Article by Barry K. Rothman

It’s been four years now ever since European Union decided to investigate Google’s antitrust violations and which has now been brought to a standstill.

In talking about the complexity of this problem, the European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, reveals in a statement, “Our current investigations involving Google are among the most discussed in the media. The sheer amount of data controlled by Google gives rise to a series of societal challenges. Privacy is one of the most pressing concerns. Media pluralism is another. Not all of these challenges are primarily economic in nature and not all of them are competition related. So many of the Google related concerns voiced in the public debate cannot be addressed in our investigations into the company’s alleged anti-competitive practices. We will have to limit ourselves to what we identify as competition problems.”

She goes to say that more time will be needed to decide what steps need to be taken against Google. This can spell trouble for both Yelp and Microsoft who have been behind this complaint as well as a number of other competitors.

Of course, she also intends to speak to those who have been affected by Google’s practices and which will involve taking into consideration a “representative sample of views of those concerned”. In addition to this, getting all the facts right, in a fast-moving market, is also a priority that she is taking very seriously.

This development comes at the inopportune time when the commission was so close to making a clear decision on the matter.

Author’s Bio:
Barry K. Rothman is an attorney from California practicing over 4 decades. He serves clients in Business and Entertainment Law. Visit Barry K. Rothman Reviews on Yelp to read some of his reviews.

 


Article by Pierre Zarokian.

When well over 570 websites and 70 new domains are created with every passing day, the only way that your online content can get a healthy flow of traffic is by maintaining a high search engine ranking through a top-notch SEO campaign. Generally speaking, investing in professional help from a search marketing agency will be the best way to run an effective campaign.

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Due to the extreme density of new web content getting generated by the second, the Google Search Algorithm (also known as Googlebot) must be very discretionary in choosing what content it chooses to index. Upon identifying a website to analyze, the search algorithm scrutinizes every relevant bit of data on its webpages (also known as crawling) in order to try and ascertain its purpose. Continue reading


Article Submitted by iClimber.

With Kodak on the verge of bankruptcy, almost 1100 of its patents are up for sale for about 500+ million. However, this has brought together two bitter enemies, Google and Apple, who have teamed up to buy these patents. This might come as a surprise considering the ‘patent war’ that has made the news recently. However, it seems as if with this move, Tim Cook is more than happy to put Apple’s affinity for litigation behind them.

What both these companies also share in common is that they aren’t particularly too fond of the current patent system, which according to both CEOs, is bad for innovation. Apart from this, analysts also believe that by teaming up, they’re actually making a smart business decision, as both companies have spent plenty of money in court and have also been quietly bidding for Kodak’s patents on their own. However, this partnership does a lot to save costs as in teaming up together, Kodak won’t be tempted to up the bid by pitting these companies against each other. While this might be a shrewd choice, it will also help Kodak to pay off its debt, after being in business for almost 132 years.

Experts believe that this combined approach by both Google and Apple seem to be a much better one as opposed to the preposterous amount, $4.5 billion in all, paid by almost every tech giant for the Nortel patent while Google alone spent almost $12.4 billion for Motorola Mobility and its 20,000 patents. And even though both companies can easily come up with $500 million in the next four months, and rescue Kodak, it’s rather unfortunate to see the latter close its doors.

This article was submitted by iClimber, who offers social media marketing services.


Article submitted by Submit Express.

It’s unanimous that Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google dominate the online world yet according to panelists at the Techonomy Conference, Apple and Facebook are particularly vulnerable.

One of the panelists, known as Alec Ellison, the chairman of technology investment banking at Jefferies & Company, has criticized Apple, in saying that the company must continue to come up with cool new products if it wants to remain in the lead. Alternatively, the other three namely Facebook, Amazon and Google won’t lose much ground even if they don’t come up with innovative products.

He also said that the Apple Store, which is a key advantage now, might work against them in the near future and likened it to the example of IBM stores that only became a “big drain” when product momentum slowed down. Citing these reasons, he also went as far as to say that Apple has the least “stickiness” with customer compared to the other three.

As for Facebook, Mark Mahaney, a former analyst at Citi, Mark Zuckerberg remains a big question mark as he has only spent time with Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick but very little with anyone else. Hence, the question mark as it doesn’t reveal how good executives really are for the next 5 to 10 years.

He also said that Facebook’s margins are very high and they should switch to ‘investment mode’ as soon as possible. Also, one area that Facebook hasn’t invested sufficiently enough has been mobile where, due to HTML5, their mobile apps have significant technical issues while it took them far too long to come out with an iPad app.

Also, the analyst, Mahaney also said that in the next few years another big online player will emerge, thanks to using a technology that isn’t economic yet.

Article submitted by Submit Express. If you need SEO services or online reputation management services, visit Submit Express.


Google strikes a new deal with European music publishing entities which now gives it access to 5.5 million tracks in 35 countries, and which includes artists such as Rihanna and Lady Gaga.

Considered to be one of the largest alliances of music publishers, Armonia will help Google to expand its music offerings in Europe will mean competition for both Amazon and Apple. In fact, the terms of this deal are exactly “in line with industry standards involving Google rivals like Amazon and Apple’s iTunes”.

Catherine Kerr-Vignale, SACEM representative, also considers this deal to be much broader than Apple and Amazon’s country-by-country licensing agreements, and which really boils down to more of its users being able to access more content in more places than before – 35 more countries to be precise.

Until now, Google Play has only had US-only content, and was not able to compete in countries where it lags behind competitors such as Apple and Amazon. With this type of deal, not only can it gain an upper hand on the competition but also offer more international content for its Google Play users.

Another reason why this deal can turn out to advantageous for Google is because it will not only compete with Apple but will prevent Amazon from using Android as their content delivery system for their own marketplace.

What this deal will also do is address the complaints made by international reviewers about the lack of content that the Nexus 7 is unable to offer its consumer outside the United States. This deal between Google and Armonia also offers content from the UK and American parts of the Universal Music Publishing library as well as Sony’s Latin Catalog.