Facebook Tops over Google as Most visited site in 2010

Facebook surpassed Google as the most visited website in the US in 2010, according to a survey by the web tracking firm Experian Hitwise.

The social networking site also claimed the top search term of the year, with variations on its name filling four of the 10 most popular searches, the survey found. In all, Facebook searches accounted for 3.48 percent of all web searches in the US in 2010, a 207-percent increase over 2009.

The study found that Facebook accounted for 8.93 cent of all US website visits in the year, ahead of Google.com's 7.19 percent and third-placed Yahoo Mail with 3.85 percent.

However if all Google's various properties are taken into account, the web search giant did overtake Facebook with 9.85 percent of all website visits. Microsoft's msn.com and bing.com also made it into the list of top ten websites, as did myspace.com.

Other terms in the top 10 searches included "youtube", "craigslist", "myspace", "ebay" and "yahoo".

Source: "NDTV"

Google: India could be cloud computing market

Google- world's largest search engine administrator- is pinning hopes on the growing cloud computing market in India with plans to double its engineering headcount in the country in next two years, a senior company official said here today.

According to Peeyush Ranjan, head of engineering, Google India, the IT major is gearing up for tapping the market though the market is said to be still in its nascent phase.

He said the company is keen on putting in place the technologies and its engineering team to cater to the market demands.

"We target the SMB market in India for cloud. The country like China is a very price-sensitive market and the small and medium businesses are showing interest in adopting the cloud model primarily due to the cost advantages at various points of its implementation," Ranjan said.

He said Google already has about 3 million clients on cloud and in India, the number is at about one lakh comprising major educational institutions, corporate and SMBs.

"Between Google Bangalore and Hyderabad, we have a team of about 300 engineers working on the cloud technologies. This is the largest cloud focused team for the company outside US Now, in order to cater to the growing market opportunities, we are preparing to hire hundreds of engineers into this team," he said.

He, however, refused to provide the exact number of employees to be hired.

Google Apps, the company's offering for the enterprises to move into the cloud, have about 25 million active users currently.

"We are signing about 3,000 businesses every day and we are approaching the market through about 1,000 authorised resellers," he said.

Source: "The Economic Times"

The World's First Internet Television Unvieling by Sony on October 12

Get ready for more details on Google TV.

Sony has just dispatched an invitation for a New York City media event slated for October 12 that promises the introduction of "the world's first Internet Television." Sony's "Internet Television" is one of the first home video products that will include built-in support for Google TV, the new Web video service from the search giant that promises to integrate Google search and any Web-based Flash video directly into the TV.

The product was first announced at the Google I/O conference in May, and subsequently demoed at the IFA show in Germany earlier this month (see photos below). In addition to the Sony TV, there have been persistent rumors of a Google TV-enabled Sony Blu-ray player as well. The Sony products will compete with the Google TV-powered Logitech Revue set-top box, which is also scheduled to be released this fall.

CNET will be covering the October 12 event live, and we're hopeful that we'll be getting details on pricing and availability on Sony's products. For Sony and Google, it's certainly a case of the sooner, the better. These streaming TV products will be going head-to-head with the already refreshed Roku line, the soon-to-be-released Apple TV update, and the much-anticipated Boxee Box--not to mention Sony's own SMP-N100

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20017615-1.html#ixzz10wp8oM5H

Google new launch: Google Realtime

Google has launched Google.com/Realtime as a separate page for its Realtime Search feature that allows users to view latest search results from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The company first introduced real-time search results as a part of its general search engine in December 2009. According to Google, the Realtime Search page is rolling out in phases and should be available soon. In the meanwhile, one can use this link to try out the new features right away.
“On the new homepage you will find some great tools to help you refine and understand your results. First, you can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify,” Dylan Casey, product manager, Google, has said. “In addition, we have added a conversations view, making it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web... We have also added updates content to Google Alerts, making it easy to stay informed about a topic of your choosing.”

Source: AlooTechie

 

Google's China website expires at midnight

The license for Google's China website expires at midnight, but as the workday ended it had not been renewed. The US firm antagonized Beijing this year by refusing to censor its search results.

Google closed its Beijing offices for the day Wednesday still uncertain whether its Chinese website would be legal in the morning.

As a midnight deadline for an annual license renewal loomed, Google was still awaiting a decision by the Chinese authorities on its application for a new permit to act as an Internet content provider.

The fate of the American search engine giant – which in January announced that it would no longer submit searches by mainland Chinese users to official censorship as required – has been watched as a test of Internet freedom in the country.

“We are still waiting to hear from the government,” said Marsha Wang, Google spokeswoman in Beijing, on Wednesday afternoon. “We do not know.”

Google said it decided to stop censoring its search results after it had detected cyberattacks coming from China against human rights activists’ Gmail accounts.

It has circumvented Chinese censorship since March by automatically redirecting any user who visited google.cn to the company’s uncensored website in Hong Kong, at google.com.hk.  

The Chinese authorities objected, however. “It is clear from conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable – and that if we continue redirecting users, our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed,” Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, said on Google’s official blog.

“Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn – so Google would effectively go dark in China,” Mr. Drummond wrote. 

Compromise solution?

Google responded this week to government concerns by adding a step that users on the Chinese mainland must take themselves to find their way to the Hong Kong site. It was still unclear Wednesday evening whether Beijing would accept this technical gesture.

The uncertainty over Google’s website, which channels about one third of Chinese Web searches, has also raised doubts over the company’s other business activities in China, such as its research and development center and its bid to persuade Chinese mobile phonemakers to install its Android software.

On Tuesday, Sina.com published screenshots from the Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce website, apparently showing that the four companies through which Google operates in China have all had their business licenses renewed. Those pages could no longer be accessed on Wednesday, and Ms. Wang said she could not comment on the status of Google’s business license applications.

In any case, Google’s website requires a separate license from the Beijing Communications Administration. The agency’s spokesman was not available for comment Wednesday evening.

Source: CSMONITOR

Google’s new kind of display ads let advertisers attract more followers to their Twitter accounts

Google is testing out a new kind of display ad that lets advertisers attract more followers to their Twitter accounts. Ads appear in a box with the Twitter bird icon, the advertisers’ latest tweet and a button prompting viewers to follow the advertiser on Twitter, which they can do without having to leave Google. Clicking on any other part of the ad directs the user to the advertiser’s Twitter page.

“To provide more marketing opportunities for our advertisers to reach users in moments that are relevant and useful to them, we are currently testing different ways that allow advertisers to better update their ads in real time,” a Google spokesperson has said, adding, “We are currently in a limited test with a small number of advertisers and publishers.” 

Source: ClickZ via Mashable

AG Blumenthal probes Google use of private data

Turkey bans Google's Services, Twitter and Friendfeed

The Turkish government has reportedly blocked access to some or all of Google’s services in that country. Turkish citizens on Twitter and other social networks such as FriendFeed have also reported access problems, and have been sharing comments about the blockage using hashtags such as TurkeyCensorGoogle, TurkeyGoogleBan and NoGoogleNoWeb. 

It’s not clear whether this is a deliberate attempt to block all of Google’s websites and services, or whether the latest access restrictions are related to the government’s ongoing attempts to block YouTube. Access to Google’s video service was cut off in 2008 after complaints that videos critical of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk — the founder of modern Turkey — were available on YouTube. Criticism of Turkey, or any “insult to Turkishness,” is a criminal offence in that country, reports GigaOm. 

A Google spokesman has said, “We have received reports that some Google applications are unable to be accessed in Turkey. The difficulty in accessing some Google services in Turkey appears to be linked to the ongoing ban on YouTube. We are working to get our services back up as soon as possible.” 

The telecommunication and communication ministry (TIB), a government body that can control internet accessibility in Turkey are reportedly attempting to block certain IPs (internet protocol addresses) belonging to Google due to ‘legal reason’. ISPs in the country are understood to have told users that they would suffer accessibility problems to Google’s home page in Turkey, websites that use Google Analytics, and use of the Google Toolbar. [Source: National Turk]

September 2010 witness Google Chrome OS

At the on-going Computex 2010 Expo, Google announced that Chrome OS would be released in Fall (September) this year.


Google's vice president of product management, Sundar Pichai said, "We are working on bringing the device later this fall." So now, we have a fixed time frame when Chrome OS will finally be made available on notebooks and desktops. It was in July 2009 that Google had announced Linux kernel based Chrome OS for desktops and notebooks. This open source operating system is based on Google's Chrome browser and is designed to work seamlessly with web applications.

Pichai added, "It's something which we are very excited by ... We expect it to reach millions of users on day one." Untill we come across and use a Chrome OS based device, we cannot say whether Google will beat Microsoft or not. Google Chrome OS would be available on notebooks and desktops from partners like Acer, Asus, HP and Lenovo. Techtree

Google integrates eSpeak in Google Translate

Google has integrated eSpeak, an open source software speech synthesizer for English and other languages, in its online translation service Google Translate. The move will allow users of Google Translate to hear translations spoken out loud ('text-to-speech') by clicking the speaker icon beside some translations.

According to Google, the company had earlier developed its own technology for the purpose and rolled this feature out for English and Haitian Creole translations a few months ago and added French, Italian, German, Hindi and Spanish a couple of weeks ago. “Now we’re bringing text-to-speech to even more languages with the open source speech synthesizer, eSpeak,” Fergus Henderson, a software engineer at Google, has said.

“By integrating eSpeak we are adding text-to-speech functionality for Afrikaans, Albanian, Catalan, Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Latvian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese and Welsh,” Fergus Henderson has added

Source: AlooTechie

Virtual Onscreen Keyboard for Google Search

Google enabled onscreen virtual keyboard for regional language search. Now search can be performed in regional language on search giant.

google.co.in

google.ad/
google.ae/
google.am/
google.ba/
google.com.bh/
google.com.by/
google.cz/
google.com.eg/
google.fi/
google.hu/
google.co.il/
google.jo/
google.kg/
google.com.kw/
google.kz/
google.mn/
google.pl/
google.com.sa/
google.se/
google.si/
google.com.ua/
google.rs/