February 11, 2005
Future of Google(?)...
ARTICLE DATE: 02.09.05
By Matt Hicks, eWEEK
Google executives attempted to demystify the search company's product decisions during presentations with Wall Street analysts on Wednesday.
As Google Inc. has moved beyond Web search and into product areas as diverse as e-mail, photo-organizing software and mapping tools, one of the common questions for the company is how it decides where to devote resources.
In classic Google fashion, its executives answered with a formula, one that CEO Eric Schmidt said was derived from the mathematical calculations of cofounder Sergey Brin.
Google is striving to split its product investments three ways, following a formula of "70-20-10," Schmidt told analysts gathered at the company's Mountain View, Calif. headquarters.
70 percent would target its core search and advertising products, while 20 percent would focus on adjacent products, such as its newer desktop and product search services.
Read the full story: Google Reveals Its Product Formula.
Copyright (c) 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
"Microsoft vs. Linux"-Two Different Poles
Microsoft's Security Chief Says Windows Safer Than Linux
By Gregg Keizer, TechWeb News
Feb. 10, 2005
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60300220
Microsoft's top security honcho insisted Thursday that Microsoft "is making progress on security using any reasonable metric."
Mike Nash, the company's chief security executive, made the comment during an online chat session just days after Microsoft rolled out its biggest bunch of Windows patches since April 2004.
Nash staunchly defended the Redmond, Wash.-based developer's progress, and compared Windows' flaws with those in open-source Linux operating systems from Red Hat and Novell's SuSE.
"Even with the relatively large number of bulletins we released this week, we compare favorably," he said. "Year-to-date for 2005, Microsoft has fixed 15 vulnerabilities affecting Windows Server 2003. In the same time period, for just this year, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 users have had to patch 34 vulnerabilities and SuSE Enterprise Linux 9 users have had to patch over 78 vulnerabilities."
Nash also said that the number of patches shouldn't be the only criteria users apply to tell if Microsoft's doing its job. "Note that this is just one measure, and doesn't take into consideration all of the other progress we're making, with security guidance for customers, improving security manageability and introducing innovative security solutions and technologies," he said.
When asked if Microsoft would consider refining its four-step severity rating system to give additional guidance to enterprises wrestling with deciding which of the 10 critical vulnerabilities of Tuesday to patch first, Nash said that for 2005, the rankings will remain as is.
Nash also took questions about this week's acquisition of Sybari Software, a maker of enterprise-oriented anti-virus and anti-spam add-ons for messaging platforms such as Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. In particular, he said that the anti-virus scanning engine acquired in 2003's purchase of Romania-based GeCAD would be supported by Sybari's products this year.
"One of the engines we will be supporting soon after the deal closes is the GeCAD engine," said Nash.
That move may put additional pressure on third-party vendors whose engines are currently supported by Sybari, which include those from Sophos, Computer Associates, and Kaspersky Labs.
And Nash talked up Microsoft's work on a desktop anti-virus product.
Although he refused to get specific about when Microsoft will release desktop AV software, the company is "working hard on it." It will be based on the GeCAD technologies, he said, but with numerous enhancements.
"GeCAD was very solid when we acquired it . . . That said, there were some things we wanted to improve. We feel very good about the progress we have made [and] know we have to have great technology before we ship our own desktop AV solution."
The combination of the Sybari purchase and the looming entry of Microsoft into the desktop anti-virus market has investors in major security firms like Symantec and McAfee worried.
As well they should, wrote three Gartner analysts Wednesday. "The Sybari architecture will also enable Microsoft to plug in its own AV engine," Gartner analysts Neil MacDonald, Arabella Hallawell, and Maurene Caplan Grey wrote. "Gartner believes Microsoft AV engine, along with its signature service, will be the foundation of Microsoft's forthcoming desktop offering."
The AV engine would be the one developed from GeCAD, the same that Sybari's products will support when the acquisition closes sometime before the end of the second quarter.
"We have not announced the availability date of our desktop AV solution at this point," said Nash. "That said, we do expect to have the GeCAD engine available on the Sybari platform soon after the deal closes. I would certainly expect that to be this year."
Nash also repeatedly said that it would be important for Microsoft to tie its various security tools together in the enterprise. "We do think that there needs to be a management capability to allow enterprises to both control and monitor their security technologies like anti-spam and anti-virus," he said. "We're currently working through specific requirements."
In a final note, Nash said that Windows AntiSpyware, the tool acquired during its December 2004, purchase of Giant Company Software, will go through at least one more beta version before it's released. In related news, Microsoft's anti-spyware product has been targeted by virus writers, in what experts believe is the beginning of what will be a salvo of malware attacks on Microsoft security products.
As other Microsoft executives have said in the past, Nash wouldn't reveal whether AntiSpyware would continue to be offered free (as the beta is now), or whether fees would be charged. "We have not yet finalized the packaging/licensing, but will communicate that as soon as it's determined, so stay tuned," he said.************************************************************************************
A question arises here in my mind:
WHY MICROSOFT HAVEN'T THOUGHT ABOUT THIS BEFORE?
February 10, 2005
Firefox is generally for individuals not for companies
By Sam Varghese
February 9, 2005
Organisations should not begin a wholesale switch to Firefox in the near term, but should consider ways to manage browser co-existence because that is the most likely long-term outcome, the technology research firm Gartner says.
In a commentary released recently, Gartner researchers R. Valdes, D. Smith and W. Andrews said Microsoft could determine the extent to which it lost browser market share by choosing whether and when to respond to the increasing take-up of Firefox.
They said growth in Firefox usage was driven by factors that were not "inherently sustainable."
"Microsoft's response to Firefox growth is limited by how much it ties a revamped Internet Explorer to the release of Longhorn," they said.
To address the growth in Firefox's browser share - on some sites that targeted technical audiences, the percentage using Firefox had gone as high as 25 percent - Microsoft would have to address concerns about the secuirty of Internet Explorer and user demand for a better browsing experience.
"Industry realignment is also helping to fuel Firefox growth. For example, Google is supporting Firefox by providing an infrastructure for downloads. Amazon's A9 toolbar now supports Firefox. Major independent software vendors (ISVs) that aggressively linked their user interfaces to specific versions of IE (contrary to long-standing Gartner advice) will likely shift to a neutral stance. Efforts by Google (desktop search evolutions) and IBM (IBM Workplace) to compete more aggressively against Microsoft on the desktop could drive additional growth for Firefox," the researchers wrote.
However, they pointed out, the growth in Firefox usage was taking place primarily at the individual level.
Gartner said features such as tabbed browsing, integrated search, better support for standards, easy installation and removal procedures and the fact that Firefox had no deep hooks into the operating system's innards were all rated as pluses by users.
"Because IE is integrated into the Windows operating system, flaws in IE have a greater impact than flaws in a stand-alone browser. Also, it takes longer to create fixes (since regression testing must include the entire operating system), and applying IE patches is often more time-intensive and expensive (requiring reboots, for example)," the researchers wrote.
"The use of ActiveX controls as spyware vectors also makes IE cause more spyware problems than other browsers. IE's architecture is open and extensible through an application programming interface, which means that "browser helper" objects can be tightly integrated into the browser (and by extension, the operating system), resulting in a more-powerful vehicle for spyware and malware."
They predicted that as Firefox's share of the browser market grew, it would increasingly be targeted by malicious code.
The researchers said one of three outcomes was possible - IE usage would fall but would be halted by improvements wrought by Microsoft; the slide in IE usage would continue unabated due to ongoing well-publicised breaches in IE; or an uneasy co-existence would eventuate where users, fed up with the security problems, would install Firefox alongside IE and use it.
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I am using Firefox and I am very happy for this. Yes, there are many problems and bugs in this browser but what significant thing we can mention about Firefox is its security. I think you will agree with me because this is the main problem of our digital world.
Today, our registration system started in our university and we have to select some courses (required or elective). In the morning, there was a traffic on the system and when trying to reach with IExplorer, we faced with some errors but with Firefox there were no errors. This again shows that although this is new for individual users like me, it is better.
Some time I think about future of this browser. "Elephant" (Microsoft) vs. "Ant" (Firefox).
I read in these days that Google wants to enter to browser race, and when it enters there will be a "rat race". Googzilla vs. IExplorer...
Tabbin system is very usable for us- individual users.
Google's plan for Asia
February 9, 2005: 11:50 AM EST
By Aaron Smith, CNN/Money staff writer
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - When Google meets with Wall Street analysts Wednesday, executives will be facing a stiff series of questions.
Among them: Can the red-hot search engine keep up its phenomenal growth, and what about all those stock options that could cause a wave of stock selling next week.
On Feb. 14, 176 million shares of Google stock, which have been locked up under the company's complex stock-release program, are scheduled to hit the market.
Mark Mahaney at American Technology Research, for example, wants to know Google's plans for Asia, where it's not the leading search engine, as it is in the Europe and the United States. And how can it maintain product quality and stay organized while growing so rapidly, he wrote in a note to clients Tuesday.
Mahaney has a buy rating on Google and a price target of $275.
"The last time the Google management team got together with 200 plus of its closest institutional investor friends, GOOG's valuation took a big hit," Mahaney wrote. "Will it happen again this week? We don't think so."
Nonetheless, Google executives should be ready for some difficult questions. Despite his high price target, Mahaney is concerned about Google's ability to keep up with its growth.
"I'm worried about how well they can handle hyper-growth," said Mahaney, in an interview. "It's very hard to maintain discipline when you're growing that fast."
According to David Garrity, chief financial officer for Caris & Company, investors are nervous about possible volatility on Feb. 14, the expiration date for the company's IPO lock-up.
Garrity, who also rates Google a "buy," the company plans to distinguish itself from competitors through expanding its language translation technology, since 64 percent of the world's Internet users do not speak English.
Google is holding the meeting just days after trounced bullish Wall Street projections in announcing strong fourth-quarter increases in sales and earnings.
In its Feb. 2 report, its second since going public, the company announced net income of $204 million, or 71 cents a share, a 650 percent increase from the same period last year.
Excluding stock compensation expense, Google earned 92 cents a share, well above analyst projections of 77 cents. Excluding traffic acquisition costs, Google reported sales of $654 million, ahead of the Wall Street consensus of $592 million.
February 09, 2005
News from Gartner - IP Telephony
Potential benefits include operational cost savings, enhanced communications and, eventually, improved business processes. Given the trend toward IP telephony, IT and telecom managers need to understand the consequences of deployment before making any strategic decisions.
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In my opinion this is somewhat new way of communication.
HERE THE PROBLEM IS SECURITY.
Longhorn is coming !!!
By Ina Fried CNET News.com
February 7, 2005, 1:00 PM PT
SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft is on track to release the first full test version of the next major Windows release by the end of June, a Microsoft executive told CNET News.com on Monday.
The company has said publicly that Beta 1 of Longhorn would arrive by the end of 2005, though internally, the company has been aiming for a release by midyear. The final version of Longhorn is slated for the second half of next year.
"There will be a beta 1 of Longhorn...happening in the first half of this year," John Montgomery, a director in Microsoft's developer division, said during an interview at VSLive, a conference devoted to the company's Visual Studio .Net toolkit. The release will be primarily aimed at developers, Montgomery said. "I do, however, expect that you will find IT departments starting to look at it, kick the tires, figure out what's in it and what's not in it."
Beta 1 will be the first look at Longhorn in its current form. Microsoft released a developer preview version of Windows at the Professional Developers Conference in the fall of 2003 and updated that early code last spring.
However, Longhorn has changed significantly since then, with Microsoft announcing changes in August affecting all three of the key pillars of Longhorn. Two of the components--a presentation engine called Avalon (1) and a Web services architecture called Indigo (2) --are being pulled out of the next Windows release so they can be offered for both Longhorn and the current generation of Windows operating systems.
The third major component, a reworking of the Windows file system known as WinFS (3) , has been delayed past Longhorn's release and is expected to be in beta testing when Longhorn ships. It is unclear when WinFS will be integrated into Windows itself.
Microsoft has not talked a great deal about what features will be part of the beta release. Montgomery said many of the updates have to do with improving the "operational characteristics" of the operating system--basically making Windows easier to manage and more reliable. Among the changes will be a new model for drivers--the bits of code that allow Windows to work effectively with hardware add-ons such as graphic cards and peripherals.
Another improvement will come in the way businesses are able to install Windows on large numbers of machines. Today, mass deployment is done through a process known as "ghosting" an image of the operating system. An improved method will come with Longhorn, Montgomery said.
Montgomery said Microsoft is on track for two other key releases for this year. The 2005 editions of the Visual Studio programming tools and the SQL Server database are slated to get new test versions in the coming weeks, with final releases scheduled for late summer.
Earlier Monday, Microsoft said that by March, it will release an update to the preview version of Avalon. Servers and tools Chief Eric Rudder is slated to talk about Indigo on Tuesday.
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I am waitin for new OS- LONGHORN. I think it will be my best...
Interoperability and .NET and new technologies
By Michael Singer
February 7, 2005
SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft (Quote, Chart) unveiled a new set of developer tools and partnerships today it hopes will make its .NET (define) framework work better with the outside world.
The announcements this week at the VSLive! 2005 developer show here highlight Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates' pledge of interoperability with other platforms like J2EE and Web services initiatives.
Key to the strategy is advancement of the Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 developer platform code-named Whidbey, along with a subsystem for its Longhorn platform known as Avalon, and its unified programming model for building service-oriented applications called Indigo. A second beta version of Whidbey is due this spring. Microsoft advanced its release of Avalon today and is expected to do the same for Indigo later this week.
"There is heavy interest in connecting systems between Visual Studio and the rest of Microsoft offerings like Office and Windows Server and SQL Server," "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president developer group at Microsoft said during his keynote address. "We look at the platform in the broadest sense and look to make it interoperable with the rest. People sometimes talk about a closed system from Microsoft. We know our customers have heterogeneous systems. And for four or five years now, we have made great progress. Web services, for example, are simplifying application and data integration across all customer segments, connecting people and partners."
Somasegar noted that Microsoft's most important work in Web services has been done with IBM, BEA and others.
The .NET Framework is comprised of two parts: the Common Language Runtime (CLR), which manages program code execution; and the class libraries, made up of the ActiveX Data Objects for .NET (ADO.NET) classes for XML (define) manipulation and Active Server Pages for .NET (ASP.NET), which are the classes used to create Web applications.
Developers can create applications using any one of more than 20 different programming languages -- though Microsoft aggressively markets its Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET), Visual C# .NET, Visual C++ .NET and Visual J# .NET languages on the Visual Studio .NET IDE. Other supported languages include Perl, COBOL, Java, SmallTalk and Python.
With that in mind, Microsoft released the second community technology preview (CTP) of Avalon. The presentation subsystem for Longhorn introduces several advances including new controls, improvements to the layout system, performance improvements and enhanced XAML support.
Likewise, Microsoft also released its Connected Systems Business Kit, which is a collection of sample applications, presentations, white papers and videos that show how to install connected systems and service-oriented architectures. The company also opened up its patterns and practices Enterprise Library, which contains application blocks designed to assist enterprise developers with common enterprise development challenges.
"The cheapest piece of code is something I don't have to write in the first place," Somasegar said.
In conjunction with the release, Microsoft VSIP partner LogicLibrary said it would include the patterns and practices Enterprise Library in its Logidex metadata repository. Microsoft's also highlighted its extended partnership with Micro Focus, which is now adopting Visual Studio as its single integrated development environment (IDE) for helping transition companies off mainframes.
Ian Archbell, vice president of product management at Micro Focus told internetnews.com the company has been working with Microsoft for at least two years on integration and its now lining up its service partners EDS, Accenture, and CSC.
"What we are doing is including the ability to integrate a COBOL-based system with .NET on the front end or extending COBOL programs trough Web services standards," said Archbell, whose company is part of the 40-member Mainframe Migration Alliance and similarly charged Migration Consortium. "The process puts the mainframe layer on top of the Windows platforms to allow you to run those applications."
Microsoft's Somasegar said the company has great momentum in the enterprise market noting that the company distributed more than 120 million copies of the .NET framework and sent more than 2.5 million of its .NET enhanced Visual Studio platform in three years.
In addition to its partner relationships, Microsoft served up its Tablet PC server development kit, version 1.7. The company is hoping to encourage more adoption of Tablet PCs. Today, there are more than 200 applications available for purchase or download optimized to run on Tablet PCs.
Microsoft said its Research University Relations group will make up to 10 awards, totaling up to $450,000 in funding, to the Phoenix RFP award for advanced research using an analysis and optimization framework. Phoenix is a collaboration between Microsoft Research, the Microsoft Visual C++ back-end team and the Microsoft Common Language Runtime (CLR) team.
Being the Distinguished One?
By BOB TEDESCHI
Published: February 7, 2005
AFTER Google disclosed last week that it had been granted the right to sell domain names, the question in many minds was, "Why?" Why would the company, which just reported click-advertising sales of more than $1 billion in the most recent quarter, compete in a relatively low-margin business with Network Solutions, Yahoo, GoDaddy and others? Would it use its new registrar status to snap up expired domains and show ads to wayward surfers? Is this a move toward Google world domination?
"In a few years you'll be driving your Google to the Google to buy some Google for your Google," read one posting on Slashdot, an online technology forum.
Eileen Rodriguez, a Google spokeswoman, hardly quelled the speculation by explaining that the whole thing was really a learning opportunity for the company. Google "has become a domain name registrar to learn more about the Internet's domain name system," she said recently in an e-mail message. "While we have no plans to register domains at this time, we believe this information can help us increase the quality of our search results."
Ms. Rodriguez would not say how having registrar status might help Google improve search results. But Bret Fausett, who publishes Lextext.com, a Web log following the domain name industry, and who first disclosed the news that Google had become a registrar, said Google could improve the quality of search results by getting better access to the list of expiring domain names - a list available only to registrars.
When a domain expires and changes hands, Mr. Fausett said, Google can now more easily find, scan and index the new site, so it does not mistakenly point searchers to a site with irrelevant content, or place advertisers on sites with content that does not match their products or services.
That alone could profoundly affect the domain name market, which has rebounded partly because of another Google service, AdSense. Through AdSense, Google pays publishers to display text ads related to a site's content. Speculators often buy the expiring domains of even marginally popular Web sites and replace the site's content. But because the practice diminishes the usefulness of Google's search engine, the company has long sought ways to curb it.
Google's continuing refinement of its search technology underscores the intensifying competition in that market, which has carried Internet advertising back to life in recent years. MSN, Yahoo and others have seen Google parlay popular search technology into a dominant business by selling text ads to marketers whenever consumers search for words related to a business.
Among Internet users, Google remains the favorite search engine, with a 35 percent share of the market, according to comScore Networks, an Internet research firm. But that lead has been threatened by the ascendancy of Yahoo and MSN from Microsoft.
Simply selling domains is not going to swell Google's bottom line. "Domain name sales have really become a not-for-profit business," said Rich Miller, an analyst with Netcraft, an Internet consultancy in Britain. Companies that sell domain names now also typically sell more lucrative services, like hosting and Web site creation, to help businesses use the domains they have bought.
Bob Parsons, the chief executive of GoDaddy, argues that Google would have to profoundly change its business philosophy to succeed in Web hosting.
"Try to call Google and actually talk to somebody," he said. "It's not their forte. Now, they could acquire that, but at the moment it's a problem I don't have to deal with, so I'm not thinking about it. If they do, we'll go to work."
But Web hosting does allow Google the opportunity to gain new customers and sell them other services. "There are lots of different ways they can use it in their business," said Mr. Miller. "Our first thought was that they might be doing something with Blogger or Gmail."
Blogger, Google's free Web log hosting service, assigns what is known as a subdomain to users. So instead of Blogger users having their own domain name (say, www.nameofblog.com), they are assigned the Web address nameofblog.blogspot.com. A more easily remembered name could attract more customers, analysts said, and could also be easier to find in a search because search engines often have difficulty turning up subdomains.
Google could also offer users the ability to quickly publish Web sites with Blogger technology, and team that service with a Gmail account and a matching domain name that Google could host. That has been the trend among domain name business in recent years, Mr. Miller said.
Until about two years ago, domain name registrars like Network Solutions and Register.com acquired domains from registries for about $6, and sold them to customers for $35 annually. While those companies still charge those fees, they have been challenged in recent years by companies like GoDaddy, which sells Web names for $4 annually, and Yahoo, which currently offers single domain orders for $5 annually.
These companies have increasingly relied on their hosting and Web site building services to increase revenues, particularly from millions of small-business owners. Yahoo, for instance, sells services ranging from a one-page Web site for $10 a year to a more comprehensive electronic commerce site for $300 a month.
According to Rich Riley, Yahoo's vice president and general manager for small business services, the company has "many hundreds of thousands of paying customers" for its Web hosting services, and market growth has accelerated since it revamped the service in August and offered less expensive services.
Among other things, Yahoo offers paying customers toll-free customer support - something also offered by competitors, who have grown accustomed to holding the hands of small-business owners. At first glance, such a labor-intensive business would not easily fit the business approach of Google, which has managed to generate billions in advertising dollars using a self-service approach with no phone support.
"Is it possible Google may jump into the hosting and domain name business?" asked Mr. Parsons, of GoDaddy. "Maybe. But the income they'd get from doing that is nickels compared to what they get from being the premier search company."
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Yes, this is some kind of risk but the opportunities in this market are more than threats. Google will get control over the websites. What I mean by control is something adding new web sites to the database of more than 8 billions web pages. The Internet became the "waste basket" but you can find what you need in this basket with searching in a better way, in other words by "googling".
I think, jumping to the hosting and domain business can put one step further from its rivals. But Google have to be very careful...
GOOD LUCK GOOGLE !!!
GOOGLE goes one step further by GMAP!
| Google releases test of mapping service |
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| Tue February 8, 2005 11:53 PM GMT+05:30 SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc. on Tuesday released a new map service that helps users get driving directions and search for restaurants and other businesses. The roll-out comes amid a flurry of new Web search-related products and features from Google and its rivals. The Google test service uses map data from digital mapping companies TeleAtlas and Navteq, according to the site at http://maps.google.com .
Google competitors Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. for several years have offered services that provide maps and driving directions. In October, Google bought Keyhole Corp., which provides mapping services based on satellite and aerial images.
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THIS IS THE ORIGINAL WAY TO THINK ORIGINAL IDEAS...
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February 08, 2005
M-Learning Becoming Real
"During a presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) IBM, Sony and Toshiba disclosed in detail the multi-core architectural design of their jointly developed microprocessor code-named Cell. The Cell is capable of showing clock speeds greater than 4 GHz. (not MHz) !!!!!!!!!!
A team of IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba engineers has collaborated on development of the Cell microprocessor at a joint design center established in Austin, Texas, since March 2001. The prototype chip integrates 234 million transistors, and is fabricated with 90 nanometer SOI technology.
Cell's multi-core architecture and ultra high-speed communications capabilities deliver an improved, real-time response for entertainment and rich media applications, in many cases 10 times the performance of the latest PC processors.
The companies expect the Cell will become the broadband processor used for industrial applications to the new digital home.
Another advantage of Cell is to support multiple operating systems, such as conventional operating systems (including Linux), real-time operating systems for computer entertainment and consumer electronics applications as well as guest operating systems for specific applications, simultaneously.
Initial production of Cell microprocessors is expected to begin at IBM's facility in East Fishkill, N.Y., followed by Sony Group's Nagasaki Fab, this year. IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba expect to promote Cell-based products including a broad range of industry-wide applications, from digital televisions to home servers to supercomputers."
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After reading above article, I thought about M-Learning (Mobile Learning) one more time. It is really getting possible for us to use Mobile Devices to learn anything in anytime and in anywhere.
So, we will have these kind of processors in the near future and is this enough? Of course not! What we have to focus on after this moment is content and usability of M-Learning.
There are manything to say about it but I will mention in the future...
February 07, 2005
Snow in Istanbul
But at the beginning of February, the "traditional weather" changed 180 degrees. Istanbul wore WHITE CLOTH.
Today, we played snowball outside and although it was cold outside, it was fantastic and interesting. Friend of mine took some "cool" pictures.
I think today was the different than any other day in a way that it was not monotone but FANTASTIC.
" Gates v Google" nice article from Telegraph.co.uk
There are not many parts of the internet that Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, does not already dominate.
Last Tuesday, the Seattle-based giant moved to tighten its stranglehold on cyberspace with the long-expected launch of its own internet search engine – MSN Search.
Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder and chairman, claims his search engine is more accurate, more relevant and more up-to-date than any of its rivals.
However, this time Microsoft may have met its match. The search-engine business is already dominated by Google – a company that has one of the best-known and most-loved brands in the world and has made billionaires of its founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Since it was launched in 1998, Google has grown explosively to become the most-used website in the world. Such is its popularity that "to google" is listed as a verb in The Oxford English Dictionary. Each month it is used by almost 15m internet users in the UK alone, and 150m in the US. In the lives of tens of millions of computer users, Google is nothing less than the front door to the internet.
For many, it is curious that Microsoft has taken so long to mount a major challenge in the search-engine market. The software giant has spent $100m (£53m) and two years developing MSN Search, which was launched simultaneously last week in 24 countries and 10 languages.
In the past, Microsoft has been remarkably successful in managing to claw back ground lost to rivals such as Netscape (internet browsers) and Apple (graphical operating systems).
However, Microsoft has a huge distance to cover to catch up with Google. In Britain, Google has a dominant 60 per cent share of online search enquiries against just 10 per cent for Microsoft, which until now used Yahoo's search-engine technology to power MSN Search. Meanwhile, there are other rivals, such as Ask Jeeves. In the US Google leads with 35 per cent, followed by Yahoo on 32 per cent, up from 27 per cent a year ago.
It is easy to see why Gates is so desperate to recover lost ground. Microsoft believes that search engines are crucial for control of the next generation of computer users.
Huge profits are also at stake. Last week, Google smashed all Wall Street expectations when it announced that net revenues for its fourth quarter were $654m – more than double the year before. Earnings were $204m.
This success drove the shares up by 9 per cent, valuing Google at $58.2bn – more than the combined worth of car makers Ford and General Motors.
For years it was uncertain how Google or any other search engine could make real money. In the late 1990s internet advertising was supposed to make internet companies a fortune, providing a revenue stream for websites that offered free content or services to the public.
What has emerged instead is text-based adverts on sites that are sold using an auction system. Advertisers bid to be displayed alongside the results of a search for a keyword.
So, for example, an internet retailer selling holidays might want to pay for a link to its website to appear at the top of a list of search-engine results for "cheap flights" or "bargain breaks".
The revenues generated by keyword auctions are rising exponentially. According to Jupiter Research, "paid search advertising" in Europe will grow from €358m (£247m) in 2003 to €1.5bn in 2009. Keyword or paid search advertising accounts for half of all internet advertising spending, but it has also fuelled overall advertising on websites. The Interactive Advertising Bureau says UK online media spending is growing at 76 per cent a year and was £468.8m over the 12 months to June 2004.
So what chance does Microsoft have of toppling Google? MSN Search will make money in the same way as its rival by charging for sponsored links. But Microsoft says its secret weapon is MSN Search's link to the computer giant's Encarta encyclopaedia software, which has 1.4 million entries. This allows users to ask direct questions – such as "What is the population of Chile?" – and get immediate answers.
Internet analysts are less than impressed. "Microsoft has produced a search engine that's better in almost every way than Google, except one: its search results are terrible," an analyst for The Register, an IT newspaper, said last week.
Creating a successful search engine is not just about a brand. It sounds obvious, but a search engine's success is based on how good it is at returning the information most relevant to users' requests.
All search engines use "spider" software that trawls the internet and builds a vast database of words found on different websites. The way in which this information is deemed relevant by the search engine is decided by a complex series of mathematical processes or algorithms.
Microsoft boasts that its search engine is faster than Google and that it updates its lists of 5bn websites every two days, against two weeks for its rivals. It also argues that it will be much more relevant – offering fewer websites for each query, but ones that provide more accurate, targeted information.
David Graham, the MSN Search business manager in the UK, says Microsoft faces a stiff challenge to create a brand to rival Google, but adds: "Google and Yahoo have been around for seven or eight years. But we have the advantage of hindsight which has given our hundreds of developers and mathematicians some ideas about the best algorithms to use."
However, in a field where brand positioning is so important, some internet analysts believe MSN Search will suffer because of its links with Microsoft and the latter's controversial dominance of the software industry.
For MSN Search to succeed it will need to shake off its big-business credentials if it wants to be regarded by web surfers as a match for Google as the window to the world.
February 05, 2005
Meeting with TakingITGlobal
What is TakingITGlobal?
TakingITGlobal.org is a global online community, providing youth with inspiration to make a difference, a source of information on issues, opportunities to take action, and a bridge to get involved locally, nationally and globally.
There was an interesting issue which is directly related to my interest and I wanto share it with you.
Intercultural Dialogue
An important barometer of cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue is a prerequisite for, and a cornerstone of, international peace and stability. Despite repeated calls for greater dialogue among civilizations and better understanding of other cultures in lieu of rapid integration of socioeconomic ties between sovereign states, history reminds us that celebrating cultural diversity and maintaining cross-cultural dialogue have always been important to coexistence and mutual understanding.
Celebrating cultural diversity through intercultural dialogue fosters greater understanding of other lifestyles, thoughts, traditions, behaviours, etc. in a manner that neutralizes our predispositions, stereotypes, and prejudices toward other ‘different’ peoples. Such dialogues serve as constant reminders that through understanding we can achieve cooperation, which leads us to coexistence, which in turn leads to greater harmony and peace.
It is precisely this element of dialogue that has been so noticeably – and tragically – absent from dark periods of human history, where large-scale wars and ethnic cleansing campaigns went hand-in-hand with the dehumanization of other cultures and peoples. Through dispelling myths and propagandistic narratives preached by evil tyrants and dictators, intercultural dialogue allows for a medium to share experiences, struggles, and achievements devoid of conflict and mistrust.
Google vs. MSN Search
Two days ago MSN Search released and after this date in some of the newspapers there is a debate about the topic that "will MSN Search beat Google?"
After releasing of MSN Search, I entered to look at "new" search engine that went for 100 million dollars. First of all, it is not as simple as Google. Before going over this subject I want to mention something.
When I entered to MSN site, I saw that MSN imitated Yahoo in its search tabs. Is it originality? Of course not. That’s why the Google is "numero uno". Being the distinguished one plays an important role in this technological age. Before Google, there were some other engines but simplicity as well as originality of Google won the game.
Now, talking about MSN Search. MSN imitated the Google in this time and pretending to be as Google. Putting the links in the top of search box.
THE USABILITY OF MSN SEARCH IS DOWN!!!
The basic usability problem is the search box. As we know from usability book of Jackob Nielsen, the search box has to be at least 35 characters long not 20 as in MSN Search. But in Google it is 50, congratulations. This puts Google one step further.
There are links as well as combo-box. Why do we need two navigation tools? The links is enough because the other is hidden in combo box. No NEED.
Also, no background image is needed because this images cuts the pages into two areas first active and the other passive but in fact this web page have to be simple and active.
Combo-box is not working properly (at least in Firefox 1.0)
I want to say that, I am not criticizing MSN Search in a way that users will not use it. As I mentioned, they spent 100 million dollars for this search engine but they spent it for its infrastructure but MSN have to spend some time to make it usable. We - users do not care about infrastructure and we do not care about which algorithms it uses to find what we need, we care about the results. Do they satisfy us, and are they usable for us.
MSN, please go over the usability of "NEW SEARCH ENGINE"...
Golden Newspaper
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In China the first in the world gold newspaper is printed. The news agency of Sinhua reported on this. Newspaper left in two copies.
To the first edition was 500 grams of gold, and it managed more than into eight thousand dollars. The second, cheaper edition, cost three and one-half thousands of dollars. It weight is 200 grams of gold. Gold newspaper let out publication China Economic Daily in the commemoration of the achievements of the last ten sessions of the highest legislative organ of China. This unique publication is named "period of prosperity of China". Is released gold newspaper in is released gold newspaper in city Shen'chzhen' - rapidly developing economic region in South Qandun.
