Recently Google CEO Eric Schmidt went on Fox Business News to do an interview about why the search engine company is going on a hiring spree again. Interviewer Neil Cavuto and Schmidt had a general converation about mobile devices and the economy too. Cavuto pointed out that Google is “taking over the world” and some people are starting to fear the company. Cavuto pointed out that this same thing happened to Microsoft. “Hopefully we won’t repeat the mistakes that Microsoft made 10 years ago that ultimately led to all these things that happened to them,” said Schmidt in the interview.
Google and Verizon has made a new commercial for the upcoming Verizon Droid mobile phone. The new commercial features a stealth bomber dropping what looks like a bomb in different areas of the world. The commercial looks like it could be a science fiction movie. The last Verizon Droid commercial made fun of the iPhone by saying “iDon’t” followed by a feature that the Apple iPhone does not have which the Droid does have. AT&T is suing Verizon for the “there’s a map for that” theme ads.
Google’s web browser is growing by leaps and bounds. According to TechCrunch, the browser is now being used by over roughly 30 million people. In October, the browser grew at a faster pace than Firefox did. Granted Firefox has a lot more overall users but Chrome is still a new player in the web browser market. Google even has TV advertisement spots for the browser that is sometimes played on Hulu too.
The Chrome team also won a Founder’s Award for their efforts over at Google. This means that the team may get some additional stock options with Google. Overall Firefox has 330 million users and Google Chrome has about 3.58% market share. This means that Google Chrome is close to passing the market share of Apple Safari. If Google Chrome continues to grow at its current rate of 0.4% every month, it will pass Safari in February 2010.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has been having some success with Google Voice. The service has about 1.42 million users and 570,000 of them use it every single day. The numbers were revealed in an FCC document filed by Google and discovered by BusinessWeek.
The same document revealed Google’s plans to expand the Voice service abroad. Google Voice allows users to have a universal number that forwards to a person’s mobile phone, work phone, or home phone. Google Voice was developed through the acquisition of GrandCentral. Google supposedly payed close to $50 million for GrandCentral in July 2007.
Best Buy Mobile announced that they are pre-selling the Verizon DROID today. The phone will be available on November 6. The DROID is the first phone on Verizon to run on the Google Android operating system. By ordering the phone through Best Buy, customers are able to avoid mail-in rebates and instant savings. Best Buy is selling the phone for $199.99 with 2 year activation.
“We’re excited to feature this new device for our consumers, as it represents the latest and greatest in mobile technology,” stated Best Buy Mobile President Shawn Score in a press release. “Bringing the DROID to Best Buy Mobile expands our already unmatched assortment of smartphones allowing customers to compare high-end devices like the iPhone 3GS, HTC Hero and DROID all under one roof. The fact that customers can purchase the phone first at Best Buy through the pre-sell is an added bonus.”
The DROID has a 3.7″ screen, 5 MP camera with autofocus and image stabilization. The camera also has dual-LED flash and DVD-quality video. The DROID is the first phone to have Google Maps Navigation.
HTC sent out a tweet about 18 hours ago that said “The rumors are true! Hero will be getting an Eclair update. We ask for your patience as we update Sense for the fancy new Android OS.” Eclair is the code name for the second version of the Google mobile operating system.
Some of the new Android 2.0 features include:
- Multiple email and contact accounts (including Microsoft Exchange).
- Combined inbox for browing multiple e-mail accounts on one page.
- Search functions for SMS and MMS messages
- Auto delete old messages when limits are reached.
- Digital zoom, scene mode, white balance, color effects, and macro focus for photos
- Multi-touch keyboard support
- Smart dictionary that learns word usage and suggests even contact names
- Thumbnails of web pages in the bookmarks section of the browser
- Double-tap zoom support
- HTML 5 support
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin is giving back to an organization that gave to him about 30 years ago. Sergey Brin and his family arrived in the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). Brin is now giving the Society $1 million for helping his family back then. THe Society helped families escape anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.
“I would have never had the kinds of opportunities I’ve had here in the Soviet Union, or even in Russia today,” stated Brin in an interview with The New York Times. “I would like to see anyone be able to achieve their dreams, and that’s what this organization does.”
Even though the $1 million is not much compared to Brin’s personal wealth, it is an indication that the Google co-founder and his wife are engaged in philanthropic initiatives. Brin pointed out that Bill Gates was highly criticized for not engaging in philanthropy until much later of his career. “While everyone was criticizing him, he was generating a whole lot more money for his foundation, and ultimately, when he got serious about philanthropy, he did it really well,” said Brin about Gates. “I’d like to learn from that example.”
Brin and his wife have given away $30 million in charities with a majority of that going towards the Michael J. Fox Foundation and other organizations that focus on Parkinson’s disease.
When Brin’s family was immigrating to the U.S., HIAS paid for their tickets, gave them money, and helped the family apply for visas. Sergey’s mother Eugenia is on the board of HIAS and helped the organization digitize their archives and launch a social network.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is challenging Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) by selling music. Google spent the last several weeks preparing deals with the four major music labels: Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music, EMI, and Universal Music Group. The new Google service is expected to be called Google Audio.
When Google Audio launches, I wouldn’t be surprised if YouTube changes their default music purchase promotion to their own service. Currently when watching music videos on YouTube, there is a link to buy the song on iTunes or Amazon.com.
I don’t expect Google to do very well in this service because iTunes has already monopolized the music download market. iTunes is the number one music retailer in the world, even beating Wal-Mart. Google attempted to challenge iTunes by selling videos through Google Video, but it did not have much of a business impact.
Irish rock band U2 will be performing a concert this Sunday in Pasadena, California. The concert has already been sold out and YouTube will be streaming the concert for free and live. About 96,000 fans will be in the audience. The tour and video is being managed through U2’s partnership with Live Nation.
“The band has wanted to do something like this for a long time. As we’re filming the LA show, it’s the perfect opportunity to extend the party beyond the stadium. Fans often travel long distances to come to see U2 – this time U2 can go to them, globally,” stated U2 manager Paul McGuinness. The concert will be available on U2.com and on YouTube. The U2 360 Tour had started in June with the first concert taking place in Barcelona.
The U2 360 Tour has a Twitter account that you can follow too. Some of the tweets that the account sends out are official videos made by U2 representatives. I especially like the video of the CN Tower that they made in Toronto.
Boy Genius Report gave the hands-on treatment on the Motorola Droid. Based on the screenshots I’ve seen, it looks very similar to an iPhone and the sliding QWERTY keyboard reminds me of a Sidekick. Below are some of the specs:
- Android 2.0 operating system (as predicted)
- Almost as thin as an iPhone 3G S and very thin QWERTY sliding keyboard
- Capacitive display
- The phone is made out of metal and rubber. The keyboard has a soft-touch rubberized finish.
- Each phone will have a desktop charger that comes with it. The charger turns the phone into a Multimedia Station by displaying the local weather and time.
AT&T has poached a lot of customers from Verizon Wireless because of the exclusive Apple iPhone contract. The iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3G S have been the hottest smartphones selling on the market over the last few years. Motorola has also felt the pain of losing customers to the Apple iPhone too as their sales have decreased substantially. Given that Verizon and Motorola have both been feeling the pain, they teamed up with Google to launch a new smartphone called the Droid. The Droid is expected to arrive in late October or early November.
As the three companies are preparing to launch the Droid, a video has been released in order to get the hype going. The video knocks on all the features that the iPhone lacks such as the lack of a keyboard, background application capabilities, and a high resolution flash camera. The Droid commercial points out the lack of the features starting with the expression “iDon’t.” And everything “iDon’t,” Droid does. Based on how intense the video looks, I’d say Apple should be concerned. This video has a “we’re not messing around this time” vibe towards the end.
The Droid is expected to be powered by the TI OMAP3430 core which is also used by the Palm Pre and iPhone. The Verizon Droid will be using the Android v.2.0 operating system. Google expects at least 18 devices to be powered by Android by the end of 2009.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is preparing to launch an e-book store called Google Editions. Google Editions will allow consumers to buy books and read them on e-book devices. This is the first time that Google will be getting into the e-book sales market.
Google Book Search publisher partnership program head Tom Turvey said that the publishers will be the ones responsible for setting the price of the e-books. Next year Google Editions will launch with about 400,000-600,000 e-books. “It will be a browser-based access,” stated Turvey at the 61st Frankfurt Book Fair. “The way the e-book market will evolve is by accessing the book from anywhere, from an access point of view and also from a geographical point of view.”
Google will earn 55% of the e-book profits and the rest will go to the publisher. That is too massive of a chunk for selling someone elses’ work in my opinion. Google lets developers keep 70% of revenue earned on the Google Android Market mobile application store.
Some of the most popular e-book readers on the market today include the Amazon.com Kindle and the Sony Reader.
Jyri Engeström co-founded a social network in Finland called Jaiku. A couple of years ago Google bought his company out and did nothing with it. Between the time that Google bought his company and now, Twitter took off and Jyri decided to leave. Jyri took on another project at Google and the search engine company ceased internal development of Jaiku. Jaiku was added to the Google App Engine and was open sourced.
Jyri left Google in order to “make meaning” out of another project. The tweet he wrote was “It was my last day at Google today. As for what’s next, @guykawasaki nailed it by saying: make meaning http://ping.fm/TUBnO.”
After the acquisition, Jyri and his family moved to San Francisco. But ever since then his family wanted to move back to Finland. Jyri and Chris Messina are rumored to be working on a new project together that involves “social objects.” Messina is a board member of the OpenID foundation.
Jyri is also helping his wife on a start-up called Thinglink. Thinglink will focus on sharing collections and photos.
Google Android is spreading at a viral pace on mobile phones and now its hitting a new market, netbooks. Acer has been able to port the operating system in a new netbook that they have put together called the AOD250-1613. The AOD250-1613 has a dual boot Windows XP/Android operating system and 10.1″ screen. The cost of the netbook is $349.99. Other features include a 1.66GHz Intel N280 processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 6-cell battery and a 9 hour runtime charge. Not bad for basic computing needs.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced that Arthur Levinson is leaving their Board of Directors. Levinson is a Corporate Director at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and is a former Chairman and CEO of Genentech. I believe it is safe to say that Levinson’s departure has something to do with the FTC’s investigation of Google and Apple. Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt stepped down from the Apple Board of Directors this past August.
Levinson’s departure from Google is effective immediately which ends his 5.5 year tenure on the Board. Levinson will continue to serve on the Apple Board of Directors where he has worked for the last 9 years.
The FTC said that they were prepared to sue Google and Apple if they did not take care of their potential conflicts of interest. “Google, Apple, and Mr. Levinson should be commended for recognizing that overlapping board members between competing companies raise serious antitrust issues and for their willingness to resolve our concerns without the need for litigation,” stated FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz in an interview.
