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.”
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].
Google Korea has unveiled a new homepage that radically breaks out of the company’s trademark scantiness. Google’s Korean homepage now displays more content right up on its front page, featuring popular search keywords, most searched-for people (“who’s hot”), and the directory of Google Korea’s services.
It remains to be seen if Google Korea’s move will help or hurt the company to gain more turf in this tough Korean market, but one thing is very clear: This is a very big move by Google. This new, content-rich homepage is only available in Korea — and this is worlds apart from Google’s seemingly unrelented pursuit of simpleness.
In a way, this shows Google is very much committed to the Korean market, even to the point where the company is willing to ditch its hallmark simpleness, something many in and out of the company has long regarded to be near impossible. Will Koreans like this move and pay more visit to Google Korea for their internet search? The jury is still very much out.
Google is using its domination of search advertising to confront Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and others. It can’t possibly succeed everywhere at once. Or can it?
In just 11 years, Google has evolved from a pair of graduate students noodling in a garage to what may be the most disruptive force the business world has ever seen. Its meteoric rise has been driven by its mastery of technology and business strategy.
With a 71 percent share of the U.S. search market under its command, Google is looking for a way to maintain its incredible rate of growth [Source].
Over the past three decades, a few titanic rivalries have defined the technology industry’s mega-trends, ultimately determining which products eventually end up in consumers’ and companies’ hands.
Now, adding to the annals of competition that include Microsoft’s clashes with Apple in the ’80s, IBM in the ’90s, and Google in this decade, the new defining rivalry in tech may be between Google and Apple. Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s resignation from Apple’s board on August 3 highlights the degree to which these companies are more foe than friend. Read more on this here and for an interview with Google’s CEO: Eric Schmidt please click here.
One-to-one concepts are looking increasingly dated. Smart companies are now striving to enable many-to-many technology, tools and services.
Smart companies are looking at ways to enable many-to-many relationships between employees. This comes under the umbrella of collaborative technology, tools and services that are designed to be shared by groups of people. Those people may be employees within the organisation but also employees of suppliers and even clients. For an overview of collaborative technology forms click here.
Google launches a direct assault on Microsoft with the promise of a new PC operating system named Chrome OS and is releasing somewhere next year.
Google says the software architecture will basically be the current Chrome browser running inside “a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.” So in other words, it basically is the web as an OS. And applications developers will develop for it just as they would on the web. This is similar to the approach Palm has taken with its new webOS for the Palm Pre, but Google notes that any app developed for Google Chrome OS will work in any standards-compliant browser on any OS.
What Google is doing is not recreating a new kind of OS, they’re creating the best way to not need one at all. Read more here.
The board of Procter & Gamble is meeting on Tuesday amid intense speculation that it will approve the naming of Robert McDonald, the company’s chief operating officer, as its new chief executive, replacing AG Lafley.
Mr Lafley took over as chief executive of P&G nine years ago this month and has indicated that he was unlikely to want to spend more than a decade at the top of the world’s largest consumer goods company.
His most significant contribution to the company has been spearheading and overseeing its $57bn merger with Gillette in 2005 and the subsequent smooth integration of the two giant companies. In addition to reorganising the company into global business units, he promoted a culture of greater openess at a company that previously relied almost exclusively on in-house innovation.
He also oversaw the creation of enhanced product design and development units, again bringing in outside talent at senior management levels. P&G’s overall business has been relatively resilient during the current global recession.
The question is whether McDonald, if he takes over as P&G’s chief for the next decade, can replicate Lafley’s success. [Source]
The impact of the recession calls for a decisive approach to operational change. Companies must identify operational improvements to reduce variable costs, generate cash, and generally strengthen the balance sheet – and understand the strategic initiatives necessary to make change happen.
Booz & Company composed a “Restructuring Toolkit” in which you can select ideas structured along operational and strategic initiatives.
Facebook, the popular social network, has found a deep-pocketed friend in Russia.
Digital Sky Technologies, an Internet investment company based in Moscow, said Tuesday it has invested $200 million in Facebook in exchange for a 1.96 percent stake in the company, and would eventually offer to buy at least $100 million in Facebook’s common stock. Facebook said the deal values the entire company — which Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, founded in his Harvard dorm room in 2004 — at $10 billion.
More details about the deal can be found here. A backgrounder on this story can be found here.
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.
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