According to the article, the mobile analytics company Flurry has been tracking the progression of Android and iOS penetration all over the world. The company has found that despite the fact that the United States is the most mature smartphone market, app developers should consider pursuing emerging markets like China, Korea, and the United Kingdom.

The article states:

Flurry encourages app developers to look overseas for potential growth markets. For instance, in China there are 122 million middle class adults age 15-64 that are not using iOS or Android. In the U.S. that number is 91 million (figuring a 200 million potential smartphone user base or about 60% of the population).

While the U.S. remains a hotbed for testing new apps, be prepared to see global app expansion in 2012. With Android “sort of” open and fragmentation a headache for some developers, can Android crush the annoying iOS and deal a death blow to Microsoft?

Jasmine Ashton, February 11, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

It is now safe to say that Google+ is becoming an enormous success, with nearly half of the unique visitors of Twitter (40,411,065 unique visitors in December). With a steep upward trend and knowledge of the power behind a Google product, expect continued growth from the unequaled search engine’s social platform known for ingenuity, creativity, and revolutionary product offerings.

There you go. Google TVs are coming as are more cloud apps.

Stephen E Arnold, February 10, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

Liz Gannes from AllThingsD.com interviewed Bing Search director Stefan Weitz regarding social data and search results in the article, “Bing–Which Has Deals With Facebook and Twitter–Finally Speaks on Social Search Controversy.” In the interview, Weitz states that social search has positively impacted the Bing experience and attributes that impact to the company’s attention to people. Weitz also comments on capitalizing on the debate around Google’s privacy and social settings. The article states:

“They [Google] are doing a nice job on their own of handling this problem. But they are learning just like we are. They did what we didn’t want to do, which was make the user experience peppered with this stuff, with +1s everywhere, the Google+ content in the top corner. I think [Google] realized we were ahead and they overextended. But I know a ton of guys there and they’re smart and they’re reacting to what has been said.”

I struggle to see exactly how Microsoft is different than Google on this issue. Instead of pressing the company’s own network (like Google using Google+,) Microsoft is using Facebook and Twitter in the same regard. Bing has just been a little slower about incorporating social data into its search results—according to Weitz, this is because making sense of social signals is complex.

I think making sense of this social search contention is possibly even more complex. Is there too much ego and testosterone in the social locker room?

Andrea Hayden, February 8, 2012

The Google Tags program gave business owners the change to attach photos, coupons, and other information to their local listings. Rachel Frezza and Mauro Rodriguez, owners of two separate North Carolina businesses, have filed suit after participating in a free one-month trial. It seems they found some unexpected Googley charges on their credit cards. I submit that most of us have experience with “free trials” that resulted in errant charges. I never considered suing over them. Well, not seriously.

Suing Google is a popular move right now, though, and I suppose Frezza and Rodriguez couldn’t resist. The case could turn into a class-action suit. How far will it go?

Besides billing mishaps, the article states,

Both entrepreneurs allege in their complaint that the company refused to delete their billing information. They argue that California law requires merchants to delete financial data upon request when it’s no longer needed. They also allege that Google’s retention of the data places them ‘at a heightened risk of identity theft, fraud and catastrophic financial loss.’

Yeah, them and anyone else who has ever entered account information at a merchant site. If you want to protect your sensitive info, keep it off the Internet. Ever heard of a prepaid debit card? Problem solved.

Cynthia Murrell, February 9, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

The write up gets into some detail about the processes behind Code Search’s Indexed Word Search, Indexed Regular Expression Search, and Implementation. Check out the article for details.  Cox summarizes:

Despite all their apparent syntactic complexity, regular expressions in the mathematical sense of the term can always be reduced to the few cases. . . considered above. This underlying simplicity makes it possible to implement efficient search algorithms like the ones in the first three articles in this series. The analysis above, which converts a regular expression into a trigram query, is the heart of the indexed matcher, and it is made possible by the same simplicity.

Hmm, we thought trigrams are patented by Brainware. Interesting use of this technology.

Though Google Code Search is no more, Cox recommends investigating some standalone programs for localized indexed regular expression searches, like the one found here.

Cynthia Murrell, February 8, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

According to the article, after being launched in 2004, Orkut quickly became the top social networking site in Brazil and it remained dominant until a few months ago. However, a recent ComScore report showed Facebook steadily increase and eventually beat out Orkut with 36.1 million visitors in December 2011.

Alex Banks, ComScore’s managing director in Brazil said:

Brazil has always been a particularly social market and currently owns the fifth largest social networking population in the world. But despite the cultural affinity for social media, Facebook adoption had traditionally lagged in the market.

What changed? maybe globalization has proven to be stronger than Brazilian nationalism?

Jasmine Ashton, February 4, 2011

Sponsored by Pandia.com

I find the thunderclouds forming and heading toward Google both amusing and somewhat disturbing. There are folks who have been doing more exciting and interesting things with user data for many years. Nope, I won’t provide names. I am not a journalist, although some home economics majors at public relations firms find this fact tough to swallow.

Consider this Reuters news story. Keep in mind that Reuters is part of Thomson Reuters, and it has quite a number of online properties and a significant amount of information about its users. The company acquired ClearForest, at the time one of the leaders in filtering information for flakes of gold. Thomson Reuters also licensed or bought the Lexalytics’ system to do some interesting things with the unstructured text flowing through the Reuters and Thomson systems.

Now navigate to “EU Regulators Want Google to Halt New Privacy Policy.” The news story asserts that the regulators see Google as having a moped. Just hit the brake and stop. Actually Google is more like a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. Stopping the darned thing takes planning, time, and quite a bit of work. Toss in a turn and one has to figure out how to get the fishing boats out of the way. When the aircraft carrier is chugging along at cruising speed, sudden maneuvers are not part of the captain’s expected routine. What happens if the stopping or maneuvering goes wrong? Well, check out the Costa cruise captain. He’s under house arrest and easy to find.

Here’s the passage in the news story which I noted:

In light of the above, we call for a pause in the interests of ensuring that there can be no misunderstanding about Google’s commitments to information rights of their users and EU citizens, until we have completed our analysis.” The European commissioner in charge of data protection, Viviane Reding, welcomed the move, saying it was a necessary to establish that EU data rules were being firmly applied. “The Commission therefore calls on Europe’s data protection authorities to ensure that EU law is fully complied with in Google’s new privacy policy,” she said in a statement.

I also found the grace note poignant:

Google said the raising of concerns came as a surprise.

Google has several challenges on its hands. Let me capture them before my addled goose brain awash with weird medications fails me:

1. There is the advertising revenue problem; that is, traffic up, spendable dough down. Add to this problem the fact that mobile advertising is not as rich of a golden goose as the 2004 to 2007 online variety, and you have a looming revenue / net profit problem unrelated to Google’s friends in government.
2. There are financially and technically capable competitors: Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, among others. Unlike the period from 1998 to 2007, Google now has to cope with marketplace push back and active resistance from competitors with different core competencies.
3. There are a broad range of business fronts on which Google is focusing resources. Trimming small scale projects is essentially irrelevant in light of the market sectors in which Google is actively trying to expand market share: mobile, online advertising, enterprise services, and consumer social services. As a result, management’s ability is put to the test and, as the financial results for the last quarter suggest, is stretched.
4. Legal challenges abound and some seem to be open ended and add friction to the smooth operation of the company; for example, books and the dispute with Oracle.

The net net is that Google’s scrutiny at privacy may bog down the company even more than its on going activities. Unlike a dollars and cents issue, unease about privacy may end up one of the more costly challenges Google faces. Opportunity cost may outweigh the legal fees associated with the European storm which is racing forward.

Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

Edwards has noted a pattern in Google earnings, wherein the company tends to grow little during the first quarter, but makes up for it at Christmas time. Last year, the December surge never occurred. This could be worrisome for Google stakeholders.

There are several possible reasons for the tepid performance. For one thing, the per-click ad rate has been sliding downward. Also, search for the mobile arena, which is still growing and bound to take over the world sooner or later, has provided a lower ad revenue than regular search. Finally, shoppers are now more likely to go directly to a shopping site like Amazon than to Google their potential purchases.

In summary, Edwards observes,

All of the foregoing explains Google’s sudden interest in newspaper advertising, PR stunts such as the Google+ event with David Beckham, and its continued enthusiasm for Google Wallet. . . . Google needs to get Christmas back on track in 2012 — and that means reminding consumers to use its products for shopping.

Hmm. Reminding and enticing are two different things. Can Google do either?

Cynthia Murrell, February 3, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

With tongue firmly in cheek, VentureBeat declares, “This Post on Google+ Statistics is a Billion* Times Better than Any Other Post.” Writer Rocky Agrawal can be excused for resorting to sarcasm, for he is righteously angry at Google and other companies who distort the facts to mislead.

Last week, Google CEO Larry Page played up the numbers for Google+. He said the social network has reached 90 million registered users, among other claims. To take that example, Agrawal is right to say Page’s boasting is deceptive; the number includes all those who registered and tried the service a few times, never to return.

The article contains several more examples of Googley distortion, but Agrawal knows that company is not the only one mutilating statistics. He writes:

Using deceiving numbers leads to a race to the bottom where companies use [worse and worse] numbers to look more and more impressive. Companies that want to be forthright can’t — otherwise they look weak and unsuccessful. That’s bad for the startup ecosystem. It also keeps companies focused on vanity metrics to impress the press. That’s largely irrelevant. Startups should spend their time building great products that people want to use, not just sign up for.

He’s right, but good luck enforcing the concept. It’s up to the rest of us to take corporate statements with a grain of salt. Is Google pushing a little to enthusiastically its social service? Interesting question. We think about Google as search and advertising, not social and advertising.

Cynthia Murrell, February 3, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com

What changed?

The write up explains:

“This last month has been particularly hard for Google lovers. I took the company’s side in the Kenya mobile fiasco up until the company admitted that, indeed, employees were lying to steal customers from Mocality. Then the big stories about Google Search+ and Google’s new privacy policy. I think one is actively bad and the other is mostly harmless, but both changes are so complex and unpleasantly self-motivated it makes me sad. So now when I read about a friend getting terminated from AdSense with no explanation I just get a headache.

The article goes on to posit that Google has gotten so big that it has shifted its focus from improving the world to improving its own bottom line. The writer has decided to dedicate his energies to “upstarts and startups.” That’s actually not a bad idea.

Cynthia Murrell, February 02, 2012

Sponsored by Pandia.com