Google Microsoft shares plunge IBM soars: related news

Microsoft Says Google Is Years Behind on Privacy - Draws attention as IE8 enters new beta

Microsoft executive Peter Cullen says that Google might have some great products but that they are about ten years behind Microsoft in terms of protecting people’s privacy online. One cited example is the problem that Google has had with Street Views capturing photos of people that they don’t want online, a problem Google has dismissed by saying that anyone could take those same pictures and put them on the Internet. Cullen says that Microsoft has built privacy into its core design and that Google is going to need to do the same thing as it grows. In fact, Microsoft is trying to use its privacy tools against Google; the latest beta version of Internet Explorer 8 has a privacy mode that has the potential to keep even Google from collecting information to use in ad targeting.

Google Chrome, the Google Browser

Philipp Lenssen writes "Google announced their very own browser project called Google Chrome — an announcement in the form of a comic book drawn by Scott McCloud, no less. Google says Google Chrome will be open source, include a new JavaScript virtual machine, include the Google Gears add-on by default, and put the tabs above the address bar (not below), among other things. I've also uploaded Google's comic book with all the details (details given from Google's perspective, anyway... let's see how this holds up). While Google provided the URL www.google.com/chrome there's nothing up there yet."

Some Developers Leaving Google For Microsoft

recoiledsnake writes "We have heard about lots of talented developers jumping ship from Microsoft to Google, but is the trend beginning to turn? Dare Obasanjo (a Microsoft employee) writes about a few high-profile people picking Microsoft over Google — either making the jump directly, or choosing Microsoft after receiving offers at both. Sergey Solyanik is back to Microsoft and he primarily gripes about the culture and lack of career development at Google. He writes, 'Everything is pretty much run by [engineering] — PMs and testers are conspicuously absent from the process. Google as an organization is not geared — culturally — to delivering enterprise class reliability to its user applications.' Danny Thorpe, who was the key architect of Google Gears, is back at Microsoft for his second stint working on developer technologies rel

Google's Big Mistake - Getting Rid of Google Page Creator

Are you kidding me? Google getting rid of Google Page Creator, this must be a joke. No, it's for real. Google says they're going to be transitioning all Google Page Creator websites into their new Google Sites. Excuse me, but Google Sites doesn't come close to being as good as Google Page Creator. Why in the world would Google choose to keep the lesser of the two?

Earnings: Microsoft and Google disappoint, while IBM soars

If there's a recession on, you would hardly guess it from the earnings reports from Microsoft, Google, and IBM. In terms of revenue, Microsoft beat Wall Street expectations with an 18-percent rise to $15.64 billion over Q2 2007. Yet the Street pummeled Microsoft's stock by 5 percent due to lowered guidance for the year and lower-than-expected profits, hinting at problems in the company's newer businesses like online and XBox.

Google to Release Web Browser Tuesday; Should Microsoft Worry, or Mozilla?

In its latest bid to remain ascendant on the Internet, Google is about to release its own Web browser, long a key online battleground. It just announced its plans for the browser, dubbed Chrome, briefly on its official blog, so its ultimate intentions are not yet clear. But the Web browser more than ever has become the one indispensable product—even if it’s free—for anyone using the Internet. So it’s clear that Google is looking to firm up its ever-growing online presence—especially vs. Microsoft, maker of the dominant browser Internet Explorer. (Chrome was first reported by the blog Google Blogoscoped, which in an odd publicity tactic on Google’s part received a comic book in the mail outlining the product.)

Google, Microsoft shares plunge, IBM soars

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"Google Satellite" To Be Launched This Week

Lord Satri writes "Well, almost. Google signed an exclusivity deal with GeoEye regarding GeoEye-1, the most advanced high-resolution, civil, remote-sensing satellite to date. This must be annoying for other high-resolution, remote-sensing data users since Google already has an exclusivity deal in place with DigitalGlobe, the other major civil satellite imagery provider. From the CNet article: 'Under the deal, Google is the exclusive online mapping site that may use the imagery... in its Google Maps and Google Earth product. And as a little icing on the cake, Google's logo is on the side of the rocket set to launch the 4,300-pound satellite in six days from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. GeoEye-1 will orbit 423 miles above Earth, but it will be able to gather imagery with details the size of 4

IBM, Linux and the Microsoft-Free PC

IconAfter 10 years of supporting Linux, IBM continues to challenge Microsoft on multiple fronts and aims to push Linux even further into the enterprise. While IBM has competed and partnered with Microsoft over the last two decades, the Microsoft-free PC effort is perhaps its most direct assault yet. "The idea of Microsoft-free personal computing has been in the air for a while," Inna Kuznetsova, director of Linux at IBM, told InternetNews.com. "We're just partnering with Linux distribution vendors and hardware vendors to make it happen."

Local company takes Google SA to Competition Commission

Entelligence filed a formal complaint against Google South Africa with the Competition Commission of South Africa on Friday, 29 August 2008, for abuse of dominance in terms of Section S8(d)(i) of the Competition Act 89 of 1998, which prohibits a firm from “requiring or inducing a supplier or customer to not deal with a competitor�. Entelligence is alleging that Google SA increased the cost per click for Yellow Pages AdWords advertising drastically without advance notification, that Google SA did not disclose upfront that it intended to pitch for the Yellow Pages account directly - after Entelligence had shared its strategy and demonstrated its proprietary technology with Google SA - and is now refusing renew its accounts held with Google and that it will prevent Entelligence from creating any new accounts in an attempt to service Yell

Microsoft-Yahoo turmoil ends up good for Google

While the Microsoft bid to buy Yahoo is long gone, its results seem to be lingering, as both Microsoft and Yahoo have lost search market share to Google since the failed merger was announced nearly 6 months ago. The Hitwise numbers--showing Google with 70.7% market share--just underscore how far both Microsoft and Yahoo (nevermind Cuil) need to go in order to break into Google's search lead. That 70.7% number could be a turning point.

Microsoft Parrots Google In Suggesting Tie-Up With Yahoo Violates Antitrust Laws

Back in February, we pointed out that Google was playing with fire in suggesting that a Microsoft-Yahoo merger would violate antitrust laws. It seemed fairly obvious that those statements would come back to haunt Google -- a company many others have been accusing of antitrust violations. And, indeed, even with Microsoft still trying to buy Yahoo, Microsoft is now making nearly identical antitrust claims against Google concerning its ad deal with Yahoo. It's all legal posturing, of course, in an attempt to get the government to annoy a competitor. As Declan McCullagh points out at the link above, if either company really believes that the other was violating antitrust laws, it's perfectly free to file a private antitrust lawsuit. But, instead, both companies are playing a game in trying to get the government to be a pest for the other -- a

Google's Open Source browser to challenge Microsoft

Local iPhone users devour content New Orleans residents prepare for hurricane online GlobalConnect Australia to support telephony-based health care Cisco joins Victoria ideas lab project BigPond expands Second Life presence Dell puts best face on slow quarter Business intelligence hots up IBM unveils new 1TB tape drive Opinion: Genuine advantage Google to launch Android Market SharePoint eating up the portal space Microsoft unveils search strategy

Google€™s culture €not fit€™ for enterprise apps

Anyone hoping that Google Apps can rival Microsoft’s products in the enterprise marketplace will have pause for thought after reading the astonishing testimony of development manager Sergey Solyanik, who has just gone Back to Microsoft after a stint working at Google. His blog post starts out innocuously enough with a list of good things at Google that Microsoft ought to emulate as an employer. But when it comes to “So why did I leave?” Solyanik rips into Google’s working practices, in particular criticizing the effects of its business model, which emphasizes free software at the expense of utility.

Microsoft's Annual Report Reveals OSS Mistakes

mjasay writes "Microsoft's most recent annual report suggests that the company is increasingly coming to grips with open source, yet also seems determined to perpetuate myths about open source that poorly serve it and its shareholders. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has suggested before that 'free software means no free soda' for Microsoft employees; but this is perhaps the first time that Microsoft has managed to enshrine its ignorance in a public document. In the annual report, Microsoft makes two primary false claims about open source: 1) Open source companies don't invest in research and development and instead largely free-ride on Microsoft's patents and copyrights; and 2) Open source projects don't innovate and instead mimic Microsoft's products.

Google URL Index Hits 1 Trillion

mytrip points out news that Google's index of unique URLs has reached a milestone: one trillion. Google's blog provides some more information, noting, "The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we've seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. To keep up with this volume of information, our systems have come a long way since the first set of web data Google processed to answer queries. Back then, we did everything in batches: one workstation could compute the PageRank graph on 26 million pages in a couple of hours, and that set of pages would be used as Google's index for a fixed period of time. Today, Google downloads the web continuously, collecting updated page information and re-processing the entire web-l

Microsoft and Apache - What's the Angle?

A week ago, we discussed Microsoft's contribution to the Apache Foundation. Now, Bruce Perens has written an analysis "exploring the new relationship of Microsoft and the Apache project, how it works as an anti-Linux move on Microsoft's part, and what some of the Open Sourcers are going to do about having Microsoft as a rather untrustworthy partner." In particular, he notes: "...Microsoft can still influence how things go from here on. If they have to live with open source, the Apache project is Microsoft's preferred direction. Apache doesn't use the dreaded GPL and its enforced sharing of source-code. Instead, the Apache license is practically a no-strings gift, with a weak provision against patent lawsuits as its most relevant term. Microsoft can take Apache software and embrace and enhance, providing their own versions of the project's

Google Chrome: It's all about ads and cookies, stupid!

Tags: Google Inc., Advertisement, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Web Browser, Cookie, Chrome, Google Chrome, Lindsay, Web Browsers

Open-source Google Chrome browser based on Webkit

Google this weekend accidentaly leaked details -- via an online comic book -- on its upcoming cross-platform open-source browser: Google Chrome -- which it claims will deliver a streamlined and improved interface along with performance improvements and security enhancements; the new browser is based on both Apple's Webkit, the core of the Safari browser, and Firefox, the rapidly growing alternative browser, but will square off against Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which dominates the internet, but continues to play catch up with security flaws and compatibility. The beta version of Google Chrome, only for for PCs initially, is expected to ship on Tuesday in more than 100 countries, while Mac and Linux versions are in development.

MS, Yahoo! and Google

The ladies and (especially) gentlemen of Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google trooped into the US Congress to inform US politicians about how good and how bad and how anti-competitive the Yahoo!-Google advert deal is; Yahoo! got things off with a joke by their lawyer Michael Callahan that was pretty funny but disrespectful: ''With all due respect to Google, we have every expectation of fighting them and winning;'' Brad Smith, Microsoft solicitor, explained to the congresspeople that if search is the key to the Internet, as ''many'' believe, then ''this deal will put Google in a position to own that gateway and the information that flows through it''; so it's probably fair to say that when Microsoft takes over Yahoo!, this deal will follow the dodo and other extinct species.

Microsoft testifies Google-Yahoo "anti-competitive"...

Microsoft today argued that US House and Senate Judiciary Committees that the proposed Google/Yahoo deal, claiming that Yahoo's agreement to support ads through a non-exclusive deal is anti-competitive and would allegedly hurt innovation. The legal counsel for Microsoft, Brad Smith, expresses fears that Google would control as much as 90 percent of online advertising, allowing it to dictate prices and force companies to advertise through it for proper exposure. He also warns that Google could potentially have a monopoly on Internet services.

IE8 Beta 2 vs. Google Browser (Chrome) vs. Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 RC

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, Google Chrome Beta and Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 Release Candidate are all development milestones of the browsers developed by Microsoft, Google and Mozilla. Of course that with the advent of Google Browser (Chrome) on September 2, 2008, the browser market is bound to see additional competition, and in this context, comparisons are inherent.

Microsoft, Google fight over Yahoo!

WASHINGTON: Google and Microsoft will spar today at a congressional hearing called to examine whether Google's revenue-sharing deal with No 2 search rival Yahoo will harm competition. Google, with more than 60 per cent of the Web search market, and Yahoo, with 16.6 per cent, announced a deal on June 12 that would allow Yahoo to place Google advertisements on its site and collect the revenue.

IE8 Breaking Microsoft's Web Standards Promise?

An anonymous reader points out a story in The Register by Opera Software CTO Hakon Lie which tells the story of how Microsoft's interoperability promise for IE8 seems to have been broken in less than six months. Quoting: "In March, Microsoft announced that their upcoming Internet Explorer 8 would: use its most standards compliant mode, IE8 Standards, as the default. Note the last word: default. Microsoft argued that, in light of their newly published interoperability principles, it was the right thing to do. This declaration heralded an about-face and was widely praised by the web standards community; people were stunned and delighted by Microsoft's promise. This week, the promise was broken."

Yahoo! rejected Microsoft bid for search business, due to exclusivity clause

Microsoft dropped bid for all of Yahoo! on 8 June and launched a bid of USD 1 billion for Yahoo!'s search business and a share of future search advertising revenue. This proposal also included an USD billion investment in Yahoo! but required Yahoo! to commit to a 10-year exclusive arrangement, according to a letter sent to Yahoo! stockholders by CEO Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock. The letter explains the reasons for Yahoo! to sign a four year non-exclusive deal with Google for online advertising services and to end the talks with Microsoft, as their search-only hybrid proposal may have been helpful to Microsoft. The board and its advisers also carefully studied the financial impact of Microsoft's proposal and concluded that it would have provided no meaningful improvement to the operating cash flow.

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