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2009

2009
Google Reportedly Making Bid To Acquire Yelp
December 19, 2009 at 12:38 pm 0

Mountain View, California -- According to various media reports suggesting that Google Inc., world's most popular Internet search engine, is making a bid to acquire the popular San Francisco do-it-yourself review site Yelp Inc., the site that allows users to review restaurants, bars, shops and more, potentially providing the search giant an opportunity to reach deeper into the local business market for more than $500 million, a person familiar with the discussions said.

The two companies have held discussions in the past, but serious talks about a deal are believed to have started several months ago. According to Technology blog TechCrunch and the New York Times quoting marked the discussions as “advanced” and “serious,” respectively, quoting anonymous sources with knowledge of the deal.

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2009
Google Adds 50 New Media Partners To “Fast Flip” Online News Project
December 19, 2009 at 12:36 pm 0

San Francisco -- Internet giant Google amid criticism from media companies, now continuing to appease the dying newspaper industry, has added more than dozens 24 media partners to its online news reader “Fast Flip,” including the Tribune and McClatchy newspaper groups, the Huffington Post and Politico, bringing the total number of newspapers, magazines and blogs in the project to nearly 100.

Google says the Fast Flip project, an early-stage experimental program launched about three months ago, which is designed to make web articles in a magazine-style layout with 'pages' that readers can turn from several online news sources making it easily readably while also anticipating to make some sort of revenue for the publishers and obviously itself.

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2009
Google Adds One Button Duplicate Contacts Sorter To Easily Merge In Gmail
December 18, 2009 at 12:32 pm 0

Mountain View, California -- Managing your contacts can be a pretty irksome task, especially when you have multiple instances of your contacts scattered all over the place. Global search leader Google, earlier this week introduced a new feature Gmail dubbed as contact manager that searches for duplicate contacts and then lets you instantly merge duplicate contacts with the press of a button.

If you have imported contacts from other applications, such as Outlook or Thunderbird, or moved from another webmail service such as Hotmail, it is possible that many of your contacts have duplicate entries. Previously, users had to screen through their address book one at a time -- a process that could be both tedious and time-consuming.

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2009
Google Earth Hits The Road In Style — Integrated Into New Audi A8
December 18, 2009 at 12:29 pm 0

Los Angeles -- The Germans are great admirer of their cars and occasionally they add innovative gadgets in the newest models they export around the world. Search engine giant Google, another creative thinker is partnering with German car manufacturer Audi to include Google Earth and a number of other Google services in its flagship luxury sedan, the new Audi A8.

The 2010 Audi A8 sports a new feature not available in any other automobile: Audi is the first automobile maker to incorporate Google Earth into its cars, with others sure to play along the German's lead. (more…)
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2009
Google And Facebook Launches Custom URL Shorteners
December 16, 2009 at 12:08 pm 0

Mountain View, California -- Google and Facebook are each set to embark into new territory on Monday with the launch of a new URL-shortening service, a tool that modifies a long internet address in to a much shorter string of random characters such as Goo.gl, potentially shaking up the sector and putting pressure on established players such as Bit.ly and TinyURL.com.

Apart from some currently available high-profile shorteners such as TinyURL and Bit.ly, Google's new URL shortener, goo.gl is not an all-purpose link reducer that users can access by going to a standalone site. The roll-out appears to be targeted at increasing user engagement with services such as Twitter, which relies on short 140-character messages.

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2009
Microsoft China Accused Of Plucking Off Design And Code From Plurk
December 16, 2009 at 12:04 pm 0

San Francisco -- With competition between tech titans on the rise, it looks as if Redmond software maker Microsoft is running out of ideas and is now desperately adopting crooked ways on ruining their reputation by using stolen code. A popular Asian microblogging start-up “Plurk” accused Microsoft of plucking off around 80 percent of code and interface design to build a new MSN social-networking site in China.

According to reports, the software giant is suspending access to the MSN site, but it appears it is still online.

“Counterfeiting may be the sincerest form of flattery, but blatant theft of code, design, and UI elements is just not cool, especially when the infringing party is the biggest software company in the world. Yes, we are talking about Microsoft,” reads a blog post from Canada-based startup Plurk, which claims a membership in the “mid seven figures” concentrated primarily in Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. According to a company spokesman, it also has members in the UK, US, Australia, and Canada.

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2009
AOL’s MapQuest Introduces Street-Level Imagery To Catchup With Google Maps
December 15, 2009 at 12:05 pm 0

New York -- AOL's MapQuest has finally announced the launch of “360 degree views,” to its maps today, a feature that saw the day of light almost two-and-a-half years after Google first added similar images to Google Maps Street view. Currently, it is available for 30 cities and 13 suburbs in the United States, with more to come soon.

Of course, it takes a long time to photograph major intersections across the country and add the data to and online mapping service, but in the meantime, Google has been able to take advantage of that head start, along with other unique features, to surpass MapQuest's once large lead in the mapping market, which is likely to become even more significant as smartphone adoption increases, according to HitWise.

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2009
Microsoft’s Bing Maps Powers New Climate Change Web Apps
December 15, 2009 at 12:03 pm 0

Copenhagen, Denmark -- As world leaders gather in Copenhagen, planning to thrust engagement and support of actions against climate change, Software behemoth, Microsoft rolled out a new Web-based applications designed to highlight environmental problems during the COP 15 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which runs through Friday.

Microsoft has rolled out two new applications designed to help individuals analyze the climate debate and manage their carbon footprints. Microsoft is operating with the European Environmental Agency (EEA) to use its Bing Maps, Silverlight multimedia technology and Azure cloud platform to show how climate change is affecting certain regions in Europe.

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2009
AOL In Discussion With Russian Firm DST To Sell ICQ
December 14, 2009 at 11:56 am 0

San Francisco -- Barely days after separating from corporate company Time Warner, AOL Inc. is negotiating to sell its ICQ instant-messaging service to Russian Internet-investment Russian firm, Digital Sky Technologies, is best known for its $200 million stake in Facebook, according to people familiar with the matter.

Quoting unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal said that talks between AOL and the conspicuous Facebook investor are still in the early stages, and AOL has reached out to other parties as well, according to a person familiar with the talks. The sources said that AOL could fetch somewhere between $200 million and $300 million from the sale.

The move reflects one of the first major action from AOL's new chief executive, Tim Armstrong, who just guided the company through a spinoff from Time Warner. AOL bought ICQ's parent firm, Mirabilis, in 1998 for $287 million and other payments worth up to $120 million.

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2009
Google To Introduce Android Smart Phone In 2010, A Latest Blow To Apple Iphone
December 14, 2009 at 11:53 am 0

Mountain View, California -- In its latest attempt to make headway in the lucrative mobile market around the globe, search engine titan Google Inc. is developing its own proprietary Android smartphone dubbed as “Nexus One,” to be released in early 2010 without a mobile carrier partner, marks a new push by the company to take on Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. in the smart-phone market, analysts said.

Google, confirmed the announcement in a blog post this weekend on the Google Mobile blog, and Google engineers around the world are covertly distributed an Android handset to company employees for testing -- known in the internal circle as “Nexus One”.

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