Internet Explorer, Firefox got their users back

Few days ago, Google Search Engine launched smart, stylish and faster web browser, Google Chrome, and after launch of chrome, many more users had downloaded browser chrome, and started to work with chrome web browser.

As I can definitely say that any seo expert has not used this web browser, coz Google’s own browser chrome, is not able to install Google Tool bar, and also other social bookmarking buttons are not supported for chrome, as chrome programming is same as Mozilla Firefox, nothing extra just difference of color. Google announced that this fast, safe and stylish browser, as it. It’s faster than IE but still as per online survey and communication with web masters and also discussing on some forums regarding Google Chrome popularity, many more web masters told that they had already uninstall chrome from their system and start using Mozilla Firefox as default web browser.

Source:- semaphore-software.com/

Google Apps tops 1 million businesses

Google is well known as a one-trick pony.

Almost all of the company's revenue comes from its search engine, which last quarter accounted for more than $5 billion. New initiatives, such as the Chrome browser, Google Gears, and Google Friend Connect, are focused on building a mostly open-source Internet operating system out of Google technology in order to funnel more user data and targeted advertising opportunities into the Googleplex financial engine.

It's easy to draw parallels to Microsoft, which gradually built the dominant 20th century operating system and applications platform. Bill Gates and company realized that attracting developers to the Windows platform was key. Google is following that advice with its open-source projects and allowing its mad scientists to try to remake the early 21st century software world and take on Microsoft.

Microsoft has led the way with productivity software, gaining a more than 90 percent share of market with Microsoft Office. Google is hoping to replicate Microsoft's office suite success with Google Apps. It's far less feature-rich than Microsoft Office, but Google Apps Premier edition is far cheaper at $50 per user per year.

For some companies, Google Apps is "good enough," and its cloud-based, collaborative core is an advantage--no Microsoft SharePoint server required. Even with a few enterprise wins, Google Apps is a puny business. According to a Fortune article, Google brought in about $4 million with its Google Apps business in 2007, compared with $12.2 billion for Microsoft Office. Google Apps is a profitable business, according to Matthew Glotzbach, enterprise product management director at Google.

Since early this year Google has been touting 500,000 active business customers, primarily small businesses, using at least one of the Google Apps, and more than 10 million active users. In addition, thousands of universities, with more than one million active users, are using Google Apps, the company said. So far, Google's biggest wins are Valeo, a leading automotive suppliers, with 32,000 users, and the District of Columbia, with 38,000 employees.

However, the vast majority of Google Apps users are not paying customers. The company maintains that "hundreds of thousands" of users are paying the $50 annual fee. The $50 per-user-per-year Premier Edition offers several features lacking in the free Standard Edition, including Postini messaging security, APIs for integrating Google Apps with IT infrastructure, 24x7 support, 99.9 percent uptime guarantee for e-mail, Google Video and 25GB of storage per account.

At this point, Google is underplaying the number of Google Apps business customers. The company has been saying that it is adding 3,000 businesses a day, which amounts to over 1 million per year. The reality today is that Google has more than a million Apps business customers. In addition, the Apps suite continues to fill out, most recently with Google Video.

It took Microsoft years to build a base of applications and developer ecosystem for Windows and Office. Google faces the same uphill climb for Apps and its fledgling Web operating system. The company hopes to ride on the backs of the younger generation that has grown up on the Web and identify with the Google brand. As the Google generation moves into positions of purchase authority within businesses, Google is betting that those decision makers will shun Microsoft, especially as Apps product features improve. Of course, the resilient and relentless Microsoft will respond to Google's challenge when it is more than a $4 million or even $20 million blip.

source:- news.cnet.com/

Ask.com abandons pursuit of Google, seeks makeover as women's site

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - In a dramatic about-face, Ask.com is abandoning its effort to outshine Internet search leader Google Inc. and will instead focus on a narrower market consisting of married women looking for help managing their lives.

As part of the new direction outlined Tuesday, Ask will lay off about 40 employees, or 8 percent of its work force.

With the shift, the Oakland-based company will return to its roots by concentrating on finding answers to basic questions about recipes, hobbies, children's homework, entertainment and health.

The decision to cater to married women primarily living in the southern and midwestern United States comes after Ask spent years trying to build a better all-purpose search engine than Google.

The quest intensified after Internet conglomerate InterActiveCorp bought Ask and its affiliated Web sites for $2.3 billion in 2005. But Ask.com remained an also-ran, despite spending tens of millions of dollars on an advertising blitz about dozens of new products that impressed many industry analysts.

Through January, Ask ran the Internet's fifth largest search engine in the United States with a 4.5 percent market share, according to comScore Media Metrix. Google dominates the industry with a 58.5 percent share.

"No matter what (Ask) did, it just wasn't enough to get people to leave Google," said Chris Winfield, who runs a search engine consulting firm, 10e20. "This looks they are raising the white flag."

Jim Safka, who became Ask's chief executive two months ago, predicted the retooling will breathe new life into the search engine.

"Everyone at Ask is excited about our clear focus and the trajectory-changing results it will deliver," he said in a statement.

Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said Ask's new strategy could help boost the company's profits because married women - particularly mothers - dictate many household spending decisions, making them a prime advertising target.

"It's a smart move," she said. "I still think Ask has great technology, but it's just really hard to fight against Google."

With Ask scaling back, the online search market could winnow to two dominant players, Google and Microsoft Corp. Now third in the market, Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo Inc., which runs the second largest search engine, for about $40 billion.

Ask's inability to increase its market share had spurred widespread speculation that Barry Diller, InterActiveCorp's chief executive, might hire Google to run the search engine's results to save money. Google already posts text-based ads on Ask and InterActiveCorp's other Web sites in a five-year deal that Diller expects to generate about $3.5 billion.

New York-based InterActiveCorp plans to break itself into five separate companies later this year. Ask will remain under Diller's control at InterActiveCorp.

When it first started out in 1996, Ask positioned itself as a search engine that could spit out answers to requests that were posed as natural-language questions instead of being entered as a string of loosely related words.

But the search engine, then known as AskJeeves, frequently misinterpreted requests and produced nonsensical answers that triggered widespread ridicule.

After investing in more sophisticated technology, Ask tried to reposition itself as a cutting-edge alternative to Google and even dropped its cartoonish mascot - a genteel butler named Jeeves - in an effort to be taken more seriously.

Even after adding more bells and whistles, Ask still primarily appealed to women who used the search engine primarily to get simple answers. Women are also a familiar demographic for Safka, who was chief executive of InterActiveCorp's online dating site, Match.com, before taking the reins at Ask.

Li predicted many married women and mothers will be thrilled to have a search engine focusing on their interests. "It's not so much that these women have simple questions," she said. "It's just that they are so busy that they need fast answers."

Source: klewtv.com