Windows 8 and a number of devices running the operating system are expected to launch tomorrow during the Microsoft Build Conference in California.

Microsoft will use its latest operating system to compete with the Apple iPad. The iPad, which was launched about one and a half years ago, is believed to have sold over 25 million units thanks to a lot of marketing and the usual hype surrounding an recent Apple product launch.

So far, competitors to the iPad, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Touch Pad by HP and the RIM Playbook have failed to dent the popularity of the iPad.

Microsoft hopes that the Windows 8 OS will be able to function equally well on both desktops as well as tablets. For this to happen, Microsoft will have to convince app builders to add one more operating system to their development schedules.

Initially, Windows will only roll out a test version of this new OS. It may be almost a year before the tested version is put up for sale worldwide as they will have to ensure that this system works equally well for desktops and tablets.

Chitika recently conducted a study that revealed that users of Microsoft browsers and operating system have a tendency to click on advertisements more than users of other services such as FireFox, Safari, Chrome etcera. Not only that, even users of Windows click on ads far more frequently than users of other operating systems such as Mac OS or Linux.

The findings of this study are significant as it was conducted using a sample of over 130 million impressions across 80,000 sites.

The details emerging from the study are as follows:

• Internet Explorer users on average have a click-through rate (CTR) of 1.05% compared to 0.66% for Firefox users, 0.50% for Safari users and 0.21% for Chrome users
• Windows users have a CTR of 0.92%, while Mac users have 0.52% and Linux users have 0.46%

These findings have been indirectly validated by TechCrunch, where reports that users of Microsoft’s search engine Bing have a higher CTR than users of other search engines. Bing users have a CTR of 1.74% as opposed to 0.98% for Google users and 1.37% for Yahoo! users.

TechCrunch insinuates that the higher CTRs from Microsoft users is because these users are more gullible and easier to dupe than others, which has ruffled a few feathers, even though it is probably true.

Microsoft users don’t click the most, though. AOL, which is a much smaller network has the highest CTR of 2.5%.

Sony has already conducted a test run this last May, and the test phase is now almost over.

It may be safe to assume, though, that other browsers will also be available on Sony PCs as they would not want to upset their users.

The deal is a first for Google, and they hope to be able to win similar deals with other computer manufacturers as well, in order to promote Chrome.

Chrome’s market share might get a slight push by this means. Personal computers from Sony account for less than 5% of the US market share. This could be a very good first step in the right direction. However, Google should have probably waited to win some bigger players over to their side before announcing their strategy to their competitors!

With competitors like Microsoft, Google had better watch its back when trying to make in-roads into the PC market. Microsoft pretty much has that market cornered. Internet Explorer comes with the Windows operating system, which is used on over 90% of all PCs shipped.

Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox browser are way ahead of Chrome in terms of market share. They have, of course, been around for a much longer time.

According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer currently has about two thirds of the market share among Internet users, with 67.7%, Firefox has 22.5%, Apple’s Safari has 4.1%, while Google’s Chrome has a mere 2.59%.

Data pulled from the 4 billion page views collected across more than 3 million websites that use the StatCounter analytics solution showed that Google monopolises the mobile search market. The search giant, whose brand is now a neologism for searching, delivered 96.23% of mobile searches worldwide in the first half of 2009.

Yahoo! follows second, worldwide, with 3.24% mobile search market share and Yandex.ru is third with 0.14%.  Ask Jeeves (0.11%) and AltaVista (0.07%) round off the top 5 mobile search providers. The rest, including Microsoft, account for no more than 0.21% of the worldwide mobile search volume.

In the UK, the situation is similar, with Google commanding 98.8%, followed by Yahoo! (0.86%) and, surprisingly, Ask Jeeves (0.14%).

Before screaming “anti-trust” or falling into depression caused by the world turning into a Googleopoly, let’s take a moment to examine the data…

While the size of StatCounter’s data set is nothing to laugh at, most of its volume comes from fixed internet websites rather than mobile sites. In fact, the page views and number of sites using StatCounter to track visitor data on the mobile Internet is bound to be much, much lower.

That’s not all. StatCounter data itself is not wholly credible due to the fact that they use cookies and JavaScript to track visitors, both of which often don’t work when websites are viewed 0n a mobile device. Therefore, any data delivered by StatCounter is only valid for a small subset of all the different mobile phones consumers use to search the Internet.

Last year, Nielsen reported that Google’s mobile search market share in the USA was an estimated 61%, while Yahoo! and Microsoft got 18% and 5% respectively. Not a lot has changed in the mobile search market since June 2008, which makes it safe to assume that Nielsen’s numbers would not be drastically different today.

This still leaves us back at square one, asking “has Google already won the race for mobile search supremacy before it even really began”?

The annnouncement came just one day after Yahoo! announced its intention to support Google’s OpenSocial platform. Microsoft has never been truly open, and so joining any alliance like OpenSocial or even forming a truly similar initiative of its own is out of the question. Microsoft has however taken some big strides to improve data portability and allow users better control over the use of their information.

Several new APIs and tools that help third-parties develop more applications were announced during MIX08 last month. And now a new ‘Windows Live Contacts API‘ has been launched to allow users to transfer and share their contact lists, without any security concerns.

Social networks partnered with Microsoft through this initiative will gradually shift to using Windows Live Contacts API instead of using the method called ‘screen scraping’, which was not a very secure means and exposed users to spam and, worse still, identity fraud.

Users will be given ultimate control in deciding which of their contacts, if any, get shared with each of the participating social networks.

Read the full announcement from Microsoft

Microsoft has also created a new site where users from the partner social networks can download Live Messenger and invite their friends from the social networks to chat with them. This would normally seem a surprising move from Facebook, given that they are likely to launch their own chat client in the near future. However, Microsoft’s stake in the company has probably influenced the decision to support a competing product.

www.invite2messenger.net