Google Search blog

The deal is the first to value one of the new crop of user-participation websites at more than US $1 billion. In anticipation of the acquisition, investors pushed shares of Google up $8.50, or 2%, on Nasdaq Monday to a closing price of $429.

The stock had already gained 2% on Friday when reports emerged that the deal might be in the works, and in the last 2 trading days, Google has added nearly $4 billion in market capitalization– more than twice what the company has agreed to pay for YouTube.

“YouTube is phenomenally valuable in terms of traffic, and in the internet sector, this is important– just like location is important in real estate,” said Sasa Zorovic, an analyst at Oppenheimer.

You Tube was founded in February 2005 as one of dozens of internet video start-ups. It has exploded in popularity since last November by letting users share short clips of home videos and programming copied from television.

You Tube has been the subject of acquisition speculation for much of this year. Potential buyers included internet rivals of Google such as Yahoo, as well as media companies like News Corp, owner of MySpace.com, and MTV owner Viacom.

“This is a very good move for Google, strategically, as it opens up to them the possibility to grow in one internet area where they were not very big - that is video,” said Steve Neimeth, portfolio manager for AIG SunAmerica Asset Management. “Financially, since Google is sitting on top of $US10 billion in cash, and the price came within the range of expectations, it is probably going to be a non-event.”

You Tube says it serves about 100 million videos daily and has drawn scrutiny from major media companies for copyrighted material appearing on its pages without their consent.

In a move that appears to pre-empt the threat of legal action against You Tube, Universal Music Group and Sony BMG said earlier on Monday they signed distribution deals with YouTube, following a similar agreement with Warner Music Group last month.

This sounds like an ideal work environment. Source: asuwebdevil.com, with italicized corrections by myself.

With free food, recreational luxuries, and a college dorm-like feel, Google’s new Phoenix location turned the stereotypical-cubical-loaded-office space into a Gymboree for adults.

Google Phoenix had it’s grand opening on Thursday, which is its first ever location on a university campus.

“A lot of this stuff is from IKEA,” said Beth McRae, a public relations representative for the Google Phoenix location. IKEA is a popular, modern-style furniture and accessories store.

Plastic tables and chairs adorned in Google colors stood smack dab in the center of the office. Refrigerators and freezers were stocked with salami and ice cream sandwiches, bottles of water, soda pops, and energy drinks. There were small cubbies resembling those that were available in kindergarten, filled with a smorgasbord of candy that would put any movie theater to shame. A pool table and foosball table were next to a room that was showing the movie “Star Wars,” while an Xbox 360 video game console was on the floor ready to be played.

“After you work hard and resist distractions, a person can play a round of pool and load up on free caffeine,” said David Sears, an employee at Excel Services.

Google employees rested in leather massage chairs and enlarged bean bags on a bright blue, red, yellow and green carpet, playing toss with a stress-relief ball.

“We want work to be fun, but serious,” said Douglas Merrill, vice president of engineering for Google and head of the Phoenix Google office.

The new Google Phoenix headquarters is located on the second floor of the University Services Building on Rural Road just south of Apache Boulevard.

Instead of a ribbon cutting ceremony, a Native American blessed Google to grow in strength and to reach out to the market and its neighbors.

“We put our office here because we go where the talent is, and ASU and Tempe have large clusters of very smart people,” Merrill said.

“We are going to work really well with Arizona State University, have internships, and hire as many people locally as we can,” Merrill said. “When our doors opened on June 12, we had 50 people working here, but we are now aiming for 100, and we are going to keep on growing.”

Onnie Shekerjian, a City of Tempe councilmember said that Tempe is, “tickled that they’re [Google] here and we’d love to keep them here.”

She said she likes to see businesses that have a great work and play MO, and Google is one of them.

Marshall Green, director of membership services for the Arizona Technology Council said, “I can walk in and tell if a company is going to make it, but with Google, I ask, ‘When will they dominate?’”

Just like a college dorm, as long as there is free food, catered or in the fridge, people will not shy away.

“This brownie is like a flourless chocolate cake and not just a regular brownie,” said City of Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman. “If only I had my coffee, then I’d be in heaven,” he said.

A free gourmet coffee machine and espresso bar rested behind him.

Google is celebrating its 8th birthday this week. Can you believe it?

One of Google’s greatest expenses is electricity. Well, on Tuesday, they called for vastly more efficient PC power supplies– in partnership with Intel. The power supply is often the component that consumes the most energy in current PCs.

Google says it’s increased the efficiency of power supplies from 60-70% to 90%, and the same efficiency is within reach for consumer PCs. At the Intel Developer’s Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday, Intel CTO Justin Rattner invited Google engineer Luiz Barroso on stage to call for more efficient PC power supplies. Barroso highlighted findings from a newly published Google white paper. The paper, “High-efficiency power supplies for home computers and servers,” by Google engineers Urs Holzle and Bill Weihl, states that Google has managed to increase the typical efficiency of power supplies from 60-70% to at least 90% efficiency, reducing lost energy by a factor of four.
Barroso and other Google engineers believe that home computers can be made just as efficient as Google servers. Toward that end, Google, Intel, and other partners are proposing a new power supply standard. Assuming the new power supply design gets deployed across 100 million PCs running an average of eight hours a day, Google estimates a savings of 40 billion kilowatt-hours over three years, which translates to $5 billion at current California energy rates.

The problem with today’s power supplies, according to the paper, is that they were designed to provide multiple output voltages. In 1981, chips needed this, but not today. Yet because power supply designs have not changed, power supplies continue to be over-provisioned and inefficient.

Google servers, and the new PC standard Google is proposing, use a simplified 12V power supply that generates a single voltage. When certain motherboard components require something different, the power can be modulated using voltage regulator modules.

Google estimates 85% energy efficiency can be achieved at virtually no cost, while spending about $20 more for higher quality components can lead to over 90% efficiency.

I think I might disagree with that statement. See what you think of Brian White’s idea:

Has Google just gone crazy recently with the amount of product releases and industry partnerships that seem to give the company headlines every other day? From many accounts, the Internet search giant is poking its toes into every big-name area when it comes to hot web property partnerships, having inked deals with MySpace.com recently for $900 million and having entered the non-Internet advertising fray with radio deals and even television deals. Where is all this Google-chaos heading?

Perhaps it is an attempt to partially be in all places most of the time as it crafts a “second act” to please the investment community. The first act was (and is) Internet advertising, where Google continues to bank billions every quarter on something that nobody could have predicted back in 2000 — simple text ads next to billions of Internet searches per day. But, the law of averages now makes this a “duh” moment for many. as Google commands the lion’s share of Internet searches, far ahead of Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Anarchy rules at Google, as many of us have read and seen when investigating the company’s culture. Can anarchy lead to ultimate and consistent success? Google’s results — so far — seems to suggest a very strong yes.

When a VP for the company recently made a mistake that cost Google a few million dollars, company co-founder Larry Page’s response was quite a bit unexpected — for a normal company leader, that is. Page said “I’m so glad you made this mistake … Because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don’t have any of these mistakes, we’re just not taking enough risk.”

That is a very rare sentiment from a normal company leader or manager, who would freak out at the mentioning of a loss in the millions. But, Google is not a normal company in any way. Perhaps that is why Google is as successful as it is — but will it remain that way?

But Google can bring it back. Here’s a quote from ZDNet.

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, believes that when he is listening to the radio in his car, radio ads should personally address him about his needs. For example, while driving past a clothing store, a radio ad should remind Eric that he needs a pair of pants and instruct him to turn left at the upcoming clothing store.

There’s a lot more potential there, I agree. It’ll take a lot of work, but the world will be better for it… and who better to do the job than Google?

The Chinese web user base is second only to the American market, and is growing much faster. With 1.3 billion people, China could easily grow to be the world’s largest economy. Baidu is beating Google and Yahoo in the search game there, despite heavy censorship from the government and prime placement of paid results. It’s hard to say who will win, since Google is pouring lots of effort into reaching China, but there’s little doubt that Baidu will do quite well despite its shortcomings.

Starting September 11 at $378, Google finished the week with a gain of over 8%, to $409.88. I think Google is continuing to expand at a rapid pace. They’re buying small companies that you don’t hear about, start-ups that have only been around for a couple months before Google snaps them up. The masterminds behind the company then join Google and bring expertise to help Google strengthen its offerings in core markets. Particularly in the mobile sector, including phones and services for phones, using SMS or mobile web browsers. I wouldn’t be surprised if you start seeing new Google applications that actually run on your phone, though, whether in Java or something else.

The Chinese search engine Baidu continues to be far more popular in China than Google, despite the huge amounts of money spent on market research. As a Chinese company started by Chinese people, Baidu seems to cater better to the culture. Yet all of the results returned are paid for by advertisers, unlike Google, which provides “organic” results and shows advertisements only a clearly-marked sponsored links.

Here are some news highlights.

Google shares lead Internet stocks higher

Google clings to number one slot
About the rankings of Google’s own site in the search results.

Google’s mapping innovations
About Google Earth add-ons.