This may be easier said than done, and among their biggest competitors in this effort is obviously Google.

While Facebook is essentially a social network it has been trying to incorporate search into social. On the other hand, Google which is basically a search engine has been working hard to get a foothold in social through their social network Google +.

Facebook certainly has a much larger user base than Google +. This could work in its favour as they will be able to attract more people to see their ads. However, certain features of Google +, are more attractive than those on Facebook.

While users of Facebook are mostly connected only to their friends due to the privacy settings of that network, it is easier to get in touch with a wide variety of people on Google +.

This kind of networking obviously leads to more stimulating and informative discussions, rather than the discussions on Facebook where people usually talk to each other about their day to day schedule or days events.

Also users can access many more sites such as Places, Maps and Navigation, YouTube and others through Google +.

Based on these observations one will have to wait and watch which social network will ultimately attract more advertisers and thus generate more revenue.

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

Google’s cloud storage service is called ‘Drive’, while Microsoft has named their cloud storage service ‘Sky Drive’.

Both services allow users easy access to all their stored data across all the devices that they use, be it a desktop, a mobile phone or a tablet computer. To do this, the user has to download the feature to all his computers. He can then easily create, share and collaborate all his information from any of the connected devices.

Both GDrive and Sky Drive have some pros and cons and only time will tell which of the two is really more useful than the other.

It is easier to store data on Google’s cloud storage system because of the ease with which Google Docs operates. It is possible to store data in various formats including Microsoft Word. On the other hand, Microsoft’s SkyDrive operates with Web Office which is a little more cluttered, and it also allows storage only in Office format. Loading data on Google Docs is also faster than on Web Office.

Google Drive also has better search features compared to SkyDrive and also offers video previews, making it easier to select which video one wants to download. Google’s service also offers users a larger variety of paid storage options ranging from 25 gigabytes for $2.49 per month to 16 terabytes for $800 a month.

On the other hand, Sky Drive offers 7GB of free storage capacity, which is better than the 5 GB free storage offered by Google. Moreover, Microsoft is offering 25 GB free to existing users who upgrade to the new service. SkyDrive offers fewer paid storage options, but the service is cheaper with an offer of 50 GB extra for $25 per year or a maximum of 100 GB at $50 year. 100GB is generally thought to be more than enough for most regular users.

SkyDrive gives better remote access to users via SkyDrive.com. Editing a document is also easier on Microsoft’s cloud storage system than it is on Google’s Drive.

Industry opinion currently seems to favour Microsoft’s offering. However, individual users might go for Google simply because the brand has greater leverage than Microsoft and they trust Google more. That said, businesses might prefer Microsoft’s offering because of its seamless integration with Microsoft Office, which is still the leading productivity app for enterprise.

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.

Roger McNamee a technology investor and co-founder of Elevation Partners in Menlo Park, California was recently interviewed by Margaret Brennan for Bloomberg Television. According to his analysis Apple Inc. is the only company that is making a profit on their mobile business at present.

McNamee says that both Google and Microsoft are losing a lot of money just trying to keep up with Apple.

His view is that “In order for other companies to compete with Apple’s iPad and iPhone, they have to go outside of the application model and use the HTML5 programming language to “create a new Web.”

Elevation Partners is an investor in Facebook. McNamee says that Facebook is also losing money as far as mobile is concerned. However, Facebook has a slight advantage over the other websites as several websites sign on new users through Facebook, and these users will eventually gravitate towards mobile.

He also believes that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the best entrepreneur, even better than Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

Of course he feels that the losses on mobile are only a temporary situation. He says “I don’t think these guys are going to roll over and let Apple own things forever.”

IgnitionOne, a leading digital marketing solutions firm has just released these figures.

According to these results the Yahoo! Bing alliance has shown an increase of 46.4% increase in US search advertising spend in the first quarter of the year. This growth is more than double the growth that had been seen by both Yahoo! and Bing during the first quarters of 2010 as well as of 2011.

In comparison Google has shown a growth of only 26.6% growth YoY.

It is an established fact that search spend during the first quarter of a year sees a dip after the spike during the holiday season. In spite of this Yahoo! Bing managed a growth of 14.3% increase in spend while Google posted a drop of 5.4% during the same period.

This growth seen by the Yahoo! Bing combine is the best since they started their alliance and could well be attributed to their recent push for increased utilization of broad match keywords. This system of utilization leads to increased competition between marketers, which is of course good for the search engine.

The U.K. markets are following a similar trend, with the Yahoo! Bing alliance posting a growth of 6% during the period.

In the U.S. the Yahoo! Bing alliance has a share of 21.2%, while in the U.K. it holds only 4% of the market share.

During the same period, mobile search activity has also seen a growth, resulting in 12.3% of total search advertising spend, during the first three months of the year.

Tablet devices accounted for 67.4% of total mobile search advertising budgets for the quarter, thus proving that tablets are being adopted at a phenomenal rate.

According to the latest reports on this issue, it is believed that Facebook is trying to improve their search functionality in the hope that this will lure away more users from Google towards Facebook.

This report has of course come through unnamed sources, and one of these sources is a former employee of Google according to ‘Business Week’. 

The said employee of Google is Lars Rasmussen and he is believed to be leading a team of 24 people who are set to revamp the way in which Facebook search operates.

While Google is way ahead of all others including Facebook as far as their search market share is concerned, Facebook hopes to be able to make use of the various apps at their disposal to chip away at Google’s market share slowly but steadily.

Google on their part are trying to integrate their social feature Google+ with their search engine.

The main problem that Facebook is currently facing in this endeavour, is the fact that the privacy settings of users allow them to integrate only those results that a user has set for public viewing.

On the other hand the problem Google has to deal with is the fact that their social site, Google Plus is certainly not as popular as Facebook is.

Only time will tell which of the two sites will eventually reign supreme in this game of one upmanship.

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.

The scientific team at Yahoo! has been working on providing a new technology to the search engine. They are aiming to be able to provide answers to queries on their search engine, rather than just providing links.

This new technology will allow the search engine to anticipate the requirements of the user, who is conducting a search operation. The new algorithm will help the engine to find out what it is the user is really interested in. This will be done by continuously monitoring how that user engages with the search results provided.

The system will keep updating itself to provide the most relevant search results. Results that were at the top of the page in the morning may be pushed lower down later in the day, and results that held a lower position may be shifted upwards, depending on user behaviour and what content is most relevant.

For now, these changes have been introduced only for queries related to news and movies. They intend to introduce similar innovations for other categories such as shopping, local, travel and mobile searches in future.

Yahoo! search for ‘Whitney Houstons coroner’ includes News results

While this is indeed a good move, it has come very late in the day. Search giant Google introduced similar features on their search engine almost three years ago. In March 2009, Ori Allon from Google had said, “We’re deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search,”

At that time itself, Google had changed from traditional keyword searches to ‘semantic search’, which goes beyond just matching keywords, to actually understanding the meaning of a sentence or a combination of words. Later that very year, in December, they started integrating News search results into the organic Web search results pages.

Considering this fact, one wonders how much the new innovations at Yahoo! will be able to help the beleaguered company.

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.

The whole controversy first started when a Stanford University graduate student, Jonathan Mayer, said that Google was bypassing the privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser and tracking users on iPhones and Macs.

Soon thereafter, Microsoft followed with similar allegations.

Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president for Internet Explorer at Microsoft, has said that “Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies.”

According to him, Microsoft has already contacted Google and asked them to stop tracking users of IE and other browsers, in writing.

He has also advised users to use The Internet Explorer 9, in order to protect their privacy.

He says, “By default, IE blocks third-party cookies unless the site presents a P3P Compact Policy Statement indicating how the site will use the cookie and that the site’s use does not include tracking the user. Google’s P3P policy causes Internet Explorer to accept Google’s cookies even though the policy does not state Google’s intent.”

Google has of course, countered the allegations by saying that the P3P policy used by Microsoft is outdated since it was started in 2002, and therefore is not practical to follow. They have also cited a report of 2010, which shows that over 11,000 web sites were not issuing valid P3P policies.

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.

While Google continues to hold the number one spot in this market, with a share of 66.2%, Bing now holds the second position with a 15.2% market share, and is followed by Yahoo! with a 14.1% market share.

Google and Bing have shown a marginal growth over the previous month by 0.3 and 0.1% respectively. Yahoo! has seen a fall of 0.4% in market share. These figures are valid for the Explicit Core Search.

Numbers for Total Core Search are slightly different. In this category, Google continues to hold the first slot with a 66.2% market share, but Yahoo! is second with a 16.0% market share and is followed by Bing with a 13.8% market share.

In both categories, Ask Network and AOL Inc. hold the fourth and fifth places respectively.

Turns out that according to Shareaholic, Facebook is the number one source of referral traffic with 25.6% of the market share in December and 26.4% of the market share in January. Other sites such as StumbleUpon, Google and Twitter also contribute to the numbers.

Newcomer Pinterest is generating a good amount of referral traffic. According to a report from Shareaholic, this site is generating more traffic than sites like Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube put together.

In December, Pinterest had 2.5% of the market share while in January they contributed 3.6% of the referrals. This growth is especially impressive when you consider that in July last year they sent only a miniscular 0.17% of referrals.

StumbleUpon, which holds the second position for referral traffic had 6.5% of the market share in December, but has fallen to 5.07% in January.

Facebook and StumbleUpon’s relatively large share of traffic referrals has been corroborated by reports from StatCounter in the past.

Although Google Plus contributes a very small amount of the total share of referrals – just 0.22% – other Google sites such as Google news, Google Images and Gmail continue to be major sources of traffic.

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.

The report, released by online marketing company, Efficient Frontier, states that during Q4 of 2011 search spend continued to increase in both the U.S. and U.K.

Increase in search spend in the UK by quarter. Source: Efficient Frontier

Retail spend in the U.S. grew by 18% year-on-year and 40% quarter-on-quarter, indicating that the spend increases substantially during the last quarter of the year. Retail growth in the UK was not as good, and this was reflected in the search spend too, which grew by just 10% year-on-year in the country.

Although Google accounted for 80% share of spend in Q4, Yahoo! and Bing clicks were found to be 14% more valuable and showed 9% higher return on investment than Google. The click-share of Google has, however, gone up by 2.5%.

Search CPCs dropped by 5% overall, mainly due to an increase in mobile advertising and better ad delivery.

Mobile ad spend now accounts for 7-8% of all ad spend compared to just 2% a year ago. Of this, tablets account for 50% of the share. Google drives 96% of mobile search ads while Yahoo! and Bing have just 4% share of the market.

In 2012, mobile search spend is expected to account for 16-22% of all paid clicks as users gradually shift from desktops to mobiles. For the same reason, search CPCs are also expected to fall by 4%.

Projected mobile search spend forecast by the end of 2012. Source: Efficient Frontier

Facebook accounted for 2.7% of biddable online spend in Q4, as marketers now spend a larger amount on social networks. Yahoo! and Bing are set to increase their ad inventory, while Facebook is expected to reach 5% of all online ad spend in 2012. Other social networks, such as Google+ and LinkedIn are also set to grow further and deliver more ad impressions.

Nearly 1 in every 5 minutes (20%) of the time spent online was for social networking in the month of October 2011. Further, this activity is indulged by 82% of the world’s online population.

Social networking has grown in popularity over the past few years, and has provided a new way for people to build more contacts, as well as making it easier for people to remain in touch with their existing friends and family who may be spread out across the globe.

The Rise of the Global Social Networking Audience
Source: comScore Media Metrix, Worldwide, March 2007 – October 2011

One of the major factors fueling the continued growth of social networks is the increased use of the Web through mobile phones, which help people to communicate even when they are on the go or in regions where they cannot access a wired connection.

Only five years ago, in March 2007, social networking was used by less than 500 million people, while email was the primary online activity, with 528.7 million users. By October 2011, the graph has changed drastically and social networking now accounts for 1,179.4 million users while email has only 916.8 million users. The social network graph continues to grow parallel to the growth of Internet usage.

Worldwide Regional Popularity

Asia-Pacific regional users constitute one-third of the world’s social networking population. However, Latin America accounts for the largest amount of time spent on social networks.

Percentage of Online Population Using Social Networking around the World
Source: comScore Media Metrix, October 2011

Another interesting finding of the report is that women are more social across the globe.

Facebook is of course the most popular social network, and has 55% penetration. Three-fourths of the time spent on social networks is on Facebook, and one in seven minutes spent online are on Facebook. Google+ is a fast growing social network, and it is the only network to have signed up 25 million new users in less than one month.

Inevitably, micro-blogging has also gained in popularity. Twitter is, of course, the most popular micro-blogging site – in October 2011, it was used by about 10% of Internet users worldwide.

Interestingly, these social networks are growing in popularity across all age groups. In fact, males and those above 55 years of age are the fastest growing group.

Revenue Lagging Growth

Social networks deliver the most online display ad impressions, but they do not generate the largest revenue. 25% of ads are displayed on social networks but they generate only 15% of the revenue.

U.K. Social Statististics

Snapshot of social networking in the United Kingdom
Source: comScore Media Metrix

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.

According to this report, the list is similar to the one they had released last year. However, there has been a significant increase in the number of unique visitors to most of the top sites.

It is no surprise that search, social networking and video remain at the top of the reasons for mobile browsing with Google, Facebook and YouTube scoring the top three rankings respectively.

The world’s 10 most popular mobile websites are:

1. google.com
2. facebook.com
3. youtube.com
4. vkontakte.ru
5. odnoklassniki.ru
6. yandex.ru
7. wikipedia.org
8. my.opera.com
9. yahoo.com
10. twitter.com

The report has compared the findings between November 2011 and November 2010. Apart from seeing rapid growth in Asia, Opera Mini has also found a substantial increase in mobile Web usage in Latin America, Africa and South East Asia.

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.

Lopez narrowly beat another comeback queen, Mariah Carey, into second place and Take That into third to be named the “World’s Greatest Musical Comeback Act” in a study of online searches since 2004.

The first global ranking of the world’s “Greatest Musical Comeback Act” comes from analysing over one billion online searches via Google by AccuraCast, a leading digital search agency.

The study also shows that, above all, the death of a musical star is by far the biggest driver of online music searches. Searches for Amy Winehouse after her death equalled those for Jennifer Lopez’s comeback and searches for Michael Jackson almost quadrupled those for Lopez.

So what constitutes a big comeback? According to Farhad Divecha, AccuraCast’s Managing Director, “It is when a previously well-known act registers a low starting search index which subsequently goes through the roof for a sustained period of time. We have been careful to include acts that have had true comebacks not just more or less successful periods in their careers. Using figures from Google we have been able to analyse rises and falls in popularity and produce a unique league table”.

The Jennifer Lopez comeback began in early 2011 when she released the single “On the Floor” which achieved worldwide success and gave Lopez her first top ten on the Billboard chart since 2003. Combined with her stint as a judge on TV hit “American Idol”, Jennifer’s comeback is still happening.

Mariah Carey’s singing career was believed to be over in 2002 after poor reviews for her last two albums. She came back with the critically acclaimed album, “The Emancipation of Mimi” and has rarely looked back since.

Take That had split up in 1996 and after almost ten years apart re-formed as a foursome to release, “Beautiful World”, which would sell over 3 million copies. Their musical comeback continued when Robbie Williams completed the original line-up and another album and a record breaking tour followed.

In the U.S, Lopez and Carey saw off comeback competition from Ricky Martin, New Kids On The Block and ex-Beach Boy now soloist Brian Wilson.

The U.K. top five after Take That featured Blur, The Spice Girls, Rage Against The Machine and Take That ‘leader’, Gary Barlow.

“The UK results feature more bands than the U.S”, adds Divecha, “They also show the importance of sustaining a comeback. The Spice Girls reunion was just that and Rage Against The Machine saw incredible interest around a Christmas record before immediately falling back to previous low levels.

“Gary Barlow is interesting. His comeback is via Take That but also due in part to his X Factor appearances. His score is increasing but unlikely to ever get close to the Take That total.

USA’S 5 GREATEST MUSICAL COMEBACKS

UK’S 5 GREATEST MUSICAL COMEBACKS

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.

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.

Reports from Asian technology blog, Penn Olson state that for the past 5 days, Gmail services are being affected on Android handsets. The Android Market has also been intermittently inaccessible during the same period.

While the Gmail website is working as normal in China, both the Gmail app for Android and the Android Market have completely stopped working in the country. The website Blocked In China confirms that the Android Market is inaccessible on both Android devices and via the wired Web.

Android Market shows as “Blocked” in China

Gmail was the battleground where Google’s exit from China was decided. It comes as no surprise, then, that the service should also be blocked on mobile phones. What is surprising is the fact that it took Chinese authorities so long to make this decision.

Google Plus, on the other hand, was blocked hardly a week after it was launched in China, and remains that way since.

If the sequence of events repeat themselves, Google might find itself exiting the Chinese Mobile market as well, which could be yet another major blow to the company’s East Asian operations.

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.

All industry analysts knew that Facebook would announce something big  during the f8 conference held today in San Francisco. They also knew that many of these changes would be reacting to the growing popularity of Google Plus. What exactly these announcements have now been revealed.

In the last few days, Facebook already introduced some changes, such as the new subscribe button, revamped Friend Lists, a new News Feed format and a real-time news ticker. As usual, the new design has been met with resistance from a number of users.

However, these changes are minor in contrast to what has now been announced.

Most significant of all, is the change to the News Feed, which is now split into “Top Stories”, “Recent Stories” and a “Ticker”. Profiles are also evolving and turning into Timelines, or what Zuckerberg calls “the story of your life”.

An introduction to Timeline

Facebook Timeline with cover, stories and apps sections

When a user shares a post normally, it goes into their news feed. When that user adds activity on third party websites or apps through the Facebook Open Graph, it will go into Ticker, and into Timeline, but not into the news feed normally. The Open Graph and Ticker make a stream of everything users are experiencing and expressing through Facebook.

This is the first time the social network has enabled sharing “lightweight” activities, such as listening to a song, watching a movie, reading a book, or even cooking a meal.

Facebook news ticker expands stories when moused-over

Developers will be elated at the attention once again being given to apps, especially via the Ticker as well as in a dedicated section of the Timeline.

Google+ recently announced updates to improve their popularity. The new Facebook design and features are very clearly aimed at incorporating the better parts of Google+ and improving on them by adding a whole lot of embedded capabilities.

New features include larger images, embedded video, music streaming – this expectation arose after an employee of Facebook tweeted about it. He said, “The ‘Listen with your friend’ feature in ticker is blowing my mind. Listen to what your friends are listening. LIVE”. The post has since been deleted.

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.

The study, incidentally, was conducted to show the importance of clean drinking water. While drinking water was ranked third, above Facebook, the results were not quite what one would expect.

Facebook was ranked fifth in the list. Clean and flushing toilets were ranked ninth!

Similarly, an Internet connection was ranked at number two, just after sunshine, which of course most Britishers are known to be quite starved of.

Ironically, another survey conducted earlier this year found that nearly 50% of men accessed the Internet on their mobile while in the toilet.

Technological advances and social networks have been given predominance over other requirements such as washing machines, showers, fresh fruit and vegetables, pain killers and even shoes. However, to give them more importance than food, clothing and the basic sanitary facility of flushing toilets, seems rather extreme.

The study polled 3,000 British residents, many of whom could possibly have been young adults, who tend to dramatise the importance of trivial things and have never had to live without the ‘comforts’ of clean toilets being available to them.

The top 10 items in the list were as follows.

1. Sunshine
2. Internet connection
3. Clean drinking water
4. Fridge
5. Facebook
6. NHS
7. Cooker
8. Email
9. Flushing toilet
10. Mobile phone / smartphone

In fact, 4 out of the 10 most important things the respondents said they couldn’t live without are completely unrelated to the sustenance of life. Even more ridiculous is the fact that 15 out of the 50 “essentials” were items such as eBay, iPods and Twitter, which didn’t even exist 20 years ago!

Are the British public really such a nation of airheads or was this just another survey with a poorly chosen sample showing “stats” that are far from reality?

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.”

Obviously, Google must think they can get more out of Hulu than the other companies – they wouldn’t want to buy yet another video hosting site and then struggle to monetise it, would they?

It has been reported by the Financial Times that Amazon, Yahoo! and Dish Network have offered between $1.5 billion and $2 billion to Hulu in exchange for ownership of the free video site, its subscription service and the rights to exclusive content for at least two years.

The details of what Google is willing to offer Hulu are not yet available. It is also not known whether or not Google has already made an offer to Hulu.

It is quite possible that Google is looking for access to more content and video scene search technology from Hulu, and the deal would then have to be for a longer period of time. It’s equally possible that Google just doesn’t want anyone else to compete with YouTube’s newly formed movie and TV show streaming business.

An executive of Hulu, involved with the deal-making process has said, “Normally we would have thrown people out if they’d said that.” In spite of such strong statements, Hulu is still talking to Google, so it is quite obvious that the offer being made by Google is probably too good to let go.

While the money involved seems to be big, there is still the possibility that Google and YouTube could eventually swallow Hulu, and that may deter Hulu from agreeing to a deal with Google.

It is also quite possible that Hulu’s parent companies, News Corp and Disney, may decide not to sell the company to anybody at all.

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.

YouTube’s parent company, Google, has been fighting a court case with several music publishers and TV / Movie companies regarding the use of pirated and copyrighted content on YouTube since 2007. Viacom had also filed a class action suit at the same time.

In 2007, the courts ruled in favour of Google, stating that YouTube was protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The litigants had filed an appeal against the verdict at the time.

The parties concerned have now arrived at an understanding whereby Google will pay royalties to the music company concerned for the use of their content on YouTube.

Financial details of the agreement have not been revealed.

A post on the YouTube blog says, “We already have deals in place with a number of music publishers in the U.S. and around the world, and today’s deal offers more choice for rights holders in how they manage use of their songs.”

The blog further states that “When these publishers allow YouTube to run ads alongside user-generated videos that incorporate their compositions, the publishers and the songwriters they represent can make money.”

While the deal has been signed only with publishers, it is also expected to benefit songwriters, recording artists and record labels. This will be possible thanks to Google’s Content ID technology, which allows recognition of songs and other music.

How exactly Google will monetise the content sufficiently to pay for every instance of copyright infringement is not clear. However, the relatively recent success of YouTube’s monetisation efforts obviously will play a big part in this.

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.