Now it's Google vs Microsoft. Who else can Google take on? They're taking on the biggest software
company and area already trying to thwart Yahoo.
Google is reportedly working on a downloadable file and text software search tool, code-named Puffin, that will
attack a weak spot in Windows — which runs on more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers — by making it
easier for users to find information stored on their desktops.
Microsoft, now building its own search engine to challenge Google's lead, is said to be working on a way to
include search technology in Longhorn, the next version of Windows slated for launch in 2006.
Why didn't they ask me to buy shares at 6 cents a pop?! Poor Bezos, he's going to get even richer.
Google, operator of the most widely used search engine on the Internet, disclosed in a securities filing that
Bezos was one of the company's first five outside investors. The group, which also includes former Amazon.com
executive Ram Shriram, paid 6 cents a share for Google stock in late 1998, according to the documents.
Bezos, 40, already has built a personal fortune of $5.1 billion, according to Forbes, by turning Seattle-based
Amazon.com into the world's largest online retailer. He is set to reap further rewards as Google prepares to raise
$2.7 billion through its IPO, a record first-time stock sale for an Internet company.
This isn't no joke ladies and gentlemen. Look to your right. This is my Spam folder, those are
my lables, I'm using 4MB of 1,000,000MB not 1,000MB anymore, 1
terabyte! Rumors say only Google employees get this, but I'm just lonley peon that got offered a Gmail
account.
I swear, Google and Yahoo! should just merge, all they do is copy each other. I'll still take Google over
Yahoo! anyday.
Yahoo! has launched a system to show the "Web Rank" popularity of pages viewed by those using its toolbar. It's
similar to Google Toolbar's long-standing PageRank (PR)
meter, and it brings with it some of the same potential problems.
The Google Toolbar PR
meter reflects how popular Google believes a page is, based on the number and quality of links that point at it.
Sounds great. But adding this meter was one of the worst things Google ever did.
It was only time they did this. Targeted ads by the topic of the mailing list and/or what is being
discussed. Not sure if they're going to do that, but they can do the same thing they're doing with Gmail.
Here are some features:
Group creation: Users can easily create, join, and search email-based mailing lists; administrative interface
enables customized access controls to designate a group as public or restricted
Dynamic conversations: Postings appear within 10 seconds and are indexed within 10 minutes
Enhanced user interface: Users can track and mark favorite topics using the "My Groups" feature and view
postings in a variety of ways including by message summary, title, or conversation view
I would think Google would raise their prices since the ads will be highly targeted and click-throughs will be
less.
The survey revealed, however, that advertisers don't want to pay as much for Gmail ads as they pay for ads that
appear alongside search results. Only 30 percent said they are willing to pay the same cost-per-click (CPC) as they
pay for search-results ads. A full 50 percent said no to idea of paying the same rate as search ads. But if the rates
are lower for Gmail, advertisers like the idea. Sixty nine percent say they would try Gmail at a lower CPC. And like
good direct marketers, 69 percent would design a separate campaign for Gmail.
Was this a scam so people would buy their stock, or just confusion?
Early in the trading session, Dow Jones Newswires, a unit of Dow Jones & Co., published a report that
erroneously identified HEI as owning about 1.2 million warrants for class B Google shares, HEI said. Google filed
recently for a long-awaited initial public offering of stock.
However, it is Heidrick & Struggles that owns the warrants in question. Heidrick reported holding the shares
in its quarterly report with securities regulators on Monday.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have competition… the Official Google
Blog! Evan, creator of Blogger, owned by Google, finally convinced Larry, Sergey and Co. to
start up a blog. According to Evan's first post, we'll soon be able to know "What Larry had for breakfast. What
Sergey thinks of that Hellboy movie. Which Dawson's Creek character reminds us most of Eric."
Most popular blog by the end of the week? Oh ya. I think Evan should put up a blogroll of "related
blogs." :)
Nino and I would like to congratulate Jake and Dan Woolley to be the first to provide the correct answers to
the Gmail contest. A couple hours after the post, they posted the correct answer to the third question, "On what
date did Google officially come out of beta?" The answer is September 21, 1999, not September 22, 1999.
Expect more contests like this. I'm sure us current Gmail users will receive more invites in the near
future. I know a few bloggers here at WIN will be posting their own contests offering Gmail accounts, so keep an
eye open!
I don't see a problem. Google continues to create more and more applications where they can include AdSense,
and as long as they have more and more space to put those ads, then companies will continue to buy.
Google, which shared $504 million in ad revenues with its various distribution partners in 2003, controlled
roughly 20 percent of the paid-search market last year and was effectively one of the biggest ad agencies on the
Web.
While overseas growth could further bolster ad revenues at Google, the company cautioned investors in its
prospectus that ad spending has historically been tied to economic cycles.
Spending a little too much money, too early… but it's well worth if they're going to offer a gig of space to
millions of users.
Experts believe the reason for this large expansion is Google's email service, Gmail. BusinessWeek offers an
explanation: "even if a Gmail account holder only has 500 megabytes of mail — half the system's capacity — Google
will need to create enough storage space across its network to handle several times that amount in order to backup
the account."
Expect Gmail this summer, in the mean time, check out our
contest!
30 years old, and they're about to become billionaires. A big jump from their $150,000, 2003 salary.
Mr Page and Mr Brin, the 31 and 30-year-old co-founders, each own about 15 per cent of the company, conservatively
worth more than US$4.5 billion; Eric Schmidt, the 48-year-old chief executive, has stock options on 6 per cent, worth
US$1.8 billion.
Good luck. Reading this article gave me a headache. Although, for those investors out there who have an
account with either Morgan Stanley or Credit Suisse First Boston, you have a much better chance.
Google's investment bankers will gather up the bids and enter them into a master order book, which will be
reviewed by the company's founders and underwriters. If a bid appears unusually large or the share price listed far
exceeds the top range, then investors may be disqualified for creating a speculative bidding environment, according
to the filing.
"As part of this auction process, we are attempting to assess the market demand for our Class A common stock and
to set the size of the offering and the initial offering price to meet that demand," the founders state in the SEC
filing. "Buyers hoping to capture profits shortly after our Class A common stock begins trading may be
disappointed."
If you don't want to continue reading, knowing you're going to need some Advil to finish the article, then here's a
rundown: basically if you bid too high, you'll get thrown out, if you bid too low, you'll get thrown out. You
have to hit it right on the nose.
I would think people are too scared after the late-90's boom.
Although a Google IPO is seen raising $2 billion or more, it alone will not open the floodgates to a torrent of
venture capital funding and the heady returns seen in the dot-com and telecommunications boom of the late 1990s.
"I don't believe it breaks some logjam," Ted Schlein, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, said in a conference call with
reporters to discuss a new quarterly report on the venture capital industry.
Schlein said that Google going to market would not mean that dozens of other companies would make it into the IPO
pipeline.
I do see a growth in spending from companies wanting to advertise on search engines and blogs—text ads.
Because of discrimination against Jews, Michael Brin and his wife, a mathematician working as a civil engineer,
left in 1979 with their young son Sergey. Michael Brin got a job at the University of Maryland mathematics department
where he still teaches, and thought his son might follow in his footsteps, as he had followed his father before
him.
"I left because of myself and because of his (Sergey's) future. I didn't want him to be in the same situation as I
was," Michael Brin said by telephone. "Did we expect him to become, what's it called—Time Magazine calls him a 'titan
of industry'? No, I had no idea. I expected him to get his Ph.D and to become somebody, maybe a professor."
Sergey is now on leave from Stanford University where he was trying to get a doctoral degree. Instead, he set up
Google, the world's No. 1 Internet search engine that is widely expected to announce this week that it plans to go
public.
