Google to roll out revamped Image Search

Google has redesigned its image search, Google Images, to offer a better and more streamlined search experience.
The search giant informed through a blog post that the new interface, which is being gradually rolled out to all users, will display image search results within an inline panel, and users will be able to flip through images displayed on the results page by using their keyboard.
In contrast to the current version, where users are taken to a separate page to preview the image with an iframe on the side that displays the name of the site, information about the size and resolution and type, the revamped image search listing will display detailed information about the image, including metadata, right underneath its preview on the results page.
Details such as the title of the page hosting the image, the domain name it originates from, and the image size will be displayed prominently next to the image, as per Google. Users will be able to browse other search listings by scrolling down and selecting another image.
It appears that the new version, which is a bit similar to Google's Image search on tablets, might have been designed keeping in consideration touchscreen laptops, desktops and hybrid devices.
Google has also made changes through which it claims that sites hosting the images will see an increase in average click-through rates. The new search interface will allow users to click on the domain name (unlike the current interface), and the listing will also feature a clickable button to visit the page hosting the image, and another button to view the image.
Google says that the changes will speed up the experience for users, reduce the load on the source website's servers, and improve accuracy of metrics like pageviews for websites.

Governments world over fishing for more user data from Google

Google is being pulled into an increasing number of police and government investigations around the world as authorities seek to learn more about the people who use its Internet search engine, email and other services.
The latest snapshot of law enforcement agencies' efforts to extract personal information from Google emerged in a Wednesday report from the company.
Governments presented Google with 21,389 requests for information on 33,634 of its users during the last six months of 2012. The number of requests was up 17 percent from a year earlier.
Authorities in the U.S. delivered nearly 8,438 of the requests, representing nearly 40 percent of the worldwide total. The U.S. volume was one-third higher than in the same period the previous year.
Subpoenas accounted for 68 percent of U.S. requests, followed by search warrants at 22 percent. A mix of court orders and other legal demands made up the remaining U.S. requests for user information from Google.
India generated the second highest number of user requests during the final half of last year at 2,431, a 10 percent increase from the previous year.
Since 2010, Google Inc. has been disclosing the total number of subpoenas, search warrants and other legal requests that it receives.
The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., said it plans to release a report within the next few months on the number of government demands it receives to remove videos, blog entries and other content from its services. That data also will cover the July-December period.

iPhone most popular in US, while Android popular worldwide in Q4 2012: Report

Apple's iPhone remained the most popular smartphone among US buyers in the closing months of 2012 while Android handsets were on top worldwide, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech reported on Tuesday.
"At the end of 2012, the global (operating system) picture shows Android on top, but clearly the rate of growth it experienced over the past year is beginning to slow as easy wins from first-time smartphone buyers begin to reduce," said Kantar global consumer insight director Dominic Sunnebo.
Apple iPhones accounted for 51.2 percent of smartphone sales in the United States during the 12-week period ending December 23rd of last year, according to Kantar.
Smartphones powered by Google-backed Android software made up slightly more than 44 percent of sales while handsets based on Microsoft's Windows operating system were a distant third-place with 2.6 percent, the report indicated.
Android smartphones continued to be best sellers in major markets including Britain, China, Spain, Australia, and Germany while iPhones were favored in Japan as well as the United States, according to Kantor.
Windows smartphones appeared to be catching on in Europe, with its shares of sales in Britain and Italy climbing to 5.9 and 13.9 percent respectively, the reported indicated.
"Windows Phone is now starting to gain respectable shares in a number of key European countries," Sunnebo said.
"However, its performance in the Chinese and US markets remains underwhelming; these remain key challenges for Microsoft to overcome during 2013."

Next-gen Google Nexus 10 tablet rumoured to feature quad-core processor, 8-core GPU

Google is currently rumoured to be working on a new Nexus 10 tablet that is likely to replace the Exynos 5 processor and Mali-T604 GPU as found in the original Nexus 10 tablet, reports Droid Life via chip-focussed site Bright Side of News.

The second generation Google Nexus 10 tablet may feature a quad-core processor and new 8-core Mali-T678 GPU. BSN also claims to have spotted the new tablet at CES in an identical current Nexus 10 chassis. They further add that the benchmark performance on it was "night and day" compared to the original.

Google is also believed to be making minor design improvements over the current Nexus 10 tablet though a major overhaul in design will be applicable only for the third-gen, which is pretty far away from this point.

While we believe we saw a prototype design in an old chassis (it was identical to the currently selling Nexus 10), the performance difference in popular benchmarks was night and day. The final design of the part (Google currently does not have final versions of the chassis) should address the shortcomings of the original design, even though we were told that the company was satisfied with the original design. They did agree that the design lacked a bit of "wow factor", but that will probably wait for the third generation.

Going by these sources, the tablet could make a rather quiet appearance at the Mobile World Congress next month, though the device may not be shipped in the initial couple of months possibly until the back-to-school period. Then it would be more sensible on Google's part to see the Google I/O event as a possible launch opportunity.

The original Nexus 10 was launched in October last year, which marked the search giant's entry into the 10-inch tablet arena. other specs of the tablet include a dual-core Cortex A15 processor with 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, 5-megapixel rear and 1.9-megapixel front cameras, NFC, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a 9,000mAh battery.

The entry-level Nexus 10 is priced at $399 and began selling in November 2012 in the US, Britain, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Canada and Japan. The other variant is a 32GB Wi-Fi only Nexus 10 that costs $499.

EU says Google must change search results presentation - report

Google will be forced to change the way its search results are presented in Europe or face antitrust charges for "diverting traffic" to its own services, The Financial Times reported the European Union's antitrust chief as saying.
The EU's competition commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, told the newspaper in an interview published on Friday that he intends to prevent Google from allegedly distorting choices for consumers and taking business from rivals.
"We are still investigating, but my conviction is are diverting traffic," the newspaper quoted him as saying, referring to Google's preferential treatment of its own vertical search services.
"They are monetizing this kind of business, the strong position they have in the general search market and this is not only a dominant position, I think I fear there is an abuse of this dominant position," he said.
The EU issued Google an ultimatum on December 18, giving it a month to come up with detailed proposals to resolved a two-year investigation into complaints that it used its power to block rivals such as Microsoft.
Google has been the center of a two-year investigation by the EU based on complaints that Google unfairly favored its services over its rivals in search results and that it may have copied material from travel and restaurant websites without permission.
Almunia told the newspaper that his concern was "the way they present their own services" and that he was "not discussing the algorithm" the top-secret formula behind Google's search engine.
The FT said this suggested one facet of the solution would be labeling when Google's in-house services such as shopping comparison information - are artificially given higher billing than rivals, although other changes would likely apply to how Google services are displayed within general search engines.
He also said that while Google showed a more constructive approach at a meeting in December, he warned that he would be "obliged" to issue formal charges if its proposal was unsatisfactory.
Google spokesman Al Verney said: "We continue to work cooperatively with the commission."
Divergence from US
Almunia's spokesman confirmed the quotes in the FT but said they did not add a new position on behalf of the European Commission.
"He was highlighting that we think the preferential treatment may lead to diversion of traffic, which we consider anticompetitive. That's a basic concern we have as we explained last May," the spokesman, Antoine Colombani, told Reuters.
The EU's stance on Google marks a sharply different approach to that of U.S regulators, who last week ended their investigation into the company and concluded that it had not manipulated its Web search results to hurt rivals, a verdict which disappointed its rivals.
Almunia told the FT that the EU's rare divergence with the U.S. was due to the differing legal standards for abuse of dominance, as well as Google's stronger position in Europe where it handles more than 90 percent of searches.
He also dismissed the idea that an intervention would cause a rift with the US and trigger outrage at a European meddling with a US corporate giant.
He said, "I have never received a single message coming from the other side of the Atlantic saying, 'hey, what are you doing?' Everyone knows this is global."
Almunia said a separate a less advanced probe into Google's Android's operating system will remain open and outside the settlement.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Google unblocks Maps on Windows Phone

Various users have reported that they are now able to access Google Maps as usual on Windows Phone, indicating that Google has reversed the block it had put in place earlier.

Last Friday, Windows Phone users had reported that while trying to access the Web-based version of Google Maps, they were being redirected to google.com on their phones.

Though initially, the search giant remained quiet about the problem, it later issued a statement to The Next Web offering an explanation.

"The mobile web version of Google Maps is optimised for WebKit browsers such as Chrome and Safari. However, since Internet Explorer is not a WebKit browser, Windows Phone devices are not able to access Google Maps for the mobile web."

This was followed by a statement from Microsoft falsifying Google's explanation. In its defence, Microsoft argued that the company uses the same rendering engine in the version of Internet Explorer used in Windows Phone 8 as the one in Windows 8.  The latter has no trouble accessing Google Maps.

However, people could use the desktop version of Google Maps just fine by changing the user agent on the Windows Phone simulator to something that doesn't say Windows Phone or identifies itself as Internet Explorer for Windows Phone. To be more specific, misspelling "Windows Phone" makes Google Maps work, which is interesting.

Later, Google admitted that it had chosen to block access to Maps from Windows phone for other reasons, mainly that it didn't think that Internet Explorer was good enough. It also mentioned that Mozilla's Firefox mobile browser "did offer a somewhat better user experience" and so the company chose not to redirect those users.

As far as the epic battle between Microsoft and Google is concerned, this is a continuation of Google's war on Microsoft. It recently announced plans to drop Exchange ActiveSync support for Gmail, which means Windows Phone users will not be able to use Gmail on their phones.

In more recent events, the software giant stepped up its criticism of Google on antitrust grounds, claiming the Internet giant refuses to allow Windows Phone users "proper access" to the YouTube video service.

Google's Motorola drops key patent claims against Microsoft

Google unit Motorola Mobility has asked a trade panel to drop two key patents from an infringement complaint that it filed against Microsoft, according to a filing at the International Trade Commission.
The ITC has been considering accusations by Motorola Mobility, which has since been purchased by Google, that Microsoft infringed on its patented technology to make its popular Xbox.
Google filed a motion with the ITC on Tuesday, asking that two patents be withdrawn from the case. One patent remains, according to the filing.
The withdrawal was required under an agreement that Google made with the Federal Trade Commission last week settling a pair of long-running antitrust investigations.
The FTC, U.S Department of Justice and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office assert that companies should not request sales bans when filing patent infringement lawsuits based on patents that are essential to a standard in most cases. Standard essential patents ensure that devices are interoperable.
Microsoft identified the two patents withdrawn from the ITC case as standard essential patents.
"We're pleased that Google has finally withdrawn these claims for exclusion orders (sales bans) against Microsoft, and hope that it will now withdraw similar claims pending in other jurisdictions," David Howard, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, said in an emailed statement.
Google did not immediately respond to requests for a comment.
Microsoft said that standard essential patents had been asserted in cases in Wisconsin and Washington district courts, both of which have been stayed. Sales bans, or injunctions, were requested in both cases, Microsoft said.
The ITC is a popular venue for patent lawsuits because it can bar the importation of infringing products and because it issues decisions relatively quickly.
The International Trade Commission case is No. 337-752.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Google Earth helps put North Korea gulag system on map

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's visit to North Korea this week has been met with sharp criticism and low expectations, but the global Internet search giant indirectly is helping to make history by revealing one of the reclusive country's darkest secrets, say human rights activists.
Google Earth, the company's popular satellite imagery product, might be the last thing Schmidt will want to showcase for his hosts, because it presents a bird's eye view of many things that secretive North Korea wants to keep hidden.
Human rights activists and bloggers have taken a Google program used mostly for recreation, education and marketing and applied it to map a vast system of dozens of prison camps that span North Korea, a country slightly smaller in area than Greece and home to 23 million people.
As many as 250,000 political prisoners and their families toil on starvation rations in the mostly remote mountain camps, according to estimates by international human rights groups.
Schmidt's trip to Pyongyang with former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has been criticized by the U.S. State Department as ill-timed - coming weeks after North Korea conducted a rocket launch in violation of U.N. Security Council sanctions.
Rights activists are skeptical that celebrity visits to Pyongyang can produce meaningful results, but they are inclined to give Google credit for living up to its informal motto of "Don't Be Evil" when it comes to how Google Earth sheds light on North Korea.
"What Eric Schmidt does or does not do in Pyongyang will probably be forgotten in a few weeks," said Joshua Stanton, a Washington lawyer who devotes his spare time to blogging and activism on North Korea human rights.
"The good that Google has done, however inadvertently, by helping people tell the truth about North Korea, will probably be reflected in the history of the country one day," he said.
Google has characterized Schmidt's trip as "personal" travel, and Schmidt did not respond to requests for comment before leaving for Pyongyang. The company declined to comment on the use of Google Earth in monitoring North Korea.
Richardson said last week he hoped to win the release of Kenneth Bae, a U.S. tour guide detained in the North since November.
Hidden gulag no longer so hidden
Stanton's blog http://freekorea.us/ carries satellite images from Google Earth and analysis of the features of six political prisoner camps - three of which he is credited with playing a role in confirming or identifying.
The blogger identifies images of gates and guard houses, and in some cases coal mines and crude burial grounds - corroborated through the work of experts and interviews with defectors from North Korea who lived or worked in the camps.
"The largest of the camps, if you don't know what you're looking at, look like towns or villages, and I suspect they are designed that way to fit into the countryside," said Stanton, whose readers trade tips on the camps and their landmarks.
Stanton, who became interested in North Korea while serving in the U.S. military in South Korea at the height of a deadly late-1990s famine in the North, built on the pioneering work of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a U.S. non-governmental organization which unveiled the camps in a 2003 book, "The Hidden Gulag."
When a second edition of "The Hidden Gulag" came out in 2012, Google Earth received prominent acknowledgement.
"The dramatically improved, higher resolution satellite imagery now available through Google Earth allows the former prisoners to identify their former barracks and houses, their former execution grounds, and other landmarks in the camps," said the study.
"Hidden Gulag" also credited Stanton and a second blogger, Curtis Melvin, whose blog http://www.nkeconwatch.com/ has been at the forefront of using Google Earth to catalog not only prison camps but also ordinary facilities like schools, factories and train stations.
"It opens up areas of North Korea that no foreigners are allowed to see at all," said Melvin, who downloads the free program available to the general public.
Imagery makes denials implausible
Melvin, an economist with an unfinished doctoral dissertation on North Korea's monetary system, verifies landmarks he finds on Google Earth by studying maps and documents and by sitting down in front of his computer in Virginia with North Koreans.
"I've also been watching North Korean television literally every day for about three years, so I have a list of thousands of names (of places) I can ask them specific questions about," he said of his interviews with defectors from North Korea.
North Korean defector Kim Sung Min, who escaped the country in 1997 by jumping off a train that was taking him to be executed, "told me the name of the train station where he jumped, and I pulled it up immediately and we were able to trace his actual escape path out of North Korea," said Melvin.
Some of Google Earth's satellite imagery comes from DigitalGlobe, a 20-year-old Colorado firm that, under its previous name, EarthWatch Incorporated, was the first outfit to get a U.S. government license to gather and sell satellite imagery commercially.
The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea receives imagery and analysis pro bono in a project with DigitalGlobe Inc, which has a record of supporting humanitarian causes, said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the committee.
According to satellite technicians, the imagery available directly from DigitalGlobe is of finer resolution and is updated more frequently than the versions carried for free on Google Earth.
"Satellite imagery readily available through Google Earth has certainly enabled human rights experts to decisively confirm that these facilities do exist, despite the fact that the North Korean regime denies their existence," Scarlatoiu said.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Google, Amazon rivalry set to escalate in 2013

Google, Amazon rivalry set to escalate in 2013

When Amazon.com Inc CEO Jeff Bezos got word of a project at Google Inc to scan and digitize product catalogs a decade ago, the seeds of a burgeoning rivalry were planted.
The news was a "wake-up" call to Bezos, an early investor in Google. He saw it as a warning that the Web search engine could encroach upon his online retail empire, according to a former Amazon executive.
"He realized that scanning catalogs was interesting for Google, but the real win for Google would be to get all the books scanned and digitized" and then sell electronic editions, the former executive said.
Thus began a rivalry that will escalate in 2013 as the two companies' areas of rivalry grow, spanning online advertising and retail to mobile gadgets and cloud computing.
It could upend the last remaining areas of cooperation between the two companies. For instance, Amazon's decision to use a stripped down version of Google's Android system in its new Kindle Fire tablet, coupled with Google's ambitious plans for its Motorola mobile devices unit, will only add to tensions.
The confrontation marks the latest front in a tech industry war in which many combatants are crowding onto each others' turf. Lurking in the shadows for both Google and Amazon is Facebook with its own search and advertising ambitions.
"Amazon wants to be the one place where you buy everything. Google wants to be the one place where you find everything, of which buying things is a subset," said Chi-Hua Chien, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. "So when you marry those facts I think you're going to see a natural collision."
Both companies have a lot at stake. Google's market capitalization of $235 billion is about double Amazon's, largely because Google makes massive net earnings, expected by analysts to be $13.2 billion this year, based on a huge 32 percent net profit margin, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. By contrast, Amazon is seen reporting a small loss this year.
Amazon shareholders have been patient as the company has invested for growth but it will have to start producing strong earnings at some stage - more likely if it grows in higher margin areas such as advertising. Google's share price, on the other hand, is vulnerable to signs of slowing margin growth.
Ad clash
Not long after Bezos learned of Google's catalog plans, Amazon began scanning books and providing searchable digital excerpts. Its Kindle e-reader, launched a few years later, owes much of its inspiration to the catalog news, the executive said.
Now, Amazon is pushing its online ad efforts, threatening to siphon revenue and users from Google's main search website.
Amazon's fledgling ad business is still a fraction of Google's, with Robert W. Baird & Co. estimating Amazon is on track to generate about $500 million in annual advertising revenue - tiny, given it recorded $48 billion of overall revenue in 2011. By contrast, 96 percent of Google's $38 billion in 2011 sales came from advertising.
But Amazon's newly developed "DSP" technology, which taps into the company's vast store of consumer purchase history to help marketers target ads at specific groups of people on Amazon.com and on other websites, could change all that.
"From a client's perspective, the data that Amazon owns is actually better than what Google has," said Mark Grether, the chief operating officer of Xaxis, an audience buying company that works with major advertisers. "They know what you just bought, and they also know what you are right now trying to buy."
Amazon is discussing a partnership with Xaxis in which the company would help Amazon sell ads for the service, Grether noted.
Amazon did not respond to an email seeking a comment.
Starting point
Amazon can bring in higher-margin revenue by selling advertising than it can from its retail operations. By showing ads for products that it may not actually sell on its own website, Amazon establishes itself as a starting point for consumers looking to buy something on the Web.
Research firm Forrester reported that 30 percent of U.S. online shoppers in the third quarter began researching their purchase on Amazon.com, compared with 13 percent who started on a search engine such as Google - a reversal from two years earlier when search engines were more popular starting points.
Amazon now sells ads that show up to the side of product search results on its website. There were 6.7 billion display ad impressions on Amazon.com in the third quarter, more than triple the number in the same period of 2011, according to comScore.
That early success is a "huge concern" for Google, whose business relies heavily on product searches and product search ads, said Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter.
Partly in response, Google recently revamped its product search service, Google Shopping, by charging retailers and other online sellers a fee to be listed in results.
Founded four years apart in the late 1990s, Bezos has long worried about Amazon's reliance on Google for traffic, according to people close to the company, while also being dubious about Google's high market valuation.
"He'd say: 'This is the first time in the history of the world where the map maker is worth more than the territory that it's mapping,'" recalled the former Amazon executive of Bezos' comments about Google's popular online mapping service.
Tensions build
Google's Android system is thriving but still has not cracked the nut of how to make money from mobile search ads and sales of digital goods like games, apps, music and video.
"If they can figure out mobile ads, that would truly be Google's second act," said Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.
But Amazon launched a broadside against Google in 2011 with the creation of its own version of Android for its Kindle Fire tablets that replaces key Google money-making services, such as a digital music and application storefront, with its own.
Not unlike Apple, "Amazon wants to control the experience on their devices," said Oren Etzioni, a University of Washington computer science professor. "That doesn't make Google happy."
The two are also clashing in cloud computing software.
Amazon started its cloud business more than six years ago, providing data storage, computing power and other technology services from remote locations. Google only launched its cloud computing business this year, but the market is growing so quickly there is still room to grab share, Etzioni said.
"I would not write Google off," he added. "Amazon has the early lead but it's very early."
Transact or die?
Still, mobile gadgets and cloud computing are currently tiny businesses compared with the multibillion-dollar opportunity presented by advertising and online commerce.
Google recently acquired BufferBox, a company with a network of lockers that shoppers can use to receive packages. It is also testing same-day delivery in San Francisco, hinting at growing interest in a larger role in online retail.
It is not talking about its full plans for retail, but some analysts think features such as same-day delivery or "pick-up" lockers, are valuable features it can use to enhance its existing online ad business. An ad for shoes, for example, might also make the shoes available for pick-up in a locker nearby, said Needham & Co analyst Kerry Rice.
If Google can own the search and the delivery, it will be able to provide the same experience as Amazon, with no inventory - "a higher margin, more efficient model," Chien said.
Earlier this year, Google launched a new certification service highlighting merchants that ship quickly and reliably and backing it with up to $1,000 in "purchase protection."
Google could create a database of products and send shoppers to a page that has a way to buy quickly through the company's payments service Google Wallet, Forrester's Mulpuru said.
Google could then send that transaction to the retailer who would ship the product to the consumer. That ability is critical, according to Schachter, who said if consumers lack the ability to purchase items through Google it will lag Amazon and eBay Inc.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Google Play growing faster than Apple's App Store: Report

Google Play growing faster than Apple's App Store: Report

Google's online Play shop of applications for Android-powered smartphones or tablets is growing fast, a report released Thursday by market tracker Distimo said.
The aggregate daily revenue at Google Play shops across the 20 largest countries where they are available climbed 43 percent during the past four months, while sales at Apple's online App Store increased 21 percent.
"Google Play is just starting to rival the Apple App Store in a few countries on a worldwide scale, even though it is still losing in terms of daily revenues," Distimo said in the report.
Apple's App Store catering to its iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch devices took in more than $15 million dollars a day in November, while daily revenue at Google Play was just shy of $3.5 million, according to Distimo.
"There were many success stories in 2012 about applications that became very successful in a matter of a few days and gathered millions of downloads and revenues," the analytics firm said in the report.
"Looking at the worldwide daily download and revenue volumes, the opportunity is really huge."
Smartphone game application "Draw Something" reached a million users in just nine days, while Asian publisher Naver launched five games in November that quickly became hits.
Naver game application Line Pop was downloaded 1.75 million times within three days of its release, according to Distimo.
A report released this month by research firm IDC projected that Android operating system will power more than two-thirds of smartphones sold worldwide in 2012, and will remain the dominant platform for at least the next four years.
IDC also boosted its forecast for global tablet sales for 2012 to 122.3 million, from 117.1 million, in large part due to demand for Android tablets and the new iPad mini.

YouTube analytics provider Tubular raises $2.5 million in funding

YouTube analytics provider Tubular raises $2.5 million in funding
Tubular, a small San Francisco start-up that provides analytics for YouTube content creators, has raised $2.5 million in venture capital in the latest sign of how far the business ecosystem has evolved around the Google-owned video repository.
YouTube was once known as Wild West of online video, but over the past two years Google has focused on raising the quality of YouTube content through a series of direct investments and the cultivation of third-party "networks".
The result is a cluster of small studios, mostly based in Los Angeles, that acts like a digital Hollywood, pumping out slick YouTube hits.
With the ultimate goal of hosting enough high-quality content to lure big-spending advertisers to YouTube, Google doled out more than $100 million last year in grants to its networks and bedroom stars.
In May Google led a group of investors who poured $35 million into Machinima, a leading network, to stoke growth in the YouTube industry.
That market has now grown to the point that it can support its own start-ups, says Tubular's founder Rob Gabel.
Competition
As more semi-professional and professional YouTube creators enter the sector, with increasing competition among them, there is a growing need for analytical services.
Tubular is one such service, allowing customers to monitor and measure when videos get the most views and comments, or the sources of referred traffic.
The software includes a dashboard that displays the real-time analytics, which are generated by tapping into a stream of data provided by YouTube.
"If YouTube is a multibillion-dollar market, then that's billions of dollars going out to content creators who can then invest that again," said Gabel, a former Machinima employee.
"On every platform, from Google to Facebook to Twitter, people have turned to third parties' helpful tools."
At a high level, the pie is large and continuing to grow rapidly. Former Citi analyst Mark Mahaney estimates that YouTube will bring Google a total of $3.6 billion in 2012.
Rich Heitzmann, a co-founder of FirstMark Capital, which led Tubular's latest funding round, said that Google is far from wringing out all of the potential revenue from YouTube.
"We think the ecosystem is at least the size of Facebook's, considering it has a billion users and if you consider the time spent on YouTube," Heitzmann said.
"The advertising opportunities are there, and yet the ecosystem hasn't evolved technologically."
Sustainable business
Other investors in Tubular's first tranche of equity financing included High Line Venture Partners, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures and Bedrocket Media Ventures.
Still, Gabel is betting that he can create a long-term, sustainable business on YouTube's platform at a time when some Silicon Valley companies are wary of building on the backs of larger companies.
Twitter, for instance, courted controversy this year when it made a business decision to shut off its firehose of data for a number of popular third-party developers to drive more visitors to its own site.
Allen DeBevoise, the CEO of Machinima who is also a Tubular investor, said that YouTube has reason to foster its independent developers rather than squash them.
"It's a thriving and fast-moving ecosystem now," he said. "But a lot of players are needed to make it all work."
Though Gabel acknowledges that the YouTube industry's rapid expansion is no guarantee of success, he has high hopes.
"Everything is a bit of gamble," he said, "but I feel good gambling on YouTube and online video."
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Google to sell Motorola's TV set-top business for $2.35 billion

Google is selling Motorola Mobility's TV set-top business for $2.35 billion, lightening the load that the Internet search leader took on earlier this year when it completed the biggest acquisition in its history.
The cash-and-stock deal announced late Wednesday will turn over Motorola's set-top division to Arris Group Inc., a relatively small provider of high-speed Internet equipment that is looking to become a bigger player in the delivery of video. Investors applauded the move, driving up Arris' stock by nearly 17 percent.
Google's decision to jettison the set-top boxes comes seven months after the Mountain View, Calif., company took control of Motorola Mobility Holdings in a $12.4 billion purchase.
The set-top boxes were never a big allure for Google, although the company is interested in finding ways to pipe its service on to TVs so it can sell more advertising.
Google prized Motorola for its portfolio of more than 17,000 mobile patents. Those form an arsenal that it can use in a fierce battle that has broken out over intellectual property as smartphones and tablet computers have emerged as hot commodities in recent years.
Motorola also makes smartphones and tablets, a manufacturing business that Google will retain, despite lingering concerns on Wall Street about the hardware shrinking Google's profit margins and possibly alienating other device makers that use the company's Android software.
Besides not being a natural fit for Google, Motorola's set-top box also has become a potentially expensive liability. Digital video recorder pioneer TiVo Inc. is seeking billions of dollars in damages in a lawsuit alleging that Motorola's boxes infringed on its patents. Those claims are scheduled to go to trial next year in federal court in Texas.
Although they declined to provide specifics, Arris Group executives told analysts in a Wednesday conference call that Google still must cover most of the bill for any damages or settlement that TiVo might win.
TiVo already has negotiated about $1 billion in combined settlements in other patent-infringement cases it has brought against other companies, including Dish Network Corp., AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications.
The proposed sale of Motorola's set-top division calls for Google to receive $2.05 billion in cash and $300 million worth of Arris stock. If the deal wins regulatory approval, Arris Group expects to take over the division before the end of June.
Google will also pare its expenses, something likely to please investors concerned about Motorola being a drag on the company's earnings. Arris said about 7,000 people work in Motorola's set-top division. Google ended September with about 53,500 employees, including 17,400 who worked on the Motorola side of its operations. More than 20,000 people worked at Motorola Mobility when Google became the owner in late May, but the payroll was slashed as part of an effort to pare the losses that have been piling up within Motorola as its once popular cellphones lost market share to Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics.
But Motorola's set-top business had been making money, according to Google, though the company didn't say how much.
In the past year ending in September, Motorola's set-top operations generated $3.4 billion in revenue. That makes it twice as big as Arris Group, whose revenue totaled $1.3 billion during the same period. Arris Group, which is based Suwanee, Ga., had earned $39 million through the nine months of last year after suffering a loss of nearly $13 million for all of 2011.
"This represents a great leap forward for Arris," CEO Bob Stanzione said during Wednesday's conference call.
Arris' stock surged $2.46 to $17 in extended trading Wednesday while Google's stock dipped $2.61 to $717.50.
The other half of the old Motorola Inc., Motorola Solutions Inc., remains an independent company. Based in Schaumburg, Ill., it sells communications equipment to government and corporate customers.

EU seeks Google accord to address anti-trust concerns

The European Union will seek an accord with US Internet search giant Google as progress has been made in resolving EU anti-trust concerns, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said Tuesday.
Almunia said he made the decision after meeting Google head Eric Schmidt in Brussels as "we have substantially reduced our differences regarding possible ways to address" EU competition concerns since talks began in July.
"On the basis of the progress made, I now expect Google to come forward with a detailed commitment text in January 2013," he said in a statement.
This text will used as the basis to firm up the measures Google should take which will "then be market-tested, leading to a possible decision with binding commitments."
The EU listed four areas of concern regarding Google, chief among them how it can highlight links with its own search services in specific areas such as travel or restaurants.
It also has concerns over how Google may use and display third party content on its search services; the possible use of exclusivity agreements by the company and restrictions on allowing advertisers who would want to move their advertising from the company's AdWords service.
The Commission launched an anti-trust investigation into allegations that Google had abused its dominant market position in November 2010.
Tuesday's EU announcement came after reports that US regulators were also likely to conclude a lengthy anti-trust probe into Google's dominance of Internet searches with a voluntary settlement.
The Wall Street Journal said Monday that Google was likely to agree to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that calls for unspecified changes in how it handles search queries but would stop short of signing a consent decree that could be enforced by a court.
The Washington Post also reported that a settlement was likely this week, saying it would fall well short of what Google's rivals had sought.
The online news site Politico reported that the FTC did not have the votes to bring an enforcement action against Google but that the settlement would include new practices on the use of "snippets" of user reviews from companies such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, companies which have said Google uses such content without permission.
Politico said Google will also pledge to make it easier for advertisers to buy ad space on its search engine and to move their ad campaigns to competing sites.
Critics say Google controls some 70 percent of the Internet search market and the advertising that goes along with it and may exert even more power in the mobile sector by controlling the Android operating system used on two-thirds of smartphones.
Google has been accused of "scraping" content from other services like travel and restaurant reviews while keeping consumers on its own sites.
It is also under fire for allegedly promoting its own services including travel, restaurant reviews and YouTube videos in its search results.

YouTube marks 2012 with 'Gangnam Style' mash up

YouTube has marked a year of viral video sensations with a "Gangnam Style" mash up of its top two songs of 2012, starring South Korean performer Psy and a horde of the video-sharing site's stars.
"Rewind YouTube Style 2012" approached 16 million views one day after its Tuesday release, paying homage to "Gangnam Style" and Canadian pop star Carly Rae Jepsen's smash "Call Me Maybe".
A tiny Psy next to the YouTube icon linked to the video that opens with the five members of Canadian band Walk off the Earth performing on a guitar, which Psy then smashes before introducing the parody of his own hit.
"Gangnam Style" is closing in on one billion hits after becoming the most viewed YouTube video of all time.
The four-minute video features dozens of cameos and visual gags, testing the limit of the viewer's awareness of YouTube culture and ability to understand all the references.
The Internet's own viral stars make an appearance include the "Sh-t Girls Say" actor Graydon Sheppard and YouTube personality Jenna Marbles.
Real news landmarks of 2012 play a prominent part, such as Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner's supersonic freefall from the edge of space and NASA's Mars Curiosity landing.
People watch more than four billion hours of video monthly at YouTube, according to the Google-owned service.
The "Gangnam Style" phenomenon refuses to lose any steam, with South Korean social networks awash with conspiracies that tie Psy's horse-riding dance with 16th century French seer Nostradamus and the December 21 apocalypse prophesied by the Mayans.

sam4sammy :: India getting more utilitarian, but education, entertainment still most searched on Google

Indian Internet users are now searching more for utilitarian services like banking, shopping and travel compared to entertainment in previous years, Google India on Tuesday said.
While unveiling its annual Zeitgeist list this year, Google India Vice-President and Managing Director (Sales and Operations) Rajan Anandan said, "utilitarian services drove search volumes".

"Google's 2012 Zeitgeist reflects data from 1.2 trillion searches in 146 languages globally. With 137 million users, India is the world's third largest Internet market and is a good barometer of trends in Indian society as a whole," Anandan told reporters New Delhi.

While results in 2011 reflected the emphasis on people and event related searches, Internet users in India are now starting to use the web for their personal needs - shopping, booking tickets and making informed decisions for their offline purchases, he added.

According to the Zeitgeist, IBPS (Institute of Banking Personnel Selection) led the top trending search list, followed by GATE Exams, Sunny Leone, 'Ek Tha Tiger' and 'Rowdy Rathore'.

An analysis of the top searched travel websites showed that while railways, airline tickets, and hotel booking sites were an obvious trend.

A bus booking portal redbus.in featured at number three in the list, marking a new trend in how Indians prefer to travel, Anandan said, adding that a huge chunk of search volumes were coming from mobile phones.

"With growing smartphone adoption, mobile searches continued to grow with over 70 million mobile Internet users.

We expect India's next 150-180 million Internet users will access the Internet through their mobile devices," he added.

This means that the information that these users will look for will need to be more local, he said.

The most searched terms on mobile phones in 2012 included songs, YouTube, ATMs, Cricinfo and IRCTC.

Another trend seen in the Zeitgeist is the shift in the user perception on purchasing gadgets, books, accessories and more online with Flipkart, Homeshop18 and Snapdeal topping the top searched shopping websites list.

Sensex topped the most searched event this year, followed by Vilasrao Deshmukh's death and Hurricane Sandy in the US.

In a separate list by YouTube, Google's video sharing portal, the most searched video was 'Brown Rang' by YoYo Honey Singh beating international topper PSY's Gangnam Style.

Google releases YouTube Capture app for iPhone

Google has released YouTube Capture app for iPhone in an attempt to plug a gaping hole in its existing YouTube app, which does not include the ability to upload videos.

Google released the YouTube app for iPhone back in September with support for discovering and watching videos, months after Apple announced its decision to drop the iOS-bundled YouTube app. Google later updated the app to add a native interface for iPad, iPhone 5 and include other features like AirPlay. Strangely, the app didn't include an option to upload videos to YouTube. This is where YouTube Capture comes in.

YouTube Capture is a pretty basic app that prompts users to sign-in upon launch. Users have the option to enable Camera Roll that allows the app to user the phone's Gallery for storing/ accessing videos, otherwise it maintains its own private library. The app lets you share videos simultaneously to YouTube, Google+, Facebook and Twitter. It comes with basic video enhancement options like colour correction and video stabilisation.

Other options in the app include Landscape lock (enabled by default), which won't let you start video recording unless you're in landscape mode and a Rotate to begin recording option (disabled by default). On the iPhone 4S, you can toggle the upload quality between 480p and 720p (HD) - this may differ from one model to the other.

Overall, it's a pretty decent offering from Google - albeit rather basic -  though as other recent iOS launches, it's not available as a native iPad app on launch day. We expect that to change soon enough.

YouTube Capture (iPhone, Free)

Motorola News :: Britain's Pace approaches Google over Motorola Home

British TV decoder maker Pace Plc said on Monday that it had made an early-stage proposal to Internet group Google Inc to acquire its set-top TV box maker Motorola Home.
"Discussions with Google are currently at a preliminary stage and there is no certainty as to whether any agreement regarding any transaction will be reached," Pace said in a statement.

The offer is one of several bids for the unit, including from private equity firms, that Google received on Friday, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Google acquired the set-top box maker as part of its $12.5 billion acquisition in May of Motorola Mobility, which was largely motivated by a desire to snap up its large portfolio of communications patents.

Since acquiring Motorola, Google has moved to revamp the company's loss-making mobile phone business, while appearing less interested in the set-top business.

"It's a fine business, it's just not core to Google," said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser.

Motorola and Cisco Systems Inc's Scientific Atlanta dominate the U.S. market for cable television set-top boxes and for the back-end infrastructure that manages the transmission of video signals to the boxes, said Wieser.

He estimated that the Motorola's home business could fetch "in the billions" of dollars, depending on how the deal is structured, such as whether patents are included.

Arris Group, a cable equipment maker, also made a bid for the business, according to a report by Bloomberg. Arris Group and Google declined to comment.

Google, the world's No.1 Web search engine, has increasingly expanded into the hardware business as consumers turn from their personal computers to smartphones and other gadgets to access the Internet.

Google worked closely with companies such as Asus and LG Electronics to develop Nexus-branded smartphones and tablets that Google sells directly on its website. And Google has said it is shifting the emphasis at Motorola Mobility's phone unit from low-end phones to more innovative smartphones.

Some analysts had speculated that Google might use the Motorola set-top box business to help it gain a foothold in the living room, where its nearly three-year-old Google TV efforts have so far failed to make a huge splash with consumers.

"It seems like it would make sense to be able to integrate that into a set top box," said Needham & Co. analyst Kerry Rice, referring to Google TV.

But he said Motorola Home's customers cable providers and telecommunications companies were different than the advertising agencies and consumers that Google is accustomed to working with.

The Motorola Home business generated $797 million in revenue in the third quarter, according to Google's financial results, with $25 million in operating income.

Pace said its shares had been suspended from trading in London as the potential acquisition would be classified as a "reverse takeover" deal given the size of the acquisition relative to Pace.

A deal could help Pace recover from the three profit warnings it issued in 2011 due to natural disasters such as flooding in Thailand and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan that damaged the group's supply chain.

"Pace already has a somewhat stretched balance sheet, they have done a good job over the past 12 months to try to pay down that debt but how they would finance such a large acquisition is a question, but not an insurmountable one," said Numis Securities analyst Nick James.

Shares of Google were just a shade higher in Monday afternoon trading, up 80 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $685.01

© Thomson Reuters 2012

Google starts selling $99 Chromebook laptop to select schools

Google Inc began selling basic laptop computers to schools at a price of $99, meeting a price point that prominent MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte famously held out in 2005 as key to bringing computing power to the masses.
The Internet giant said on Monday that it will be offering the steep educational discount on Series 5 Chromebooks from Samsung Electronics Co through December 21. They typically retail for $249.
Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child Foundation failed to meet his ambitious target, which critics said would be impossible to meet when he set it. His XO laptop currently sell for about $200.
Still, he is widely credited with helping to launch the era of low-cost portable computing.
The creation of relatively low-cost laptops from his foundation pressured industry giants including Intel Corp, Microsoft Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc to develop inexpensive versions of their products such as the netbook.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Facebook, Yahoo, Google most accessed sites by mobile Internet users: Airtel

Facebook, Google and Yahoo are the most accessed websites among mobile Internet users, who tend to consume maximum data between 10-11 PM, shows a survey by Bharti Airtel.
"Mobile Internet sees maximum data consumption between 10 pm - 11pm and Google is most visited website in terms of unique users, while Facebook clocks maximum time spent and leads all websites in terms of page views as well as data consumption," fourth edition of Airtel Mobitude 2012 survey said.

The annual survey of customer preferences is conducted to capture the 'mobile attitude' of over 186 million Airtel customers in the country.

According to the survey, wallpaper downloads witnessed a 300 percent jump and recorded 75 million downloads while music downloads number stood at over 150 million.

"Chikni Chameli from Agneepath was the most downloaded song of the year, its actress Katrina Kaif continued to maintain the leading position in the category of images downloaded for the 4th consecutive year," the survey said.

Among actors, Shah Rukh Khan led the category of Bollywood actors' wallpaper downloads, it added.

During the year, MMS crossed the one million mark on Diwali and jumped 145 percent on the festive day for the first time.

This year's analysis also highlighted a fast increasing customer preference for MobileTV, thus resulting in a 65 percent jump in traffic experienced by the service over last year.

"The data reveals an exciting picture of India's love for movies, music, gaming and social networking. The study also brings to light India's increasing dependence on smart devices and data usage as they access a whole host of new services on the go," Bharti Airtel Chief Marketing Officer Consumer Business N Rajaram said.

Microsoft's #DroidRage Twitter campaign backfires, leads to #WindowsRage

Microsoft Windows Phone team kicked off a #DroidRage campaign on Twitter earlier this week encouraging users to share their stories related to malware on their Android smartphones. In return, Microsoft promised "get-well presents" to the best/ worst stories.

Windows Phone

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@windowsphone

Do you have an Android malware horror story? Reply with#DroidRage with your best/worst story and we may have a get-well present for you.

5 Dec 12

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While the campaign received some genuine responses, it wasn't long before it backfired on Microsoft, as people started sharing their horror stories related to Windows Phone, tagging them with #WindowsRage. Here are a couple:

Mohammad Tarakiyee@Tarakiyee

I once thought about writing malware for a @windowsphonebut then I thought, aren't they suffering enough?#DroidRage #WindowsRage

5 Dec 12

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Ollie Reardon@ojdon

You'll never get Malware from our Windows Store. You'll never find any third-party support either! #WindowsRage

6 Dec 12

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This is not the first time Microsoft has targeted Google, though this is likely the first time things have gone wrong so spectacularly for Redmond. Microsoft held the #DroidRage campaign last year as well, with not-so-embarrassing results.


More recently, Microsoft attacked Google in a series of TV ads, describing the dominant search engine as a lousy holiday shopping guide in its latest attempt to divert more traffic to its Bing search engine. To punctuate its point, Microsoft warned consumers that they risk getting "scroogled" if they rely on Google's shopping search service.

Earlier, Microsoft launched a campaign called "Bing It On", trying to show web users the quality of its Bing search engine is better than Google's. The software company unveiled the site "bingiton.com" where users input five search queries and the unbranded search results of Bing and Google were shown in two columns. For each query, users were asked to choose a winner (or a draw) and the test showed which search engine come on top in the end.

With agency inputs