Microsoft Offered $1B for Yahoo Search
Microsoft offered Yahoo Inc $1 billion in cash to buy its search business in a deal that would have delivered $1 billion in additional annual operating income to Yahoo, a source familiar with Microsoft’s thinking said on Friday. In an alternative to a full acquisition, Microsoft would have taken control of Yahoo’s search business, delivering the company better rates for advertisements tied to its search results than Yahoo’s current Panama advertising system, the source said.
Microsoft would have also paid $8 billion to take a 16 percent stake in Yahoo, which would have valued the company’s stock at $35 a share, the source said. Talks between the two companies broke down after Yahoo entered into an advertising agreement with Google Inc. Microsoft is still open to discussing its proposal despite Yahoo’s agreement with Google, the source said. Yahoo had no immediate comment.
Source: Reuters
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Google App Engine to Announce Open Sign-ups, Pricing Plans, and New APIs at Google I/O
Google is getting ready to welcome more than 2900 developers to the Moscone Center in San Francisco for Google I/OTM, the company’s largest developer event of the year. The event opens with a keynote speech on Wednesday, May 28, and runs through Thursday, May 29, with nearly 100 in-depth technical sessions about Google’s own developer products, and general web application development.
Google’s developer products are devoted to making it easier for developers to build for the web. In particular, Wednesday’s keynote speech will explore three areas of Google investment that — in close collaboration with the larger web community — aim to enable increasingly innovative and rich web applications:
- Making clouds of computing power more accessible to all developers
- Making the client — i.e., the browser — more capable and more powerful
- Ensuring the connectivity that enables the client and the cloud to work in harmony
"After years of competition among platforms, the web has won because it’s open, because it’s ubiquitous, and because there’s a passionate community working together to move it forward," said Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for developer products at Google. "Openness is great for developers and for users because it knocks down hurdles to building great applications, and because it speeds the next wave of innovation by letting good ideas be shared. The web doesn’t depend on any one API or tool or product, from Google or anyone else. What makes the real difference is the aggregate effect of us all working together, with open standards and open source."
Source- Google Press Release
Google makes health service publicly available
Google Inc. is now offering the general public electronic access to their medical records and other health-related information.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based Web search leader announced the public launch of Google Health during a Webcast on Monday. It lets users import records from a variety of care providers and pharmacies.
Google tested the service by storing medical records for a few thousand patient volunteers at the not-for-profit Cleveland Clinic.
"It’s a really exciting day for us. We’re really happy to be able to offer this service to all our users," Marissa Mayer, the Google executive overseeing the health project, said in the Webcast.
Source: Google Health
Google Translate adds 10 new languages
Language is one of the biggest challenges we have in making information universally accessible. As part of the machine translation team within Google Research, I’m happy to report we’ve been hard at work to overcome this challenge. We’ve recently added translation capabilities for 10 new languages to Google Translate, bringing the total to 23 languages. The newly featured languages include Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish.
In addition, you can now translate text and web pages as well as perform cross-language searches between any two languages that we offer. For example, we now support Chinese translation to/from any of our languages (e.g., Chinese to French). So for those of you who will be following or attending the Olympics in Beijing this fall, you’ll be able to more easily find and access content from local sources.
We’ve also added a "Detect Language" option to help you automatically identify the language of the text you’re trying to translate. Keep in mind that the longer the text, the more accurate it will be. And for those of you who have embedded the Google Translate My Page gadget in your website to give it global reach, these new languages will automatically appear. Developers can also take advantage of these new languages in our AJAX language API.
Source- Google Press Release
Google Apps extends protection to web surfing and remote workers
Google today announced a web security product that makes it easy and affordable for companies of all sizes to provide Internet security to users in any location. Google Web Security™ for Enterprise provides real-time malware protection and URL filtering with policy enforcement and reporting. An additional feature extends the same protections to users working remotely on laptops in hotels, cafes, and even guest networks.
"One of the benefits of Google Apps is the protection it provides for communication and collaboration within businesses," said Scott Petry, director of product management, Google. "Now companies can extend that protection to more of their users’ Internet activities, whether they’re surfing the web at the office or the airport."
Google Web Security allows companies to secure their networks from web-based malware; enforce Internet use policies at the user, workgroup or company level; and receive comprehensive reporting on all web activities. Since employees are most vulnerable when they’re working outside the office, companies have the option of adding protection for off-network users. And because the product is delivered as a service, those remote workers get the protection wherever they are, without having to sign on to their corporate network.
The product is Powered by Postini™ with technology from ScanSafe, and accessible from the same administration console used for Google Apps security and compliance messaging services. Google Web Security is available in North America and Europe. Go here for more information.
Source- Google Press Release
Microsoft to show new search tech this month
Microsoft hopes to back up its refrain that it has a plan to catch Google by showing off some improvements to its Live Search product at a company-sponsored advertising conference later this month.
"We will start to show you the next version of the search," Chairman Bill Gates said in comments to reporters in Japan Wednesday, promising that Microsoft had some exciting things up its sleeve. The comments were included in a partial transcript provided by Microsoft.
View Full Article: CNET News
Google Maps Street View now available in driving directions
Starting today, finding your way around town will be easier than ever: Street View is now integrated into Google Maps driving directions. In the regions across the country where Google Maps Street View imagery is available, users will see camera icons next to each step of their directions, which will open a Street View image of the location, along with an arrow showing the action to be taken. Users can click through their entire route through Street View, and when the journey is complete a green marker will indicate arrival at their destination.
By viewing Street View images alongside directions, drivers have visual context for intersections and action points along their route, enabling them to be aware of landmarks and other factors such as tolls, speed limits, size of the road, and the availability of parking at their destination.
Street View, originally launched in May of 2007 in 5 cities, now provides interactive 360-degree street-level imagery in 44 regions across the country. Integrating Street View with driving directions provides those living in or traveling to these regions with another powerful, useful tool to help them easily navigate their surroundings. Street View was also recently made available through the Google Maps API, allowing developers to utilize Street View functionality to enhance their services.
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