<IT WORLD> There's no catching Google By Martin J Young
Google's market share is still on the increase as it expanded its US search
market in October while its competitors all lost ground. Market research
company ComScore reported that Google's share was up to 58.5% from 57% the
previous month. Yahoo remained at second place with 22.9% after a drop of 0.8%
and Microsoft lost 0.6% to put them at a 9.7% share for the month.
Google captured 6.1 billion of the 10.5 billion Internet searches in the US
during October; far more than second place Yahoo's 2.4 billion. ComScore only
counted search engines with almost a 5% share or more, fourth and fifth
positions were taken by the Ask
Network and Time Warner Network with 4.7% and 4.2% respectively.
A new
anti piracy system unveiled in France last week aims to target Internet users
who frequently download music or films illegally. A three-way coalition between
French Internet service providers, the government and owners of music and movie
rights was drafted by a commission led by the chief executive of FNAC, a large
music and film retailer.
Warning messages will be issued to users that violate the agreement by service
providers, failure to comply with them will result in Internet accounts being
suspended. In a speech endorsing the deal, President Nicolas Sarkozy said that
the Internet must not become a high-tech Wild West, "a lawless zone where
outlaws can pillage works with abandon or, worse, trade in them in total
impunity. And on whose backs? On artists' backs."
The international recording industry has also praised the move stating that
"this is the single-most important initiative to help win the war on online
piracy that we have seen so far".
The
2008 race for the Whitehouse just accelerated a little this week when ABC News
and social networking giant Facebook announced a new initiative that will use a
web 2.0 application to assist political debate. The application, built with
Facebook technology and editorial content from ABC News, will be called US
Politics, it aims to give Facebook users new methods to learn about and debate
issues regarding the approaching elections.
Reporters from ABC News and presidential candidates will post news stories,
blogs and images from the campaign directly onto Facebook, members will then
have access to "Debate Groups" where they can share opinions about the
campaign. Polls will also be conducted on various campaign issues in an effort
to get more feedback from the public as opposed to watching a televised debate.
Search
giant Google is planning an online service which will offer subscribers
web-based hard-disk space for backup and data storage. The service will
reportedly offer a limited space for free with additional storage space
available at extra cost.
Online backup and storage services are nothing new, but Google intends to offer
a user-friendly interface so that the service will be accessible to all and not
just the technically minded. The one obstacle that Google will not be able to
solve is slow upload times from users with sluggish Internet connections,
storing a large video clip online could take several hours or even days to
upload.
The move by Google comes shortly after Microsoft launched its free online
storage service called SkyDrive, which offers 500 Mb. Also at about the same
time, Apple upgraded its Mac service to include 10 Gb for US$100 per year. No
timetable was given for the launch of the project, however, and Google was
unavailable to comment.
Hardware
Nvidia has held the spotlight for high-end graphics cards for some time,
however, AMD is fighting back with its latest Radeon offerings. The newest ATi
cards launched this week are the HD 3850 and 3870 aimed to compete with the
Geforce 8800 series.
The new range of GPUs from AMD is the first to support the new version of
Direct3D 10.1, however no games have been released yet to take advantage of it.
In competition and as always to beat their rivals, Nvidia rushed the launch of
its higher performing 8800 GT recently, which having a price tag of around
$260, is still a better bang for your buck than the new HD 3000 series cards
from AMD. The only problem with the Nvidia card is that availability will
become scarce approaching the spending season so the new Radeons may prove to
be a good alternative.
AMD also made waves in the processor pool this week by introducing its new
highly anticipated CPU after delays of over a year. The new processor, called
Phenom, is the first quad core processor from the microchip company and comes
in three models; the Phenom 9700, 9600 and 9500.
A new 7 series chipset couples the processor as AMD unveiled its spider
platform which allows four graphics cards to be run in crossfire mode using the
new 790FX chipset. The quad core processor won't actually run at four times the
clock speed, this is a common misconception; it uses four cores to speed up
simultaneous multi-tasking as its dual core predecessor did with two.
This processor still uses the 65nm production process and AMD is working on
45nm technology for release next year. AMD positions its new CPU in the
mid-range segment and will offer the most affordable quad core processor on the
market by undercutting its rivals Intel.
Software
Firefox fans will be happy this week as Mozilla released the first public beta
version 3.0 of the browser after almost four months of delays. The new version
has over 36 major improvements to features, security and performance, and
boasts a new rendering platform that improves the display of web pages.
The 6.2Mb download also features a number of new enhancements, such as a new
icon next to the URL bar, providing a snapshot of currently viewed sites and
displaying information on website operators and possible security issues.
Better anti-virus and Windows Vista integration is also included, along with
extended malware protection and a new download manager. Mozilla has stated that
this is still only a beta version for developers and the final product will not
be released until all bug testing has been completed and issues fixed.
Gaming
A busy Thanksgiving weekend and a price cut gave Sony an almost quadruple boost
in sales figures for its Playstation 3. Many shoppers took the first
opportunity to buy the $400 version of the gaming console which comes bundled
with a Blu-ray Disc version of Spiderman 3 and a 40Gb hard drive. Sales
increased by 245% in the week of November 18 to 24 and price cuts across the
range of Sony consoles saw increases in sales for other models following many
months lagging behind Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360.
Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
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A new
anti piracy system unveiled in France last week aims to target Internet users
who frequently download music or films illegally. A three-way coalition between
French Internet service providers, the government and owners of music and movie
rights was drafted by a commission led by the chief executive of FNAC, a large
music and film retailer.
