Google Making POWER Moves

Google is buying cell phone maker Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in cash in what is by far the company's biggest acquisition to date.

Google Inc. will pay $40.00 per share, a 63 percent premium to Motorola's closing price on Friday.

The companies say the deal has been approved by the boards of both.

Google CEO Larry Page says that the deal with "supercharge the entire Android ecosystem."

The deal gives Google direct control over the maker of many of its Android phones.

In premarket trading, shares of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. are up 60 percent, or $14.72, to $39.19.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/15/3838454/google-to-buy-motorola-mobility.html#ixzz1V6AxDWs6

Joe Carretta

Googling on Up.. or Down

Thanks to the individuals over at Titan SEO. This blog is a based on theirs - which can be read here

Google has made yet another update to its ever-changing algorithm, and this time it is a change that will affect a whopping 11.8 percent of its search results.

Last week, Google announced its latest algorithm change will decrease the rankings for sites with a reputation for having low-quality or second-hand content. These sites are often called "content farms" or "scraper" sites, and although Google has declined to specifically name the type of site the new algorithm will be punishing, they have been clear that they want the change to affect sites known for copying the majority of their content from other websites.

One concern for many sites such as eHow, which carries both shallow and deep content, is that they will be penalized for the low-quality content but not necessarily rewarded for the high-quality information. Another unfortunate result of this update is that some clearly non-spam sites were also penalized. For example, ecommerce sites that included manufacturer-provided product descriptions for their merchandise were penalized if another site used those same descriptions.

However, a good measure of the effectiveness of the new algorithm is the external confirmation that 84% of the sites affected were among the top 50 sites most commonly flagged by users as "spam". These are the sites that typically look for the top search trends and generate a small amount of poor quality content on the cheap, and it shows. Luckily for the searcher, most of these sites are the ones you hope will disappear.

Is the Cloud Falling From the Sky?

An article on ZDnet outlined an incident that affects anyone who puts information up on the aforementioned “cloud”..
First of all what is a cloud?
Cloud computing describes computation, software, data access, and storage services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services. Parallels to this concept can be drawn with the electricity grid where end-users consume power resources without any necessary understanding of the component devices in the grid required to provide the service.
The blogosphere was buzzing Monday with news of Google’s Gmail outage. ZDNet’s Larry Dignan outlined backup options, while young Zack Whittaker could barely contain his glee that Microsoft wasn’t alone in hosing a major webmail product. And yet, despite the inconvenience, the sky simply isn’t falling. The cloud is alive and well and Gmail remains one heck of a safe place to store your email (and everything else for that matter).
The outage referred to an incident last week when Google lost 38,00 users email account information. Basically for these affected users, their Gmail homepage looked like it did the first day they singed up for the service. This called into question obvious concerns regarding the safety of the cloud as a storage hub for individuals information.
As Christopher Dawson explains, Every time something like this happens, cloud naysayers take the opportunity to tell us why it’s a bad idea to store valuable information out in this mythical, mystical cloud. Those naysayers are usually no fans of Google, since the web giant has so much riding on cloud strategies and would just love for all of us to join them in embracing the unseen, distributed web. It’s not like Google has a competing desktop product for what it does. The Chrome OS only solidifies the idea that computers need merely be portals to the web with anything of value stored and synced across Google’s servers.
Therefore we are all left with our fingers crossed, and are eyes turned up toward the Google gods, hoping that every time we punch in our UN’s and PW’s that we see our electronic correspondence safe and sound up on the cloud.

What is Facebook's Next Move?

This past week, Goldman Sachs along with an unnamed Russian investor invested $500 million in Facebook. The investment makes the social media giant flush with cash, and string at a crossroad for the company.

The common mistake for companies with a sudden influx of cash is to spend on ventures outside their core competency that has brought them to where they are in the first place.

According to J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan, the answer is “yes.” Not only did Facebook just receive a significant monetary boost from one of Wall Street’s major banks, but the social networking site is also quickly catching up to Google in terms of Web traffic noted Elain Wong in her Forbes online article.

Stay tuned to the TNS blog to see what happens to Facebook, Google, and if the SEC decides something is not well in tech land.

Joe Carretta

Smartphones On The Scene

The IT world is always buzzing with rumors of new features and gadgets, especially around the holidays. The TNS Group blog is here to set the record straight on the latest tech toys that will be in stores for the most wonderful time of the year.

- Samsung Nexus S Smartphone for Android 2.3: Google has announced the release of its latest operating system for its Android phone, featuring 16GB of internal memory, a front and rear facing camera, improved copy & paste functions, and a 4 inch contour display. This Smartphone will be available in stores on December 16, right in time for holiday shopping.

- BlackBerry Bold 9780 for T Mobile: This latest installment for BlackBerry features double the memory of its predecessor, 5 megapixel camera (improved from 3.2 megapixel), and is preloaded with the BlackBerry 6.0 Operating System. The Bold 9780 is in stores now.

- Samsung Focus for Windows Phone 7: This device has been dubbed the "first great device" for the Windows platform, features an easy-to-use layout, great display screen, and compatibility with Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint -- excellent news for businesses that utilize these programs. The best part? The rumors are true.. AT&T is offering a Buy One, Get One Free campaign for the holiday season.

- Now we get to the "core" of the rumors with Apple: There has been a lot of talk lately about the possible release of the iPad 2. While this is normally enough to get Apple fans' heads spinning, there is a catch. Rumor has it that Steve Jobs & Co are pushing for a February 2011 release date. Of course, this will really upset customers who bought iPads for the holidays. It seems that Apple wants to move the current iPads out of stores this holiday season to make room for the new ones to follow. Our advice? Although you may be dying for an iPad from Santa, try to hold out to see if there's any truth to the iPad 2. You don't want to be "outdated" in February.

There you have it, these are the holiday gadgets to look out for this season. Happy shopping from TNS!

Google Buzz Settlement Reached

Yesterday, Google announced that a federal district court judge approved a settlement for a lawsuit filed against them by Gmail users.

Google launched Google Buzz, a tool used for social networking and messaging in association with Gmail. However, Gmail users were upset because they were automatically signed up for Buzz. Without any consent, Gmail users had their data and frequent contacts displayed. Subsequently, users took Google to court, citing privacy violations.

District courts have approved a settlement, which requires that Google pay $8.5 million to organizations that provide education on Internet privacy and policies. Additionally, Google has made changes to its Buzz service and is educating its users on its privacy settings.

Yesterday, all Gmail users in the United States received an e-mail that clarified the nature of the settlement. Gmail users will not receive any monetary compensation for the lawsuit. In the email, Google stated, "Just to be clear, this is not a settlement in which people who use Gmail can file to receive compensation".

In a statement released today, Google announced, "We are satisfied with the agreement and are glad to move forward, We have always been committed to offering users transparency and choice in Buzz and all our products, and will continue to work together with users to provide the best experience possible."

Although the payout for the settlement is a large figure deal, it is clear that Google will not have a problem paying the $8.5 million. As previously mentioned on The TNS Group tech blog, Google will make an estimated $15 billion this year in advertising, and is continuing to grow and improve annually.

Google Outdoes Itself

The Internet is technology's most formidable source, and it just keeps getting bigger. In fact, traffic increases at an amazing 40-45% each year! But what website is crushing all the competition?

None other than... Google. The search engine giant accumulated a third quarter revenue this year of $7.29 billion, a 23% increase from last year. Even more fascinating, according to recent data from Arbor Networks, Google accounts for a whopping 6.4% of all Internet traffic in the world!

The numbers don't stop there. Because Google is so widely used, its advertising sales are equally astronomical. This year, Google's total ad revenue will be an estimated $15.7 billion. To put that into perspective, last year Time Warner and Viacom, among the biggest media companies in the world, earned $8.8 billion and $4.7 billion in advertising revenue, respectively.

The Internet is expanding so rapidly, its hard to imagine what will come next. With impressive progress being made on Google's self-driving car, it seems that anything is possible. To stay up-to-date with the latest in technology news, keep checking back at The TNS Group's tech blog.