Microsoft is walking an interesting line between the successful but traditional software products of the past—Windows, Office, and so on—and its cloud-based future, which can be seen in such products as Windows Azure, Office 365, and Windows Intune, the cloud-based PC management service. During this time of transition, the company must continue updating and servicing its on-premises solutions while pushing customers, gently, toward more cost-effective and scalable cloud solutions.
This situation is beneficial to customers, since Microsoft often provides an interesting mix of on-premises and hosted solutions, giving customers more choice. So when you look at something like office productivity, you see on-premises products such as Microsoft Office, hosted versions such as the Office Web Apps, and then ancillary solutions such as SharePoint, which also come in both traditional and hosted versions. You can mix and match between these and related solutions, so a customer could provide part of its Exchange infrastructure in house, and part of it could be hosted in the cloud with federation linking the two together for management and integration purposes.
Office is also a great example because it's one of Microsoft's core product lines and a top driver of revenue. In fiscal year 2010, for example, Office revenues represented 30 percent of the company's overall revenues of $62.5 billion, or the same as for Windows. And that fiscal year ended just as Office 2010 was released, a release Microsoft has described as its fastest selling ever at retail.
But we're in this age of transition. And during this time, Microsoft is vulnerable, because users may move on to other hosted office productivity offerings as they make their own transitions to the cloud. One primary competitor here is Google Docs and Google Apps. These solutions haven't received much traction with larger businesses yet, and they won't until they've matured quite a bit. But they're free, and appeal to individuals and very small businesses as a result.
Google, of course, isn't standing still. Recognizing that customers still know and even love Microsoft Office, the company has created various integration tools over the years that bridge the gap between its free and cheap online services and Microsoft's Windows-based software. And this past week, the company delivered a tool called Google Cloud Connect that drives home Google's strategy in this market. Which is: we'll work with what you use today, with an eye toward getting you to migrate away from Office in the future.
It's a good idea. And one that should—and does—alarm Microsoft.
To understand why, it's necessary to examine how Google Cloud Connect differs from the Microsoft approach. Installed on client PCs, Google Cloud Connect is essentially a plug-in that appears as a toolbar in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint 2003, 2007, and 2010. You must logon to a Google account, and then choose sync settings, which can be automatic or manual. When used in the default automatic sync mode, each Office document you create or edit is automatically saved, or synced, in your Google Docs repository as you work. This is itself a powerful bit of functionality, since it provides crucial off-site backups, essentially, of your documents.
Google Cloud Connect also provides basic collaboration capabilities, allowing multiple users to edit a supported document type simultaneously, but, curiously, only using Microsoft's Office applications. That is, you can't use Google's own cloud-based Google Docs tools to work collaboratively with others using Office.
In fact, you can't use Google Docs at all: Documents synced to Google's servers are stored in Microsoft formats, and while you can convert them to something Google understands for later processing, the results are often terrible, with butchered formatting, even with very basic Word 2010 documents.
And like most Google solutions, Cloud Connect isn't exactly enterprise friendly. It needs to be manually installed on a per-PC basis. So it targets the same individuals and very small businesses as other Google products.
What Google Cloud Connect gets right, in my opinion, is the seamless integration with cloud backup. Even if you never intend to use Google Docs, this is a pretty good way to ensure that each document you work with ends up in the cloud, if only for backup purposes. And while there are some application reliability issues—Word has spazzed out on me temporarily a few times this past week—it does get the job done.
Microsoft is making its own play for hosted productivity. And while its Office Web Apps aren't as full-featured as their traditional counterparts—they're not even available offline, for starters—Microsoft is also offering customers ways to integrate its rich, client-side Office suite in useful ways with various cloud services as an interim step.
So what does Microsoft offer? Does it have a credible response to Cloud Connect?
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
Google to go plus-one better than Facebook
Google to go plus-one better than Facebook
By Richard Waters
Published: April 13 2011 21:05 | Last updated: April 13 2011 21:05
Five years ago, Yahoo! had a plan for beating Google at its own game. It would encourage members of its huge online audience to vote for web pages they liked by “tagging” them. Out of this outpouring would come a more personal and social web, one that was filtered by Yahoo’s users rather than Google’s algorithms.
Fast forward to the present, and there’s a distinctly similar echo in what Google has come up with in its own latest attempt to counter a certain fast-growing social networking site.
Facebook’s “Like” buttons may have sprouted across the web over the past year, but if Google has its way we will all soon be “plus-one-ing” – the inelegant new phrase that describes its move into social, whereby we can click on the “+1” buttons due to appear on its search results and, eventually, other web pages.
The comparison with the now-struggling Yahoo, and the sight of Google copying one of Facebook’s more successful moves, raises the uncomfortable feeling that the search group is running out of ideas.
When Larry Page marked his elevation to chief executive this month with the blunt message to Googlers that a large part of their bonuses will be tied to the company’s success in social, it only added to a sense that urgency is turning to panic.
But it would be a mistake to write Google off. It has some prime assets already in place for its social push and it undeniably has the staying power. Also, it has more in common with Facebook than the usual “search algorithm v social network” contrast suggests. Both see themselves as utilities on the web, with a mission to help a large slice of the world’s population communicate and connect with things they’re interested in.
If Facebook’s key asset is its “social graph” – the web of its users’ personal connections – then Google has its own, implicit networks of relationships to mine. By tapping your most frequent Gmail connections, your list of friends on its Chat service and your phonebook on one of its Android devices, it has plenty of ways to divine your social relationships. It can supplement that by drawing on connections from services like Twitter.
Until now, Google’s main problem has been that it just hasn’t found anything very compelling to do with this information.
That’s where the “+1” voting system comes in. Smartly, it got a low-key launch (lessons learnt here from the debacle around Buzz, the rudimentary social networking service that attracted criticism last year over its handling of privacy). Websites will have good reasons to display the +1 buttons: votes will feed into Google’s search system and could help their rankings.
More of an issue is what users will get out of clicking those buttons – there is no social networking site to collect all those preferences and display them to friends. But as Google starts to show what your contacts have “plus-owned” in the search results you see, the draw could strengthen.
There are other pieces that need to fall into place. Google needs more users to set up profiles and add personal information about themselves, as they do on Facebook. Then, the value of having a Google profile should start to become more apparent.
To feed this virtuous circle, Google needs to find many more things for users to share. Inevitably, that will mean finding a way to draw in an equivalent of the Facebook status update – something that Buzz has so far failed to do.
An acquisition of Twitter still makes sense, which would bring a new brand and an extra dimension in much the way YouTube did. It would have the added benefit of marrying a company which has become a byword for the failure to find an effective business model, with one that is sitting on a geyser of cash.
Larry Page’s “social bonus” kicks in for Googlers in the final quarter of this year. That might be a little early to see real results from the latest social push, but the message he has sent is not unreasonable: Google does not need to build a new social network from scratch and is closer than it may look to seeing some results.
None of this is to belittle the severity of the challenge. Simply welding social behaviour on to an existing web service – as Apple has proved by trying to attach its Ping music network to iTunes – does not work unless users see some compelling benefits.
Google has plenty of ways to make that mistake. Properties like YouTube, Android and the Chrome browser could become powerful platforms for promoting and spreading its social services. But force-feeding users with Facebook alternatives they don’t want or need is a recipe for disaster – as seen with the privacy row around Buzz.
The question is not whether Google “gets” social – it is whether it is as attuned to, and respectful of, its users’ interests as it claims.
Richard Waters is the FT’s West Coast managing editor
richard.waters@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.
By Richard Waters
Published: April 13 2011 21:05 | Last updated: April 13 2011 21:05
Five years ago, Yahoo! had a plan for beating Google at its own game. It would encourage members of its huge online audience to vote for web pages they liked by “tagging” them. Out of this outpouring would come a more personal and social web, one that was filtered by Yahoo’s users rather than Google’s algorithms.
Fast forward to the present, and there’s a distinctly similar echo in what Google has come up with in its own latest attempt to counter a certain fast-growing social networking site.
Facebook’s “Like” buttons may have sprouted across the web over the past year, but if Google has its way we will all soon be “plus-one-ing” – the inelegant new phrase that describes its move into social, whereby we can click on the “+1” buttons due to appear on its search results and, eventually, other web pages.
The comparison with the now-struggling Yahoo, and the sight of Google copying one of Facebook’s more successful moves, raises the uncomfortable feeling that the search group is running out of ideas.
When Larry Page marked his elevation to chief executive this month with the blunt message to Googlers that a large part of their bonuses will be tied to the company’s success in social, it only added to a sense that urgency is turning to panic.
But it would be a mistake to write Google off. It has some prime assets already in place for its social push and it undeniably has the staying power. Also, it has more in common with Facebook than the usual “search algorithm v social network” contrast suggests. Both see themselves as utilities on the web, with a mission to help a large slice of the world’s population communicate and connect with things they’re interested in.
If Facebook’s key asset is its “social graph” – the web of its users’ personal connections – then Google has its own, implicit networks of relationships to mine. By tapping your most frequent Gmail connections, your list of friends on its Chat service and your phonebook on one of its Android devices, it has plenty of ways to divine your social relationships. It can supplement that by drawing on connections from services like Twitter.
Until now, Google’s main problem has been that it just hasn’t found anything very compelling to do with this information.
That’s where the “+1” voting system comes in. Smartly, it got a low-key launch (lessons learnt here from the debacle around Buzz, the rudimentary social networking service that attracted criticism last year over its handling of privacy). Websites will have good reasons to display the +1 buttons: votes will feed into Google’s search system and could help their rankings.
More of an issue is what users will get out of clicking those buttons – there is no social networking site to collect all those preferences and display them to friends. But as Google starts to show what your contacts have “plus-owned” in the search results you see, the draw could strengthen.
There are other pieces that need to fall into place. Google needs more users to set up profiles and add personal information about themselves, as they do on Facebook. Then, the value of having a Google profile should start to become more apparent.
To feed this virtuous circle, Google needs to find many more things for users to share. Inevitably, that will mean finding a way to draw in an equivalent of the Facebook status update – something that Buzz has so far failed to do.
An acquisition of Twitter still makes sense, which would bring a new brand and an extra dimension in much the way YouTube did. It would have the added benefit of marrying a company which has become a byword for the failure to find an effective business model, with one that is sitting on a geyser of cash.
Larry Page’s “social bonus” kicks in for Googlers in the final quarter of this year. That might be a little early to see real results from the latest social push, but the message he has sent is not unreasonable: Google does not need to build a new social network from scratch and is closer than it may look to seeing some results.
None of this is to belittle the severity of the challenge. Simply welding social behaviour on to an existing web service – as Apple has proved by trying to attach its Ping music network to iTunes – does not work unless users see some compelling benefits.
Google has plenty of ways to make that mistake. Properties like YouTube, Android and the Chrome browser could become powerful platforms for promoting and spreading its social services. But force-feeding users with Facebook alternatives they don’t want or need is a recipe for disaster – as seen with the privacy row around Buzz.
The question is not whether Google “gets” social – it is whether it is as attuned to, and respectful of, its users’ interests as it claims.
Richard Waters is the FT’s West Coast managing editor
richard.waters@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.
Friday, December 17, 2010
An early future from Google
By Chris Nuttall in San Francisco
Published: December 16 2010 22:44 | Last updated: December 16 2010 22:44
Gingerbread man: the Nexus S is the first Android phone to have the 2.3 version of its operating system
William Gibson, the science fiction writer, could have been envisioning Google’s Mountain View headquarters when he said: “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
The Googleplex is where a lot of the future is currently stacked up – from experiments with driverless cars to support for robots on the moon.
Google products have names inspired by sci-fi – the Nexus One phone using its Android operating system refers to the Nexus-6 androids in the film Blade Runner. A successor, the Nexus S, has just come out along with another piece of hardware – the CR-48 notebook, which sounds like a cross between R2-D2 and C-3PO, the robots in Star Wars. In fact, it stands for Chromium-48, an unstable isotope and an all too suitable name for a shaky prototype of its Chrome computing system, first announced in July last year.
Google has decided to distribute the future more evenly. Instead of concentrating on the bug-ridden and delayed product in its labs, it is offering 60,000 or so CR-48 notebooks to users in the US to help with its development.
Samsung Nexus S
Pros: Second-generation “Google phone” made to the company’s specification; light, vivid 4in screen; decent battery life; fast processor; good camera functions; first to feature improved Android Gingerbread operating system.
Cons: Pure Google phone, so lacks added layers and services offered by other handset makers and operators; handling of music, video, games inferior to iPhone.
..I gained a glimpse of what lies ahead with review units of the Nexus S and the CR-48 – and found that both contained intriguing possibilities.
The Nexus S is the first Android phone to have the 2.3 version of its operating system, codenamed Gingerbread. One new feature is support for near field communication technology: NFC can be used for contactless payments and exchanges of information such as sharing digital photos with a friend’s phone. Another use, previewed by the Nexus S in an app called Tags, allows users to hold their phones up to NFC-tagged objects and receive information from them such as text, pictures and links to websites.
Gingerbread also has a spiffier interface overall. Upgraded apps timed for its release include YouTube, which I found more responsive and fun to use than in my web browser. Settings for the 5Mp camera are more sophisticated and accessible, and there is better support for making internet calls and an improved on-screen keyboard experience.
Samsung Focus
Pros: Windows Phone 7 showcase smartphone; superb 4in Super Amoled screen; thin and light; excellent touch sensitivity; fast processor; enticing interface; HD video recording.
Cons: Limited number of apps; no Flash capability yet in Windows Phone 7.
..The Nexus S is made by Samsung – the original Nexus One was an HTC handset – and features the wonderful brightness of colours of its Super Amoled (active matrix organic light emitting diode) slightly curved 4in screen. It feels light for its size, has good battery life, excellent call quality and is very responsive with its fast 1Ghz processor. The Nexus S is on sale at Best Buy in the US ($529, $200 with a T-Mobile contract) and is available in Europe from Monday (free on a long-term contract, or for £550 without a contract, at Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy stores in the UK).
. . .
Like its predecessor, the Nexus S is “pure Google” – designed to Google’s specifications and as a showcase for its latest, greatest version of Android. It lacks the interface layers and features that handset makers and operators have added to Android on other handsets to make up for its shortcomings against the iPhone, which still handles music, video and games much better.
Apple iPhone 4
Pros: Retina screen has highest resolution of any smartphone; intuitive operating system with more than 200,000 apps; excellent music and gaming.
Cons: Browser not Flash-enabled; no capability to turn itself into a WiFi hotspot; screen looks small next to some Android rivals; still not available in white.
..This makes it hard to get excited about the Nexus S – it is an excellent smartphone, but it lacks a defining feature that would make it stand out from the growing Android crowd.
The same could be said of the CR-48 laptop – an ordinary black box of a notebook – but then it is meant to be a plain-looking machine for testing purposes only. However, the keyboard is one element of the design that is likely to appear in the two Chrome notebooks that Acer and Samsung are expected to launch in mid-2011.
The Caps Lock key has been replaced with a search magnifying glass and the usual F1, F2 etc function keys along the top instead are symbols representing brightness, volume and the forward, back, reload, full screen, next window functions associated with a browser. This is because the Chrome OS is modelled on Google’s Chrome browser, with the idea that the web can become the operating system and the browser its desktop interface.
CR-48 Chrome notebook
This prototype is being given to 60,000 testers in the US to iron out the kinks of Google’s ambitious project to move all our computing tasks from local PCs to the web.
Pros: Decluttered notebook, thanks to the web browser operating as the operating system; instant on and off functionality; cheap, low-powered machine that is long on battery life.
Cons: Abandonment of desktop concept is hard to adjust to; internet connectivity is essential; web alternatives to tasks done locally are incomplete; the Chrome OS struggles to deal with everyday peripherals such as printers and scanners.
..This took some getting used to. I kept wanting to minimise the browser to see a familiar desktop with program icons. Instead, my programs were web applications whose icons appeared on the otherwise blank page when I selected “New Tab” in the browser. Default programs included YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Scratchpad – for taking quick notes – and a couple of games, where I could hit the Full Screen button and play as if I was not inside a browser window.
Google’s argument is that we spend so much of our computing life inside browsers that we may as well float off into cloud computing land, where tasks from e-mail to word processing and editing photos can already be carried out. We will not need expensive computers and slow-loading operating systems because processing and storage can be handled in Google’s data centres. The CR-48 has long battery life with only a low-power Atom processor and a 16Gb flash drive for minimal storage.
However, printing, scanning, editing pictures and video, recording audio, accessing local files either failed to work, needed keystroke combinations or took much longer, and depended on the speed of my internet connection.
Such is the problem of dragging the future into the present – the web’s infrastructure and our own working habits are not equipped to deal with such a dramatic shift just yet, whereas a Blade Runner Nexus-6 android would probably cope very well.
chris.nuttall@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.
...
Published: December 16 2010 22:44 | Last updated: December 16 2010 22:44
Gingerbread man: the Nexus S is the first Android phone to have the 2.3 version of its operating system
William Gibson, the science fiction writer, could have been envisioning Google’s Mountain View headquarters when he said: “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
The Googleplex is where a lot of the future is currently stacked up – from experiments with driverless cars to support for robots on the moon.
Google products have names inspired by sci-fi – the Nexus One phone using its Android operating system refers to the Nexus-6 androids in the film Blade Runner. A successor, the Nexus S, has just come out along with another piece of hardware – the CR-48 notebook, which sounds like a cross between R2-D2 and C-3PO, the robots in Star Wars. In fact, it stands for Chromium-48, an unstable isotope and an all too suitable name for a shaky prototype of its Chrome computing system, first announced in July last year.
Google has decided to distribute the future more evenly. Instead of concentrating on the bug-ridden and delayed product in its labs, it is offering 60,000 or so CR-48 notebooks to users in the US to help with its development.
Samsung Nexus S
Pros: Second-generation “Google phone” made to the company’s specification; light, vivid 4in screen; decent battery life; fast processor; good camera functions; first to feature improved Android Gingerbread operating system.
Cons: Pure Google phone, so lacks added layers and services offered by other handset makers and operators; handling of music, video, games inferior to iPhone.
..I gained a glimpse of what lies ahead with review units of the Nexus S and the CR-48 – and found that both contained intriguing possibilities.
The Nexus S is the first Android phone to have the 2.3 version of its operating system, codenamed Gingerbread. One new feature is support for near field communication technology: NFC can be used for contactless payments and exchanges of information such as sharing digital photos with a friend’s phone. Another use, previewed by the Nexus S in an app called Tags, allows users to hold their phones up to NFC-tagged objects and receive information from them such as text, pictures and links to websites.
Gingerbread also has a spiffier interface overall. Upgraded apps timed for its release include YouTube, which I found more responsive and fun to use than in my web browser. Settings for the 5Mp camera are more sophisticated and accessible, and there is better support for making internet calls and an improved on-screen keyboard experience.
Samsung Focus
Pros: Windows Phone 7 showcase smartphone; superb 4in Super Amoled screen; thin and light; excellent touch sensitivity; fast processor; enticing interface; HD video recording.
Cons: Limited number of apps; no Flash capability yet in Windows Phone 7.
..The Nexus S is made by Samsung – the original Nexus One was an HTC handset – and features the wonderful brightness of colours of its Super Amoled (active matrix organic light emitting diode) slightly curved 4in screen. It feels light for its size, has good battery life, excellent call quality and is very responsive with its fast 1Ghz processor. The Nexus S is on sale at Best Buy in the US ($529, $200 with a T-Mobile contract) and is available in Europe from Monday (free on a long-term contract, or for £550 without a contract, at Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy stores in the UK).
. . .
Like its predecessor, the Nexus S is “pure Google” – designed to Google’s specifications and as a showcase for its latest, greatest version of Android. It lacks the interface layers and features that handset makers and operators have added to Android on other handsets to make up for its shortcomings against the iPhone, which still handles music, video and games much better.
Apple iPhone 4
Pros: Retina screen has highest resolution of any smartphone; intuitive operating system with more than 200,000 apps; excellent music and gaming.
Cons: Browser not Flash-enabled; no capability to turn itself into a WiFi hotspot; screen looks small next to some Android rivals; still not available in white.
..This makes it hard to get excited about the Nexus S – it is an excellent smartphone, but it lacks a defining feature that would make it stand out from the growing Android crowd.
The same could be said of the CR-48 laptop – an ordinary black box of a notebook – but then it is meant to be a plain-looking machine for testing purposes only. However, the keyboard is one element of the design that is likely to appear in the two Chrome notebooks that Acer and Samsung are expected to launch in mid-2011.
The Caps Lock key has been replaced with a search magnifying glass and the usual F1, F2 etc function keys along the top instead are symbols representing brightness, volume and the forward, back, reload, full screen, next window functions associated with a browser. This is because the Chrome OS is modelled on Google’s Chrome browser, with the idea that the web can become the operating system and the browser its desktop interface.
CR-48 Chrome notebook
This prototype is being given to 60,000 testers in the US to iron out the kinks of Google’s ambitious project to move all our computing tasks from local PCs to the web.
Pros: Decluttered notebook, thanks to the web browser operating as the operating system; instant on and off functionality; cheap, low-powered machine that is long on battery life.
Cons: Abandonment of desktop concept is hard to adjust to; internet connectivity is essential; web alternatives to tasks done locally are incomplete; the Chrome OS struggles to deal with everyday peripherals such as printers and scanners.
..This took some getting used to. I kept wanting to minimise the browser to see a familiar desktop with program icons. Instead, my programs were web applications whose icons appeared on the otherwise blank page when I selected “New Tab” in the browser. Default programs included YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Scratchpad – for taking quick notes – and a couple of games, where I could hit the Full Screen button and play as if I was not inside a browser window.
Google’s argument is that we spend so much of our computing life inside browsers that we may as well float off into cloud computing land, where tasks from e-mail to word processing and editing photos can already be carried out. We will not need expensive computers and slow-loading operating systems because processing and storage can be handled in Google’s data centres. The CR-48 has long battery life with only a low-power Atom processor and a 16Gb flash drive for minimal storage.
However, printing, scanning, editing pictures and video, recording audio, accessing local files either failed to work, needed keystroke combinations or took much longer, and depended on the speed of my internet connection.
Such is the problem of dragging the future into the present – the web’s infrastructure and our own working habits are not equipped to deal with such a dramatic shift just yet, whereas a Blade Runner Nexus-6 android would probably cope very well.
chris.nuttall@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.
...
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Google unveils key update on searches
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: September 9 2010 00:50 | Last updated: September 9 2010 00:50
Google has unveiled changes to the way it presents search results in what it described as one of the most significant updates in its 12-year history.
The new approach is intended to help users find results more quickly, though some search experts said that indirect changes to how users conduct their searches could also have a wider impact on the many businesses that advertise on Google or rely on traffic from the search engine.
The new feature, called Google Instant, displays full search results as users type in queries, without waiting for them to finish typing or to hit “enter”. “It’s searching before you type – we’re predicting what query you’re likely to do and giving you results for that,” said Marissa Mayer, Google’s head of search products and user experience.
The approach should shave two to five seconds off the average search, Ms Mayer said.
Sergey Brin, co-founder, said the technological advances that had contributed to the new feature highlighted “a little bit of a new dawn in computing”, as companies such as Google, Apple and Amazon experiment with new user interfaces to make it easier to find and use information.
Google said it could not yet determine how far Google Instant would change search behaviour, but some analysts said the impact of the launch could reverberate through the online economy that has built up around the Google search service. “It’s potentially enormously significant,” said Greg Sterling, a US search engine analyst. “Anything that changes the way people interact with search results will affect the many businesses that rely on search.”
He and other analysts said that search users could be drawn to the top results that Google returns as they type their queries, giving extra prominence to companies whose websites come out high in search results. By putting greater emphasis on the top results, the change could have important implications for any business that uses so-called search engine optimisation to try to gain prominence in search results, Mr Sterling said.
Google executives said the new feature should not change the search results that users eventually click on, since the underlying relevance algorithms used to determine the order in which results are shown had not changed.
Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land, an industry website, said that while the changes might have a marginal impact, suggestions that they would undermine current search engine optimisation practices appeared overstated.
Some analysts also predicted that the Google Instant would change the way that search engine users interact with advertising, since adverts will also appear linked to Google’s predictions about what a user is interested in.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.
Published: September 9 2010 00:50 | Last updated: September 9 2010 00:50
Google has unveiled changes to the way it presents search results in what it described as one of the most significant updates in its 12-year history.
The new approach is intended to help users find results more quickly, though some search experts said that indirect changes to how users conduct their searches could also have a wider impact on the many businesses that advertise on Google or rely on traffic from the search engine.
The new feature, called Google Instant, displays full search results as users type in queries, without waiting for them to finish typing or to hit “enter”. “It’s searching before you type – we’re predicting what query you’re likely to do and giving you results for that,” said Marissa Mayer, Google’s head of search products and user experience.
The approach should shave two to five seconds off the average search, Ms Mayer said.
Sergey Brin, co-founder, said the technological advances that had contributed to the new feature highlighted “a little bit of a new dawn in computing”, as companies such as Google, Apple and Amazon experiment with new user interfaces to make it easier to find and use information.
Google said it could not yet determine how far Google Instant would change search behaviour, but some analysts said the impact of the launch could reverberate through the online economy that has built up around the Google search service. “It’s potentially enormously significant,” said Greg Sterling, a US search engine analyst. “Anything that changes the way people interact with search results will affect the many businesses that rely on search.”
He and other analysts said that search users could be drawn to the top results that Google returns as they type their queries, giving extra prominence to companies whose websites come out high in search results. By putting greater emphasis on the top results, the change could have important implications for any business that uses so-called search engine optimisation to try to gain prominence in search results, Mr Sterling said.
Google executives said the new feature should not change the search results that users eventually click on, since the underlying relevance algorithms used to determine the order in which results are shown had not changed.
Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land, an industry website, said that while the changes might have a marginal impact, suggestions that they would undermine current search engine optimisation practices appeared overstated.
Some analysts also predicted that the Google Instant would change the way that search engine users interact with advertising, since adverts will also appear linked to Google’s predictions about what a user is interested in.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
If Google can be hacked, is anyone safe?
If Google can be hacked, is anyone safe?
By Seth Berman and Lam Nguyen of Stroz Friedberg
Published: March 5 2010 16:34 | Last updated: March 5 2010 16:34
Businesses pour millions of dollars into a never-ending “virus-antivirus” arms race, all the while wondering: “If the technology titans can be hacked, what are the chances that my own data is secure?”
IT sophistication means we can now watch individual data packets as they enter and exit systems; we can scan files for known viruses, as well those yet to be written; we can examine corporate networks to see who’s online, what they are doing and how they are doing it. Yet we are still vulnerable.
At the heart of this insecurity is the “zero-day exploit”. It is derived from a programming concept that refers to day one of a software development project; known as the zeroth day.
Thus, a zero-day exploit takes advantage of the window of time between when developers are made aware of a problem and when the complete software fix can be developed and distributed.
Zero-day exploits, by definition, are vulnerabilities that have not been addressed by hardware and software manufacturers. Thus, there are no virus signatures to be downloaded or software patches to be updated, leaving the bad guys with the upper hand.
Add to this the complexity and sophistication of today’s attacks and it becomes easier to understand why industry giants such as Google can be hacked.
Recent reports indicate the Google attacks started on social networking sites. The attackers watched key Google employees to identify their friends and associates and hacked these accounts.
Then they used information gained to contact other employees and, appearing legitimate, lured unsuspecting victims to nefarious websites, which provided the doorway through the company’s firewall.
These attacks have become known as ”chained exploits”, a series of vulnerabilities and weaknesses that when used in tandem, can break even the most secure systems.
In another example, a corporation detected a calamitous virus infection which plagued more than 500 computers in its network. It thought it had dealt with it successfully but six months later the company identified suspicious traffic indicating the presence of another virus.
After forensic analysis, it was discovered the “new” malware had been installed during the earlier attack. Once the second virus was in place, it didn’t matter to the hackers that the first virus had been destroyed.
Chained exploits not only create new vulnerabilities, they can lead to a false sense of reassurance by allowing the first virus to serve as a decoy, leaving the impression that efforts to destroy the first virus have solved the problem.
So what can you do mitigate this risk? First, assume that no matter how good your firewalls, infections will happen from time to time. Maintaining diligent and timely patch management of applications, operating systems, and network devices is a must – but not sufficient.
Where possible, restrict access to sensitive information to as few people in the company as possible – that way a breach of one person’s computer, won’t open the keys to the kingdom.
You also need an emergency response plan in place before a virus attack to assess whether it is the sort of attack that can be dealt with using commercially available virus detection software (which will be true in most cases), or if the infection is systemic or is affecting an especially sensitive system that constitutes a breach of your central infrastructure.
In that case you might need to decompile the virus’s code to understand exactly what it did, how it operated, and seek expert advice on finding and containing the damage.
The recent cyber attacks also reveal a changing motive – the hackers wanted to steal intellectual property or corporate secrets. Indeed, some recent hacks involved viruses that automatically copied every e-mail sent or received by key individuals to a shadow address, giving the hackers a clear view of company secrets.
In short, this new wave of hacking is corporate espionage. The implication is clear: previously, the financial risk of hacking was primarily of damage to a network and perhaps reputation. Now the risk is far greater – the new target is the business information upon which a company relies.
Stroz Friedberg provides digital forensics, incident response and electronic disclosure in the UK and the US. Seth Berman is a managing director in its London office; Lam Nguyen is a director of digital forensics in its Boston office.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
By Seth Berman and Lam Nguyen of Stroz Friedberg
Published: March 5 2010 16:34 | Last updated: March 5 2010 16:34
Businesses pour millions of dollars into a never-ending “virus-antivirus” arms race, all the while wondering: “If the technology titans can be hacked, what are the chances that my own data is secure?”
IT sophistication means we can now watch individual data packets as they enter and exit systems; we can scan files for known viruses, as well those yet to be written; we can examine corporate networks to see who’s online, what they are doing and how they are doing it. Yet we are still vulnerable.
At the heart of this insecurity is the “zero-day exploit”. It is derived from a programming concept that refers to day one of a software development project; known as the zeroth day.
Thus, a zero-day exploit takes advantage of the window of time between when developers are made aware of a problem and when the complete software fix can be developed and distributed.
Zero-day exploits, by definition, are vulnerabilities that have not been addressed by hardware and software manufacturers. Thus, there are no virus signatures to be downloaded or software patches to be updated, leaving the bad guys with the upper hand.
Add to this the complexity and sophistication of today’s attacks and it becomes easier to understand why industry giants such as Google can be hacked.
Recent reports indicate the Google attacks started on social networking sites. The attackers watched key Google employees to identify their friends and associates and hacked these accounts.
Then they used information gained to contact other employees and, appearing legitimate, lured unsuspecting victims to nefarious websites, which provided the doorway through the company’s firewall.
These attacks have become known as ”chained exploits”, a series of vulnerabilities and weaknesses that when used in tandem, can break even the most secure systems.
In another example, a corporation detected a calamitous virus infection which plagued more than 500 computers in its network. It thought it had dealt with it successfully but six months later the company identified suspicious traffic indicating the presence of another virus.
After forensic analysis, it was discovered the “new” malware had been installed during the earlier attack. Once the second virus was in place, it didn’t matter to the hackers that the first virus had been destroyed.
Chained exploits not only create new vulnerabilities, they can lead to a false sense of reassurance by allowing the first virus to serve as a decoy, leaving the impression that efforts to destroy the first virus have solved the problem.
So what can you do mitigate this risk? First, assume that no matter how good your firewalls, infections will happen from time to time. Maintaining diligent and timely patch management of applications, operating systems, and network devices is a must – but not sufficient.
Where possible, restrict access to sensitive information to as few people in the company as possible – that way a breach of one person’s computer, won’t open the keys to the kingdom.
You also need an emergency response plan in place before a virus attack to assess whether it is the sort of attack that can be dealt with using commercially available virus detection software (which will be true in most cases), or if the infection is systemic or is affecting an especially sensitive system that constitutes a breach of your central infrastructure.
In that case you might need to decompile the virus’s code to understand exactly what it did, how it operated, and seek expert advice on finding and containing the damage.
The recent cyber attacks also reveal a changing motive – the hackers wanted to steal intellectual property or corporate secrets. Indeed, some recent hacks involved viruses that automatically copied every e-mail sent or received by key individuals to a shadow address, giving the hackers a clear view of company secrets.
In short, this new wave of hacking is corporate espionage. The implication is clear: previously, the financial risk of hacking was primarily of damage to a network and perhaps reputation. Now the risk is far greater – the new target is the business information upon which a company relies.
Stroz Friedberg provides digital forensics, incident response and electronic disclosure in the UK and the US. Seth Berman is a managing director in its London office; Lam Nguyen is a director of digital forensics in its Boston office.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
FT.com / Technology - Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google
FT.com / Technology - Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google: "Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google"
Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google
By Chris Nuttall and David Gelles in San Francisco
Published: March 16 2010 13:15 | Last updated: March 17 2010 00:10
Social networking website Facebook has capped a year of phenomenal growth by overtaking Google’s popularity among US internet users, with industry data showing it has scored more visits on its home page than the search engine.
It is the first time that Facebook.com has enjoyed a weekly lead over Google.com. The lead may be slim, but it has become inevitable as Facebook’s popularity has grown rapidly from just over 2 per cent of visits a year ago. Heather Dougherty of Hitwise said that Facebook had “reached an important milestone” with the weekly figures.
Facebook’s membership has more than doubled in the past year, passing the 200m mark last April and 400m in February.
“The true value of Facebook and social networks is just becoming clear to marketers,” said Augie Ray, analyst at Forrester Research.
Although Facebook is enjoying rapid growth, it is only beginning to cash in on its success. Revenues at the social media company are estimated to be in the range of $1bn to $1.5bn this year, while Google took in $23.7bn last year.
Google has responded to the ascendancy of the social networking site with its own Buzz service last month. Buzz allows users to add status updates, friends, pictures, videos, location information, comments and links to other networking sites. Buzz, though, has struggled with privacy concerns just as Facebook has been criticised for encouraging members to reveal personal data to search engines.
The Hitwise figures only cover visits to the Google.com site, meaning that services such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps and searches carried out in a box in a browser toolbar are excluded. Taking all Google properties into account, the internet company accounted for 11.03 per cent of US website visits last week, compared with 10.98 per cent for Yahoo properties and 7.07 per cent for Facebook, according to Hitwise.
Facebook’s trajectory suggests that it will soar ahead of Google.com in the coming months. However, social networking sites have fallen in the past. Google.com had led since September 2007, when it overtook News Corp’s MySpace.com.
Internet users worldwide spent more than five-and-a-half hours a month on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82 per cent increase over the previous year, according to the Nielsen Company research firm.
US users spent nearly six-and-a-half hours on Facebook compared with fewer than two-and-a-half hours on Google.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google
By Chris Nuttall and David Gelles in San Francisco
Published: March 16 2010 13:15 | Last updated: March 17 2010 00:10
Social networking website Facebook has capped a year of phenomenal growth by overtaking Google’s popularity among US internet users, with industry data showing it has scored more visits on its home page than the search engine.
It is the first time that Facebook.com has enjoyed a weekly lead over Google.com. The lead may be slim, but it has become inevitable as Facebook’s popularity has grown rapidly from just over 2 per cent of visits a year ago. Heather Dougherty of Hitwise said that Facebook had “reached an important milestone” with the weekly figures.
Facebook’s membership has more than doubled in the past year, passing the 200m mark last April and 400m in February.
“The true value of Facebook and social networks is just becoming clear to marketers,” said Augie Ray, analyst at Forrester Research.
Although Facebook is enjoying rapid growth, it is only beginning to cash in on its success. Revenues at the social media company are estimated to be in the range of $1bn to $1.5bn this year, while Google took in $23.7bn last year.
Google has responded to the ascendancy of the social networking site with its own Buzz service last month. Buzz allows users to add status updates, friends, pictures, videos, location information, comments and links to other networking sites. Buzz, though, has struggled with privacy concerns just as Facebook has been criticised for encouraging members to reveal personal data to search engines.
The Hitwise figures only cover visits to the Google.com site, meaning that services such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps and searches carried out in a box in a browser toolbar are excluded. Taking all Google properties into account, the internet company accounted for 11.03 per cent of US website visits last week, compared with 10.98 per cent for Yahoo properties and 7.07 per cent for Facebook, according to Hitwise.
Facebook’s trajectory suggests that it will soar ahead of Google.com in the coming months. However, social networking sites have fallen in the past. Google.com had led since September 2007, when it overtook News Corp’s MySpace.com.
Internet users worldwide spent more than five-and-a-half hours a month on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82 per cent increase over the previous year, according to the Nielsen Company research firm.
US users spent nearly six-and-a-half hours on Facebook compared with fewer than two-and-a-half hours on Google.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Friday, April 11, 2008
FT.com / In depth / Yahoo merger bid
FT.com / In depth / Yahoo merger bid
Web giants take sides in battle for Yahoo
Yahoo ratcheted up its efforts to improve its negotiating position in the face of an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft amid signs that it was edging towards a three-way alliance with Google and AOL - Apr 10 2008
Yahoo digs in for final battle
Yahoo has positioned itself for the endgame in its battle with Microsoft by issuing its strongest rejection to date of its rival’s $42bn takeover offer - Apr 7 2008
Yahoo seeks boost from ad sales system
New platform aims to simplify significantly the process of buying and selling adverts online and improve Yahoo’s value in the face of Microsoft’s renewed takeover efforts - Apr 7 2008
Yahoo board huddles over Microsoft bid
Directors were in discussions about Microsoft’s latest gambit in its unsolicited takeover approach, amid signs that Yahoo was preparing to dig in deeper against its suitor’s current bid - Apr 6 2008
Advertisers welcome prospect of Google rival
Google executives are quietly rehearsing their arguments against Microsoft’s approach to Yahoo in internal discussions which could indicate the search group’s lobbying strategy once a bid comes before regulators - Mar 16 2008
Web giants take sides in battle for Yahoo
Yahoo ratcheted up its efforts to improve its negotiating position in the face of an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft amid signs that it was edging towards a three-way alliance with Google and AOL - Apr 10 2008
Yahoo digs in for final battle
Yahoo has positioned itself for the endgame in its battle with Microsoft by issuing its strongest rejection to date of its rival’s $42bn takeover offer - Apr 7 2008
Yahoo seeks boost from ad sales system
New platform aims to simplify significantly the process of buying and selling adverts online and improve Yahoo’s value in the face of Microsoft’s renewed takeover efforts - Apr 7 2008
Yahoo board huddles over Microsoft bid
Directors were in discussions about Microsoft’s latest gambit in its unsolicited takeover approach, amid signs that Yahoo was preparing to dig in deeper against its suitor’s current bid - Apr 6 2008
Advertisers welcome prospect of Google rival
Google executives are quietly rehearsing their arguments against Microsoft’s approach to Yahoo in internal discussions which could indicate the search group’s lobbying strategy once a bid comes before regulators - Mar 16 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
FT.com / In depth - Web giants take sides in battle for Yahoo
FT.com / In depth - Web giants take sides in battle for Yahoo
Web giants take sides in battle for Yahoo
By Richard Waters and Chris Nuttall in San Francisco and Joshua Chaffin in New York
Published: April 9 2008 21:23 | Last updated: April 10 2008 05:43
Yahoo ratcheted up its efforts on Wednesday to improve its negotiating position in the face of an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft, amid signs that it was edging towards a three-way alliance with Google and AOL that might protect its independence or at least force Microsoft to pay more.
There were also reports that News Corp was in talks with Microsoft about joining in that company’s bid for Yahoo. The talks involve News Corp combining MySpace, its social networking service, with the Microsoft and Yahoo internet businesses, according to the reports. Both News Corp and Microsoft refused to comment.
The flurry of activity came as Yahoo and Microsoft positioned themselves for the end-game in the takeover battle, which began at the end of January. Microsoft tried to turn up the heat on Yahoo over the weekend by threatening to take its cash-and-stock offer, currently worth $42bn, directly to the embattled company’s shareholders and hinting that it might even cut the value of its offer. Yahoo countered by repeating that the offer price was too low and that while it did not rule out a deal with Microsoft at a higher price, it was pursuing alternatives.
Yahoo gave the first public sign of one possible alternative on Wednesday when it announced the test of a potential advertising alliance with Google. The two-week experiment, due to start next week, will involve Google supplying relevant adverts alongside a small sample of Yahoo search results.
The test suggested that the two sides were once again discussing an alliance that would involve Yahoo closing down its own search advertising system and outsourcing the work to Google. The idea was discussed last year and again after Microsoft made its unsolicited bid, but Google had appeared to cool on the idea amid concerns that it would be blocked by anti-trust regulators.
The idea of Yahoo abandoning its own search advertising system and adopting Google’s has long been promoted by several Wall Street analysts. They see it as a way for Yahoo to cut costs and boost revenues, with Google yielding 30 to 40 per cent more revenue per search than Yahoo.
“What they’re doing now is testing revenue assumptions about what they could expect” from a search advertising alliance, said one person who is familiar with the situation.
Microsoft was quick to raise the anti-trust flag on Wednesday. “Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90 per cent of the search advertising market in Google’s hands; this would make the market far less competitive,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel.
Some analysts were also sceptical that the relationship could expand beyond a trial.
“We do not think a broader or longer-term Yahoo/Google search partnership would pass regulatory muster,” said Scott Kessler, Standard & Poor’s internet services analyst, in a note. Even some people close to the situation warned that the chances were small that the advertising test would eventually lead to a full-blown partnership.
Meanwhile, talks have been continuing over a separate deal involving Yahoo and AOL, according to people familiar with the situation. Accounts differed on Wednesday over how close the two sides were to an agreement. The two have for several weeks been discussing a deal that would involve Time Warner injecting its AOL division into Yahoo in return for a stake in the company.
One person close to the situation described the talks as “fluid” and said the two sides were still some way from any deal, though another person said that considerable headway had been made and an agreement could come as early as next week.
A deal with AOL alone would not create enough value for Yahoo shareholders to justify turning down the big takeover premium offered by Microsoft, according to one Yahoo investor. It has been seen instead as part of a three-way transaction also involving Google, since outsourcing search advertising would have a far bigger and more immediate impact on Yahoo’s earnings.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Web giants take sides in battle for Yahoo
By Richard Waters and Chris Nuttall in San Francisco and Joshua Chaffin in New York
Published: April 9 2008 21:23 | Last updated: April 10 2008 05:43
Yahoo ratcheted up its efforts on Wednesday to improve its negotiating position in the face of an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft, amid signs that it was edging towards a three-way alliance with Google and AOL that might protect its independence or at least force Microsoft to pay more.
There were also reports that News Corp was in talks with Microsoft about joining in that company’s bid for Yahoo. The talks involve News Corp combining MySpace, its social networking service, with the Microsoft and Yahoo internet businesses, according to the reports. Both News Corp and Microsoft refused to comment.
The flurry of activity came as Yahoo and Microsoft positioned themselves for the end-game in the takeover battle, which began at the end of January. Microsoft tried to turn up the heat on Yahoo over the weekend by threatening to take its cash-and-stock offer, currently worth $42bn, directly to the embattled company’s shareholders and hinting that it might even cut the value of its offer. Yahoo countered by repeating that the offer price was too low and that while it did not rule out a deal with Microsoft at a higher price, it was pursuing alternatives.
Yahoo gave the first public sign of one possible alternative on Wednesday when it announced the test of a potential advertising alliance with Google. The two-week experiment, due to start next week, will involve Google supplying relevant adverts alongside a small sample of Yahoo search results.
The test suggested that the two sides were once again discussing an alliance that would involve Yahoo closing down its own search advertising system and outsourcing the work to Google. The idea was discussed last year and again after Microsoft made its unsolicited bid, but Google had appeared to cool on the idea amid concerns that it would be blocked by anti-trust regulators.
The idea of Yahoo abandoning its own search advertising system and adopting Google’s has long been promoted by several Wall Street analysts. They see it as a way for Yahoo to cut costs and boost revenues, with Google yielding 30 to 40 per cent more revenue per search than Yahoo.
“What they’re doing now is testing revenue assumptions about what they could expect” from a search advertising alliance, said one person who is familiar with the situation.
Microsoft was quick to raise the anti-trust flag on Wednesday. “Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90 per cent of the search advertising market in Google’s hands; this would make the market far less competitive,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel.
Some analysts were also sceptical that the relationship could expand beyond a trial.
“We do not think a broader or longer-term Yahoo/Google search partnership would pass regulatory muster,” said Scott Kessler, Standard & Poor’s internet services analyst, in a note. Even some people close to the situation warned that the chances were small that the advertising test would eventually lead to a full-blown partnership.
Meanwhile, talks have been continuing over a separate deal involving Yahoo and AOL, according to people familiar with the situation. Accounts differed on Wednesday over how close the two sides were to an agreement. The two have for several weeks been discussing a deal that would involve Time Warner injecting its AOL division into Yahoo in return for a stake in the company.
One person close to the situation described the talks as “fluid” and said the two sides were still some way from any deal, though another person said that considerable headway had been made and an agreement could come as early as next week.
A deal with AOL alone would not create enough value for Yahoo shareholders to justify turning down the big takeover premium offered by Microsoft, according to one Yahoo investor. It has been seen instead as part of a three-way transaction also involving Google, since outsourcing search advertising would have a far bigger and more immediate impact on Yahoo’s earnings.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
FT.com | Tech Blog | Taking aim at Microsoft’s cash cow
FT.com | Tech Blog | Taking aim at Microsoft’s cash cow
Taking aim at Microsoft’s cash cow
Google’s anti-Microsoft strategy continues to unfold. Today brings news that its online Docs applications will soon step beyond the Web and onto the desktop. (This is accomplished with the Google Gears browser plug-in, which lets you access internet applications while offline by using the hard drive as a cache - a company representative offered to “whitelist” me so I can start using it today, but the less privileged among you will have to wait until this feature becomes generally available over “the next few weeks.”)
Google likes to cloak its new product features in uplifting rhetoric: the company only looks to delight its users, it isn’t motivated by the sort of competitive strategy that other companies employ, and so on. But the evolution of Docs has always looked like a very deliberate plan hatched with its Redmond rival in mind.
Early on, CEO Eric Schmidt talked down the capabilities of Docs as a rival for Office: the main attraction was the ability to share documents, spreadsheets and other files over the Web, and anyway browser-based apps were very poor relations of their desktop cousins.
Then, nearly a year ago, the tune changed. Having rounded out Docs into an Office-like suite of apps, Google said it was adding “applications” to its corporate mission statement (alongside search and advertising.) For good measure, Schmidt said that online apps were starting to become a real alternative to desktop software since browser technology had advanced far faster than he had expected (what a surprise!)
Extending Docs offline looks like the next step. Giving users the ability to write, edit or view files while not connected to the Web (any changes are automatically synchronised with the version on Google’s servers once the machine goes online again) removes one of the main disincentives for using Docs.
Google’s leaders have at times given tell-tale hints about the real strategy here. Last year Mr Schmidt conceded that while many companies might not yet consider adopting Google’s applications, they were still likely to use the threat of switching away from Office as a way to get a better deal out of Microsoft. Thanks to the new offline capabilities, this negotitating leverage is about to get stronger.
March 31st, 2008 in Internet, Software | Permalink
Taking aim at Microsoft’s cash cow
Google’s anti-Microsoft strategy continues to unfold. Today brings news that its online Docs applications will soon step beyond the Web and onto the desktop. (This is accomplished with the Google Gears browser plug-in, which lets you access internet applications while offline by using the hard drive as a cache - a company representative offered to “whitelist” me so I can start using it today, but the less privileged among you will have to wait until this feature becomes generally available over “the next few weeks.”)
Google likes to cloak its new product features in uplifting rhetoric: the company only looks to delight its users, it isn’t motivated by the sort of competitive strategy that other companies employ, and so on. But the evolution of Docs has always looked like a very deliberate plan hatched with its Redmond rival in mind.
Early on, CEO Eric Schmidt talked down the capabilities of Docs as a rival for Office: the main attraction was the ability to share documents, spreadsheets and other files over the Web, and anyway browser-based apps were very poor relations of their desktop cousins.
Then, nearly a year ago, the tune changed. Having rounded out Docs into an Office-like suite of apps, Google said it was adding “applications” to its corporate mission statement (alongside search and advertising.) For good measure, Schmidt said that online apps were starting to become a real alternative to desktop software since browser technology had advanced far faster than he had expected (what a surprise!)
Extending Docs offline looks like the next step. Giving users the ability to write, edit or view files while not connected to the Web (any changes are automatically synchronised with the version on Google’s servers once the machine goes online again) removes one of the main disincentives for using Docs.
Google’s leaders have at times given tell-tale hints about the real strategy here. Last year Mr Schmidt conceded that while many companies might not yet consider adopting Google’s applications, they were still likely to use the threat of switching away from Office as a way to get a better deal out of Microsoft. Thanks to the new offline capabilities, this negotitating leverage is about to get stronger.
March 31st, 2008 in Internet, Software | Permalink
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Microsoft opens online services to small, medium companies - SiliconValley.com
Microsoft opens online services to small, medium companies - SiliconValley.com
Microsoft, facing a threat from Google, IBM and other rivals, is ramping up its online services, which are hosted applications that manage such things as e-mail, calendars and video conferencing.
Microsoft, facing a threat from Google, IBM and other rivals, is ramping up its online services, which are hosted applications that manage such things as e-mail, calendars and video conferencing.
Cebit Ideen von gestern - Computer - sueddeutsche.de
Cebit Ideen von gestern - Computer - sueddeutsche.de
Nach sechs Jahren kommt Microsoft-Chef Steve Ballmer wieder nach Hannover - mit Konzepten, die er schon vor sechs Jahren präsentierte. Auch der Gegner heißt immer noch Google.
Nach sechs Jahren kommt Microsoft-Chef Steve Ballmer wieder nach Hannover - mit Konzepten, die er schon vor sechs Jahren präsentierte. Auch der Gegner heißt immer noch Google.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Google Pressures Microsoft With Team Collaboration Tool
Google Pressures Microsoft With Team Collaboration Tool
Google expanded its suite of personal and group productivity tools by adding a persistent collaboration repository to Google Apps. This move increases the pressure on Microsoft and once again alters IT pricing economics.
Google expanded its suite of personal and group productivity tools by adding a persistent collaboration repository to Google Apps. This move increases the pressure on Microsoft and once again alters IT pricing economics.
FT.com / Companies / IT - Microsoft line extended to small business
FT.com / Companies / IT - Microsoft line extended to small business
Microsoft line extended to small business
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: March 3 2008 05:03 | Last updated: March 3 2008 05:03
Microsoft will on Monday take the wraps off a new service designed to repel Google’s incursion into one of its core markets, selling software applications to small and medium-sized businesses.
The plan will involve delivering a service over the internet for small companies to do things such as manage corporate e-mail and let workers collaborate on documents, rather than requiring them to buy the software. Users of the new internet services will be charged a flat annual subscription fee per worker.
The move marks a response to Google’s launch a year ago of a set of online applications for business customers, for a fee of $50 a year for each worker. Google executives have suggested that even if companies don’t end up using their services, the presence of an alternative could still lead companies to negotiate lower prices from Microsoft.
Chris Capossela, head of Microsoft’s Office desktop applications and related server software businesses, dismissed the threat from this new low-priced competition. He refused to disclose what Microsoft would charge for its online services, but said: “We’re really not worried about cannibalisation.”
The new Microsoft services involve two of its main server products – the Exchange e-mail software and SharePoint, which is used to manage documents centrally and make it easier for workers to collaborate.
Internet-based versions of this software were made available to big companies last year. It will now be extended for a test period to the smaller companies that have traditionally formed the backbone of Microsoft’s business.
In spite of the experimentation with offering online versions of its server-based software, Microsoft has so far retained its traditional business model for its dominant Office suite of PC applications.
It is counting on the functionality of its software to counter Google. “Looking at their software, it’s incredibly basic,” said Mr Capossela. “It isn’t good enough for a 50-person company.”
He also said Google, which has been building a sales force to improve relations with business customers, had a long way to go before being taken seriously as a business software supplier.
“The reality is, it takes a very long time to build the credibility with [chief information officers],” he said.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Microsoft line extended to small business
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: March 3 2008 05:03 | Last updated: March 3 2008 05:03
Microsoft will on Monday take the wraps off a new service designed to repel Google’s incursion into one of its core markets, selling software applications to small and medium-sized businesses.
The plan will involve delivering a service over the internet for small companies to do things such as manage corporate e-mail and let workers collaborate on documents, rather than requiring them to buy the software. Users of the new internet services will be charged a flat annual subscription fee per worker.
The move marks a response to Google’s launch a year ago of a set of online applications for business customers, for a fee of $50 a year for each worker. Google executives have suggested that even if companies don’t end up using their services, the presence of an alternative could still lead companies to negotiate lower prices from Microsoft.
Chris Capossela, head of Microsoft’s Office desktop applications and related server software businesses, dismissed the threat from this new low-priced competition. He refused to disclose what Microsoft would charge for its online services, but said: “We’re really not worried about cannibalisation.”
The new Microsoft services involve two of its main server products – the Exchange e-mail software and SharePoint, which is used to manage documents centrally and make it easier for workers to collaborate.
Internet-based versions of this software were made available to big companies last year. It will now be extended for a test period to the smaller companies that have traditionally formed the backbone of Microsoft’s business.
In spite of the experimentation with offering online versions of its server-based software, Microsoft has so far retained its traditional business model for its dominant Office suite of PC applications.
It is counting on the functionality of its software to counter Google. “Looking at their software, it’s incredibly basic,” said Mr Capossela. “It isn’t good enough for a 50-person company.”
He also said Google, which has been building a sales force to improve relations with business customers, had a long way to go before being taken seriously as a business software supplier.
“The reality is, it takes a very long time to build the credibility with [chief information officers],” he said.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Friday, February 29, 2008
FTD.de - Medien+Internet - Nachrichten - Google bringt neues Konkurrenz-Produkt zu Microsoft heraus
FTD.de - Medien+Internet - Nachrichten - Google bringt neues Konkurrenz-Produkt zu Microsoft heraus
Google verschärft die Konkurrenz mit Microsoft: der Suchmaschinenbetreiber erweitert seine Internet-basierten Office-Anwendungen "Google Apps" um ein neues Werkzeug zur Erstellung von Webseiten. Microsoft will sich nicht abschlagen lassen und zieht mit.
Google verschärft die Konkurrenz mit Microsoft: der Suchmaschinenbetreiber erweitert seine Internet-basierten Office-Anwendungen "Google Apps" um ein neues Werkzeug zur Erstellung von Webseiten. Microsoft will sich nicht abschlagen lassen und zieht mit.
Microsoft Matches Google With SaaS for E-Mail/SharePoint
Microsoft Matches Google With SaaS for E-Mail/SharePoint
Responding to the threat from Google, and sensing a significant business opportunity, Microsoft has announced substantial plans for an Exchange and SharePoint software-as-a-service model.
Responding to the threat from Google, and sensing a significant business opportunity, Microsoft has announced substantial plans for an Exchange and SharePoint software-as-a-service model.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
FT.com / In depth - Yahoo poised to reject Microsoft bid
FT.com / In depth - Yahoo poised to reject Microsoft bid
Yahoo poised to reject Microsoft bid
By Chris Nuttall in San Francisco
Published: February 9 2008 20:29 | Last updated: February 9 2008 20:29
Yahoo intends to reject Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for the internet company, according to a person close to the situation.
Yahoo’s board held its first formal meeting on Friday to discuss the February 1 offer, which is currently valued at $41.5bn. It has decided the $31 a share on the table massively undervalues the company, this person said.
The Silicon Valley company is expected to send a letter to Microsoft on Monday detailing its position, including the concern that any takeover could be overturned by regulators.
It is understood Yahoo would be unlikely to give serious consideration to an offer of less than $40 a share. Shares in Yahoo closed on Friday at $29.20.
Yahoo’s rejection of the bid could set the scene for a protracted struggle for the company. Microsoft could launch a proxy contest and seek to replace Yahoo’s board at its annual meeting in June.
But Yahoo’s move could also give it time to come up with alternatives that might satisfy shareholders disappointed with its poor financial performance. It is understood to be considering handing over its search advertising to Google, a move that would generate considerable revenues and cost savings. Another option would be to sell off its holdings in China and Japan to generate a special dividend.
So far there has been no indication of any ”white knight” coming to Yahoo’s rescue, with News Corp and NBC among those ruling out a possible counter-bid.
Yahoo is being advised by Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. Moelis & Company, a Los Angeles-based mergers and acquisitions boutique, has also joined the team.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Yahoo poised to reject Microsoft bid
By Chris Nuttall in San Francisco
Published: February 9 2008 20:29 | Last updated: February 9 2008 20:29
Yahoo intends to reject Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for the internet company, according to a person close to the situation.
Yahoo’s board held its first formal meeting on Friday to discuss the February 1 offer, which is currently valued at $41.5bn. It has decided the $31 a share on the table massively undervalues the company, this person said.
The Silicon Valley company is expected to send a letter to Microsoft on Monday detailing its position, including the concern that any takeover could be overturned by regulators.
It is understood Yahoo would be unlikely to give serious consideration to an offer of less than $40 a share. Shares in Yahoo closed on Friday at $29.20.
Yahoo’s rejection of the bid could set the scene for a protracted struggle for the company. Microsoft could launch a proxy contest and seek to replace Yahoo’s board at its annual meeting in June.
But Yahoo’s move could also give it time to come up with alternatives that might satisfy shareholders disappointed with its poor financial performance. It is understood to be considering handing over its search advertising to Google, a move that would generate considerable revenues and cost savings. Another option would be to sell off its holdings in China and Japan to generate a special dividend.
So far there has been no indication of any ”white knight” coming to Yahoo’s rescue, with News Corp and NBC among those ruling out a possible counter-bid.
Yahoo is being advised by Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. Moelis & Company, a Los Angeles-based mergers and acquisitions boutique, has also joined the team.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Microsoft v Google | When clouds collide | Economist.com
Microsoft v Google | When clouds collide | Economist.com
THE collision of two clouds is a gentle affair—except, that is, in the digital skies of the technology industry. But such a virtual collision is the best image to keep in mind when trying to understand why Microsoft, the world's largest software company, has bid a whopping $44.6 billion for Yahoo!, an ailing online giant. As computing moves online, the sources of power and money will increasingly be enormous “computing clouds”, as the cognoscenti call them, hosted on the internet. The Yahoo! deal is mainly about inflating Microsoft's cloud so that it can at last match that of its most dangerous rival, Google.
To be sure, the merger, which would be the internet industry's biggest since the ill-fated union of AOL and Time Warner in 2000, is far from a done deal. As The Economist went to press, Yahoo! had yet to reply formally to the offer, other than to say that it was considering it. Indeed, its management, which has spurned previous overtures from Microsoft, is said to have been looking into alternatives to the takeover, including selling off some units and even considering an alliance with Google. A rival bid is possible, but so far no one appears inclined to enter into a bidding war with deep-pocketed Microsoft; its offer values Yahoo! at $31 a share, a 62% premium over its closing price before Microsoft's bid was made public. And then there is the inevitable antitrust review, which promises to be lengthy, particularly in Europe.
If Microsoft does manage to swallow Yahoo!, it risks a severe bout of post-merger indigestion, as happened with AOL and Time Warner. (This week Time Warner's new boss, Jeff Bewkes, said he planned to spin off AOL's shrinking internet-access business.) Microsoft will have to combine or eliminate overlapping products and services. There will be cultural problems to overcome, too. Yahoo! is an online-media company that prides itself on its fun-loving ethos and has built its business on open-source technology, whereas Microsoft attracts hard-charging geeks and makes its money from proprietary software. So combining the two firms' technology infrastructures to make further savings will also be tricky.
Since Microsoft must know all this, the fact that it still wants to buy Yahoo! is nothing less than an admission that it needs help to catch up with Google. The latter is best known for its search engine, but it was also the first company to build a huge computing cloud—a nexus of hardware, software, data and people which provides online services. In Google's vast data centres, the computing equivalents of power stations, hundreds of thousands of machines are cleverly linked to act as one. Google collects vast amounts of data from its users and from the web. And it has hired an army of bright engineers to devise new services that make use of these resources.
Most importantly, Google has figured out a way to make money from its cloud. By giving away its services, the firm creates plenty of space for targeted advertising, mostly in the form of small text-boxes related to users' search queries. These are auctioned, and buyers pay only if users click on their advertisements. Google has thus created a virtuous cycle. As the largest search engine, Google attracts more advertisers and can serve up more relevant advertisements. This in turn attracts more users and advertisers, and so on.
In recent years Microsoft has tried to create a comparable cloud of its own. It is investing heavily in infrastructure and has built data centres around the world. It is also trying hard to catch up with Google's services, notably internet search. It recently strengthened its position in display advertising, a subset of the online-ad market that is smaller than search-based advertising, but is expected to grow quickly. In May Microsoft bought aQuantive, an online-ad agency, after Google agreed to buy DoubleClick, a leader in display.
Yet it has little to show for its efforts. In search, for instance, Microsoft's worldwide market share in December 2007 was 2.9%, according to comScore, a market-research firm, compared with 62.4% for Google (and 12.8% for Yahoo!). Microsoft's online business has yet to turn a profit. Yet what worries the firm's management most is that Google is pulling ahead in online advertising and may soon corner this crucial market, particularly once its acquisition of DoubleClick is completed. Despite fierce lobbying by Microsoft, American regulators have approved the deal, and their European counterparts are expected to follow suit soon.
Ironically, Microsoft argues that Google will benefit from the same advantage that has long made it almost impossible for any other firm to compete with its own Windows operating system, and which played an important role in successful antitrust cases against the software giant. Since so much software is written to run on Windows, it is difficult for competing operating systems to enter the market. Similarly, if too many publishers and advertisers adopt Google's online-advertising platform, rivals will not be able “to mount a credible competitive challenge”, as an internal Microsoft document puts it.
Having failed to keep DoubleClick out of Google's clutches, Microsoft now hopes that Yahoo! will keep it from being left in the dust. If it succeeds, the takeover would expand Microsoft's cloud, though not to the size of Google's. The combined firm's websites would attract over 290m unique visitors per month in America—slightly more than Google, according to Nielsen Online, another market-research firm. Yet Microsoft-Yahoo! would have a market share of only 18% in search advertising and 30% in display, according to Oppenheimer, an investment bank.
Still, the takeover would give Microsoft greater clout in other areas. One is web-based e-mail, where the merged entity would have 80% of the American market. It would be equally dominant in instant messaging. Since Yahoo! also offers many other services, such as Flickr, a photo-sharing site, Microsoft would control the world's biggest directory of registered internet users—a valuable asset as it develops new cloud-based services.
Nonetheless, the transaction could be good news for Google, at least in the short term. Google will most certainly try to lure away Yahoo!'s best staff. The integration effort will distract Microsoft's management and take time. Google has already launched a lobbying campaign to block the merger, arguing that it could undermine innovation on the internet—though neither Microsoft nor Yahoo! has done anything terribly innovative online lately. Indeed, the more Google complains about threats to innovation, instead of just getting on with doing it, the more it sounds like Microsoft used to.
THE collision of two clouds is a gentle affair—except, that is, in the digital skies of the technology industry. But such a virtual collision is the best image to keep in mind when trying to understand why Microsoft, the world's largest software company, has bid a whopping $44.6 billion for Yahoo!, an ailing online giant. As computing moves online, the sources of power and money will increasingly be enormous “computing clouds”, as the cognoscenti call them, hosted on the internet. The Yahoo! deal is mainly about inflating Microsoft's cloud so that it can at last match that of its most dangerous rival, Google.
To be sure, the merger, which would be the internet industry's biggest since the ill-fated union of AOL and Time Warner in 2000, is far from a done deal. As The Economist went to press, Yahoo! had yet to reply formally to the offer, other than to say that it was considering it. Indeed, its management, which has spurned previous overtures from Microsoft, is said to have been looking into alternatives to the takeover, including selling off some units and even considering an alliance with Google. A rival bid is possible, but so far no one appears inclined to enter into a bidding war with deep-pocketed Microsoft; its offer values Yahoo! at $31 a share, a 62% premium over its closing price before Microsoft's bid was made public. And then there is the inevitable antitrust review, which promises to be lengthy, particularly in Europe.
If Microsoft does manage to swallow Yahoo!, it risks a severe bout of post-merger indigestion, as happened with AOL and Time Warner. (This week Time Warner's new boss, Jeff Bewkes, said he planned to spin off AOL's shrinking internet-access business.) Microsoft will have to combine or eliminate overlapping products and services. There will be cultural problems to overcome, too. Yahoo! is an online-media company that prides itself on its fun-loving ethos and has built its business on open-source technology, whereas Microsoft attracts hard-charging geeks and makes its money from proprietary software. So combining the two firms' technology infrastructures to make further savings will also be tricky.
Since Microsoft must know all this, the fact that it still wants to buy Yahoo! is nothing less than an admission that it needs help to catch up with Google. The latter is best known for its search engine, but it was also the first company to build a huge computing cloud—a nexus of hardware, software, data and people which provides online services. In Google's vast data centres, the computing equivalents of power stations, hundreds of thousands of machines are cleverly linked to act as one. Google collects vast amounts of data from its users and from the web. And it has hired an army of bright engineers to devise new services that make use of these resources.
Most importantly, Google has figured out a way to make money from its cloud. By giving away its services, the firm creates plenty of space for targeted advertising, mostly in the form of small text-boxes related to users' search queries. These are auctioned, and buyers pay only if users click on their advertisements. Google has thus created a virtuous cycle. As the largest search engine, Google attracts more advertisers and can serve up more relevant advertisements. This in turn attracts more users and advertisers, and so on.
In recent years Microsoft has tried to create a comparable cloud of its own. It is investing heavily in infrastructure and has built data centres around the world. It is also trying hard to catch up with Google's services, notably internet search. It recently strengthened its position in display advertising, a subset of the online-ad market that is smaller than search-based advertising, but is expected to grow quickly. In May Microsoft bought aQuantive, an online-ad agency, after Google agreed to buy DoubleClick, a leader in display.
Yet it has little to show for its efforts. In search, for instance, Microsoft's worldwide market share in December 2007 was 2.9%, according to comScore, a market-research firm, compared with 62.4% for Google (and 12.8% for Yahoo!). Microsoft's online business has yet to turn a profit. Yet what worries the firm's management most is that Google is pulling ahead in online advertising and may soon corner this crucial market, particularly once its acquisition of DoubleClick is completed. Despite fierce lobbying by Microsoft, American regulators have approved the deal, and their European counterparts are expected to follow suit soon.
Ironically, Microsoft argues that Google will benefit from the same advantage that has long made it almost impossible for any other firm to compete with its own Windows operating system, and which played an important role in successful antitrust cases against the software giant. Since so much software is written to run on Windows, it is difficult for competing operating systems to enter the market. Similarly, if too many publishers and advertisers adopt Google's online-advertising platform, rivals will not be able “to mount a credible competitive challenge”, as an internal Microsoft document puts it.
Having failed to keep DoubleClick out of Google's clutches, Microsoft now hopes that Yahoo! will keep it from being left in the dust. If it succeeds, the takeover would expand Microsoft's cloud, though not to the size of Google's. The combined firm's websites would attract over 290m unique visitors per month in America—slightly more than Google, according to Nielsen Online, another market-research firm. Yet Microsoft-Yahoo! would have a market share of only 18% in search advertising and 30% in display, according to Oppenheimer, an investment bank.
Still, the takeover would give Microsoft greater clout in other areas. One is web-based e-mail, where the merged entity would have 80% of the American market. It would be equally dominant in instant messaging. Since Yahoo! also offers many other services, such as Flickr, a photo-sharing site, Microsoft would control the world's biggest directory of registered internet users—a valuable asset as it develops new cloud-based services.
Nonetheless, the transaction could be good news for Google, at least in the short term. Google will most certainly try to lure away Yahoo!'s best staff. The integration effort will distract Microsoft's management and take time. Google has already launched a lobbying campaign to block the merger, arguing that it could undermine innovation on the internet—though neither Microsoft nor Yahoo! has done anything terribly innovative online lately. Indeed, the more Google complains about threats to innovation, instead of just getting on with doing it, the more it sounds like Microsoft used to.
Monday, February 04, 2008
FT.com / In depth - Google weighs in against Microsoft
FT.com / In depth - Google weighs in against Microsoft
Google weighs in against Microsoft
By Richard Waters in San Francisco and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in London
Published: February 3 2008 19:54 | Last updated: February 4 2008 03:17
Google raised a red flag over Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover offer for Yahoo, on Sunday arguing it could open the way for the software developer to extend its PC monopoly to the internet.
The intervention is the latest example of the growing enmity between the two companies and echoes Microsoft’s denunciation of Google’s proposed acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick.
While Microsoft claimed that deal could give Google inordinate power to control online advertisements as they become the lifeblood of many internet companies, Google believes Microsoft would be in a position to influence the evolution of the web itself.
However, Brad Smith, general counsel of Microsoft, said: “Microsoft is committed to openness, innovation, and the protection of privacy on the internet.”
Microsoft has not ruled out launching a proxy fight for control of Yahoo by 13 March, the last date it can nominate its own directors to the company’s board ahead of this year’s shareholders’ meeting.
Separately, an alliance with Google is being seen inside Yahoo as one of the main options as the company tries to fight off Microsoft’s unsolicited approach, according to one person familiar with its thinking.
Yahoo rejected the idea of a tie-up with Google last year but has now put it back at the top of its list of options, along with finding ways to realise more of the value from its stakes in Japanese and Chinese joint ventures, according to this person.
The possibility of an alliance between the two internet groups adds to the intrigue surrounding the tussle between Google and Microsoft, and could raise questions about Google’s motivations in publicly attacking Microsoft now.
In a posting on Google’s company blog, David Drummond, its top lawyer, said: “While the internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies – and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.”
He went on to question whether a Yahoo acquisition would allow Microsoft, “despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offences, to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the internet”.
Google swung the spotlight on to the “overwhelming” share of the web e-mail and instant messaging markets that Microsoft and Yahoo account for, plus the fact that they own two of the busiest web portals.
“Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ e-mail, IM, and web-based services?” Mr Drummond asked.
Meanwhile, a Google-Yahoo alliance, something discussed but not pursued last year, would enable Google to halt Microsoft’s latest bid to boost its standing on the web.
The idea was receiving serious consideration again this weekend as Yahoo looked at a wider range of options, according to a person close to the company.
Microsoft’s cash-and-stock offer for Yahoo was worth $43bn at the end of last week.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Google weighs in against Microsoft
By Richard Waters in San Francisco and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in London
Published: February 3 2008 19:54 | Last updated: February 4 2008 03:17
Google raised a red flag over Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover offer for Yahoo, on Sunday arguing it could open the way for the software developer to extend its PC monopoly to the internet.
The intervention is the latest example of the growing enmity between the two companies and echoes Microsoft’s denunciation of Google’s proposed acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick.
While Microsoft claimed that deal could give Google inordinate power to control online advertisements as they become the lifeblood of many internet companies, Google believes Microsoft would be in a position to influence the evolution of the web itself.
However, Brad Smith, general counsel of Microsoft, said: “Microsoft is committed to openness, innovation, and the protection of privacy on the internet.”
Microsoft has not ruled out launching a proxy fight for control of Yahoo by 13 March, the last date it can nominate its own directors to the company’s board ahead of this year’s shareholders’ meeting.
Separately, an alliance with Google is being seen inside Yahoo as one of the main options as the company tries to fight off Microsoft’s unsolicited approach, according to one person familiar with its thinking.
Yahoo rejected the idea of a tie-up with Google last year but has now put it back at the top of its list of options, along with finding ways to realise more of the value from its stakes in Japanese and Chinese joint ventures, according to this person.
The possibility of an alliance between the two internet groups adds to the intrigue surrounding the tussle between Google and Microsoft, and could raise questions about Google’s motivations in publicly attacking Microsoft now.
In a posting on Google’s company blog, David Drummond, its top lawyer, said: “While the internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies – and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.”
He went on to question whether a Yahoo acquisition would allow Microsoft, “despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offences, to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the internet”.
Google swung the spotlight on to the “overwhelming” share of the web e-mail and instant messaging markets that Microsoft and Yahoo account for, plus the fact that they own two of the busiest web portals.
“Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ e-mail, IM, and web-based services?” Mr Drummond asked.
Meanwhile, a Google-Yahoo alliance, something discussed but not pursued last year, would enable Google to halt Microsoft’s latest bid to boost its standing on the web.
The idea was receiving serious consideration again this weekend as Yahoo looked at a wider range of options, according to a person close to the company.
Microsoft’s cash-and-stock offer for Yahoo was worth $43bn at the end of last week.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Friday, February 01, 2008
Ready to Rumble: Microsoft-Yahoo! vs. Google | AMR Research
Ready to Rumble: Microsoft-Yahoo! vs. Google | AMR Research
The last minutes of January were barely off the clock when Microsoft made a $44.6B cash-and-stock bid for Yahoo!. Microsoft is offering $31 per share, a 62% premium over Yahoo!’s closing stock price January 31. If I were Yahoo! co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang, having recently stepped back into the lead role only to deal with executive departures, disappointing results, and layoffs, I’d be ecstatic that Steve Ballmer has taken Mick Jagger’s offer and has come to “my emotional rescue.”
When I saw the news flash on a television as I entered the gym, I had three reactions:
First, it’s a lot of money for a company that continues to fall far behind Google in revenue, market share, market valuation, profitability, and mindshare. The offer is nearly seven times last year’s revenue.
Second, can Microsoft recoup its investment? I use My Yahoo! every day … for free. When I talked about this with one of the investment gurus who belongs to my gym he said, “If Yahoo! provided the same services for just a penny per subscriber per year, they would lose 50% of their base immediately.” While I’m not sure that’s true, his point is that we’ve come to expect Yahoo! and Google functionality will be free. The cost is offset by the paid ads that no one admits to clicking on.
Third, can Microsoft retain the key Yahoo! developers and sales stars? There is so much venture money in Silicon Valley chasing proven talent that it may be hard for Yahoo! employees to accept Microsoft’s planned retention packages in lieu of the opportunity to join the next Google. How ironic is that?
On the flip side, if Microsoft really wants to slow or stop Google in its march across the enterprise, did it have any other choice? As I was trying to finish writing, Jonathan Yarmis and Jim Shepherd came to my office arguing passionately that this deal makes sense for Microsoft. To make sure his points were heard, Jonathan teamed with Chris Fletcher and Jim Murphy on a companion piece.
Zimbra as hidden jewel for Microsoft Live?
When I think of Yahoo!, I think of my portal. In considering the Microsoft-Yahoo! combo, I initially overlooked Zimbra. Yahoo! bought the collaboration software vendor last September for $350M. I first wrote about Zimbra, last April, saying:
“When I first saw it, my reaction was that this is what SAP and Microsoft are trying to do with Duet. The Zimbra Collaboration Suite is designed to allow PC users to add or build new capabilities on top of their preferred desktop standard (like Microsoft Outlook or any of its competitors). The company provides a wide range of Zimbra-developed and third-party “zimlets” that allow users to access Google maps, VoIP services, data sources (such as Wikipedia and catalogs), enterprise applications, and third-party services such as travel.”
Zimbra’s software would be ideal for extending—some would argue saving—the Microsoft Live initiative. It certainly sets up an interesting play against Google Apps. Does Microsoft Zimbra escape the scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Justice?
Meanwhile, Google shares get walloped
Ironically, Google employees with options at ridiculously high strike prices may be looking for the next Google, too. Shares of GOOG were getting spanked at opening February 1. By 11:30 a.m., the stock was trading at $513.01, down $51.29 or more than 9%. This is a far cry from the peak of $747.24 reached last November. At the current price, Google still enjoys a market cap that tops $160B. That’s more than $100B higher than SAP ($57.58B) and $56B higher than Oracle.
While some of the sell-off might be because of the threat of Microsoft emerging as a stronger competitor, the market has reacted negatively to Google’s recent earnings report. The company said that 4Q07 profits and paid clicks had grown slower than the previous three quarters. A fierce debate has ensued over whether Google will be helped or hurt by the long-predicted U.S. recession.
What do you think?
Is Steve Ballmer making a smart bet, or could he have waited six months and bought Yahoo! at a fraction of today’s price? If the deal goes through, will Microsoft be able to keep Zimbra or will it be seen as having too much power on the desktop? Is Google’s recent slower growth rate in profits and paid clicks a sign of saturation or just part of the ebb and flow of its dynamic business model? As always, I welcome your feedback and ideas—brichardson@amrresearch.com.
The last minutes of January were barely off the clock when Microsoft made a $44.6B cash-and-stock bid for Yahoo!. Microsoft is offering $31 per share, a 62% premium over Yahoo!’s closing stock price January 31. If I were Yahoo! co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang, having recently stepped back into the lead role only to deal with executive departures, disappointing results, and layoffs, I’d be ecstatic that Steve Ballmer has taken Mick Jagger’s offer and has come to “my emotional rescue.”
When I saw the news flash on a television as I entered the gym, I had three reactions:
First, it’s a lot of money for a company that continues to fall far behind Google in revenue, market share, market valuation, profitability, and mindshare. The offer is nearly seven times last year’s revenue.
Second, can Microsoft recoup its investment? I use My Yahoo! every day … for free. When I talked about this with one of the investment gurus who belongs to my gym he said, “If Yahoo! provided the same services for just a penny per subscriber per year, they would lose 50% of their base immediately.” While I’m not sure that’s true, his point is that we’ve come to expect Yahoo! and Google functionality will be free. The cost is offset by the paid ads that no one admits to clicking on.
Third, can Microsoft retain the key Yahoo! developers and sales stars? There is so much venture money in Silicon Valley chasing proven talent that it may be hard for Yahoo! employees to accept Microsoft’s planned retention packages in lieu of the opportunity to join the next Google. How ironic is that?
On the flip side, if Microsoft really wants to slow or stop Google in its march across the enterprise, did it have any other choice? As I was trying to finish writing, Jonathan Yarmis and Jim Shepherd came to my office arguing passionately that this deal makes sense for Microsoft. To make sure his points were heard, Jonathan teamed with Chris Fletcher and Jim Murphy on a companion piece.
Zimbra as hidden jewel for Microsoft Live?
When I think of Yahoo!, I think of my portal. In considering the Microsoft-Yahoo! combo, I initially overlooked Zimbra. Yahoo! bought the collaboration software vendor last September for $350M. I first wrote about Zimbra, last April, saying:
“When I first saw it, my reaction was that this is what SAP and Microsoft are trying to do with Duet. The Zimbra Collaboration Suite is designed to allow PC users to add or build new capabilities on top of their preferred desktop standard (like Microsoft Outlook or any of its competitors). The company provides a wide range of Zimbra-developed and third-party “zimlets” that allow users to access Google maps, VoIP services, data sources (such as Wikipedia and catalogs), enterprise applications, and third-party services such as travel.”
Zimbra’s software would be ideal for extending—some would argue saving—the Microsoft Live initiative. It certainly sets up an interesting play against Google Apps. Does Microsoft Zimbra escape the scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Justice?
Meanwhile, Google shares get walloped
Ironically, Google employees with options at ridiculously high strike prices may be looking for the next Google, too. Shares of GOOG were getting spanked at opening February 1. By 11:30 a.m., the stock was trading at $513.01, down $51.29 or more than 9%. This is a far cry from the peak of $747.24 reached last November. At the current price, Google still enjoys a market cap that tops $160B. That’s more than $100B higher than SAP ($57.58B) and $56B higher than Oracle.
While some of the sell-off might be because of the threat of Microsoft emerging as a stronger competitor, the market has reacted negatively to Google’s recent earnings report. The company said that 4Q07 profits and paid clicks had grown slower than the previous three quarters. A fierce debate has ensued over whether Google will be helped or hurt by the long-predicted U.S. recession.
What do you think?
Is Steve Ballmer making a smart bet, or could he have waited six months and bought Yahoo! at a fraction of today’s price? If the deal goes through, will Microsoft be able to keep Zimbra or will it be seen as having too much power on the desktop? Is Google’s recent slower growth rate in profits and paid clicks a sign of saturation or just part of the ebb and flow of its dynamic business model? As always, I welcome your feedback and ideas—brichardson@amrresearch.com.
Friday, December 14, 2007
FT.com / In depth - Google in challenge to Wikipedia
FT.com / In depth - Google in challenge to Wikipedia
Google in challenge to Wikipedia
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: December 14 2007 21:41 | Last updated: December 14 2007 21:41
Google has taken direct aim at Wikipedia with a project designed to supplant the collectively produced encyclopedia as the primary source for basic information on the web.
Known as Knol, and currently restricted to a limited test, the service is a highly ambitious attempt to collect and organise “user-generated information” in all fields of knowledge.
The move echoes other Google efforts to transform online behaviour – although some, such as Google Base, designed as an open database to collect items for sale, have failed to catch on widely.
With Google’s service, anyone will eventually be able to write a web page about any topic they want, and have it indexed by Google and other search engines. Authors will also be able to benefit from any advertising placed on the page.
Google gave few details about how it would rank submissions to highlight the most accurate or useful, but the group said user ratings would be important.
“A Knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read,” Udi Manber, a Google engineer, wrote on a blog post that announced the project.
That role is often taken by Wikipedia entries, which frequently appear high on Google’s and other search engines’ results, making the collective encyclopedia one of the 10 most-visited sites.
The design of the Google project seeks to address some of the fundamental issues that have hampered the controversial Wikipedia. Entries in the encyclopedia are anonymous and often lead to heated “edit wars”, as people with rival opinions compete to change items. By contrast, Google plans to identify its writers and avoid the collective editing process altogether.
“The key idea behind the Knol project is to highlight authors,” Mr Manber said.
He added Google expected rival notes to appear on many topics: “Competition of ideas is a good thing.”
That approach will avoid the “problems of governance that come from trying to run a collaborative community” like Wikipedia, said Larry Sanger, a founder of the website who split with that project over its failure to apply stricter editing policies.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Google in challenge to Wikipedia
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: December 14 2007 21:41 | Last updated: December 14 2007 21:41
Google has taken direct aim at Wikipedia with a project designed to supplant the collectively produced encyclopedia as the primary source for basic information on the web.
Known as Knol, and currently restricted to a limited test, the service is a highly ambitious attempt to collect and organise “user-generated information” in all fields of knowledge.
The move echoes other Google efforts to transform online behaviour – although some, such as Google Base, designed as an open database to collect items for sale, have failed to catch on widely.
With Google’s service, anyone will eventually be able to write a web page about any topic they want, and have it indexed by Google and other search engines. Authors will also be able to benefit from any advertising placed on the page.
Google gave few details about how it would rank submissions to highlight the most accurate or useful, but the group said user ratings would be important.
“A Knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read,” Udi Manber, a Google engineer, wrote on a blog post that announced the project.
That role is often taken by Wikipedia entries, which frequently appear high on Google’s and other search engines’ results, making the collective encyclopedia one of the 10 most-visited sites.
The design of the Google project seeks to address some of the fundamental issues that have hampered the controversial Wikipedia. Entries in the encyclopedia are anonymous and often lead to heated “edit wars”, as people with rival opinions compete to change items. By contrast, Google plans to identify its writers and avoid the collective editing process altogether.
“The key idea behind the Knol project is to highlight authors,” Mr Manber said.
He added Google expected rival notes to appear on many topics: “Competition of ideas is a good thing.”
That approach will avoid the “problems of governance that come from trying to run a collaborative community” like Wikipedia, said Larry Sanger, a founder of the website who split with that project over its failure to apply stricter editing policies.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
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