Google moving further into the Phone Market
Google is further trying to penetrate the voice communications market by way of it’s recent acquisition of Gizmo5 in the US. Gizmo5 is an online phone company that operates an open-standards platform for Voice-over-IP phone calls that is similar to Skype’s popular platform.
In addition to the possibility of fierce competition that Google poses to Skype, it could also be threatening to some of the world’s largest telecommunications companies whose fat profits are derived from mobile communications.
Google Voice is on trial in the USA at present, and it enables the user to transfer their existing phone number onto the platform, and provides a way to unify your mobile, fixed-landline voice and Voice-over-IP into one number, providing a host of cheap and convenient options including Voicemail, cheap international calls over the internet, Conference calls, Free SMS and more.
The move positions Google as potentially one of the most cost-effective providers for phone-calls, and if the technology is successfully implemented into Google’s Android handsets, it could enable callers to benefit from substantial discounts on their mobile phone bill and provide a very compelling offering that appeals well beyond the tech-geeks who are the current demographic of owners using Google’s Android Mobile Phone handsets.
Google Voice is on trial by invite only in the USA, and invitations can be requested from http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html
Market-Share Updates - Bing Gains on Yahoo
Microsoft’s recently launched Search Engine (or their coined term “emotion engine”), Bing is picking up market share for search volumes, and along-side Google is eroding Yahoo’s market-share, research by comScore Inc reveals.
comScore advises that between September and October 2009, Bing’s market share rose from 9.4% to 9.9%m with Yahoo! slipping 0.8% percentage points down to 18%.
Google still remains the dominant figure with around 65% market-share.
* This data is based on search volumes within North America.
Introducing Drop.com.au - Domain Catch Specialists
A new and exciting internet brand has launched today in Australia. drop.com.au is a new domain business by Dark Blue Sea (most commonly known for their Fabulous.com and FabulousDomains.com brands) and is set to shake up the Australian Domain Industry with it’s domain catch platform.
This exciting new brand offers a domain catching service, allowing participants to re-register expired domain names the instant they are deleted and purged from the registry.
The service runs on technology previously used by the successful registrar Domain8, to catch deleted .au Domain Names, and operates on week-days when the registry releases the expired domains and makes them available for registration.
Catching is the process of re-registering a domain after it deleted and made available again for registration. The drop.com.au system monitors the registry for the randomised purge, and continuously attempts to register the name until it has been caught. The registration process is completed literally within milliseconds of becoming available.
Interested parties are required to bid on the name they would like to register on the morning of the day when the “drops” occurs (a “drop” is the process of a domain name being deleted & purged from the registry) and as in all auctions, the highest bidder at auction close wins the “right to catch”.
Over the past 6 months, drop-catch services such as this have yielded some very valuable domain assets including printing.com.au (which was picked up for a meager $A 9221.00) and many other high value domain names going for as low as a single dollar (plus registration costs).
The drop.com.au service does not guarantee 100% success, but sources at DBS indicate that drop.com.au should perform with 85% success-rate and higher, which is a good result considering other players have also been taking part, officially or otherwise, for the past 2 years or so.
In addition to the Drop-Catch platform, drop.com.au also plans to introduce many new services aimed at the domain investment market. Hopefully a new after-market service is one of these services, because it is certainly lacking in the industry. Aftermarket services for the uninitiated, allow people to buy and sell .AU domains.
Domain trading is a relatively new concept in Australia, with the regulator of .AU domain names only laxing it’s policy on transfers between registrants (the ability to trade a name) in June 2008. There are only a few players in this space, including the rather expensive NetFleet.
Given FabulousDomains.com’s experience in the International Domain Space with it’s Domain Distribution Network (listing over 600,000 international domains for trade), it is a certainty that Dark Blue Sea is capable of providing a superior offering in the Australian Domain After-Market, and Search News will be watching in anticipation of their growth and success, and many of the other innovative tools they promise to bring to the domain name industry.
Visit the newly launched website today: www.drop.com.au
Another Insurer Mis-using Google’s Trademark
Earlier we brought you news of an Australian Insurance company; budget direct mis-using Google’s trademark in it’s advertising. The ad is still on air, but the audio has been replaced and the reference to “Google” was removed shortly after.
Now it seems another insurance company is using Google in it’s advertising, Allianz, with the term “Just Google Allianz”, and also featured a screenshot of the Google homepage being used to type in the name “allianz”.
I’m sure that Google’s lawyers will be on the case once again, but what is becoming increasingly frustrating with these advertising campaigns, apart from annoying Google’s IP lawyers; is they do little to educate their audience or raise awareness of their brand and website name.
Promotion of a website and educating the audience can have many benefits, least of which would save the advertiser money, as they remove the search engine from the equation, where there is a high chance the user will see competing websites or adverts, resulting in a lost customer.
Even if Alliance were to have the user click on their ad, the cost of that click could be as much as $3.00.
Had the advertisement said “log on to www.allianz.com.au” they would be re-enforcing the website name, and encouraging users to enter a website URL, rather than relying exclusively on a search engine to reference or find information, which is creating a generation of lazy internet users.
One of the key rules of Online Marketing is to present your customer with the right information in the shortest possible time to help them make an informed decision and then get on with what they were doing. Adding a search engine in the process of delivering that information, when you’ve already run a TV ad campaign might not be the best way of achieving that end.