Replies to post #3858 on Alphabet Inc (GOOG)

[SeriousMoney]

Google: Can You Hear Me Now?
Monday April 17, 12:56 pm ET
By Tom Taulli, Motley Fool

A few months ago, while in a noisy restaurant, I had lunch with a start-up company called V-Enable, which allows voice-enabled search on mobile devices. I said into a phone "Rolling Stones," and in less than a second, I got a list of relevant search results.

Yes, it's the next frontier in search: the mobile phone. In fact, last week, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG - News) got approval for a patent, No. 7027987, for the "voice interface for a search engine." The inventors include Alexander Franz, Brian Milch, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. To be sure, this is not a dominant patent -- the sort that locks up the voice search market. Instead, there are many technological permutations offering some form of voice search; V-Enable has a variety of patents. As for the Google patent, it deals with improving the effectiveness of natural-language queries in the contents of search systems when using large databases -- one of the problems of voice search.

More importantly, though, the market for mobile search is expected to be huge: A recent Piper Jaffray research report forecasts that it will reach $11 billion by 2008. And to be sure, while Google dominates desktop search, the company has so far been defensive in mobile search, making moves of this sort even more important. In fact, I'm somewhat surprised at how slow Google has been on mobile, at least up to this point. To my observation, competitors such as Yahoo! seem to be more aggressive, such as with its latest deal with Helio, which is a joint venture with EarthLink.

An important problem Google will face as it seeks to monetize mobile search is the carriers themselves. They control the mobile footprint and are likely to extract a good amount of the revenue generated from mobile search.

In other words, the market is too big for Google to ignore, so expect the company to pounce on it. "We are confident all major Internet portal and search companies will launch voice-enabled search later this year or early next year," said Dipanshu Sharma, the founder and chief technology officer of V-Enable. "Our usage numbers show consumers prefer using voice-search over text-search on mobile handsets."

With top talent and billions in cash, expect Google to invest aggressively in the mobile search market -- and perhaps even buy a company or two to accelerate things.

http://biz.yahoo.com/fool/060417/114529297707.html?.v=2

[SeriousMoney]

Yahoo! Looking Out for Google
at TheStreet.com (Tue 2:30pm) [video]

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/video/strategysession/10279856.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&...

[SeriousMoney]

Yahoo's Profit Drops as Revenue Surges With Online Ad Boom
A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP
April 18, 2006 5:37 p.m.

Yahoo Inc.'s net income declined 22%, weighed down by stock-options expenses, but revenue surged as the Internet portal continued to ride the wave in Internet advertising.

Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., posted net income of $159.9 million, or 11 cents a share, compared with $204.6 million, or 14 cents a share, in the same quarter last year.

Excluding stock compensation expenses, Yahoo said earnings were $231 million, or 15 cents a share. That compares with adjusted earnings of $195 million, or 13 cents a share, in the year-earlier period.

Revenue surged 34% to $1.57 billion from $1.17 billion in the year earlier quarter. Sales excluding commissions paid to marketing partners totaled $1.09 billion, compared with $821 million in the year-earlier period.

Yahoo had forecast revenue of $1.04 billion to $1.1 billion, excluding marketing commissions. On that basis, First Call pegged revenue at $1.08 billion, compared with $820.8 million in the same quarter last year.

Although Yahoo's top line has been enjoying big growth thanks to the boom in Internet advertising, competition from archrival Google Inc. could cut into some of those gains, particularly in the area of search-related ads, where Google dominates.

Yahoo reported results after the close of trading Tuesday. Shares rose 33 cents to $31.30 in 4 p.m. trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114357606114510387.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo

[SeriousMoney]

comScore: Google Leads On March 2006 US Search Share
Posted by Danny Sullivan on Apr. 18, 2006
SearchEngineWatch

You may have seen some rumblings a couple of weeks ago about Google being up in search traffic compared to competitors, based on comScore figures. I'm going to do a big drill down on that later this week, bringing in some NetRatings and Hitwise figures as well. But more comScore figures have just arrived for March, so here they are:

Share of Online Searches
US Home, Work & University Users

Search Network March 2005 March 2006 Change  
 Google         36.4%      42.7%      +6.3% 
 Yahoo          30.6%      28.0%      -2.6%  
 MSN/Microsoft  16.5%      13.2%      -3.3%  
 Ask             5.5%       5.9%      +0.4%

Other notes from the comScore release:

Americans conducted 6.4 billion searches online in March, up 10 percent from last month and 15 percent from last year. The increase in search queries from the previous month marked the largest gain over the past twelve months.

Google Sites led the pack with 2.7 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (1.8 billion), MSN-Microsoft (849 million), Time-Warner Network (486 million), and Ask Jeeves/Ask Network (376 million).

The toolbar search market continues to be dominated by Google and Yahoo!, which combined for more than 95 percent of toolbar searches in March. Google led the way with 48.9 percent, while Yahoo! captured 46.5 percent.

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060418-103131