Welcome to Googleholic - your bi-weekly fix of everything Google!
This edition covers:
Google stock drops below $500
Yahoo gets a call from Google for alternative to Microsoft's "bear hug"
Google Android Developer Challenge gets extension
Google stock drops below $500
For this first time since last August, Google stock prices dropped below $500 this week. Maybe that's due to by Google missing earnings, or because of Google's interference with the Microsoft-Yahoo deal, investor's are losing confidence. Considering that Google stock was selling for around $750 last November, this is quite a drop. Yahoo gets a call from Google for alternative to Microsoft's "bear hug"
The WSJ reports that Google has been making calls to Yahoo to save it from Microsoft by having Yahoo outsource its search and ad business to Google. One does have to consider the irony, especially in the light of David Drummond's post about "openness" and "innovation." If Google practically runs Yahoo, will there really be any competitive search alternatives left? Google Android Developer Challenge gets extension
Although officially announced last week, the deadline for submissions to the Android Developer Challenge has been pushed pack to April 14, 2008. This is apparently due to an update to the development kit, which will be released in a few weeks.
In other Google bits here at Download Squad:
Google's social graph - Google releases an API that indexes the web to determine relationships in your social networks, making it easier to find those same friends when you join a new network.
Avoid looking like a spammer on Gmail - Gmail has limits set on the number of recipients that can receive your emails in a day, and will disable your account if you exceed the limit.
Stanford University Network Workstation, more commonly known as Sun Microsystems, has decided to change its ticker symbol to something a little more meaningful and symbolic.
The SUNW symbol will be changed to the new trading symbol of JAVA as of next week. This marks a new step in the company's growth strategy, focusing on the power and brand strength of Java as a technology for the web.
Sun is not changing the company name, they will still remain a systems company, however they are simply not just a workstation company and they feel that Java does a better job of capturing what they do on the trading room floor.
Are you a digital photographer? Like to bring your camera wherever you go and snap like crazy? Why not enter the world of buying and selling your stock photos?
Lucky Oliver is a community of photographers, designers and artists who all buy and sell stock photos. The images and illustrations in Lucky Oliver are high enough quality for both web and print work, and are pretty affordable and starting at only $1.00. For people interested in submitting images to the image portfolio, there is a photographer's guide on what type of images the team is looking to sell. Photographers have to prove themselves to get started in the system by submitting their three best photos. When they are in the system though, royalties can be range from $0.30 to over $12.50 per use.
No more stealing images from Google for projects, this is an affordable way to get the job done without breaking the bank on high priced stock photos.
$87 million is the number Shutterfly raised in their IPO last week. Apparently they are doing something right. Several friends of mine swear by the online photo service for its many features and ability to print so many products from your photos. I personally love Flickr, and don't have much need for printing my photos on stuff, so I haven't used Shutterfly for that reason. Apparently many people love it, since they are valued at a much higher than Flickr's estimated $35 million. The service is decidedly more consumer-friendly, and not so much catered to the power-user.
DivX, the little video compression software company that could, is aiming to go public this week, CNET is reporting. The company has almost matched last year's annual revenue of $29.3 million in the first 6 months of 2006, and after adding copy protection to its software which helped it land in over 50 million DivX-certified devices to date, the company is now shaking hands with its former enemy: Hollywood studios. DivX is hoping to strike it big with said studios in a lucrative web distribution deal for films, though as far as we can tell, no deals are itching to be signed just yet.
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.
Google has more than doubled its profits since last year at this time. The doubling of profits has been said by Google to be from the launch of some very impressive products and services into the marketplace.
Google's profits went from $342 million last year, to $721 million this year. This was a historically slow quarter, and Google's growth in the quarter had even shocked Eric Schmidt at a press conference into saying "Google grew at an impressive pace during a seasonally slow quarter".
Google's growth is a stark change to the recent news of Yahoo's fall in the market due to its delayed launch and development of its new ad search service.
Microsoft is planning on buying back 8% of its total stock due to a falling net income in the fourth quarter.
This stock buyback will add to the already $30 billion it has already bought back in the past year alone. Microsofts income has reported to have dropped from $3.70 billion to $2.83 billion, mostly die to the growing number of legal expenses incurred over the past while.
Microsoft's expects booming profits come the release of its much anticipated Microsoft Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Windows Vista later this year. Hopefully. How many times have they changed the release date on us so far?
Earlier this week Yahoo! announced changes that would roll out soon to upgrade aspects of the Yahoo! Finance property. One of these changes, and probably the most significant for daily users, is the completely overhauled Stock Charts.
When Google rolled out Google Finance property, most of the hubbub around their offering was the dynamic charts. These hadn't been seen before anywhere and had a lot of "kewl" factor in them. Even without the kewl charts, Yahoo! continued to be the most comprehensive and most visited financial resource on the web. And now, Y! is rolling out their version of dynamic stock charts with lots of "kewl" factor. Read on for an overview of the new features and my thoughts.
Yahoo! announced in a press release that many long-awaited upgrades were soon to appear on Yahoo! Finance, albeit some only in beta form.
Stock Charts - Google showed us that they could beat Yahoo! to the punch with their Ajaxy charting tools. Unfortunately for Google, the financial users are a pragmatic bunch and need more than the "kewl" factor to make them switch as indicated by Yahoo! continuing to hold the financial users' interest. According to this recent announcement, Y! Finance users will soon be enjoying new kewl dynamic charting tools which take advantage of Flash and DHTML . It pays to be patient, eh?
Message boards - Yahoo! has been upgrading its message boards throughout its many sites for many months now. Yahoo! Finance has seen some of these changes already. Easier search, threaded views and now a rating system to quickly locate quality contributors to the conversation.
Y! Finance Badge - Y! Finance badges for your website have been out in beta for a while now but according to this announcement are out of beta and available for general consumption.
Y! Finance Videos - Y! has made huge advances recently in its ability to serve video regardless of where it is hosted. This is spreading to various Y! sites including Y! Finance. Today's announcement points out that video from several news sources are being made available via the Y! Finance site.
The new stock charts are being evasive. Hopefully we will see them in action soon even if only on a beta version of the Y! Finance site.
UPDATE: The new chart tools are being rolled out to small percentage of users for now. This is much as the ! home page revision was revealed to only a few users for their feedback before opening it up to all Y! home page visitors. More Y! Finance users can expect to see the new chart tools as time goes by.
