The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.
Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s investment arm, have injected sums (less than $10 million each) into Recorded Future, a company that goes through “tens of thousands” of websites and looks for related actions and conversations between, for example, Twitter accounts, blogs and websites, and analyzes them in order to spot events and trends as early on as possible [Source].
Google has acquired Metaweb Technologies, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that maintains a massive open database that details all sorts of real-world stuff in an effort to “build a smarter, more connected Internet.”
“The web isn’t merely words—it’s information about things in the real world, and understanding the relationships between real-world entities can help us deliver relevant information more quickly,” Google said in a blog post.
Google’s emerging rival Facebook recently announced the Open Graph, a way to map all objects on the web like movies and places and peoples’ relationships to them. The metadata required for this would create a rival structure to what Metaweb has built. And because Facebook has the “like” data recording the preferences of its 500 millions users, it would be in the best position to harness the metadata to create a compelling search product.
A new Google search tool to allow people to search easily for air travel and book travel plans is now on the runway. Google said Thursday that it had agreed to acquire ITA Software, a 14-year-old company that makes software that organizes flight and pricing information, for $700 million in cash.
Given that about half of airline tickets are sold online these days, it’s perhaps no surprise that Google has just snapped up ITA Software in a deal worth some $700m. The search behemoth says it is getting its hands on ITA, which gathers and processes flight information such as seat pricing and availability, to make it easier for people to find quickly the flights they want at the very best prices [Source].
Microsoft bids to keep its grip on corporate computing against Google’s challenge.
In a significant move, Microsoft announced new, web-based versions of popular applications such as Word and Excel as part of the “Office 2010” release, and unveiled changes designed to make it easier for workers to collaborate using its software. These initiatives come at a critical time in the evolution of corporate computing. After dominating the office desktop for so long, Microsoft now faces a growing challenge from a variety of companies that are betting they can leverage the cloud to erode its share of the market.
Among other things, the new, web-based version of Office will make it much easier for workers to use documents and spreadsheets on a host of different devices, including smart phones. Microsoft has also tweaked its software to make it easier for people to, say, embed videos in PowerPoint presentations and to integrate data from their social networks into online calendars and e-mail services. And the company plans to offer a free, stripped down version of its web apps that will compete directly with Google’s mass-market offering [Source].
Apple is accelerating the rate of acquisitions as the company vies with Google for mobile technologies and talent. Since returning to Apple as CEO in 1997, Jobs has made 13 acquisitions, according to Bloomberg data. Of those, five happened in the past seven months alone.
“The pace has really picked up, there seems to be a strategic shift,” said Charlie Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co. in New York. “It looks like there’s an acquisition frenzy going on between Google and Apple in the sense that there’s an increasing urgency on Apple’s part to stay even if not ahead of Google in the phone space and apps space.”
Patent filings may provide clues to potential targets. Apple recently sought patent protection for mobile purchasing and touch-screen technology. Even with the new attention to M&A, Apple will maintain its strategy of focusing on smaller companies rather than taking on the risks of integrating large ones into Apple’s culture.
With more than $23.1 billion in cash, Apple has plenty of money to keep purchasing small startups. Counting long-term investments that the company can “liquidate in a day,” Apple had $41.7 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter, Broadpoint’s Marshall said, In comparison, Google had about $26.5 billion, he said [Source 1] [Source 2].
It was probably only a matter of time before China and Google would find themselves in a major conflict. On the one hand, you have an authoritarian government that believes it has the right to censor information available to its citizens. On the other, you have a California-based Internet company committed to the free flow of information.
In mid-March, Google halted operation of its Internet search engine on the Chinese mainland and started directing users to its Hong Kong site, which is uncensored. Chinese officials retaliated on March 29 by blocking some of Google’s mobile Internet services. Knowledge@Wharton discussed the entire matter here.
According to the latest Hitwise analysis, Google’s lost its crown as the most-visited Web site in the U.S. last week. The new king of Web site traffic is, of course, Facebook.
During the Winter holidays there were a few momentary spikes in traffic which placed Facebook on the top, but if you check out the graph of the long term trend shown above, you can see Facebook’s meteoric rise is now on target to meet or beat Google. And if that curve continues on its trajectory, which it may well do for a while (its market share is 185% up over the same week in 2009, for example,) Facebook will become number one by a huge margin, versus the tiddly little 0.04% separation it currently has above Google’s 7.03% share of average weekly market share.
Nonetheless, Facebook is now in a position to leverage those user visits to seize control of the online ad-placement business from Google–advertisers will begin to do the math and work out which site will get their ads in front of more eyeballs. And while Web 2.0 has been with us for a while, the fact that more people are visiting Facebook than Google indicates that this interactive revolution has really changed online habits [Source].
Google’s ever-expanding empire has added another branch: subsidiary Google Energy has been granted an order by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to buy and sell energy at market rates. See previous post.
Does this mean Google is set to become your power company? Not yet — instead, Google wants more control over the high energy costs of its many data centers, and also aims to become carbon neutral.
A Google spokesperson told CNET: “Right now, we can’t buy affordable, utility-scale, renewable energy in our markets. We want to buy the highest quality, most affordable renewable energy wherever we can and use the green credits.”
Even in these tough times, surprising and extraordinary efforts are under way in businesses across the globe. From politics to technology, energy, and transportation; from marketing to retail, health care, and design, each company on the Fast Company list illustrates the power and potential of innovative ideas and creative execution.
The top spot is taken by Facebook which has around 200 million active users to date. Most notable in the top five and new on the ranking is Huawei, the Chinese Telecom equipment manufacturer. You can find the complete list here.
For years Google has stayed on the fringes of the social-networking industry, leaving the field largely to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Now, however, it is making a determined foray into online friendships. On February 9th the search giant unveiled Buzz, a networking service that will be closely integrated with the firm’s e-mail offering, Gmail. Google no doubt hopes Buzz will help it catch up with the leaders of the networking world—but the chances are slim. Mashable made a comparison here. [Source 1] [Source 2].
The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.
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