Google dominates mobile phone searches

We all know that Google dominates the online search market with over 60% market share followed by Yahoo with about 20% market share, but its not just the online search market that Google is dominating. As per latest facts and figures released by Internet marketing firm Net Applications, Google accounts for 97.68 percent of all mobile phone searches followed by Yahoo with 1.88 percent.

This is a great news for search engine giant coz off late for all top 3 search engines viz Google, Yahoo & MSN Live, we have seen kind of stagnancy or dip in revenues through online Ads. With mobile Ad market expected to get bigger than online market, Google is all set to grab a major pie of this billion dollar market.

Twitter To Start Indexing

We all know Google is the undisputed search engine giant who over the years has beaten big boys like Yahoo, MSN Live, etc. Having said that it wont be long before Google gets stiff competition from Twitter. Yes that's right, if reports are to be believed, very shortly, Twitter will start crawling the links that people tweet out and start indexing them. This will immediately take Twitter Search, which is currently a very basic service, to the next level.

Off late many senior people quit Google to join Twitter. Douglas Bowman (Design lead at Google), Dustin Diaz (An engineer working on Gmail) and Santosh Jayaram (VP of Search Quality) are some of the people we know.

There is no way Twitter Search will index as many pages as Google and there is no way Twitter will replace Google. This is because Twitter Search is meant to be a different kind of powerful search engine. Its gonna be more of a real-time search engine which will update itself and blend as per user response.

Following is a real-time search story from Santosh Jayaram which he used to illustrate the power Twitter Search: he told of being in the Twitter offices in San Francisco on March 30, when the Twitter engineers noticed that the word "earthquake" had suddenly started trending up. They didn't know where the earthquake was. Several seconds later, their building started to shake. The earthquake had been in Morgan Hill, 60 miles south of San Francisco, and the tweets about the shaker reached the office faster than the seismic waves themselves.

There are also talks of Twitter looking at ways to throw better search results. According to Santosh Jayaram, Twitter is looking at adding some sort of a reputation filtering to offer better search results. Now how this reputation filter would work, No one knows.

Its time to Twitt (Quit) Google

With Twitter becoming the latest hot property on web, there are number of defectors from Google to Twitter. Recently Douglas Bowman, the design lead at Google, left to become the Creative Director at Twitter. He was shortly followed by Dustin Diaz, who was an engineer working on Gmail, who resigned from Google and announced he was taking a job at Twitter. Santosh Jayaram, VP of Search Quality for Google also quit to join Twitter as VP of Operations.

Things are gonna be quite interesting coz since April this year there are talks of Google looking to buyout Twitter. It needs to be seen whether so many senior professionals quitting Google is a matter of coincidence or a well planned strategy.

Google hires goats.

With recession clouds kind of clearing the skies, Google has gone ahead and hired goats. Yes, that's right, Google has hired 200 goats....not to replace their existing employees but to replace their lawn movers.

Recently Real Estate Director Dan Hoffman blogged that from now on, Google will no longer use lawn mowers to keep the hills around the GooglePlex free of weeds and brush. Instead, it will unleash a herd of goats and let them munch to their hearts' content. "At our Mountain View headquarters, we have some fields that we need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. This spring we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we've rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we're not "kidding"). A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers".

The move is a part of the internet search giant’s go green and low-carbon approach. Interestingly google rival yahoo is not far behind even they use goats for grazing on yahoo properties. The rival web firm tweeted at Google saying “Once or twice a year, a large herd of goats can be seen just past our parking garage in Sunnyvale, grazing happily on the tall grasses of the hill beyond" says Yahoo in the caption. "We have a special fondness for the goats and are always sad to see them go - which, based on their voracity, happens much faster than you'd imagine."

Jaiku : Googles twitter variant

For many who may not know, Google has its own Twitter variant and its called Jaiku. As mentioned on Jaiku website "Jaiku is a part of Google. The service is maintained by volunteer Google engineers on their spare time."

While Twitter started as a side project in March of 2006, Google had acquired Jaiku in October of 2007 for an estimated $12 million. As a matter of fact blogger.com which is currently owned by Google was owned by Twitter's Founders. Over the years there are number of unsuccessful investments made by Google, for instance in 2005 Google acquired social-networking service Dodgeball, which enables people to link up using text messages sent to mobile phones. But the company never really did anything with it, and the founders left in disgust in April.

With Jaiku hardly able to drive any traffic, Google finally moved Jaiku to Google Apps, going open source. With this move many experts believe that an open source Jaiku could make some real inroads in the custom development space. Jaiku Engine will enable users at the individual, group and organization levels to run their own micro blogging services through the Google App Engine. The Jaiku Engine will also provide support to open standard authentication, which Twitter is already using. This will thus allow the creation of a freely available open source micro-blogging service.

Identi.ca is another open source variant of Twitter's microblogging service.

Google Sued over use of Android name

Google and around 45 other companies are being sued over the name given to "Android", the open-source mobile phone operating system.

Erich Specht, who trades in the US as the Android Data Corp and the Android's Dungeon was given trademark rights to Android five years ago by the US Patent and Trademark Office and has since developed software and applications under the name. Google attempted to achieve similar rights in October 2007, a month prior to the launch of its operating system, but this was rejected by the Patent and Trademark Office in February 2008. The Patent and Trademark Office reasoning for the denial was simple: Since both Google and Specht were involved in the development of software and related services, "consumers are likely to conclude that the goods are related and originate from a single source."

In the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court, Erich Specht is seeking nearly $100 million in damages for trademark infringement. Motorola, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba are among the 45 companies involved in this case. They are all part of Google's Open Handset Alliance, which backs the Android operating system.

If verdict turns out in favor of Specht, Google would be forced to rebrand its mobile OS.

Microsoft Corp reports first ever revenue drop in 30 year history!

Microsoft reported its first ever Y-O-Y quarterly drop in revenue, in its entire 30-year history! In its three decades of existence, Microsoft had never before seen a Y-O-Y quarterly drop. Probably this is a sign of how bad this recession is. Revenue for the company’s third fiscal quarter dropped 6 percent to $13.65 billion, from $14.45 billion a year ago.

Following is a snapshot of its revenues
Quarter ended 31st March 2009 - $13.65Bn
Quarter ended 31st March 2008 - $14.45Bn

9 Months ended 31st March 2009 - $45.34Bn
9 Months ended 31st March 2008 - $44.58Bn

While 9 months figure seem to be encouraging, a drop in last quarter revenues indicate that worst is not over yet.

Also, in the last quarter Microsoft posted net income of $2.98 billion down 32 percent from $4.39 billion recorded during the same period a year ago.

Following is a snapshot of its net income
Quarter ended 31st March 2009 - $2.98Bn
Quarter ended 31st March 2008 - $4.39Bn

9 Months ended 31st March 2009 - $11.52Bn
9 Months ended 31st March 2008 - $13.38Bn

Notice here that net income for the 9 months period is down by a whopping $1.8 billion

Online business
The company’s online business reported a 14 percent drop in revenue to $721 million, compared to $843 million a year ago.

Following is a snapshot of its revenues from online business
Quarter ended 31st March 2009 - $0.72Bn
Quarter ended 31st March 2008 - $0.84Bn

9 Months ended 31st March' 2009 - $2.36Bn
9 Months ended 31st March' 2008 - $2.38Bn

Notice here that for 9 months period revenue is down marginally

Also, in the last quarter online business posted a net loss of $575 million which is more than double of $226 million loss recorded during the same period a year ago.

Following is a snapshot of its net loss from online business
Quarter ended 31st March 2009 - ($0.57 Bn)
Quarter ended 31st March 2008 - ($0.23 Bn)

9 Months ended 31st March 2009 - ($1.52Bn)
9 Months ended 31st March 2008 - ($0.74Bn)

Notice here that net loss for the 9 months period is close to $1.0 billion. Also, net loss for quarter ended 31st March 2009 is almost equivalent to 9 months loss of 2008.

Perhaps its time for Microsoft to concede search engine battle to Google and give up its online advertising.