All About mobile

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today a definitive agreement to acquire, a global leader in digital marketing technology and services, for $3.1 billion in cash from San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman along with JMI Equity and management. The acquisition will combine DoubleClick’s expertise in ad management technology for media buyers and sellers with Google’s leading advertising platform and publisher monetization services.

DoubleClick is a provider of digital marketing technology and services. The world’s top marketers, publishers and agencies utilize DoubleClick’s expertise in ad serving, rich media, video, search and affiliate marketing to help them make the most of the digital medium. From its position at the nerve center of digital marketing, DoubleClick provides superior insights and insider knowledge to its customers.

The combination of Google and DoubleClick will offer superior tools for targeting, serving and analyzing online ads of all types, significantly benefiting customers and consumers:

• For users, the combined company will deliver an improved experience on the web, by increasing the relevancy and the quality of the ads they see.
• For online publishers, the combination provides access to new advertisers, which creates a powerful opportunity to monetize their inventory more efficiently.
• For agencies and advertisers, Google and DoubleClick will provide an easy and efficient way to manage both search and display ads in one place. They will be able to optimize their ad spending across different online media using a common set of metrics.

“It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful. Together with DoubleClick, Google will make the Internet more efficient for end users, advertisers, and publishers,” said Sergey Brin, Google’s Co-Founder and President, Technology.

“DoubleClick’s technology is widely adopted by leading advertisers, publishers and agencies, and the combination of the two companies will accelerate the adoption of Google’s innovative advances in display advertising,” said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google.

“This transaction will strengthen our advertising network by expanding our access to publisher inventory and enabling us to serve the needs of a broader set of advertisers and ad agencies,” said Tim Armstrong, Google’s President, Advertising and Commerce, North America.

“Google is the absolute perfect partner for us,” said David Rosenblatt, Chief Executive Officer of DoubleClick. “Combining DoubleClick’s cutting edge digital solutions for both media buyers and sellers with Google’s scale and innovative resources will bring tremendous value to both our employees and clients.”

“When we acquired DoubleClick in July 2005, we saw an opportunity to partner with a great management team to further enhance the company’s capabilities and growth trajectory,” said Philip Hammarskjold, Managing Director of Hellman & Friedman. “This transaction affirms the successful transformation of DoubleClick, positions the firm for the future, and greatly benefits our investors.”

Both companies have approved the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close by the end of the year.

Press release 

As Google awaits a ruling on its proposed acquisition of DoubleClick, its prospects may have grown brighter because of Microsoft’s pursuit of Yahoo.Reuters and Bloomberg report that the European Union is preparing to approve Google’s pending acquisition of DoubleClick, the advertising technology firm. The deal, which was announced last April, has been delayed mainly because of protests by Microsoft that Google would gain monopoly power in the online advertising business.

The acquisition was approved in the United States in December, but European regulators have been looking at it more closely. The deadline for action in Europe is April 2, but Bloomberg reports that action could be taken as soon as next week.

Now that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo, tripling its share of the search ad share and vaulting to the top of the online display ad business, maybe it doesn’t look like such an injured party.

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Semantic searches are the future. Google is always working to figure out just what we’re looking for with those obscure search string - in essence, trying to read between the lines. Figuring out the meaning behind the search is a critical next step in web-search, and the next step after that is semantic image-based searches. We haven’t mentioned semantic visual search technology is quite some time, but the idea.

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Google is putting secondary search boxes in the Google search results. I see them myself now. For example a search on amazon returns this search box directly under the snippet but above the URL, here is a picture:

It also works for a search on wikipedia:

And even for ny times, which also has Sitelinks.

When you type a keyword into the search box and click search, you are essentially searching the site via a site command using Google’s search engine. For example, I typed in mortgage rate into the search box within my NY Times search and Google returns pages from the New York Times that match that query.

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Google, already the world’s most popular spot for finding Web sites, is aiming to become the go-to place for creating Web sites too.he Mountain View-based company is taking its first step toward that goal Thursday with the debut of a free service designed for high-tech neophytes looking for a simple way to share information with other people working in the same company or attending the same class in school.

With only a few clicks, just about anyone will be able to quickly set up and update a Web site featuring a wide array of material, including pictures, calendars and video from Google Inc.’s YouTube subsidiary, said Dave Girouard, general manager of the division overseeing the new application.

Google’s latest service represents a challenge to Microsoft’s SharePoint, which charges licensing fees. Google is unveiling its alternative just a few days before Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft hosts a SharePoint conference in Seattle.

While Microsoft’s programs typically are installed on individual computers, Google keeps its application on its own machines so users can access them from anywhere with an Internet connection. READ MORE

This is the perspective of a “skeptical, later early adopter”; the sort of person who Microsoft needs to retain and should have been able to retain easily. I don’t spend time on productivity tools that may at some date make me more productive, but which today are just a frustrating time sink. That describes the majority of people. MS Office can be annoying, but it does work. So any serious alternative has to offer a significant advantage and at the same time make adoption a total breeze.I think Google Apps has reached that point. The significant advantage is collaboration.

Since I started working on a new project where we all agreed to use Google Docs from the start, I have hardly used MS Office at all - even on other projects.

The lead product in Google Apps for me is their word processing product - i.e. the MS Word alternative. That may be because I am a wordsmith, but also because it is the most mature. I still use Excel, as Google Spreadsheet is both a pain to learn and not good enough for power users. Also there are better ways to collaborate with Excel, such as eXpresso. I don’t use Google Presentation, but that is because I am weaning myself off Powerpoint - as I think it is no longer the best presentation medium. If I want to persuade with words, I use words. If I want to persuade with multimedia, then it is time for video such as YouTube or maybe Seesmic and screencasting tools to show off an app. A PPT deck is very flat by contrast.

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SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that’s likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader.to an electronic transfer of their personal health records so they can be retrieved through Google’s new service, which won’t be open to the general public.

Each health profile, including information about prescriptions, allergies and medical histories, will be protected by a password that’s also required to use other Google services such as e-mail and personalized search tools.

Google views its expansion into health records management as a logical extension because its search engine already processes millions of requests from people trying to find about more information about an injury, illness or recommended treatment.

But the health venture also will provide more fodder for privacy watchdogs who believe Google already knows too much about the interests and habits of its users as its computers log their search requests and store their e-mail discussions. READ MORE

Check out fierce wireless photos of various developers’ booths showing off their Google Android demos. Some companies even had it running on concept handsets.

Nitinpai from TECHTRACR  has posted 10 most usefull cheats for searching on internet with Google.using some tricks or the cheat sheet provided by Google itself to quickly find what you actually require. Having being hooked onto Google for a long time now, I have come across some amazing search tricks which can change the way you look at Google today.

The post includes searching  for

Specifc fil types, Scholarly Search, Meanings of any word in an instant, definations, READ MORE

BBC is currently mulling over the results of a 12-month long mobile TV trial to figure out its long term strategy for the medium. NMA reports that the trial–a live mobile stream of BBC One, BBC Three, and BBC News 24 currently running on the portals of Orange, 3 and Vodafone—ends in March, and the BBC has yet to tell operators if they plan to continue. They are said to be “closing analyzing” the statistics on viewing habits. The service has, apparently, been a popular one, with Orange reporting that the simulcast BBC service has over 27 percent of the audience share on the operator’s portal. Head of TV and VOD partnerships and services for Orange Jake Redford told NMA that its subscribers were making sure they didn’t miss popular TV shows such as Casualty and East Enders as they made their way home from work. He added, “All this has led to tremendous growth in subscriber numbers, so much so that revenue from mobile TV is almost double the forecast.”

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