In the hyper competitive world of Silicon Valley, where Tech companies are constantly seeking out engineering and scientific talent to fullfil their needs … the Department Of Justice has decided that bilateral agreements amongst certain tech giants not to poach from their competitors labor force by cold calling went a bit too far.
Even though these types of employees are very well paid and in high demand, the DOJ concluded after a year long investigation that for companies to agree not to cold call each others’ employees for job prospects, that it amounted to a “restraint of trade” rule violation under well established antitrust law.
The Justice Department said the agreements to curb cold-calling each others’ workers amounted to “diminished competition to the detriment of the affected employees who were likely deprived of competitively important information and access to better job opportunities.”
Several of the big tech companies had established no cold call agreements amongst themselves. Apple and Google, Apple and Pixar, Intel and Google, Intuit and Google, and Apple and Adobe.
At its peak hiring phase in 2007 Google was hiring 40 people a day. Between 2005 and 2009 it grew the company by 16000 employees.
Intuit for one was not happy with the DOJ ruling and said they “ agreed to disagree” over the issue of wrongdoing in the case.
With today’s FCC’s approval to allow broadband WiFi to use TV channel white space spectrum … companies like Google will now have an even bigger advertising audience.
Google was one of the first to promote the idea to the FCC in 2008 of using so called white space for broadband WiFi . The changeover from analog to digital TV created channel space that no longer was being used for TV signals.
These WiFi broadband channels will have a range of about 50 miles and be able to penetrate buildings in the much the same way a TV signal can. The amount of channel space available makes it feasible that the whole nation can be blanketed with “Super WiFi”.
A company like Google with it’s Android mobile platform software, its dominance in Internet search, the Chrome browser, and a large dark fiber network it owns, can now provide broadband to everyone and access a much larger market to show its advertisements to.
It’s very similar to the free service advertiser based business model TV networks started out with.
Facebook has a network of about 500 million users, and 100 million of them use Facebook apps from Iphone or Android.
As more and more computer users move away from the desktop to smartphones and other mobile devices, this section of the web is becoming a test of which manufacturers can deliver the best combo of hardware, software, and apps for the user.
Free software producers such as Facebook and Google leverage their user traffic by displaying ads to earn revenue. Facebook already does this and has people on its team who helped create software for both Iphone and Android.
In a Techcrunch report it is suggested that Facebook is at work developing software which will be deeply integrated into the Facebook database that no other competitor has access to. The software will run on an Android based smartphone specifically engineered for Facebook.
Facebook has denied they are building a smartphone but the denial was worded in a such a way that it’s still possible the software above is being developed, but because they aren’t actually building the hardware they can deny they are building a smartphone.
It should be remembered that Google denied it was building a smartphone to while it was quietly creating the Android software.
Maybe there’s more than meets the eye here and explains why Apple and Facebook couldn’t agree to provide Apple’s new iPhone4 users direct access to Facebook via an API.
Google product manager Jonathan Effrat revealed in a video today what Google’s new Instant Search is all about. In spite of what seems to be over the top technical magic, the Google spokesman went on to explain how it’s just the use of better retrieval through new software and its ability to sift through the search data stored in their database that makes it happen.
This search will now display results “instantly in a way that has never been done before.” “Now, results appear automatically as you type, with no need to hit enter or click the search button. as soon as you see what you need predicted in gray text, you can stop typing, and just look down to find your results waiting…see results instantly lets you refine your search as you type – looking for a bird? A map? A recipe? You’ll know instantly if you’re on the right track to finding what you want.”
Google has re-engineered their famous simple search web form using a web application called AJAX which they claim will speed things up about 3-5 seconds per search.
Instant Search is based on the principle that the eye can scan the displayed results much faster than the fingers can type in the search phrase, so by anticipating what you are likely looking for based on its database of previous searches Google thinks it will have the search you want displayed before you can finish typing … and viola, you’ve just saved 3 to 5 seconds.
Google will be rolling out this new service today in the U.S. and it will become the default search that will appear on the Google search page. Users can still use the old slower search if they want.
Quantcast’s latest report shows that the Android OS now is being used by 25% of all smartphone web browsers and continues to gain market share from both Apple’s iOS and RIM. Apple still holds about 55% of the market compared to Android’s 19% and RIM with 16%.
Web developers still prefer making apps for Apple over Android by a wide margin.
In spite of the recent launch of Iphone 4 Apple has been unable to make gains on Android since phone manufacturers started bringing to market several Android versions of smartphones last year. The gains of Android have clearly come at Apple’s expense and affected RIM’s market share less severely. Apple’s market share a year ago was about 70% and continues to slip as more Android phones hit the market.
It was thought earlier after the release of Iphone 4 that iOS could increase its user base but most people purchasing version 4 phones were already users of a previous version.
Stay tuned for the battle of the smartphone mobile market between Apple & Google.
Google Buys Like.com
Like.com was founded in 2004 and was known then as Riya. It has since developed a visual shopping search engine technology for retail products like shoes,jewelry, clothes, and home decor.
Google has also experimented with this technology and last year reported that it had produced a “similar image” function for its image based search.The idea was to categorize things in it’s database in such a way that a search for a particular image would also provide best matches for other images similar to the searched item.
In recent Google search testing they have also demonstrated how they can start producing search results immediately as the search term is being typed in … much like how the Google Suggest feature now works. The list produced then gets modified as the full search term is entered.
This may allow for faster search results depending on the complexity of the search term and whether the desired results appear at the top of the list or not.
Google is obviously leaving no stone unturned to further advance its search services and pursue its goal to make it easier and faster for the user to quickly drill down to find exactly what they are looking for on Google better than anywhere else.
