Google Trends shows drops in Twitter news coverage, search volume
After a day of intriguing claims about Twitter — younger people don’t use it so much; men follow each other and nobody tweets — here’s something else. Google Trends, the search engine’s automated site analysis service, is showing a drastic drop in “news reference volume” about Twitter, with a relatively less but still noticeable drop in the volume of searches for the micro-blogging service.
How to interpret Google Trends? Through the prism with which you view… Continue Reading
Liveblogging the launch of Google Wave
Eric Eldon and I are at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, where Google is launching a new product called Google Wave today as a “developer preview”. The goal of the product is apparently to reinvent email/online communication. We’ll update this post throughout the keynote speech.
[Update: Read my later post to get a better sense of what Wave is and and why it's exciting.]
Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra told the audience to “Keep telling… Continue Reading
Google Suggest delivers speed, speed and speed
Google users can now try new changes to the search engine’s auto-completion of search terms.
The changes were announced in detail late yesterday on the company’s official blog. Unlike many websites, Google’s engineers have proven yet again that interactive Web content can be made both better and faster. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
To see the new suggestion features, which the company calls Google Suggest, type “venturebea” into Google. The popup auto-suggest panel will now place a… Continue Reading
Roundup: OpenTable IPO this week, big cell phone launches approaching, Google facing antitrust scrutiny
Here’s the latest action:
OpenTable going public — Silicon Valley will likely welcome its first IPO in a while this week from the restaurant-reservation site.
Will the summer bring blockbuster cell phone sales? — The launch of the Palm Pre, iPhone 3.0 software, and others could juice cell phone sales. The New York Times has more.
FTC drops case against Rambus – After years of litigation, the Federal Trade Commisison is no longer pursuing an antitrust case against memory chip… Continue Reading
Google’s mobile jihad: Support the web, but live with the app
Over the last year, it’s become clear that Google has a bigger mobile war on its hands than it had anticipated. Its principal antagonist is Apple’s sexy Apple iPhone, which has seriously disrupted Google’s ambitions to turn the mobile industry into a Web-based world.
With its iPhone and the App Store, Apple has suddenly made it easy for people to download and install mobile apps. Now other big players are scrambling to follow Apple’s lead: Nokia,… Continue Reading
Shocker: Google loses top sales executive David Rosenblatt
Google’s top advertising sales executive, David Rosenblatt, said he is leaving the company, in what some industry insiders are saying is the biggest shock yet about the steady departure of high-ranking executives.
We’ve already written about the flow of exits from Google, which comes in part because Google has become so large and ambitious employees see few reasons to stay. The amazing rise in Google’s stock price has come to an abrupt end, and it’s harder… Continue Reading
Roundup: Facebook’s election, Google’s new toolbar, and more
Facebook users vote on site’s governing documents — An overwhelming majority of votes supported the new terms of use (which were rather controversial) over the old ones.
Google adds new features to Toolbar — New features include a search using your current location and a simplified Chinese toolbar.
Amazon earnings jump – The online retailer handily beat analysts estimates during the first quarter of the year.
Twitter gets 19 million global users – That’s according to comScore, a firm whose… Continue Reading
Android growing, says Google — but not so fast, says Motorola
Okay, it’s not just tech blogs like VentureBeat that think the Google-forged Android operating system is going to have a big year. Even Google chief executive Eric Schmidt is getting bullish. In a conference call yesterday about his company’s first quarter earnings, Schmidt held forth with the following:
There are announcements happening between now and the end of the year that are quite significant from operators and new hardware partners in the Android space, which I… Continue Reading
Google Friend Connect’s event gadget: Useful, but not a Facebook killer
Google is announcing a new way to promote and get people to sign up for events online — a gadget powered by Google Friend Connect, the search giant’s service for letting developers add social features to web pages.
Setting up an event is pretty easy: Just enter the basic details like time, location, and relevant images, and Google will generate HTML code that you can add to your site. Then, when people visit your site, they’ll… Continue Reading
Google defies economy, ekes out decent Q1
Google has announced its first quarter financial earnings, and so far the results look decent — given the economic climate. The search giant reported net revenue of $5.5 billion, or $5.16 per share. In terms of historic earnings, Google’s Q1 performance was actually down 3 percent compared to Q4 2008, and up 6 percent in comparison to Q1 2008.
The company’s net profit came in at $1.42 billion for the quarter, or $4.49 a share. Although hardly explosive growth, this… Continue Reading
Google cuts how long it keeps your IP data by half
Google announced yesterday evening it would change how long it stores the IP addresses of its users without anonymizing the information, down to nine months from 18. The announcement comes a year and a half after Google instituted the 18-month rule – before that, Google held on to IP information, without removing personally identifiable information, in perpetuity.
The Google blog offers the reasoning behind the decision, citing pressure from U.S. and European regulatory bodies to curtail… Continue Reading
Analyst predicts merger of Android and Symbian mobile OSs
Updated
An analyst firm, J. Gold Associates, is speculating that Google’s mobile operating system, Android, and Nokia’s mobile operating system, Symbian, will merge in three to six months. The thinking goes that the move would free Google up to focus on compelling and potentially profitable mobile applications, prove that Symbian is more than a Nokia publicity ploy, reduce the number of platforms that developers would need to build for, and promote a standard user interface across… Continue Reading
Blue Dasher joins the street visualization fray
There’s a dogfight among the street-view mapping companies. Blue Dasher Technologies is launching its own virtual tourism application where you can remotely view a distant place and feel like you’re walking down a street with a 360 degree view of the scenery. The company is unveiling the technology at the CTIA show in Las Vegas today.
They’re not the first to do it, but they claim they’re the best. Typically, these companies try to produce a… Continue Reading
Government’s wireless spectrum auction closes
The federal government said that the 700-megahertz wireless spectrum auction has come to a close. The government will announce the winners in a matter of days.
Fortune magazine’s Techland blog said that, after eight weeks, there were 261 rounds of bidding. The spectrum is becoming available in 2009 thanks to the conversion from analog TV to digital TV that will take place on February 18, 2009. It is the last major chunk of nationwide spectrum available… Continue Reading