MS Strikes a Deal with HP

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, already in partnership, are expanding their businesses together. Microsoft, after tasting failure in Yahoo! acquisition and after the talks between Yahoo! and Google on a search advertisement partnership, is under strong pressure to get higher search market share. And this caused their striking up a deal with HP to install Live Search engine in HP PCs.

HP is the largest distributor of consumer PCs in the US and Canada, and shipped almost 4 million PCs in the first quarter of 2008 alone. So, having Windows Live Search in all HP PCs is a huge advantage for MS. It will well equip Microsoft to fight Google better. In 2006, Google had struck up a similar deal with Dell to install Google search in the Dell machines as default search toolbar. Microsoft’s move can be seen as an afterthought of that.

Though many advanced users may change the default search back to Google or Yahoo!, this may enable Microsoft to get a good share in the search realm. Currently, Google holds 62 % of the search market and Live Search is at a deplorable 9 %.

Now, Live Search is the default search engine for Windows Vista, but the new deal will make Live Search have more visitors. Also, HP can boost their business through this partnership. HP, at a small fee, can point users to their specific technology websites and get some more sales.

Genuinely, what these tactics bring back to Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard is something to wait and see.

Copyright © Gayatri Jayashankar 2008

Eagerly in wait for Firefox 3.0?

After a three-year development, Mozilla releases Firefox 3.0 next month. IE 8 is expected to be released by the end of the year, and altogether, these browsers, which share more than 90 % of the browser market, would be in for a great competition, since IE 8 is also expected to boast some cool new features (which we will look at a later post).

Firefox 3 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 web rendering engine, which was in development for more than the past two years, incorporating two millions lines of code edits and fix for more than 11,000 issues. This all-new Gecko engine will make Firefox a lot more robust and reliable. Firefox 2.0.0.14 is based on Gecko 1.8.1.

Here is a video I found about Firefox 3.0. I haven't watched it fully due to my connection problems. But I hope it will be rich with some good information. If not, please let me know by comments.

Firefox boasts these features in particular:

One click site information: You will find a favicon on the address bar of the web browser when the site is loaded, and on clicking this icon, you can get details of the site’s ownership.

Malware protection: In this, the users are warned against the site whenever they arrive at a site known to install malwares in the user machines.

Web forgery protection page: The contents of pages, which are suspicious of fraudulence such as phishing, are not at all shown when you visit them.

New SSL error page: Clearer and stricter error pages are shown when Firefox finds an invalid SSL certificate.

Add-ons and plug-in versions: Firefox will automatically check for add-ons and plug-in versions and update them, and all add-on updates will be completely secure.

Antivirus integration: As one of the greatest features of antivirus integration, Firefox alerts the antivirus in the system of the executable downloads, so that the antivirus can scan whatever is being downloaded.

Cool user friendly features

New download manager with resumable download: Here, at last a browser incorporates a resumable download manager. Never in the past was there a browser with a complete download manager. IE’s greatest weakness was a good download manager, which could resume downloads. Here, Mozilla Firefox comes up with a resumable download manager, in which locating files downloaded is also pretty easy.

Full page zoom: You can now zoom the entire page with images, layout and of course text. In the past, it was text only that got zoomed.

Tab scrolling and tab quick menu: With the new feature known as tab quick menu, a simple menu is added to make finding the tabs easy. It’s similar to IE7. Also, the tabs now are better organized to open pages. When you open something on a tab, another tab is appended rather than the current tab is overwritten.

Text selection made easy: Double-click and drag, and you will select entire words. Triple-click and you will select entire paragraph, and use ctrl button, you can select multiple words and paragraphs.

Vista integration: New Firefox will show Vista-visual menus.

Star bookmark: There will be a star button for the bookmarking in the location bar itself. The bookmarks may be added very quickly. Also, a second click will file and tag the bookmark.

Improved display: New text handling and display code within Gecko will smooth the text display (an improvement present in IE7) and will display the text and graphics in a better, smoother, eye-candy way.

Color management: You can now change the color profiles of images displayed in Firefox.

You don’t want to know anything about the system requirements. All systems in existence can support the software, and the memory improvement done has fixed about 300 memory errors. This will drastically boost the performance. The testing has shown an estimated double performance gain in Firefox 3 for applications like Gmail, Zoho Office, etc. Also the software’s beta version was released in 45 languages, while the original Firefox 3 may support even more. The browser, with the total market share of 17 % will soon be a grave competitor to IE, with over 75 % of the market.

Everything else, when the new browser itself gets released for us.

[Apologies to readers for no blog post tomorrow. I was at work another post on another blog of mine about the scam known as Associated Content, please read it.]

Copyright © Gayatri Jayashankar 2008

Microsoft Offers Search Incentives

The search engine giant Google holds more than 60 per cent of the searches done on the Internet and thereby huge revenue through search contextual ads. The other major players in this field, Yahoo! and Microsoft have been trying extra hard to be seen in the scenario by boosting their technology. As a last attempt, MS even tried a merger with Yahoo! for 47 billion to compete with Google. But nothing worked out and the Google giant stood tall and still in its merit fortress.

So, now here is a grave new development from Microsoft, which, feeling that they may trip off the cliff if this goes on further. MS offers cash back to the users of their search engine (Live Search) to find products from the Internet. As a last strategy from MS, would this work out or not, we have to wait to see.

In a press conference held in Redmond, Washington, Bill Gates, MS chairman, conferred the glad news to the web searchers. The cash back payment would be made through the popular online money transfer subsidiary of eBay, PayPal. And the customers of course have the options to choose checks or drafts.

The most important announcement for the advertisers is that the new advertisements will be “Cost per Acquisition.” This means, the advertiser need pay Microsoft only if the searcher clicked and purchased from the site. Otherwise, they don’t have to pay. Google’s Pay-Per-Click monopoly would get a big hit from this?

Adwords, the largest advertisement network in the world by Google uses Pay-Per-Click technology, meaning the advertiser pays a certain pre-calculated amount (nearer to $1 for major search words and some cents for less competitive search words) per click. If the CPA scheme from MS becomes popular (and which the advertisers would love to see), then Google’s business may be in an awkward position.

It’s not a great news for ad publishers, however, if any system goes CPA, because the publishers will get paid only if an actual purchase happens. Currently, they have both options (the CPA option coming from companies like Amazon and ClickBank and CPC from Adsense, Adbrite, and many others). So, CPA getting popular will help only giants like Microsoft.

Google’s stronghold in the search engine world is completely based on merit. Their contextual ad strategy is such well developed that the advertisers have the opportunity to get maximum business from it, well optimized for the keywords they target. So, Google’s CPC ads are well in with the advertisers. In this scenario, how many of them would love to test MS technology is questionable. Also, cash back scheme would attract a hundred thousand more greedy searchers to MS Live search and thereby ten thousand more sales for advertisers. But how it will compete with Google is yet to be seen. Google’s superior technology makes 60 % more revenue from contextual ads than their next rival, Yahoo!.

After the failure of MS’s 47 billion bid on Yahoo! and the recent talk of cooperation of Yahoo! and Google opening partnership, MS, sitting idle, may just vanish from the table without even their knowledge. So, this strategies are their wriggles to fight drowning. Desperate, any giant would attempt anything!

Copyright © Lenin Nair 2008

Google-Yahoo! Against Microsoft?

Soon after the challenging Microsoft-Yahoo! merger conjectures, we have here, another interesting news. Google is in for a partnership with their archrival Internet company, Yahoo!. While Microsoft put forward a deal with Yahoo! some time back, which almost came down to a merger, and to MS’s disappointment, was dropped, here is a thunderbolt on its already shattered dreams.

If Google collaborates with Yahoo! or in the future, even decides to acquire the giant, then it will be a nightmare for with Bill Gates. Eric E Schmidt, Google’s chief, said about a proposed alliance with Yahoo! that Google would allow Yahoo! to use their most innovative contextual ad technology within Yahoo search results. This would enable Yahoo! rake in an extra $1 billion every year.

And in exchange, Yahoo!, currently number two in overall searches made in the WWW, would hand over some of its subsidiary services to Google. Eric Schmidt only gave the reply that “We would anticipate structuring a deal to address antitrust concerns.”

And analysts have only a vague idea of the cooperation. Some believe it will only be a supplier arrangement. Meaning, Google supplies its services to Yahoo! and in exchange, purchases some Yahoo! services. Similar to Dell’s supplying hardware to Adobe or Accenture.

Still, some of the concerns raised include the thought that this move by Google is anticompetitive. Google, with the search market share of 60 %, the highest, if shares its strategy of search contextual advertising with Yahoo!, the experts believe that it will reduce the competition. The Yahoo! share of the market is only around 20 % and their ad share revenue falls far behind Google’s.

Google’s superior contextual ad technology and their better market share make them 60 % more revenue from comparable Yahoo! ads. Sad that the giants cannot publicly use the technology of each other, maybe due to their ego. They are, instead, forced to invest too much in developing a similar technology, and failing in it, lose all that money. The same happened here with Yahoo! and Microsoft, who tried to collaborate with each other to shatter Google’s monopoly. But now that Google itself came to the scene with partnership with Yahoo!, it seems Microsoft will be the loser.

Copyright © Gayatri Jayashankar 2008

Microsoft’s Cooperation with Yahoo! Takes a New Phase

Some days ago, we witnessed the story of Microsoft going into potential big-game partnership with Yahoo! Inc, and later by May 8, they backed off from that. But the latest in the news raises an entirely different development. It seems now that Microsoft will end up acquiring Yahoo!.

Though Microsoft earlier said that they would only consider a merger after some deeper brooding, they are likely to change their mind in this regard. But a new development happened as one of the topmost investors of Yahoo!, Carl Icahn of California, sent a letter to Yahoo! denouncing the board’s action of not accepting the Microsoft’s offer of merger.

According to him, the merger with Microsoft would prove to be better for Yahoo! as a company, and as one company, they can be better equipped against the competitors.

Being major investor in Yahoo!, Icahn’s message would have deep effects. In his letter, he also specified the opinion of other investors with the company, who collectively talked with him favoring a merger.

Microsoft had made an initial bid of $31 per share for Yahoo! but later increased it to $33. Still, Yahoo!’s steadfastness (that it would not go below $37) is under suffered denouncements from the shareholders. And to retaliate, Microsoft bought up ten nominees to oppose Yahoo! board, which gets re-elected every year.

But since, Icahn’s proxy battle would hit Yahoo! badly, Microsoft proposed a better alternative for them. Though Microsoft equivocated the alternative deal, the sources are in belief that it would finally result in an acquisition.

In pressure from Microsoft and Yahoo! shareholders, Yahoo!, which closed at about $20 per share on 18, would find it difficult to let down Microsoft’s deal of $33, which may take a fresh effect soon. Let’s wait the latest developments.

Copyright © Gayatri Jayashankar 2008