This is the full text from Omar Hamoui, founder of AdMob.

Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our publishers.

AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to effectively monetize your mobile traffic – no interruptions. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns.

After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our developer and publisher partners by:

* Building even more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.

* Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.

* Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our publishers.

You can read more about this deal at www.admob.com/google.

Omar

AdMob is like the AdSense for mobile sites serving billions of mobile ad impressions per month. Google AdSense for Mobile has also been recently introduced by Google but hasn’t really taken off. Acquiring AdMob is the next logical step. I just didn’t image how much that traffic acquisition is.

I’ve been doing some consultancy for a number of start-ups for some time now and one of my biggest advise to them is to invest in the mobile web this early. Just last week, I told one of them that AdMob could be Google’s next target. I’m just surprised my prediction happened this soon.

According to AdMob, the Philippines ranked #5 on their mobile web ad traffic report, up from #9 or #10 a couple of years ago. And for the last 2 years, I’ve been trying to get hold of them so we can have them talk on our annual Search Engine Marketing Conference about the mobile web and advertising.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

No related posts.

And mind you, these are real-time search from all Twitter updates.

Microsoft came out first with the announcement and has already implemented the search via http://bing.com/twitter:

However, upon inspection, the Twitter search on Bing doesn’t seen to be working. Now, that’s an epic fail on launch date.

On the other hand, Google’s announcement of the Twitter search integration is just an announcement. No specific date when this will be implemented and how the integration will be done.

So, why would Twitter want to give the search data to Bing and Google when they can do it on their own (which they’ve been actually doing already):

• Computing Power – search requires a huge amount of computing power (just ask administrators of very large forums on how their internal search is choking the servers). Google and Microsoft already has that technology so it spares Twitter from spending more on servers.
• Search Discovery – Twitter is already mainstream but it looks like its growth has plateaued (stagnant) for the last 3 months (according to Compete). Getting more traffic from search engines could help boost its growth.
• Monetization – Twitter could be developing a much better API and selling it as a premium to 3rd parties like Google and Microsoft. The search engines, in turn, can monetize the search traffic. It’s a win-win deal.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

No related posts.

Well, this is supposed to be a new way to communicate with people but if you’re the only one among friends who has a Google Wave account then there’s nobody to communicate with. You’d eventually end up leaving the window and forget about it. So unless Google puts Mafia Wars and Farmville inside Google Wave, I don’t think I’ll be spending more than 10 seconds with it (*jk*).

Second, the moment I saw the Spam Folder, I realized Google Wave isn’t moving far away from email. The biggest problem with email since time-immemorial is spam. If the Wave still has that, then we still have a problem.

Lastly, the Google Wave Panel reminds me of Outlook Express. Can they get some cool designer in the team and make it look snazzy?

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. Will Google Wave change the way we E-Mail? One of the upcoming services that was demo’ed on Google...

The additional Php299 monthly plan is only available to Nokia E75 subscribers but may be extended to other handsets that support Nokia Messaging.

For SMEs and corporate subscribers, the push email will also support POP3/IMAP accounts. There’s a 24-month lockin period for new applicants.

This plan may be a cheap alternative to those using mobile email on a daily basis since the minimum charge for Smart 3G is Php10 for 30 minutes. The Php299 monthly unlimited breaks down to Php10 per day.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

No related posts.

This was shown to me earlier by Art Samaniego of MB on his HTC Magic.

I did the same search on my iPhone 3G and it’s also there.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. Google Latitude: Find Friends on Google Maps Google has just introduced Google Latitude on top of its...

The announcement same out today:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Google Chrome OS will be based on a Linux kernel and will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips. Google is actually talking to several netbook manufacturers to bring the Chrome OS to market by middle of next year.

Google Chrome OS is a separate project from Google Android. Everybody is going to get very busy — Nokia and Intel is cooperating on Moblin, Google has Chrome OS and Microsoft has Windows 7. Since Chrome OS is basically just another Linux flavor, will it succeed or go the same path as Xandros on the Eee PC?

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

No related posts.

If you haven’t heard about it, you may want to check out this demo video from them (it’s an hour and 20 minutes long though so sit back and relax):

My impression with Google Wave is that it’s like a live session of GTalk, Wikipedia, Flickr and Twitter — all happening in a browser. It looks nice and cool — and that happens in the “clouds”.

The other impression that I am getting is that Google Wave wants to replace the way people “email” each other. We’ve already seen this with the threaded conversations in GMail and the GTalk chat feature inside GMail.

This would have been nice if people liked replying and sending out emails. But for one like me who’s flooded with emails all day, everyday and can barely cope up — there is no escape now.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. Much Ado about Google Wave We saw a preview of Google Wave a couple months...

I have to admit, it’s a nice commercial though.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. Chrome trumps Firefox on Google Pack Google Chrome recently got promoted to version 1.0 and dropping...

Usually, after repeated communications with the culprits fail to gather any positive results, most publishers/webmaster would resort to a DMCA takedown which is filed with the web host. Sometimes it’s pretty effective and fast and sometimes not (they could always transfer to a new host or server).

The most painful way to get back at the scrapers is to hit them where its most painful — their pockets. Google offers a couple of solutions to this:

• If the culprit’s website runs Google AdSense, you can file for a copyright infringement report against that AdSense publisher. It’s most likely that the AdSense account of that publisher/scraper could get banned or terminated. Here are the steps you need to do that. Here’s more info about the DMCA for AdSense.
• If the site is intentionally scraping (misappropriating and republishing) your content but doesn’t have Google AdSense, you can file for a violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines. You fill out the form here.

Just be reminded though that you must be the rightful copyright owner of the content you are complaining about. If it’s an image that came from screencap you made of a TV show or movie, you don’t own copyright of that image since it’s just a derivative of the original copyright owners (which is the TV networks or the movie producer). Neither can you complain about lyrics copied from your site by other blogs (because you don’t own the copyright to those lyrics anyway).

Now instead of just ranting on your blog about others copying your content, you can do something about it.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

No related posts.

TechCrunch picked up the story initially reported by Asiajin.

Paid reviews and link buying is a practice Google itself discourages so it’s a little confusing why Google would use the same tactics that it openly disapprove.

Hours after being outed, Baba Yasutsugu posted as response on the official Google Japan blog:

“Google Japan is running several promotional activities to let people know more about our products.

It turns out that using blogs on the part of the promotional activities violates Google’s search guidelines, so we have ended the promotion. We would like to apologize to the people concerned and to our users, and are making an effort to make our communications more transparent in order to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.”

Apparently, Google is trailing behind Yahoo! in Japan — just 39%, way below Yahoo’s 51.2% market share. This paid review campaign may just be one of Google’s efforts to gain more users in Japan. Too bad they got caught.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. The day Google broke the Web There was some sort of mass panic last night when...
2. Google Latitude: Find Friends on Google Maps Google has just introduced Google Latitude on top of its...
3. Chrome trumps Firefox on Google Pack Google Chrome recently got promoted to version 1.0 and dropping...
4. Google sheds some fat — up to 10,000 people All these time that competing company Yahoo has been announcing...

Latitude is available on most phones — the Blackberry, S60, and Windows Mobile, and will be available on Android in the next few days. It’s highly likely it will be coming to the iPhone, through Google Mobile App, very soon — according to the official Google blog.

I tried installing it on my Nokia 5800 and it replaced my existing Google Maps to version 3. Here are some of the screenshots I took on the phone.

You can also view the location of your friends on Google Maps in your desktop (via iGoogle Gadget). The accuracy of the tracking will depending on how many satellites your GPS is connected too — up to 20 meters on 4-5 GPS satellites and as far as 800 meters on 1 satelite.

Looks cool but at the same time a little scary (especially when you know others can snoop on you). Of course, your privacy is of utmost concern for Google so you can pick who you share your data with (and assuming there’s no glitch in the system).

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. Quiapo DVD on Google Maps Not sure how Google moderates contributed entries (or POIs) on...
2. Chrome trumps Firefox on Google Pack Google Chrome recently got promoted to version 1.0 and dropping...
3. Google sheds some fat — up to 10,000 people All these time that competing company Yahoo has been announcing...
4. The day Google broke the Web There was some sort of mass panic last night when...
5. Google caught doing paid post in Japan Google was doing some marketing campaign in Japan thru an...

Connie took a screenshot from her browser of what turned out to be human error from some engineers over at Google:

The incident happened sometime between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. as Google explains:

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message “This site may harm your computer” if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.

A single character (the “/”) did all that trouble. One can only imagine if it were a single word/command or a line of code?

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. Google Latitude: Find Friends on Google Maps Google has just introduced Google Latitude on top of its...
2. Chrome trumps Firefox on Google Pack Google Chrome recently got promoted to version 1.0 and dropping...
3. Google sheds some fat — up to 10,000 people All these time that competing company Yahoo has been announcing...
4. Google caught doing paid post in Japan Google was doing some marketing campaign in Japan thru an...

The list on the new Google Pack has Chrome “checked” by default and FireFox “unchecked”, displacing the latter in just less than 3 months after it was first revealed {via}.

This isn’t surprising and I’ve sort of expected this to happen (though not this soon). We even saw how FireFox ran to Yahoo! for some help.

Google will not completely remove FireFox from Google Pack nor totally stop promoting the browser as there’s still money to be had between the browser toolbar and the default search. Google even used to pay $1 for every Firefox referrals installed. The Google-Mozilla partnership generates hundreds of millions of dollars in ad clicks annually.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. Google Chrome TV Ad When people say that TV is dead and Google is...
2. Firefox 3.5 out and ready for download Mozilla Firefox 3.5 is now officially out and ready for...
3. Google Latitude: Find Friends on Google Maps Google has just introduced Google Latitude on top of its...
4. The day Google broke the Web There was some sort of mass panic last night when...
5. Google caught doing paid post in Japan Google was doing some marketing campaign in Japan thru an...

Then, there’s the rumor that caught fire last Monday — about 10,000 contractors are affected by Google layoffs. According to an SEC filing, Google reported 20,123 employees by end of September 2008. However, the real number could actually be close to 30,000.

Google classifies the ~10,000 of the employees as temporary operational expenses or “workers”. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “There is no question that the number (of workers) is too high” {via}.

From a CNet article, Google spokeswoman Jane Penner vaguely confirmed that:

“We have 10,000, and we have had a plan in place for awhile to significantly reduce that number. This is something we’ve been thinking about for awhile–six or seven months. It predates the most acute phase of the (present economic) crisis.”

Just like any other publicly listed company these days, Google shares have been sliding down in the last 6 months — hitting an all-year low of of $247 (from a high of $724.80).

Google was able to reach 3rd quarter earnings expectations by trimming operational expenses. This could have included ending or not renewing contract workers.

But even before this, news of cutting cost across all Google offices have been making the rounds:

• Renting out extra office spaces in the Google New York office.
• Shutting down in-house cafes in the Google Plex.
• Limiting employee guests to two free meals a month and no more bringing home of dinner food.
• Shutting down some beta products and services like Lively, SearchMash, etc. and re-distributing human resources.

There’s also a report by Premium AdSense Publishers and AdWords Advertisers that this year’s Christmas gift from Google will be more modest — a 2GB USB flash drive.

Google has been really good to project to the public that they’re crisis-proof. Not sure how long they can handle it well though.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. Google Latitude: Find Friends on Google Maps Google has just introduced Google Latitude on top of its...
2. Chrome trumps Firefox on Google Pack Google Chrome recently got promoted to version 1.0 and dropping...
3. The day Google broke the Web There was some sort of mass panic last night when...
4. Google caught doing paid post in Japan Google was doing some marketing campaign in Japan thru an...

Here’s a copy of the email I receive. Odd thing though is that I’ve actually already migrated to Google Accounts so this looks like a mass email to all AdSense Publishers:

Hi,

We’re contacting you to let you know that we’ll be migrating your FeedBurner account yuga to your Google Account on 12/5/2008 .

Please rest assured, this change won’t disrupt your current feeds service. As part of this migration, all of your existing FeedBurner feeds will automatically redirect to Google feeds. You won’t lose any of your current subscribers in the process nor will this affect any email subscriptions.

All of your feeds will be moved to your new account and an initial batch of your most recent 30 days’ traffic stats will also be added. Your entire history, should it go beyond 30 days, will be added at a future date.

Once a part of the new Google FeedBurner systems, you’ll immediately be able to take advantage of our AdSense for feeds product. AdSense for feeds helps you monetize your feeds by delivering ads that are relevant to your content and your readers. Once migrated, you can start using AdSense by following these directions: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=99647 .

Please note that this migration process is required for all publishers. If your FeedBurner ID or Google Account information is incorrect, please let us know before the date at the beginning of this message.

Sincerely,
Google AdSense Team
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Last August, after migrating my FeedBurner account to Google Account, I also changed my feed URL which resulted into over a thousand subscribers dropped from the list.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

No related posts.

The Google Phone is one of the oddest phone I’ve ever seen in terms of design and form factor. Even the mechanism for flipping out the keyboard is a bit unconventional.

Took several shots of the phone together with the Nokia E71, iPhone 3G and Xperia X1 for some visual comparison. The G1 is indeed huge and bulky.

Will be done with my review before the week ends so watch out for it.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. G1 Google Android Phone Review After a week of playing with Google and HTC’s new...

A search for “yugatech” in 2001 reveals my old website hosted on HyperMart.net. It was an “AnandTech” wannabe.

Back then, .com domains were still $35 a year but there were at least two services that gave out free domains in exchange for free banner ads (via an ad bar) like NameDemo.

My university-hosted page also shows up when searching for my name and it showed our project page on WireLess LAN. I was playing around with 2Mbps WiFi networks back in 1999.

Check out Google in 2001.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. Google Latitude: Find Friends on Google Maps Google has just introduced Google Latitude on top of its...
2. Google sheds some fat — up to 10,000 people All these time that competing company Yahoo has been announcing...
3. Chrome trumps Firefox on Google Pack Google Chrome recently got promoted to version 1.0 and dropping...
4. The day Google broke the Web There was some sort of mass panic last night when...
5. Google caught doing paid post in Japan Google was doing some marketing campaign in Japan thru an...

The GeoEye-1 satellite was launched into orbit the other day at a height of about 670 kilometers into the atmosphere.

Google used to buy satellite images electronic maps from mapping companies such as Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ (now owned by Nokia), some of which are old data so we don’t get to see better resolutions in some regions.

In other cities like Hyderabad, India, Google does some sort of crowd sourcing where residents are the ones who input street-level maps (to augment the Google Maps, Street View Project). The Google Product Manager explains to em that it’s a private site where volunteers login and fill out additional data to existing maps.

I said in the Philippines, this might be a difficult project since our lawmakers tend to change street names every other year and the MMDA constantly opens and closes roadways and alternate routes. *hehe*

The GeoEye-1 satellite will be able to capture hi-res images with resolution of about 41 centimeters although US restrictions only allow up to 50 cm (that means 1 pixel is equivalent to 0.5 meters in ratio). Google’s current resolution on some areas (including the Philippines) is only about 15 square meters per pixel.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Related posts:

1. Google Latitude: Find Friends on Google Maps Google has just introduced Google Latitude on top of its...
2. Google sheds some fat — up to 10,000 people All these time that competing company Yahoo has been announcing...
3. Chrome trumps Firefox on Google Pack Google Chrome recently got promoted to version 1.0 and dropping...
4. The day Google broke the Web There was some sort of mass panic last night when...
5. Google caught doing paid post in Japan Google was doing some marketing campaign in Japan thru an...