TechNews (Oyya-Info)

Google Chrome ads coming to TV

June 15, 2009

Google plans to make its first foray into the old-fashioned world of television advertising with spots promoting its Chrome browser this weekend.

Google Japan had already released a 30-second video promoting Chrome on YouTube, but the company will distribute that video through the Google TV Ads network this weekend as an experiment to see if it can drum up interest in Chrome, its new browser. Google said it's using the research it has done on measuring the relevance of television ads in order to place the Chrome ad appropriately.

Chrome was also featured as part of a huge ad on the front page of The New York Times' Web site Friday, with several different videos promoting the browser. Those are also available, of course, on YouTube.

For a consumer brand of its size, Google does relatively little advertising. It put Chrome ads on YouTube in January, but "house ads" are a little different than network television exposure. Likewise, T-Mobile advertises the "G1 with Google" in hyping up the Android-powered G1, but that's not exactly the same as making Google the focus of the ad.

Posted by Oyya-Info. Posted In : Google

Analyst: Google will walk away from bad AdSense deals

June 15, 2009

Are the days of silly AdSense deals with the likes of MySpace and AOL over for Google? Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay seems to think so. The analyst upped his price target to $600 for Google shares on the theory that the economy is rebounding and the search giant's revenue per click ratio will follow. Meanwhile, Google's profit margins are likely to go higher.

And Google's ability to walk away from high-cost AdSense deals are one reason those margins are headed higher. Lindsay writes in a research note:

We also expect that Google will be increasingly prepared to walk away from unfavorable AdSense for search and AdSense for content deals in the future and this "mix shift" will also translate into higher margins. Rather than agree to revenue guarantees and exceptionally high TAC rates to partners such as AOL and MySpace, as it did in the past, we think Google will simply pass on these deals and allow a much larger share of this low margin and loss-making business to go to competitors such as Microsoft. This may result in some sensationally negative headlines such as "Microsoft scoops the Xyz deal from Google," but much of this business is either uneconomic or toxic or both. For example, consider Google's recent write-down of $726 million attributable to the "strategic investment" tied to the AOL AdSense for Search deal.

Lindsay's take is quite believable. Google has propped up MySpace financials in recent years with $900 million in guaranteed revenue through 2010 even though it has had trouble monetizing that inventory. The best move for Google may be to let a rival like Microsoft win a deal like MySpace.

There's a decent bit of evidence that Google is already being more selective. Time Warner indicated that it may buy Google's AOL stake back as the media giant plans to spin off AOL. And it's highly unlikely that Google will renew its MySpace deal on the previous terms, much to parent News Corp.'s chagrin.

Other odds and ends from Lindsay's research note:

An economic rebound in the second half will reverse negative trends in revenue per click rates. That rebound should give Google's fourth quarter revenue growth of 14 percent.

Paid search has become a proxy for the economy. Lindsay writes:

We believe that paid search is almost unique as an advertising format in that it has no formal contracts and is sold in a real-time electronic auction for search terms. As such, we believe that it will recover almost in real time as the economy improves --so much so that it will in many ways behave like a barometer of economic activity in key sectors such as automobiles and travel. The majority of display advertising does not have these same characteristics because it is sold by sales force and negotiating a new contract typically takes four to six weeks per client --generating a significant lag effect. As a result we think the rapid recovery will be almost unique to paid search businesses.

New CFO Patrick Pichette is bringing a new focus on expense control at Google and that discipline will translate into better profits.

Posted by Oyya-Info. Posted In : Google

Citrix updates XenServer and Essentials

June 15, 2009

Citrix has introduced updates to XenServer, its free virtualization platform, and to Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V, its virtualization management package.

The new 5.5 release of XenServer, which Citrix began offering as a free download in February, is designed to provide easier virtualization management and broader integration with enterprise systems, the company said in its announcement Wednesday. This includes hooks that allow third-party products to interact with XenServer to provide full or incremental in-guest, file backups of virtual machines. Image backups are supported too.

In addition, it lets admins carry out GUI-based snapshots from the XenCenter management console.

The update supplies new tools to convert virtual machines from VMware's VMDK format into the VHD format used by Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V. It also lets them switch between common open virtualisation format packages.

In addition, new search facilities give admins a range of ways to locate virtual machines, while Active Directory integration brings XenServer hosts into the enterprise's information repository.

The list of supported guests has grown in the new version of XenServer to include Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11, Debian 5.0 and RedHat/CentOS/Oracle 5.3.

As for Citrix Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V, the new 5.5 version adds the ability to clone and provision XenServer or Microsoft Hyper-V-based virtual machines across physical and virtual resources. It also allows third-parties to deliver unified backup and snapshot features for the VMs.

Citrix said the Essentials update also simplifies the process of building, testing, sharing and delivering applications throughout an application's life cycle, including the ability to develop and test environments across virtualization platforms. According to Citrix, it also extends XenServer's XenMotion features by enabling automated movement of live virtual machines across servers based on preset rules and thresholds, so reducing performance bottlenecks.

The beta version of the new Citrix XenServer 5.5 is available for download now, with the final version scheduled for release on June 19. Citrix Essentials 5.5 for XenServer and Hyper-V is available now for download in a beta version and a 30-day trial version. It will also be released on June 19, with prices starting at $2,500 per server, regardless of the number of processors.

On Wednesday, Citrix also unveiled NetScaler VPX, a virtual appliance version of its NetScaler MPX hardware appliance that is designed to accelerate and secure enterprise web applications. It can be installed on commodity hardware, the company said. It added that the move should allow smaller companies to access its technology because the software appliance can be downloaded from the net and run on a standard server, making it cheaper to buy.

The company is pitching NetScaler VPX for use by enterprises and cloud service providers as an on-demand service, as virtual machines can be deployed quickly deployed as demand increases. The company has not yet announced prices.

Posted by Oyya-Info. Posted In : Business Tech