Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
Ten years of excellence!
Ten years ago, two young men called Larry and Sergey founded an organization called Google. Since then, Google has become an essential part of millions of people around the globe.
Here is a list of 15 milestones which changed the lives of millions of people forever.
· 15 September 1997: Google.com registered as a domain
After a long brainstorming session, Larry and Sergey decided to name their Search Engine as Google – a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflected their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.
· 23 October 2000: Launch of Google AdWords
Google AdWords was launched with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promised online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.
· 28 July 2001: Launch of Google Image Search
Google Image Search was launched, offering access to 250 million images.
· 23 September 2002: Launch of Google News
Google News was launched with 4000 news sources.
· 17 February 2003: Acquisition of Blogger.com
Google acquired Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.
· 4 March 2003: Google AdSense Released
Google launched a content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers to access Google’s vast network of advertisers.
· 22 January 2004: Orkut Released
Google launched Orkut to tap into the sphere of social networking.
· 1 April 2004: Gmail Launched
Google launched Gmail on April fool’s Day. Initially an invitation was needed to get an account.
· 28 June 2005: Google Earth
Google unveiled Google Earth: a satellite imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capabilities and Google search
· 24 August 2005: Launch of Google Talk
Google Talk, an application that enables Gmail users to talk or IM with friends was launched.
· 9 October 2006: Acquisition of YouTube
Google announced the acquisition of YouTube, an online streaming video portal.
· 13 June 2006: Launch of Picasa Web Albums
Google unveiled Picasa Web Albums, allowing users to upload and maintain their photo albums online.
· 11 October 2006: Google Docs and Spreadsheets Released
Google released web-based applications for Docs & Spreadsheets.
· 5 November 2007: Announcement of Android mobile platform
Google announced Android, the first open platform for mobile devices, and a collaboration with other companies in the Open Handset Alliance.
· 1 September 2008: Google Chrome browser
Google finally released there long awaited web browser called Chrome.
With the kind of success which Google has achieved within the first ten years of its inception, it will be interesting to see what surprises it has in store for the internet community in the years to come.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Indians are 10th most intense internet searchers in Asia Pacific
Source: livemint.com
Saturday, September 20, 2008
US meltdown may affect 3G bid
The absence of global players is expected to seriously restrict the value of the bids placed for 3G spectrum, which jeopardises the government's Rs 40,000 crore revenue target from this spectrum sale.
Typically, it is large global banks like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch that are intimately involved in supporting the financial bids of both existing operators and new entrants.
They also have a strategic role in the M&As that follow such bids. With the weakening of the financial sector and a general nervousness around money supply, it is highly likely that even if global telcos do participate, the bidding will be far more conservative than it would have been under normal circumstances.
"The financial meltdown is at its peak. India's 3G auctions could not have come at a worse time. The weakness in financial markets is bound to impact bidders confidence," a leading global banker told TOI.
Apart from the fundamental weakness in financial markets, these international banks have very close relationships with global telecom service providers where long term debt, bridge loans and IPO's are concerned. With the collapse of these banks, many global telcos have started tightening their belt and frozen future investments, M&A's and even hiring.
"The entire sentiment is negative. Don't expect global telecom service providers to swim against the tide and put out massive bids in a market like India which is already littered with regulatory uncertainties," says a global telecom operator whose company has been in the Indian market for investments for nearly two years.
The weakness of foreign banks and global financial sector is also expected to move the Indian banking sector to a more conservative approach for funding debt which will be critical to the post-bidding rollout scenario.
"Overall, the sentiment of telecom investments during and post the 3G bidding will be intimately linked to the scale of the unfolding financial crisis," says a telecom analyst.
Telecom minister, A Raja's 3G guidelines, announced on August 1, 2008 proved to be a dampener for global telcos who said they would not participate on account of discriminatory financial entry barriers among other issues.
This forced the DoT to revise the spectrum guidelines for both 3G and Broadband Wireless Access spectrum. Companies are currently studying the full impact of such revisions. It seems that the crisis faced by the global banking sector is definitely an unwelcome move that will adversely impact India's exchequer revenues.
Source: Indiatimes Infotech
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Google Strikes Again !
Google is best known for two reasons. Firstly because they have an uncanny ability to come up with totally new and innovative products such as Google Earth which none of its competitors would have even contemplated about.
Secondly because they are motivated enough to come up with much more efficient replacements of existing successful products and solutions of their competitors. Before the Google Search Engine became the world's most popularly used search engine, MSN and Yahoo were the leading players. Due to much improved search algorithms and faster search results, Google left them way behind. Google captures more than 65% of the search engine market whereas Yahoo has a market share of 20% and Microsoft has a meagre 7%.
Chrome, the latest offering from the R&D labs of Google is a web browser giving direct competition to Microsoft's Internet Explorer and the very successful Mozilla Firefox. Currently Internet Explorer is used by 70 % of the Internet users and Mozilla has a market share of 20%. Mozilla has been growing at a steady rate in last few years, mainly at the cost of Microsoft IE. The major reason for the huge market share of Microsoft Internet Explorer is the fact that it comes bundled with the Microsoft Windows. Google clearly saw an opportunity here as there would be millions of people who would easily change over to another browser, provided it is easily available. Google on the day of launch of Chrome, displayed the download link on the main page of Google search, giving it a huge publicity infront of millions of Google users.
Using Chrome is a refreshing experience purely because of a new look and feel which it provides. Performance wise too, it is doing pretty well. It works much faster than the IE and Firefox and takes lesser memory compared to them. Chrome seems to work fine with over 25 tabs open too. The homepage with thumbnail images of frequently visited sites makes your work faster and the history search is as efficient and comprehensive as the Google search itself.
Its not possible that there will only be the positive side of the Chrome. There have been a few of instances in last 2-3 days when I had to "kill" a webpage because it wasn't responding, but the good thing is that, a crash in one tab does not crash the whole browser.
Google Chrome will definitely eat up a huge chunk of Microsoft IE users in near future. With Google going aggressive with Android, the mobile phone OS, the launch of Google OS for computers seems to be pretty close. And that definitely would be some competition for Microsoft!!
Monday, September 8, 2008
Slowdown hits cellphone market
At end-May Gartner forecasted that 10-15 percent more phones would be sold this year. "In the last month however, the economic environment started to negatively impact emerging markets as well as mature," Carolina Milanesi, head of mobile device research at Gartner, said on Monday.
Shares in Nokia and Ericsson lost most of their earlier gains on the news and were 0.4 percent and 0.6 percent higher respectively by 0910 GMT. "Signals for a weaker-than-expected second quarter have arrived from Sony Ericsson as well as some component manufacturers," Milanesi said.
The world's fifth largest phone maker, Sony Ericsson warned on June 27 it would make no profit in the April-June quarter due to weaker demand for its more expensive phones, and said the market was challenging. "Despite expecting a stronger second half, we feel that the weakness of the first half has pulled the overall year growth down to 10-11 percent," she said.
Earlier on Monday Salcomp, the world's top maker of cellphone chargers, warned its 2008 operating profit would fall from last year's level, citing expectations of weaker volumes during the second half of the year. Shares in Salcomp were 13.9 percent down at 2.84 euros.
Source: www.timesofindia.com
Nokia all the way!
With 3G Iphone hogging all the limelight in recent past, one big news which many might have neglected was the acquisition of Symbian by Nokia. Nokia will now create a foundation which will give away Symbian's softwares for free.
Nokia by taking this step has made it clear that they are not going to get bogged down by any American companies( read Apple, Google and Microsoft). Until now Symbian was owned by a consortium comprised of Nokia and other handset companies. Symbian is the most widely used mobile phone platform with 56% of marketshare.
But in recent past, companies like Apple and Google have threatened to eat into Symbian's market share. But with Symbian giving away the softwares free of cost, the tables have seemed to turn in Nokia's favour. With the ever growing market for VAS, Nokia is looking to develop all the applications through in-house development.But one challenge that Nokia faces is, that, they need to provide many more handsets which can deliver these next generation services. Symbian is mostly used in Nokia's high end phones such as the N series and they must look to start using Symbian in less expensive and mass market products.
Nokia has stiff competition from Google who is backing a web friendly software platform called Android and other groups who are promoting Linux for mobile phones. Apple's success story is known to all and they claim to have sold 1 million 3G Iphones within 3 days of its release.To counter competition from such major software giants, Nokia has shrewdly made the Symbian software open and free. This would mean that More people will use the software and also improve it.Besides this, the economics of this deal also makes sense as Nokia has been paying $250 million to Symbian yearly. So, its definitely better to pay $410 million to buy the company once and for all.Their are some concerns though such as the involvement of Motorola with Symbian aswell as Android and LiMO. It is highly unlikely that there will be a monopoly of any one operating system as in the case of PCs where Microsoft is a clear leader. In the case of mobiles, only that operating system which keeps on developing continuously will prevail.
Reference: Businessweek Magazine
