Michael Hickins

Google’s first-quarter sales and earnings figures are almost a backstory to a more important potential trend–the company’s modest (6.2 percent) revenue growth might mean that e-commerce business might be about to rebound, as online retailers make heavy use of search to drive business their way. New York Times reporter Miguel Helft noted: “Analysts are looking […]

Google and Apple seem headed on a collision course with their respective telephony products, leading to sentiment that Google CEO Eric Schmidt should resign his seat on Apple’s board. The crux of the biscuit is Android, the Google-sponsored smartphone operating system sold to phone manufacturers as an alternative to the iPhone. Now that Android may […]

Google’s dominance in Web search is growing and may grow even more thanks to a change in underlying technology it uses to present search results. So much for Steve Ballmer’s ambitions for Microsoft. Google had a 63.7 percent share of the 14.3 billion U.S. searches in March, up 0.4 percentage points from February, and above […]

SAAS is on its way to becoming the rule rather than the exception for application delivery. The software-as-a-service model still has some barriers to break, but analysts, vendors and customers agree that it’s come a lot further than anyone expected it to even five years ago. And more barriers are likely to be broken before […]

Google’s YouTube acquisition is looking less and less like a financial boondoggle every day. YouTube is now selling ads against 9% of its content, versus 6% a year ago (and remember, this is a market in serious recession). According to AdAge: “A YouTube spokesman confirmed that the social site is placing ads on more videos […]

Eric Schmidt gave at least four different speeches yesterday to an equal number of publisher association meetings in four different cities all named Washington, D.C. At least that’s what you’d gather given the remarkably different takes on his comments. But that’s to be expected: we all know reporters never get the story right. The Wall […]

This isn’t as bad as the recent “improvements” Skype introduced to its desktop client, but it has some users questioning the value. According to the Google Mobile blog, the company used HTML5 and Gears to make the mobile browsing experience faster, more resilient to carrier network snafus and more like the full-screen experience you get […]

The forces of reaction are aiming their pitchforks at Google. Like pogroms of the past, entrenched powers faced with uncontrollable change try to forestall the inevitable by egging on disgruntled masses in the wrong direction. Cause and effect. Rupert Murdoch has been for months voicing displeasure at Google for stealing his intellectual property; mobs turn […]

T-Mobile plans to start selling a home phone and a small tablet computer, both running on Android, in early 2010, according to published reports. This is in addition to the G1 it currently markets and the forthcoming G2. It’s a great sign for Google that Android is being picked up not only as an operating […]

There actually is a deal in place between Google and Twitter, but it’s not an acquisition (contrary to a report by Techcrunch). Google is selling marketers a service that streams their five most recent Tweets across the AdSense network. Intuit, Google’s first customer for this service, as reported by AdAge, will direct people clicking on […]