Google In The News

Yahoo suspends employee pay raises
CNET News - San Francisco,CA,USA
Meanwhile, Google, under much less pressure but also grappling with the economy, chose a different route. On Thursday, Google announced a stock
option ...
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10148907-93.html>
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US STOCKS-Banks buoy S&P, GE hits Dow; Nasdaq up with Google
Reuters UK - UK
Stimulus optimism fuels financials, Google lifts Nasdaq * GE drags on Dow after cautious outlook * Dow off 0.6 pct, but S&P up 0.5 pct, Nasdaq up 0.8 pct ...
<http://uk.reuters.com/article/usMktRpt/idUKN2333298420090123>
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Loss on investments pounds Google profit
Bizjournals.com - Charlotte,NC,USA
A $1.1 billion impairment on its equity investments hurt Google’s profit in the fourth quarter and year ended December. The Mountain View search and ...
<http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2009/01/19/daily65.html>
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Google: Officially Evil
Motley Fool - USA
By Rick Aristotle Munarriz Fresh from announcing market-besting quarterly results last night, Google is repricing its employee stock options. ...
<http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2009/01/23/google-officially-evil.aspx

>
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Feeling Lucky: All Things Google
Washington Post - United States
The Big Money's Chris Thompson, author of the "Feeling Lucky: All Things Google" blog, will be online Friday, Jan. 23 at Noon ET to discuss Google's
...
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/01/22/DI2009012201785.html>
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Open up most files with Google Docs automatically
CNET News - San Francisco,CA,USA
If you're a big fan of opening up PDFs and Microsoft Word .doc files in Google Docs from Gmail, you're probably wishing you could do the same thing
from ...
<http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-10148942-12.html>
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New In Google Talk: Embedded Videos From YouTube And Google Video
Washington Post - United States
I just received a Google Talk chat message from Orli Yakuel that contained
an embedded YouTube Video. Turns out Google is testing a feature that ...
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/22/AR2009012201392.html>
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Earnings preview: Yahoo 4Q likely extends slump
The Associated Press
Shortly after Google walked away, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang decided to step down as Sunnyvale-based company's chief executive, ending an 18-month
reign ...
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Movers: Wyeth, Pfizer, Google, GE, Capital One
BusinessWeek - USA
Google (GOOG) posts $5.10 (non-GAAP), vs. $3.79 a year ago, fourth quarter EPS on 18% revenue rise. Plans to offer employees a voluntary, one-for-one
stock ...
<http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/jan2009/pi20090123_016557.htm>
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Pope one of world's oldest YouTube stars
Reuters - USA
Henrique de Castro, managing director of European sales and media solutions for Google, which owns YouTube, told a news conference Google would not
make any ...
<http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKTRE50M3A620090123>
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AlertPay: A Great Alternative to Paypal

If you would like or have started to earn and transact business in the Web, they you most probably have heard already of PayPal. Paypal claims that it provides a "safer, easier way to pay online". That is true.

However, if you are NOT a holder of an active credit card (Master Card, Visa or American Express), then you will not be able to enjoy the full privileges of having a PayPal account. Why? Because you need to "link and confirm your card to get Verified and lift limits on your PayPal account."

You can sign up for or create a FREE PayPal account but until you get Verified, you will not be able to withdraw money from your PayPal account.

With an Unverified PayPal account, you can ONLY perform the following transactions:

1. Send money from your PayPal account to another's PayPal account. Sending Limit is $500.00 USD. The "Sending Limit is the maximum amount of money you can send through PayPal before you link and confirm your debit or credit card."

2. Receive money from another PayPal account to yours.You can also accept payment through a Credit or Debit Card transaction. However, "you can (only) accept up to 5 credit or debit card payments per year at our low per transaction rate."

3. Request Money or Payment from another PayPal account holder. I think there is no set limit here.

4. YOU CANNOT withdraw from your PayPal account and transfer your PayPal balance into your local bank account. With an Unverified PayPal account:

a. Your Monthly Withdrawal Limit is ZERO. "The Monthly Withdrawal Limit is the maximum amount of money you can withdraw each month from your PayPal account."

b. Your Total Withdrawal Limit is ZERO. "The Total Withdrawal Limit is the maximum amount you can withdraw from your PayPal account if you have not been verified. Once your Total Withdrawal Limit reaches a zero amount, your Monthly Withdrawal Limit will be zero as well."

This is where AlertPay comes in. With AlertPay, you can transfer your money from your AlertPay account to and withdraw it from your local bank. -- WITHOUT CREDIT CARD VERIFICATION! Of course, with AlertPay, you can avail of all the other usual services that an online payment system like PayPal offers like sending or requesting funds to or from other AlertPay members or payment facilities such as banks and credit card companies.

From the AlertPay Account Verification FAQ page:

Q: What if account verification? Account verification identifies who you are as a KYC (Know your customer) policy. It's important for the AlertPay network that members identify themselves by submitting documentation to protect our members against fraud. At any time, AlertPay can ask you to become verified.

Q: What type of verification documents can I provide to AlertPay? AlertPay requires a copy of 1 proof of address and 1 photo identification for verification. Please ensure that all four edges of the documents are visible.

Photo identification can be one of the following:

* Driver's license
* Passport
* State ID, Country ID or Photo Medical ID

Please submit the back of the identification if the expiration date is located on the back.

Proof of address must show your name and address and be dated within the last 6 months. You can submit one of the following:

* Utility Bill
* Phone bill
* Credit card statement
* Bank Statement

Q: Is verification necessary to add, withdraw, or transfer funds? Verification of an AlertPay account is not necessary in order to, add or transfer funds. We believe verification increases the security of our network as we are able to verify and authenticate users. Although not necessary, verification is highly recommended.

In some cases, when transactions involve substantial amounts, our security center may ask some members to verify their AlertPay account in order to proceed with their transactions.

And more, you can even earn by referring people to AlertPay (which is what I'm doing right now): "Each time you refer someone to AlertPay, you could earn up to $10 USD. The more people you bring to AlertPay, the more we will reward you. Helping you earn more money -- think of this as our way of saying thank you."

So, if you're tired of online payment hassles, then check out and sign up for an AlertPay account. It's a great alternative to PayPal. ;-)

Google's Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal or RE<C

As part of Google's commitment to helping build a clean energy future, the search giant "announced a new strategic initiative to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal":

The newly created initiative, known as RE<C, will focus initially on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other potential breakthrough technologies. RE<C is hiring engineers and energy experts to lead its research and development work, which will begin with a significant effort on solar thermal technology, and will also investigate enhanced geothermal systems and other areas. In 2008, Google expects to spend tens of millions on research and development and related investments in renewable energy. As part of its capital planning process, the company also anticipates investing hundreds of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects which generate positive returns.

Larry Page, in a post he himself wrote in the Official Google Blog, said:

Our new initiative isn’t just about Google’s energy needs; we're seeking to accelerate the pace at which clean energy technologies are developing, so they can rival the economics of coal quickly. We've gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building data centers that lead the industry in efficiency. We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating inexpensive renewable electricity at scale.

Promising technologies already exist that could be developed to deliver renewable energy cheaper than coal. We think the time is ripe to build rapidly on the tremendous work on renewable energy. For example, I believe that solar thermal technology provides a very plausible path to generating cheaper electricity. By combining talented technologists, great partners and large investments, we have an opportunity to quickly push this technology forward. Our goal is to build 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic that this can be done within years, not decades. If we succeed, it would likely provide a path to replacing a substantial portion of the world’s electricity needs with renewable energy sources.

So when the Global Climate Change Conference kicked off in Bali last week, Google accordingly joined admitting that "our own efforts can only get us so far. That's why we are participating in the Bali conference. The world must chart the path to a clean energy future collectively."

Now, all these concrete actions by Google are in stark contrast to the non-commitment by the search giant's base country, the United States, to the Kyoto Protocol as shown in this Kyoto Protocol Participation Map:


What do you think does that say about Google?
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This is cross-posted in my other blog, The New (Online) Confessions.

Revealing (?) Orkut Trends

Over at the Orkut News and Notes blog, engineers "investigate questions that have been debated for millennia" using data from Orkut's "unique worldwide user base".

Orkut users are indeed so unique that figures derived from information on "honest self-assessment" of user's own attractiveness in his/her profile show that six percent(!) of Orkut users believe that they consider themselves as "beauty contest winners".

Now, isn't that something.

In yet another trending, it was discovered that:

Women from Mexico are most likely (29%) to describe themselves as "beauty contest winners" and the least likely (2%) to describe themselves as "mirror-cracking material". Men from Tonga tend to extremes, with the most (23%) claiming to be pageant winners and an equal number (23%) claiming to be mirror crackers. Uruguayan women are most likely (58%) to consider themselves average, as are 58% of Paraguayan men.

The engineer-author of the post quipped:

Of course, anyone can claim to be beautiful, especially online, so the above rankings may say more about conceit and humility than about looks. As one user wrote, "Orkut can make a lot of money if they put tax on how beautiful people declare themselves to be."

On the per country beauty data, one user commented:

"The concept of beauty varies from one country [to] another". In any case, statistics can give us information but not wisdom, such as that expressed 2500 years ago by Confucius: "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."

Come on, let's cut Orkut users some slack and give them the benefit of the doubt. Who knows, there would be some sort of a pattern when the data are correlated with Miss Universe title wins by each country.

Now, that would be something. :-)

Creating Blogrolls in Google Reader

In case you missed the announcement, Google has rolled out a new feature in Google Reader that enables bloggers to create blogrolls based on their Reader subscriptions.

Such nifty capability to produce blogrolls may not be new for a lot of bloggers as several feed aggregators like Bloglines and a well-known pioneer site in making blogrolls, Blogrolling, offer the same service. Some may think such services are already neat, but others may see them as quite "out of touch" in terms of integration with most ever-developing blogging platforms.

Blogging newbies would consider Blogrolling convenient and effective already in maintaining a blogroll, as did I when I discovered blogs. But at some point, you would realize that surely there is much better than that especially if you get tired of visiting another site just to update your blogrolls.

Now comes this feature in Google Reader and I'd say that this is the ultimate way of creating blogrolls -- integrated with a very user-friendly Google product at that!

So now let me tell you some how-to tips in creating a blogroll in Google Reader:

1. Subscribe to your favorite blogs using Google Reader. If you're not yet a Reader user but is browsing using Mozilla Firefox, one easy way to do this is to open all the blogs listed in your existing blogroll and, one-by-one in each blog, click on the RSS button located in the right-most end of the address bar opposite the site's address. If an RSS button does not appear in the address bar, subscribe by clicking the "Add to Google", RSS or any feed icon that you can find somewhere in the blog. Another way to subscribe to a site is to do it directly in Google Reader: just copy and paste the blog's address in the "+Add subscription" field.

2. Tag each blog you've just subscribed to in Reader. Go to a subscribed blog and from the 'Feed settings...' pull-down menu, tag the blog by creating and adding it to a 'New folder' (e.g., "My Blogroll"). Do this for each of the blog you'd like to be included in your blogroll.

3. Change the folder's sharing setting to 'Public'. By default, all newly created folders in Reader are private. To change the setting, go to the Reader 'Settings' page then to 'Tags'. Select or tick your "My Blogroll" folder and from the "Change sharing.." pull-down menu, choose 'Public'.

4. Add your blogroll script into your blog's template. Instantly after doing the previous step, the "add a blogroll to your site" link should appear opposite your "My Blogroll" folder. Click on the link to pop up the "Put a Blogroll on your site" page. Customize the would-be appearance of your blogroll in your blog, copy the script and paste it in the part of your blog where your old blogroll used to be.

5. Rename your subscriptions. Now, you may want to change the names of the blogs as they appear in your Reader blogroll. To rename them to your wishes, go to the 'Feed settings...' pull-down menu and choose 'Rename subscription...'.

There you are, now you can easily organize and manage your blogroll while reading and keeping updated with all your favorite blogs through Google Reader.
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This is cross-posted in my other blog, The New Web.

Google Commits $4.6 Billion To Open Broadband Platforms

In what probably Google's biggest contribution to "promote a spirit of openness" in the broadband market that would eventually be greatly beneficial to all American consumers, Google has committed a minimum of $4.6 billion to bidding in the upcoming 700 Mhz spectrum auction by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) "to address unsupported claims about any impact from adopting open platform conditions".

The four principles of successful open access are:

Open Devices: An open devices provision would require the licensee to allow any device to attach to the network, so long as that device does not harm the network. This, essentially, is wireless Carterfone. Using a current (and very appropriate, given the recent Congressional hearing) example, with this open devices requirement, iPhone users would be able to discontinue their AT&T service and sign up for a competing service, but still keep and use their iPhones with the new service. Even more important, an open devices provision would spark the same kind of innovation in the wireless market that the Carterfone decision produced in the wired market. For those who don’t know, Carterfone is industry shorthand for the FCC decision that required then-dominant AT&T to allow consumers to attach any device to the telephone network, so long as that device did not harm the network. This led to the invention of the modem and the fax machine.

Open Applications: The second “open principle” would allow consumers to access the same applications if they move their devices from one network to another. Going back to the iPhone, this means that consumers parting with AT&T but not their iPhone would still be able to use Google Maps, and would not be required to use, say, T-Mobile’s specialized mapping service. An open applications provision would not only allow consumers to use the applications of their choice, but it would spark the creation of new and innovative applications.

Open Services: Here, the licensee would be required to make every important network interfaces available to wholesale customers and third-party application providers. For example, let’s say a company like Best Buy decides that it wants to sell wireless internet service – maybe it wants to sell innovative devices that come with access to a “Best Buy internet” – but it can’t afford to purchase spectrum licenses at auction. An open services condition would require the licensee to sell access to its internet service to Best Buy. The licensee would have to do so on a non-discriminatory basis and at a wholesale price. This provision promotes competition in the wireless service market: smaller service providers who are unable to bid (or unable to out-bid the incumbents) at auction would still be able to purchase access to the wireless network from licensees at wholesale prices. The rest is an old song: more service providers equals more competition equals better service for consumers.

Open Networks: This is the wholesale open access that PK and the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition have been discussing from the beginning. Requiring the licensee to make the network available to other service providers on a non-discriminatory basis at wholesale prices remains the only way to ensure competition and new wireless service providers. This would set-up a market much like the highly-competitive days of dial-up ISPs. Smaller service providers who, again, are unable to acquire spectrum at auction or who cannot afford to build-out their own networks, would still be able to lease network access from licensees at wholesale prices. Old songs are worth repeating: more service providers equals more competition equals better service for consumers.

I think this Google decision is no surprise as this is simply aligned to Google's mission "to organize the world's information and make it more universally accessible and useful".

It seems no price is too high for Google for them to never lose sight of their goal.

Google's "Splashy" Universal Search

Google's grand Universal Search project basically aims to show results from a number of selected Google search products and "splash" them in the first search results page. As announced in the Official Google Blog by Google's own Marissa Mayer:

With universal search, we're attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results...

In addition, we've rolled out a few new navigation elements and experimental features to help our users better navigate our site and find the information they're looking for. These include contextual navigation links above the search results that help users "drill down" to specific types of information.... Also, in terms of integration and navigation, today we introduced a new universal navigation bar at the top of all Google web pages to provide easier navigation to your favorite Google products, such as Gmail.

While today's releases are big steps in making the world's information more easily accessible, these are just the beginning steps toward the universal search vision. Stay tuned!

With Universal Search, apart from Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" feature, you type something in the Google search field and chances are you will find what you're looking for after clicking the search button.

"(B)ecome Inspired To Take Action Where You Live."

Google further extends its collaborative efforts in creating more 3-D models of Google Earth satellite images' two-dimensional flat structures by partnering with The American Institute of Architects (AIA).

As a result, Google Earth users now have the chance to fly and "(v)iew all 150 structures, including many with just created 3-D models of the buildings, ballparks, bridges, and memorials that characterize architecture in the eyes of Americans."

Apparently, this is one of Google's strategies to encourage more Google Earth users to produce 3-D models of their own local buildings and structures using Google SketchUp and then upload them into Google Earth, as RK Stewart, AIA President and author of the Official Google Blog post, persuades:

You’ll be able to track the progress of these projects on Google Earth as they unfold over the next year and, we hope, become inspired to take action where you live.

Your Google Office Online

Google has announced that it will be adding presentation functionalities to Google Docs and Spreadsheets:

First of all, we want to welcome the team from Tonic Systems to Google. Tonic, which we've just acquired, is based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia. They have some great technology for presentation creation and document conversion, and it will be a great addition as we add presentation sharing and collaboration capabilities to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

We've already freed those of you working in teams from the burdens of version control and email attachment overload when going back and forth on word processing and spreadsheets. It just made sense to add presentations to the mix; after all, when you create slides, you're almost always going to share them. Now students, writers, teachers, organizers, and, well, just about everyone who uses a computer can look forward to having real-time, web-based collaboration across even more common business document formats.

This completes Google's product adaptation of the three main members of the Microsoft Office family (i.e., Excel, Word and Powerpoint), only Google's version are much, much better products, of course.

The thing with Microsoft is that they have an all too different notion of the term "sharing" compared to Google's concept of the same word. In terms of talking about "Office" software, "sharing" for Microsoft means directing users of their mediocre and expensive products to their half-heartedly produced, Yahoo- slash static-like Microsoft Office Online Web 1.0 site and waste time there, while "sharing" for Google simply means providing users with free tools to collaborate and share more.

Microsoft is so nineties.

Replace Your Cellphone By Year-End With A Google Phone (?)

I definitely would like to buy myself one of these Google Phones once it's available in the market by the end of 2007. This, according to Engadget:

The on-again, off-again Google Phone rumors just got a healthy stir by Digitimes. The Taiwanese tech rag says that HTC is building the phone with initial shipments set to hit by the "end of 2007" -- globally in 2008. They cite "handset component makers" as their source. The phones will feature Texas Instruments' 3G platform with EDGE and of course built-in G-Mail and Google Maps. Unfortunately, they will not be GPS enabled. The handsets are also said to sport both Google and carrier branding with "sources" claiming that European's Orange might be the first carrier to see the hotness. Digitimes doesn't have the best track record with rumors so please everybody... exhale and let's wait for secondary confirmation.

All these despite reports that Google "poured cold water on claims it is developing a mobile phone."