Google Makes Phone calls to India cheaper with Gmail Phone

Google has brought out a new feature that would allow Gmail users to call to phone lines from Gmail inbox. Right now, this facility can be enjoyed by U.S. based Gmail users and calling to phone numbers in USA and Canada is free for at least 2010. This new feature would also decrease the charge of calling to India.

According to the comparison chart, Google will charge 6 ¢/min for calling to India while "Leading internet telephony provider" is charging 9.2 ¢/min + connection fee. Google did not mention who this leading internet telephony provider is but it is clear that Google has Skype in its mind as Skype has the rate of 9.2 ¢/min + connection fee for calling to India.   

This is good news for people of Indian origin living in USA and Canada. There are more than 2.5 million of people of Indian origin in USA and thus, it is an important market for both Google and Skype.

Google is offering lower rated compared to Skype for other South Asian countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan.  

Google 2nd-quarter Results Very Impressive but…..

The results of second-quarter are out for Google and the stats looked very impressive. However, the figures were just short of the expectations of Wall Street people and as a result the shares of the company suffered some fall. The company is likely to continue its strong dominance in Internet search market for the time being at least.

On a year to year basis, the company earned 24% more in April-June 2010 compared to the same period in 2009. However, the Wall Street had some higher expectations and as a result, it did not help the share price.

The main problem of Google in the last few months has been rising expense in Europe. Some European countries like Greece are suffering from economic downturn and this problem is going to continue. Google has very strong presence in the European market and nearly one-third of its revenue originates from there at the moment.

Google managed to add some new employees in the last quarter. The company has been continuously doing when it comes to keeping its very high market share in the search market. However, Google has been finding it very difficult to emulate the same kind of success in other areas.

Another problem that the company needs to address is its ongoing battle with Chinese government. China has the largest number of Internet users in the world. It also has the largest number of mobile phone users. This is a market that Google simply cannot afford to lose if it wants to remain as the number one Internet based company in the world.

For the moments, things look great for Google and it will be not be surprising if the company can post impressive figures for the 3^rd-quarter results of 2010 just after 3 months. 

The Next Android Iteration Codenamed Froyo

Google is working hard on the next Iteration of Android and from now it is making ready the market to accept after 6 months eagerly!

Android 2.x will show a majoy update over the current Android and Google has already named it “Froyo”. That is short for “ Frozen Yogurt” to follow the past Android’s revisions like  Android 1.6 called “Donut" and 2.0 named "Eclair."

There is no information about the new version. Electronista has mentioned that “ 2.1 adds animated backgrounds and other more noticeable changes”.

We have to wait some more that Google releases more information about this tasty Version!

Will there be a Google Page Rank Update on October 2009?

Page Rank is a very important factor for any blog or website. For example, this blog (South Asia Blog) has a PR 6 in a scale of 10 according to Google. Six is considered to be a good one but 7 is obviously much better. I wish that someday, I can have a blog with PR 7 or 8. Anyway, there is perhaps a lot of expectations among the bloggers that there will be an update in PR in the first few days of October 2009. The problem is that only Google officials know when will be the next update and if you ask my opinion then I would say that there should PR update at the beginning of each month.

After all, Google is now the giant in search engine market and no one is near it. Good thing is that Google Caffeine is coming any day and then we should expect much faster indexing and updating. I have noticed that some of my entries of this blog and another blog get indexed within even 1 minute after uploading. It shows that things will be faster when Google Caffeine comes out in full force.

So, to answer the original question, most likely there will be a Page Rank Update at the first week of October 2009 but if it does not happen then do not blame me because I am no way related to the mighty search engine.

Can Google Help the Newspaper Industry with Micro payment System

Well, it is very bad time for the printer newspaper industry. They are facing increasing competition from Internet and some newspaper owners feel that Google is the villain. Well, they are wrong because Google is not stealing their content. In fact, no one is stealing their content. Instead, what they don’t understand is that their system is outdates. Internet publishing is very cheap and for example, for maintaining this blog, I do not have to spend any money. We try to update it regularly and every month this blog is visited by more or less 100,000 people. Now, Google is thinking of helping the newspapers with a micro payment method.

PC World reported:

In the next year, Google plans to launch a "micropayments" feature as part of its Checkout online payments service, it said in the document. The system could allow consumers to buy a package subscription to several publications and then pay for other stories on an a la carte basis. In a separate statement, Google said on Thursday it had no specific products to announce. But in a separate statement on Thursday, Google said it had no specific products to announce yet.

"The idea is to allow viable payments of a penny to several dollars by aggregating purchases across merchants," Google said in the document.

Newspaper owners should remember that online advertisement revenue is increasing while offline revenue is declining. 

A small Step from Google: A Giant Leap for Bloggers

If you are a regular visitor to this blog then you will notice that I do not use images or pictures that much. Well, the reason is that I am afraid of breaking copyrights in images. I know that some bloggers do it without giving that much thought. However, I like to follow the rules. That is why, I am so happy to see that Google has introduced a great new search feature in Image Search.

Official Blog of Google Wrote:

To enable this feature, go to our advanced image search page. Under the "Usage rights" section, you can select the type of license you'd like to search for, such as those marked for reuse or even for commercial reuse with modification. Your results will be restricted to images marked with CC or other licenses. Once you confirm the license of the image and make sure that your use will comply with the terms of the license (such as proper attribution to the image's owner), you can reuse the image. Some of you may already see these options, and we'll be rolling this feature out to everyone throughout the day.

This is a great day for all the bloggers. Google has introduced this feature mainly think of bloggers like us who want to follow the rule. That is why, I like the company and that is why, they are the best in Internet search engine market.