Or take the number of servers that Google operates. The only figure the company will admit to is '10,000+'. They
also claim to have '4+ petabytes' of disk storage, and have let slip that each server is fitted with two 80 gigabyte
hard drives. Now a petabyte is 10 to the power of 15 bytes, so if Google had only 10,000 servers, that would come to
400 Gb per server. So again the numbers don't add up. I could go on, but you will get the point. But what it all
comes down to is this: Google has far more computing power at its disposal than it is letting on. In fact, there have
been rumours in the business for months that the Google cluster actually has 100,000 servers - which if true means
that the company's technical competence beggars belief.
Credit Suisse First Boston, a unit of Credit Suisse Group <CSGN.VX> and Morgan Stanley, would share in a
pool of investment banking fees of almost $100 million.
Who doesn't want to sue Google and try to get a slither of their money. Much like everyone wanting to sue
Microsoft.
Google is keen to gain a definitive ruling to protect its lucrative paid search advertising business. A negative
ruling will call into question the search advertising revenues of the likes of Yahoo!, MSN and AOL.
Paid search accounted for 35 per cent of US online ad revenues in 2003, up from 15 per cent in 2002. This ad
category drove the first annual rise in online ad revenues since 2000, according to a PwC report published last
week.
Yahoo! owns a stake in Google? Yep, so does eBay, Napster, AOL and Netscape. An interesting article of
who has invested in the past and will become even more filthy rich once Google IPOs.
People speculate. People dream. And if the numbers are to be believed, people will drool. The current prediction
is that Google, if it decides to sell shares to investors this year, would probably end up with a market value of $20
billion to $25 billion by the end of its first day as a publicly traded company.
A $25 billion market value would instantly make Google worth more than Lockheed Martin, the big military
contractor; Federal Express, the package delivery service; or Nike, the sports clothing maker.
Finally, we get some answers. For
those wanting an account: wait another six months. For those wanting RSS within Gmail (like myself), you're in
luck!
It started as an experiment to see if our search could be used on e-mail. And in fact, it was originally applied
to my e-mail. I get a lot of e-mail—I have many gigabytes of it, and it's hard to manage. I have all the same
challenges as everybody out there, and I found that having effective search, having large storage, having the kind of
threading that we've done here—all those things make me more efficient with my e-mail. And that's what I then decided
that we should make available to the entire world.
Google AdSense introduced a new format for public service ads (PSAs) on the pages of Google AdSense network
websites. This new format is intended to distinguish between untargeted PSAs and targeted Google ads. According to
Google, by differentiating between targeted and untargeted ads, users will be easily able to identify targeted ads –
not mixing them up with non-profit helping PSA's.
Thinking smart as usual. Making more money themselves, as well as their customers—the bloggers.
So-called "self-Googling" may seem like vanity in action, but a University at Buffalo communications professor
says it is a "shrewd form of personal brand management in the digital age."
Public relations experts generally agree. Whether you are an ardent self-promoter or an earnest job-seeker, a good
self-Googling can go a long way.
A G-aggregator, integrated with G-mail? Mmmmm, yummy.
Watching my logs, I've been getting random requests from Googlebot for atom.xml and index.rdf files on this site
and others. It's always in the root or in relevant subdirectories (usually /blog or similar). All of these sites run
WordPress, and I can promise there is no mention of or links to atom.xml or index.rdf anywhere. This means
Googlebot is guessing that these files will be there. Now I've come to
expect random flailing for syndication files from Feedster and
Kinja, but Google? Et tu, Googlebot?
Finally, they're getting in the game. They need to get more blog-friendly, much like Yahoo! is.
Although, imagine an RSS aggregator built into Gmail. My mouth is watering.
Everyday you see a startup try to challenge Google, but do they really have a chance to even come remotely
close? No. I only see Yahoo! stepping on Google's shoes, and maybe Microsoft when it releases some upcoming
products, but besides them…?
Thanks goodness for Google. Rather than give over the important real estate of its front page to any old rubbish,
it stuck to pure advert-free lines, a nifty search engine and strict control of the commercial links.
It remains the best of the bunch, and is so lauded for this singularly straightforward success that there is talk
of a listing for the company.
Such reward for a company built on nothing more than a good idea, a little smart technology and a big dollop of
common sense is no less than the company deserves.
The one hurdle is Microsoft. Redmond, it is said, covets the success of Google. Microsoft would like a piece of
the action, so much so that a Google-alike engine is supposedly due in Microsoft's next OS release.
A 20 billion dollar company when it IPOs. Holy %$@!
The Internet search company's initial public offering could raise $2-billion (U.S.) and value the business at
$20-billion.
The Google IPO announcement is thought to be imminent and the rumours say the underwriters have already been
chosen. What is still a mystery is how the potential record-breaking deal will be sold. This is where the firm that
has done everything right in its six years of existence could stumble.
Google is reportedly considering a Dutch auction, in which the number of shares to be sold is set, but not the
price. Investors bid for the stock. In the most common variation on the theme, called the "descending" Dutch auction,
the price starts at an unrealistically high level and is progressively lowered until the entire issue is sold. Salon,
the on-line magazine, used this technique for its IPO a few years ago. Agricultural commodities are routinely sold
this way.
As of 4-21-04 the 3rd ranked result's description spans across the entire page, obscuring some of the paid
listings.
He [Jason Dowdell of Global Promoter] thinks this glitch occurred because, "there isn't a space in that string of
text anywhere on the page. Typically when the body of a page doesn't contain spaces Google will use the META
description tag, the META keywords tag or the Title tag or not display a description of the url at all.
"In this case since all of the default places were stuffed with one long string of text it decided to use that
string of text."
Google president Sergey Brin told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday that the company was discussing changes to its
new Gmail e-mail service because of criticism about how it handles users' privacy.
Which really shouldn't matter because a user doesn't have to sign up for the service if they don't want their e-mail
read.
Sukhinder Singh, Google's general manager of local search, in speaking to
DMNews.com alluded to the potential of
local ad targeting, stating that clients could run different campaigns for different regions.
"Our belief is that opening up more local-targeting options leads to new click opportunities for advertisers," Singh
said. "It allows advertisers to step online in a more targeted fashion."
These locally targeted ads will be shown on Google's main results page as well as
Local Search results pages, an obvious location for their local targeting.
While Google's policy shift on the sale of trademarks through its sponsored listings may attract a flurry of
lawsuits from disgruntled trademark holders, some industry analysts and legal insiders don't think the shift will
carry serious repercussions for the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant.
Google no longer protects companies' trademarks from being bid upon by advertisers. However, advertisers may not
mention another company's trademark in the actual text ads. The move doesn't extend to customers outside the United
States and Canada.
This has been the buzz in the blogosphere, but obviously Google hasn't confirmed, nor denied, these rumors.
It'd be incredible news the day they say something about this though.
Google has already expanded its offerings to include news aggregation, comparison shopping, software for
publishing Web logs, a social networking service called Orkut, and now Gmail. It is also unveiling a new program
today giving online merchants and other Web sites more options for tailoring their advertisements to local
audiences.
Many believe Googol's next step will be to use its unmatched processing and storage capacity to invite people to
house things on Googol's network that they normally keep on their computer desktops, such as documents, digital
photos, spreadsheets and songs. All those files would be accessible from any Internet-connected device and easily
searchable using the technology that made Google famous.
That could mean trouble for Microsoft. The more you can do on the Internet, the less important your PC becomes.
Gates has been worrying about the Internet making Windows less relevant since 1995.
