This service had been launched in beta last September, for a few users, but is now being rolled out for all users. Now, users will be able to broadcast their own hangout sessions in real-time. The broadcast will be available to users all over the world.

Google+ Hangouts On Air

To activate this service the user will have to select the “Enable Hangouts On Air” button. By enabling this function, the user will be able to broadcast his hangout via his or her Google+ stream, on a website or even directly on a YouTube channel.

This is a chance for ordinary users to go on air before a global audience. While hangouts are generally accessible on iPhones as well as Android phones, the ‘Hangouts on Air’ feature is so far available only on desktops.

Among the programmes that will be aired via this service in the future are a Hangout hosted by Cadbury UK on 11th May as well as one hosted by Jamie Oliver on Food Revolution Day, which takes place on 19th May.

It may take a little time for all users to have access to this feature as Google has just started rolling it out for general use.

Last March, Google bought BeatThat Quote for £37.7m. Its managing director John Paleomylites was made Google product management director and has overseen the launch of this new search product.

This service will initially provide comparisons for UK credit cards, and current and savings accounts. Further products are expected to be added in due course.

Credit cards compared on Google Search results

Paleomylites has said, “We are introducing a new-look comparison unit with enhanced transparency, using BeatThat Quote.com expertise and Google technology. The enhanced service is easier to use for consumers and will provide higher-quality traffic for advertisers.”

When a user wants to know more about a product or ad, he has to click on the ad. He is then shown a table detailing all the relevant services as well as their individual benefits and features. This will help financiers to generate more traffic as well increase the rate of conversion.

This service is in some ways similar to Google Advisor which was launched last year. This service provides a comparison of various financial products available in the market. An advanced search page allows users to filter results by offers, rewards, networks and fee structures.

Google credit card comparison advanced search options

The Trusted Stores programme was introduced with the intention of giving users the confidence to spend money online.

When users buy a product from a ‘Trusted Store’ they can contact Google in case they have any problem with the product and the online store concerned does not attend to it satisfactorily.

Buyers from Trusted Stores are also offered the option of getting their money back, if they are not satisfied with the product or service rendered. This money-back guarantee comes in the form of a $1,000 ‘Consumer Protection’ guarantee.

To qualify as a ‘Trusted Store’ the online retailer must have a good record for on-time shipping as well as reliable and timely customer service. A ‘Trusted Store’ badge will appear on the retailer’s website and customers will be able to see the store’s grades with regards to on-time shipping as well as customer service.

In order to avail of the free Purchase Protection service, the customer must opt in for the same. Having opted for the Purchase Protection the customer must first contact the store itself in case of any problem. If the problem is not solved satisfactorily, the customer can then contact Google, who will contact the store. If the problem is still not solved, the customer is eligible to get their money back.

Internet Retailer recently found the ‘Trusted Stores’ badge being tested on live search results to indicate the quality and reliability of the advertiser. It is initially being tested with about a dozen participants.

Trusted Store badge on AdWords ad

If this new embellishment to search ads is rolled out, it could serve as a great advantage to trusted well established online retailers with extensive customer service resources. However, smaller retailers and new online stores could find themselves severely disadvantaged by this new service as it could take them time to earn the badge.

Google Senior VP Vic Gundotra has said on his Google+ page “We think you’ll find it easier to use and nicer to look at, but most importantly, it accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google.”

Since Google+ is now tied up with other Google services such as Gmail, YouTube, Docs and others, Google+ has reached the 170 million users level. However, it is not exactly known how many of these users are active.

Larry Page says, “Well over 100 million users are active on Google+”

The new page has a new customizable navigation bar on the left hand side. This allows users to drag and drop apps to arrange them in whatever order suits them best. Apps that are not likely to be used often can be hidden behind the ‘More’ panel.

The redesign also provides for bigger photos and videos. An ‘Activity Drawer’ highlights members of the community and trending topics.

A new Hangouts page shows Hangouts that are happening in that circle. Users can also access public hangouts.

An ‘Explore’ page can be accessed from the left hand navigation bar that allows users to access fresh content, when there is no news from friends.

Since the roll out has just been started, it will be a few days before all users across the world have access to this new redesign.

They have set up a new facility called ‘Campus London’ to help the growth of new technologies and allied businesses. This facility has been set up in the East of London, in a neighbourhood known as ‘Tech City’.

Campus London is a seven storey building that will provide space for those who wish to innovate and develop new internet based technologies.

The U.K.’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt. Hon. George Osborne MP has officially launched the Campus. He later took a round of the premises and found that innovators ranging from fashion trend setting websites to London leisure guides were already making use of this facility. On day one itself, the place was 90% occupied with over 100 people on site and a further 4500 who have signed up for a visit online.

Google has started this facility in collaboration with Central Working, Tech Hub, Seedcamp and Springboard.

Apart from providing a good workspace for the new entrepreneurs Campus London will also offer a good environment from which to set up the business as also host daily events, run a regular speaker series, alongside lectures and programming, Local Google teams will also provide training to the entrepreneurs.

Services like a café, co-working space and high speed Wi-fi capability are already available to visitors on the site. Google hopes to be able to encourage interaction between people from various fields such as investors, developers, designers, lawyers, accountants and others thus leading to the development of new businesses and further enhancing the economy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is likely to make some changes in the way their search engine processes and answers queries over the next few months.

These changes are expected to affect the websites that depend largely on the Google search engine. The changes will also help them to serve more advertisements thus increasing their revenue.

While the ‘keyword’ search system will continue, Google is planning to introduce a “Semantic Search” feature. This means that the search engine will actually try to understand the meaning of the keyword being used, and thus offer more relevant answers.

Amit Singhal, a top search executive at Google has said that Google has amassed a very large database over the last two years. The engine will now try to coordinate and associate different words with each other. For example, the word Google could be associated with its owners Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Singhal says that the search engine will now function more like “how humans understand the world.” He also says that while the changes will start in the next few months the entire process will be long drawn out, and will enter the “next generation of search.”

It is hoped that this new search system will provide more value based answers than it has done in the past. In this respect they hope to be able to keep up with Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Some experts believe that this move will help Google to keep up with the fast-evolving social networking scene where the prominent players already have a huge database. Others are a bit more sceptical, saying that Google already does this to quite a large extent so not much will change.

It is not yet known how these changes will affect the advertisements being served on the search engine. However, it may be assumed that once the engine better understand s what a user is looking for, they will be able to serve more relevant ads.

Google has often updated their search algorithms in the past. Recently, they have begun to provide answers to users based on their activity on Google Plus.

This new update will be based on their acquisition of Metaweb Technologies, which has a database of 12 million entities including books, movies, celebrities and other data.

It remains to be seen how effective these changes really are. After all, Bing has been using similar semantic technology but has failed to really make a dent in Google’s market share.

Google Assistant will be voice-controlled, just like Siri, but is expected to be more goal oriented.

While Google has not yet made any official announcement about the product, sources at TechCrunch reveal that Google has been working on this product for a long time.

It is believed that Google will keep control of this service at all levels, unlike Siri, which refers to third-party information sources for certain user requests.

Google’s Android team is said to be working on this project. The project is currently supposed to be at the stage where they have to convert all information into a language that the computer will understand.

Sources claim that Google Assistant will be more of a “Do Engine” rather than a service that focuses on just the search. Google is expected to launch this product in the last quarter of the year.

Recent versions of Android already have a pretty strong voice-based range of services, which include voice-to-text input, voice search and basic voice activated commands such as “call”, “send text”, “navigate to”, “go to” [a website] and [show a] “map of”.

Android’s existing range of voice-activated controls don’t quite match up to the breadth of Apple’s Siri. Furthermore, if Google wishes to make the same range of controls available on interfaces other than mobile, such as tablet and TV, it would need to drastically increase the range of commands it can accept. This is especially important if rumours of an imminent Apple TV launch are true.

Now, when a user searches for a symptom or a group of symptoms, Google’s organic search results will show a list of possible causes for those symptoms.

In other words, Google will offer a differential diagnosis for a given set of symptoms.

To explain how the system will function, Google has given the example of a search being conducted for right sided abdominal pain, in a blog post.

While this is being done with a view to help users, one needs to make sure that the search does not end up causing more confusion.

It is very likely that a user conducting a search for some symptoms, may consider the symptom to arise from a relatively minor problem, which may have been placed higher on the search results page. The user may thus neglect taking prompt expert advice, and delay taking treatment and further aggravating a potentially serious illness.

On the other hand, some users may consider themselves to be suffering from a major and dangerous illness, and unnecessarily stress themselves over what may eventually turn out to be a minor matter.

Google has clarified that the results will be algorithmically presented. The results have not been provided by a medical doctor, who is qualified to make a judgement about the actual diagnosis taking into account several points such as clinical findings and the results of various investigations.

While the effort being made by Google is noteworthy, users must remember to use this only as a broad guideline and not as a replacement for an expert opinion. After all ‘little knowledge is dangerous’.

It is believed that the search giant is in the process of launching a cloud computing service along the lines of Dropbox. This service will enable users to store their data in the cloud and they can then retrieve it at will from any internet connected device.

The service will be called Drive – along the lines of GDrive.

Material that can be stored on this new service will include not only documents, as is the case with GDrive, but also photos and videos. This feature will be especially useful for sharing large files.

Google will offer a certain amount of storage space to users for free, but those wishing to have larger storage space will have to pay for it.

The company is already equipped to store large volumes of data, so the introduction of this service should be the natural next step.

This service is expected to be compatible with Android devices, and may complement Google’s other services such as Google Docs and Google+.

The service may also link to Google Music and help users to share the music they like with their friends.

Dropbox, which is similar in concept to Drive, was launched in 2007 and is doing extremely well. They already have about 50 million users, and provide 2GB of storage for free.

Google has so far refrained from making any official comment about the new service.

Searches for news of Jackson’s departure were double those of Osama bin Laden who was narrowly ahead of Amy Winehouse (both of whom died last year) in a study of online searches since 2004.

The first global ranking of the world’s “Deaths That Shocked the Net” comes from analysing one billion online searches via Google by AccuraCast, a leading U.K. digital search agency.

Deaths that Shocked the Internet – infographic

2011 had 5 big deaths in terms of search with Osama bin Laden, Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Taylor and Muammar Gaddafi all featuring in the top ten of most searched for deaths of all time. Only 4 other years made it in the study – 2010 for Alexander McQueen, 2009 with Michael Jackson and Brittany Murphy, 2008 for Heath Ledger and 2006 with Saddam Hussein.

The study shows that the average age of the top ten most searched for deaths is 50 years and 4 months. Amy Winehouse was the youngest on the list at 27 years of age with Elizabeth Taylor the oldest at seventy nine years of age.

The top ten contains 5 entertainers (3 film stars, 2 singers), 2 political leaders, 1 fashion designer, 1 terrorist and 1 technology pioneer – Steve Jobs.

Violent death is the most common cause of death in the top ten search list with 4 in this category – Bin Laden (shot), Saddam Hussein (hanged), Muammar Gaddafi (shot) and Alexander McQueen (suicide).

Homicide was found to have killed Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs died due to illness while drugs and alcohol accounted for Heath Ledger and Amy Winehouse respectively.

Brittany Murphy’s death was judged as accidental while Elizabeth Taylor was the one person who died a natural death.

According to Farhad Divecha, AccuraCast Managing Director, “Our study shows that, above all, death is the biggest driver of all Internet search activity especially just after it has occurred. Using figures from Google we have been able to analyse rises and falls in search to produce a unique league table”.

Ranking of the 10 most shocking deaths

Google has stated that they are doing this because they wish to create a “beautiful, simple and intuitive experience” for their users.

In effect, the new policy will make it possible to share information provided by a user on one Google product across all other Google products and features. This includes Gmail, Google Search, YouTube, Google Plus and others.

A major stumbling block of this new policy is the fact that users will not have the option to disagree with the policy if they wish to continue using any of these Google services.

Consumer Objections

Users have voiced their discontent via comments and votes on the YouTube video introducing the new, unified privacy policy. The major bone of contention for users seems to be that information from any one Google service will now be accessible to a host of other services.

Regular consumers are not blind to the fact that Google makes its money from advertising. They also accept that in order to advertise on all of its services, Google does need to be able to pull information from one service and use it elsewhere. What they dislike is the idea that Google is mixing the concept of privacy in a closed system such as GMail with that on an open network such as Google+ or YouTube.

Official Investigations Triggered

Not surprisingly, the announcement has not gone down too well with certain groups. Gary Davis, the Data Protection Commissioner in Dublin, where Google’s European headquarters are based, has said that their office would be “further assessing the implications of the changes now that they are launched to users”. He also said that “Google has a responsibility to ensure that any such changes are made abundantly clear to users”.

Greg Jones from the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office said, “Failure to inform users about changes may not only lead to a loss of trust in the company, but could also mean that they are failing to comply” with U.K. law.

Exceptions to this new policy will be Google Books, Google Chrome and Google Wallet. These sites will continue to retain their own privacy policy.This exception is due to legal reasons.

The new policy will come into effect from the 1st of March 2012.

A tweet sent out by Experian Hitwise says that Google has seen a growth in their membership last month, that has more than doubled the number of users they had in the previous month.

According to Hitwise, Google+ had more than 49 million visits in the U.S. itself in that month, which is a 55% increase in traffic compared to the month before.

Google+ share of visits to all categories. Source: Experian Hitwise

Analyst Paul Allen, who is the founder of Ancestry.com, has estimated that Google+ now has over 62 million users, and, of this, 25% of users have signed up in December itself.

While these figures are insignificant compared to the membership that Facebook has (over 800 million) the growth rate itself is significant. In fact, Facebook could not cross the 60 million mark until four years after it was launched.

According to Paul Allen, over 625,000 members are signing up every day. Part of this growth is definitely due to the fact that over 700,000 Android devices are being sold every day, and Google+ is integrated into many of these devices, making it easier for users to sign on.

The holiday season, TV commercials and celebrity endorsements may have further contributed to the growth.

Google has refused to confirm or deny the numbers.

It is being further estimated that at this rate, Google + will cross the 400 million mark by the end of this year.

Over the last year or so tablet devices have been growing in popularity. A study conducted by Google found that 65% of users that have tablet devices use them for at least one hour a day. It was also found that these devices are used mostly for personal and fun purposes such as checking email, shopping, gaming and other such leisure activities.

91% of the time spent on tablet devices is for personal activities as opposed to desktops, which are used for work related activities and mobiles, which are carried everywhere and used mainly for local search and other related activities. As a result of this, the tablet devices are used mostly in the evening or night and are not usually carried everywhere.

In order to make the most of this growing popularity of tablet devices, Google also studied how users interact with ads on the tablets. The study showed that users expect the advertisements on tablets to be more interactive and interesting than ads shown on desktops and mobile phones.

Naturally, this is an opportunity Google won’t miss, as they are continuously trying to find new ways to woo big brands and win over more advertising money from traditional media via formats such as online video. The new ad formats introduce by Google are for search and display advertising on tablet devices and have a heavy emphasis on video and rich media.

Rich Media Designs for Mobile are basically rich media ad templates with in-built interactivity. This will make it easy for advertisers to create rich media ads for tablets by porting creative used on other display ad campaigns.

Google Media Ads for tablet search. Image courtesy of Google

On the search side, Google will take advantage of the interactive touch-screen of tablets test video ad placement directly onto the search results page. Google had tried similar video advertising on desktop search results pages in the past, but that experiment never took off from beta.

Media Ads, which will show on Google search pages on tablet devices, though, are more likely to succeed as tablet users are much more open to interactivity and the entertainment aspect of such a device and on the format will help advertisers to engage users in new ways as tablet devices continue to gain n popularity in the days to come.

Google highlights three important aspects that currently characterise the Web scenario:

1. The number of online users are growing
2. The number of mobile phone subscribers will double in a few years
3. The amount of digital information exchanged worldwide is destined to see a huge growth too.

During the event, Google representatives spoke in detail about these 3 aspects, and how developing countries are reacting to changes.

The UK is believed to benefit from this growth. The Internet contributes to 7% of the UK’s GDP, with a growth of over 10% each year (this, of course pales in comparison to Chinese growth levels, which are massive!)

The Internet levels the playing field, representing a great benefit for SMEs, which can now effectively compete with big players.

Google+ In The Ad Ecosystem

Presenters at the even went to pains to point out that Google+ is not just a platform. It is a project. Their mission is to organise information and make it more accessible. Google+’s 40 million users help make this mission more personal.

Google+ is also aimed at engaging people with brands, through the set up of a Google+ profile. Once people add your business to their circle, you can also add them to any circle and segment your audience.

Intel directly asks which circle you belong to, so as to target the right campaign to the right consumers.

The 1+ button was confirmed to affect ranking. The extent of the effect remains unknown as Google employees continue to dodge direct questions about it.

AdWords Express

Made for businesses that are not yet ready for Adwords – 40% of small businesses do not have a website – AdWords Express is simple to set-up and easy to manage.

Google are keen to drive adoption of the new system. They even offered to reward a credit of ₤250 to all agencies that bring in five new clients to AdWords Express by the end of the year.

The benefits of AdWords Express are as follows:

• Targeted – specific to the area where the business operates
• Simple – no need to create /manage campaigns
• Measurable
• Eligibility – no need to have a website

Tips and tricks for Insights:

Let’s assume that faster is better – Google Instant saves a lot of time in the long term.

In Google Images you can drop images into the search box to give similar related results on search.

Google Insights for Search – You can find the most searched terms in a certain period in a specific location. Also you can analyse the evolution of a specific KW during a concrete period.

Ad Planner gives you insights about the audience that uses a specific website, so you can target your audience accurately.

Mobile On the Rise

The Smartphone and mobile markets are growing fast. Mobile is transforming the retail market. This is because user reviews have a huge impact on customer decisions and behaviour.

• It’s a good practice to set a mobile-only campaign, as it provides better click-through rates and easier tracking.
• Ads with phone numbers included get an average 6% to 8% higher CTR!
• Mobile is local – More than 1 in 3 searches in mobile are local.
• It is advisable that for mobile campaigns keywords should be shorter.
• Top spots matter more on mobiles than they do on desktops
• Another good practice is to set location extensions. One should also be mindful of the huge power of CTC and site links.
• The audience spends only 5% of their online time on Search. Display is growing a lot and will be growing even faster.

4 top tips for mobile advertising:

1. Prioritise re-marketing and keyword contextual advertising
2. Run both display and text format
3. Use exclusions to control efficiency
4. Frequency cap & ad scheduling

Tips and tricks for measurement:

The 3 Be’s

1. Be found
2. Be engaging
3. Be accountable

You definitely need to have goals to measure against.

Mobile sites / apps are a huge opportunity that most small businesses are losing.

1 second delay in page load causes a 7% loss of conversions, 11% fewer page views and 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

Improving Ad Campaign Performance

Page Speed Online – pagespeed.googlelabs.com – check there for audit & suggestions.

Real-time (Beta) – New on Analytics

Flow visualization – user path graph – New on Analytics

Tips and tricks for driving conversions:

• Enhanced CPC
• Conversions Optimizer
• Focus on optimising conversions
• Use automated rules

Knol, Google Wave, Renewable Energy cheaper than Coal (RE<C), Google Friend Connect, Google Gears, Google Search Timeline and Google Bookmarks Lists will be shut down permanently over the next three months.

The products didn’t quite take off as Google had hoped and are therefore being shut down, in Google’s own words, with the aim “to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience.”

A lot of the engineering resources at Google seem to be redirected towards making Plus a hit. A host of new features are seemingly added to the new social network each month. One of these new features is an advanced search option, allowing users to filter search results by author and to browse through the currently trending topics at that point in time.

Similar to Twitter, the trending topics on Google+ show users what are the most popular topics at the moment, and allow them to dive into conversations related tot hose topics.

Google+ search along with trending topics

Now, when a user carries out a search, the trending topics will be displayed in a column on the right side of the page. Users click on any of the trending topics to conduct a search for that topic, which again is very similar to the functionality in Twitter.

Users can also narrow down the search results by using the filters provided at the top of the page, to narrow the content by type – everything, Google+ posts, people and pages or Sparks – and the content source – everyone, circles or self. At present, these tools are available only after a search has been conducted. However, it has been reported by The Next Web that users are asking for the trends results to be added to the main page on Google+.

Another interesting feature that has been spotted recently is the integration of Google+ with Google Places. A number of local searches now show the listing accompanied by the profile image that has been pulled from Google+. When users click on this logo, they are taken to a Google search results page that lists the Google+ Page and provides the user the option to directly add that Page directly to their Circles.

Google+ profiles featured in Google Places search results

This is yet another service that the search giant has integrated with Google+. Even though the network has been criticized for its lack of activity, the developers seems to be determined to make it succeed by placing it in front of users of all other Google services till they eventually wear down and decide to use it!

Google will synchronise the music to a Google Music library in such a way that the playlist will remain the same on all devices, be it a laptop, mobile phone or tablet. Each user will be able to store upto 20,000 songs for free, but they will have to be manually uploaded.

Music can also be purchased from a music store in the Android Market. Over 13 million tracks from the big music companies like Sony, EMI and Universal will be available to buy, in addition to tracks from several independent labels.

Google Music on an Android mobile

Individual artists who have the necessary permissions will also be able to upload their music and build their own artist page through the artist hub interface.

This service will obviously compete with Apple’s iTunes. The cost of each track on Google Music will be the same as that on iTunes, ranging between $0.69 and $1.29. However, the cloud computing service by Google will be free, whereas Apple charges $25 for it.

While Google may not generate a lot of revenue through this service, it will help them build customer loyalty to Android-based mobile phones. Once a user has purchased music from a particular service like Apple or Google, they are unlikely to switch to another device.

The service will provide some music for free everyday, and those tracks will be displayed in the music library. Amazon also offers free tracks daily, but the service is rather complicated.

Google Music has already been integrated into Google+ and that will make it more popular as it can now be shared with friends. Social aspects of Google Music could be the main driver of its success, as it could potentially out-shine popular services such as Spotify and Last.fm primarily due to its larger user base.

Reviews of the service are lukewarm. A lot of the criticism focuses on the fact that the service has been released 8 years later than iTunes. The service also requires users to upload each and every song they wish to store and can create problems when users upload old iTunes tracks that had DRM encryption.

The biggest plus points in favour of Google Music are the price – free! – and the true portability of the service – it can be played on any device, incuding iPhones and iPads.

Most industry experts, though, recognise the Google Music service for what it is – a suitable replacement for the iTunes eco-system for Android devices and a means to complete and tether the Android user experience.

Horowitz emphasized the use of Circles to easily segment audiences when communicating brand / product / corporate messages and the Hangout feature, which allows brands to host face-to-face video sessions with customers. Both of these are features that would appeal to large businesses.

The real power of Google+Pages, though, lies in their ability to influence search engine rankings for a brand or product name. This alone is reason enough for all business owners to want to ensure that they do have a presence on the otherwise placid network. This is also Google’s only ace in an otherwise extremely weak deck.

A number of bloggers have labelled the new feature a rush job or a Facebook / Twitter rip-off. What they overlook is the fact that unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google+ can integrate with a number of even more useful services, not least of which is Google Search and YouTube, to change the way brands can reach their target audience.

The Offers app is free, of course, and users will be notified about all the offers available. Users will be able to make purchases within a few clicks and they will even be able to redeem the offers without the use of any paper forms, from certain selected outlets.

The app is based on four different screens.

• A “Featured” screen that’s the deal of the day.
• A daily deal notifier, which alerts you about the deals that are available.
• An archive screen, which shows the deals that the user has made use of or saved, as well as the deals that have expired.
• A screen for redeeming offers without printing them.

While the success of Groupon has led to the proliferation of several websites providing such deals, it is very likely that an app like this from Google will be more welcomed by users. The timing for the launch of this app is also commendable as it has come just at the time, when people would start their shopping for the upcoming holiday season.

Groupon already has a fairly successful Android app, with over 1 million downloads and an average rating of 4.6 stars out of 5. Google’s new Offers app has less than 50,000 downloads to date, with an average rating of 3.6 and quite a high percentage of pretty poor ratings

If Google expects to steal any market share from Groupon, it is obvious that they will have to do a lot more than just release a mobile app – for starters by getting more offers in all major US cities!

As with any major change to the search results pages, this update has been rolled out after extensive tests. Google has been running tests on this project for some time now, and has come to a final decision in this regard.

Ads at the bottom of the SERPs

The decision to include ads at the bottom of the search results pages has been based on the fact that they find the performance of ads at the bottom of the page to be better than the performance of ads that run alongside the search results.

This improved performance is probably due to the fact that users scan a search results page from the top downwards and not from side to side. Hence, when they reach the bottom of the page, they automatically see the ads displayed at the bottom. On the other hand, it is very likely that they might miss the ads that happen to be on the side of the results page, partly because they are not directly in the page scan path and partly due to acquired “banner blindness”.

Organic results at the bottom of the page have been known to typically have higher clickthrough rates than ads in the second-last position. These results will now more than likely get fewer clicks, with such traffic instead flowing to the ads at the bottom of the page.

When ads are displayed at the bottom of the page, it increases the potential advertising space, making it possible to place more ads on page one, rather than when the ads are placed only above and alongside the search results. This too could have a major bearing on the overall performance of ad campaigns, as many users may scan only the first page of results.

The store is known as ‘Chromezone’ and is actually a mini-store within a popular electronics retail store. It is a 285 square foot outlet, based inside the PC World store on Tottenham Court Road in Central London.

Chromezone store in London. Image courtesy of T3

Quite surprisingly, the opening of the store was a rather quiet affair. In complete contrast to the hugely publicised opening of the first Apple store.

The store will sell Google’s Chromebook laptops and a few accessories, such as headphones. It will be operational for a short duration of time only; until just after Christmas.

Google plans to open more stores shortly. The next one is scheduled to open on the 7th of October in Essex. Other stores will also be opened worldwide in the run up to Christmas.

This is Google’s first attempt at opening a store. Arvind Desikan, head of consumer marketing at Google UK, said “We found anecdotally that when people tried the device and played with it, that made a huge difference to their understanding of what the Chromebook is all about. People will be able to go in and have a play with the devices. We want to see whether people understand what this device is all about and monitor their reaction when they try it out.”

While Google may never go down the route of Apple and open dedicated stores to sell hardware, this is definitely an interesting new direction for the company. Perhaps they’ve learnt a lesson or two from their previous failed attempts to sell the Nexus One online and have decided that old-fashioned retail might yet be the best way to sell new hardware.

The search giant has been running trials of this app on Sprint phones and they are now ready to roll out the app to all Sprint Nexus S 4G phones with an over-the-air update.

So far, they have only tested the app with Citi, MasterCard, and First Data. However, now they are ready to add other partners including Visa, American Express and Discover, to this service. It is not yet known when these cards will become functional on Wallet, as technical details are being worked out.

Once users download the wallet app to their phone, they can use it to make payments through NFC technology instead of having to carry several credit cards.

This service is still in its infancy, as it works only on one Sprint phone, and is compatible with only a limited number of credit cards. Also, the number of terminals compatible with this technology is a very small percentage of the total number of terminals in use.

Google aims to be able to let users use this app for all credit cards, and is also working to make the feature compatible with several other handsets. They also hope to increase the number of terminals compatible with this technology in the near future.

While Google Wallet is compatible on the Sprint network, the other popular networks, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile USA, are working with several credit card companies to create their own digital wallet too.

www.google.com/flights/

This new service has been launched in conjunction with ITA Software, which was acquired by Google in April 2011. It took Google nine months to finalise the deal with ITA, because of in-depth legal scrutiny of the deal as a result of objections from numerous other websites.

Flight Search by Google is a lot faster than similar services provided by any other website so far. The results appear almost instantaneously compared to the typical 5-10 second wait experienced by users on most other travel sites that scour a large database of partner deals.

Instant results on Google Flight Search

Users can browse costs to fly to different destinations without having to perform a dozen searches. Prices and travel times in this flight search facility can be viewed on a graph for easy comparison, and a slider allows users to filter down the search results by price and flight duration.

Flight search results filtered on a graph

Google believes that most flights are chosen based on cost as well as travel time. Thus, they said, “We automatically set the filters to focus on options which are reasonable in both price and duration, and you can always adjust the filters to show even more flights.”

This service is not based on any paid relationships so far. Since it is the airlines that decide how their flights are to be marketed, the booking links will point to the airline websites only.

As of now, this feature is available only for selected destinations within the U.S. There are plans to expand the service in the near future.

Among the projects that will be affected by this decision are Aardvark, Desktop, Fast Flip, Google Maps API for Flash, Google Pack, Google Web Security, Image Labeler, Notebook, Sidewiki and Subscribed Links.

Aardvark is a question and answer social search site. Notebook was used to clip and save URL, text, and images. Fast Flip was a tool to enable fast news browsing and sharing. Sidewiki was an early social search effort that allowed users to read and comment on any website. Subscribed Links allowed users to customise search results.

The common theme with all these services was that they were attempts at socialising search.

Now that Google has introduced a new social network in the form of Google Plus and it is actually turning out to be more successful than any of the previous attempts, they will shut down all of these social sites and focus on strengthening Google +1.

Additionally, Google’s shutting down or gradually discontinuing a number of other services, some of which were quite popular. These include Google Ddesktop and several APIs, plugins and gadgets it supports, Google Maps API for Flash, Google Pack, Google Web Security and Image Labeler. Components and features from many of these services are already visible in newer Google offerings and will continue to be used in other Google services.

The changes were initiated by Larry Page to improve overall efficiency. Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Research has reportedly said, “We’ll continue to take risks on interesting new technologies with a lot of potential, but by targeting our resources more effectively, we can focus on building world-changing products with a truly beautiful user experience.”

Data from analytics provider, StatCounter’s global stats shows that Chrome currently occupies the number two spot among web browsers in India.

The first place is held by Firefox, which currently has a market share of 32.97% after displacing Internet Explorer from the top spot just last month. Google Chrome is second, with 31.75% and is closely followed by Internet Explorer, which has been losing popularity steadily over the past twelve months and currently has only 31.33% market share.

The success of Chrome in the Indian market could be attributed to various factors including advertising on television, which is the most popular form of advertisement in India and the need for faster browsers to compensate for slower Internet speeds in the region. The browser also gets promoted through various other Google services.

When Chrome was launched internationally, in 2008, it secured 10% market share in India, but that went up to 22% within a year, thanks to its technical excellence as well as rapid release cycle.

Last month, Chrome overtook Firefox in the U.K. to occupy second place, with a market share of 22.12% compared to 21.65% for Firefox. Similarly, Chrome has also overtaken IE during the month of July in three countries of South America – Argentina, Chili and Uruguay.

Google’s social network Google Plus, which was launched just a couple of months ago, is also doing well in India, especially when compared to the rest of Asia. 

In India, Google+ had 0.4% market share in mid-July, after it was released but has tapered down to 0.2% since then, according to data from Experian/Hitwise. In Singapore, the social network had 0.8% share a week after its release and grew to 1.2% less than two months later. Google+ has not, however, fared too well in Hong Kong, where it had only 0.074%. This could be largely due to the pre-dominance of local social networks in China and the East Asian region.

The most notable change to have occurred is the fact that people now start conducting movie searches much earlier than in the past. It has been found that on an average, people now start movie searches about five weeks prior to its release. Only a couple of years ago, these searches were conducted just prior to the release of the movie.

Google search results for the last Harry Potter film

Another major change that has been found is the fact that people now search for movies much more than they used to do in the past.

Selina Rennie, who works with the team at Google that carried out this study team says, “Movie-goers searched 1.75 times more per film in 2010 than in 2008. Additionally, searches for film trailers were up by more than 50% in 2010 versus the previous year.”

The increased availability of digital content as well as the growing availability of Internet-connected devices has led to these changes in the way movie searches are conducted.

Big box office hits (grossing more than $100 million) seem to draw disproportionately more searches than mid-tier films (grossing $50 – $100 million). Queries per moviegoer are higher for mid-tier films, indicating a lot of consumer interest but low engagement from the industry, which implies a lot of potential for growth.

YouTube searches and related video referrals are a very important source of video views. Yet, the surprisingly low number of studios advertising on YouTube search as against those advertising on Google search shows yet another opportunity for growth.

It would be highly expedient of studios to be ready with an interesting trailer the moment the audience shows an inclination to see the movie or gather any information about it.

Home entertainment is also an evolving branch of this industry and studios are now contemplating the creation of a new “premium VOD” that would allow users to rent movies within 30 to 60 days of the release of the film.

By using the new +1 Button users can now share links to pages on Google Plus. In other words, if a visitor to a site wants to start a conversation about some content they like, it becomes very easy to do so.

Another improvement released with the new version of the button is the launch of +Snippets. Publishers can customise the name, image and description that appear when content is being shared.

Lastly, Google have added inline annotations, which improve engagement when users see a recommendation from a friend regarding a particular piece of content.

Google +Snippets showing when a user shares a +1

In order to start customising the snippets that show up when users share content on Google Plus, publishers need to add the correct schema.org attributes to the Meta data present on the page. The name, image and description have to be added to the code either in the HTML page body or head.

Inline annotations include the name and profile photo of the persons who have +1′ed the page. When the next user sees the name or image of a person he / she knows he / she is more likely to pay special attention to the content on that page.

Publishers must update the +1 button in order to ensure that all these changes are incorporated onto their site.

The new features are being gradually rolled out. In order to test these new features, users can join Google+ Platform Preview group.

Internet-enabled TV from Google are expected to be available in the UK within the next six months. The Google TV products allow users to switch between the Internet and television channels seamlessly on the same screen. Users will not be required to change any cables to change from the Internet to TV or vice-versa.

Surfing the Web on Google TV

Users will be able to use their smartphone as a remote control. A special YouTube channel in high definition will also be available to them. Other services such as the BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, Channel 4 On Demand and all of the IPTV services will also be accessible directly on the main TV screen.

According to the Telegraph, this facility will be available to users only through the special set-top box. It is possible that manufacturers will start selling TV sets with the functionality built in soon after, if initial demand for the product is high. However, if the success of the product in the USA is an indicator, we might need to wait a while before we see Google integrated TV sets being manufactured for the UK market.

Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, is expected to make a formal announcement about the launch during this year’s MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival.

One of the problems expected with this service, though, is that the amount of bandwidth required for such facilities is very high.

As the name suggests, this new feature will show users additional content ‘related’ to the topic they are reading about, even as they read about it.

With the help of Google Related users will be able to view other content relative to that topic — like videos, product reviews, or other mentions of the product across the web.

Users will be able to see the related content n a thin bar at the bottom of the screen. Hovering the mouse over the bar will cause it to expand, enabling the user to view the content directly in the browser window without having to open a new tab or window. If users come across some information of interest to them they can use the built in +1 button.
This feature will make it very easy for users to find contextual content. Google Related is a step in the right direction for optimising websites and hence will be of use to marketers.

Motorola Mobility will however be run as a separate business by Google. It will function as a licensee of Android and the Android OS will continue to remain an open source.

Motorola had been one of the founding members of the Open Handset Alliance, and by 2008 had eventually made Android its sole operating system for all their smartphone devices.

While the handset manufacturing division of Motorola has not been doing too well for some time, it could be their vast collection of patents that attracted Google to buy the company.

Motorola has already got 17,000 patents, while another 7,500 patents are pending.

Google on the other hand is on the lookout for patents in order to compete with Microsoft, RIM and others.

A note on the Google Blog said, “Motorola’s total commitment to Android in mobile devices is one of many reasons that there is a natural fit between our two companies.

Google CEO Larry Page and Google’s senior VP of mobile Andy Rubin have both confirmed that the primary reason for buying over Motorola mobility is to get hold of their patents to strengthen Android.

Andy Rubin has also stated that the deal would in no way be a disadvantage to Google’s over 50 other partners.

Google will be paying $12.5 billion for this deal. The deal is subject to regulatory approval from various bodies in the US, the European Union and other jurisdictions, and the approval of Motorola Mobility’s stock holders.

The fact that these companies manufacture tablets and handsets for Google, means that Google is the actual target of Apple’s attacks, although indirectly.

Apple has files suits against the above firms for multiple patent infringements across multiple countries, pointing out “slavish copying” of design and “look and feel.”

The European court has recently ruled in favour of Apple. The court has banned the sale of Samsung’s latest Galaxy tablet in most of Europe. Apple has also filed similar suits in Australia.

While the lawsuits so far are only aimed at the handset manufacturers, Brian Marshall, an analyst with Gleacher & Co, said that Apple is really concerned with the software being used by these devices.

Since the Android software being used in these devices is similar to their iOS 5 they have decided to take action. Thus it is Google that will effectively bear the brunt of the lawsuits.

Though Apple is the market leader of smartphones, the free Android software on Google’s phones, could affect Apple eventually. The Android software is being activated on 550,000 devices daily.

If Apple can win some injunctions against this free software, consumers would be forced to pay for the use of the Android OS and this could make the Android OS less popular than it is.

At present Apple holds 75% of the market share for tablet devices. But this is expected to come down to 39% by 2015, while Android’s share will go up to 38%.

This war over patents had initially been kicked off by Google, when they sued Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies for the acquisition of 6,000 patents from Nortel.

Similarly, last October, Motorola sued Apple for violating 18 patents in its iOS-based devices,. Now Apple has sued Motorola for violating 6 of their patents.

“It’s clear that the tablet wars are going to be fought on many, many fronts,” Michael Gartenberg, technology analyst with Gartner.

Microsoft, Apple and Oracle have come together to buy old patents of Nortel. Having done that, they are now asking manufacturers to pay a fee of $15 for every Android system they wish to use on their mobile devices. This fee makes it more expensive for phone manufacturers to use the Android apps in their phones, compared to the Windows Phone 7.

Google’s official blog claims that the imposition of this “tax” for these dubious patents is a means of fighting Google through litigation rather than competing by developing their own patent-worthy technology.

The U.S. Department of Justice should ask Microsoft and its partners to license the said patents at a reasonable price as it does not approve of the acquisition of patents as an anti-competitive tool.

In the meantime, Microsoft has responded to this allegation, saying that Google had also been invited to bid jointly for these patents, but had refused.

Google, in turn, replied saying that joining the group would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners, thus making sure that they were unable to assert themselves against these patents. It would also mean that Google would end up paying for something that would actually hamper the growth of their platform.

Microsoft has further said that Google refused to join the other companies because it wanted to buy these mobile patents for itself, to assert against others. Clearly, the last word on this issue is yet to come, but in the meantime, it will be the end users who suffer as they will end up paying heavily for the use of the patents.

As the name suggests, Google News will provide highlights of news stories that the editors of various publications have selected as being the most newsworthy.

To begin with, this feature will only be available to users in the U.S. A new section in the right hand column of the Google News page will display content that editors have selected as being the most important or catchy.

Stories being highlighted may be of local, national or general interest. Some of the publications already involved with this feature are Reuters, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and Market Watch.

Publishers can decide what stories, videos or audios they wish to display in his section of the feature. Each publisher has to send that information to Google through a special RSS feed.

In order to keep this feature fresh, Google requires feeds from publishers to be updated at least once in 48 hours. A minimum of three articles is also required. Advertisements of any form are not allowed in this section. Only news content is admissible.

Users can navigate to stories of their interest using the side-to-side arrows provided next to the publisher’s logo. A slider at the bottom of the articles, allows users to select their particular source preference.

Google News has been experimenting with this feature since about a year. While this feature allows users to get the news they are interested in from sources they trust, the publisher also get a lot more traffic to their website, thus making it a win-win situation for all three parties involved.

Instant Pages will be available by default in the latest stable version of Google Chrome. This feature will help users to save precious time by loading the pages they are searching for faster than before. In fact, as the name of the service suggests, the page will open almost instantly.

When a person conducting a search clicks on the topmost result, if that result has been determined to be the most likely one to be clicked by the searcher, Google will ensure that the page will open almost immediately when clicked.

This will be possible through pre-rendering technology available in the latest version of Chrome.

Only when it is almost certain that a user will click on the first search result, will Instant Pages start to load that result even before the user clicks on it. In cases where the first result on the Google search results page is not an obvious choice, Google will conserve computing power and let the page load in its natural time as and when the user clicks on it.

Navigational queries and brand-related searches are likely to benefit from this speed improvement most of all, as they are the sort of queries where searchers tend to click on the topmost organic result.

This should give Chrome an edge over other browsers, as users are always impatient for their pages to open, and when they’re performing a navigational query, reducing the time to reach their destination could have a significant net positive impact as it would make the act of searching akin to or even faster than typing the website address directly into the URL / search bar on Chrome.

Google Hotel Finder

Hotels in Chicago via Google Hotel Finder

Google’s new service allows users to find hotel rooms available in a given area, along with the price and amenities of each hotel in that area.

Hotel Finder selects the most visited areas of major cities by default and shows hotels within these tourist hotspots. Users can also draw a shape on an interactive map around the area they wish to stay in.

The Hotel Finder service provides a comparative study of the price range of hotels in an area.

Details of each hotel in the area are provided when a user clicks on the listing, along with a collage of images and reviews from Google Places. Users can then shortlist the hotels they are interested in or book a room in the hotel they like via Travelocity, Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com or the hotel itself.

Hotel Finder is currently in the pre-beta experimental stage and is available only for hotels in various American cities. The interface is very similar to other sites and uses sliding scales and quick option selectors to allow users to narrow their choice. The most popular feature of the service is likely to end up being the seamless integration with Google Maps, which makes selecting hotels in a particular region extremely simple.

It is estimated that London’s network of 250 underground stations and 18,000 bus stops is used by over 1 billion commuters every year.

Now, when a commuters and tourists wants to get from one point to another, they can plan their journey by visiting Google Maps and then clicking ‘Get Directions’ in the left-hand panel.

Selecting the train icon shows public transport directions. Users can enter a departure location and a destination as they would for driving and walking directions. These can be either in the form of street addresses or names of popular places, businesses or restaurants. Once that is done, clicking the ‘Get directions’ button will bring the desired results.

Google Maps with public transport directions for London

Users will receive instructions about several different options they can use for the trip. On Google Maps for Mobile, the suggestions will be based on the user’s current location by default.

While Underground and bus routes are integrated perfectly into the system, the recently extended London overground train network is not incorporated into Google Maps. As a result, some journeys that would take just 15 minutes on the train are shown as a 45-minute route via the Underground network.

Kentish Town to City Thameslink requires 30 additional minutes on Google Maps

Those using Android devices will get directions with Transit Navigation (Beta) in Google Maps. This new feature, which was launched earlier this month, will also show alerts when it’s time to alight or transfer from one bus or overground train to another.

Public transport directions are available for all Underground, bus, tram and Docklands Light Railway (DLR) lines. More services will be included as soon as information is available.

London has one of the best public transport systems in the world. Locals rely on the Transport For London official governmetn site when planning their journey. However, tourists often aren’t aware of this service. It will now be even easier for commuters, especially for tourists to use this public transport as detailed directions will be available to them at a click.

It had been decided as a matter of policy that the newly launched social network Google Plus would only allow accounts of people who used their real name in the account.

When Google put this policy into action, they unwittingly ended up deleting the accounts of some genuine users as well.

Among them were Limor Fried – AKA Lady Ada, and A.V. Flox, and even an ex-employee of Google Kirrily ‘Skud’ Robert.

The account holders whose accounts were deleted received a message saying, “After reviewing your profile, we determined the name you provided violates our Community Standards.”

This move on the part of Google has been criticised by several people as it can at best be termed as arbitrary.

Finally Google has responded to the controversy that has thus been created.

On Monday, Google VP of Product Bradley Horowitz wrote, We’ve noticed that many violations of the Google+ common name policy were in fact well-intentioned and inadvertent and for these users our process can be frustrating and disappointing. We’ve noticed that many violations of the Google+ common name policy were in fact well-intentioned and inadvertent and for these users our process can be frustrating and disappointing,”

The policy is explained in section 13 of the company’s User Content and Conduct Policy. It says, “To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable.”

Some of the erroneously deleted accounts have since been restored.

Google will henceforth implement some changes in the way this policy is used. The changes are as follows:

• Google will give users more warning and the chance to comply with the common name policy
• The company is improving the signup process
• Lastly, the search giant is exploring better ways to support nicknames, maiden names and pseudonyms.

Collaborative tools for scientific research are already available in the cloud. Some of them are Academia.edu, Mendeley and Questia.

The home page explains that Wingu will provide “more connective ways to get to the next decision point”. In simple words, this means that Wingu will offer researchers, analysts and scientists a method to collaborate and share easily online thereby enabling them to collectively reach a conclusions. Additionally, the service provides ways to use the cloud-stored data, through the “enterprise-grade cloud platform dubbed Elements.”

Wingu offers four main selling points:

1. Managing cross-discipline teams on a common platform to share data and ideas
2. Analysing data to drive decision-making with analytical workflows and discovery tools
3. Sharing information to connect researchers across silos and geographical divides for better collaboration
4. Protecting intellectual property via data back ups and leading systems and security experts.

Biotech and the Cloud

Job postings on the site indicate that Wingu might be more than just a regular cloud-based collaboration service. One of the positions they are recruiting for is a BioInformatics & Engineering specialist. Could this be simply tied in to the last point mentioned above – data security – or does Google have some much bigger plans?

What seems surprising about Google investing in this project, is also the fact that the investment was done very quietly. The move has even been described as “stealthy”.

Of course, it is possible that this was done quietly only because Google did not see a need to make a hue and cry over this acquisition. On the other hand, it could also be to maintain some privacy and prevent competitors from finding out too much about the project or launching similar projects of their own.

Google had purchased the domain name and trademark Photovine about a month ago. At that time, people were left wondering why Google was interested in a photo sharing site, when they already have Picassa.

Now that it is known that Photovine will function as a photo-sharing app for smartphones, the purchase makes sense.

Photovine will be different from other photo-sharing sites. It will allow users with common interests to connect with each other. The FAQ describes Photovine thus:
“A vine is like a constantly growing family of photos connected through a common caption created by you, your friends, and people all over the world.”

Some examples of vines could be: “What Weekends Are Made Of”, “Secret Stuffed Animal”, “Party People”, or, “Love of My Life”.

As people add photographs to vines, they tell their own stories about the moments, images, and ideas that define our lives in a way that’s social, creative, and fun.

Photovine is run by Slide, which Google had bought over in August 2010 for $182 million.

The concept of collecting a chain of photos that are related to each other through a common caption is quite similar to the new version of Twitter search, where photo and video content are attached through hashtags.

It is not immediately known whether or not Google will eventually integrate Photovine into their new social network Google Plus. At present, Photovine is an invitation only service, and those interested can ask for an invite on www.photovine.com.

As of now, users of this social network are allowed to keep their profiles private if they desire to do so.

However, come 31st July and these private profiles will be deleted. This move is likely to upset users, who wish to keep their profiles private as they are allowed to do on Facebook.

A statement issued by Google explains the purpose behind this decision. It says, “The purpose of Google Profiles is to enable you to manage your online identity. Today, nearly all Google Profiles are public. We believe that using Google Profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used. Private profiles don’t allow this, so we have decided to require all profiles to be public.”

It should be a consolation to users to know, that the only data they are required to provide on the public profile includes the full name and gender of the user. The user will have the ability to delete or hide any other information from the profile.

Another point in defense of Google is the fact, that even with Facebook, the users name gender and profile picture of the user is freely available to all, even with private settings since the last year or so.

Mark Zuckerberg had then explained that “The site has actually never worked in a way that you sign up and the only people who can see you or your information were your friends. The reason for that is … if only the people who were already your friends on the site could see your information then it would be really difficult to connect with your actual friends and actually be able to have meaningful interactions with them.”

Hence, even though Google has decided to disallow private profiles, they are not actually affecting the user’s privacy any more than Facebook is already doing.

Data will only be shared with websites that have opted for anonymous data sharing with Google Analytics.

The time frame for data in the first newsletter report is from 1 November 2010 to 1 February 2011. The data is compared to the same period one year ago, i.e. the time frame between 1 November 2009 to 1 February 2010.

It has been found that websites have seen a reduction in the number of pages/visit as well as the amount of time spent during each visit and the bounce rate.

The pages/visit have gone down from 4.9 to 4.5 on average, while and the time spent per visit has gone down from 5.49 to 5.23. The good news is that on average, the bounce rate has reduced from 48.2% to 47.0%,

Bounce rates in various countries are found to be in reverse proportion to the time spent on site. While the bounce rate is highest in East Asian countries like China, Korea and Russia, the time spent on site is highest in Caribbean nations like the Bahamas, British Virgin Islands and Aruba.

Goal Conversion rates are surprisingly high in Italy and the Vatican City. The media conversion rate is around 1.1%, which is also the average in countries such as India, France and the U.K.

While traffic has increased slightly from direct sources as well as from search engines, the traffic from referral sources has reduced.

The use of operating systems such as Linux and Macintosh has gone up marginally, but the use of Windows has fallen from 89.9% to 84.8%.

For over a year, a number of stories were either leaked out or speculated upon, about Google launching a social network. Invariably, the leaks were followed by denials about it. But now, things are out in the open.

Google has finally bitten the bait, and their new social network Google Plus (or Google+) has just been launched.

Google+

While there is bound to be excitement to find out what exactly Google Plus is all about, it seems to be a combination of features that are already offered by a number of other networks.

“Real-life sharing, rethought for the web” is the tagline for the new network. Users will be required to create a profile containing a name and a photograph. They will then find five basic features. These are:

• Circles
• Sparks
• Hangouts
• Instant Uploads
• Huddle

Circles allows a user to divide contacts into different groups such as family, friends and work. This will allow them to decide what information they wish to share with a particular group of contacts, instead of having to share all information with all contacts. A similar feature is already available on Facebook in the form of Friend Lists.

Sparks is similar to Google reader, which allows users to get updated news feeds by subscribing to sources of news and information. It facilitates the spread of viral content similar to how Twitter and the Facebook News Feed do.

Hangouts allows users to hold video conversations with various contacts at the same time. This feature is also available on Tinychat. The overall premise of the feature, though, seems to be inclined more towards mimicking functionality found on Foursquare.

As the name suggests, Instant Uploads will upload the photos taken on a mobile phone automatically. This is also possible through iCloud, Microsoft Kin and other platforms. This feature, though, competes directly with Facebook and Flickr for photo-sharing.

Huddle will enable the user to have a group chat. This is also possible through Beluga, which Facebook acquired recently and is very similar to Google Wave, which got discontinued at the end of last year.

Only time will tell how popular Google+ will become and whether or not it will provide any real competition to Facebook, which is already extremely popular and quite unlikely to feel any real threat in the near future. The odds are against Google once again, but they have very successfully beaten the odds in the past and just might do so again.

Google allows advertisers and marketers of different products and services to show their ads on the various sites of the Google Display Network, the real challenge has been to reach specific sections of the audience that would be interested in that particular product.

In order to do so in the past, advertisers had to estimate that visitors to a particular website might be interested in particular subject and hence they would be interested in products or services dealing with that subject. For example, visitors to a gardening blog might be interested in buying gardening tools. However, this isn’t always an easy way to target consumers.

Now, when a user visits a particular type of page on a regular and frequent basis, the browser is associated with that interest category by means of a number. Google stores that number in the browser by means of a cookie.

In addition to the type of sites that the user has visited, Google will also consider inferred demographics to judge whether that user is likely to be a male or female, if they are likely to belong to a particular age group and other such relevant statistics. Google will then show ads based on the interest category as well as demographic profile associated with that particular browser.

Adding interest categories in an AdWords ad group

Google maintains that this service is in keeping with their privacy policy, as no personal information about the individual is used for this kind of targeted advertising. When users visit a site from a different computer or browser, they will not be shown interest-based ads, as Google will not know that this is the same user. However, one could argue that a user’s browsing history on their office or personal computer is pretty personal too, and that information is being used by Google in order to target their ads.

Ads will not be shown based on any sensitive information such as race, religion, sexual orientation, health, financial status etcetera. Users also have the right to decide whether or not they want to be shown these ads. Those who do not wish to use the service can opt out of it by clicking ‘Opt Out’ in the Ads Preferences Manager.

In order to achieve this, Google has added a new feature that will enable automatic mobile rendering of Google Sites for iOS 3.3+ and Android 2.2+ devices.

In order to use this feature, Google Site admins need to go to ‘general settings’ under More actions > Manage site and click on ‘Automatically adjust site to mobile phones’. Once this is done, the Google Site will automatically be adjusted when it is viewed via an iOS or Android 2.2 device.

When this new feature is activated:

• The header layout and top bar will be automatically aligned
• The width of the site will match the device
• Sidebars will be smartly handled and horizontal navigation and dropdown links will be available.

In order to preview the page from the computer as a mobile viewer, users can click on More actions > Preview as viewer (Mobile). Webmasters will even have the option to save some vertical space in the footer by hiding some of the links.

To further help publishers to find their sites even when they are on the go, Google has also added mobile versions of the site list, sites search, and browse sites categories.

Google Advisor provides a comparison of various financial products available in the market. Until now, the service was restricted to the U.S. only. However, searches for the word ‘mortgage’ on Google U.K. have now started providing interesting results:

Google Comparison ad for ‘mortgage’

At the top of the paid search results is an ad by Google promoting their own mortgage comparison service. Comparison ads were introduced back in May 2009, but were limited to a few states in the U.S.A. When users click on a comparison ad, they are taken to a list of details from various lenders, and users can fill in specifics to view a list of the services matching their requirements.

Google comparison of UK mortgages

An interested user can then call one of the Google pay per call numbers to connect to a specific lender for further information, or the user can request a call back from the provider.

The good thing about this facility from Google is that the user’s personal information and phone number are protected from the financial advisors. Users are given an 03-number from which they are indirectly connected to the financial services provider.

In most cases, Google provides detailed results about the amount of interest that would accumulate in various accounts, thus helping the user to decide what kind of financial arrangement suits them best. However, as far as mortgage deals are concerned, they seem to have a very limited list on offer.

Other sites such as Bankrate, Money Supermarket, Wells Fargo and Quicken Loans offer similar but much more comprehensive services, so users are not likely to switch to Google’s comparison service immediately. However, the appearance of Comparison ads could signal the upcoming launch of Google Advisor, which could gradually turn into a significant source of competition for many of the currently popular financial service comparison sites.

The +1 button allows users to share stories and articles with their network of friends. In functionality, this is similar to the ‘Like’ button from Facebook and is a significant step towards the concept of social search by Google.

When a user clicks the +1 button the user’s network – as defined by the friends on their Google Account – will be notified about it.

Sites that are interested in making use of this new facility can set it up by visiting Google’s +1 button code generator page. The button can be set up in a choice of four sizes ranging from 15 pixels to 60 pixels. Users have the option to include a counter that can indicate the number of +1s a particular page has received. The feature is currently available in 44 languages.

Generate a +1 button for your site

Although it might be too early to judge, one cannot help wondering how successful this new service will be. As of now, not too many sites have jumped to add this function to their sites.

Some of the popular sites to have already included it are TechCrunch, Huffington Post, Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land – all search industry and tech veterans.

However, most of the really popular blogs and websites have not yet added this service. Sites such as Business Insider, Perez Hilton and TMZ have all chosen to wait and watch whether users will pick up on this new service or if it will flop like Google’s other ventures into the social space.

Sites such as YouTube, Blogger, Google Product Search and the Android Market are expected to add +1 shortly. These are Google-owned properties, though. Out of the top 10 most popular blogs, only 3 have added the +1 button conspicuously on their pages:

Success of the +1 button will be determined largely by the general public’s adoption of this feature. If Google’s history with social networking is anything to go by, few will be holding their breath for this one!

The DOJ is trying to ascertain whether or not Google knowingly allowed the pharmacies based in Canada and The U.S. to advertise through their advertising site Google AdWords, thus violating U.S. laws.

While several websites are known to sell prescription drugs, some of them do underhand things like selling fake drugs or drugs which have passed their expiry date. Some of them also dispense the drugs without a valid prescription.

The investigation, which is being conducted by the Food and Drugs Administration in Rhode Island, aimed to uncover whether the executives at Google were aware of these illicit activities, and if so, how much money Google has generated through this means.

In the past, Google has done its bit to prevent rogue online pharmacies from advertising on their site. In 2003, Google banned pharmacies that dispensed medicines without valid prescriptions.

Google’s competitors, Yahoo! and Microsoft, have also had to undergo similar investigations in the past.

After the present investigations were started last year, Google decided to allow only U.S. pharmacies accredited by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy and pharmacies accredited by the Canadian International Pharmacy Association in Canada to advertise on their site.

They have already brought in a court order preventing the pharmacies named in the lawsuit from advertising on their site.

While spokespersons from Google, as well as the DOJ, have refused to comment on the issue, Google has set aside $500 million, while filing their quarterly results with the Securities And Exchange Commission, for a settlement with the DOJ. While this is a large amount for a settlement it isn’t big by Google’s standards - the company is expected to generate $30 billion through advertising this year alone.

According to Google, a Chromebook is a computer-like object that will allow users to do everything that they can on the Web, so that they get a “faster, simpler and more secure experience without all the headaches of ordinary computers”.

The Chromebook will have a start-up time of just 8 seconds. The device will ship with Wi-Fi and 3G access built in, and everything will be stored in the “cloud”, thus enabling users to work from any place with network access. This will also eliminate the need for anti-virus protection. The operating system will automatically update, eliminating the need to buy expensive new operating systems every 3-5 years.

With a starting price of $350 or £216, the Chromebook will be cheaper than a high-street PC or laptop or even the iPad. However, it will not be cheaper than entry-level Dell notebooks, which could make it less attractive to corporate buyers who also prefer the familiarity of Microsoft Windows, which comes pre-installed on Dell machines.

“We think this will fundamentally change the way people use computing in companies”, said Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior VP of Chrome.

The Chromebook will be made available on June 15 on Amazon.com and Best Buy in the USA and other outlets in the U.K. France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

Details on the Chromebook can be found at:

google.com/chromebook

Corporate Chromebooks

Business buyers will have two Chromebook hardware options to choose from:

The Chromebooks for Business subscription will include:

• Chromebook computers running the Chrome operating system
• Web-based management of user, device and application policies via an easy-to-use admin console
• 24/7 email and phone support for Chromebook administrators, as well as access to the Google Enterprise Support Portal, which has answers on how to set device and user policies as well as other Chromebook related topics
• Device replacement and warranties.

Google is currently only able to process Chromebook for Business orders of 10 subscriptions or more.

Over the months this feature has become very popular and is now getting over 1 million ratings per month. Part of this popularity is due to the fact that the ratings and reviews of friends definitely carry more weight than the reviews given by strangers or professionals.

Google has also added an app on the iPhone and on Android to integrate the feature with Google Maps and Google.com. This feature is currently available in 47 different languages. Users can also share their ratings and reviews on twitter.

Thanks to this growing popularity, Google Hotpot is now being rolled into Google Places and will no longer be known as Google Hotpot. This change is being made to help users to find and review the over 50 million places which are already on Google Places.

Google will also be adding more features to Google Places, in due course of time in order to increase and improve the interactiveness of the site.

Google already has automated software that blurs out faces, but this is only about 98% to 99% effective, while the court has stressed on 100% efficiency.

This means that Google will have to do the needful manually, which will not only require a lot of time and manpower, but will also substantially increase the cost of operations.

The court has deemed that this is not a real problem. It has said, “All privacy breaches could be avoided, but this would entail additional costs for the defendants, as they would have to make images (even more) unrecognisable in part manually. The additional costs would obviously not, however, jeopardise the commercial survival of the defendants.”

Google Street View Zurich showing van parked outside erotic club

In addition to blurring faces and license plates and ensuring complete anonymity near sensitive areas such as schools, women’s shelters and prisons Google has also been instructed by the court to prevent private places such as courtyards and walled gardens from showing up on Street View.

Moreover, it is also now mandatory to announce where and when Street View capture is scheduled.

Google has one month to decide whether or not they wish to appeal against this ruling to a higher court.

A spokesperson for the search engine has said, “We are very disappointed because Street View has proved to be very useful to millions of people as well as businesses and tourist organizations. More than one in four of the Swiss population has used it since the service launched in Switzerland. We’ll now take some time to consider what this means for Street View in Switzerland and our appeal options.”

There is, of course, a very real possibility that Google may decide to stop this service in Switzerland rather than having to waste resources on blurring out individual images manually.

Android developers will now be able to publish their apps on the Android market with the ability for users to purchase them directly when they wish to do so.

While this facility will give users the ability to try-and-buy the app and also get upgrades when required, developers will be able to better monetise their apps.

A good number of apps are already available with the In-app Billing facility. Some of them are Tap Tap Revenge by Disney Mobile, Comics by Comixology and WSOP3 by Glu Mobile.

Google had first announced this In-app Billing facility in January at the Inside Mobile conference in San Francisco and had allowed users to start developing and testing these apps. To begin with, developers will have to fill out a detailed documentation form and will then be provided with a sample app to demonstrate how the feature works.

It will be imperative for users to follow the prescribed security guidelines, in order to prevent the inadvertent purchase of unwanted apps and also to prevent misuse of the facility by miscreants, as this could result in excess billing.

In-app purchasing facilities have been available through Apple’s App Store and Blackberry’s App World for quite some time now.