Will Google Chrome be a hit in browser market?

Google announced that the launch of it's browser or OS for the internet Chrome. This is a direct shot at Microsoft's IE as well as desktop dominance. However, surprisingly, this decision shocks me as it's partnership with Mozilla's Firefox was going well. Maybe the top brass at Google did not like the idea of depending on other company to extend it's Internet dominance.

What does this mean for Firefox long term? Google is one of the biggest supporters of Firefox. It has contributed financially and in terms of development talent. According to PaidContent, "just last week Google extended its support of the Mozilla foundation until 2011".

At CNET, Matt Asay writes

Nor can I imagine web developers getting excited about developing for yet another browser. It took years for anyone to start developing for Firefox, and no one got excited about developing for Flock or other spin-offs of Firefox. Google has the brand equity to make people pay attention to Chrome in the way start-up Flock never did, but could Chrome be Google's Zune moment?

In the media player world, the iPod reined despite Microsoft coming out with a good-but-not-good-enough alternative. Firefox has managed to gain a 20 percent market share after years of fighting: 72 percent of web users still slum with Internet Explorer. Are these magically going to dump Internet Explorer just because Google showed up to the party? Unlikely.

Google had many failures in the past. Google desktop, Videos,etc. Hope this does not becomes the same. However, Google has created enough buzz to ensure considerable amount of downloads on the first day.

I don't think the web developers of websites will be happy as they have to create websites suitable for several browsers and their several versions.

UPDATE: Download Chrome Here(windows XP and Vista only. No version for mac and Linux yet)
Chrome Features
Chrome's Code

India to sue Google, Yahoo & Microsoft for sex selection ads

The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Centre, Google India, Yahoo India and Microsoft Corporation on a petition seeking a ban on popular online search engines promoting sex selection techniques.

A three-Judge Bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justices P. Sathasivam and J.M. Panchal issued notice on a writ petition filed by Dr. Sabu Mathew George highlighting the violation of Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act by the websites.

Counsel Sanjay Parikh submitted that despite bringing the websites to the notice of the departments concerned, no steps were taken to block them. He said the petition was filed for full and effective implementation of the Act.

He sought a direction to the Centre to block all websites, including those of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, that violated the Act.

Dr. George wanted a direction to the Centre to take punitive and deterrent action against these three companies.

It is funny that even though Google's adwords policy does not allows this
advertising when ads are targeted to India, it still shows up.

It is banned because of selective abortion for past centuries have resulted in dip in girl population. The sex ratio in many parts is almost 900 to 1000 men.

The Evolution of Windows

"Windows is a flop!" When version 1.01 made it's appearance at the end of 1985, no one wanted it. Apple threatened to take legal action for using Macintosh features like the menu bar, program windows, drop down menus and mouse support.
At that time Apple was IT giant while Microsoft a small fish. However, after IBM machines started dominating the markets so did Microsoft's Operating System DOS. It tasted success with version 2.0. Microsoft later switched from 16 bits OS and DOS platform to more stable 32 bits and NT kernel. Windows 95 introduced the concept of task bar and start menu.

Yahoo faces difficult monday

Techcrunch reports that Yahoo is frantically trying to negotiate a deal with Google to outsource search advertising and get it announced before the markets open tomorrow. Yahoo has lost the lions share of negotiating leverage. That means a lower revenue share, a shorter term deal, etc.

Yahoo to announce their delayed annual shareholder meeting early this week, and actually hold it as early as late June. When it’s announced, shareholders have ten days to propose an alternate slate of board members. Microsoft says they are sitting on the sidelines, but a group of angry stockholders may now emboldened enough to make their own effort to change company management.

To say that shareholders are angry is an understatement. They made it clear to anyone who’d talk to them that they would be more than happy with Microsoft’s $33/share final offer. Legg Mason, Capital Research, T. Rowe Price and others all reportedly strongly wanted the Microsoft deal to happen.

Microsoft's Steven Ballmer's letter to Yahoo's Jerry Yang on abandoning of the deal

Yahoo's trick of outsourcing ads placement to Google seems to have paid off.

Below is the text of the letter from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang.

May 3, 2008


Mr. Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089


Dear Jerry:

After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!.

I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team, and Yahoo!’s Board of Directors for your consideration of our proposal. I appreciate the time and attention all of you have given to this matter, and I especially appreciate the time that you have invested personally. I feel that our discussions this week have been particularly useful, providing me for the first time with real clarity on what is and is not possible.

I am disappointed that Yahoo! has not moved towards accepting our offer. I first called you with our offer on January 31 because I believed that a combination of our two companies would have created real value for our respective shareholders and would have provided consumers, publishers, and advertisers with greater innovation and choice in the marketplace. Our decision to offer a 62 percent premium at that time reflected the strength of these convictions.

In our conversations this week, we conveyed our willingness to raise our offer to $33.00 per share, reflecting again our belief in this collective opportunity. This increase would have added approximately another $5 billion of value to your shareholders, compared to the current value of our initial offer. It also would have reflected a premium of over 70 percent compared to the price at which your stock closed on January 31. Yet it has proven insufficient, as your final position insisted on Microsoft paying yet another $5 billion or more, or at least another $4 per share above our $33.00 offer.

Also, after giving this week’s conversations further thought, it is clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer. Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo! undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.

We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:

· First, it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!’s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system. This would also fragment your search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem surrounding them. This would undermine the reliance on your display advertising business to fuel future growth.

· Given this, it would impair Yahoo’s ability to retain the talented engineers working on advertising systems that are important to our interest in a combination of our companies.

· In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit. Among other things, this would consolidate market share with the already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce competition and choice in the marketplace.

· This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key search terms on both their and your search platforms and, in the process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo. In addition to whatever resulting legal problems, this seems unwise from a business perspective unless in fact one simply wishes to use this as a vehicle to exit the paid search business in favor of Google.

· It could foreclose any chance of a combination with any other search provider that is not already relying on Google’s search services.

Accordingly, your apparent plan to pursue such an arrangement in the event of a proxy contest or exchange offer leads me to the firm decision not to pursue such a path. Instead, I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft’s proposal to acquire Yahoo!.

We will move forward and will continue to innovate and grow our business at Microsoft with the talented team we have in place and potentially through strategic transactions with other business partners.

I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table.

But clearly a deal is not to be.

Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.

Sincerely yours,
/s/ Steven A. Ballmer


Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation

Here is the threatening letter Microsoft had send to Yahoo few weeks back regarding hostile takeover.

Yahoo set to show Google ads on search results

Yahoo Inc. could announce an agreement to carry search advertisements from Google Inc. within a week, as it braces for Microsoft Corp. to go hostile or abandon its unsolicited acquisition offer for Yahoo, say people familiar with the matter.

Yahoo was waiting for Microsoft to announce its approach this week, after the two sides failed to reach a negotiated deal amid a divide on price. But Yahoo has also been pursuing a broad agreement to carry search ads from Google, which it views as a way to boost its cash flow and bolster its claim to shareholders that it is still capable of being alone

Google share in US searches increases

Which means Yahoo's and Microsoft's share decreases.

So, keep Googling.

Google to rescue Yahoo from forced marriage to microsoft

Here is the plot.
A very rich and powerful landlord Microsoft is forcing a beautiful girl Yahoo into marrying him. He is trying to attract her by giving her lot of expensive gifts. But the girl does not wants to marry him. She wants to remain free. The Landlord warns the girl that if she doesn't marry him then he will take her away forcibly.

Enters a very handsome and rich and powerful Knight from a distant land ie. Google. He is accompanied by his trusted assistant America Online code named AOL. They come to know about the damsel in distress and promise to help her.

In anger the land lord hires a dreaded dark knight News corp. to help him.

The story will be continued later........

Learn how to write threatening letters with microsoft

Dear Members of the Board:

It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.

While there has been some limited interaction between management of our two companies, there has been no meaningful negotiation to conclude an agreement. We understand that you have been meeting to consider and assess your alternatives, including alternative transactions with others in the industry, but we’ve seen no indication that you have authorized Yahoo! management to negotiate with Microsoft. This is despite the fact that our proposal is the only alternative put forward that offers your shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.

During these two months of inactivity, the Internet has continued to march on, while the public equity markets and overall economic conditions have weakened considerably, both in general and for other Internet-focused companies in particular. At the same time, public indicators suggest that Yahoo!’s search and page view shares have declined. Finally, you have adopted new plans at the company that have made any change of control more costly.

By any fair measure, the large premium we offered in January is even more significant today. We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment, even after reviewing your public disclosures relating to your future prospects.

Given these developments, we believe now is the time for our respective companies to authorize teams to sit down and negotiate a definitive agreement on a combination of our companies that will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders, creating a more efficient and competitive company that will provide greater value and service to our customers. If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board. The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.

It is unfortunate that by choosing not to enter into substantive negotiations with us, you have failed to give due consideration to a transaction that has tremendous benefits for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees. We think it is critically important not to let this window of opportunity pass.

Sincerely,

Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Office
Microsoft Corp.

Are you going to buy VISTA ? DON'T !!!!!

Bill Gates announced the successor of Windows Vista- Windows 7. Microsoft is already finding it difficult to upgrade Windows XP users to Vista and with this news there is no point in purchasing Vista at all.

Google to appeal against OOXML

Microsoft's OOXML has finally passes ISO certification. However, many critics of OOXML have argued against the specification because Microsoft has failed to build in native support for ODF files, which are used by the likes of IBM, Sun Microsystems and others, into its latest Office suite. Others, meanwhile, have complained that approving OOXML as a standard would see Redmond tighten its monopolistic stranglehold on the software industry. This ISO voting has been marred by accusations of voting irregularities which are still loudly being voiced in some quarters.
Viewing this Google, which is a supporter of ODF, and some national standard bodies in Norway and elsewhere could yet try and crash the party by mounting formal appeals in an attempt to reverse the ISO's approval of OOXML.

Google trying to kick Microsoft's a** hard

Google is trying hard to stop Microsoft from expanding it's business in internet and also reduce it's dominance in software market.
Sample this
1. Google protests when Microsoft decides to provide LIVE search from desktop in VISTA.
2. Google partners with Mozilla to spread Firefox with their Google pack.
3. Google then partners with SUN to allow users download Staroffice rivaling MS office.
4. It provides Realplayer in Google pack to rival Microsoft's Windows Media Player.
5. It opposes Microsoft's plan to buy Yahoo inc. citing fears that Microsoft will abuse the internet like it did to the OS market.
6. It oppose OOXML's bid to get ISO certificate.
7. It buys out Jotspot to compete against Microsoft's cash cow sharepoint.
8. It starts Gmail which provides storage capacity increasing by infinity as against Hotmail's 250 M.B.
9. Google starts Docs and spreadsheets which allows users to create document online.

I will not be surprised if Google dares to buy Microsoft in next 5-8 years.

Google Code Blog: Google welcomes ISO decision on OOXML

Google welcomes the ISO decision to not approve the fast track of Office Open XML (OOXML) proposed standard DIS 29500 (ECMA 376).
It's engineers conducted an independent analysis of the OOXML specification and found several areas of concern, which we communicated both to the ISO and to the public. These include and are not limited to the following:


for a specification of this size it was not given enough time for review;
the undocumented features of OOXML prevents its implementation by other vendors;
dependencies on other Microsoft proprietary formats and their technical defects makes it difficult to fully implement; and
the overall cost for vendors of implementing multiple standards (hence the lack of OOXML implementations in the marketplace).
It is also incompatible with the existing ISO standard ISO 26300:2006, the Open Document Format (ODF), which already offers a high degree of interoperability, wide support, and offers the level playing field the world needs. Google is a supporter of ODF and has successfully integrated this open format into Google Docs and Spreadsheets. ODF also enjoys implementation in over twelve other products.

Read Google Code Blog: Google welcomes ISO decision on OOXML

Adsense racist?

1.Well it has been quite a long time since, Adsense has introduced Electronic Clearance. It allows publishers to directly transfer their money to their bank account. Many countries like US,UK,Italy,etc have been included but India has been ignored till now. Even PayPal.com has started this and that to free if the amount exceeds Rs.7000.
2.Adsense have started Video units which are are customizable YouTube players you can place on yoursite; the player will play YouTube videos, and text ads will be
displayed within the player. It is available only in US,UK and some other countries. Adsense snubbed India even though it has more English speaking population than UK.
3.Now an announcement has been made that they will no longer support Adsense referrals in India.
Good News is that Microsoft is buying Yahoo. This might drum up Yahoo's YPN and it might come out of beta and be available to publishers outside US.
What do you say?

Microsoft bids $45 billion for Yahoo

Microsoft Corp. made an unsolicited $44.6 billion cash and stock bid for Yahoo on Friday, a deal that could shake up the competitive and lucrative market for Internet search.

The deal would pay Yahoo shareholders $31 a share, which represents a 62% premium from where Yahoo stock closed on Thursday.

Shares of Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) shot up 50% at the start of trading Friday, while shares of Dow component Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) tumbled about 5%.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, called the move the "next major milestone" for the software giant.

"We are very, very confident this is the right path for Microsoft and for Yahoo," he said.

Microsoft hopes to close the deal by the end of the year. Ballmer said that Microsoft has been in "off and on" talks with Yahoo for 18 months and said he called Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang Thursday night to tell him the bid was coming.

A Microsoft-Yahoo combination would create a powerful number two player in the online search business, which Google commands. The leading search engine reigns over 58.4% of the U.S. search market, while Yahoo has 22.9% and Microsoft's share is just 9.8%, according to comScore, a research firm that tracks Internet traffic.

Microsoft made the bid early Friday. In a statement, the company said the offer allows Yahoo shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the software giant's offer consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock.

In a statement, Yahoo acknowledged receipt of the offer and said its board would evaluate the proposal "carefully and promptly."

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have fallen far behind rival Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) in the lucrative field of Internet search. Yahoo's earnings and share of the online search market have badly trailed Google.

In a letter it sent to Yahoo's board of directors, Microsoft disclosed it had explored a Microsoft-Yahoo deal a year earlier, only to be rebuffed by Yahoo, which said at that time it was confident of the "potential upside" for Yahoo from operational changes it planned.

"A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved," said Ballmer.

On Thursday, former Yahoo CEO and current Chairman Terry Semel, who opposed an earlier approach Microsoft made last year, resigned from the Yahoo board.

Why Digg should ditch MSN and use Adsense

We all love digg. It keeps us updated about the latest happenings. But the advertisement on the Digg are painfully irrelevant.I clicked on this sony ad and I was taken to the page only to realise that it is for US residents. I don't understand why such ads are displayed in other countries.It is irritating to view such ads. On the other hand Adsense would generate the perfect ads.

Microsoft to challenge Google maps, buys Multimap

Microsoft buys European online mapping company Multimap. Google has in recent months shown how it can successfully integrate map advertising and search. Users can mark their business in it and connect it to their business.

Microsoft releases patches for December

Microsoft has released its monthly set of security patches, fixing critical flaws in the Windows desktop.

The December updates released Tuesday include critical fixes for Internet Explorer, DirectX and the Windows Media Format technology. Security experts say that the most important of these updates is the Internet Explorer patch, because it fixes four separate bugs in the browser. One of these flaws, relating to the way the browser renders dynamic HTML (DHTML) pages, has been exploited in online attacks, Microsoft said.

All of the browser vulnerabilities in this update are rated critical -- Microsoft's most serious rating -- for IE 7 users running on the latest version of Windows XP, Microsoft said.

Though Microsoft has assigned it the less-grave rating of "important," a patch for Macrovision copy-protection software that ships with Windows should also be given priority, security experts say. That's because criminals have already leveraged this bug in online attacks.


click here for more

India HALOed?

When will India be an important market in video games world. Halo 3 hasn't been released yet in India.

Microsoft Corp.'s alien-killer gaming thrill, "Halo 3," has broken the U.S. sales record for a new video game by garnering an estimated US$170 million in its first 24-hours on sale, the company said late Wednesday.

The performance beat the previous record setter, predecessor Halo 2, which raked in $125 million within 24-hours after its launch.

That's not all. Halo 3 has beaten other records as well. More than 1.7 million copies of Halo 3 were pre-ordered in the U.S., making it the fastest pre-selling game in U.S. history, Microsoft said. The game also drew over a million Xbox Live members to play online in the first 20-hours on offer, making it the biggest day for Xbox Live gaming in history.

The video game industry has enjoyed sizzling sales this summer in the U.S, according to the industry researcher, NDP Group. In August, video game software sales rose nearly 23 percent year over year to $488 million, while overall industry sales totaled $993 million, including consoles and other hardware.

Sales figures for Halo 3 were collected for the U.S. only, and the figure will likely stand much higher after Microsoft tallies results from overseas. Halo 3 launched in 37 countries at midnight on Sept. 25 and is available in 17 languages. It retails for around $60.

The title could go on to become one of the top international sellers of all time, but it faces stiff competition. The top selling console game of all time, not originally bundled with a console, is Pokémon Red, Blue and Green, at 20.08 million units, according to figures compiled from the Web site Magic Box's Japan Platinum Game Chart and its U.S. Platinum Videogame Chart..

Microsoft Should Buy Yahoo

In the battle of online search, Microsoft is again courting Yahoo, according to media reports
Microsoft should acquire Yahoo! in order to fend off Google and solidify the software giant's Internet presence, according to a Friday report by Merrill Lynch.

“The possible acquisition of Yahoo would be a strategic positive in our view,” said Justin Post, a Merrill Lynch analyst and author of the report.

Post said that Microsoft’s goal is to make advertising a significant new revenue stream, possibly even larger than the core operating system business, and buying Yahoo! would be a large step in that direction..

“A Yahoo/MSN-Microsoft combination would have garnered approximately 41% share in the US of search queries [in April] versus Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) with 44%,” Post said.

Google is already venturing into Microsoft’s territory with the recent launch of their spreadsheet and their partnership with Adobe Systems (nasdaq: ADBE - news - people ), Post said.

Yahoo! would be Microsoft's best prospect from a strategic standpoint, according to Post, because Bill Gates and company could thereby eliminate a top competitor and because Microsoft’s search and advertising focus on personal computers, mobile dives and video games fits well with Yahoo!’s business strategy.

The latter company’s large presence in Japan would also bolster Microsoft’s business platform in Asia, the analyst said.

A good second option, however, could be eBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ), he added.

“Worse case, an acquisition of eBay or Yahoo! could cost Microsoft $5 a share if completely unsuccessful,” Post said. “However, Google’s potential encroachment on Microsoft’s core software market, using Internet profitability to fund software investment, represents a long-term business risk.”


In a way, they’re two tech titans that could badly use each other: Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO), both hobbled by an 800-pound gorilla that has come to dominate search.

According to newspaper reports May 4, Microsoft has asked Yahoo to enter formal negotiations for an acquisition that could be worth $50 billion. Yahoo's market capitalization was about $38 billion at the close of trading May 3.

Reports of the deal sent Yahoo shares jumping 17% in premarket trading, while Microsoft slipped 1.5%.

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post reported Friday that executives of the two companies are in early-stage discussions of a merger or some other kind of collaboration, although Microsoft officials would prefer to acquire the company outright. The companies held similar discussions a year ago, but no deal came to fruition, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the talks.

Still, any deal is far from certain, the reports noted.

Among bloggers on the Net, there is plenty of skepticism about a merger because of the size of the deal, the differences in culture, the abundance of executive egos, and the redundancies in technology. "If Microsoft buys Yahoo, Microsoft should immediately spin the Yahoo-MSN business out as a separate company," says Henry Blodget, the one-time analyst at Merrill Lynch (ML), who now writes the Internet Outsider blog. "If it doesn't, both Yahoo and MSN will die." (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/4/07, "Yahoo, MSN "Will Die"").

Microsoft is feeling increasing pressure to compete with Google (GOOG), which plans to beef up its portfolio with a $3.1 billion purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick.

Microsoft currently trails both Yahoo and Google in the lucrative and growing business of Web search. For its part, Yahoo has stumbled in recent years with a lack of strategic focus and laggardly technology at a time when Google has been able to monetize its search prowess to a degree that has startled investors.

Google won a search advertising deal with AOL (TWX) in 2005 that the Post said Microsoft wanted. In addition, Google has developed an array of Web-based software that, while not as robust as the tools in Microsoft’s suite of Office products, presents a severe future threat.

The Post story said Microsoft and Yahoo have held informal talks over the years and said Microsoft's latest approach to Yahoo signals increased urgency.

Earlier this week, Yahoo said it would buy 80 percent of advertising exchange Right Media for $680 million, increasing its stake in that company to full control.

Yahoo shares surged nearly $5, or 17%, to $32.96 at midday trading, near its 52-week high of $34. Shares of Microsoft fell 1.5% to $30.51