Google takes on Microsoft

NYTimes reports

The growing confrontation between Google and Microsoft promises to be an epic business battle. It is likely to shape the prosperity and progress of both companies, and also inform how consumers and corporations work, shop, communicate and go about their digital lives. Google sees all of this happening on remote servers in faraway data centers, accessible over the Web by an array of wired and wireless devices — a setup known as cloud computing. Microsoft sees a Web future as well, but one whose center of gravity remains firmly tethered to its desktop PC software. Therein lies the conflict.

I am with Google and I vote for Cloud Computing.

Google Core Values

Image credit : Blogoscoped

Happy Birthday Google

Happy 9th Birthday Google. Thanks for changing our lives. Hope you improve your search algorithm and serve us much better. Long Live Google Search!

Google Shared Stuff

Google has launched a new tool to share stuff with your friends. This looks like a social bookmarking tool. Anyway checkout this service at http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff

To know more about this service, checkout Google Help page.

Google buying WebMD?

CNNMoney reports a rumor a that Google might acquire WebMD to boost its yet to launch Health Channel 'Google Health'. WebMD is an excellent online health care company.

Google to finance moon challenge contest

Yahoo News Reports

Google Inc. is bankrolling a $30 million contest that could significantly boost the commercial space industry and spur the first non-governmental flight to the moon.

Call it Moon 2.0. The bulk of the prize will go to the first private company that can land a robotic rover on the moon and beam back a gigabyte of images and video to Earth, the Internet search leader said Thursday.

Google Universe launching...??? :-)

Men Are From Google, Women Are From Yahoo

On the Internet, as in life, men and women have different motivations for doing what they do. According to a recent report from Pew Internet and American Life, women view the Internet as a place to extend, support, and nurture relationships and communities.

More at WebProNews.

Google leads US search market

Top US Search Providers for May 2007,
Ranked by Searches (U.S.)

1. Google Search 56.3%
2. Yahoo! Search 21.5%
3. MSN/Windows Live Search 8.4%
4. AOL Search 5.3%
5. Ask.com Search 2.0%

An estimated 4.0 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 56 percent of all search queries conducted during the given time period.

References
Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Search, June 2007

Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine

NYTimes reporter spent one day with Google Search Team and wrote an article on how Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine. Google makes lot of improvements to its algorithm and all are not visible to the end users. Theres lot of hard work behind that simple search box which answers almost all our queries. Running a gold standard search engine like Google requires lot of machines and humans working together to provide us the best search results. This article sheds light on some new people in search like Amit Singhal, an Indian who is presently the master of the Google ranking algorithm. Checkout Smashing Magazine article to know more about Google PageRank.

The Story of Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin is a Russian born American entrepreneur who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin is currently the President of Technology at Google and the 26th richest person in the world together with Larry Page.

To know more about him read the following article

The Story of Sergey Brin - How the Moscow-born entrepreneur cofounded and changed the way the world searches

Google Hiring Process

Some guys posted their interview experience with Google on Slashdot.

Google wants to be YOUR Internet

Check out this article. The author had made some interesting observations about Google moves.

Some more interesting articles

Google and the Third Age of Computing

Sam Walton Taught Google More About How to Dominate the Internet Than Microsoft Ever Did

Why Google Is Like Wal-Mart

I wholly agree with this quote, "Google is not your competition, Google is the environment."

Google - The Most Powerful Brand of 2007

According to Millward Brown Optimor, here are the 10 most powerful global brands of 2007, plus brand value:

1. Google--$66.4 billion
2. General Electric--$61.9 billion
3. Microsoft--$55 billion
4. Coca-Cola--$44.1 billion
5. China Mobile--$41.2 billion
6. Marlboro--$39.2 billion
7. Wal-Mart--$36.9 billion
8. Citigroup--$33.7 billion
9. IBM--$33.6 billion
10. Toyota Motor--$33.4 billion

Google is also ranked the No. 1 place to work in the United States by Fortune.

Google is having its honey moon period now. Hope it will last forever.

Source : News.com

Search Engine Shoot-Out

PC World concludes "Google is indeed the best search engine and Google's index proved to be the most accurate, comprehensive, and timely of the bunch. It also bested the majority of the specialty-search sites we tried, meaning those that focus on a category or file type, such as videos, images, news, blogs, or local info delivered on a mobile phone." You can view the chart here.

Google Buys DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion

NYTimes reports

Google reached an agreement today to acquire DoubleClick, the online advertising company, from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash, the companies announced, an amount that was almost double the $1.65 billion in stock that Google paid for YouTube late last year.

The sale offers Google access to DoubleClick’s advertisement software and, more importantly, its relationships with Web publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies.

A great move by Google. Microsoft looses another bidding war. This is another blow for Microsoft. Google is now creating a monopoly in Online Advertising by buying out its competitor.

Google corners nearly two-thirds of US search market

Fortune reports

The latest search market share numbers are in from Hitwise: in the four weeks ended March 31st, Google (GOOG) racked up fully 64.13% of all US searches. That’s up more than 10% since March 2006, and, if trends hold, Google’s share will pass the two thirds mark by August. In the same period, Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT), and Ask (IACI) all lost share. As the old Wall Street hands like to say: “Liquidity begets liquidity.”

Google is the undisputed leader in the field of search engine. Google means nothing but search to an army of web users. It even entered the dictionary as a verb. It became a generic verb which means "to search on web", something like 'I googled that topic' or 'I googled you'. Long live Google! Thanks for the changing the way we live.

Yahoo Mail Offers Unlimited Storage

Yahoo has announced that it is giving away unlimited storage accounts for all its web based email users as a tribute to Yahoo Mail's 10th anniversary. Yahoo is desperately trying to retain its lead in web based email. Recently many users are switching to Gmail as its is simple, faster and offers much more storage and options than Yahoo Mail.

An average user cannot even reach the limit of Gmail. There is nothing like unlimited storage. Just a matter of time till we find the unofficial cap for the email storage. Gmail is a killer application. It can catch spam with such an accuracy that you can almost never get a spam mail in your inbox. The spam filters of Yahoo Mail and Live Hotmail are very much inferior to Gmail. Gmail offers free POP mail and forwarding whereas Yahoo offers it for a fee. Yahoo Mail interface sucks. I suggest Yahoo to better concentrate on improving user interface rather than offering these useless unlimited storage crap. I love Gmail's grouping of emails into a thread and also tagging feature.

Here is the link to CNET comparison of Gmail vs Yahoo Mail vs Live Hotmail.

Gmail vs Hotmail vs Yahoo Mail

TechCrunch offers a nice comparison chat between Yahoo Mail, Live Hotmail and Gmail.Image Source : TechCrunch