Google has a new tool in the works that will allow it to enter into the market that measures Internet usage, according to a published report. An announcement of the new Google (GOOG: 545.21, -1.22, -0.22%) service, which is aimed at helping advertisers pinpoint where to place their ads online, is expected to be unveiled as early as Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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CANNES, France (Reuters) - The Chief Executive of Digitas, the online advertising arm of France’s Publicis, welcomed a new advertising deal between web search giants Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., saying he hoped it could be extended to areas beyond search ads. David Kenny told Reuters in an interview on Friday, on the sidelines of the Cannes Lions 2008 advertising festival, that he did not think the deal would reduce competition.

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Google Inc. and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts will partner to allow plan members to create online personal health records with Google Health, the insurer said.Under the partnership, the Boston-based health insurer’s members will be able to download their claims data into a personal health record hosted by Google Health. Users will be able to organize, store and manage their medical records, personal health information and Blue Cross claims data; download their prescription histories and medical records from other connected providers such as Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreen Co. and Minneapolis-based Minute Clinic; and share their medical information with providers, among other things. Both Walgreens and Minute Clinic have agreed to share information with Google Health.
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Sony will soon add a Google Internet search feature as part of a software update for the PlayStation Portable. On the PSP blog Monday, Sony said the new upgrade, v4.00, “replicates the Google Internet search experience. PSP users will need to be connected to the Web via Wi-Fi. The move represents Sony’s continued efforts to expand the Internet features of the handheld. Of course, what users really want is an easy way to download movies off the Web.

Nonetheless, the company continues to force users to buy the much rejected Universal Media Discs (UMD), the mini DVDs that Sony built especially for the PSP, or hack the device with video converters.

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Yahoo announced a nonexclusive partnership Thursday under which rival Google will supply it with some search ads, a move that could increase Yahoo search revenue but that also gives Google even more power in the market.Yahoo expects the deal, which was expected, to raise revenue by $800 million in its first year and to provide an extra $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow. That’s a major potential boost, given that Yahoo reported revenue of $1.53 billion in its most recent quarter, after ad commissions are subtracted. “We see this as a good, open, flexible deal and (one that) helps Yahoo be strengthened as a good longer-term competitor,” Chief Executive Jerry Yang said in a conference call Thursday.

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In the span of a few minutes in San Francisco today, Steve Jobs stuck a needle in big balloons hanging over Google and Microsoft. By announcing and taking the wraps off MobileMe, Jobs and Apple did what Google and Microsoft have tried but have failed to do: Define the cloud, and turn it into a broad-based, software-as-a-service offering for anyone. It has potential to integrate work and life, documents and images, PCs and phones.

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Google (NSDQ: GOOG) on Tuesday plans to launch Google Site Search, a re-branded version of Google Custom Search Business Edition.

Site Search, like its less elegantly named predecessor, gives businesses a way to offer Google search on their own Web sites.

“Search continues to be the way people find information,” said Google enterprise product director Matt Glotzbach. “It has really taken over as the navigation paradigm for the Web. We’re really set on addressing that and creating a hosted search offering that’s accessible to everyone.”

The new Site Search offers enhanced index coverage. It now indexes documents on public sites that otherwise wouldn’t be indexed. Glotzbach described these files as “content that the crawler knows about but isn’t in the main index due to space constraints.” Public documents hidden behind submission forms represent the types of files that might not normally make it into Google’s index, he explained.

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It’s pretty much a given that the next iPhone, expected June 9, will have 3G network capabilities. What’s the next-most important feature the device ought to have? That would be GPS, according to Arik Hesseldahl. The applications and functions that GPS could bring about would open a whole new world for the iPhone.

If there’s anything the iPhone has lacked compared with other phones in its class, it has been high-speed connectivity and the ability to determine its location accurately. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) will address the first shortcoming in a matter of days, when it unveils the second version of the year-old iPhone on June 9.

I’m hoping Apple also tackles No. 2 — by including support for Global Positioning System navigation. For one thing, most of the handsets in the iPhone’s peer group contain GPS chips by default. Research In Motion’s (Nasdaq: RIMM) BlackBerry devices have included GPS support for a few years now, while Finland’s Nokia (NYSE: NOK) considers GPS so strategically important that last year it spent US$8.1 billion to acquire Chicago’s Navteq, a digital mapmaker that supplies all the major navigation device companies.

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Apple’s release of a major update for its Leopard operating system has further deflated the claims of some fans that Macs are intrinsically superior in the security department. There’s a cup-half-full argument to be made, though: It’s because more consumers are using Mac systems that the OS is attracting more attention from hackers.

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has completed a major security overhaul of its Leopard operating system. The fix addresses more than 40 crucial security flaws, including one in iCal that allows hackers to attack the computer remotely.

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Google just released a new browser plugin that lets users experience Google Earth from directly inside a webpage. The new plugin is accompanied by an API that web developers can use to easily incorporate Google Earth into their applications, just like what they did with Google Maps a long time ago.

The downside is that nobody has the plugin yet, so any representation of Earth you put on your website is instead displayed as a box telling your users to install the plugin (but this is a common and acceptable practice). The install is easy and fairly unintrusive — basically a couple clicks and browser restart. In Firefox at least (I haven’t tried installing on IE yet), the browser restart shouldn’t be necessary (Microsoft’s Live Earth does everything it needs to without one).

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I’m at the Googleplex in Mountain View for a Google Factory Tour–which involves neither a factory nor a tour. But it is an update on Google search, and should therefore be worthwhile. I’ll update this post as the event proceeds…

9:50am: The event is starting, a bit late. Google’s Marissa Mayer introduces R.J. Pittman, Director of Product Management. He says search is search is important, and then talks about digital photos: 300 million of them are taken every day. Next, he says that there are 360 million image searches a day across the major search properties.

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Mozilla Corporation on Friday released Firefox 3 RC1, more or less the final form of this iteration of the popular open-source Web browser. RC stands for Release Candidate and represents a stage in which the browser’s features are complete and the code is stable enough for public testing. Barring any serious bugs, RC1 will become the official release version of Firefox 3, which is planned for June.Firefox 3 offers significantly improved speed and memory usage.

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