“Google Me” Social Network…a Facebook Contender ?

News that Google is building a Facebook competitor have become more believable due to Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt confirming the launch of the social application ‘Google Me‘ into their products including email, online search, videos and maps.

The proclamation of this launch (in fall this year) comes at a very significant time. With Facebook having suffered badly from recent privacy issues, chances are that Google Me could become an immense concern for Facebook.

Google desires that ‘Google Me’ should  not be just another accumulation to the product catalogue but will target at combining all their previous ‘not so winning’ social networking attempts like Orkut, Buzz and Profiles into a victorious social network.

Google CEO,Eric Schmidt recently stated at the Google Zeitgeist Conference held at Scottsdale, Arizona that “We’re trying to take Google’s core products and add a social component.” He also added “If you think about it, it’s obvious. With your permission, knowing more about who your friends are, we can provide more tailored recommendations. Search quality can get better.”

Well, we also need to wait and watch as to how Google can get such huge Facebook devotees to abandon Facebook and turn towards Google Me instead !

Tags: Buzz, Facebook, Google, Google Me, Orkut, Profiles, Social Network, social Networking, Zeitgeist Conference

Google Instant-A Dramatic Break From The Conventional Google Search Experience

Google displays its role as the leader of search engines by relentlessly pushing technology to its limits, with the launch of Google ‘Instant’.The new feature ‘Google Instant’ that was launched yesterday, is a huge enhancement to its search platform as it displays result as the user types ,without even clicking on the search button.

Within the next couple days, Google will be launching a new enhancement to its search platform with its newest addition of Google Instant.  Google Instant is a new feature that shows results to the user as the user types, without even touching the search button. Infact every letter the user inputs, updates the search results in view of that. It was really exciting to watch this major transformation today created by Google.

Google has always been an supporter of simplicity, Google estimates the latest improvement can save around 2-5 seconds for every search. The new system also enhanced on the prediction feature that’s been utilized by Google and many of the other search engines like Yahoo, MSN, and Bing. The smarter prediction will help guide users through their searches, making it simple even if you’re not precisely sure what your  searching for.

The following corresponding output was obtained while typing in each of the  letters a s m in the search:

Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of Search Products stated that the user benefits of Google Instant are numerous but the primary one is time saved. Mayer announced the novel feature at the company’s launch event in San Francisco yesterday.

Google Instant is presently only available for desktop searches, but the company announced that it is at this time also working on the mobile version, which will be released soon.

Tags: bing, Google, google instant search, Marissa Mayer, MSN, Search Engine, SEO, Yahoo

Partnership Deal between Yahoo and MSN

With Google being the present leader in the search engine kingdom, other competitors confront a massive mountain to climb if they need to emerge as the winner. Research firm comScore reported that in July, Google claimed an enormous 66 percent of the total search traffic within the United States. Much behind were Yahoo with 17 percent and Microsoft’s Bing with 11 percent .Rather than uniting with Google or being absorbed by them, Bing and Yahoo decided to be united in their quest for preeminence in the search engine market.Within the last couple months, Bing and Yahoo announced that they would become partners in order to unite their efforts to take up the number two spot in search engine market share and take direct aim at Google’s top spot.

The amalgamation is a great move for Yahoo, for whom the market share dropped over the last year. For the moment, Bing, which began in 2009, has seen its share steadily climb. While Yahoo brings abundant search engine experience to the table, Bing can bring can launch a fresh start to the partnership.

Presently, Bing is powering Yahoo’s search results in English within the United States as well as Canada. People who visit Yahoo’s search will notice “Powered by Bing™” at the bottom of each page to officially indicate the partnership between the two services.

In future, other languages are expected to be added for more of an global flair. In addition to the standard search engine services, Bing and Yahoo will also merge their advertising services. Yahoo and MSN are working on a total shift over to Microsoft’s adCenter, which is the company’s advertising service that provides pay-per-click advertisements to those involved. They hope to complete the shift this fall, appropriate for the holiday season. Bing and Yahoo will divide advertising revenue once everything is finished.

It would be interesting to notice how search engine technologies develop as competition increases, and what type of response Google will have in this search engine race.

Tags: comScore, Google, MSN, Search Engine, Yahoo

Built in URL Shortening added in Google Maps

Google Maps URLs have always been long and messy. It’s really unpleasant to paste a complete URL linking to a Google Map on an email, IM, or blog post.Specially for twitter users ,it is very inconvenient since there is a restriction of  140 characters  for each tweet.

To start using short URLs on Google Maps(http://maps.google.com), all you need  to do is go to Google Maps Labs by clicking on the little green flask on the upper right corner. The next step is to  enable the Short URL option, which is the second on the list of experimental features. Refresh the page, and the feature should be good to go. We obtain a URL  something like this ..goo.gl/maps/sss.This is Google’s official URL shortening service that is being utilized. Goo.gl is entirely integrated into Google Maps once you enable it, so the only URL you see when you hit the Google Maps “Link” is the shorter and  the simpler version.

We  tried the option by giving the following in Search Maps

Seattle, WA, United States

The original URL before enabling the Short URL option:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Seattle,+WA,+United+States&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=27.781434,54.931641&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Seattle,+King,+Washington&z=10

The URL after enabling the Short URL option:

http://goo.gl/maps/7KsT

Tags: Google, Google Maps, Shorter URL