Google smartens up on mobile locations

Windows Mobile users in the US and the UK who search with Google will find their results more localized.The evolution of mobile search depends on bringing the individual a highly localized result for each query made. If I'm searching for pizza in Chicago, I'd better find Gino's East if I'm near one of their locations.

Such results should be more common through Google, according to the Google Mobile blog. They introduced Mobile Search with My Location for Google users:

Previously, when you went to google.com from your phone’s browser and performed a local search, the results were tailored to the last location you entered. Now, using the Gears Geolocation API, Search with My Location approximates your actual location using the same Cell ID technology used by Google maps for mobile.

Give Google credit for continuing to be aware of the privacy implications behind location data. Google said it won't associate your My Location data with personally identifiable information. They will even keep that separate for people who are logged in to a Google service through their mobiles.

Greg Sterling said at Search Engine Land the technology "saves keystrokes in mobile and also lays the groundwork for more precise mobile ad targeting at some point in the near future."

That's the real driving force behind improved mobile search services. Millions of people carry mobile devices, and the number of those with web capabilities increases all the time.

Google's familiar name makes it likely people will add the Google Gears framework to their Windows Mobile devices to enable services like this enhanced mobile search. With this groundwork in place, Google can pursue its mobile ad initiatives with greater enthusiasm. Read more!

Dollar's up, and that's bad for US Internet companies

Strong international revenue buoyed by a weakened dollar may drift downward as the US economy finds its currency slowly making a resurgence.
One would think American companies might have some patriotic cheer for a strengthening dollar. But the global nature of Internet business for firms like Google and Amazon.com means strength at home means weakness abroad.

ZDNet said the assessment by JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan predicted lower earnings per share. Google and travel site Priceline may have cause for worry:

Regarding Google Khan noted that more than half of Google’s revenue comes from abroad. Google also has “significant exposure” to the British pound, which has fallen along with the euro relative to the dollar.

Priceline may also take its lumps over a stronger dollar because 60 percent of its travel bookings come from abroad.

However, old-line companies, notably shaving razor maker Gillette, made a habit of hedging their currency bets against such swings in global fortunes. If the likes of Google have not made such strategies part of the ongoing business, I'd be very surprised. Read more!

Google Chrome privacy policy polished

Google's entry into the web browser field drew complaints about the privacy policy attached to the software.
Typing anything into the Google Chrome browser's "Omnibox" gave Google rights to those words forever and ever. At least that's how CNET characterized a section of the End User License Agreement that Google recently updated for the software.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed concern about the gee-whiz Omnibox and its digestive habits:

"We're worried that Chrome will be another giant conveyer belt moving private information about our use of the Web into Google's data vaults," (EFF staff technologist Peter) Eckersley said. "Google already knows far too much about what everybody is thinking at any given moment.

I know it's an old quote, but former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy's infamous line that people have no privacy and should get over it has relevance here. With Google dominating the search engine market, people already give Google, willingly, reams and reams of information through millions of queries day after day.

The easiest way to avoid concerns about privacy and the Chrome browser is to use something else. Firefox, Opera, Safari, and even Internet Explorer exist as mainstream options, all of which people were using before Google's attention-getting Chrome launch.

Wouldn't it be amazing if people found themselves trusting Microsoft and Internet Explorer more than Google these days? Read more!

Yahoo shares down to a familiar place

At the end of January 2008, Microsoft offered to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion. Jerry Yang and the Yahoo board sniffed at the price.
Today, Valleywag made fun of Yang for his insouciance.

"The markets closed yesterday with Yahoo shares worth $19.11. It was the second day in a row Yahoo shares closed below the $19.18 they were worth on January 31, the day before Microsoft made its $31 per share offer public," said Nicholas Carlson.

Yang said the offer undervalued Yahoo. Months of back and forth sniping and negotiating ended in May when Microsoft's Steve Ballmer decided he had better things to do than spar with Yang and Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock.

A proxy fight for control of Yahoo, spurred by corporate raider Carl Icahn, ended with Yahoo agreeing to expand their board and give Icahn and a couple of his choices seats at the table.

It's fun to pick on Jerry Yang, but Yahoo's trading at $19.50 at 12:30 EDT today. Icahn isn't busy updating his blog, so maybe he should be helping Yang find a way to pump up that stock price. Read more!

Google chugs to nearly 62 percent of US market

Search, thy name is Google in the United States. Month to month changes noted by comScore saw Google take what Yahoo gave away.


Google picked up 61.9 percent of US searches in July 2008, up a bit from 61.5 percent in June as measured by comScore.

So how did the four-tenths of a percent get to Google? It may have been from their new search advertising partner, Yahoo, which saw its month over month search market share drop from 20.9 to 20.5 percent.

Microsoft's sites may have handed share to the engines at Ask and AOL, both of which followed Microsoft's third place share of 8.9 percent; that's down from 9.2 percent in June.

Ask rose to 4.5 from 4.3 percent, while AOL ticked a teeny-tiny bit to 4.2 from 4.1 percent.

The big percentages mask the numbers. For US-based queries, Google handled over 7.2 billion in July. Yahoo processed 2.4 billion. That's out of the 11.8 billion searches at the five biggest engines.

As Rich Skrenta noted some time ago, Google is the environment. There's no such thing as search engine competition, only search startups that hope to attract a buyer, much in the way heavily-hyped Powerset seemed to do when it parlayed lots of positive press into being acquired by Microsoft. Read more!

Verizon ready to mobilize search with Google

The mobile search market could trigger the next big wave of growth for the search industry. One big partnership between Google and Verizon stands ready to begin, and reach for a share of that market.


Somewhere the lawyers fence over codicils and subparagraphs, but once all of the 'wherefores' have been carefully tapped into place, a whole world of Google search on Verizon devices should clear up a morass of services Verizon customers see.

"I’m a Verizon Wireless customer and I get bounced all over the place depending on whatever deal the carrier cut. To say the Verizon Wireless default search experience is messy is an understatement," Larry Dignan said at ZDNet.

Going with Google looks like a no-brainer proposition. Ars Technica tossed out Nielsen Mobile search figures for the first quarter of 2008, and Google held 61 percent of the mobile search market.

Verizon isn't the only company this year to recognize Google's power. Norway's Opera Software, maker of the Opera Mini and Mobile browsers, promptly switched its mobile search choice back to Google after a year-long with Yahoo for its mobile search ended.

Google Mobile also pushed out a new Gears Geolocation API for wireless app developers. The API allows an application to locate a user based on either the cell towers they are near, or their IP address.

Using such technology makes mobile search much more valuable. Google showed off what popular travel site lastminute.com in the UK does with geolocation now:

Read more!

Spamming the Georgia-Russia conflict

Current events serve as fodder for spammers on a continual basis, with the recent troubles between Russia and Georgia serving as a recent inspiration for junk mailers.


Social engineering met shameless profiteering once spammers figured out that a subject line with a current headline worked at getting people to open the message.

When it was just plaintext pitches for penny stocks stuffed inside that email, spam was just an annoyance. As security vendor Symantec found in a recent spate of spam, the senders dropped in some malware for the trip:

One subject line that has been seen reads: “Subject: Journalists Shot in Georgia.” A short description of a “news event” related to the Russia-Georgia conflict is contained within the body of the message.

The use of the attention-grabbing subject line seems to be intended as a social engineering tactic to entice recipients to click the link and view videos. The attachment contains no videos; rather, the attachment redirects to a link that delivers a payload identified as Trojan.Popwin.

CNN and MSNBC have been spoofed by spammers recently, as the criminals behind fake messages from those news media companies sought to deliver malware via a fake Flash Player file.

If a news story merits broad attention, it's better to head to your favorite news site and check it out. A real breaking news item will be on a CNN or an MSNBC, and those sites won't try turning your computer into a spambot either. Read more!