Security and Compliance Services for Emails at Office, by Google

Google is now set to use its Postinin acquisition to provide security features for any e-mail system. The company is about to launch many new security applications that are already part of the Google Apps platform. These products are targeted at the organisations that are not using Gmail or other Web hosted applications from Google, like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Start Page .

These products are powered by Postinin and act as message filtering with spam and malware filter and this is available to you at $3 per user every year. For $12 per user per year, you can get message filtering services along with improvised virus detection content policy management, and other support to stop e-mail data leaks. And for $25 per year per user, you would get message discovery, which increases one year of message data archiving, retention, and discovery to assist companies comply with legal and government regulatory compliance requirements.

According to Sundar Raghavan, a product marketing manager for Google, this is specially useful to those organisations and executives who are anxious about employees downloading copyrighted content, such as MP3 files, at work and leaking confidential information through e-mails.

The Pros and Cons of Google IP Exclusion in Pay per Click Community

The facility to exclude certain IP addresses in Google Adwords has proven to be beneficial in many ways in the Pay per Click community. You can both control your ad placement through various methods and focus your targeting with IP or Internet Protocol exclusion, now. You can control the view of your ads by methods such as location and language targeting, site exclusion and network distribution preferences. And you can also block certain IP addresses where you do not wish to make your presence felt.

With Google IP exclusion options, now you can also deal with click fraud techniques from competitors. If you can get the IP addresses of your competitors, then you can exclude them from seeing your ad and therefore you can stop their clicking your ad just to increase your ad spend.

However, tehre is a disadvantage to this IP exclusion technique. Some large Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use a range of IP addresses for all their users. This would mean that if you exclude one IP address which could be a proxy for many users, then you might just block many potential readers and customers from reading your ad.

Google-DoubleClick Acquisition Still Catches Attention

The news of Google's taking over of online advertising company 'DoubleClick' had hardly settled down, when Microsoft's unsolicited bid for Yahoo, had created yet another storm in the international online industry. But that does not put Google's acquisition out of focus. According to DowJones newswires, "the European Union's antitrust regulator has prepared a draft 'statement of objections' to Google Inc.'s planned $3.1 billion takeover of DoubleClick." The 'statement of objections' is not yet issued, and till that time, it is kept confidential.

This, however, does not mean that EU has plans to block the deal between Google and online advertising company 'DoubleClick'. Yet, it would impose conditions or ask Google for a compromise in the deal it has up its sleeves.

Google Presents Urchin 5 - On-Premise Web Analytics Software

On Friday, 1st February, Google released in beta an upgraded version of it on premises Web analytics software called Urchin Software. This software is developed for those who do not prefer to use the online analytics services provided by the search engine. Urchin Software has similar scope as Google Analytics. However, it is programmed to run on an organisation's server, as per Google. As of now, Urchin Software is just available for evaluation purposes and it is not to be used for production purposes as yet.

Urchin Software is prepared for the organisations that have their content behind a firewall or impose restrictions against using an online service. This is similar to the predecessor Urchin 5. The other uses of Urchin software, as per Google, would be for performing ad hoc historical processing, storing Web analytics on the local servers and for collecting data for third party audits.

Google and Microsoft Tug of War

On 3rd February, Google came down heavily upon Microsoft's unsolicited buying of Yahoo for a whopping $44.6 billion. According to Google, this takeover can lead to the monopoly of the software group in the internet. This is not the first altercation between the two companies, rather it is yet another blow in the already growing animosity between both the organizations, the last dispute being Microsoft's accusing Google for proposing acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick.

While Microsoft feels that acquisition of DoubleClick would provide Google with dizzying power to control the online advertising, Google on the other hand feels that with the takeover of Yahoo, Microsoft would gain the power to control the evolution of the web itself. The organisation says that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal would give the former a position where it could undervalue the principles of “openness” which forms the basis of web.

A possibility of an alliance between Google and Yahoo is also not rejected at this moment and is given consideration, unlike last year.

Google Fails to Please Wall Street Analysts and Investors

The quarterly results as posted by Google could not meet up to the expectations of the Wall Street's Analysts and this led to a reduction in the value of shares by 8% on Friday. According to the results, Google's fourth quarter net income rose to 1.21 billion, or $3.79 a share, in comparison to $1.03 billion, or $3.29 a share, in the same period, a year ago. There is a rise in the revenue to $4.83 billion, that is 51%. Google says that it earned $4.43 per share after excluding special items. The revenue was at $3.39 billion after subtracting the payments made to other sites to gain Internet traffic.

Chief Executive of Google, Eric Schmidt commented on the results, that the company was quite pleased with the year and also the quarter that just ended. However the Adsense program experienced some problems in the quarter, as put by co-founder Sergey Brin, due to the difficulty in getting users to click on related ads and generate revenue. Brin also said, “ We have had a challenge in the fourth quarter with social networking [advertising] inventory as a whole. Some of the monetization work we were doing there did not pan out as we'd hoped.”

Mixed Reaction on Microsoft's Yahoo Take Over

Microsoft's $44.6 billion leap to buy Yahoo has triggered mixed reactions from active internet users and those who follow the online industry closely. While on one hand a group of readers and enthusiasts have a strong feeling that Microsoft is attempting to clamp down the competition by monopolising the online industry, on the other hand a second group of people opine that Microsoft and Yahoo are perfect fit for each other and the end consumer would be benefited if this marriage happens.

Predictions are strong that this would also compel Google to wake up and take notice of the competition. This, in other words, would mean that Google would be forced to better its services and provide more user friendly Internet tools and expand the existing ones, in order to stay ahead of the competition, the position that it enjoys at present.