Google Introduces "One Box" Music Search feature

Google now has gone one up over yahoo in the domain of music search with their newly announced “One Box” venture. It also marks the beginning of a new journey by Google in an arena once overlooked by them. And here they have done almost a catching up job by embedding this new music search feature. But as they say, its always better late than never! Though Google was lethargic to react, still when they came up, they came up with a feature that is much superior to the one already in motion by yahoo. While Yahoo’s music search only returns live playable music results for the artists name only, Google’s will return results for album and songs name also along with the traditional artist name results.

Turning down the speculations thrown out by the media that this music search results will come up with links to purchase the songs, Google’s RJ Pittman said that, they have no intention to give a commercial touch to this search feature, at least at this point of time. But going by the past records, one can easily assume that this option is always on the cards. Any ways, who cares, at least I’d care the least even if they had embedded it with commerciality.

Google has tied up with online music majors like, Lala, iLike, Pandora and Myspace for this venture. And depending upon the availability, viewers will be able to listen to the songs live, provided by these content partners.

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Real-Time Search is Not Far from Reality Now

If the current development tracks are maintained, we are not really far from celebrating the true advent of the 'Real time Search Experience'. In a win win deal proceeding Microsoft defeated Google by roping in Twitter in a dramatic table turn. Just when it seemed that the Search Emperor was going to get hold of the most promising and talented kid in the block, Microsoft flown in to the picture and snatched the prey to sport the last laugh.

And just to make the dish sweeter, Facebook also joined in the flock.

Now that's definitely one deal Google didn't want to see kissing success. Well, not much really revealed at this stage, but still it seems that the impregnated deal will soon give birth to the wonder baby who can completely change the face of the Search World in coming future. With millions of users tweeting about almost every thing under the sky, its definitely the future of searching. And the company from facebook is definitely going to make the road smoother.

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Google Drops Page Rank from Webmaster Tools

After seeing that all their suggestions regarding the ineffectiveness of page ranks in deciding a page’s true quality falling in the deaf ears, Google finally decides to drop the page rank statistics from Google Webmaster Tools. Google has been saying discouraging things regarding page rank’s authenticity for long now. But it seemed like a rather contradictory policy on their side as they kept providing page rank statistics in their Webmaster Tools. So finally Google has sealed their thoughts on page ranks with this move, that got reflected in their recently released Webmaster Tools Lab.

The obsession over the little green bar among the webmasters community was like insane. Though many of them admit that it has very little significance while judging a page’s quality, still they simply couldn’t stop themselves from giving a glare at the little green devil. Many a time I wondered how on the Earth Google could give a vulgarly high pr to some pages that simply looked like craps!

It was Susan Moskwa from Google Webmaster Central team who came out explaining the exclusion as a reminder from their end to the webmasters community about their dangerous liaison with the green bar.

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Google Chrome OS..the Raw Version got Leaked

At last we got to take a peek at the first glance of Google Chrome OS, and that too strangely enough came not from the Google’s end. And although it has come with loads of bugs and

problems in it, still it has already succeeded to generate enough curiosity among enthusiasts. You can now easily download the raw or unstable version as it is named. Google is definitely not happy about this. And they have already started an internal investigation to find out the source of this leak. I’ve here also posted some screen shots that were originally posted by Jonathan Frederickson of Techcrunch, who was actually the first person to find this out.

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Ask Launches "Deals" to Survive the Search Engine War

To 'Deal' with the competition thrown by the heavy weights like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, Ask has introduced a new service or feature, 'Ask Deal'. It is almost in the same line as 'yahoo Deal'. Using its decent enough search technology Ask promises to churn out more than 1 million discount deals available in the web that covers offers from both the national and local merchants.

In its press release(as published in the searchengineland) Ask has said,

" Ask Deals, its proprietary database of more than 1 million high-quality savings offers from national and local merchants across hundreds of product categories.

Ask Deals scours the Web for all the deals available online – from savings on ‘skinny jeans’ to restaurant coupons – and organizes the best money-saving offers front and center on the results page, eliminating the need for consumers to search multiple sites or multiple coupon sites or search engine links to find their answer. The Ask Deals database is continuously refreshed and editorially refined, giving consumers the most up-to-date and highest-quality savings offers every time they search on Ask."

With its wide range of merchandise covering and looking at the approaching festive season, it seems that Ask has struck the right chord at the right time.

Being a relatively unexplored territory, 'discount deal' search has given Ask, the required breathing space. And being early in the competition will definitely enrich them with great advantage.

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Microsoft Urges it's IE Users not to Install Google Chrome Frame

Microsoft's recent urge to it's IE8 users regarding the usage of Google Chrome Frame has not gone down well with the web community. According to a Microsoft representative who spoke with ars technica said;

"With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers. Given the security issues with plugins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take."

And that at least to me sounded really fishy. To me it was just a reflection of Microsoft's growing anxiety regarding Google. Yes,There were security issues with Chrome at it's nascent stage, but they have sorted it out now. And the most funny thing was that why they are only concerned about the IE8 version! And that too when the version still could not achieve the success that it was meant to. Isn't it a fact that more people use IE than Chrome and so the hackers also mainly target IE rather than Chrome. So their concerns in the security issue looked more of a protective grudge to me.

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Adobe buys Omniture for $1.8 billion.

In a surprisingly fast development, Adobe has announced that it will take over web analytic software company 'Omniture'. This take over will be costing them about $1.8 billion. This buy by Adobe will definitely force Google to revise its strategies for the web analytic market. Many are thinking that Google might come out with an 'Enterprise' version of their web analytics service.

Adobe Systems Inc. said Tuesday it will buy the Web analytic software company Omniture for about $1.8 billion, giving the maker of content-creation software a way to let marketers monitor the effectiveness of such content.

San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe Systems Inc. said it will buy Omniture Inc. for $21.50 per share in cash, a premium of 24 percent over Omniture’s closing stock price Tuesday.

The announcement came as Adobe said it earned $136 million, or 26 cents per share, in the fiscal third quarter that ended in August, down 29 percent from the same time a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, Adobe earned a profit of 35 cents per share, a penny above what analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting. The maker of Photoshop, Flash and Acrobat software says its revenue fell 21 percent to $697.5 million.

As nobody was expecting the entry of Adobe in the web analytics market, and that too so early, it will take some time for the web geeks to come out with their own versions and thoughts regarding this development. This has already started showing its effect in their shares(NASDAQ:OMTR), as it has pushed Omniture shares up $4.43 a share, while Adobe's share went down about 4% to $34.10.
According to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayan, this was an important game changer for both Adobe and their customers. He has also said that this 'Omniture take over' wil enable advertisers, media organizations and e-tailers to realize the full value of their digital assets.

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Google Looses Kai-Fu Lee in their Chinese Crusade

Just when everything seemed to be going alright for Google, they recieved a very disguised jolt from the Google china's head Kai-Fu Lee, as he left Google to nourish his own venture, 'Innovation Works'. It was on the cards according to many. Kai-Fu Lee has served Google for four years. And just when every one was sensing that Google might at last take a bite of it's share off the China's search engine market, that is one sidedly dominated by 'Baidu', the cards fell down. Though it might seem from the surface that it's just another job switch of a high profile Googler, there's more in to it. Google had started to penetrate the Chinese 'Oasis' search engine market after years long try and the timing could not be worse. Though Kai-Fu Lee has said that he for the time being will get fully absorbed into his venture which is about helping young and talented Chinese engineers and entrepreneurs to develop fresh internet and mobile computing technology. This new endeavor, 'Innovation Works' will hire the budding talents from China and nurture them for one year and then finally let them go open.
This is no doubt a very noble initiative and quite appreciable, but what if Kai-Fu Lee thinks of building a new Chinese search engine by mobilising these pool of talents. And with the invaluable Google experience that's definitely quite viable. No matter if it does not succeed to overpower 'Baidu', even a decent attempt can bid Google's Chinese search market dream a premature good bye forever. And that is definitely the last thing Google wants.
My assumption got closer to get transfared into belief after talking to several fellow web wizards. Now it will be really interesting to see, how Google reacts to this, what strategy they incorporate to enforce their Chinese crusade, who replaces Kai-Fu Lee and what vibe he spreads.

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Google Finally Owns the Patent to its Homepage Design

After five long years of legal procedures Google finally got hold of the patent to its very simple yet so powerful homepage design. So any one from now on, trying to take a piece out of its design could very well be dragged into legal trouble. Many Search engines who either consciously or subconsciously got influenced in their design aspect by Google, have definitely not accepted this patent episode in open minds. They are fearing a possible Google lash out from legal grounds sooner or later. They are thinking that with this new found ammunition, Google might go for the kill to extend its monopoly by finishing off the smaller rivals. And with the merging of Yahoo and MSN search technologies, it definitely looks quite a decent possiblity to clarify their no-fuss stand.

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Yahoo Launching English Version of Meme

After achieving fair success in the Portuguese and Spanish versions, Yahoo is getting ready to launch the English version of its microblogging platform 'meme'. From the recent developments it gets quite vivid that yahoo is playing all its cards to impress 'Twitter'. But may be acknowledging the huge competition its now concentrating upon developing its own 'twitter' version. The Portuguese version was shown the daylight earlier this year and they soon followed it up with a Spanish version. This service comes with almost all the features that could be found in twitter. It provides the scope for sharing photos and videos with fellow users. It also dishes out the option of reposting the messages of other users. I, like many other over enthusiastic net freak waiting eagerly for this service to get launched. It will be really interesting to see how yahoo tries to elbow out twitter on their very own ground.

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Now its Microsoft-Yahoo-Amazon vs Google in the Book Settlement issue

The challenge has become tougher for Google in the Book Settlement issue, as America’s largest online retailer and web biggie Amazon joins the hand with Microsoft-Yahoo against them. And to add salt to their wound, strong supports have been enunciated from many quarters. With a steadily growing support, this coalition is now looking to pose a serious threat to dismiss the deal that Google had struck with Authors Guild last year.

According to this deal Google gets the right to make the published books available on the Internet and in return they give back a certain percentage of revenue generated from the ads that run along these books. This deal was struck after almost a three and half year old tussle between Google and Authors Guild over the dispute regarding publishing of the books online by Google through their book search segment. But just when it was looking everything has been sorted out, it suddenly went wrong from Google's point of view. It seems that their steady growth and envious success has amplifying their enemy list rapidly.

The reason behind this new dispute is stemmed out of the concern that this deal will provide Google with an unfair advantage over other players in the digital book market.

As several groups of authors, libraries and publishers are uniting against the deal, and libraries like Special Libraries Association and the New York Library Association, supported by American society of Journalists and Authors are joining the coalition, it seems that Google is going to have a tough time ahead.

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Twitter soon to make available it's 'Geolocation' feature.

Do you want to let others know from where are you tweeting ?

If you do, then it will soon be brought to reality by the Twitter team. After getting poplular through iPhone, now its turn to get popular in the webworld for "Geolocation" feature. Like iPhone, where you are asked several times for permission to enable several features of Geolocation, the Twitter version of it will also offer you to turn off this feature.

But the question is, are they somewhere compromising with the privacy of the users. Specially when you are already getting updates 24x7 from an user about his movements, was it really necessary to make this feature available where you are actually offering the users to know others geographical locations. Am I being a bit too sceptical, may be yes. But its not just me, many in the web community is getting sceptical about it. Arnold Zafra, of SearchEngineJournal also didn't hide his inhibitions about this new kid from Twitter's stable.

Well the feature is cool, but this will definitely offer the wicked members of the web community with a thick opportunity to intrude. this will definitely open up a new proxy lane for them. Though they will ofter you to turn this feature off, but still many unsuspecting member will overlook it as just another stupid security advice pop up. And this can seriously put them on high risk of playing with their social and even in some cases personal security.

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