2010年12月30日 星期四

電信大廠Google

谷歌壯志 擬成電信大廠 【11:45】

〔中央社〕從機械人汽車到風力電廠,谷歌(Google)的遠大志向向來在科技業出人意料,接下來還可能成為電信營運商。

美國「有線電視新聞網」(CNN)報導,Google萬事皆備,可望成為類似威瑞森(Verizon)、美國電話電報(AT&T)或史普陵特(Sprint)般的大型行動通訊公司。

報導指出,Google把觸角伸向手機,還授權廠商使用大受歡迎的Android智慧型手機作業系統,如今正設法提供網路服務。

Google Voice似乎已成谷歌最強大的武器,這種廉價語音通話服務自2009年5月推出以來,大受好評,僅5個月就有140萬用戶加入,其中近半數每天使用。

Google目前仰賴現有通訊商販售它們的手機並提供技術支援,不過假如Google有能力與顧客直接接觸,這些中間商便無用武之地。

提供WiMax設備給Sprint的量子網絡(QuantumNetworks)執行長佐丹(Ari Zoldan)說:「Google的多樣化努力,的確想強調它有能力把服務推進至地球上的每個角落,不過這不是單單授權Android就能辦到。」

「假如Google能找到方便途徑,打入手機領域並提供行動通訊服務,才會有非常強大的優勢。」

2010年12月27日 星期一

higher touch at Google

Google Woos Local Advertisers
Google, which helped popularize the idea of automated ad sales on the Web, has been quietly turning to an old-fashioned tool—phone calls—to compete for local business advertising.


Ring, Ring. Hi, It's Google

Google Inc., which helped popularize the idea of automated ad sales on the Web, has been quietly turning to an old-fashioned tool—phone calls—to compete in the hot market for local business advertising.

Getty Images

Google's Marissa Mayer says its new local-ad offerings are 'simple and they work.'

The Internet-search giant this year has hired several hundred sales representatives to call U.S. businesses such as spas, restaurants and hotels to promote new advertising initiatives, people familiar with the matter said. The effort includes an office in Tempe, Ariz., with around 100 sales representatives, one of these people said.

Since 20% of searches done on Google are for local information, "a strong Web presence can help neighborhood businesses answer those searches and bring in more customers," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of geographic and local services, in a prepared statement. Google's new local ad offerings "are simple and they work, so we've been investing in marketing and sales to support them."

One person who has experienced the results is Debbie Codino, a manager at Bob Brown Tire Center Inc. in Portland, Ore. She said she hangs up daily on callers who say they can help boost the small tire shop's presence on the Web to attract new customers. But when she received a call from a Google salesman last month, she stayed on the line.

Ms. Codino quickly agreed to pay $25 a month to highlight her store and show a 10%-off coupon when people use terms like "Portland tires" in a search on Google. "I was surprised," she said. "This time it was really Google calling so I was motivated to listen."

Google, of Mountain View, Calif., is better known for search algorithms and the engineers who refine them to get better results. The company's $24 billion in revenue last year came almost entirely from AdWords, a self-service system developed 10 years ago to let anyone buy text ads that show up next to search results. More than one million small businesses, from makers of boots to distributors of special shampoo or contact lenses, advertise through Google on AdWords to drive online sales or get people to download catalogs, among other things, according to some analysts.

Bloomberg News

Bob Brown Tire Center in Portland, Ore., is seeking to attract new customers with local ads on Google.

But AdWords never fully took off with local businesses, in part because it includes features viewed as too complex or time-consuming for average business owners to use, according to former Google employees. For example, AdWords uses an auction-like system to determine prices for ads. By contrast, Google introduced ad offerings this year for local businesses that cost a fixed amount per month, the kind pitched to Ms. Codino.

So far, only a fraction of local businesses advertise online. BIA/Kelsey, a local-media advisory firm, estimates that local businesses will spend about $20 billion online this year, a figure that could reach more than $35 billion by 2014.

Google signaled a strong interest in the market with an unsuccessful attempt to buy Groupon Inc., a fast-growing company that offers users daily deals on a variety of goods and services. People familiar with the matter have pegged Google's offer at $6 billion; both companies have declined comment. Had that deal been reached, Google would have picked up a sales force of more than 1,500 people who call local businesses to get them to offer discounts to Groupon customers.

Companies such as Groupon and Yelp Inc.—a business-reviews website that has hundreds of sales reps—have attracted big Web companies such as Google and social networking site Facebook Inc. to the growing online local ad market. Google tried to buy Yelp last year, people familiar with the matter have said.

The direct-sales approach on local business "constitutes a cultural change of sorts" for Google, said Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, but a necessary one. Paying sales people generates lower profit margins than a system like AdWords, "but what Google has come to see is that without a sales force or at least human involvement in the process, they're not going to acquire these small businesses as customers," he said.

Direct sales isn't a new approach for Google in handling large advertisers. Though many of Google's 23,000 employees have technical jobs, the company says it also has several thousand salespeople who work with Fortune 500 companies, small and medium-sized businesses and ad agencies on text and graphical ad campaigns, among other things.

To reach local businesses, Google has already built relationships through Web pages it developed last year for them on its search engine. Known as "Place pages," they list basic information, such as the location on a map and a summary of customer reviews.

Google's new sales reps are primarily selling two ad offerings called "tags" and "boost" to the four million businesses that have contacted Google electronically to verify the accuracy of their Place page. The ads show up on Google search results and in Google Maps that display local businesses.

When Facebook earlier this year began its own effort to establish relationships with local businesses, known as Facebook Places, its Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the social network would compete with Google's offerings but added that the local market is huge. A Google executive said he welcomed Facebook's moves.

Links to Place pages on Google's search engine recently became more prominent on the results page for searches covering everything from Italian restaurants to spas. That has put Google into conflict with some business-review sites that generate revenue from local businesses, such as Citysearch.com, which claim Google is crimping their sites' growth by directing more Web searchers to its Place pages. Google executives say the changes are meant to improve users' experience and they believe the changes have generally helped direct more users to non-Google sites that specialize in local-business information.

Mr. Sterling said he expects Google to offer more opportunities for local businesses to reach consumers, perhaps through Groupon-type daily deals. In addition, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said recently that Google's Android software for mobile devices could help people use those devices to pay for goods at a local store, rivaling credit cards.

"Google has always had large sales forces and, quite frankly, the advertiser opportunity has always been bigger than the number of people we were able to hire," said David Scacco, who joined Google as the first advertising sales executive in 2000. But he said Google co-founder Larry Page stressed from the beginning the "need to build automation," or allowing advertisers to buy ads through a self-serve system rather than just hiring scores of salespeople to reach the advertisers.

Mr. Scacco, who is now chief revenue officer at MyLikes, a social-media ad company, said Mr. Page would tell Google's ad team: "If you only throw people at the problem, you won't innovate."

Write to Amir Efrati at amir.efrati@wsj.com




2010年12月23日 星期四

A Holiday Card From Google

A Holiday Card From Google

Five Artists, 250 Hours, Six Months to Create the Search Engine's 'Doodle'


Mountain View, Calif.

[1222goog] Google

Set to be unveiled at 9 a.m. eastern time Thursday, Google's 2010 holiday doodle has 17 interactive images that approximate the logo's letters and colors.

For Micheal Lopez, creating this year's holiday card came down to the wire. The design took five artists about 250 hours. It will be opened by hundreds of millions of people. You're on the list.

Mr. Lopez is in charge of what Google Inc. calls its "doodles," the illustrations that occasionally adorn the search engine's logo in the U.S. and abroad. Doodles appear throughout the year to commemorate holidays, pop-culture touchstones, civic milestones and scientific achievements. The holiday doodle—its most ambitious one yet—will go up on its home page Thursday morning at 9 a.m. eastern time. It will remain on the site for 2½ days.

Ever wonder how much work goes into a single doodle? Or what it's like to have the job title "chief doodler"? Just ask Google.

"We want to end the year with a bang," says Mr. Lopez, whose title is chief doodler.

For Google, the goal is to burnish its brand image and engage the legions of people who conduct more than a billion searches a day, without offending any of them. Google estimates it has created more than 900 doodles since 1998, with 270 of them running in 2010. Some appear globally, and others are tailored for local markets outside the U.S., such as Kenya Independence Day.

In the past, holiday doodles have used gift bows and snowmen to celebrate the season. But since becoming chief doodler 18 months ago, Mr. Lopez, 30-years-old, has upped the ante creatively and technologically. This year marked the first video doodle, videogame doodle and hologram doodle.

On what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday in October, the former Beatle's glasses were the "Os," and clicking on the logo launched a 30-second video with an "Imagine" soundtrack.

Mr. Lopez's concept for the doodle is a representation of the Google logo through 17 interactive portraits of holiday scenes from around the world. For months, Mr. Lopez had envisioned unveiling it in stages over three days, ending on Christmas.

But when executives and others at Google saw the nearly completed doodle last week, they made a key change: the entire doodle needed to go online in one posting. Suddenly, after working for six months, Mr. Lopez and his team were racing to finish.

Discussions about the holiday doodle started back in July. Mr. Lopez met with his team of four artists, who include a recent Rhode Island School of Design graduate and children's book illustrator. They batted around a few ideas, then decided the illustrations of celebrations should focus on food, dance, architecture and textile.

The version of Adobe Flash Player required to view this interactive has not been found. To enjoy our complete interactive experience, please download a free copy of the latest version of Adobe Flash Player here

Mr. Lopez divvied up the 17 scenes among his staff, personally taking responsibility for six. As the team met over the following months to discuss regular doodles, artists would give updates on the status of their holiday sketches. Jennifer Hom, who was assigned Italy, drew Venetian gondolas on the wipe board, with the curve of a bridge feeding into a "G."

In mid-December, the doodle team met one morning in a conference room on campus here to weigh in on the illustrations. Some were just being conceived; others were well in progress. A red drawing of three Indian women dancing, with henna accents framing the scene, was projected from a computer onto a wall. Mr. Lopez shared a concept for southern Africa, imagining a solitary man in tribal dress and sandals. "I wanted to keep the shape of the actual body very geometric."

"It's odd for it to be a single person," another artist said.

"Maybe it should be a family. That's more holiday-like," Mr. Lopez agreed.

"If they're really a family, there needs to be a kid playing Game Boy," someone called out.

As the meeting ended, Mr. Lopez was rushed but jocular. His team had about 100 more hours of work to devote to the project—not including the hours Google programmers would put into writing the code and building the interactive infrastructure. But he predicted they might wrap it up even a week before Christmas. "I think we're in good shape," he said.

But last week, some at Google raised concern about how much time people spend on their computer Christmas Day. Many people would miss the completed doodle, they worried.

"I thought, 'Is my mom going to be available to play this on Christmas Day?' " says Mr. Lopez. "The answer is, no, she'll be making me food!" So the team worked past Wednesday afternoon to re-engineer the next day's doodle.

Toying with Google's logo, created by independent graphic designer Ruth Kedar in 1998, is part of the company's culture. In August 1998, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to adorn the company logo with a symbol of Burning Man, a festival held annually in the Nevada desert that they were attending. Through the second "O," they inserted a figure with arms akimbo, like that associated with the festival.

In 2000, they asked Dennis Hwang, then an intern, to integrate other doodles into the logo from time to time. As with the Burning Man doodle, there's often an air of mystery as to what is being depicted. When users are stumped, they can click on the doodle to get more information.

Holidays are a mainstay of the operation, but they're tricky territory for a large company trying to appeal to a broad audience.

Two years ago, Eman Hassaballa Aly, a 31-year-old social worker from suburban Chicago, rallied for a doodle devoted to Eid, a Muslim holiday celebrated twice a year. She urged her Facebook friends to email Google—which was unaware of the efforts—yet eventually dropped the matter. "This was not a negative thing. No one is saying Google is anti-Muslim," Mrs. Aly says. "We still would love to have a doodle and to acknowledge the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world."

Mr. Lopez says while the team endeavors to be as inclusive as possible, "The questions is, 'How do we celebrate these holidays without religious symbolism,'" he says.

Though Google publishes an email address (proposals@google.com) for user submissions, few unsolicited ideas make it to the home page.

In the fall, supporters of the Girl Scouts of the USA took to Twitter and Facebook to urge others to email Google to ask for a doodle of founder Juliette Gordon Low to appear on what would have been her 150th birthday on Oct. 31.

Mr. Lopez, who says he was unaware of the campaign, notes that Halloween would be a tough day to highlight a Girl Scout.

But he's not ruling out a Scouting-related doodle at some point. "It's sweet," he says.

Doodles also like to serve up doses of nostalgia. In 2009, after a doodler read an article about the 25th anniversary of videogame Tetris, Google contacted Honolulu-based Blue Planet Software Inc., which controls the license to the game, asking permission to create a Tetris-themed doodle. "We cleared copyright in two hours, the fastest ever," says David Kwock, general manager of Blue Planet.

In 2003, Mr. Hwang celebrated the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick. On the double helix that comprised the Os in Google, a small section of a strand crossed another at the wrong spot. After a torrent of emails from geneticists, an artist scrambled to fix the rendering and repost it.

For Thanksgiving this year, Google rolled out a doodle over three days. Day one showed the logo made from photographs of Thanksgiving groceries; the next day it was photographs of the process of baking a pie, and the third day, Thanksgiving, showed a complete turkey-and-stuffing feast.

Clicking the doodle on the first two days revealed recipes created by Ina Garten, author of the "Barefoot Contessa" cookbooks and star of the TV show.

What a doodle can do for a brand, well "you can't possibly quantify it," says Ms. Garten says. "The cool factor alone is incalculable," she says.

Ms. Garten got an email from Google asking if she was interested in collaborating on a Thanksgiving doodle. Two doodlers flew to East Hampton, N.Y., and met with Ms. Garten and her photographer, whom she called in to help.

"I thought, 'It's six letters, how hard can it be?' " Ms. Garten says. It took them from sunrise to dinnertime, she says. When the first day's doodle changed at midnight on the dot, she was captive in front of the computer to watch.

Write to Katherine Rosman at katherine.rosman@wsj.com



Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704774604576035500936272100.html#ixzz18ySuquGH

Google adds hacking warnings to search results

Google adds hacking warnings to search results
Los Angeles Times
Google has been posting malware warnings on suspicious search results for years, but now it'll also add notifications to sites that might have been hacked. ...

2010年12月6日 星期一

Google eBooks

歌公司(Google Inc.)週一宣佈﹐推出市場期待已久的數字圖書銷售業務Google eBooks。

目前該業務已經上線﹐並推出了幾十萬本暢銷圖書以供出售﹐而且還提供數百萬本的免費圖書。谷歌由此加入數字圖書業務的競爭。目前數字圖書業務估值接近10億美元﹐並預計會在未來幾年進一步增長。

Google eBooks此前名為Google Editions。

2010年12月1日 星期三

Google and Europe

Google and Europe
New York Times
The European Commission did the right thing on Tuesday when it opened a formal antitrust investigation into allegations that Google abused its dominant ...

Google and Europe

Google and Europe
New York Times
The European Commission did the right thing on Tuesday when it opened a formal antitrust investigation into allegations that Google abused its dominant ...

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