Verecom Web Design Blog

Google has signed co-operation contract with another 24 news media,
Including the Forum (Tribune Co.), and McClatchy Newspaper Group.

Since 3 months ago, Google launched FastFlip, a website has 50 newspapers, magazines, news agencies, television and radio stations, and total of about 90 external website links for visits.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) is the original FastFlip media Initially added, also there were “the British Broadcasting Corporation” (BBC), “The New York Times” (The New York Times), “Washington Post” (The Washington Post), “Ko Dream Bodin” (Cosmopolitan), “Newsweek” (Newsweek ), etc..

FastFlip allows users to quickly browse Google news media websites. Users can click large arrow on webpage to jump to the next article and the browsing speed is quite fast compare with others.

Edited By Henry Lu

Google plan to change the way of web search, and fight back its competitors.

Google will provide computer, iPhone and Android devices the real-time search results page. It also added a new search technology called Google Goggles, which allows users to upload a picture to search, rather than enter a keyword to query.

Google is expected mobile devices will become a transit point for network activity next year, announced by Google engineering vice president, Vic Gundotra, and chief engineer. Amit Singhal. Singhal describes real-time search is “the most exciting thing in my career.”

Marissa Mayer, vice president of Google search products said that this technology is the future of search engine. This new search engine will help users to find the best answer instead bunch of links. Mayer said, the four directions of Google search technology in future: model, media, language and personalization. New search functions such as voice or image search will be the top priority for the search engine advertisement.

Gundotra also shows the Google Mobile Search can accurately identify many language queries, such as English, Chinese and Japanese. Google translator also supports 51 languages, Gundotra said during first quarter of 2010, our real-time translation function will be available for the mobile device. “Our goal is to support all major languages around the world,” he said.

Google is also planning the geographic search for text and voice information services. Google Maps service is available in the Android 1.6 or above It includes “What’s Nearby” which lists closest place for users who look for services. This service will also be available for iPhone and other Android devices.

Google Goggles represents the starting point for Google to enter the computer field. This service is currently only in the Google Labs, and can only identify a few kinds of objects.

Google is able to do facial recognition, but for privacy issues, it decided to defer to promote the service.

Google Instant Search is made from numbers of social network partners. Google recently signed a search cooperation contract with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku, and Identi.ca, in order to provide public information in real-time search.

Instant Search is currently unavailable, but is expected to be on-line very soon.

Edited By Henry Lu

According to the report from Internet research institutes Net Applications in November, Microsoft (Microsoft Corp.; MSFT-US), Web browser, the IE is gradually losing market share, and Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome is slowly take over market position of IE.

For 3 months, Internet Explorer has loss at least 1% of market share. In November the market share of IE drop to a new historical low of 63.6%. During the 2008 period, Microsoft’s IE has lost 8% total market share.

Microsoft launched the latest version of the IE8 in March this year, and hope to improve safety of IE and offers more modern new products that can keep the pace of Internet users. But even IE8 officially launched, It still didn’t slow down its market decline.

Firefox is expected to reaching 25% market share in the Internet browser market and the present market share in November had reached 24.7%. Google’s Chrome grows rapidly and its market share rose from 0.4 to 3.9%.

Google already pointed out, Chrome is currently only available for Windows computer system, and Apple version will be published in 2010.

Edited By Henry Lu

Google Webmaster Tools has recently released an experimental feature that can help webmasters to find out if there is malware infection on the website.

Google already had added website index search with automatically scan function, if there is suspicious malicious programs, it will add a warning sign on the search results. Google also provide this function for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and other browser users, when browsing infected websites. Google will notify webmasters by email.

However, the information is too sketchy, and cannot provide much detail. And Google plan to add “Malware details” to strengthen this tool.

Webmaster can use this tool from laboratory (Lab) menu located on the left menu of webmaster tool, including “malware details link” which will display all found malicious programs listed on Google, as well as samples of malicious content.

This tool is sometimes really able to find malicious code, even if the JavaScript that is not easily be identified. The greatest significance of the amendment is to make website maintenance easier. However, Google reminded, at present, the information of malicious programs is not complete, so website administrator cannot rely entirely on this Google tool.

Google engineer Lucas Ballard said: “Google scanning function and current database can not cover all the malware samples. And we do not recommend that you only use our webmaster tools to remove malware. If you have not identified and fix the underlying weaknesses of your website, your site is very likely to be infected again.

Edited By Henry Lu

Through many negotiations, Microsoft and Yahoo announced a number of cooperation in the search engine market. Yahoo will use Microsoft technology for all its search engine assets, while it is also responsible for online ads sales for both side platform. From this 10 years co-operation, Microsoft can exclusively access to Yahoo search engine license, and Microsoft can also integrate yahoo technology with its own.

From Revenue-sharing agreement based on the two sides, Microsoft will pay Yahoo for the traffic generated by Yahoo Website; Yahoo is expected to increase 500 million U.S. dollars annual revenue and cash flow of 275 million U.S. dollars, while saving 200 million capital expenditure.

“The cooperation will benefit our clients and industry greatly” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said in a statement. “I believe this cooperation laid the foundation for innovation and development of the Internet into a new era” Bartz said.

Microsoft and Yahoo have more than a year to discuss cooperation, at beginning Microsoft plan to buy Yahoo, and this request was refused by Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang. However Jerry Yang was been removed from the board of director and replaced by Bartz, hence triggered this negotiation for cooperation.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer also commended the cooperation between the two sides will benefit Microsoft’s new search engine www. Bing.com and great opportunity to challenge current top 1 search engine giant, Google.

“Through the cooperation with Yahoo, we will be able to develop more innovative search technology to benefit our advertisers, and also to provide more market choose for consumers beside Google.” Ballmer said.

“The success of search engine businesses needs innovations and users scale, our search platform www.Bing.com provides a breakthrough innovation. And the cooperation with yahoo will provide the scale we need for the rapid development on relevance and the availability”

Based on ComScore’s survey, Google currently holds the 65% of search engine market in US, Microsoft only has 8% and Yahoo has 20%.

Edited By Henry Lu

For the booming market of mobile internet, not only hardware industries, but also many online service providers actively try to grab this market. Yahoo, with monthly 500 million unique visitors not only want be a world biggest global internet portal, but also try to be the integrator of online services and make internet users rely on it completely

During April this year, yahoo announced its new personalised mobile homepage with combination of oneSearch, oneConnect and onePlace which these three online services are used as the search engine, social network and LBS (Location Based Service) for the individual.

According with their own personal preferences and needs, users can add various internet services (including services not belong to Yahoo) into their own homepage, and this service is able to support more than 300 kinds of devices.

Support hundreds of different devices

Marc Davis, Yahoo Chief live action Scientist explains its core strategy of mobile communication:

“We will not focus on hardware or operating system development, but to create a platform, a layer to provide services for thousands business and industries.”

For Yahoo, the “size” is obviously the focus of considerations, and through the strategy of use universal platform to achieve the purpose of provide services for global users. Davis said that Yahoo’s software will be covered by the mobile browser and application software (client) to support for hundreds of different devices.

Yahoo said: through the centralized management strategy by the new executive director Carol Barts, we greatly reduce the time for new product development. And for Asian market, Barts is full of confidence:

“The next five years, there will be masses of users come from Asia this emerging market.”

Now this area is either on the turning point of pc based internet to mobile based internet, or have the low rate of computer penetration. In comparison to Europe and the United States, Many Asia industries still not ready to transfer their advertising budget from traditional media to the internet, which also represents the great potential of the Internet advertising market to be developed in future.

Edited By Henry Lu

IT industry testing released the report says the growth rate of Microsoft search engine Bing.com already run ahead of rivals since his launch on May this year.

Microsoft new search engine provides many search services. According to data released by Hitwise showed that, the growth rate of Bing.com reached 25 percent in June. But however, its
U.S. market share is still only 5.25 percent.

This new search engine attracts the close attention of media. Microsoft plan to spend 100 million U.S. dollars to promote Bing.com, and intends to take the territory from Google, the current number one search engine company.

However, Google still remains the dominant position of the U.S. market with 74 percent market share. Yahoo still has the second largest market share of 16%. Ask.com has fourth place with 3.2 percent market share.

Analysts said that, the growth rate of Bing.com is faster than the other three well-known search engine companies. And Microsoft hopes Bing.com can grab more market for online ads.

On Thursday’s stock trading, Microsoft shares fell to 22.44 U.S. dollars. And Google rose 2% to 410.39 U.S. dollars.

Edited By Henry Lu

From July 1 2009, Chinese Government forces the PC manufactures to install Green Dam, the internet filtering software which claimed to block any website contains sexual or violent material, on all PCs sold in China.

3 computer science professors from University of Michigan published a test report of Green Dam and point out the critical software bugs which will create major security weaknesses on PC. The report said that these software bugs come from defective coding skill; hence installation of this filtering software may lead PCs to a large number of attacks from hackers.

If the Green Dam is deployed based on the current state, it will seriously weaken computer security in China. Although these bugs can be fixed by downloading the update patch, but this software still need a substantial re-coding and thorough testing. And experts believe that it is very difficult to complete before July 1.

Although China’s official claim that the software is only used to block pornographic and violence, but it was found that it has also been used to filter politically sensitive website.

“Wall Street Journal” reported that two Chinese professors have protested against Green Dam and said this compulsory filtering software is Government’s abuse of power.

Beijing’s human rights lawyer Li Fangping also questioned the legitimacy of the Chinese Government plans. He asked the Ministry of Information Industry of China held a public hearing on this.

Edited By Henry Lu