Google’s Top Ten Products (More Or Less)

Google’s Top Ten Products (More Or Less):
"Can you name Google’s top ten products? If you look at how Quantcast ranks Google’s subdomains, you can get a sense of which Google products are the most popular, since they each have their own subdomain. Google’s main search engine tops the list with an estimated 136.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. Then comes Google Maps (36 million), Image Search (31.7 million), and Gmail (10.5 million). Google Docs, Sites, and Knol are still too small to make the top-ten, but are all showing decent growth.

YouTube, Blogger, and Orkut are not included below because they are on their own domains, but YouTube would be second with 70 million unique U.S. visitors, and Blogger would be in the top 5 with 23.5 million. Orkut is not popular in the U.S., so it would not be a factor in this particular list. And I took out sorry.google.com, the domain Google uses to try to catch bots and spyware. It would....

What Do Google Android Netbooks Mean For Microsoft And Apple? (GOOG)

What Do Google Android Netbooks Mean For Microsoft And Apple? (GOOG)

. . . "It's no secret that Google (GOOG) is hoping its Android operating system can be useful for more than just mobile phones. So it makes sense that Google would want to get Android on 'netbook' laptops -- small, lo-fi computers that companies like Dell (DELL), HP (HPQ), Acer, and Asus are selling like hotcakes to geeks and early adopter-types.

If that happens, and Google-powered computers take off, Microsoft is the biggest loser. Early netbooks ran Linux, but today's best sellers run Windows. For instance, the 10 top-selling laptops on Amazon (AMZN) right now are netbooks running Windows XP Home. While selling an XP Home license likely isn't as valuable to Microsoft as selling a Vista Ultimate license, it'd still be losing some potential license sales. And if netbooks start cannibalizing real laptop sales, Microsoft stands to lose market share, too.

What about Apple? The company hasn't joined the netbook market yet -- unless you count the iPod touch, or maybe the iPhone -- but will supposedly start selling larger tablet computers sometime next year. We see no reason why a Google-powered netbook would necessarily be better than an Apple-powered netbook. But they could be cheaper."

Walmart Splits With PRISM - 01/02/2009

from MediaPost Publications
"Walmart is withdrawing from the consortium of retailers, packaged-goods manufacturers and agencies supporting the PRISM in-store media measurement service, the Nielsen Co. disclosed Tuesday.

Nielsen said it will continue work on PRISM (an acronym for Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric), which is expected to introduce a complete metric in 2009. However, the departure of its largest founding member is a setback for the project, one of several high-profile initiatives working in parallel to create new metrics for out-of-home.
. . .

In September, Walmart unveiled a new Internet-protocol Smart Network, the result of a cooperative effort between Premier Retail Networks, Studio2 and DS-IQ, which will continually analyze point-of-sale figures and dynamically update programming and advertising to maximize sale lift.

Premier Retail Networks is responsible for building and operating the IPTV network as well as ad sales. Studio 2 provides custom programming, and DS-IQ is responsible for measurement, analysis and the message optimization strategy. (The roster at DS-IQ, founded in Bellevue, Wash. in 2003, boasts former top tech executives from Microsoft, Amazon.com, RealNetworks and aQuantive).

Shifting into gossip mode, the decision to leave PRISM could also be delayed fallout from the departure of Walmart's former senior vice president of marketing Julie Roehm two years ago. Roehm, who was at the helm when preliminary research for PRISM was performed in spring of that year, was forced out in December 2006 for alleged favoritism in granting ad and media contracts.

She was also said to have clashed with the retailer's powerful merchandising and consumer research and strategy divisions, which were responsible for creating the Smart Network. Walmart did not hesitate to pull the plug on another of Roehm's initiatives: an online media exchange also organized as a consortium.

Top Media & Marketing Innovations of 2008

Top Media & Marketing Innovations of 2008:
"Sponsor in Aisle Five!
Shopper marketing may never be the same. Wal-Mart, the largest U.S. retailer, this year led the way with the rollout of its in-store digital network, the Wal-Mart Smart Network. Powered by Internet Protocol Television, content, ads and merchandising can be monitored and controlled down to a single screen. Even as scores of video networks pop up, this represents a new paradigm, offering a level of precision targeting never before seen. Instead of relying on shelf-talkers and end-of-aisle displays to promote products, the Wal-Mart net creates a dynamic, interactive dialogue between marketer and consumer. (While utilizing the latest technology, the network also is a real throwback in terms of customer service, taking shoppers back to a time when the store clerk knew every item and could help the customer make informed decisions on the spot.) Operated by Premier Retail Networks, the network is the result of two years and $10 million in research aimed at the optimal content and placement of screens for engaging consumers at the point-of-purchase. Up and running in 300 stores in time for the holiday season, Wal-Mart anticipates chain-wide deployment (2,700 U.S. outposts) by early 2010. -Katy Bachman"

The Real Story of Cyber Monday: A View Into Actual Consumer Engagement - MarketWatch

from MarketWatch:
. . . Amazon.com, eBay.com, and Walmart.com were the most visited retail sites on Cyber Monday

"On Cyber Monday, the most popular shopping websites received substantial increases in average clicks per user, suggesting that users were more engaged shoppers on that particular day. WalMart.com had the biggest increase with more than 145 times the average clicks per user. The top two shopping websites on Cyber Monday (Amazon.com and eBay.com) were on the bottom of the list for average user clicks per site.

Wal-Mart launching takeover of Chile retailer D&S | Industries | Consumer Products & Retail | Reuters

UPDATE 2-Wal-Mart launching takeover of Chile retailer

"SANTIAGO, Dec 19 (Reuters) - U.S. retailing mammoth Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) said on Friday it launched an all-cash offer to buy Chile's biggest supermarket chain, D&S DIS.SN(DYS.N), setting itself up to gain a major foothold in one of Latin America's most competitive retail markets.

D&S, Chile's biggest supermarket chain, said in a statement to the Chilean bourse late on Friday that the offer would be made within 10 days and was for $0.408 per share. It was being made in the name of Inversiones Australes Tres Limitada, a unit of Wal-Mart."

Google Ad Server share now at 57%. Microhoo less than 15% market share.

from Attributor Blog
"December 18, 2008 @ 8:00 am
The Google ad serving juggernaut appears secure even if Microsoft and Yahoo agree on a deal to merge their search advertising businesses. Our analysis of ad server calls across 75 million domains shows that both Yahoo and Microsoft lost significant share compared to our March report and now make up less than 15% of the total market.

The explosion of new ad networks in 2008 had an impact, but only one newcomer - Revenue Science- broke into the top 5. Unsurprisingly, Google’s AdSense is dominant on smaller sites while Google-owned DoubleClick leads on larger sites; however AdSense made great strides on larger sites, leapfrogging Yahoo into 2nd place."

Can Google Crack the Mobile Advertising Nut?

Technology News: M-Commerce:
"Earlier this week, Google announced it's pushing its AdWords program onto the mobile platform. Sponsors will be able to show their advertisements on handhelds like the iPhone, the T-Mobile Latest News about T-Mobile G1, and others that use full HTML browsers without having to redesign the ads specifically for mobile devices. The advertisers can even get feedback specifically on mobile ads to check a campaign's status.

Google has the potential to jump-start the mobile advertising market, which has had a slow takeoff. In addition to its recent AdWords effort, it's also deployed mobile search applications to popular smartphones like the iPhone, not to mention the fact that it has its own mobile software system, Android, through which it could presumably offer any number of creative advertising ventures. However, the company faces many challenges in its attempt to reshape the mobile sector."

SMS Text Messaging for G chat

Official Gmail Blog: Really new in Labs this time: SMS Text Messaging for chat:
"How often do you try to chat with somebody and they don't respond because they just walked away from their computer? Or maybe you're in the middle of chatting with them just as they need to leave. But you still need to tell them something -- something really important like you've moved where you're meeting...or ice cream! We need ice cream! This is why we built a way to chat with your friends even when they're away from their computers. Now you can keep the conversations going with a new Labs feature that lets you send SMS text messages right from Gmail. It combines the best parts of IM and texting: you chat from the comfort of your computer, and your friends can peck out replies on their little keyboards."

Chrome Comes Out of Beta with 10 Million Users

Chrome Comes Out of Beta with 10 Million Users:
"As was reported yesterday, Google’s browser Chrome is coming out of beta — a mere 100 days after it was introduced. When I commented to Sundar Pichai, Product VP, that this had to be one of the fastest exits from beta for Google in recent memory he explained that “Google has a very traditional approach to our client software products,” meaning it accelerates the process of getting them to a general release."

Recessions give space for new ideas to flourish

from FT.com :
. . .
While the economic effects of recession can be dire, in the long term the effect on work and working habits can be positive."
. . .

So what impact will the current recession have on work over the next decade?
. . .

First, while the focus is still on shoring up finance and the economy, in time we will begin to question the prevailing norms of leadership and decision-making. The dominant “command and control” leadership style that allows a chief executive such as Richard Fuld at Lehman Brothers unilaterally to make decisions about the whole company will increasingly come under scrutiny. If the crowd is indeed wise, why do we put our faith in the decisions and knowledge of a tiny fraction of people?
. . .
Next, past recessions have often served to accelerate the development of practices and processes that had limited popularity pre-recession. Before the 1990s recession, for example, off-shoring was seen to be too complex and difficult an option. It was only with the cost imperatives of the recession that off-shoring was initially pushed and then eventually became a norm, later to be broadened and deepened into its current application. The same is true of group-ware technologies, which have had limited uptake as people said they would prefer to meet face to face. Now, however, those who last year would have jumped on a plane to attend meetings have had their travel budgets slashed. They are being forced to use video conferencing and webcasts. . . . . Others, however, will have fundamentally changed their habits and begun to build working communities that are virtual.

Finally, the 2008-2009 recession will profoundly change the way occupations are seen. Each previous recession has had some impact on perceptions. The 1990s recession slowed the rush to technology and start-ups. The current one may well have the same impact on banking, which has been a huge magnet for talent. The upside would be that our most talented youngsters might look to more than just investment banking for a career.

Recessions are a time of destruction of the old order, a time when assumptions are questioned and nascent practices and ideas are given space to flourish. That is little cheer for now but, in the longer term, an enormous stimulus for change.

King Google

from BuzzMachine

Via TechCrunch, here’s a good PPT outlining the continued primacy of Google across its various products and lines of business:"

All about Google

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: google strategy)

2008 Video Search Year In Review

2008 Video Search Year In Review
"The big TV networks haven’t given up on their own sites, but in 2008, some networks have started to embrace YouTube. CBS, in a very resourceful move, recently announced a partnership with YouTube to stream full length episodes of popular shows like “MacGyver.” MGM has also reached an agreement to post movies on YouTube. Between funny skateboarding accidents and full-length episodes of MacGyver, I don’t think I’ll ever leave YouTube."

2008 Video Search Year In Review

2008 Video Search Year In Review
"YouTube rolls out a new ad-model. Recently, YouTube internal search results have started to look a little more like Google.com results. Google has used AdWords functionality to allow advertisers to bid on YouTube search terms that trigger ads to appear in the “sponsored video” section of the YouTube search results. For example, an advertiser selling first aid products might benefit from bidding on the “funny skateboarding accidents” phrase. Unlike Google.com, clicking on the ad keeps the user on the YouTube domain, where they see a featured video from the advertiser. This channel could be particularly effective for studios promoting movie trailers, companies bringing a new product to market, and brand advertisers like car manufacturers wanting to showcase products. 2009 will tell if sponsored video becomes the effective YouTube ad model that advertisers have been craving."

Google Sorts One Petabyte Of Data In 6 Hours - Analytics - InformationWeek

Google Sorts One Petabyte Of Data In 6 Hours - Analytics - InformationWeek
"According to last Friday's Official Google Blog, the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Systems Infrastructure Team has sorted a record 1 terabyte of data on 1,000 computers in only 68 seconds, which breaks the previous mark of 209 seconds established in July by Yahoo.

Team leader Grzegorz Czajkowski wrote that the team followed the rules of a standard terabyte sort benchmark and used Google's MapReduce software framework that supports parallel computations over large (multiple petabyte) data sets on clusters of computers. Yahoo's effort had featured a 910-node cluster, and used Hadoop, an open-source MapReduce implementation.

The sort benchmark, which was created in 1998 by computer scientist Jim Gray, specifies the input data (10 billion 100-byte records in uncompressed text files), which must be completely sorted and written to disk. Not content with just rewriting the record book, the Google team then decided to up the ante in sorting massive volumes of data."
. . .
One petabyte is a thousand terabytes, or roughly 12 times the amount of archived Web data in the U.S. Library of Congress as of May 2008. One way to put that amount in perspective, according to Czajkowski, is to consider that the aggregate size of data processed by all instances of MapReduce at Google was, on average, 20 PB per day in January 2008. A paper explaining MapReduce on the Google labs site says that the upwards of one thousand MapReduce jobs are executed on Google's clusters every day. So the infrastructure team's MapReduce job that extended the benchmark factors out to 50 typical MapReduce jobs, or one-twentieth the total of all daily MapReduce jobs run on Google's clusters.

Google v Microsoft

Microsoft Loses Internet Ground, Or Not? - Microsoft Blog - InformationWeek:

"Do the hit counters at ComScore have a different take on this situation? The Seattle Post-Intelligencer quotes a ComScore study that shows Microsoft's search share holding steady. However, that refers to October versus September search share. If you eyeball the one-year graph in that story, you'll see essentially the same decline that Neilsen found.

Beneath these two contradictory headlines, there is actually some consistent data. Microsoft has lost about 20 percent of its market share in the past year, but in recent months has seemed to stop the bleeding. Yahoo has even managed a slight uptick in searches over the past two months. It makes you wonder whether the now-unlikely merger of these two would make any difference when both are so far behind Google."

Op-Ed Contributor - How to Publish Without Perishing - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributor - How to Publish Without Perishing - NYTimes.com:

"One could imagine the book, venerable as it is, just vanishing into the ether. It melts into all the other information species searchable through Google’s most democratic of engines: the Web pages, the blogs, the organs of printed and broadcast news, the general chatter. (Thanks for everything, Gutenberg, and now goodbye.)

But I don’t see it that way. I think, on the contrary, we’ve reached a shining moment for this ancient technology. Publishers may or may not figure out how to make money again (it was never a good way to get rich), but their product has a chance for new life: as a physical object, and as an idea, and as a set of literary forms."

A Maturing Google Buckles Down and Searches for Cost Savings - Advertising Age - Digital

A Maturing Google Buckles Down and Searches for Cost Savings - Advertising Age - Digital:

"NEW YORK (AdAge) -- The recession is reverberating even in the freewheeling halls of the Googleplex.

Proving that even the search giant isn't immune from the vagaries of the economy, Google is cutting its 10,000-strong contract staff, nixing some new products that won't pay back in the near term and aggressively trying to squeeze more out of existing revenue streams."

Google's Plan for Mobile Domination | Fast Company

Scobleizer: Google's Plan for Mobile Domination | Fast Company:
"In January, California will join the states that have made it illegal to text while driving. Google's voice-powered service, GOOG-411, is great for hands-free access to local information. Call 800-GOOG-411 and the system prompts you to tell it where you are and what you want. You can even have it send directions via a text message."

worth the click for more details

It's not Chrome v Firefox, it's Google v Microsoft

Free standards based at the last mile = controlling the screen.

Media News - European Journalism Centre:
"Google is considering pre-installing its Chrome browser on personal computers in the search giant's latest challenge to the dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The move would significantly ramp up the browser war that Google launched against Microsoft when it launched Chrome in September, in the battle to dominate how users access and interact with the web"