Google ( NSDQ: GOOG) shared its plans today for how it will distribute applications mobile phones running its Android operating system, and it sounds startlingly similar to Apple's ( NSDQ: AAPL) App store. Google wrote today on the Android developer blog that it will be called Android Market, "an open content distribution system that will help end users find, purchase, download and install various types of content on their Android-powered devices."

Of course, the marketplace is designed to solve a critical problem that developers face?getting in front of the consumer. It will work like this: Google will make the content available on an open service hosted by Google, and create a feedback and rating system similar to YouTube. To get your content in the market, developers will have to follow three steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe content, then publish it.

Full article: washingtonpost.com 

Labels: Android, apps, market, store

YouTube's huge lead in market share over other online video sites continues to get bigger, even as the over all video viewing market continues a decline. According to traffic analysts Hitwise, YouTube now sees 75.43% of traffic to the online video category; that's up 26% from it's May 2007 marketshare of 59.95%. The nearest competitor is still MySpaceTV, which was down a whopping 44% to 9% marketshare. (Full chart of top 5 sites below.)

In April we reported that YouTube's dominance in online video was bigger than Google's dominance in search (67%). The new Hitwise numbers raise a number of questions for us.

Full article: readwriteweb.com 

Labels: market, video, youtube

SAN FRANCISCO: Vivek Shah at Time magazine spent six months assessing whether Google, Yahoo or Microsoft could most effectively attract advertisers to the publisher's Web sites. His decision: none of them.

In June, Shah awarded a three-year, $100 million contract to Quigo Technologies, a venture capital-backed New York company that will handle ad space on more than 15 sites, including CNNMoney.com and People.com.

After beating down rivals, Google's dominant position in the $40.6 billion online advertising market is showing cracks. Google has mined keyword auctions, where the highest-bidding advertiser may end up on a heavily trafficked news site like that of The New York Times and the lowest bidder might end up on an obscure blog - neither knowing in advance where their ads would land.

Full article: iht.com 

Labels: market, shares

27.09.2007 - Running for over a year now, Microsoft’s Live Search site has received a mini makeover, focusing on improved search results in the areas of shopping, health, entertainment and local interest.

The Microsoft Live Search site is currently at number three in the market with Google in the lead followed by Yahoo!.

Microsoft said it had used customer feedback from among its 128 million users per month to develop “richer and deeper” search results including better data extraction.

Read more: siliconrepublic.com 

Labels: live, market, microsoft, query, search, Yahoo

Search giant Google is setting the stage for its biggest push yet into the U.S. mobile market, in a strategy that delicately straddles the line between partnering and competing with the major cell phone operators.

Last week, Google signed its most significant deal with a U.S. wireless operator to date. Sprint Nextel will integrate the company's mobile services with the carrier's new 4G WiMax network.

But in a move that could pit Google against wireless operators, the company recently announced plans to bid in the Federal Communications Commission's upcoming 700MHz wireless spectrum auction. Google is also continuing with its plans to build free citywide Wi-Fi networks in San Francisco and Mountain View, Calif.

The recent activity has many Google watchers speculating about the company's ultimate plans. Will it build its own wireless network using spectrum from the upcoming auction? Or will it strike more deals like the one it signed with Sprint Nextel? Will it come out with its own Google phone that will take on the likes of the Apple iPhone and other manufacturers like Motorola and Nokia?

Full article: news.com 

Labels: market, mobile, Motorola, Nokia, phone

Yahoo has a strategic plan due in 100 days and lags Google in most metrics. Yet despite Yahoo’s issues it still has the No. 2 market share in search. But if Yahoo wants to change its standing it should work on its interface a bit more.

According to Nielsen/Netratings, Google’s search market share in June was 52.7 percent with 20 percent going to Yahoo (gallery at right). To put this in context, Microsoft in third place with 13 percent. Yahoo’s year over year search growth is 20 percent compared to Google’s 46 percent. Microsoft’s Live Search grew 77 percent annually.

Full story: blogs.zdnet.com 

Labels: market, microsoft, search, share, Yahoo

Almost all my experience with the investment community is from the research side, but I did once work on the propaganda side: investor relations [IR]. For a short time after the troubles began, I was ambushed into doing IR for the ill-fated shared-memory processing manufacturer Kendall Square Research.

And if you know the story of KSR, you know why I did IR only once and for a short time. So based on this meager IR experience, it was with wonderment that I noticed that Google (GOOG) was letting two engineering VPs loose at a Goldman Sachs conference.

By just being there, Alan Eustace and Jeff Huber answered my question posed on seekingalpha on March 7: Is Google a media play or an IT investment? (And with the pending DoubleClick acquisition, add to that question the possibility that it should be measured like a large advertising/communications agency).

Full article: seekingalpha.com 

Labels: applications, DoubleClick, market, technology

Microsoft's share falls despite recent resurgence

Google continues to dominate the search sector commanding over 55 per cent of the market share and gaining ground at the expense of rivals Microsoft and Yahoo.

Figures for April from Nielsen/Netratings show that Microsoft's minor resurgence in the market in recent months seems to have come to a halt.

Microsoft experienced its first market share increase for over a year in February, another in March, but has slipped from 10.1 per cent to nine per cent in April. In the same period Google increased its share by two per cent gain.

Read more: computing.co.uk 

Labels: market, microsoft, search, Yahoo

I have just heard from a VERY trusted source that Google is buying Feedburner in order to get into the rapidly evolving RSS Ad market. The delay in announcing the deal, I am told is solely due to the delay in closing out the DoubleClick deal.

If true this deal makes a lot of sense for both parties. Today many of us predominately read blogs via our RSS readers and thus never actually visit the original blog source and/or see the sites supporting adverts.

Full story: vecosys.com 

Labels: ads, DoubleClick, Feedburner, market, rss