purchase information, various consumer groups have been demanding such a policy. According to Jack Gillis of the Consumers Federation of America, unless this connection between bloggers and the company is disclosed, consumers can get mislead.

The guidelines , do not however lay down any rules about how this disclosure is to be made. That has been left to the parties concerned, as long as it is clearly mentioned.

The FTC has stated that “bloggers who make an endorsement, must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

Some of the inducements received by bloggers in the past range from an evening of pampering with manicures, pedicures etc. by Proctor and Gamble, Acer Laptops from Microsoft in 2006, and the use of a Ford car for 1 year.

These new guidelines have generated mixed results. While some bloggers are in favour of such legislation, others have criticized it as being misguided, foolish and even dangerous.

Internet giant Google has reacted quickly to this change, to ensure that they don’t get into any trouble with the authorities or become a scapegoat to set an example to other publishers and advertisers.

Google already label most of their ads with an ‘Ads by Google’ tag. In the future they will overlay an “i” icon in the bottom right corner of rich media ads, which currently don’t include the usual proclaimation. This icon will expand to read “Ads by Google” when the user hovers over it and link to a page providing more information about Google’s advertising practices.

To understand this phenomenon better, Nielsen carried out a study across 1,800 participants in August 2009. For this study, users were categorised into 3 groups. Those who used mainly search engines (searchers), portals (portalists), and social media (socialisers) during their research operations.

The study surmised that approximately 18% of people used social networks as their primary source of information. Although this amount is smaller than that of search engine users (37%) and portal users (34%), it is nonetheless significant and growing constantly.

A major cause for this change could be the fact hat the internet is literally flooded with information on all subjects, thus making it difficult for the average user to decide what part of the information to trust, thus creating more confusion, rather than clarifying matters. On the other hand, when they go to the social networks, there is a lesser amount of information available, and equally important is the fact that this information is provided by ones friends and family, which reassures the user that he can trust the matter provided there.

Another factor in favour of social networks like Twitter and Facebook is the fact that they provide information in real time, while the search engines take a while to get updated.

In spite of these facts, social networks have a long way to go before they can overtake or replace the search engines for search. For one thing, social engines are more useful for information like local recommendations etc. while information about general topics is more easily available on the search engines.

Also the search engines are already working on systems for better filtration of the information available, so that users are not overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of content.

The first feature, Malware Details, simplifies the tough task of finding out if pages on a site are distributing malware. Webmasters previously had to depend on manual testing, use the Google Safe Browsing API or rely on malware notifications in the Google SERPs to find out if pages on their site had been compromised. Now, this task should be a lot simpler, as Google will provide snippets of code that exist on some of the pages, which they feel could be malicious.

Malware details will not only be helpful to webmasters who wish to eliminate malware from their sites quickly but might also help a number of webmasters, whose sites fell in ranking due to the presence of malicious code on their site, now understand why this happened.

The other feature, Fetch as Googlebot, was previously launched in Google Labs. Webmasters are often curious to know what exactly Googlebot sees when their page is accessed. The text only cache on Google SERPs and the keywords and HTML suggestions tools in Webmaster Central help site owners to understand, to some extent, what information Googlebot sees on the page and what details are extracted during the crawl and indexing phases.

Now, with the Fetch as Googlebot tool, webmasters will be able to get real-time feedback on what the Google search robot sees when it crawls and indexes a page. This information will be especially useful when users update their sites with new technology or find that their pages have been hacked. It might also help some understand why they have not been ranked on specific keywords.

Google Trends already shows users which topics are among the 100 most popular searches on a given day. Google has now incorporated this feature in Google Search, so that users do not need to visit another page to find out what the trending topics of the moment are.

Now, when a user Google’s a particular topic which is among the top 100 in popularity, Google will display a graph at the bottom of the search page to indicate the rate of rise of that topic and other details about it.

Google highlights trending topics within organic SERPs

Google Trends’ Hot Trends feature has also been pruned from its existing top 100 topics to only 40. However, when any of the top 100 topics are searched for it will show up on the homepage.

This move will brings Google a bit closer to imitating Twitter’s popular topics and real-time search functionality. It also allows users to not only know what are the most popular topics at the moment, but will also provide them with additional information about those topics. These Hot Trends will be updated every hour to show how the scenario is changing.

The Hot Topic being searched will not only get a number to indicate its rank in the popularity list but will also be classified with terms such as ‘On Fire’ and Volcanic’ etcetera.

This feature is officially launched only in the U.S. and Japan, but can be seen by some users in the UK at present.

This new feature is a toolbar, which has been christened Sidewiki. With this new toolbar, it will now be possible for all users ranging from an ordinary layperson to an authority on the subject concerned, to put in their own insights to every article on the net. This will help other users to get more information on the given subject.

To further improve the quality of the service, Google has used an algorithm that will allow the most high quality, relevant and appropriate comments to appear at the top of the comments column, and the other comments will come lower down, instead of letting just the latest comments come at the top as is seen with blogs.

Google will also incorporate entries from other relevant posts, blogs and other sources, if they happen to be about the same page that the user has accessed.

This may be Google’s way of staying ahead of the competition, Yahoo1 in particular, which has just launched a new search update feature.

Currently, Google Sidewiki is available on Internet Explorer and also on Mozilla Firefox, and Google is working to make this service available on their own browser, Google Chrome.

Those who wish to use Google Sidewiki can start doing so by going to ‘google.com/sidewiki’, from where they can download the sidewiki toolbar and then add their own comments to the web pages they use by clicking on ‘Write an entry’ after logging into their Google Account. The comments previously entered by others will be displayed in the right hand side column.

Mobile search volumes have been a long-requested feature that Google representatives have been historically reluctant to share. Speculators always concluded that this was due to the low volume of mobile searches.

The new feature is not immediately obvious in the new keyword tool. Advertisers need to click the “Advanced Options” link and then check the “Show stats for: Mobile search” box.

The network statistics setting allows advertisers to change search volume data to show mobile device statistics only. This setting changes only search performance columns and does not affect traffic estimate columns.

Mobile website owners and mobile search marketing agencies will welcome this new feature as it finally gives them the ability to estimate PPC costs and traffic volumes they can expect from search.

A quick review of the mobile search volumes shows that even in popular mobile search categories such as local information and gaming, the volume of mobile searches is a mere fraction – as low as 0.3% – 0.6% of traditional Web searches for the same 1-word keyword queries.

Several advertisers have admitted that of late, the results they get from advertising on Facebook are better than those achieved from advertising on Google, and that is in spite of spending less on Facebook than on Google.

According to several advertisers and marketers, the response they have been getting from Facebook has improved substantially in the last 6 months, and due to this, more and more businesses are buying ad space on Facebook.

Tim Kendall, director of monetization at Facebook, however, maintains that the advertising growth curve at Facebook has maintained a steady pace and there has been no sudden jump in the demand for ad space on their site. It is true, though, that the number of advertisers on Facebook has tripled over the last three years.

One important factor for this growth surge at Facebook is the ability of advertisers to find their target audiences accurately from the profile data available about Facebook users. Facebook has always been very strict about users using real names and information on the site, and has often deleted profiles that posted false information. As a result, demographic data on Facebook is more reliable than on other networks.

When a Facebook user likes a product they are likely to recommend it to most of their friends, who are already on Facebook. This feature has certainly attracted a lot of marketers to Facebook.

While Google has not commented on this topic, Facebook has announced that they have logged annual sales to the tune of $500 million. Coupled with Facebook’s fast growing user base, it may only be just a matter of time before the social networking leader out performs Google on the advertising front.

The number of mobile websites has been growing rapidly, and so has the number of mobile Web users. The number of mobile websites has now grown to almost 2 million while an estimated 31% of mobile phone users browse the mobile web at least once a month, to look up routine things such as weather, news and search.

While mobile websites are improving in general, the report from the Yankee Group found that only 4 of them received good usability scores. These were Google, Google News, Yahoo! and MLB.com.

Carl Howe, a director at Yankee Group, says, “Unlike last year, most of the sites we reviewed adapt their content to many differing feature phones and smartphones. And some companies are also starting to incorporate location-awareness, something other sites should strive to emulate.”

Of the 27 sites studied, it was found that for news, both Google and Yahoo! have done well and scored 73 points each. They have managed to walk the tight rope between providing sufficient information and flooding the user with excessive details.

Again, in the field of search, Google has retained the number one slot as would be expected with 81 points and is followed quite closely by Yahoo! with 76 points. Yahoo! just needs to strengthen itself regarding some of the relatively minor features such as extraneous content and HTML validation errors.

In the field of sports, the Major League Baseball mobile site scores 71 points and is followed by Rival.com with 58 points and ESPN.com with 57 points.

As far as U.S. mobile carriers are concerned, they all need to improve their own mobile presence. Sprint, though not very good, is the best with just 53 points.

Read the full report: Best Of Anywhere Web 2009

One of the reasons for their low adoption rates could be the complexity involved with display advertising. Display ads are available in several formats, such as images, videos and interactive gadgets. It can be a laborious task to manage the organisation of such varied ads across thousands of Google Content Network sites. Hence, advertisers have not been too keen on this form of advertising.

Publishers on the other hand, are left with a lot of unused ad space on their sites.

To help simplify this process for both the parties involved, Google has now launched the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange. This ad exchange will be a platform from which publishers can sell and advertisers can buy the required ad space via their existing Google AdSense and Google AdWords accounts.

The exchange will function as a real-time automated auction market. Advertisers will try to get better ad space, while publishers will try to extract better rates from the advertisers and also sell more of their available ad space.

The exchange will also allow advertisers to measure the performance of their ads, thus offering a degree of accountability. It will also make display advertising more accessible to all advertisers.

In 2008, the total revenue generated from online advertising was $23.4 billion, while display advertising accounted for only $7.6 billion of that total. Hopefully, the new, better integrated Google AdWords / DoubleClick Ad Exchange will help to increase the revenue generated by display ads.

So far, Yahoo! remains the market leader for display ads ever since they bought RightMedia in 2007 for $680 million. Google, no doubt, hopes to be able to now overtake Yahoo!

Introduction to the new, open Google Ad Exchange