Filings Watch: Google’s 10-K: Headcount; Acquisition Spend

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) filed its annual 10-K report with SEC this Friday, and not much in it that we don’t know already, but good to get a yearly perspective on umbers, rather than the quarter-to-quarter we all chase.

Some points that caught my eye:
-- Our full-time employee headcount has significantly increased over the last 12 months, growing from 10,674 at December 31, 2006 to 16,805 at December 31, 2007...consisting of 5,788 in research and development, 6,647 in sales and marketing, 2,844 in general and administrative and 1,526 in operations. All of Google’s employees are also equityholders, with significant collective employee ownership.

-- Minimum guaranteed payments to the likes of MySpace and others: At December 31, 2007, our aggregate outstanding non-cancelable guaranteed minimum revenue share commitments totaled $1.75 billion through 2012 compared to $1.17 billion at December 31, 2006. (issues here of lower-performance of MySpace inventory, which we have written about before)

-- Cash used in investing activities in 2007 of $3,681.6 million was attributable to capital expenditures of $2,402.8 million, cash consideration used in acquisitions and other investments of $941.2 million, of which $545.7 million related to the acquisition of Postini in the third quarter of 2007, and net purchases of marketable securities of $337.6 million.

-- Besides DoubleClick and Postini, during the year ended December 31, 2007, we also completed seventeen other acquisitions. Three of these transactions were accounted for as asset purchases; the remaining 14 transactions were accounted for as business combinations. The total initial purchase price for these transactions was $281.6 million.

-- In addition, during the year ended December 31, 2007, we capitalized intangible assets of $5.2 million, paid in cash, related to patent purchases.

-- Cost of revenues increased $2,424.1 million from 2006 to 2007. This increase was primarily the result of additional traffic acquisition costs, the depreciation of additional information technology assets purchased in the current and prior periods, other additional data center costs and additional credit card and other transaction fees. There was an increase in traffic acquisition costs of $1,625.1 million which includes an increase of $216.7 million in fees related to distribution arrangements.

-- Advertising revenues made up 99% of our revenues in 2005, 2006 and 2007. We derive the balance of our revenues from the license of our web search technology, the license of our search solutions to enterprises and the sale and license of other products and services.

-- Our international revenues have grown as a percentage of our total revenues to 48% in 2007 from 43% in 2006.

-- Aggregate paid clicks on our web sites and our Google Network members’ web sites increased approximately 9% from the three months ended September 30, 2007 to the three months ended December 31, 2007, approximately 43% from the year ended 2006 to the year ended 2007 and approximately 65% from the year ended 2005 to the year ended 2006.

Source: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-filings-watch-googles-10-k-headcount-acquisition-spend/

Yahoo! Search Draws Younger Audience; Google Users Big Spenders Online

In my post earlier in the week, I mentioned that Yahoo! Search attracts a younger audience than Google. I promised a post with figures to back up my claim (sorry I am a day late - forgot it was Valentine's Day!). The following charts show the percentage of visits from each age group to Yahoo! Search and Google.com.

I cross checked this data against our Lifestyle data. to be sure that we weren't missing the kids of these householders. Our Lifestyle data confirms that the groups that are highly indexed on Google tend to be older (55+) and the groups highly indexed on Yahoo! Search tend to be younger.

I mentioned this to my husband and he asked if the Google users spend more online. Good question (he seems to think young people have no money)! I created the following Lifestyle Quadrant Analysis to compare the online audience of Google.com and Yahoo! Search.

The figure summarizes the audience strengths and weaknesses for the two search engines. Visits by MOSAIC Group to Search.Yahoo.com are plotted on the y-axis and to Google.com on the x-axis. For example, the top left hand box indicates unique strengths for Yahoo! Search, in that they are groups that are over-indexed relative to the online population on Yahoo! Search but under-indexed on Google.com. The bigger the bubble the higher the propensity to have spent $500 online (based on offline data collected by Experian).



As you can see Google's relative audience strengths - i.e. the groups over-indexed on Google.com relative to the online population - are those that are among the most likely to have spent more than $500 online. This indicates that Google users are more likely to be big online spenders.


Source: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/us-heather-hopkins/2008/02/yahoo_search_draws_younger_aud.html

Blueprints Of Google's Oregon Data Center

Harper's Magazine has a spread showcasing a blueprint of Google's Oregon data center in The Dalles. The article documents the data center at 68,680 square-feet with three buildings, two that are currently completed. The data center would require enough power to light up about 82,000 homes, equivalent to 103-megawatts of electricity.

Check out the full blueprints over here, take note of the dormitory building and various landscape.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/080218-092213.php

Google Study: 1.3% Google Searches Return At Least One Malicious Result

Web Browsing, Search, And Online Ads Grow More Risky, Google Says from InformationWeek reports on a recent Google Study named All Your iFRAMEs Point to Us that shows 1.3% of Google searches returned at least one malicious result.

Niels Provos, a security engineer at Google, lead the study that took 10 months of data containing billions of URLs. The data collection period was between January 2007 and October 2007. They checked 66,534,330 URLs and found that 3,385,889 URLs were "suspicious," 3,417,590 URLs were malicious, pointing to 181,699 landing sites.

But the real impact to the end user, as described by the study showed that a search query at Google returned "at least one malicious result, with an average approaching 1.3% of the overall incoming search queries." Furthermore, of the top one-million URLs appearing in the search engine results, "about 6,000 belong to sites that have been verified as malicious at some point during our data collection." Here is the kicker, "about 0.6% of the top million URLs that appeared most frequently in Google’s search results led to exposure to malicious activity at some point."

Where does the malware originate from? Here is a chart from the study on that question:

Many of the malware stems from ads. The study showed that "on average, 2% of the landing sites were delivering malware via advertisements." But when you look at the searchers perspective, "12% of the overall search results that returned landing pages were associated with malicious content due to unsafe Ads."

Source: http://searchengineland.com/080213-090126.php

MSNbot 1.1: Live Search Implements A More Efficient Crawl

Today, Microsoft announced changes to their Live Search crawler intended to reduce bandwidth resources during the crawl of a site. MSNbot (upgraded to version 1.1) now supports both HTTP compression and conditional get. The post on the Live Search Webmaster Center blog describes each feature in detail and includes links to tools you can use to check your server for support of these features.

• HTTP compression enables search engine crawlers (and browsers) to compress files before downloading them.
• Conditional get lets the crawler ask a server if the page has been changed since the last request (using the If-Modified-Since header). If the content hasn't changed, a server that supports conditional get returns a 304 response (not modified). When the crawler gets this response, it doesn't download the page contents (and continues to use the version already downloaded).

As the blog post notes, the other major search engines support these features as well.

Google
Google overhauled their crawler to reduce bandwidth usage in 2006 as part of the "Bigdaddy" infrastructure change. With this effort, Googlebot increased support for HTTP compression and started using a crawl caching proxy. The Google webmaster help center describes Googlebot's handling of conditional get, which is similar to MSNbot's.

Yahoo!
In 2005, Yahoo! announced support of both HTTP compression and conditional get.

Ask
Ask's webmaster documentation includes information about HTTP compression, although it doesn't mention conditional get support.

Cache Dates

In 2006, Google changed how it displays cache dates of pages to reflect the most recent visit to the page, rather than the most recent download of the page. Live Search matches Google's current functionality, showing the last time MSNbot visited the page as the cache date. Yahoo! doesn't display a cached date.

Other Ways To Reduce Search Engine Crawler Bandwidth

If search engine crawlers use too much bandwidth on your site, even once your server has HTTP compression and conditional get turned on, you can use additional methods to reduce bandwidth consumption. However, keep in mind that unlike HTTP compression and conditional get, these other methods could potentially reduce the number of indexed pages.

Crawl Delay
Live Search, Yahoo!, and Ask all support the crawl-delay instruction in robots.txt (Google is the lone holdout). You specify the crawl-delay in seconds, which indicates how long the crawler should wait between page fetches.

A robots.txt file that directs all crawlers to wait five seconds between each page fetch looks as follows:

user-agent: *
crawl-delay: 5

The Live Search webmaster help notes that the news crawler doesn't follow the crawl-delay instruction:

"Live Search also uses a dedicated crawler to crawl certain types of sites at high frequency. The msnbot-NewsBlogs/1.0 news crawler helps provide current results for our news site. The msnbot-NewsBlogs/1.0 does not adhere to the crawl-delay settings.

If you find that MSNBot is still placing too high a load on your web server, contact Site Owner Support."

In a recent interview, Matt Cutts of Google explained that Google doesn't support crawl delay.

"I believe the only robots.txt extension in common use that Google doesn't support is the crawl-delay. And, the reason that Google doesn't support crawl-delay is because way too many people accidentally mess it up. For example, they set crawl-delay to a hundred thousand, and, that means you get to crawl one page every other day or something like that.


We have even seen people who set a crawl-delay such that we'd only be allowed to crawl one page per month. What we have done instead is provide throttling ability within Webmaster Central, but crawl-delay is the inverse; its saying crawl me once every "n" seconds. In fact what you really want is host-load, which lets you define how many Googlebots are allowed to crawl your site at once. So, a host-load of two would mean, 2 Googlebots are allowed to be crawling the site at once."

Google's Webmaster Central crawl rate feature provides information about Googlebot's current bandwidth usage and enables webmasters to request a slower crawl (and in some cases, a faster crawl).

Using robots.txt To Reduce Bandwidth
You can block pages or directories from being crawled to reduce overall bandwidth. If you have large portions of your site that you don't want (or need) indexed, you can use robots.txt to block search engine crawlers from accessing them. Note that use of robots meta tags will keep the pages out of the index, but won't achieve the bandwidth reduction goals, as the crawlers have to access the pages to read the meta tags.

Many webmasters assumed MSNbot already supported HTTP compression and conditional get, although some had criticized Live Search for using more bandwidth than other search engine crawlers. With these enhancements, webmasters who have these features enabled on their servers should notice a bandwidth reduction.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/080212-160910.php

Six Steps to Conversion Health

Are you planning a site re-design? Is your landing page not converting well enough? Hopefully you've got the basics covered, and your landing page has a search function, contact information and a strong marketing message. But what else can you do to improve your conversion rate?

Once a visitor lands on your website, the clock starts ticking and you have only a few seconds to convince them to stay there, let alone make a purchase. At first glance, a user should know that they are in the right place and that their transactions will be secure. Sound daunting? With only a few easy changes, you can convert more visitors. Consider these six points as you assess the strengths and weaknesses of your current site and plan your re-design.

1. Custom Landing Pages - Add a Personal Touch:

Does your landing page have a navigation bar or feature multiple product lines and promotions? If so, you are committing conversion suicide. You must convince the visitor that the landing page is just for them. Avoid using home pages or all-inclusive multipurpose landing pages. Create specific landing pages for every ad and paid search term. When you land a visitor on your home page, they may stay longer and check out more of your pages, but chances are they won't make a purchase. Instead, consider taking your visitors to a custom landing page. They'll stay on your site a shorter amount of time, but they'll convert about three times more often. And whatever you do, do not include a navigation bar on your landing pages - it's completely unrelated to your sale and can dramatically lower your conversion rate.

Custom landing pages are so important for pay-per-click advertising because you are creating consistency from keyword to ad to landing page. Many campaigns fall short of their goals due to an overly general landing page which does not meet the customer's expectations of relevancy. Just make sure you include some branding elements that will help consumers understand who you are and what you offer.

2. Images - Size Matters:

Product image size is actually one of the most important conversion factors on your landing page. The bigger and more detailed a product image is, the more inclined the consumer is to make a purchase. Make sure the picture is clear and full-color to contribute to the professional appearance of your landing page. In addition to product images, pictures of people can also increase conversion rates.

3. Confidence Messaging - Counter the Fear Factor:

Retailers must gain trust from shoppers. A large percentage of consumers won't buy online because they're absolutely terrified of giving out their credit card information. They've heard stories on the news about identity theft and with increasing spyware and phishing threats, consumers are rightfully concerned. Smart marketers counter customer fears by placing third-party endorsements such as "VeriSign secured" or "BizRate.com customer certified" on their landing pages to give visitors confidence to buy.

5. Registration Forms - Don't Scare Them Away:

More information is not always better. When you scrunch too much copy onto one landing page, you make your visitor's eyes hurt and they are more likely to leave. Keep your font size over 10 point type and try just one column of copy. Few visitors will scroll down, so your marketing message should be short and sweet and above the fold. Your goal is to not confuse your visitors, so place your conversion activity in a clear and prominent location. Overall, the design should be clear, uncluttered and easy to read. Don't try to jazz things up with flashing buttons, overly bright colors or artsy fonts.

6. Newsletter Subscriptions - Keep Them Coming Back for More:

Not only are visitors worried about their privacy, they're also a little "work averse". So keep your registration forms short. Limit your page to six or seven fields and don't require too much personal information like Phone numbers. Include e-mail privacy information so the visitor knows that you won't share their information with other marketers.

It's also important to have the reg form on the landing page above the fold so the user doesn't have to click to convert (remember, they may be concerned that a program will download if they click).

Another tip is to not require registration for free downloads like white papers. Instead, on the thank-you page, offer a sign-up for further updates and offers.

Test it.

Conversions don't always happen right away. Keep your visitors coming back by having an easy e-mail newsletter sign-up on your landing page. You're also more likely to keep your customers converting when you build a relationship with them by sending various offers, news and discounts directly to their in-box.

Source: http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/bin/answer.py?answer=77127&hl=en

Google Is Doing More Than Indexing The Web, They’re Making Their Own

While I pretty constantly feel I’m in a constant grappling match with Google and their engineers, I really do respect them on so many levels. But perhaps most of all, is their general “business plan”, and how they implemented it. They are no longer indexing the internet. They are making one of their own.

The True Genius Of It
When Google started, even if they had the resources they do now, they could not have created what they have now. When Google started, search engines, and especially caching content, were dubious at best. As time went on, they were allowed more and more leeway with the information they gathered from websites(out-out, of course). They no longer just linked to dictionary sites, they added the “define:” command. They no longer just linked to local businesses, they gave them a section above the search results themselves. Things like this would not have been ok before; Google waited until popular opinion and the almost (dare I say it?) omnipotence of Google was firmly established in the global consciousness.

Essentially, they invalidate the largest websites and niches using their information and market share. Whenever some (non-viagra) niche is doing too well, they replace it.

Breaking Down Their “Tools”, and Their Purpose

1. E-Commerce
   1. Google Checkout - There is no business that makes money like the money business. Stepping into Paypal’s shoes, this service is not massive…yet. I have an odd feeling the plans for this are future-based
   2. Froogle - An invasion upon the various comparison shopping websites(remember when MySimon was huge?).
   3. Google Base - Call it CraigsList2.0. It even has personal ads.
   4. Music Search - Try Searching for “The Decemberists Album”. You’ll see yet another top bar ahead of the search results. This is their way of driving traffic to Google Base. But it once again shows that they’re gaining some decent AI about product searches. Not only searching information, but understanding it.
   5. Google Pages - Google’s free hosting setup. Why is this under e-commerce? Read the next section and you’ll understand…
2. Information Centralization
   1. Google Reader - A central location to access all websites you would not normally have to search for. Takes the place of (well, other RSS readers), but also type in traffic and bookmarks.
   2. Local Search - Invalidates the need for a small business website(in the eyes of many). At the top of any search result, it shows business addresses, phone numbers, and busienss names.
   3. Knols - Brings the information of Wikipedia into the “Google” fold. With the information they have organized and indexed, it’s easy to bring it together. Ties in lovely with the define: Function
   4. Question and Answer - Everyone, open a new tab, and search for “What is the population of China?”, or “What time is it in Dayton, Ohio?”. Surprised? Yeahhhh. By having users go straight to them for this information, once again, increased marketshare, no webmaster participation involved.
   5. Define:keyword Search - Perhaps the first sign that Google was doing more than just indexing information. They were organizing it, extracting meaning from it. It’s the first step necessary to being able re-create information.
   6. GMail - You’ll notice this little gem(and it is a gem by the way) got introduced when a significant portion of the middle-aged adults were getting more acquainted with the internet. This particular group has a tendency towards e-mail; it’s safe and requires no credit card number. Not only did it cut into Hotmails market share, but in doing so the people not overly familar with the internet became familiar with Google, and became potential crossovers from the default Live.com search.
   7. Google Print - Google’s project aiming to scan as many books as possible into their database. Using OCR, they’re text-searchable. Click one, and surprise surprise, we see a familiar bar at the left allowing us to purchase this book from a variety of sources…once again, read the next section to realize the implications here.

How They’re Going To Bringing This Together To Establish Their Own “Internet”
Note: This section is speculation, but I believe it is firmly supported by their actions thus far.
Let’s take a look at what Google has here from an e-commerce prospectiong. They currently have a freehost, payment processing company, and a tremendous knowledge of various products that are sold(all categorized, of course). I suspect in the near future, we’re going to see that “free host” (google pages) turn into a “Yahoo Store” like thing, that gives you a top panel above all the searches, like searches for music already do. Imagine them combining this with their book search and Google base/Froogle? That would actually have the potential to be a “amazon killer”, cutting into the profits of everyone.

Also as they get better and better at not only indexing the information, but understanding it, we will be seeing more and more top panels that make the rankings of sites less and less relevant. With the introduction of knols, much of the information previously available on other sites will be available right there, making them increasingly irrelevant as well.

It appears Google found an odd answer to Search Engine abuse; simply control all the ranking websites. Their information centralization services have already deeply cut into many other services, and give them more than enough data to make this possible. And judging by their most recent additions to the search engine(detailed above), this is definitely the direction they’re heading in.

Source: http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/?p=201

10 Billion Videos Online

RESTON, VA, February 08, 2008 – comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released December 2007 data from the comScore Video Metrix service, which reaches beyond simple site visitation to measure actual online video viewing behavior. The December 2007 report revealed that U.S. Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online during the month, representing the single heaviest month for online video consumption since comScore initiated its tracking service. Top-ranked video property Google Sites saw substantial growth and extended its video market share gains, now accounting for nearly one out of every three videos viewed online.

“December represented a considerably strong month for online video viewing,” said Erin Hunter, comScore executive vice president of media and entertainment. “With the writer’s strike keeping new TV episodes from reaching the airwaves, viewers have been seeking alternatives for fresh content. It appears that online video is stepping in to help fill that void.”

Google Extends Lead in Online Video Market Share

Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property in December with 3.3 billion videos viewed (32.6 percent share of videos), gaining 1.3 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for more than 97 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 358 million (3.5 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 340 million (3.4 percent) and Viacom Digital with 238 million (2.3 percent).

Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Videos Viewed December 2007 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property	Videos (000)	Share (%) of Videos
Total Internet	10,156,199	100.0
Google Sites	3,314,962	32.6
Fox Interactive Media	358,353	3.5
Yahoo! Sites	340,409	3.4
Viacom Digital	237,689	2.3
Microsoft Sites	180,443	1.8
Time Warner Network	174,079	1.7
Disney Online	123,009	1.2
ESPN	84,839	0.8
Apple Inc.	50,316	0.5
ABC.COM	47,259	0.5

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

In total, nearly 141 million Americans viewed online video in December. Google Sites also captured the largest online video audience with 79 million unique viewers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 43.9 million and Yahoo! Sites with 38.2 million.

Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Unique Video Viewers December 2007 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property	Unique Viewers (000)	Percent of all U.S. Internet Users
Total Internet	140,926	76.7
Google Sites	79,041	43.0
Fox Interactive Media	43,915	23.9
Yahoo! Sites	38,214	20.8
Time Warner Network	27,168	14.8
Viacom Digital	24,504	13.3
Microsoft Sites	20,096	10.9
Disney Online	12,256	6.7
ESPN	10,004	5.4
Apple Inc.	9,455	5.1
Amazon Sites	7,734	4.2

*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

Other notable findings from December 2007 include:

• 77.6 million viewers watched 3.2 billion videos on YouTube.com (41.6 videos per viewer).
  
• 40.5 million viewers watched 334 million videos on MySpace.com (8.2 videos per viewer).
  
• Online viewers watched an average of 3.4 hours (203 minutes) of online video during the month, representing a 34-percent gain since the beginning of 2007.
  
• The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.
  
• The average online video viewer consumed 72 videos.

Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2051

Google Gives Baidu Tough Competition in China

Baidu.com Inc., which is a leading website in China popular for free and unlicensed music downloads, is about to face stiff competition from Google Inc. Google Inc. may come in partnership with another Chinese company, which would provide it free licensed music downloads. Google is all set to capture the Chinese market where it has faced tough competition from Baidu.com for over two years of operation in the country.

With a hope to gain a better position in the Chinese market, Google would be providing free downloadable music in order to compete with Baidu. This is yet another crucial move by the organization to gain dominance in the Internet market of China, where the number of users are predicted to cross that in U.S..

Although the company has not yet divulged the strategies about free downloadable music in China, however, it is clear that Google has resolved the decision to win the Chinese Internet market.

Google Paves Its Ways Through Local Market with Local Search

Google's attempt to make its way through the small and medium business (or SMB) market has resulted in a few but critical changes made recently to the OneBox / Universal Search result that appears at the top of the result page when you make a query which Google perceives has local intent. Earlier, Google would provide 3 local search results in the One Box area along with a rating in stars and a short review. Now you would see 10 local search results listed A-J.

This major change would help Google gain support from the local small and medium sized businesses, which in other words means more lead generation for advertisers. This is due to the fact that with this arrangement, Google would be able to pull in more online traffic and also increase the number of alliances with local advertisers who would be able to provide new revenue streams and provide further local data.

Ask is Creating Big News with Latest Launch - BigNews

Ask.com, one of the leading search engines in the online world, has now launched its new service called BigNews. The BigNews is a search service that is similar to Google News with traces of Digg. There is something called “BigFactor” that would be used to rank the stories with respect to freshness, impact, use of multimedia and the related discussion it brings along. BigNews gives you category clusters and lets you browse the Diggs from the top Diggs to the no Diggs as well. There is also a section on 'Blogviews' that would mark the new posts from a few chosen blogs.

Google Properties Breakdown

We all know that Google's strength is in search - but how dominant is search compared with other Google properties and where is Google's growth coming from? The following table shows the top 20 Google properties based on share of US Internet visits last week. I created the table using a Hitwise Custom Category so the market share figure is based on the share of visits within that category of Google properties.

As you can see, Google's online presence is still dominated very much by search, accounting for 70.10% of visits to the top Google properties last week. (I should mention that Google has changed their URL structure so that Google Product (Froogle) is now counted as part of Google.com.)

I took a look at what Google properties are growing fastest. I was amazed to see that Google.com and YouTube traffic continue to experience strong growth. Google ranked #1 and YouTube #10 last week in share of US Internet visits. Market share of US Internet visits to Google were up 20% year on year last week and YouTube's visits were up 19%. YouTube's growth is due in part to a corresponding decline in visits to Google Video (down 57% year on year last week).

A number of properties in this top 20 have seen their traffic more than double year on year, including Google Maps, Blogger, Google Groups, Google Calendar, Picassa Web,

Properties seeing a decline in traffic were Google Video (-57%), Orkut (-15%), Google Pack (-32%) and Google Toolbar (-31%).

Source: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/us-heather-hopkins/2008/01/google_properties_breakdown.html

Rumor: Is Google About to Buy Bebo For $1 Billion To $1.5 Billion? Or Will it Be MySpace?

An unconfirmed rumor has surfaced that either Google or MySpace is about to announce a big $1 billion to $1.5 billion acquisition in the social space. After checking around with multiple industry sources, we’ve concluded that if the rumor is true the most likely candidate is Bebo, which we are told is raising capital and simultaneously shopping itself around again. We put the chances of this rumor being true at a solid 50 percent. Update: Make that a solid 51 percent.

To be clear, there is a long history of rumors surrounding Bebo as an acquisition target that turned out to be false or never panned out. The last one was in May 2007, when Yahoo supposedly wanted to buy it for $1 billion. At a TechCrunch party last summer (before I was working here), Bebo CEO Michael Birch told me that the Yahoo bid was a complete fabrication and the first he heard of it was from his Dad, who called him up after reading about it. When I contacted Birch last night about this latest rumor, he had no comment.

Let’s just go through the logic for each potential buyer, who might be bidding against each other. An acquisition of this size by Google in the face of Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo would show how swift Google can act while its competitors dither. It would also show that what it is really scared of is not a combined Microsoft-Yahoo, but the growing threat from fresh-faced upstart Facebook.

Google already owns Orkut, one of the biggest social networks globally, especially in Latin America. It just has not caught on in the U.S. Bebo is also a global play, but its strength is in English-speaking countries such as the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. According to comScore, Bebo had 21 million unique visitors worldwide in December, 2007, with about 4 million in the U.S. Orkut had 25 million worldwide unique visitors. So Google would nearly double its social networking market share, as measured by active members. And it would have a strong English-speaking social network with which to begin to challenge Facebook here in the U.S.

Bebo is already part of Google’s OpenSocial platform, even though it embraced Facebook’s competing platform also. You can bet that Bebo’s Facebook effort would get a bullet in the head pretty quickly if it became part of Google. Still, given Google’s recent earnings shortcomings, which were partly attributed to an inability to make its ads on MySpace pay off, investors might not be so keen to see the search engine double-down on social networking. It is a distraction it can do without.

So what then of MySpace/News Corp.? What does it need Bebo for? It’s 107 million worldwide unique visitors overshadows every other social network out there. But Bebo could help MySpace with its global expansion, particularly in markets like the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, where it is weak. Securing the No. 1 spot in each international market is the key to dominating them.

There is also a technology play here for MySpace. Both MySpace and Bebo are adopting OpenSocial as a way to let outside developers create apps for their social networks, so there would be interoperability on that front. But more importantly, Bebo has done a good job of adding the latest features to its site while still keeping it clean of clutter. MySpace could use some of that DNA, and beef up its engineering ranks with a serious Silicon Valley presence. One billion dollars to future-proof its site does not seem like too much to pay.

Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/06/rumor-is-google-about-to-buy-bebo-for-1-billion-to-15-billion-or-will-it-be-myspace/

Gmail Has a Daily Limit on Sending Email

Gmail imposes a limit on the attachment size (20 MB) and the overall storage space (6 GB and growing) but there’s also a daily quote on sending email. Break the rules and Google will disable you Gmail account temporarily without any warnings.

So while sending an email message to a large group of friends using Gmail, read the following rules to avoid temporary shut-down of Gmail:

Rule 1. If you access Gmail via POP or IMAP clients (like Microsoft Outlook), you can send an email message to a maximum of 100 people at a time. Cross the limit and your account will be disabled for a day with the error "550 5.4.5 Daily sending quota exceeded."

Rule 2. If you access Gmail from the browser, you may not address an email message to more than 500 people at a time. Try adding any more recipients in the To, CC or BCC field and your Gmail account will get probably disabled for 24-72 hours. Error: "Gmail Lockdown in Secton 4"

Rule 3. Always double check email addresses of recipients before hitting the Send button in Gmail. That’s because your account will get disabled if the email message contains a large number of non-existent or broken addresses (<25>

Rule 4: This is slightly unrelated but still important - Google will disable your Gmail account permanently if you don’t check your Gmail email for a period of nine months. All the stored messages will be deleted and you Gmail address (user name) may be released for others to grab it.

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/gmail-daily-limit-sending-bulk-email/2191/

comScore Releases 2007 U.S. Internet Year in Review

Google and Facebook among Biggest Winners in 2007

RESTON, VA, January 30, 2008 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a report highlighting the major trends in U.S. Internet activity in 2007, including top gaining properties and site categories, and core search market growth. The biggest winners in 2007 featured some of the top Internet brands, including Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and Craigslist.

Top-Gaining Properties in 2007

A study of the growth in visitors among the top 100 U.S. Internet properties revealed that 2007 was a strong year for several of the largest properties. Social networking giant Facebook.com reaped the benefits of opening registration to all users, jumping 81 percent versus December 2006 to 34.7 million visitors in December 2007. Wikipedia Sites gained 34 percent to reach nearly 52 million visitors, continuing its reign as the Web’s most popular reference hub. Leading classified site Craigslist.org jumped 74 percent to 24.5 million visitors, while AT&T grew 27 percent to 30.2 million visitors boosted by its exclusive deal with Apple as carrier for the iPhone. Yellow Book Network jumped an impressive 137-percent to 10.4 million visitors

Several of the top-gaining properties were driven by the acquisition of Web entities including, but not limited to, the following:

• Everyday Health gained 349 percent driven by its acquisition of several web sites and the addition of Drugs.com to their network.
• Women’s category leader, Glam Media, grew 213 percent during the year, due in large part to the addition of several new entities, including Quality Health Network, MyYearbook.com, and LifeScript.com, among others.
• Yellow Book Network grew 137-percent to 10.4 million visitors, as visitation to Yellowbook.com Sites tripled (up 207 percent to 4.6 million visitors) and one new entity was added to the property.
• iVillage.com: The Women’s Network gained 27 percent with the addition of Sugar Publishing, MakeoverSolutions.com, and iWin.com, among others.
• Demand Media added numerous entities under its Demand Media Knowledge and Demand Media Games media titles, which contributed to its 149-percent growth.
• OfficeMax’s dramatic 199-percent gain was driven primarily by a December 2007 surge in visitation to its popular viral holiday greetings site ElfYourself.com.

comScore Top 20 Gaining Properties by Percentage Change in Unique Visitors* (U.S.) December 2007 vs. December 2006 Total U.S. Home, Work and University Internet Users Source: comScore Media Metrix
	Total Unique Visitors (000)
	Dec-06	Dec-07	% Change
Total U.S. Internet Audience	174,199	183,619	5
Everyday Health	2,690	12,073	349
Glam Media	7,994	25,028	213
OfficeMax	5,130	15,339	199
Demand Media	5,999	14,958	149
Yellow Book Network	4,386	10,388	137
ValueClick Sites	6,339	13,013	105
Facebook.com	19,105	34,658	81
WorldNow – ABC Owned Sites	8,714	15,474	78
Craigslist.org	14,075	24,468	74
Experian Interactive	8,054	12,500	55
Yellowpages.com Network	16,168	24,453	51
AmericanGreetings Property	11,982	18,102	51
Comcast Corporation	18,716	26,445	41
UGO	8,450	11,912	41
The Mozilla Organization	10,948	15,267	39
Answers.com Sites	10,707	14,899	39
Wikipedia Sites	38,585	51,851	34
iVillage.com: The Womens Network	13,545	17,234	27
AT&T, Inc.	23,833	30,212	27
Internet Broadcasting Systems	9,894	12,394	25

*Ranking based on the top 100 properties in December 2007.

Top-Gaining Site Categories in 2007

The top-gaining site categories in 2007 reflected trends in both the online and offline worlds. The politics category grabbed the top position, gaining 35 percent, as the 2008 presidential election and primary season kicked into high gear. Women’s community sites also jumped 35 percent, as the top two properties in the category, Glam Media and iVillage.com, saw strong growth. With the ever-increasing coverage of celebrity news, from Britney Spears’ meltdowns to Anna Nicole Smith’s death, entertainment news sites jumped 32 percent. Online classifieds had a strong 2007 growing 31 percent versus year ago, as it continued to impinge on traditional news media’s classified revenues.

comScore Top 10 Gaining Categories by Percentage Change in Unique Visitors (U.S.) December 2007 vs. December 2006 Total U.S. Home, Work and University Internet Users Source: comScore Media Metrix
	Total Unique Visitors (000)
	Dec-06	Dec-07	% Change
Total U.S. Internet Audience	174,199	183,619	5
Politics	6,192	8,384	35
Community - Women	51,632	69,854	35
Entertainment - News	37,093	49,023	32
Classifieds	31,867	41,688	31
Career – Training and Education	7,865	10,279	31
Gay/Lesbian	1,843	2,367	28
Retail – Consumer Goods	28,829	35,936	25
Finance – News/Research	43,317	52,064	20
Teens	23,313	27,979	20
Religion	19,101	22,886	20

Core Search Query Growth in 2007

In 2007, searches at the five major core search engines increased 15 percent to 9.6 billion searches. Google Sites led with 5.6 billion searches in December 2007, up more than 30 percent from the previous year. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 2.2 billion searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (940 million), Time Warner Network (442 million), and Ask Network (415 million).

comScore Core Search Report* December 2007 vs. December 2006 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch 2.0
Core Search Entity	Search Queries (MM)
	Dec-06	Dec-07	Percent Change Dec-07 vs. Dec-06
Total Core Search	8,348	9,636	15%
Google Sites	4,317	5,629	30%
Yahoo! Sites	2,300	2,211	-4%
Microsoft Sites	871	940	8%
Time Warner Network	465	442	-5%
Ask Network	396	415	5%

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

More than 113 billion core searches were conducted in the U.S. during all of 2007, with Google Sites accounting for nearly 64 billion, representing a 56 percent share of the market.

Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2043