Google’s Q1 Better than Expected
Just another typical Google quarterly earnings report…
* Net income rose 69% to $1 billion compared to $592 million a year earlier.
* Gross revenue up 63% to $3.66 billion.
Analysts had expected gross revenue of around $3.57 billion and much less profit per share than Google actually delivered.
Mozilla Releases Thunderbird 2.0.0
“The Mozilla Corporation has released Thunderbird 2.0.0. Among the improvements are Message Tagging, updated UI, Advanced Folder Views, Better New Mail Notification and Full Support for Windows Vista and 64-bit versions of Windows.”
Goodbye Froogle
Froogle has been renamed “Google Product Search†says Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search & User Experience. It also sports a redesign, and product results are now returned at the top of normal Google search results at appropriate times.
Thus ends the name Froogle as a Google brand. It was launched in 2002, never really went anywhere, and was unceremoniously dumped from the Google home page last year in favor of video search. Traffic to the site fell dramatically.
Danny Sullivan has a good long writeup of the new service. Froogle (the brand) is now in the TechCrunch DeadPool.
Use Robots.txt, Save the World
Robots.txt Help the Search Engines Learn All About Your Website
There is a growing interest in the little known file that every website should have in the root directory: robots.txt
It’s a very simple text file you can find all about at the robotstxt.org website.
Why should you use it ? Here are some good reasons for you to consider.
Controlled Access to Your Content
With a robots.txt file you can “ask” the search engines to “keep out” of certain areas of your website. A typical area you might like to exclude is your images folder: If you aren’t a photographer, painter and your images are for your website use only, there are good chances you don’t want them to be indexed and showing up on image search engines, for people to download, or hotlink.
Unfortunately grabbers and similar software (such as Email harvesting applications) will not read your robots.txt file disregarding any indication you may provide in this respect. But that’s life isn’t it, always someone being disrespectful to say the least …
You can keep search engines away from content you wish to keep out of sight, but remember your robots file is also subject to attention of hackers seeking sensitive objectives you might inadvertently lÃst: keeping out the robots while inviting the hackers � keep this in mind.
The Growing Importance of Robots.Txt
At SES New York a robots.txt summit was held where major search engines (Ask, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!) participated, sharing interesting information on this file. Here are some numbers.
According to Keith Hogan from Ask:
i) Less than 35% of websites have a robots.txt file
ii) The majority of robots.txt files are copied from others found online
iii) On many occasions robots.txt files are provided by your web hostÃng service
It looks like the majority of webmasters aren’t familiar with this file. This is going to play a major role as the size of the web continues to grow: Spidering is a costly effort that search engines tend to optimize. Those web sites demonstrating optimal command (which in turn determines efficiency) will be rewarded.
What Americans Think Of The iPhone
The anticipation of the launch of Apple’s iPhone has created plenty
of buzz. A new survey from Harris Interactive takes a deeper look
on what American think about the mother of all mobiles.
They found that the iPhone is not yet a household word but that 47
percent of respondents were aware of the product and 17 percent had
an interest in buying it, which they noted was impressive for a
product that has not yet been released.
When it came to the question of when people would buy an iPhone,
nine percent said they would purchase the product at launch, while
another 8 percent would buy before their wireless service contract
expired. Around 17 percent said they would hold off on making a
purchase and wait for their current wireless service to expire.
What’s in Store for the Future of the Internet and Google?
“There’s a possibility that Google will integrate Marratech web
conferencing features into Google Apps (Premier Edition) and
Google Office to make these “virtual office” offerings more
complete and compelling for the corporate world,” Agarwal said.
Those are certainly options for Google, as those products are
oriented toward users similar to WebEx’s target market. Microsoft
plays in these waters as well, just as it does with productivity
suites that Google seems to be competing with despite Eric
Schmidt’s claims otherwise.
Video has been a glaring omission from Google Talk, and we
think Marratech’s technology, which includes video chat, could
be adapted as an enhancement to Google’s IM product.
