Microsoft Bing grows but far behind Google, Yahoo

Hitwise, a Web analytics firm, reported that Microsoft Bing fielded more searches in June, but it still lags far behind Google and Yahoo.

Bing lost market share in June even as it handled more search queries, according to Hitwise, showing the size of the hill Microsoft has to climb.

Google remained the overwhelming favorite among search engines with 74.04 percent of the market in June -- that's up about four-tenths percent since May and nearly 5 percent from a year ago.

Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask.com lagged far behind Google -- with 16.19 percent, 5.25 percent and 3.15 percent of the market respectively -- and all three have lost share since last year, although Yahoo gained slightly in May.

Bing was introduced in May but is a revamp of Microsoft's previous search offering called Live Search.

Still, the number of search queries handled by Bing grew steadily in June, nearly doubling by the end of the month to 6.63 percent. Bing's average weekly growth rate was 25 percent, according to Hitwise -- faster than the growth rate of Microsoft search services (Bing, Live.com and MSN Search) combined.

"The question is, will Bing maintain that type of share through an entire month?" asked search analyst Danny Sullivan at his blog, searchengineland.com. "We'll know when July figures come out. The bigger question is whether Bing will maintain that type of share when Microsoft's ad spending ramps down."

Meanwhile, there's a flap on Twitter over Google's cache of Microsoft's outage warning for Bing's travel site, which was temporarily knocked out last weekend by an electrical fire in a data center in Seattle.

Microsoft posted the notice last week after the site went down but it still shows up as the second item on Google when Google is used to search for Bing.

Microsoft has asked Google, via Twitter, to check out its index.

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Apple iphone 3G In China Sooner Than Expected

Apple is more appealing to the enterprise than ever. And yet, despite the developments around the iPhone and the Mac in the past few years, Apple has not done much to make that happen.

Apple, the company that was started by two Steves in a garage, has grown into one of the most successful companies in the tech industry. From the iPod to the iPhone to the Mac, Apple offers several products that make it an ideal choice for consumers. But a recent study suggests that Apple is winning customers in the corporate world too.

According to ChangeWave Research, more companies plan to add new computers to their operations during the next quarter. Nine percent of those buying new computers plan to buy MacBook Pros for employees, while 7 percent of respondents said they plan to buy desktop Macs. If those figures hold up, Apple could capture its stated goal of 8 to 10 percent market share in the enterprise.

It's no small feat -- especially for a company that has never really cared about the business world.

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Microsoft's Silverlight 3 Launches Early

Microsoft today released version 3 of its Silverlight framework for developing rich interactive applications (RIAs) and its Expression Studio Web and graphics design suite. While numerous developers and users have had access to the beta for four months, this marks its official release of a development and runtime platform that is critical to Microsoft’s effort to drive the next crop of RIA-based apps based on its .NET framework.

At a launch event in San Francisco, Scott Guthrie, VP of the Redmond software maker’s .NET Developer Platform group, and Soma Somasegar, SVP of Microsoft’s Developer division highlighted key features of Silverlight 3. Among them is its ability to work outside the browser for both connected and disconnected access to applications and data. Another key highlight, IIS Smooth Streaming built into Microsoft’s Internet Information Services 7 (IIS7), boasts HDTV-quality video. Also new is Expression SketchFlow, which allows for rapid prototyping.

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Chrome, Android OS are on separate paths, Google says

Among the many questions raised in the wake of Google's announcement of Chrome OS is exactly how the project fits in with Google's Android mobile operating system.

Essentially, nothing has changed, said Google's Andy Rubin at a press conference Friday morning highlighting Google and T-Mobile's partnership on the launch of the new MyTouch 3G smartphone. "You need different technology for different products," Rubin said, explaining that Google's approach to product development means that projects that might overlap aren't necessarily scuttled to protect the one that got there first.

Android is first and foremost a smartphone operating system, found on products such as the new MyTouch, the older G1, and others scattered around the world. But companies such as Acer and Asus are planning to put Android on Netbooks later this year, and several others are rumored to be following suit.

Chrome OS, however, is supposedly going to arrive on Netbooks first when it's scheduled to be ready in the second half of 2010. So how should companies thinking about alternatives to Windows on Netbooks navigate about Google's operating system strategy?

Google's blog post announcing Chrome OS acknowledged the overlap. "Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to Netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the Web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small Netbooks to full-size desktop systems."

After a panel discussion, Rubin declined to get into specifics about how Android and Chrome would be presented to Google partners once both are on the market. But during the discussion he noted that Android is capable of handling complicated, specialized tasks that a browser-based OS may not be able to tackle.

For example, Android handles the complicated process of handing off an Internet connection between cell towers as you drive down the highway, and carefully manages the power consumption of the system to extent the battery, Rubin said.

Google is also planning to make social-networking technologies a big part of a future Android release, he said. Google just released Android 1.5, known as Cupcake, and plans to keep the sweet desert theme going into the future with code names such as Donut, Eclair, and eventually Flan, but Rubin didn't specify which release will introduce heavier integration with social technologies.

And work continues on making Android suitable for things like set-top boxes and even refrigerators, Rubin said. "Our team is working hard to define those profiles. We've done a good job defining those profiles for cell phones."

But the Netbook situation remains murky. Is Google going to support two different operating systems for the mini-notebook market? As of yet, no Open Handset Alliance type of partnership exists for Chrome OS, meaning that unless that changes Google will have to do almost all the heavy lifting on Chrome development and support itself.

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Yahoo to finally shut Yahoo 360 on July13

Another Yahoo service is closing officially. Yahoo 360, which was supposed to close early last year, is finally shutting its doors on July 13, according to a blog post written on the site.

"Over the past two years there has been a lot of discussion about the closure of Yahoo! 360° and the transition to our new profiles experience that we’ve had in the works. Today, we’re able to firmly say that on July 13, 2009 Yahoo! 360° will be closing down and you’ll be asked to move into your new profile on Yahoo!, by July 12, 2009," goes the blog.

Yahoo 360 was launched in March 2005 as a ocial network/blogging service. However, the service could never really gain popularity. In fact, several analysts cite Yahoo 360's failure as an example of a hot Internet property that Yahoo failed to cash on.

According to ComScore, Yahoo 360 had 13.9 million worldwide unique visitors in April.

In October 2007, when the company first announced that it would close Yahoo 360, it aimed move to a 'universal' Yahoo profile. The company reiterated the plan during its Yahoo Open Strategy (YOS) launch in April 2008.

In September last year, Yahoo also shut its other social-networking site, Yahoo Mash. Late last year company launched its "universal" profile service, Yahoo Profiles, which incorporates basic social-networking functions. However, Yahoo Profiles doesn't match the features of Yahoo 360.

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Social-networking Site Tagged.com stole identities; To be sued by New York

New York's attorney general has charged that Tagged.com stole the identities of more than 60 million Internet users worldwide — by sending e-mails that raided their private accounts.

Andrew Cuomo said he plans to sue the social networking Web site for deceptive marketing and invasion of privacy.

"This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people," Cuomo said in a statement. "Consumers had their privacy invaded and were forced into the embarrassing position of having to apologize to all their e-mail contacts for Tagged's unethical — and illegal — behavior."

Started in 2004 by Harvard math students, Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith, Tagged calls itself a "premier social-networking destination." The California-based company claims to be the third-largest social networking site after Facebook and MySpace, with 80 million registered users.

Cuomo said Tagged acquired most of them fraudulently, sending unsuspecting recipients e-mails that urged them to view private photos posted by friends.

The message read: "(name of friend) sent you photos on Tagged."

When recipients tried to access the photos, Cuomo said they would in effect become new members of the site — without ever seeing any photos. Recipients' e-mail address books would then be lifted, the attorney general said.

Tagged temporarily suspended its online campaign last month, in response to user complaints.

E-mail and telephone messages from The Associated Press to the company were not immediately returned on Thursday.

In an open letter on the site, dated June 16, Tseng acknowledges that Tagged had received 2,000 complaints "from people who invited all the contacts in their e-mail address books but didn't intend to."

He said that every day, "our members make 2 million new friend connections" using the site's special "feature." But on June 7, in response to the complaints, "we hit the pause button."

The site than e-mailed all new members to offer "information on how to manage their contacts and, if they wanted, how to cancel their membership."

Cuomo said Tagged's problems went far beyond technical glitches.

"This very virulent form of spam is the online equivalent of breaking into a home, stealing address books, and sending phony mail to all of an individual's personal contacts," Cuomo said.

The system was set up so that a user was asked whether the sender of the photos was a friend, then suggesting that if the recipient didn't respond, the friend "may think you said no" (accompanied by a sad face icon).

Any click resulted in the same thing, Cuomo said: Every person on a user's contact list received an e-mail that again read, "(name of user) sent you photos on Tagged." The site then released a flood of offers for everything from sweepstakes to other services.

By the time a recipient realized there were no photos, it was too late. On Thursday, a box on the site's home page still read: "NOW HIRING ... click here."

The attorney general said a lawsuit would seek to stop Tagged from engaging in "fraudulent practices" and to seek fines.

Another site founded by Tseng, Jumpstart Technologies, was fined $900,000 in 2006 by the Federal Trade Commission for violating the CAN-SPAM Act — signed into law in 2003 by President Bush as the anti-spam national standard for commercial e-mail.

At the time, the director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, Lydia Parnes, said the Tseng-founded site had "intentionally used personal messages as a cover-up for commercial messages."

Such practices not only violate the law, she said, "but also consumer trust."
Courtesy: IndiaTimes.com

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Sprint Nextel to let Ericsson handle Networking Operations

Sprint Nextel Corp. on Thursday announced it will transfer operation of its wireless and wireline networks to Swedish telecommunications equipment maker LM Ericsson.

The seven-year deal, valued between $4.5 billion and $5 billion, will transfer about 6,000 Sprint employees later this year to an Ericsson-owned subsidiary, based at Sprint's Overland Park, Kan., headquarters. About 2,000 of the employees are currently based in the Kansas City area with the remainder spread across the country.

Sprint officials stressed that the nation's third-largest wireless provider will maintain ownership and control of its network, including future investment and strategy, while Ericsson provides day-to-day maintenance and monitoring of the network of cell towers and call switching equipment.

"This is about improving the customer experience," Steve Elfman, Sprint's president of network operations and wholesale, told reporters. "While we get the benefits of Ericsson's expertise and the tools and best practices they bring to the table, we can focus our attention on bringing great devices, great services, great applications to (customers)."

Elfman said the company expected to save money on employee and other operational costs with the agreement but declined to give details on how much. Sprint laid off 8,000 employees earlier this year, which it said provided $1.2 billion in savings.

During a conference call with analysts, he said Sprint would reinvest much of the savings back into its networks to expand their reach and improve their quality. They currently serve 49 million wireless subscribers.

The deal does not involve the company's high-speed wireless Internet technology, also called WiMax, which Sprint transferred to Kirkland, Wash.-based Clearwire Corp. last fall. That company, of which Sprint is a majority owner, is rolling out WiMax services in several cities this year.

Yankee Group analyst Camille Mendler said in a research report that the agreement "changes the game in the North American telecom market" as it represents the first time a major telecommunication provider has turned over operation of its network to a third party.

She noted that Sprint has begun showing signs of turning around its operations, hampered by technological and operational snags since buying Nextel Communications Inc. in 2005. But she said the company is still struggling to attract and retain customers, which network management transfers alone can't help.

"Sprint will not complete a business turnaround simply through its relationship with Ericsson," she wrote. "What really matters is how such relationships — if proactively managed — can free up time and resources."

The Sprint employees are expected to switch over to Ericsson in late third quarter, after which it will take 12-18 months to fully shift operations to Ericsson. Elfman said Sprint will retain about 2,000 employees who have network-related jobs, such as budgeting.

Jan Frykhammar, head of Ericsson's Global Services unit, told reporters the company was "excited" by the contract, its first network operation deal in North America. The company already manages global networks that serve 275 million subscribers with around 30,000 employees.

"This is really a proof point of a long-term partnership between Sprint and Ericsson," Frykhammar said.

The deal, which has been rumored for months, came following a "vigorous bid process" with other potential management companies that lasted up to a year, Elfman said.

"Our judgment over that fairly lengthy time ... they came out far ahead," he said, adding that Sprint will continue to benefit operationally and financially from Ericsson's expertise in networking and its economy of scale.

Frykhammar and Elfman downplayed analysts' concerns that Ericsson has typically invested in technology opposed to Sprint's wireless networks, which use so-called CDMA and iDEN technology, saying network management is the same regardless of the technology involved.

Sprint shares gained 17 cents, or almost 4 percent, to $4.46 in trading Thursday

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Mahindra Satyam to allot additional 18.96% stake to Tech Mahindra Unit

Satyam Computer Services Ltd., now called Mahindra Satyam, Wednesday said it will allot 198.66 million shares of the company on a preferential basis to Venturbay Consultants Pvt. Ltd., a unit of Tech Mahindra Ltd., for 11.52 billion rupees ($238 million), as per a Company Law Board order.

After the allotment, Tech Mahindra will hold about 43% of Mahindra Satyam's outstanding share capital of 1.18 billion shares, Mahindra Satyam said in a statement.

Tech Mahindra on Monday said its open offer for 20% more in Satyam resulted in 0.1% of Satyam's shares being tendered, taking the company's stake in Satyam up to 31.04%.

It bought 31% in Satyam in April after winning an auction. The company had said it intended to subscribe for additional shares via a second preferential allotment.

The order by the Company Law Board - a quasi-judicial body - also approved the appointment of a financial auditor for this fiscal year ending March 31., 2010, subject to ratification by shareholders at Mahindra Satyam's next annual shareholders' meeting, the company said.

The details on Satyam Computer Services Ltd.
Deal Value (US$ Million) 230.44
Deal Type Private Placement
Sub-Category None
Deal Status Announced: 2009-07-06
Deal Participants

Target (Company) Satyam Computer Services Limited
Acquirer (Company) Tech Mahindra Limited
Deal Rationale

The acquisition of Satyam would help Tech Mahindra diversify its software services business and strengthen its market position. The transaction would also enable Tech Mahindra, which is focused on the telecom vertical, to diversify into other verticals such as financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing. Tech Mahindra would also gain Satyam's portfolio of customers.

% Acquisition 18.96%
Offer Price ($ per share) 1.16
No. Shares Issued 198658498

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Canon Introduces New Injket and Laser Printers

The PIXMA MP560 Wireless Inkjet Photo All-In-One
Targeting home users, the new PIXMA MP560 AIO printer is Canon's most compact inkjet printer, with wireless capabilities and built-in Auto Duplex Printing. This new printer is the successor to the PIXMA MP620 Wireless Photo AIO Printer, and is also the first Canon PIXMA Printer that can to print out pictures directly from a USB Flash Memory device.

The PIXMA MP560 can print out photo-lab-quality borderless 4-x-6-inch pictures in approximately 39 seconds, and the 2-inch LCD screen enables users to preview photos before printing. Under the new ISO print-speed standard, the PIXMA MP560 AIO printer will deliver output at approximately 9.2 ipm for black-and-white documents and approximately 6.0 ipm for color.

The new PIXMA printer includes Canon's Easy-WebPrint EX software that includes the Auto Clip feature, which allows consumers to select a specific part of a Web page they want printed rather than printing out the whole page.

The PIXMA MP560 Photo AIO Printer will hit store shelves next month and retail for $149.99.

The PIXMA MP490 AIO Photo Printer
Consumers looking for a product at a lower price point ($99.95), may want to check out the PIXMA MP490, which includes the new Auto Photo Fix II software that is built into the printer, and automatically corrects images while viewing and editing can be done on the 1.8-inch LCD. The QuickStart feature gives users faster access to operations once the printer has been turned on. The Auto Scan Mode automatically recognizes the type of original that is being scanned and saves it with the appropriate settings.

The template feature has been expanded to 11 different templates, which now includes schedules and handwriting paper. Under the new ISO print-speed standard, the MP490 can create letter-sized documents at approximately 8.4 ipm for black-and-white documents and roughly 4.8 ipm for color. A release date is set for August.

The SELPHY Compact Photo Printer
This printer replaces its predecessor, the Canon SELPHY CP770 Compact Photo Printer, and has been upgraded to include new Creative Options that enable users to add their own personal touches to their photos. The feature includes six different layouts, six background colors and 18 clip-art stamps to personalize photos. A 3-inch LCD screen lets users preview their work before cropping and printing out photos.

The portable printer also features an optional battery and memory card slot that provides printing on-the-go capabilities without a computer. According to Canon, the SELPHY CP790 produces higher quality images than the previous model thanks to enhancements to the Portrait Image Optimize feature. The Face Detection brightness and color cast correction have also been overhauled and both are "vastly" improved, Canon said, so that skin tones and faces can be produced with more natural and realistic colors. The SELPHY CP790 can print a 4-x-6-inch photo in roughly 43 seconds, which is 10 percent faster than the previous model. The printer will be rolled out in August and retails for $179.99 -- an optional $79.99 NB-CP2L battery pack is also available.

The Canon Color imageCLASS MF8050Cn
Canon is also hitting the small-business and home-user market segment with two additions to its imageCLASS laser multifunction line. The Color imageCLASS MF8050Cn and MF8350Cdn laser multifunction printers are the company's lowest-priced color laser MFPs.

The MF8050Cn has print speeds up to 8 pages per minute (ppm) in color and 12 ppm in black-and-white. The printer has a front-loading design and also features in-line cartridges that can also be retrieved from the front of the machine, and the large LCD with graphic-display animation provides on-screen instructions. Users can save scanned documents to a USB removable media. Other features include ID card copy, auto fax forwarding and searchable PDF.

The printer will be rolled out in September for $499.

The Canon Color imageCLASS MF8350Cdn
The MF8350Cdn also features an auto-duplex function that can print, copy and fax two-sided documents from single-sided originals, and prints up to 21 ppm in color and black-and-white. The printer also has built-in networking so the machine can be shared by a work team. The MF8350Cdn also has a front-loading design, with a 250-sheet cassette, 50-sheet multipurpose tray and an optional 250-sheet cassette. Other features include ID card copy, auto fax forwarding and searchable PDF.

Also available in September, the MF8350Cdn has a price tag of $699.

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Google announces computer Operating System

Alas, poor Microsoft. First Google dominates the search engine market. Then Google enters the Web-based e-mail market. Android invades Windows Mobile's turf. And then Google jumps into the browser market with Chrome. Tonight Google announced that it has upped the ante yet again, and will release a new operating system based on Google Chrome.

The new operating system, aptly named Google Chrome OS, will be an open-source operating system initially geared toward netbooks, Google announced in a press release this evening.

Google claims the new operating system, which should ship in the second half of next year, will be "lightweight" and heavily Web-centric.

With Chrome OS, Google plans to follow the same formula it used with its browser: "Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds," Google stated in its announcement. "The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web."

Google will also make security a high priority with Chrome, stating that they "are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work." That's, as you probably figured, pretty ambitious, considering every current operating system sees its fair share of security flaws and patches.

Chrome OS will run on x86-based PCs, as well as machines built around the ARM processor (such as so-called smartbooks).

So what does this mean for Android? According to Google, Chrome OS is in no way connected to Android, and that while Android was created with smartphones, netbooks, and other devices in mind, Chrome OS "is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web" and will be able to run on practically any PC that meets the minimum requirements, ranging from netbooks on the low-end to high end power desktops.

When Google first introduced the Chrome browser last year, I remarked in my review that "In the past there has been some speculation that Google would develop its own operating system, but I think that Chrome's launch makes one thing is clear: The Web browser is Google's operating system."

While Chrome OS goes beyond being a mere Web browser, Google's vision of the future is as clear with Chrome OS as it was with the introduction of the Chrome browser: The Web is the OS of the future, and a modern OS needs to be built around the Web first. In fact, in the announcement, Google flatly states, "For application developers, the web is the platform." Even better: "And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform."

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