goog posts

Filed under: Business, Text, Web services, Google, Search

Google adds maps to 1-800-GOOG-411

by Chris Gilmer Jul 2nd 2007

Google has beefed up its 411 voice search service with some directions.

Google launched a 411 voice search at 1-800-GOOG-411 in April. The service allows users to call in a search query and get the result by voice. Now Google has integrated maps into the voice search. The 411 voice search service with maps works the same way, but during your call you would say "map it" to get a text message with details of your search plus a link out to a map result on your mobile phone.

1-800-GOOG-411 is a free service, but only available in the US for US based business listings.

Tags: 411, goog, phone, search, voice

Filed under: Video, Hardware

Should MSFT, YHOO, or GOOG buy TiVo?

by Jordan Running Oct 27th 2006

PRV Wire's Chris Tew has written an interesting editorial in which he argues that "There is one company that Google, Microsoft or Yahoo could acquire to ensure they will be well placed on the living room TV, and that company is TiVo." Chris rules out Microsoft because they've already got their foot in your living room with Windows Media Center and because TiVo runs on Linux. Yahoo! and TiVo already have a partnership and YHOO has a history of big acquisitions. "Securing its services on TiVo," says Chris, "could give Yahoo an advantage it desperately needs" over Google. Google, of course, is also a big spender, and would love to get its ads into the living room.

In the end, Chris puts his money on Yahoo!, but I wouldn't rule out Microsoft so quickly. Microsoft already has a hardware arm and could easily merge the Media Center and TiVo product lines with a branded TiVo version of Windows MCE, and many of the TiVo faithful wouldn't bat an eyelash. In the end, I think it would be ideological, rather than technical, differences that would hamstring a MSFT-TiVo buy-out. But I guess I'll side with Chris on this one--of those three companies, Yahoo! seems like the best candidate, and may be foaming at the mouth for a new avenue of expansion to pursue.

Tags: acquisition, goog, google, media center, MediaCenter, microsoft, msft, pvr, tivo, yahoo, yhoo

Filed under: Finance, Internet, Google

Google Share Error

by Chris Gilmer Jul 31st 2006

Seems like someone made a booboo at the close of the NASDAQ last Thursday, dropping Google shares $350.

The supposed details of this massive error started at the close of NASDAQ when Google trading ended at 4pm with $387.12 a share. Shortly after closing, Google made an announcement that they had better then expected earnings, but less then the quarter before. 4:02 pm hit, and Google's shares dropped down to about $364, then gained steadily to $391. When the $391 per share price hit, it seems like someone at Nasdaq hit some wrong numbers when an Instinet-ATS order triggered trades at $38 per share between 4:10 and 4:12pm. When that started happening, trades starting going wild between $38.05 and $37.81.

Everything was sorted out and restored shortly after.

The New York Sun has some great stories about traders. Especially one who was told by his broker that his previous 200 share investment in Google at $380 per share, $76,000 total investment, was down $68,400. I'm sure someone at the Securities and Exchange Commission is going to have some major explaining to do.

Tags: broker, finance, goog, google, invest, nasdaq, securities and exchange, SecuritiesAndExchange, share, stock, trades

Filed under: Business, Finance, Web services, Google

Google Finance launched

by Jordan Running Mar 21st 2006

After last month's rumors, Google took nobody by surprise today with the launch of Google Finance. The new financial portal is pretty slick, with a similar feel to Google Maps. Stock charts are powered by Flash rather than AJAX and have a very flexible interface. Along with all the usual info like market cap, volume, and so on, Google Finance also annotates its charts with recent news articles and even blog and newsgroup chatter. One feature I found cute is the "Management" are of the page that lists the company's higher ups—if you hover your mouse over one of their names, a little headshot of them will pop up. Ironically, when I hit the page for Apple (AAPL), it showed no photo for Steve Jobs, possibly the most-photographed CEO in the valley.

Tags: business, charts, finance, goog, google, money, stocks

Filed under: Office, Web services, Google

Google buys Writely, office domination inevitable?

by Jordan Running Mar 9th 2006

Another piece of Google's fabled web-based office suite falls into place with the big G's acquisition of Writely, the web-based word processor that we (and everyone else) have been keeping an eye on since its beta launch last year. To refresh your memory, Writely is the flagship product of Upstartle and lets people collaboratively write and edit documents in their web browser. Writely shares its category with heavy hitter 37signals' Writeboard, Zoho Writer, and many more that seem to be popping up weekly. As Om Malik points out, Google has Gmail and its upcoming CL2 calendar app poised to replace Outlook and Google Base has the potential to replace the likes of Access, so all that's missing for a complete ~~Voltron~~ office suite is a spreadsheet app and a PowerPoint-killer.

Tags: acquisition, business, CL2, goog, google, office, Om Malik, writeboard, writely, zoho

Filed under: Business, Finance, Web services, Google

Rumor Alert: Google Finance?

by Jordan Running Feb 24th 2006

This one falls firmly into the wild speculation category, but Search Engine Journal is reporting that this morning it saw a number of referrals from google.com/finance. The requests came from Google IPs and the referrers included queries for "GOOG," Google's stock symbol, and led to SEJ's most recent articles about Google. This would seem to indicate that google.com/finance is a site that rolls stock information, business news, and other relevant Google content into one portal. Google PR is characteristically mum, saying only, "We’re always exploring opportunities to expand our offerings, but don’t have anything to announce at this time." I agree with SEJ: The fact that Google Finance has its own google.com URL (and not just an internal Google IP) would seem to indicate that whatever it is, it's pretty close to launch. (And yes, the "logo" above is faked by me.)

[Via Jeremy Zawodny]

Tags: business, finance, goog, google, google finance, Jeremy Zawodny, money, search engine journal, stocks

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