Microsoft, previously having an exclusive advertisement deal with Facebook in the United States, seized another opportunity for exclusive global advertisement rights over Facebook. The exclusive global deal with the social networking giant for the next four years came at a hefty price tag. In fact, Microsoft invested $240 million to acquire a 1.6% piece of Facebook real estate equity. This amount reflects a valuation of the company at a grandiose $15 billion and also illustrates the amount of confidence Microsoft has in the company and the scope for social networking as a whole. This deal is definitely the sort of aggressive action needed to challenge Google in its own domain. Apparently, Google, who made a similar deal with MySpace last year, lost the deal to Microsoft probably due to the fact that Micosoft already had strong ties with Facebook.

However, it is yet unknown whether the amount spent by consumers as a direct result of advertising really justifies the sort of investment made by Microsoft. Microsoft must have a definite business plan to monetize Facebook’s rapidly growing user base, which is even greater than MySpace traffic. Perhaps the collaboration could lead to Microsoft developing a new Microsoft Office catered towards the Facebook platform. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft can target advertisements towards successful monetization, which is based on personal information disclosed by users. Regardless, we will have to wait and see if the duo is as competitive in the realm of ad based revenue generation as Google.

Click here for the announcement on the Wall Street Journal

Google is all set to enter the mobile industry according to news released by the Toronto Star. Sources indicate that Google is keen on capitalizing on the mobile advertising market available through cell phones. In fact, Penry Price, the vice-president of advertising sales for Google’s North American operations, stated that “If we don’t get into the space, we’ve got a big problem”. However, the means of which they plan to accomplish this is quite questionable. Regardless, Google with a market valuation near $200 billion seems more in gear to embark upon such an endeavour.

Previously, over-hype circulated blogs and news sites that Google was planning a Google phone to compete against Apple’s Iphone. Now, it appears that their focal point will shift towards software as apposed to hardware. In fact, a possible mobile phone operating system might be at work that is supposed to accomodate all the Google services already available to the mobile phone user. The major difference here is the scope for ad supported services. Furthermore, the implementation of advertisement within Google’s own YouTube and their recent acquisition of Jaiku.com is a good indication of where they are going.

Google should delicately introduce advertisements in a non-intrusive way to the mobile user. Arguably, the inclusion of free minutes, features and other freebies might win over the budget conscious cell phone user in quickly adapting the Google software. However, Google will definitely face stiff competition from Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and other manufacturers of mobile applications that are built into phones. Furthermore, it will take substantial convincing to bring on board mobile carriers such as Verizon, Telus and Rogers to partner with Google. In addition, collaborating with mobile phone manufacturers like Samsung and Nokia to install the program on cell phones will be equally challenging. These carriers and manufacturers have benefited considerably from a lack of healthy competition in their mobile domain and may not be willing to adapt the Google vision.

Alternatively, to avoid such challenges, Google could purchase its own wireless spectrum, which can be used to launch a mobile broadbank network allowing Google to operate like a mobile carrier. In fact, there is potential that Google might bid $4.6 billion for such a licence in the United States. However, these are just educated assumptions and unless we see substantial investment in the form of transactions; we have no way of truly knowing Google’s intentions. Nevertheless, it seems quite evident that Google has serious goals in taking advertisement technology the mobile route.  

Apparently, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) succeeded in their “first closure of a major UK-based pirate site”, http://www.tv-links.co.uk/, according to news released by the Guardian. The closure and arrest was made possible through a joint collaboration between the UK police and FACT.

The FACT alleges that sites like these “contribute to and profit from copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organizing, and indexing links to infringing content found on the internet that users can then view on demand by visiting these illegal sites”. In addition, Roger Marles, from Trading Standards stated that, “people are potentially evading licence fees, subscription fees to digital services or the cost of purchase or admittance to cinemas to view the films”. In other words, it is considered illegal per se for sites to have links to content or hotlink to content that is proclaimed illegal.

These efforts could be attributed to the fact that copyright holders are having difficulty putting forth successful lawsuits against huge corporations like YouTube. Furthermore, users of these social-networking sites hold responsibility for submitted content, creating a rather tricky case for allegations against the site holder on the basis of absolute onus.

This indirect approach of copyright holders illustrates a lack of understanding of how the World Wide Web operates. Hence, the piracy solution arrives in the form of intimidating smaller parties that are merely providing a link to content that is illegally uploaded on sites like YouTube. These small sites act as messengers, but are taking the heat as if they are the actual senders. Rather, copyright holders should confront larger corporations at the source for hosting such illegal content. In addition, UK tax payers have been forced to finance these unjust anti-piracy efforts carried out by their local police officers. These piracy concerns are of a commercial nature and should be dealt accordingly with a civil lawsuit and are not tax payer responsibility.

Nevertheless, there are countless sites that provide pirate content linking to illegal sites and will continue to exist. As such, efforts to centralize attention on the closure of these sites is a lost cause. Rather, copyright holders should focus on legitimizing content on their own sites by providing media streams of TV shows, but with better quality or perhaps focus on legitimizing the upload of copyright content on larger source sites. Regardless, there is bound to be more forceful closures on sites that support illegal streaming media. And surprisingly, it seems that social networking sites appear to have the upper hand in handling such allegations of illegal content than sites that upload the content themselves.

Google is first-class at earning online revenue, but having only advertisement based revenue can be problematic for Google if they don’t expand and monetize some of the initiatives they already have developed. In fact, they still earn 99% of their revenue from advertisements and that focus should change to a more diversified revenue stream.

Recent third quarter financial results will not put a damper on Google’s business model. According to their financial report, Google commands a profit of $1.07 billion. This amount is a substantial increase that forecaster hadn’t even anticipated. The profit translates to a 46% increase over the $733.3 million earned during the same period in 2006. Google’s arch rival Yahoo, subsequently reported a 12% increase in revenue, which actually dropped by 5% in comparison to $151.3 million in their third quarter.

Nevertheless, much of Google’s growth is unfortunately attributed to the undeniable fact that search advertisements are so darn profitable. And why wouldn’t it be so profitable when 1.2 billion of world wide searches per day are conducted through their search engine. Yahoo, the second largest search engine, on the flip side lags behind with just a quarter of those searches per day.

Google manages to earn such extraordinary revenue through an ever-green business model. The model in its simplest form processes a user’s search query by navigating its own gigantic database for text-based ads relating to the keywords entered in the user’s search box. Upon matching results with related ads, Google earns big revenue when the user clicks on an ad on the page or its partners’ sites. Arguably, to think that this was basically what it took Google in concept to become part of the Nasdaq 100 Index is remarkable. Nasdaq 100 is one of the most exclusive clubs of the investment community with 100 of the largest non-financial stocks. In fact, Microsoft is now the only high-tech company worth more than the Internet search leader.

Google knows very well the potential of advertisement revenue and are optimizing it to full effect, but in the process are they strategically moving forward or are they eventually going to be devoid of imagination, relying on large acquisitions to compete globally? Specifically, will Google just become a cash cow that earns ad based revenue without offering much to the end user in the realm of innovation and technology? Google’s recent proceedings seem to support these concerns as they have recently sorted out how to place text-based ads across the bottom of YouTube videos and are moving forward in placing ads within ‘widgets’. The possibilities with ad based revenues are endless. Think of the marketing dollar being spent today on the internet. It used to be that traditionally advertisement revenue was the turf of large media platforms such as the television, radio, newspapers and magazines networks.

Alarmingly, considering that there is still so much undiscovered scope in this area to just put it aside and ponder other innovative income streams such as the monetization of existing products is worrisome. As management runs after ad based revenue, hiring engineers on the go, taking on more projects than is economically healthy, an eventual downturn in their exponential growth is quite possible and its going to hurt Google. As a precaution, Google management should not lose sight of the importance of good innovation and monetization, in a world that is increasingly attracted to ad based revenue. This is the sort of epidemic proportions of globalization that we have created on the web and now fear will devalue the technology industry.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has launched a live IDN (International Domain Names) evaluation, testing domain names in 11 international languages, in a bid to revolutionize the internet so that it is more widely acceptable for users who prefer to access the internet in their own languages. Hence, the project will allow users from around the world to browse the World Wide Web in their own mother tongue, without having to use any English or the Roman alphabet when they type in a URL.

To illustrate how this initiative will have profound political and web implications; we must first comprehend our current system on par with the new system. Presently, our domain name system permits domain names with letters from the alphabet A-Z. For instance, we now can only have a domain name, that reads http://www.{English}.{net, com, etc}/{foreign language}, where the foreign language portion of the URL can be achieved as long as the individual website servers supporting the URL have the proper script in place.

However, even though domain names are partly allowed in foreign characters, people have long argued that the web is discriminatory and non-accessible in its entirety. For instance, Michael Geist, who teaches Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, asks us to “think of what it would be like if every time you typed out an e-mail address or visited a Web site you had to use Chinese characters or Sanskrit. That’s exactly like what people in other countries have to do.” Furthermore, several nations, including Saudi Arabia and China, have created their very own domains in different alphabets along with their own internets that can allow surfing without going through the United States controlled ICANN servers. In fact, there is also an outrage over ICANN rejecting the .xxx domain extension, which could have easily helped filter out pornographic sites in searches.

The recently introduced IDN system will now allow users to access domains entirely in their native languages, where URLs could read as http://www.光盘.net/大. Unfortunately, the URL still needs to end in a .com or .net spelled out in ASCII characters. The 11 languages supported by the IDN system are Arabic, Persian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Japanese and Tamil.

The current system has VeriSign controlling all domains ending in .com, which translates to roughly half of the domains of the World Wide Web. That could all change as there is bound to be much political disagreement over which nation, corporation or geographic area should have control over the IDN specific to a particular nation. On the other hand, if a particular region decides to ban a particular domain due to political reasons or even ban all english domains from being used by its nation’s people then who is to confront those decisions. 

Thus, considering that there are great global economic opportunities, possibilities for poor judgement along with the social benefits of global interconnectivity; the decision of control is bound to be one of much confusion. Nevertheless, we are yet to see if the all powerful United States still holds monopoly over the World Wide Web.

Click here for the actual test of 11 wiki pages and here for the ICANN annoucement

Talking about storage capacities amongst the big tycoons should include a comparison of the capacities along with their limitations. This sort of insightful comparison will be fair and impartial. However, the frequent updates in the form of rumours, proposals and facts often makes it difficult to isolate what matters. As such, here is my take on what I know so far than can hopefully help void that gap.

First off the bat, file-sharing services like Windows SkyDrive, much like Google Drive, lets users store information for personal use.  SkyDrive, although in Beta mode, has an excellent feature that lets users make folders public. For instance, if user John, for arguments sake, needs to share a file with Jane, then John can accomplish that without having to let Jane access his personal email.

Recent windows vista blog news tells us that they SkyDrive has doubled storage capacity to 1 GB from previous 500 MB. This is ahead of Google Drive, but perhaps due to the fact that Google Drive is presently offering its services through limited invitations. Hence, it would make more sense to compare it to Box.net, which already offers 1 GB of storage.

Secondly, in terms of email storage, we have Windows Live Mail providing 5 GB, but with a 10 MB file size limitation for emails that might not suit heavy users. Gmail, on the other hand, offers less than 3 GB and claims to be expanding on that scope according to their blog. Last, but not least Yahoo, still offers unlimited email storage. However, unlimited refers to Yahoo providing unlimited service as a privilege as long as its not exasperated or otherwise abused by users.

Google has been in the limelight over copyright infringement lawsuits ever since last November’s acquisition of YouTube, the popular video uploading portal. As such, it comes as no surprise that Google has finally launched a video recognition technology to address these copyright infringement concerns among copyright holders. Regardless, the fact that it took a $1 billion lawsuit from viacom and a similar lawsuit from NBC Universal to really speed things up should be some indication.

Notably, NBC Universal and GE stated in the past, “Many of NBC Universal’s most valuable copyrighted works have been copied, performed, and disseminated without authorization by YouTube and other similarly operated Websites. NBCU has a strong interest in preserving the strength and viability of all of its legal rights and remedies in response to such conduct”. This statement is definitely a testament to the uproar arising among copyright holders, but for what reason. Is it merely because they wish to profit from lawsuit claims or could it be that they want a piece of the potential earnings from their content? The latter reason to commercialize content seems to be a better indication of their motive and lawsuits are merely a means to go that route. Hmm. A good thing couldn’t have lasted so long!

Google, in an attempt to protect its domain from increasing lawsuits had brought into play a video recognition technology that works to serve two purposes for copyright holders. Before going into the details, we must note that copyright holders and production studios have the responsibility to upload all their content on YouTube, before the technology is put forth. It’s a time-consuming process, but seems to be the only option as the technology is not automated. Anyhow, here are the two purposes or options provided to copyright holders upon uploading their original content. One option is to use the original uploaded video as a means of blocking duplicated content from being uploaded by users. Therefore, holding a strict monopoly over the content. This can have an adverse effect on the whole YouTube experience for users translating into a possible limited experience. Anyhow, thats a whole new story. The other option, more likely to be utilized, allows original copyright holders to permit duplicated content from other users to be uploaded with a fixed condition. Users will have to display advertisements along with the duplicated content and the revenue derived would be given to copyright holders. This, my friends, is an illustration of commercialization in all its glory.

However, as an after thought, if copyrighted video unlawfully manages to reach viewers then Google might find itself with yet another lawsuit. Unfortunately, the recognition technology is only effective when copyright holders submit content before the user. In additon, users could outsmart the system by altering video content beyond system recognition and other foul play. Anything is possible in this day and age. Hence, Google’s best bet is to keep on top of these possibilities with realisic expectations. Furthermore, as Google cleans up its YouTube and shares profits with corporations; others might enter the domain more easily with less restriction. Nevertheless, litigation and issues are bound to be part of web life and can’t be made altogether obsolete or else it wouldn’t be just as interesting! Politics is here to stay.

Click here for the annoucement in the Wall Street Journal

Discovery Communications, a non-fiction media company announced a $250 million acquisition deal according to the Wall Street Journal to buy out the informative HowStuffWorks website in order to expand its enormous video library content to a large web demographic. The collaboration of Discover Communications, a media company reaching more than 1.5 billion cumulative cable subscribers in over 170 countries and HowStuffWorks, a collection of well written online articles on how stuff works, should invoke much thought into the motives.

Frank, CEO of Mefeedia.com, stated boldly that we must, “expect to see a lot more bloggers and videobloggers being acquired over the next year or so as traditional media companies ascend into the blogosphere and vlogosphere. It is being driven by the audience - newspapers and TV are losing viewership in the 18-34 year old demographic and blogs and vlogs are increasing audiences in this demographic”. As such, we must call into question the motive of Discovery and other Media outlets looking into capitalizing on lost markets and web dominance.

Previously, Discovery had seized treehugger.com for $10 million with a similar motive that brought about much speculation among users. Those for the movement were excited that treehugger would help educate the masses about environmental issues around the world along with increased global media reach. In addition, users proposed that Discovery would have an established online platform, with years of popularity and traffic along with web links and references under its wings. Those against the movement knew that there was enormous appeal to huge media companies and corporations in buying out as apposed to inventing and wondered whether this sort of growth was ever going to end. Furthermore, some feared that businesses had to be massively big to play in the global market while others feared that the biggies would redesign the whole site to get more ads and graphics in; creating downtimes and slow uploads. Greatest was the fear of inability - to maintain core identity within a larger platform that prides itself in creating content that advertisers want to be featured in.

I am hoping to differ by believing that Discovery has positive intentions and will, for the sake of small players everywhere, help these sites convey their message across to the masses in a greater capacity. Hence, as apposed to capitalizing on the fact that these sites are extremely popular with the green and knowledge conscious segment of our population and that there are huge advertising opportunities because of it.

MapQuest, the popular navigation tool for driving directions and other routing applications has finally launched a Beta Web 2.0 version built on Ajax technology. MapQuest needed to make this urgent upgrade in order to compete with the big competitive tycoons and to avoid the possibility of losing share in the map world. Judging by the features illustrated on their blog; it seems to be that the features are still lagging behind biggies like Google Maps and Yahoo Maps. For instance, the new version does not provide satellite and map views simultaneously, nor does it have traffic overlay, street view, draggable routes, custom maps and transit mapping.

However, the features offered are quite an improvement from the previous outdated version and they do, in fact command a larger market share than these two giants, which is quite commendable. Most people would assume that Google with its brand quality would have surpassed MapQuest in traffic, but traffic numbers do not always reflect popular perception and vice-versa. MapQuest users must definitely be appreciating the core value of the direction tool and are returning favor with considerable loyalty. 

Personally, I use MapQuest because the search options allow users like myself to search while omitting toll routes. Google, I believe must be advertising for toll routes, as it displays toll routes often even though non-toll routes are readily accessible. Anyhow, simple practicality and user loyalty can sometimes outweigh the benefits of a massive repertoire of features.

Click here for MapQuest Beta

SnapLayout could quite possibly be the next stop for MySpace in the realm of protecting ones established business. MySpace pages, I must admit, are in need of a long overdue boost in appearance as more and more users call the social networking portal home. The open platform to change the MySpace profile page was definitely a step in the right direction, but the options are not the most desirable. More notably, MySpace is quite slow in grasping innovations or even innovating on their own accord, which makes its problematic for users waiting for a revolution of sort. Honestly, MySpace should at least acquire sites that are worthy or start innovating soon enough. However, their string of actions in this respect is not that price worthy. First they reinvent their own editor code after being declined by RealEditor, a site offering its own MySpace profile editor, to code for them. In addition, RealEditor, on the other hand, alleges that MySpace had “blatantly ripped off their functionality”, which they hadn’t patented or otherwise protected from a legal perspective. Well, it is often considered the greatest complement when ones idea is captured by another, but thats an entirely different story.

Anyhow, RealEditor, as a profile editor is not as superior as SnapLayout, a site that offers great widget functionality with a notable appearance. In Fact, SnapLayout could be considered the best and latest in cutting edge third-party tools to alter MySpace’s profile page. However, as things stand, we are not sure if MySpace will shut down SnapLayout in an attempt to put a stop to third-party sites that add functionality to the social portal. Personally, I think it is best that MySpace include in its terms and conditions, a clause clearly indicating what MySpace considers to be issues resulting in an inevitable “shut down” and other related concerns. On the flip side, newcomers keen on seizing the opportunity that MySpace offers should be wary of a possible misfire. One way is to be aware of the risk and possibly consider legal aid in the form of a patent or similar item to  protect their code. Of course, one must deem the code to be valuable enough to big giants like MySpace to make it a priority. Also, the costs associated with legal protection can sometimes outweigh the revenue potential for startups. As another option, startups could look into accepting any reasonable offer put forth by the biggies when innovating with the moto “hit or miss”. In this manner, startups get something in return for their efforts as apposed to having nothing, but a bad after taste of missed fortune. Unless we all go legal with our ideas and codes; our options are limited.

Click here for SnapLayout