Tips to Googlize Your Business

Whether you love or hate Google as a search engine, it’s hard to spend a day without touching one of there services. The search engine giant Google has come a long way to provide variety of services like internet enquiries and to map your way to your next destination.

Today, Google is changing the way that we communicate on a personal and professional level. Today Google offers cost effective solutions often free to use, better scalability and easier collaboration with enhanced security.

Google has products that are worth trying out. They won’t take too much time to set up or install, and if you hate them there will be no nagging tech salesperson showing up on your door trying to convince you to use these tools.

Google Buzz.   Google Buzz is one of the product added to Google family. To access this product, you’ll need a Gmail account. Google Buzz is aiming to compete with the Twitter and Face book communities, among other social networks.  Google buzz is trying to improve online conversations. Google Buzz definitely looks promising since it’s integrated within your Gmail account. What also makes it interesting in a business environment is the ability to have private or public real-time conversations, helping to increase your organization’s productivity with easier collaboration using comment threads with status updates.

Google Chrome. This Google download is like the ugly stepsister in the browser world.

It just doesn’t get the attention it deserves. While Mozilla’s Firefox is an excellent web browser, what makes Chrome even better is one simple thing: this Google product allows you to search directly from the address bar. Sure, this seems simply enough, but when you start to use Chrome on a regular basis you realize how much time you can save by entering your queries in the same place you normally type a full URL. You might call this lazy searching, but whatever you say about Google Chrome, there’s no doubt it’s a winning feature.

Gmail: Many corporate Internet email services make sending, searching, and sharing messages frustrating. With Gmail, aside from ease-of-use, there are many business advantages. For starters, Google offers you more email storage than you will ever need and if you do need more, you can buy it at a reasonable price. Although managing emails is a fine art, with Gmail you don’t have to spend a lot of time organizing your messages because they are easily searchable in seconds. However, if you love organizing your email account, there are stars, filters, and labels to make Gmail sorting a breeze. Another obvious benefit to this Google service is the ability to check your email anywhere, anytime, on any computer with Internet access.

Google Calendar. There is no more important tool in a business than a company’s calendar. With Google Calendar, you can easily manage all your meetings. The app’s built-in reminders make it easy for you to send a text message or email to yourself at scheduled times before an appointment. If you’re worried about your clients or customers calendar programs getting confused with your Google ways, Google Calendar plays nice with Microsoft Outlook, among other programs. Finally, even if you’re offline, you can still see your meetings.

Google Docs. Word processing is a breeze in Google Docs. From creating documents to designing a presentation to crafting a spreadsheet, all of these items can be created and exported to popular file formats, such as DOC, PPT, and CSV. There is no new technology to learn within Google Docs since the terminology is the same as what you’d find in much of the business world’s popular software. Google docs is free to use, just like everything on this list, which decreases your software license fees and increases your company’s productivity.

Microsoft VS Google

Microsoft Corp’s assault on search engine leader Google Inc took a major step forward as US and European regulators cleared the software company’s search partnership with Yahoo Inc.

The 10-year deal, struck last July, is the biggest effort yet by Microsoft to establish an online business to rival Google, an area where Microsoft has lost $5 billion over the last four years.

Microsoft has already made some progress with its search engine, Bing, picking up 3.3 points of market share since its launch last June. But Bing is not likely to “push Google off a very big pedestal any time soon”.

The battle for online search ads is only one front on a sprawling war for revenue between Microsoft and Google, which also encompasses operating systems and mobile phones. But neither has yet managed to compete on equal terms in each other’s core market.

“In terms of our modeling, we really don’t see any impact from Microsoft-Yahoo on our Google numbers,”.

“It doesn’t change much in terms of the competitive dynamics of the industry right away,” he warned. “From a Google perspective, looking out over the next couple of years, it’s a nonevent.”

The deal, cleared unconditionally by the US Department of Justice and the European Commission on Thursday, is not expected to impact Microsoft’s bottom line, but could lay the foundation of a profitable online business.

Microsoft shares rose 1.2 per cent and Yahoo’s rose 0.7 per cent on NASDAQ, in a broadly higher tech market.

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division said the deal was unlikely to substantially lessen competition.

Google, which did not oppose the partnership, did not comment specifically on the regulatory approval but said that there has always been “robust” competition in the search ad business. Its shares rose 1.1 per cent.

HOW IT WORKS

The deal means Bing becomes the search engine for Microsoft and Yahoo sites, while Yahoo focuses on attracting big advertisers.

Microsoft will handle the automated auction of search ads for use on both companies sites, and pay Yahoo a portion of search ad sales generated on Yahoo pages.

Microsoft is hoping that by making itself a single conduit for advertisers to access customers on both sites, it will become a credible alternative to Google.

Last month Yahoo handled 17 per cent of US Internet searches, while Microsoft took 11.3 per cent, according to com Score. Theoretically, that would now give Microsoft over 28 per cent of search traffic, against Google’s 65.4 per cent.

Globally, Google is even more dominant, with 90 per cent of the search market compared with 7.4 per cent for a combined Yahoo and Bing, according to November data from Web research firm Stat Counter.

The Microsoft-Yahoo deal was broadly expected to gain approval, but some had thought the companies might have to alter the deal’s terms.

The partnership took months to hammer out last year. It followed Microsoft’s aborted $47.5 billion Yahoo takeover attempt the year before. Google abandoned its own advertising deal with Yahoo in 2008, which Microsoft opposed, under pressure from the US Justice Department.

Approval means Microsoft can begin the task of putting its Bing search engine into Yahoo sites. Neither company has laid out exactly how Yahoo’s new search pages will look, but they will essentially be Bing searches with some customization of results by Yahoo.

The companies aim to get the partnership fully operational in the United States by the end of this year, with the transition of advertisers taking place before the holiday shopping season, if possible. The partnership should be globally complete by early 2012.

The deal had already been cleared by regulators in Australia, Brazil and Canada, but needed US and European approval to take effect. The companies said they are still working with regulators in Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

Source: yahoo news