Gmail outage bigger than Obama on Twitter

Earlier this week Gmail crashed for half a day and caused quite an uproar as personal and business accounts couldn't be accessed. Now if we compare the Twitter Trends over the last couple of days against the same time as the inauguration of Obama happened. Interesting stuff:


Something else that is interesting is that their is now a Google account on Twitter, does this mean that Google does not intent to acquire Twitter or is merely testing it out. Either way it would have helped if Google had the account on Monday to let us know whats happening with Gmail as a blog post about it took quite a while to come up.

Facebook offered $500million for Twitter last year... wonder how much its valued at now especially after it received another round of funding at $35million. There is a lot of talk that this could be the next 'google'.

Will each phone company have their own App store?

They way its going it certainly looks like it... I wonder where the common sense is in these big corporations when they just don't get together and launch one common App store? Do they really think that developers will create and maintain Apps for each different store - what a nightmare!

So far the following have or are indicating that they will launch an App store soon:

The Apple App marketplace which was the first I reckon

Blackberry is releasing one soon

Nokia has mentioned one (though a bit quiet on it at the mo)

Google's android market

Palm with their App Catalog

Samsung


The one problem with Samsung's App store is that they don't control the platform it will be launched on like Apple, Google, RIM and Palm. So in the near future everything could be a big messy market.

Is Facebook a phishing scam site?

This morning when logging into Facebook via Google Chrome I received a warning notice indicating that the social network site maybe a phishing site.



I was a bit sceptical at first and tried to login again but received the message again, I then clicked 'proceed' and was logged in. I get no error message when I use Firefox but according to an article on Techcrunch the problem also occurs in Firefox. The domain name that is causing the problem is 'http://fbcdn.net' which is registered by Facebook.

Have been a few reports of it happening in Safari also, seems like it may be something to do with the roll out of Facebook connect.


Twitter is a buzz with this

Viruses now on Google Mail

Wow, they certainly are keeping me on the run. I first encountered viruses coming via MSN Chat earlier in the year and because of that I had a lovely little spam bot on my pc sending out thousands of mails all the time (sometimes a gig in a day). Eventually I got rid of that and left MSN mail and chat alone and moved over to Google cause there would never be any chance of viruses there...

Then along comes Facebook and Facebook Chat and Facebook messages and millions of users so the little people who make viruses focus their attention their and presto - viruses on facebook in the forms of messages sent to your entire friends list and posts on your friends walls with links etc... I still use Facebook how ever.

Now to my horror people have cracked GMAIL and are sending spam/viruses to all your contacts - I got a mail from a good mate of mine the other day and this was the subject line
'Dear Sir/Lady: Sorry to disturb you. We are a wholesale company in China. We mainly sell...'

Obviously I knew my mate hadn't moved to China suddenly and started a wholesale company so I ignored it. Sure enough later that day another one came...

Seems that no-one is safe once the hacker community turns their eyes onto you.

Yahoo shares sore...

Jerry Yang has or is stepping down as CEO of Yahoo! and today the shares of Yahoo! rose by 11.19% to a whopping $11.82...

My how the shareholders must still dream about Microsoft offering them £33 per share... I wonder if their was some conspiracy between Google and Microsoft to wipe Yahoo out a bit as they have both dropped Yahoo in the last couple of months.

The internet gives us small people a BIG voice

Yesterday while trying to do some work I was listening to 5fm Radio and DJ Fresh's show which I do enjoy. During they show they started talking about the old Simba packet design and how Simba just changed it back in the early '90s. Fresh was complaining about the fact that Simba did not consult him in their change and their design choice.... Now a major company like Simba back then was not going to go out and consult the average Joe as Fresh would have been back in the '90s.

They also spoke about products that were discontinued for some unknown reason back then and how they would like it back.

Now, we fast forward to the present day and look at major companies changing things and what happens when they do:

1) Facebook changes their profile design and has millions of people join groups complaining about the change

2) Yahoo makes changes and adds in a centralised profile page and has countless complaints pouring in while they are still only testing it.

3) Google makes changes to the iGoogle page and thousands of people start complaining, one chap was even quoted as saying:

How can I be rid of this ugly piece of crap?" asked one forum user about the iGoogle overhaul. "Google has decided to unilaterally change the layout of my page. If I can't find a hack or a Greasemonkey script to undo this, good-bye Google, hello Yahoo!

Will Google, Yahoo or Facebook bring back the old designs? I don't think so, the only difference now from 15 years ago is that we can make our voices heard. It now depends if the big boys decide to listen to us or not...

Google does more evil...

So Google continues to buck the trend in my eyes against their 'Do no evil' motto!

Recently reported on TechCrunch.com that one of their readers who currently spends $100,000 a month on Google Adwords was contacted by a lawyer from Google, the lawyer said he represented Google in their Yahoo advertising deal.

Here is a copy of the voicemail left by the lawyer:

Hi Darren my name is Donald Burke. I’m calling on behalf of Google to talk with Adwords advertisers about the new proposed Google/Yahoo Advertising Agreement. If you have a couple of minutes to talk with me, my number is…Thanks very much. Take care.

The reader phoned the lawyer back immediately and was asked to make a public testimonial in support of the deal:

I received a voicemail from an attorney representing Google yesterday so of course I called back (voicemail attached). We spend about 100K a month on AdWords so we’d apparently been targeted because of that. He was looking for large advertisers who use both Google and Yahoo (we do) who would be willing to provide public testimonials in support of outsourcing Yahoo’s search ads to Google. I told him I’m a free-market competition kind of guy so he tried to address my concerns for about 15 minutes and then called it quits.

According to the reader the lawyer was looking for people who advertised on both the Google and Yahoo networks, now either the Google lawyer was just guessing that the reader just advertised considering the amount they spend on Google. The problem would be if Yahoo provided Google with a list of companies that advertise on their network.

This is a deal that if Google wants to keep their heads above the water and not go against their 'do no evil' motto they should just walk away!

From $33 to $13 per share, poor Yahoo

Yahoo stock has fallen below $14 per share, the first time in 5 years and a couple of months ago Microsoft was offering them $33 per share - if I had 1000 shares I would have lost $20,000 roughly, OUCH!

Yahoo was unavailable for comments as they were waiting for their earnings report on the 21st October, that day could see their shares dip below $10 a share.

But, Yahoo was not the only website to decline - Amazon and Google both saw drastic decreases in their share prices.

Facebook SA about to reach 1million users

So recently some stats was released on the numbers of people on Facebook and the fastest growing countries etc, SA is very close to crossing the 1 million mark and I reckon if you had to include the Saffas living in London and elsewhere we would easily be over the 1million mark.

It was quite strange to see that in the 3rd quarter Facebook's traffic decreased by 1% in SA.... strange. I've been working with Facebook Apps quite a bit and have a wishlist app out now that works off the MyKindaPrices database and allows users to create a wishlist and their friends to view it and book items to buy. Now, people often talk about Facebook been the next Operating System but in order for it to work they would need servers in every country cause at the moment the way it works is as follows:

1) You're logged into Facebook
2) You click onto the MyKindaPrices App
3) Request is sent from your pc to Facebook servers in the US, they in turn send request to our servers in Joburg which starts returning the data via the Facebook servers in the USA which in turn the relays it to your PC here in SA.

That is quite a bit of a round about and it not the quickest way to do things, Facebook obviously needs to make it secure and this is the only way.

Microsoft just launched Microsoft Live Search on Facebook, now as Facebook has 135million users this could improve their search market share if everyone runs 10 searches a month on it... but I would still prefer localised search results, maybe they should use Google for that!

Just to update everyone in case you didn't know - Google and Yahoo have put their deal on hold while they wait for the authorities to OK the deal. They were planning to just go ahead with things.

Ask.com relaunches a challenge to Google

Ask.com or previously Ask Jeeves recently relaunched with a redesign that is supposed to be faster and provide more relevant results through its upgraded search technology and increased database size.

Ask.com's sponsored results are how ever powered by Google as Yahoo's will also be soon.

People are continually talking about how competitors to Google are looking for ways to set themselves apart from Google and be slightly different or better. Ask.com is going back to its way of been able to answer any question instead of searching for something. It also claims to have the biggest database of recipes available.

The question though, are people trying to beat a dead horse?. I'm not to sure they are based on the money they earn from such a small percentage share of the market. In August 46million searches were conducted on Ask in the UK which accounted for one in five people using the search engine.

I think that Ask.com and Yahoo are both missing the picture... Google has created a very sophisticated affiliate network which places millions and millions of its adverts on websites around the globe, they also have setup local servers and search results for many individual countries (like SA) - Competing search engines should maintain their 2% in the USA/UK but also be seeking to compete in local scenes where they could have more opportunity to compete against Google on the same playing ground and not be David vs Goliath any more!

Yahoo + Google = cracks in Google's motto of 'Do no evil'

Today it was announced that Yahoo had been granted permission by the Securities and Exchange Commission to keep certain parts of its Google ad deal out of the public eye and make it confidential.

Now, why would they do this when there is so much focus on this deal already and people like Microsoft and many companies looking to get the deal stopped. For me it makes Google and Yahoo look really bad!

In its quarterly filing with the SEC Aug. 8, Yahoo redacted multiple details about its search advertising deal with Google. Simply put, it was a festival of asterisks that looked like this:

One of the main reasons I feel this deal is bad besides a huge monoply coming out of it is the fact that the prices of keywords will increase drastically. Its already dodgy the way Google manages the prices and placings of the adverts.

If a company could provide decent results like Google does and provide better ad placing technology together with a great affiliate network they could challenge Google. Now, just to put all of that in place...

Interesting Interview by Vinny Lingham on SABC

I like how the interviewer comments on Google Chrome as the 'video browser'...
Also it was nice to hear Synthasite's plans on monetising their position.

The internet in 5 years time

Google has teamed up with HTC to launch the HTC Dream powered by Google Android, this will be launched next week. This comes just after Google released Google Chrome beta to the public.

Now there has always been big talk that Google will eventually challenge Microsoft in terms of their operating system and with the launch of Google Chrome this is starting to become a reality.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Dream will have a large touch screen, a swivel-out keypad and a trackball for navigation. The Dream will also feature a built-in 3 mega pixel camera, a music player and purpose-built access to Google services like Gmail, Maps, and Search.

In the late '90s Microsoft was the dominant operating system and the browser wars were just starting. So been the dominant player and already controlling the operating system on the greater majority of PCs they made Internet Explorer the default browser on all the Windows PCs. So now users would have to go and specifically find and download Netscape if they wanted a different option...

Microsoft was eventually taken to court and fined millions and millions of dollars for this anti-competitive behaviour.

When Google first started it was just a search engine and relied on operating systems and browsers to bring it to the masses. But now they have launched their own web browser and mobile operating system, will Android be adapted to run a PC? We will wait and see.

In the mean time I see history repeating itself as it always does - Google will be operating on all mobile devices (PC and mobile) and having the default search engine as Google, email as GMAIL, instant messenger as GTALK etc etc. Google how ever has already learnt a bit from looking back at history and with Google Chrome you get to select your default browser...

Will they get fined like Microsoft did? I think it depends on how anti-competitive it becomes, if they keep making APIs like they currently do and allow some greater flexibility then maybe it will be ok.

The one factor that is now also becoming a reality is Facebook with many people saying that they will also become the operating system of the future. Now many people may look at Facebook now and not think its possible, but it definitely is not a grasp at thin air.

In 2 years time - Open source operating systems like Linux could be the norm (depending on how secure they are from viruses as the hacking community is still focused on creating viruses for Microsoft PCs and not open source) with Firefox or Chrome as your browser, MS Office as your Word and Spreadsheet software and Facebook your main focus point when going online with all websites and software interacting with it. The internet in 5 years time is too much to try predict right now but its defintely going to have a merging of all devices, and expect internet on your TV very soon.

Google causes United Airlines stock to plummet

United Airlines stock price plummeted more than 75% on Monday (8th Sep 2008) after a six year old bankruptcy story surfaced on Google News.

To get to how this whole thing started we have to back track 2 days to Saturday when Google News indexed a bankruptcy piece published by the Chicago Tribune way back in 2002. United filed for chapter 11 (bankruptcy) that December, but emerged from bankruptcy four years later.

Google is insisting that it isn't their fault and that its the South Florida Sun-Sentinel paper republished the story at 10:30pm on Saturday. The paper is insisting that Google Bots must have pulled the piece from the online archive. I tend to believe the paper here as I know that Google's bots can be pretty thorough and if a website was republishing articles at 10:30pm on a Saturday night there would be other older articles resurfacing...

This article that was pulled by the Bots didn't have a time stamp so Google just time stamped it with the current date - September 6, 2008. Not a wise thing to automate!
On Monday morning a reporter within a Florida investment research firm searched for 'bankruptcy 2008' in Google and this six year old story appeared in the results with the new time stamp on it.

Now this firm is one of Bloomberg's third-party content providers and the story was soon displayed onto the Wall Street monitors as nothing more than a headline, which read:

United Airlines files for Ch. 11 to cut costs

On Monday morning when Nasdaq opened the stock price sat at $12.30 but at 11am when the headline appeared the price dropped to $3 within the hour. Eventually UAL trading had to be halted and after the headline was explained the stock price rebounded and ended the day off at $10.92.

Its quite ridiculous how reliant everyone is becoming of Google and what effect it can have when it doesn't operate properly...

Advertisers standing together against the Google/Yahoo Deal

So, for those of you who don't know about the partnership between Google and Yahoo read the next few lines. If you know about it then skip to the next paragraph.
Basically - Yahoo and Google entered into a partnership in which Google will provide advertising placed alongside search results on the Yahoo site. This is been reviewed by the Justice Department in the USA and they have yet to reveal any results into any anti-competitive behaviour. Google announced confidence in the legality of the deal last month and stated that they were planning to move forward in October regardless.


Individual companies have not been prepared to stand up against the partnership and complain but rather have kept quiet. The biggest complaint so far has of course been from Microsoft until now. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) came out yesterday against the partnership.

The ANA, a trade group that represents companies including Procter & Gamble Co., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and General Motors Corp., sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas O. Barnett yesterday recommending that the deal be blocked.

The letter claims that “a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90 per cent of search advertising inventory," and argues that the merger would be bad for advertisers.
The partnership "will likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search advertising," the letter continued.

Google voluntarily submitted to a Congressional investigation when the deal was completed in June as a courtesy, but the company has said that it was not legally necessary.

While competitor Microsoft has already voiced displeasure with the plan, the Wall Street Journal thinks this complaint may hold more weight:

“As they weigh comments from outsiders, regulators often discount the views of competitors who complain about a deal, as Microsoft has done. They are likely, however, to listen closely to customers, in this case major advertisers, so the association's letter could be a significant hurdle.”

Yahoo responded to the letter on Sunday:

"We are disappointed with the ANA board's position regarding Yahoo's non-exclusive search marketing agreement with Google... Yahoo remains steadfast in its belief that this deal -– in which prices are determined by advertiser demand-driven auctions, and not by collaboration between Yahoo and Google -– will strengthen Yahoo's competitive position in online advertising and will help to drive a more robust, higher quality Yahoo marketplace for our advertisers."

I myself don't think the deal is a good one and would prefer Microsoft to eventually buy out Yahoo - reasoning is that Google needs some competition and its going to be harder and harder for Microsoft to compete without some acquisitions.

Photo: Flickr/dannysullivan

The Battle of the Web Browsers begins...

So, just a couple of hours ago Google released the first version of their internet browser, Chrome. And like many other bloggers I've just had my first attempt at using it.

A couple of posts ago I wrote about the new IE 8 (read here) and then I wrote about the new release of a great program for Firefox, Ubiquity, and then followed it up on an article regarding the renewal of the contract between Google and Firefox.

Now Google Chrome is launched... and with such great timing. The whole new Microsoft IE 8 was supposed to be about increased security, increase in loading time and tabbing. This was just after Firefox 3 had been released and was downloaded over 8million times in 24hours. I wonder what the stats will be on Chrome.

A lot of bloggers are giving their views on Chrome, I'm not going to mimick them but I'm rather going to say that I think IE 8 is going to be under a serious amount of pressure. In my mind its definitely now between Firefox and Chrome, my first like of a browser is one that quickly opens up a new tab and allows you to browse between them. The security that Google goes on about sounds good and the fact that it is going to be very open for developers is great.

Matthew Buckland mentioned the fact in his review that there aren't enough goodies with it, I say give it time let people check it out and within a week you'll start seeing the new apps coming.

Google and Mozilla in bed together for another 3 years

Recently Mozilla announced that it just renewed an agreement with Google that it will be assigning Google's search engine as Firefox's default. This agreement has been extended until November 2011.

Now if you are wondering how dependent Mozilla is on Firefox just look at the financial records for Mozilla from the 2006 tax year - around 85% or $57million came from Google.

Now their formal CEO has committed Mozilla to remaining independent and that if their relationship with Google threatens this in any way they will walk away from the millions it collects. Read more here.

Mozilla has come under some criticism from users with some names like 'Googzilla or GoogleFox' been thrown around but Baker still defends the position and claims that the community will always come first for Mozilla and that there are other ways to generate money.

From my perspective I don't see this as a bad thing or something that threatens Mozilla, if Google started to dictate conditions to Mozilla then it could be different. In the 2 years since the first deal with Google, Mozilla's market share has increased from 11.8% to 19.2% (article here)

So now on something slightly different, Microsoft has bought out the shopping comparison site Ciao for a sum of $486million. This is a mainly UK shopping comparison and review site that receives 26million people a month. This move has received some criticism and people are wondering why Microsoft did this? Ballmer has set aside $1.2billion per year to play catch up on Google, wouldn't this money have been better spent replacing the Google Search Engine on Mozilla's Firefox with Live Search?

If Firefox has almost 20% of the market share I would definitely think that getting that contract would have been far beneficial. I'm not sure what the anti-competitive people in the USA would have thought about that move though...

In case you wondering or you just don't know - users can change the default search engine on Firefox to a rival site if they wish too.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 'beta' is released

And the prognosis... well my first impression was that not much was different except its got this cool panel view (ie takes all your tabs and shows them to you on the same page and this works pretty quickly between the pages). Aside from that I'm still sticking to firefox and the major reason why - when I open up a new tab in firefox it happens in less than a second while IE takes a good couple of seconds to 'connect' and then open - DRIVES ME CRAZY!

The word going around the blogging world is that it could hit Google's advertising model as it can hide the audit trail of websites that you have been visited and thus not deliver appropriate advertising.

Now, don't be alarmed this is not affecting Google's adsense program but its display advertising (the reason it paid more than $3billion for Doubleclick) model. There has been no news from Google as yet and I'm still testing. There is some speculation that Google uses other means to collect your history and doesn't rely on cookies but this 'option' that IE gives its uses will be causing headaches.

Any why you may ask because of the famous 'click-through tracking'! All of us who have made some bucks from it will have a bit more to worry about now as we may start loosing out on lots of sales.

Quick count of my lucky stars, out of all this Yahoo revealed that it had to pass on some 'information' to the Chinese government about its users. This information happened to include an email sent and an IP address, the poor journalist was tracked down and jailed for 10years!

Whats up with YouTube

Now, maybe other bloggers will laugh but what is happening to the quality coming out of YouTube? Or am I just missing the plot...

I listen to the ZA Tech show quite regularly, and in their 19th podcast they interviewed Stafford Massie, CEO of Google SA. This was a pretty interesting podcast, always good to hear from someone who've knows some of the most influential people in the world today.

Anyway, he spoke about the improvements they were doing for us fellow internet users in South Africa and one item he mentioned was that we should be experiencing faster usage of Google programs like Youtube... but I think with all the lawsuits Youtube has been receiving they have to take down a lot of video's because most video's I try watch now don't seem to work and come up with the annoying message - 'We're sorry, this video is no longer available'.

So now because of that I couldn't watch the interview between Jake White And Stafford Massie which was listed on Jake's new blog.

Could they have an automated system that checks video's descriptions/names and automatically removes them if it contains anything that could contain copyright information? We'll have to wait and see.