ENNBlog

You'd think that Google was pretty much unassailable now. It dominates online search and by virtue takes the lion's share of ad spend too. With huge amounts of cash from both going public and actually generating cash flows, it really is hard to see how any company, even one so mighty as Microsoft, can hope to make a dent in that position. But, and this is the important bit, this rarely stops anyone with a good idea from having a go. It's that 'low barrier to entry' thing which means there's always someone ready to step up to the challenge. The latest is a small silicon valley start-up we mentioned recently called Cuil. Cuil claims it's the biggest search engine, indexing 120 billion web pages or perhaps three times more than Google. But possibly the most interesting claim is that it has technology making this vast index need a fraction of the storage and processing power used by Google. Now, given that one of the people behind this effort is actually an ex Googler, we suspect that it might not be so much about how to take on and beat Google at its own game, but rather, to showcase technology (probably patented) that the search giant will want badly enough to pay a generous bounty to make its own.

Another quarter, another set of figures to bamboozle. This time it's Vodafone, who like to remind us that they are the world's biggest mobile operator. But what's interesting about the figures isn't the massive profits/turnover the company enjoys, it's the fact that in the last quarter the company's data revenues rose by 50 percent. That excludes text messages so we're just talking (pardon the pun) bits and bytes being shoved to people's mobiles, and more recently to laptops via 3G modems. Vodafone Ireland claims that it had more than 84,000 mobile broadband customers as of the end of June 2008. For Ireland, being a small market, the numbers are a drop in the ocean but nonetheless impressive nationally, putting it in the number one spot for mobile broadband. Of course, the challenge will be how Vodafone and all the others can stop cannibalising their voice call revenues as people seek to use VOIP over their mobile data connections, thus circumventing call charges entirely. There's a conundrum.

Here's an interesting snippet from the wires. It seems that one of the UK's largest newspapers, The Telegraph, is moving its entire staff from Microsoft Office to Google Apps. All 1,400 of them! Now this is a brave move from an organisation which produces news because, if that all-important connection to the internet goes down, so too does a lot of the functionality, even if offline tools like Google Gears are in place. Of course, newspapers, like most traditional media organisations, are doing more and more in the online space and, at least for staff on the move, it will mean being able to use a variety of devices to quickly access the Google Apps resource. But it's unlikely this was a decision motivated by one technology being better than another. It seems that the licence costs for Google Apps is about a fifth of the equivalent from Microsoft. Bring on the price war.

There's no question that people like a challenge. Especially so when there's a cash prize involved. That's why it's genuinely interesting to see what people have come up with in chasing the EUR100,000 prize put up by Eircom for the Web Innovation Fund. All of the entry winners (there are four) have developed very cool sounding ideas and will go on to receive business development training and advice from Enterprise Ireland. The winners are www.heystaks.com, www.locle.com, www.playza.com and www.touristr.com. Two entries really caught our eye. The first was HeyStaks which helps searchers to share their search experiences with friends, colleagues, and others via a browser plugin that works with Google. The second is Locle, a social mapping application for mobile phones that combines information from your mobile handset address book with social networks such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace to create mapping services that show users where their friends are. Go check them out.

So Apple has now released its new great hope for making long-term cash from its entry into the mobile market. Having realised that its steep price and prohibitive call packages were actually stymieing growth, the new business model relies on an approach that sees Apple creating incremental revenues through its new Apps Store (only via iTunes 7.7 at the moment) and adopting similar package models to all the other mobile manufacturers to shift units. It’s our guess that this will work wonders in take-up of the new 3G handset in Europe but the App Store's success will be dictated by the quality of the applications and their incremental costs.

There's little doubt, casting aside all the smoke and mirrors around the subject, that Jerry Yang really dropped the ball in whatever negotiations took place with Microsoft. Of course, he was never going to win whatever he chose to do. When the neterati first got wind of a possible deal it was proclaimed as a disastrous marriage of the same proportions as AOL/Time Warner. And those voices may have proved correct had a takeover occurred. But from a shareholder perspective Microsoft was offering a healthy margin on Yahoo’s stock valuation, yet the decisions going on inside Yahoo appear to most observers to have been motivated by factors which have little to do with protecting shareholder interests. And now, if media reports are to be believed, Microsoft still wants Yahoo but only the bits of value. It's a sorry story for a once all-conquering pioneer of the first age of the web.

If you've come to rely on the web to secure business in Europe you may be interested to note that Blacknight is claiming to be the first Irish company accredited to sell the Dutch top level domain '.co.nl'. Of course you could buy it from a huge array of providers in the Netherlands, but then again, it's sometimes reassuring to know you can talk to a local outfit when something goes wrong. Unfortunately if you need a '.nl' minus the '.co' you still have no choice but to register with a contact point in the country.

So the CSO figures come out and... surprise! We still have a digital divide in Ireland. This won't come as a shock to anyone in the tech industry. But, of course, it makes for good headlines and the political parties haven't been slow to capitalise on this. With the release of figures which show that 53 percent of households with a PC in Dublin have broadband while only 22pc of the Border and Midland regions have the same access, the inevitable round of hand-wringing and finger pointing begins. This time it's Labour putting the boot in with Deputy Liz McManus saying "These figures highlight the urgent need to implement the National Broadband Scheme which aims to provide broadband to the 10pc of the country currently without any access to broadband. However, we now know from recent FOI requests that existing staff in the Department of Communications are under 'extreme pressure'. It also emerged that Department officials have been warning of inadequacies in staffing since 2006 when it warned that it was 'fast approaching major difficulties' and yet nothing was done." Of course, political point scoring aside, Deputy McManus is right. Without universal access to broadband, wherever people are in the country, Ireland will be at a strategic disadvantage. At a time of economic downturn it's more imperative than ever that we see investment in infrastructure to maintain long term prospects of speedy (excuse the pun) recovery.

Firefox 3 was perhaps one of the most heralded browser launches to date. But here it is in all its glory. Well, that's after numerous attempts to download it failed that is. The Mozilla Foundation are keen to break some record or other for the most number of downloads in a day... yada yada... but the upshot was repeated reloads until the automated download kicked in. So, without further ado is it worth the trouble? Easily yes. If you are a user of Firefox 2 you'll immediately notice that websites render in a much more sprightly fashion. For that alone, it's worth the update. Heavy web users will immediately notice that everything just seems to go more quickly and that's a real boon if you actually use online tools like Gmail or Google Docs. However, there are quite a few other tweaks which have been mentioned in various beta reviews. But for the definitive list of changes in 3 go check the new download site features list.

The upside of all the hoo haa over the new 3G iPhone is going to be more gadget goodies for those of us who just have to have the latest and greatest filling our pockets. That's because of the iPhone's failures rather than successes however. Whilst hugely successful in entering an already crowded US market, the iPhone really hasn't made the same splash in Europe. That's because it lacked technology already well established here. Additionally, it lacked a compelling reason to upgrade. It was pricey to start with and the bundles just didn't stack up when Apple was looking for a chunk of monthly revenues from the networks. That's now all changed. The technology is (nearly) there and the price point for the handset brings it into much more effective competition with a plethora of handsets from Sony Ericsson, Nokia and others. So how's that good for the consumer? Well for one the iPhone will be more affordable and usable than in its previous guise. But it's the price drop which will compel established manufacturers, keen to retain market share where everyone can change their phone in 18 months and where most markets are at saturation point, to offer tempting deals on the newest products. Sony Ericsson's new Xperia will not be able to command the same price from launch as it might had Apple never entered the market for mobile handsets. The most fascinating aspect of the iPhone revolution is just how quickly Apple has come to punch way above its weight in telecoms. In just over a year Apple has become the mobile manufacturer all others watch. Who'd have thought it.