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November 26, 2006
Google Blog #3
Google Shares Reaches $500 landmark
After successfully acquiring YouTube, Google's stock reached a landmark of $500 per share, closing at $509.65. Since it first went public at $85, Google jumped nearly six-folds. The #1 search engine surpass this milestone for the first time in history, demonstrating strong market power and healthy cash flow.
Over the last couple of years, Google seems to have dominated the search engine business, outperforming Yahoo. In fact, with its stock price rising, Google is now the second most valuable company in Silicon Valley, surpassing Intel and Hewlett-Packard. Cisco remains to be the only other company more profitable. Wow!
It seems unimaginable that a company providing a simple type-and-click search service can surpass computer giant Hewlett-Packard as well as Intel, the world’s largest chip maker.
From an investor’s perspective, Google has momentum. Growing since 2004 and recently acquiring other popular start-ups, Google will continue to increase sales and profit as demand for online advertising increases. Expectations for next quarter earnings are high according to several analysts.
``Expectations for the online advertising market overall remain very robust,'' said Sasa Zorovic, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in Boston who rates the shares 'buy.' ``Revenue continues to grow very nicely.''
“I was one of the first analysts to expect $100 billion market cap,” Rohan said. “It’s clearly exceeded any expectations I could’ve had along the way. The growth that Google has been able to capture is unprecedented.”
All in all, Google has made its mark. Everyone knows it, and most people use it. Synonymous with the word search, “Google” is defined as “to search for information about a specific person through the Google search engine” on dictionary.com.
Again, it seems unimaginable that a simple type-and-click search engine service can be worth so much, and it is absolutely ridiculous that Google have over 100 millionaire employees. This company could prove very profitable as we BBA's jumpstart our careers, where the typical annual starting salary of $60,000 could amass up to millions.
With one great idea and over 80,000 geeks working, Google is now worth over $155 billion!!!!!!
Posted by lisun at 09:00 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2006
Google Blog #2
Welcome the Cavaliers!
On November 14th, Google announced the University of Virginia will be included within their "Google Books Library Project." Essentially this project involves the digitalization of thousands of books which will then become available online through Google's Book Search Function. According to the press release, the inclusion of Virginia will allow the search engine access to "more than five million volumes, 17 million manuscripts, rare books and archives, and rapidly-growing digital collections."
Bret and Li had both heard of this program, I had not -- and I think it is pretty cool [probably because I typically search with (shhhh) yahoo]. Essentially anyone who has the internet can come and look through the books online. The only exception are books which are copyright protected -- but even with those you can look through the books in the most basic manner.
Through this addition, the google library continues to contain a well-respected holding of libraries, including "[the] University of California, Harvard University, University Complutense of Madrid, University of Michigan, the New York Public Library, Oxford University, Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison."
From a press release on December 14th, 2004, the goal of the project was to "make the incredible breadth of information that librarians so lovingly organize searchable online"
"Google's mission is to organize the world's information, and we're excited to be working with libraries to help make this mission a reality."
-Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of Products
Will they be able to organize ALL information?
Probably not, but by combining with these well respected Universities they are certainly getting their fare share of information. And when reading the release I couldn't help but think about how far internet technology has really taken us.....years ago you would have to drive to the library, find the library card in the stacks, walk to the book, and hand copy it if you wanted information. But now? I can read an online book from the 13th century while checking my portfolio and watching Saturday cartoons.
The result?
Schools are better
Education as a whole is better
The world around us is better
Google's innovation wins once again
For a full synopsis of Google's Book Literacy Project please see Bret's October 15th Blog: Google launches literacy project
Posted by grantrob at 08:03 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2006
Google Blog #1
Google's New Frontier: Print Ads
Dictionary.com definition:
Google – Innovative company whose expansion is unlimited and strives to have their hands in every aspect of the media world.
Ok, maybe that wasn’t the exact definition but it can’t be too far off, especially after reading about Google’s newest pet project, Google Print Ads. GPA is taking notes from the success of their Internet advertising network and moving into the field of print. The general idea behind the project which is still in experimental stages is Google will buy up ad pages in tech magazines, divide them up into smaller sections, and then resell those sections to advertisers who bid on them.
GPA marks Google’s first move offline and will establish Google as an intermediary between publishers and advertisers. The addition of print ads is part of an effort to find new sales and avoid an eventual slowdown in the booming search ads business. Google has been an innovator in the field of advertising, being the pioneers of the extremely lucrative “cost per click” system.
How do advertisers feel about all this…?
"It's a lot of exposure for cheap… (Google is) doing a ton of tracking on this. They're using their own 1-800 numbers on this, and it forwards to our line."
-Jeff Witkowski
President, AHS Systems
"I think Google might be able to bring the same benefits to small advertisers where it is too cost-prohibitive to get into… This is certainly a departure from what they've been doing, but it's certainly a good thing for the industry."
-Michael Keen
President, Inksite
While no one in our group is pursuing a career in advertising, the sheer intuitiveness of the project is still something to be zealous of and is sure to be a topic at the center of many water-cooler talks in months to come.
Posted by eath at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2006
Topic Announcement
As our blogging moves forward, Li, Bret, and I would like to announce "Google's expansion and growth into new areas" as our focused topic for the rest of the semester. Each post will deal with Google's further development as more than a simple search engine -- this includes new topics and continuations of topics from previous blogs.
Two of our past blogs (#'s 2 and 3) were each on Google's development:
Blog #2 can be read here
Blog #3 can be read here.
Posted by grantrob at 07:54 PM | Comments (0)
IT Blog #5
Delicious Tips #2 Managing Tags
Grant, Brett, and I have all been tagging extensively on a variety of IT news and information sites. As we progress over the last few weeks, we have managed to find tools that facilitate our search processes. Two weeks ago, Grant mentioned the search benefits of Delicious Network Explorer.
This week, with more and more sites tagged, we all thought it would be better if we organized our tags a little bit more. So, we found another fun tool called Delicer.
To download Delicer: Delicer Download
This is a desktop program that allows us to effectively manage our whole delicious account. With this program, we can easily search for our own tags and navigate through URLs accordingly without opening a single browser. Also, we can post new, rename existing, and delete old tags without surfing through delicious.com. Furthermore, feeds from You.Tube and Delicious are available with one button-click.
To give an analogy, Delicer to Delicious is essentially like Microsoft Outlook to our email account. It is very useful to us as our bookmark collection increases. Just like me, Grant & Brett have downloaded the program and is currently using it.
Because it is a really cool, efficient bookmark organizer, Delicious is getting more and more popular. So Grant, Brett, and I all think that tools like Delicer is not only helpful but neccessary as Delicious reaches more and more users worldwide.
Along with its functional advantages, the name "Delicer" is really cool because it seems as if you are "slicing" into your bookmark collection. Whoever thought of this name deserve my praises because there is definitely a catch to it.
For more Delicious official and third-party tools, pleas visit Absolute Delicious Tools Collection
Posted by lisun at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)