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In the March issue of Entrepreneur magazine there is a interesting article called “Google Eyed - Prepare to Fall hard for Google Based OS and the computers that run on it” which takes a really in depth look at the 3 computers on the market now powered by Google applications. Its a good read and covers Zoho, Everex and Zonbu PC’s.

I wonder now with Google gaining the desktop market share if anyone will actually really use MSN without it being embedded in their operating system.

Also thinking about the mobile platform I am SOOOOOOOOO looking forward to the Google Android powered phones that will be coming out this summer. People want a hack and slash cellphone so bad =(.

I hate the stock market but I think Googles stock looks pretty good right now.

SEATTLE — The state attorney general said yesterday Redmond-based Internet Advancement must pay penalties for failing to get its customers top placement on major search engines.

Internet Advancement, which also goes by 4GreatBuys.com, must refund customers, pay $24,432 to the state for costs incurred and a civil penalty of $25,000.

The company had promised to get its customers ranked in the top 10 to 20 results on the search engines for $980 to $1,500 in set-up fees and monthly fees of $79.80 to $89.95.

The case involved “search engine optimization” services, which attempt to get businesses high placement in search-engine results.

“Internet Advancement misrepresented its success rate, promised more than it could deliver, then refused to provide refunds to customers who didn’t get what they paid for,” said Attorney General Christine Gregoire.

She said the Attorney General’s Office, the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau received more than 100 complaints from customers around the country.

Microsoft MSN

New deals for movie lovers

Microsoft’s MSN division said yesterday it has signed new deals with Blockbuster, CinemaNow and MovieTickets.com to partner on its MSN Movies site, at movies.msn.com.

People will be able to rent DVDs, download movies and buy tickets online at the site, Microsoft said. Blockbuster launched its own DVD rental service this week, and the additional placement on MSN’s site will likely give it more exposure to Internet users.

Online movie-download company CinemaNow will use the site to offer a subscription service to MSN users for $9.95 a month or $49.95 a year.

Nike

Discount brands acquired

Nike, the world’s largest athletic-footwear maker, acquired Official Starter Properties and Official Starter for about $43 million to gain brands that sell in discount stores.

Nike said the businesses, which own and license the Starter, Team Starter and Asphalt brands, will be operated by Exeter Brands Group, a new operating unit. Nike also gains the Shaq and Dunkman brands of apparel, footwear and accessories.

Enron

Lay won’t get trial in Sept.

HOUSTON — Enron founder Kenneth Lay will not get the September trial he wanted on charges stemming from the collapse of the scandal-ridden company.

Lay had asked for a Sept. 14 trial, and told U.S. District Judge Sim Lake he would give up his right to face a jury and leave his fate in the judge’s hands if that would result in a speedy prosecution.

Lake yesterday declined to set a trial date. The judge indicated he could decide by early October on whether the former Enron chairman will get a separate trial or face a judge or jury alongside his one-time protégé, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, and the company’s former top accountant, Richard Causey.

All three have pleaded not guilty.

Federated Department Stores

Profit dives while sales rise

CINCINNATI — Second-quarter profit tumbled 35 percent at Federated Department Stores, largely because of the expense of buying back debt, while sales rose 3 percent, the retailer reported yesterday.

The results fell short of analysts’ expectations. Federated’s stock price slipped 3 percent, even though the retailer, parent company of Bon-Macy’s, slightly raised its earnings guidance for 2004.

Shares of Federated fell $1.52 to $44.50. They have declined 5.6 percent this year.

» Google Add URL (Free)» Google Add URL (Paid)

Ownership: Google

» www.google.com

Summary of Company

On September 7, 1998 Google became incorporated and moved to its first office. In three years the Google was conducting more than 200 million searches a day. The founders of Google made it the company focus to refine and create the perfect search engine that, “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” Additionally, with a strict focus on infrastructure Google configured thousands of linked PCs into one of the world’s largest Linux clusters to revolutionize quick searches. This focus of creating a more efficient search engine is a standard that has all other search engine companies scrambling to catch up.

Technology- Crawler: the main results are compiled spidering the web.

Google spiders the web to maintain its index, with emphasis on content and link popularity. One factor that determines your rank on Google is the number of links that point to your site, the quality (popularity) of the sites that link to your site, the text in and around the links that point to your site, and who you link to. Google’s web crawler only views the visible text on your page. The Meta description and keywords have little influence on Google’s rankings. Google has become aggressive when it comes to elimination of spam. To be listed in Google’s directory, you should submit your site to the Open Directory.

Free: Google is a search engine that maintains its own spider based index. Google also has a directory that is powered by the Open Directory; however, the sites within the directory are ranked according to Google’s link popularity technology.

Google employs what is called PageRank Technology that performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. They evaluate the quality of inbound links (people who link to you) and outbound link (people who you link to) assigning a value to the number of quality (popularity) of your links.

The Hypertext-Matching Analysis component analyzes page content that instead of scanning for page-based text analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the location of each word. In order to determine the relevance of search user results Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages.

Paid: With Google Adwords you can customize your own advertisements by allowing you to choose your keywords to direct where your advertisement displays. Google implements cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, so you only pay when users click on your ad.

Suggestions and Tips for Best Results

Google: “Basically, Google’s position is that we prefer no hidden links, no hidden text, no automatic tools used for positioning, and no cloaking. We prefer that Googlebot get the exact same page that users see. In general, you can assume that we’re as conservative as possible. We don’t like hidden links/text in divs/layers/iframes/css, or links that are inconspicuous or punctuation, for example. Similarly, we don’t like cloaking or sneaky redirects in any form, whether it be user agent/ip-based, or redirects through javascript, meta refreshes, 301/302’s, or 100% frames.” More details are available at: Guidelines and SEO Issues. Report spam: spamreport@google.com

Google Tool - Search in all 3 Google-sub-servers with one click - www www2 and www3. (www1 is not used right now, so it doesn’t show up on the results-page…) Google Tool made by Lasse Hedegaard - feel free to use it - but please give him credit!

Upon submitting to Google, it can take up to 3-6 weeks for your site to be listed in the index. Google will respider every page in its database approximately once every 3-6 weeks and usually publishes a major update to its index during the last week of each month.

The thing to remember is that you must have suitable URL content and be engineered to beat your competition within Google before you register your pages. Just registering with Google does not assure a suitable ranking. Also note that a common Google mis-type is Goggle, which leads you to a competing search engine.

Provides Content to:

Primary:
AOL Search
Netscape
Iwon

Paid:
AOL Search
Netscape
Teoma
Ask Jeeves
Iwon

Receives Content from:

Directory:
dmoz (Open Directory Project)

As leaders in the wireless industry meet Monday in Barcelona for the annual Mobile World Congress, they will be buzzing about the latest open software platform for mobile handsets. More companies are signing up to support it. A few phone makers will be flashing hot off the bench prototypes. Software developers will be snapping up just-released development kits.

The surprise is, the platform isn’t the much-vaunted Open Handset Alliance set up by Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ). Instead, a year-old alliance of companies spearheaded by a group called the LiMo Foundation is horning into the spotlight.

Both are working to create a truly open mobile software platform that standardizes how developers build their applications. Currently applications developers spend large amounts of time rewriting or tuning their applications for a myriad of software environments, including Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Windows Mobile and Nokia (nyse: NOK - news - people ) Series 60, and beginning last year, some Linux-powered phones. For consumers, an open system could translate into faster access to richer mobile applications like mobile TV and location-based services, and more affordable cell phones.

Google made headlines last year when it unveiled its Open Handset Alliance, a group of 34 technology and mobile companies that also is seeking to develop such an open and free mobile platform. That alliance will have news in Barcelona, too: Several companies, including British chipmaker ARM, are expected to exhibit prototype chips and phones running on the alliance’s platform, dubbed Android. Alliance member HTC Corp. has already said it plans to offer an Android phone this year.

But Android has been plagued by reports of glitches since Google released an early version in November. Google recently announced it was tweaking its software developers kit and postponing the deadline for a contest for developers by two weeks, to mid-April. The Android Developer Challenge will provide $10 million in awards for “innovative and useful” Android-based mobile applications.

Meanwhile, LiMo has been steadily chugging away. “[LiMo] is a very practical initiative, but also a deeply philosophical one, based upon the belief that openness in handsets delivers value to consumers,” says Morgan Gillis, LiMo’s executive director. Inspired by this vision and the desire to exert more control over the operating systems that power their handsets, Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ), NEC (nasdaq: NIPNY - news - people ), NTT DoCoMo (nyse: DCM - news - people ), Matsushita, Samsung and Vodafone (nyse: VOD - news - people ) joined forces in January 2007 and set up a LiMo program office in the U.K. to facilitate collaboration.

Universal standards mean they can easily port applications from one device to another. That’s roughly the same vision Google has for its Open Handset Alliance. Currently, half of mobile software developments costs go toward ensuring the application will work correctly on different operating systems.

In Barcelona, LiMo will announce nine new members, bringing corporate participation up to 32 companies, including such heavyweights as Motorola, Panasonic and Vodafone. Eighteen handsets from LG, Motorola, NEC, Panasonic and Samsung will use its platform. The lineup includes Motorola’s Motorokr and Razr2, as well as the high-end 905 series of phones supported by Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo. LG is not an official LiMo member, but will be showing a prototype “LiMo Phone” at the event. LiMo partner Azingo Mobile announced in late January that it had built a full mobile Linux suite based on LiMo’s specifications.

New partners are also showing strong support for LiMo. Orange, the mobile arm of France Telecom (nyse: FTE - news - people ), plans to dedicate part of its 150-person Beijing-based R&D center to working with LiMo, says Yves Maitre, senior vice president of devices. The company, which began working with open platforms in 2002, wants to have 50% of its mobile phones run on open source by 2012, he says.

Similarly another recent member, ACCESS, a global mobile software provider that runs another popular mobile operating system called Garnet, has pledged to oversee future LiMo revisions and work closely with developers. To tap a wide range of developers, LiMo’s SDK suite includes native, Java and Web-based SDKs.

LiMo’s official position toward Google is cordial. The two groups share three members: Motorola, NTT DoCoMo and Samsung. In November, LiMo responded to Google’s announcement of its Open Handset Alliance with a press release that said the two shared “core beliefs” and technology that would allow them to “work together synergistically.”

Nevertheless, these new moves bring the two closer into competition. “There could certainly be overlap,” says Gillis. He hopes LiMo will attract developers by avoiding the types of delays that have beset the Open Handset Alliance. “For developers, what really matters is having a platform and having handsets available immediately, as that’s what will bring their applications to consumers,” he notes. LiMo is “completely on schedule” and “extremely well positioned to quickly deliver … new handsets, applications and services,” he adds.

How soon American consumers will benefit from LiMo is unclear as no American carriers have yet signed onto it. Gillis says he expects they will soon, citing AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ) and Verizon (nyse: VZ - news - people )’s recent commitment to open their networks to outside phones and services, and the “strong American presence” of LiMo members Motorola, Samsung and LG. Sprint Nextel (nyse: S - news - people ) and T-Mobile, the country’s no. 3 and 4 carriers, are Open Handset Alliance members.

LiMo-based phones could be a particular boon for consumers in emerging economies. Orange is proud to be the official operator of the iPhone in France, says Maitre, but the phone’s high price limits it to the elite. LiMo will help Orange reach a broader population in places like Africa by enabling it to offer affordable, feature-rich handsets from well-known brands, he says.

Android is believed to be similarly targeting the mass market with low-priced handsets, but it may have a more complicated model that includes subscriptions to Internet access and mobile advertising, backed by Google’s technology, says consulting firm Capgemini.

Leading handset maker Nokia may have its own open-source ambitions, judging from its recent acquisition of software developer–and LiMo member–Trolltech.

No matter who prevails, the shift will usher in a second cellular revolution, in which openness, innovation and collaboration between industry leaders and developers will transform the way people use their phones, say advocates.

It may also pump money into the telecom sector in general and encourage investors to take more risk with start-ups. Says Maitre, “That will bring value to everyone.”

Google Earnings Beat Estimates—Again

The search megalith reported stellar third-quarter earnings, though it warned that margins may thin as it makes needed investments.
The Google stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Oct. 10, 2007 Getty

As a company that regularly beats Wall Street’s earnings estimates, Google needed to blow away expectations on Oct. 18 to impress investors who have propelled the stock to record highs in recent days in anticipation of yet another blockbuster quarterly announcement. Anything less and investors would sell off the stock as they had in past quarters when Google just met or narrowly exceeded analysts’ projections.

Google (GOOG) did not disappoint. The search-advertising Goliath said third-quarter net revenue rose 61%, to $3.01 billion, a number that takes into account the amount Google pays Web site owners to put ads on their pages. That soundly beat analysts’ average estimate for sales of $2.9 billion. Not counting the amount of stock awarded to employees, earnings per share rose to $3.91, beating forecasts of $3.78 a share. “We had a very strong quarter across the board,” said Chief Financial Officer George Reyes.
Online Ad Dominance Assured

Wall Street assumed that Google’s revenues, minus traffic-acquisition costs, would grow about 57% from the prior year. They also assumed that Google could hit that number despite an anticipated credit-crunch-related slowdown in financial-services advertising, one of the largest Web marketing categories. “When you have a company that has performed as consistently as they have to the upside, there is an inherent expectation that gets built into performance,” says Derek Brown, an Internet analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. “They are larger, growing faster, and are more profitable than any company in the Internet sector by a wide margin.”

Google owes its growth mainly to its dominant share of the online advertising market. Google captures roughly 32% of the $21.4 billion in U.S. advertising spending, according to an Oct. 16 report by research firm eMarketer. Google is especially adept at search advertising, which comprises more than 40% of the U.S. online advertising market.

Now Google is racing to gain a larger slice of other forms of online advertising, including display advertising, the term given to ads that run in a fixed spot on a Web page. That’s why Google agreed to acquire ad network DoubleClick for $3.1 billion (BusinessWeek.com, 9/28/07) earlier this year.
New Ad Forays Won’t Come Cheap

Google is also taking steps to get into video advertising, a segment that eMarketer estimates could comprise more than 13% of the online advertising market in four years, up from 8.2% this year. In August, Google announced plans to embed ads in YouTube videos. “We have a really nice ad that shows up in the bottom half of the video,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin said during the analyst call.

Google’s forays into other advertising arenas are still early, and its success is by no means guaranteed. A deal that lets Google place ads on News Corp.’s (NWS) social network, MySpace, is going well, according to Google, but it’s still not a resounding success. “It is obviously a challenge because there is so much inventory and people can be distracted by many different things,” Google co-founder Larry Page said on the conference call. “So there are a lot of things that make it hard.”

One thing that makes it difficult to carve a slice of new areas of advertising is the cost. Google executives have pledged that they will continue to spend money on the infrastructure improvements and the personnel necessary to innovate around new ad formats. During the earnings call, CFO Reyes cautioned analysts that such investment could take a toll. “Margins may decline as we continue to invest in our business,” said Reyes.
Analysts Worry About Spending

Despite the blockbuster quarter, analysts expressed some concern that Google may be investing too much, too quickly. During the call, several analysts posed pointed questions about Google’s decision to hire an additional 2,100 employees during the quarter. Google blamed a less-than-amazing performance last July in part on hiring more aggressively than it had initially planned (BusinessWeek.com, 7/20/07). Chief Executive Eric Schmidt tried to allay concerns, saying, “this is an area where we need to spend more time and focus on what is the appropriate rate…We are paying a lot of attention to head count.”

But for now, it’s hard for even cautious analysts to be negative about Google’s numbers.

Google didn’t miss Wall Street’s fourth-quarter earnings estimates by much, but it’s Google and every little shortfall matters. The miss was enough to send its stock falling about 7% in after-hours trading. The search giant said its net profit rose 17%, to 1.21 billion, or $3.79 a share. Subtracting stock awards to employees, profit was $4.43 a share, a penny shy of analysts’ estimates.

Sales rose 51%, to $4.827 billion, just a hair under analysts’ estimates. Revenue after payments to marketing partners, known as traffic acquisition costs, was $3.39 billion, also shy of analysts’ $3.45 billion estimate. Google doesn’t give guidance, so its results are often subject to guesswork by analysts.

After Yahoo missed estimates on its fourth-quarter earnings, investors were looking to Google for clues to whether the economic slowdown would hit online advertising. With the conference call about to start, it’s not yet clear what accounts for the earnings shortfall, or at least the perceived shortfall. But with sales more on target than earnings, it looks like expenses, in particular those traffic acquisition costs, came in high. More to come as the call starts. …

But a quick summary first: Execs are pretty firm that the slowing economy isn’t affecting Google yet. CEO Eric Schmidt declares: “We have not yet seen any negative impact from the rumors of a possible recession.” (Oral italics are his.)

The call starts: CEO Eric Schmidt calls out strong international growth. He also calls the fourth quarter “a solid quarter, without a question.”

CFO George Reyes says AdSense revenues flagged a bit because of quality improvements that reduced the clickable area around content, which reduced clicks but increased return on advertising.

When talking about traffic acquisition costs, Reyes also says: “Social networking inventory is not monetizing as well as expected.” Sorry, MySpace (Google’s key social network partner).

Execs say they’ll continue to keep spending on data centers and other capital improvements.

Schmidt summing up: “We’re quite optimistic about ‘08.”

Now to questions.

Question on why paid click growth was down 15%. Jonathan Rosenberg, senior VP of product management: Search ads grew faster than content ads, and Google weeded out low-quality (low click-through-rate if I heard right) ads.

Question about any impact from the slowing economy: Cofounder Sergey Brin: “We have not been able to detect any such effects from macroeconomic concerns.” Rosenberg adds that direct marketing, which is what search advertising largely is, generally fares better in a downturn.

Question on Google’s role in the wireless auctions: No comment. At all.

Will the European regulators approve the DoubleClick deal? No firm answer, of course, but Schmidt says, “We’re very hopeful that they will clear (the deal) as well.”

More questions on problems making money from social networks: Rosenberg says they haven’t been able to slice up social networking pages into targeting enough groups. Brin adds: “I don’t think we have the killer best way to monetize social networks. But it’s a big opportunity” because it’s such a large amount of inventory.

More thoughts: Some analysts focused on the decline in the growth of paid clicks in the fourth quarter–up 9% from the third quarter, compared with a 22% gain from last year’s third to fourth quarters. The question is whether that decline in paid click growth is due to the economy. If so, look out. But Google execs seemed quite firm in saying they saw no negative impact from the economy yet. Since companies are usually only too happy to blame any shortfalls on the economy, Google should probably be taken at its word. In any case, the details of Google’s miss show no indication any wheels are falling off.

With the stock market slowly moving off of lows set early last week, look for Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) earnings to be just what the doctor ordered to rocket the market forward. As Brian White posted, “Google’s shares have been shaken from a high of over $700 this past Christmas to under $543 today, as the company has joined in with the overall market teeter-totter amid continued housing worries and recession talk and FUD that spreads like wildfire every week.”

I think that the company will report blow out numbers, as it has done in the past. The catch this time is that the market hasn’t set Google up for a fall. I don’t believe expectations are all that high due to the market rout. If Google surprises to the upside, this will be what the bulls among us have been waiting for, and I would expect a nice 7-10% market move to the upside in the next two to three weeks.

A strong Google report would help justify what I have been saying that technology will be leading the market higher. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) had a great report last week, let’s hope Google has a similar report tonight.

Google Inc. yesterday reported that its first-quarter profit more than quadrupled and revenue nearly doubled because of surging online ad sales. The news, disclosed after the close of the regular trading day, sparked a rally in the search engine giant’s stock price.

For the three months ended March 31, Google reported profit of $369.2 million ($1.29 a share), up from $64 million (24 cents) in the first quarter last year. Revenue, almost entirely from online advertising on Google and its partner Web sites, increased 93 percent, from $651.6 million to $1.3 billion this year.

Google stock shot up nearly $20 in after-hours trading as share prices pushed above $220. Google shares, which started the week trading at about $185, started rising earlier this week following rival Yahoo Inc.’s positive earnings report, which was released late Tuesday. Google went public in August at a price of $85 a share.

“Our focus remains very clearly and steadfastly on long-term growth. In the meantime, we have a quarterly earnings report about which we are very pleased,” said Google chief executive Eric E. Schmidt.

Millions of computer users use Google to find information rapidly on the World Wide Web. The firm profits when people click on the text-based ads that it serves up alongside its free search results. The company does business in the United States and dozens of foreign countries.

“We were very busy this quarter launching dozens of new products and features,” said Google co-founder Larry Page. But, he added, “We remain most focused on the core technology of search.”

Sergey Brin, the other co-founder, said the company also put new systems in place that made it easier for large advertisers to join the thousands of small and medium-size firms that promote their products and services on Google. He said Google’s online ads enable firms to measure the results of their spending more precisely than with traditional media. “We also see more use of Google advertising by companies for branding to make sure their name and products are known throughout the world,” Schmidt said.