Search Engines posts
FeedPosted Jan 21st 2010 10:00AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings Reports, Forecasts, Internet, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO)
A big player in the tech sector is ready to report today. Google (GOOG) will publish Q4 results later this afternoon. Traders and investors alike get super excited when the search behemoth tells the world how it's doing.
I think the company will show that it's doing quite well. According to Earnings.com, expectations peg the per-share profit at $6.43. If that number is hit, then the growth rate will be a solid 26% (last year at this time, Google made $5.10 per share). Of course, most people aren't interested in hitting the projected stat, they want management to rise above it and demonstrate true earnings power.
Continue reading Google's Q4 Is Here: What Should We Expect?
Posted Dec 5th 2009 11:40AM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Wal-Mart (WMT), Amazon.com (AMZN), Target Corp. (TGT)
Have you ever gone to a website and kicked the tires? Well, uTest, a Boston-based startup, pulled 600 software professionals together from 20 countries to do exactly that.
The company, which has a bench of 21,000 professional testers from 159 countries, wanted to see which of the three major retail websites -- those run by Amazon.com (AMZN), Walmart (WMT) and Target (TGT) -- is the least buggy. The winner: Amazon.
Continue reading Study: Target website buggy, Amazon takes top honors
Posted Dec 4th 2009 11:30AM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Internet, Google (GOOG), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World
The newspaper industry continues to blame Google (GOOG) for its woes, and Google continues to claim its innocence. The search engine giant's CEO, Eric Schmidt, says that his company could actually help the newspaper industry survive the shift from print to digital ... a shift that's been more than a decade in the making, he was kind enough not to note.
According to Schmidt, publishers need to dig into the online environment and find new ways to generate revenue. "With dwindling revenue and diminished resources," he wrote in an op-ed piece published in News Corp's (NWS) Wall Street Journal, "frustrated newspaper executives are looking for someone to blame."
Continue reading Google to media: Your problems aren't our fault
Posted Oct 28th 2009 3:30PM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Rumors, Internet, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), Technology
Unless you already have a major foothold in the search engine market – or an amazing, disruptive technology that can make the world take notice – there isn't much point in staying. Competing with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is hard enough, even when you're Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) or Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) ... and, apparently, when you're IAC/InterActive Corp (NASDAQ: IACI). Barry Diller is ready to give up Jeeves, but only if asked nicely.
Diller's presence in the search space is Ask.com, ranked #4 behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing. With a substantial gap between first and second, fourth barely registers at all. Ask.com has only a 2% U.S. market share, according to Hitwise, more than 60 percentage points behind the industry leader.
Continue reading Would anybody buy Jeeves? Ask might go on block
Posted Oct 21st 2009 8:30AM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings Reports, Good news, Internet, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Technology
The number two search engine in the United States turned in a fantastic third quarter, far ahead of expectations. Cost-cutting, layoffs and business divestitures led to a surge in Yahoo's (NASDAQ: YHOO) profits and a 4.8% increase in share price in extended trading on Tuesday evening. Net income more than tripled to $186.1 million (13 cents per share) from the third quarter of 2008's result of $54.3 million (4 cents a share). Sales (exclusive of fees passed to partner sites) reached $1.13 billion, slightly above the $1.12 billion expected by analysts, according to a Bloomberg survey.
With the advertising market in rough shape and competition from Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) continually rising, Yahoo refocused on its core properties: the home page, messaging and mobile services. The company trimmed what it didn't need, which is why it was able to boost its earnings even with a decline in revenue. Increased ad revenue from auto manufacturers, travel companies and consumer product manufacturers also helped.
Yahoo's chief financial officer, Timothy Morse, says that the company's markets are "starting to stabilize." Of course, Yahoo itself must be doing something right: its share price is up 41% this year.
Continue reading Yahoo profit triples year-over-year
Posted Oct 16th 2009 12:20PM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Google (GOOG), Technology
Modest goals don't seem to be on the agenda for Facebook. Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer, is shooting for Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). The social networking company seeks its ad market as rivaling (or even surpassing) Google's search ad market in size. Facebook says it's on target to bring in $500 million in revenue this year (Sandberg didn't confirm it, though).
With its 300 million users, Sandberg has been trying to convince the world that her company has a solid business model in place. The perception that eyeballs don't necessarily equal dollars, born of the internet boom a decade ago, isn't necessarily true any more, as demonstrated by Google's ability to monetize search (and hit record profits) has demonstrated. For the third quarter of 2009, the search engine giant raked in net revenue of $4.38 billion.
Continue reading Facebook shoots for search victory
Posted Oct 5th 2009 9:40AM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Technology
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) isn't planning to acquire its way into the search engine market. The company's CEO, Steve Ballmer, told Reuters that the company would invest in marketing and hopefully complete a partnership with Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) that is currently involved in a regulatory review. The goal, of course, is to provide at least meaningful competition to search giant and dominant market player Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).
Expect growth to slow a bit for Microsoft, Ballmer says, as a result of global economic developments. In order to cope with this -- and gear up for a potential battle with Google -- the company has frozen its R&D budget of $9.5 billion, the largest in the industry. With that and a $31.4 billion cash and cash equivalent position, Microsoft certainly has the resources to do battle.
Continue reading Microsoft not looking for search engine acquisitions
Posted Sep 22nd 2009 2:40PM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Good news, Products and Services, Competitive Strategy, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO)

When it come to search engines,
Google (NASDAQ:
GOOG) still rules the roost, but
Microsoft (NASDAQ:
MSFT) is hoping to capture as much of the pis as possible with its
newly launched engine Bing.
Bing, which was launched in June of this year increased its share of online searches by 4.5% in August, capturing 9.3% of online search traffic. While this is good news for Microsoft, I doubt Google is too concerned right now, as it still holds a massive 64.6% share of the search market.
Continue reading Bing gaining ground on Google
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