Microsoft Aims at Google

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Microsoft has used attack ads to go after Apple, and now it has Google in its sights.

The software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. That's a big campaign -- big compared with consumer-product launches ($50 million is considered a sizable budget for a national rollout) and very big when you consider that Google spent about $25 million on all its advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, with about $11.6 million of that focused on recruiting. Microsoft, by comparison, spent $361 million. Certainly Google has never faced an ad assault of anything like this magnitude.

JWT has been tapped for the push, which will include online, TV, print and radio. Another sign of the campaign's size: At a time when most agencies are laying people off, JWT added creatives on the Microsoft business last week.

People with knowledge of the planned push said the ads won't go after Google, or Yahoo for that matter, by name. Instead, they'll focus on planting the idea that today's search engines don't work as well as consumers previously thought by asking them whether search (aka Google) really solves their problems. That, Microsoft is hoping, will give consumers a reason to consider switching search engines, which, of course, is one of Bing's biggest challenges.

http://digg.com/d1s3T3

Symbian: 'Why does Google need Android?

Symbian Foundation leadership team member Tim Holbrow has questioned Google's purpose behind pursuing its own Android mobile platform, calling its strategy "weird."

In an exclusive interview with TechRadar before his speech at Wireless and Mobile 09 in London yesterday, Holbrow questioned whether Google's bullish attitude to Android could be an issue of control.

"Android's a very interesting one," he said. "A question I've asked lots of people – and not had a good answer to yet – is, I can understand the Android strategy for Google when they launched it a couple of years ago but following the creation of Symbian Foundation...and given that Google have done a lot a lot of work on Symbian, why does Google need Android now Symbian's open source?

"It seems like a bit of a weird strategy," he continued. "I mean, you could see a way forward for them contributing Dalvik (Android's virtual machine) into Symbian, it would be almost job done for them and they can start really engaging with [Symbian].

"I haven't heard a good answer to that – why does Google need Android? My concern is it's a control issue, because that's not healthy for an open source platform."

Holbrow is also surprised that iPhone and Android gets quite so much coverage as it does, even if the rise in profile of mobile apps and open source is good for Symbian, too.

"We've always seen that Symbian is this large portion of lots of devices shipping, then there's this little Apple and Google slice that gets all the attention. I'm always a bit surprised at the column inches that Android gets given the number of phones they've got and units that they've shipped. [But] if they're promoting open source [it's good for the industry].

"You've seen the benefit of the iPhone throughout the whole industry. App Store gets the whole idea of applications into people's mindsets. It's allowed us to get our message across more easily."

Getting more apps onto Symbian

Holbrow, who is on Symbian's leadership team, was at the show to talk up the benefits of Symbian's new open source status. The not-for-profit Symbian Foundation is now in full control of the platform.

So how have the beta developers received things so far? The developers aren't feeling the newness of it yet, but I think over the course of the next six months we'll start to engage quite heavily with developers bringing their applications across to Symbian," he says.

"The key thing for developers as I see it is, they can almost get past the tools, they can almost get past the support but what they really want to see is 'how can I convert [the innovation in my head] into something that's going to make me money?'

And Holbrow is complementary about Apple's model. "I guess as open source I should be talking in more religious terms but...what [developers] like about the Apple Store is that 'I can understand if I create a [popular] application I can make lots of money out of it.'"

Holbrow also believes the massive market penetration of Symbian handsets will help persuade developers that the platform should be a priority in terms of development. "It's this route to market that we really need to...sell. There is an enormous volume out there.

http://digg.com/d1s5EW

Gmail inbox Preview

Whenever I open up my inbox at work, I'm never surprised to find several new messages waiting to be read. The same thing can't always be said about my personal Gmail account. Sometimes I end up checking my mail only to find nothing new there.

No big deal, really. But now imagine that you access Gmail on a super slow connection from a remote place in Ethopia where it might take minutes to completely load your inbox. The disappointment is larger when you find out that there is nothing new to read and you could have saved all that time.

To ease this pain a bit, we created a new feature in Gmail Labs called Inbox Preview. While Gmail is loading, a simple, static preview of your inbox with your ten most recent messages is displayed. Turn it on from the Labs tab under Settings, and if you're on a slow connection you'll know from the start if it's worth the wait.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-in-labs-inbox-preview.html

New in Labs: Automatic message translation

Back in the early days of human existence, before language had fully developed, our caveman ancestors probably did a lot of grunting. Language, and thus life, were pretty simple: watch out for that saber-toothed tiger ("Blorg! AIYA!!!"); stop riding the wooly mammoth and help me pick some berries ("Argh. Zagle zorg!"); man, it's cold in this Ice Age ("Brrrr.").

Somewhere along the line, all those grunts diverged into thousands of distinct languages, and life became both richer and more complicated. And for the last few eons or so, we've struggled to communicate in a multilingual world. Which brings us to today. Since the heart and soul of Gmail is about helping people communicate, I'm proud to announce the integration of Google's automatic translation technology directly into Gmail.

Simply enable "Message Translation" from the Labs tab under Settings, and when you receive an email in a language other than your own, Gmail will help you translate it into a language you can understand. In one click.

If all parties are using Gmail, you can have entire conversations in multiple languages with each participant reading the messages in whatever language is most comfortable for them. It's not quite the universal translators we're so fond of from science fiction, but thanks to Google Translate, it's an exciting step in the right direction. I use this feature everyday to help me work with teammates around the globe (they think my Japanese is much better than it really is...shhhh!).

Whether you're reading a family update from inlaws on the other side of the world, working with a multinational team, or just trying to bring about world peace, don't worry, Gmail's got your back.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-in-labs-automatic-message.html

Google challenged by new rival - WolframAlpha

A revolutionary new search engine that computes answers rather than pointing to websites will be launched officially today amid heated talk that it could challenge the might of Google.

WolframAlpha, named after Stephen Wolfram, the British-born computer scientist and inventor behind the project, takes a query and uses computational power to crunch through huge databases.

The service can compute the distance between two cities, the population of a country at a specific date and the position of the Space Shuttle at a given moment. The user does not have to search through links provided by the engine; the answer comes immediately and, if appropriate, is accompanied by charts or graphs. What it does that Google, at the moment, cannot do is provide answers to questions that have not been answered already.

The new service, available at wolframalpha.com, was previewed several months ago amid industry speculation that it could be a “Google killer”. Dr Wolfram, however, is at pains to point out that his brainchild is a “computational knowledge engine”, not a traditional search engine.

A physics prodigy who earned a PhD aged 20, Dr Wolfram, 49, founded Wolfram Research, in Illinois, which develops advanced software called Mathematica, used mainly by scientists. Mathematica has built up a number of databases and Wolfram Alpha is an attempt to bring them to a wider audience.

The service is free but the company plans to include advertising eventually and to offer paid versions with extra features. Dr Wolfram said that WolframAlpha was a “long-term project” and he hoped to broaden the databases that it uses.

Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, the website, said: “They're saying they're not trying to wipe out Google, but they feel they do the kinds of searches that Google doesn't handle. If you're trying to get facts, this might be a handy kind of encyclopedia for you.”

Last week Google previewed a new experimental service called Google Squared, which will automatically produce spreadsheets of information from search terms.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article6307744.ece

Google launches enhanced options

TECHNOLOGY: INTERNET GIANT Google this week revealed a host of new features of its online search which add a limited amount of intelligence to results rather than simply the standard list of text-based answers.

At its Mountain View headquarters in California, engineers showed enhanced features at an event called Google Searchology.

Udi Manber, Google’s vice president of search engineering, showed how simply putting a flight number into the search engine yields a link to real-time information on the flight’s progress; or how searching for “plumber” will present results relevant to the area you are searching from.

According to Mr Manber, the company has now cleared many of the practical hurdles that dogged search in its early days, such as how to store and access mind-bending volumes of digital information reliably.

“We’re now in a position where these problems are much easier for us, so we can concentrate on starting to understand,” Mr Manber said during the event.

With the new features, Google will pay closer attention to the way that users would like to view their information, offering more control over the type and flavour of search results.

There’s even a visual search option called Wonder Wheel that generates a kind of visual concept map, pointing to similar topics.

The Wonder Wheel and other search power tools can be found by clicking on the link that says “Show options” after executing a Google search.

With Google Squared, a service launching later this month, users can order up an instant spreadsheet on any topic – composed of neatly tabulated information Google plucks from across the web at light speed.

If you try a search for “small dogs”, for instance, Squared will pop out a grid organised by breed, including photos, descriptions and statistical data on each type of pooch.

“It’s a very, very hard computer science problem to try to take the unstructured web and build it into this type of structured information,” said Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products.

Attempting to impress its audience with a final search-related tool, Google showed off a new mobile phone application called Sky Map.

Using a smartphone’s global positioning system capability, as well as its compass and accelerometer, Sky Map can draw a real-time map of the stars so accurate that it knows exactly where users are standing – and even which direction they are facing.

John Taylor, a Google engineer who worked on the app, demonstrated by attempting to locate Ms Mayer’s star sign (Gemini). He rotated the phone gingerly until a red target circle on the screen showed it had locked on to the distant constellation.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/0515/1224246559604.html

Google wants to know if you are sick

Google is attempting to find out how much of a role Internet searches play in the self-diagnosis process.

The company plans later Wednesday to start rolling out a subtle question at the bottom of pages with search results for a few common ailments, such as "Did you search because you or someone you know may have an ear infection?" That question will only appear for a very small number of users who search for terms such as "ear infection," but it will help Google start to understand how many people are searching on such terms looking for treatment remedies or options as opposed to doing research, said Dr. Roni Ziegler, a product manage.

n a way, this is an extension of the work Google has done tracking the flu with Google Flu Trends. The company noticed that search activity related to the flu tends to rise about two weeks before a similar rise is reported to the Centers for Disease Control by doctors, but years of data on flu patterns validates those trends, Ziegler said. Similar data does not exist for more common health issues.

Google is not exactly sure what it wants to do with that data, or how much useful data will be produced by the experiment. Ultimately, however, everything at Google goes back into the search process, so it's possible that the data could be used to offer searchers more options, such as "Did you mean to search for treatment options for X?" at the top of the search page.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10240076-2.html