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Music Store from Google launching Tomorrow
There has been a lot of speculation going around for the launch of Google Music Store as Google has scheduled a press conference tomorrow. Screenshots of Music Store have also been leaked.
Google Music Store will be competing with iTunes and will be selling songs and albums for digital download.Sources say that Google has yet to secure licensing deals with all the major labels.Sony or Warner have not given any indication of a licensing agreement.
Google has the reach,social capabilities and hardware through Motorola and the Android Os.Both Google and Apple has been fighting fo territory with especially Apple launching the iOS.
This has been a long wait as Google has been working on licensing deals with labels that would allow Google to become an MP3 seller. There has been a new featured called “music locker” that has been rumoured to be included in the Music store.
Music Locker would match user uploaded songs with high quality tracks and when a song matches Google would automatically play back the higher quality version of the song.
Let us wait and watch how Google can match Apple Istore.
Startup Apture acquired by Google
There seems to be no end for Google’s acquistion this year.Google’s 23rd acquisition this year Apture will give the ability to monetize every page on the web.
Founders of Apture Tristan Harris and Can Sar along with their employees will join the Google Chrome team according to the announcement on their company’s site homepage.
Since 2007, all of us here at Apture have worked hard to add new dimensions to the web. We’ve always believed that by transforming flat web pages into interactive multimedia experiences, we could enable readers to see, hear and truly experience the ideas on the page.
After enhancing more than a billion pages with our products, we think now is the best time to expand our efforts with another team just down the road that shares our vision of making the web better. That’s right — we’ve been acquired by Google and will be joining the Chrome team to continue driving innovation and creating a better user experience on the web. The modern web is an amazing platform, so stay tuned for even more enhancements to your Chrome browsing experience.
Apture’s browser plugin has been already removed from Chrome store and all the Apture plug-ins will be shut down in the coming months.Apture’s browser plug in will allow users to highlight words and phrases and bring up results that includes news,videos and images in a small time window.
The users can explore many topics without leaving the page and this feature has also been used in sites like Financial Times and Economist.com.a single line of Javascript is used.
The purchase amount has not been disclosed and with this new feature Google offers enhanced on page search to 200 million active users.
Sites will be penalized by Google for too many ads
Sites that making it life tough for the visitors to find good content and comprising of heavy ads will be penalized by Google.This was said by head of Google’s web spam team during his keynote session at PubCon.
”What are the things that really matter, how much content is above the fold,” Cutts said. “If you have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it,” inferring that a if a user is having a hard time viewing content that the site may be flagged as spam.
Google has been dropping ranking for sites with too many ads since it has been updating the algorithm over the past couple of months.
Cutts also said all the sites that have been marked as spam should not have been marked as spam and asked the webmasters to report to Cutts and his team.
In the pubcon Cutt responded to audience doubts that there won’t be any threat to SEO and SEO is here to stay.Search will always be getting better and more personalized for each one of us.He also told “Google will be always be striving to get the best results possible while getting fresh real time results”.
Business and Brands can now create Google+ pages
The wait is over and today Google+ officially announced the pages for brands and businesses which the marketers have been eagerly anticipating for months.
If “Create a Page” is visited,it’s likely you will be greeted with this message : “but we haven’t finished releasing them to everyone. Please check back soon.” Currently twenty Google+ pages are available and these numbers will increase making it available to all as part of its worldwide rollout.
Google+ Pages are Google’s version of Facebook pages that allow brands to connect with customers and fans.In Google+ pages you can post updates ,communicate with customers or fans and check your +1 counts.A personal Google+ profile is needed to create a Google+ page and you need to pick one of the five categories for your page.
1.Local Business or Place
2. Product or Brand
3.company,Institution or Organization
4. Arts, Entertainment or Sports
5.Others
Google users will be able to find and follow pages like public profiles via Google’s search results.Also, with a Pages admin account, you can use Google+ circles and take part in video chat Hangouts.
Mobile-Friendly Site Initiative launched by Google
Google has launched HowToGOMo.com in an effort to tempt webmasters to create mobile friendly sites.Visitors can able to view their website as customers see it on their smartphones and also find mobile site developers.
Google Mobile Ads team has find out that 61 percent of the users are unlikely to return to a website that is not optimized for mobile browsing.The site has a feature called GoMoMeter which analyzes your website and gives customized recommendations in downloadable part.
A feature called “Mobilize” was added by Google in July which allows users to build mobile friendly sites.Last month in “From Why to How” mobile webinar,Google announced that mobile optimization will be factored into Adwords quality score for mobile ad campaigns.
See the following video for how GoMo works
Redesign made to Gmail and Google Reader
Gmail and Google Reader will now get crisper and cleaner designs with some functionality added to Gmail. Reader is losing many of its social features in favour of Google+ integration
The preview format of the look and feel has been available for several months and the actual update is around the corner.The following features will now be available in Gmail very soon
1. Allow users to resize different panes within Gmail (including the chat and label panes).
2. Automatically adjust to fit any screen or window size.
3. Choose between three levels of compactness for their layout.
4. Pick one of several high-resolution themes.
5. Use an all-new conversation structure.
There has not been any news about the official release and given the current state of readiness we are looking at a November release.
Reader now Cleaner after Shedding Weight
Quite a number of functions are being sweeped by Google and user can expect the clean look that has implemented elsewhere.
Expect a different look in Google Reader and several functions are making it’s way out.To help those who want to migrate to alternative RSS services instead of getting started with Google+, Reader’s subscription export will now allow this social data to be exported as well.
Google Adwords in UK and Germany
Adwords Express will now be available to all UK and Germany advertisers as a way to help local businesses get more traffic to their websites and places pages. With the help of Adwords Express you can search customers to for your website or Google places listing. Basic Information like business information,ad text and monthly budget is provided to Google.
Once the initial set up has been done,Google will manage the campaign for you.AdWords will target and figure out which searches your ad should be showing on much like their new Dynamic Search Ads program that they launched last week.
The whole process to set up Adwords Express takes around 5-10 minutes depending on how long it takes you to come up with ad text.Another important thing on Google Express is that it will give you an estimated
monthly budget based on local competition,estimated clicks and how much the customer can get out of the advertiser.
When the customers search for your business or places account,the ads will appear in the Ads section above or to the right of Google’s organic search results.A blue pin will be displayed in Google Maps rather than the red pins non-Adwords advertisers receive on the desktop.
This is one of the perfect move by Google for the local business to get more traffic.With its availability in UK and Germany,local business can get more traffic without having to learn about Adwords.
Have a look at the following video.
Google Reader now gets Google+ Integration
Search Engine Giant Google’s RSS reader Google Reader will get a new look and integration with Google+ next week will allow you to create reader specific circles.
The changes that are requested include a new design and drawing back features like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader which will be supplanted by Google+
The integration allows you to export your subscriptions , friends, likes and shared items to another RSS reader.A new makeover was given to Reader with follows and friending in 2009,when social services like Digg was much more influential
The retiring of Google Buzz was retired last week as Google has began to concentrate much more on Google +
Google acquires Social Grapple,Twitter Analytics Startup
Social Grapple,twitter analytics start up has been acquired by Google.The details of the acquisition has not been disclosed by Google.
Social Grapple was started by Andrey Petrov,a year ago which gives you visual insights,email reports and other monitors helps you understand what going on behind the scenes.
With the help of it you can able to show growth of a particular keyword you choose and track any Twitter socail graph.Here’s a statement released by SocialGrapple about the acquisition:
SocialGrapple started a year ago, and launched only a couple of months later as a social graph analytics service. It was an amazing learning experience and I am incredibly grateful to all the users who supported this venture. Much of what was built over the months came directly from your needs and requests, so I feel like we were all on this journey together.
Since the first launch, we also explored keyword tracking and branched out to other social networks, but this was only scratching the surface. I’m looking forward to taking these ideas to the next level and revealing metrics on an incredibly larger scale.
Thank you again for being a part of my journey. I strive to continue building tools that make the world more transparent and empowered, and I can’t imagine a better partner than Google.
News from the inside sources said Google has acquired them to help with the analytics for Google +.
Bing Powered Translation Service launched by Facebook
A new option has been available for the Facebook users for reading foreign fan pages.With the help of Microsoft’s Bing Translator technology, the users can click a link to translate Facebook pages not written in their language without leaving Facebook.
This move has come from Facebook a week after Microsoft’s announcement for new Microsoft Translator API.
This is, however, another win for Bing on multiple fronts. It is one more commitment from a social network into their service. It’s also another major player to use their translation API.
Many companies will be forced to decide what to do about translation, since Google decided to make their Translate API a paid service only, effectively shutting down the free translate API as of December 1, 2011.
The translation doesn’t happen automatically. Translation is provided via an app that users must install (give permission to) in order to translate Facebook pages into their own language.
By clicking on the translator button, Bing Translator will provide the translation to your language in a popout window. Apart from the translation, users will also have the opportunity to correct the translation and submit it. If a user-submitted translation receives enough support, it will replace the Bing translation automatically each time future users click the translate button for that individual post.There are also options to turn the translation ability off altogether.