The UK has seen the closure of three high-profile, traditional retail brands in the last fortnight, following on from a dismal 2012 and an increased downturn for the sector since 2009. The recent closures had legacy presence in bricks and mortar on the UK high street (AKA: the UK’s Main Street or Mall retail profile) […]
A little more than a year after announcing its plans to build a superfast, experimental broadband network somewhere in the U.S., Google has announced where that’s going to happen: Kansas City, Kansas. In selecting a city, our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and […]
The PEW Internet and American Life Project has come out with a new study about internet use based on household income that includes some data on how these segments use search. There’s also interesting stuff here about how income correlates to likelihood to rate and review products, pay for online content, book travel, and access […]
Google and Verizon have announced that they’ll be hosting a conference call today at 10:30 AM Pacific Time. Topic? Not said, but probably related to the rumor last week that the two companies have cut a deal to ensure Google’s content has preferential treatment in Verizon’s network, something that made many wonder if Google’s abandoned […]
We’ll have to wait and see what emerges from the reported discussions between Verizon and Google. However prospect of a patchwork of agreements between large internet companies and ISPs like Verizon over web traffic is highly undesirable. (See update below.) The private Google-Verizon talks are an apparent response to the slow pace of progress on […]
What would you do to get Google to build a super high-speed broadband network in your hometown? If you’re the city of Topeka, Kansas, you’d change your name. To Google, Kansas. According to the Topeka Capital-Journal (err … the Google Capital-Journal?), mayor Bill Bunten issued a proclamation today that renames the city to “Google, Kansas […]
Google continues to flirt with being an ISP or carrier. Several years ago the company was part of the aborted municipal WiFi bid for San Francisco with Earthlink. Google is also one of the major forces behind the White Spaces initiative (“WiFi on steroids“) that seeks unused TV spectrum for broadband purposes. In addition, Google […]
Google wants to make the internet faster. By speeding up the “most important computing platform of our time,” Google believes that consumers and businesses will experience a wide range of benefits, many of which we can imagine, some of which might be revealed over time. There’s no product or specific consumer offering here. Rather Google […]
Although it’s been around for a little while, Google is doing some promotion of its new “Small Business Network.” Believe it or not it’s a lobbying effort to represent small business interests in Washington DC and at the state level. It’s also a clever way to open a new direct communication channel with SMBs: Google’s […]
I’ve been writing monthly articles for Small is Beautiful for about almost a year now, offering observations and insights into what we’ve seen working with small and medium sized businesses from the front lines but will be winding down a bit in 2009. Our focus is still very much on serving the SMB advertiser, but […]
A PEW/Internet and American Life study out today finds that the place Americans turn to most for answers is the internet. The study, which surveyed 2,796 Americans, found that 76% have internet access and that 58% turn to the internet when they have questions about things like health, school, careers, and government issues. The project […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
British Telecom has invested in FON, the Spanish WiFi provider, and says it will build out a free (to BT customers), UK-wide free WiFi network. MarketWatch reports that “BT’s three million plus Total Broadband customers will be able to join the FON WiFi network, which already provides more than 190,000 hotspots worldwide. By doing so, […]
Here’s the Microsoft earnings release: “Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $13.37 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2007, a 13% increase over the same period of the prior year.” Online Services Business is the category where search and other ad revenues are reported. Here’s what the release shows: OSB revenue increased driven primarily […]
Google has launched a new home page for Korea that departs from Google’s “classic,” minimalist home page approach. The new look features animated product buttons below the search box and will become the default home page in the country, a move Google is comfortable with given the near universal presence of broadband.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project just released the findings of a new survey of 4,001 U.S. adults that segments Americans into a range of groups based on usage of and attitudes toward the Internet and mobile phones. The report is provocative (even surprising) but long, so I’m just going to summarize it at […]
Google Goes Wireless from BusinessWeek reports on Google’s lobbying in Washington DC to open up a government auction of licenses for those wanting to provide new wireless services. We know that Google, Microsoft and others would love to use a slice of these radio waves to run their own wireless devices. If this government auction […]
Fred Vogelstein, who penned the semi-infamous “How Yahoo Blew It” piece for Wired Magazine, has a long Q&A style interview with Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt in this month’s issue. Here’s a potentially more interesting earlier Vogelstein interview (previously unpublished) with Schmidt for comparison.