On the 7th of October Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt gave a press conference in New York, where he said the recession in the advertising industry had leveled off, suggesting that the green shoots of recovery are ready to sprout in the United states and European search markets.

The company has continued to develop and introduce a great deal of new web applications over these challenging times, but Eric said that search accounted for the vast majority of the company’s revenue – at around 90%.

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From the first half of next year anyone with a web browser will be able to take advantage of Google’s new e-book service, Google Editions. The controversial advance into the world of book reselling has got plenty of backs up in the publishing industry – everyone takes notice when a company the size of Google moves into its territory.

Google has, however, been careful to give a handsome percentage to publishers – standing at 63 percent, while Google will pocket the remaining 37. What does this mean for the publishing industry? Does it mean lower prices for consumers, or does it mean the same prices but with more money going to Google and the publishing houses? The only people who will be truly saddened by this are those people who work in the printing industry.

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Google just keep coming up with new stuff, don’t they? I guess when you’re one of the most profitable companies in the world, you have to offload that money somewhere. And they choose to pump it into lots of new web applications and product design ideas that no-one’s sure will be useful.

But they look cool. And here comes Google Wave. If you look at the Youtube adverts it certainly looks very sexy, with cute little blue boxes and pretty icons everywhere. But what the hell is it for?

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Harsh times for Google and I don’t mean financially! It would appear that rogue sites and dodgy links are being moving higher up in their rankings. Google are being outwitted by being tricked into displaying compromising web pages as a way for cyber-criminals to hijack end user’s computers, downloading personal information and stealing credit details. One attempt that has been successful in their activities has been to entice specific groups of people by using the phrase ‘Cheap vista for students‘ in Google search terms.

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So, Those Imperious Google folk have come up with yet another product to help the internet get along. Only this time, they’re kind of hijacking one of the most valuable and Googlejuicy aspects of having a website or blog: the comment thread.

Of course, others have tried to do this before, namely the Third Voice – but with little success. The Sidewiki is a tool that can forms part of the Google toolbar, and allows comments to be posted on any page on the net. As it floats above pages as opposed to being in it, no webmaster can opt out. The only saving grace for the webmaster is the fact that he or she can control the top comment (via Google Webmaster).

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Even though the economic downturns have managed to swallow whole even the biggest known companies, it hasn’t managed to take search engine giants Google down with the others. In fact Google’s brand is soaring, seeing its value rise in what appears to at an exponential rate. Google’s brand value rose up 25% estimating £31.9bn (£19.5bn) which according to Interbrand’s survey has been their biggest rise yet.

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The Google search algorithm has come a long way, and is arguably the most advanced search engine service around. Although the exact way it works will remain a mystery, many SEO specialists have pinpointed how to ‘work’ the algorithm to their advantage. But one question that often occurs as regards the algorithm is ‘Can Google Identify Bad Writing?’

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Google have recently landed a deal with Sony to bundle their Google Chrome internet browser into Sony PC’s.

Since its launch in December 2008 Google Chrome has become increasing popular as an internet browser by users worldwide, however it still lags behind market leaders Microsoft with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox browser.

The recent deal between Google and Sony is the first agreement which Google have signed with a major personal computer manufacturer which is set to increase the awareness of the Chrome browser.

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Google Analytics is an almighty tool with many spectacular features which all web-masters to track the performance of their websites within search engines. However the default statistic reporting of Analytics can be frustrating for webmasters attempting to analyse the true statistics behind their website.

Google provide data tracking from 41 search engine by default such as Google organic, Yahoo organic, Bing organic and so forth; however by default there is no way to track visits to your website which came regional searches and searches via Google News. By default, any traffic visiting the website via Google News and incorporated into Google Orgaic data, inevitably meaning there is no way to distinguish between organic visits and visits via news.google.co.uk data.

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It might not come as a surprise that Google has taken over a large number of firms since 2001, but it still makes fascinating reading.

The company made just 2 acquisitions in 2001, and interestingly made no purchases in 2002. But the next year they really seemed to get their wallet out; over this twelve month period they grabbed a grand total of 6 companies. These firms included sectors as diverse as weblog software, blogging services and the web search engine Kaltix. Two of the firms were online advertising specialists.

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