An Italian national newspaper has reported that Google plans to launch a service allowing publishers to hide content behind a paywall before the end of the year.

The report in La Repubblica newspaper suggests the system will be linked directly to Google’s search results and will allow consumers to buy paid content directly via Google Checkout with one click. Observes say it could provide a valuable revenue boost for cash-strapped newspapers.

Google is said to be approaching publishers to gauge their interest in its own version of a micropayment system it linked directly to Google’s search results, which would let consumers buy paid content directly via Google Checkout with one click.

According to UK marketing industry magazine Brand Republic, the launch of Newspass would certainly head off some of criticism that has been levelled at Google by the likes of Rupert Murdoch who dispute Google’s claim to send valuable traffic to newspapers.

Murdoch said last year: “We’d rather have fewer people coming to our websites but paying.” And his latest manifestation of this vision is the paid for TheTimes.co.uk website, launched in early June 2010.

La Repubblica has quoted Google’s Vice-President of global media, Henrique de Castro, as saying that his company wanted to forge partnerships with other media organisations, rather than rival them.

According to Brand Republic, it is unclear whether the system is being developed locally in Italy by Google where it already faces an investigation by the country’s Competition Authority. The investigation has been running since last year, after the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers complained about the lack of transparency in how Google News calculates its rankings.

The Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers complained that Google was using its dominant position to stop publishers from earning their fair share of online ad revenues.

It seems likely, however, that the plan is one Google hopes to launch globally in that it sounds similar to an idea that it proposed to the Newspaper Association of America last year, which looked at how a successful micropayments model might work.

A pro-privacy pressure group has said that it plans to issue a legal challenge in the UK courts to Google over the company’s interception of private data gathered by its Street View vehicles.

Privacy International has taken the action after claiming that an investigation by third party computer forensics experts into how the data interception happened suggested that the interception was deliberate – which would put the internet search company in breach of rules forbidding wire-tapping.

Last month it emerged that cars taking pictures of streets for Google’s Street View service were also collecting snippets of personal data from wireless internet connections in the homes and businesses they were passing.

Google has said this interception was an error and due to rogue code being unwittingly incorporated into the Street View cars. It has agreed to hand over the data to European law enforcement bodies, and is carrying out an internal review to discover who created the rogue code which enabled the data to be collected, and whether any action should be taken against the individual concerned.

However, Privacy International said the third party report showed that the code had been deliberately set to store private data, which is a violation of the UK’s Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

“The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system … intentionally separated out unencrypted content of communications and systematically wrote this data to hard drives. This is equivalent to placing a hard tap and a digital recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorisation,” the pressure group said.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said last week that the data collected could contain parts of private e-mails, and personal information such as bank account details, and he publicly admitted: “We screwed up.”

But Simon Davies of Privacy International told the Financial Times in London. “Why they did this is irrelevant to the prosecution going ahead.

“There is a constant sense of Google saying they didn’t mean any harm.

“But if Google gets away with it, what will stop someone else from doing it in six months’ time?”

Data protection authorities in Hamburg are also considering whether there are grounds for a criminal prosecution over the interception.

Privacy International’s complaint is likely to be filed by early next week.

UK internet users have visited more social networking sites than search engines in one month than ever before.

Data released by research firm Hitwise shows that visits to social networks accounted for 11.88 per cent of all UK internet visits in May, compared to search engine visits which made up 11.33 per cent.

Facebook brought in the majority of users, claiming 55 per cent of all social networking and forum visits. YouTube comes a considerable way behind, with 16.5 per cent of sector traffic during May. Twitter finishes off the top three, with 2.08 per cent of all traffic.

In terms of search sites, Google dominates the market with Google UK and Google.com accounting for over 91 per cent of all search traffic.

Despite the ever growing popularity of social networking, Google’s dominance of the search market means it retains its position as the most visited website in the UK, accounting for 9.29 per cent of all visits. Facebook takes second place with 7.04 per cent.

By Richard Morris

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Google’s Chrome browser continued to make inroads into its rivals’ share of worldwide browser usage in May, new statistics show.

Chrome rose 0.3 percentage points to take seven per cent of the market, said Net Applications, which monitors browser usage on a network of Web sites.

The statistics reflect activity, not the number of people using a browser, as people load up about 160 million pages each month on sites Net Applications monitors. Because Web usage is increasing, the absolute number of people using a browser can increase even as its fractional share of usage drops.

Drops in market share were recorded by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which dropped 0.3 per cent to 59.75 per cent, and Mozilla’s Firefox, which slipped 0.2 percentage points to 24.3 per cent. Fourth-place Safari from Apple rose 0.1 percentage points to 4.8 per cent, and Opera rose by the same margin to 2.4 per cent.
 
The browser market has become highly competitive as new features are built in to support new Web standards. Even Microsoft, long considered a technology laggard despite the dominant market position enjoyed by its browser, is fighting back, with extensive development work taking place on IE9.

Microsoft has been trying to rid the world of Internet Explorer 6, introduced in 2001 and now considered outmoded, slow, and insecure. Another analytics firm, StatCounter, reported IE6 use had dropped below 5 percent in the United States and Europe and to 9.8 percent worldwide.

“At these levels, Web developers now have valid justification not to support IE6 in the future,” StatCounter Chief Executive Aodhan Cullen said in a statement. The company collected its data from 15 billion page views of web pages in May.

Net Applications also released statistics for iPad use, showing the Apple tablet’ making gradual progress. With the iPad now for sale internationally, usage peaked May 29 with 0.17 per cent.
Net Applications’ data shows the iPad is relatively popular at weekends, when browsing using it roughly doubles.

The company also tracked mobile phone browsing usage. Java ME, a mobile phone version of the technology from Sun Microsystems and now owned by Oracle, took the top spot with 40 per cent of usage share.

Next in line was iPhone OS with 32.8 per cent, Symbian at 14 per cent, Android at 6.2 per cent, and BlackBerry at 3.6 per cent.

One commenter on the story, when it appeared on technology news website CNet, said the appeal of Chrome was simple: “I like Chrome for one reason: speed. It’s so much faster than Firefox when it comes to loading web pages,” he said.

The majority of businesses in the UK are set to up their digital marketing spend next year according to new research.

Data compiled by Econsultancy from a survey of 500 client-side digital marketers and agencies reveals 52 per cent of companies plan to increase their paid search (PPC) budgets next year, up from 45 per cent.

The proportion of companies looking to increase their search engine optimisation (SEO) budget over the same period has increased by 10 per cent, to hit a total of 60 per cent.

According to the report, almost half of all companies (49 per cent) are now spending at least £50,000 on PPC in a year – an increase from 39 per cent in 2008. In addition, the number of firms spending less than £5,000 has decreased significantly from 25 per cent last year to 14 per cent this year.

When it comes to SEO, the report said 22 per cent of firms are now investing at least £50,000 – up from 16 per cent in 2008.

Spending on social media ventures is still small in comparison, with 57 per cent of companies putting aside less than £5,000-a-year.

However, it seems the potential benefits of implementing a sound social media strategy are starting to become clear to business owners, with 65 per cent looking to increase spend during the next 12 months. Out of those companies, 15 per cent plan to double their budget.

In terms of potential stumbling blocks with regard to PPC spending, 41 per cent of companies cited a lack of internal resources while 30 per cent pointed to poorly converting websites. In terms of SEO, companies highlighted a lack of internal resources (49 per cent) followed by budget problems (26 per cent).

By Richard Morris

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A dispute in Australia between members of the public and photographers gathering data for Google’s Street View service has been referred to the country’s police, the country’s Attorney General (senior law officer) has said.

Robert McLelland told journalists ahead of a conference on internet security in the Australian city of Melbourne, that the Federal Police were looking into complaints from members of the public that concern a possible breach of the country’s telecommunications laws.

Google said it would co-operate with the Australian police investigation, and a spokeswoman told Reuters that the company had made an error: “This was a mistake. We are talking to the appropriate authorities to answer any questions they have,” she said.

The ‘Street View’ service has recently been criticised in several countries. The company has said it inadvertently picked up personal data from some unencrypted wi-fi services over several years.

The acquisition of technology start-up Invite Media by Google has begun to draw criticism from online display advertising firms.

The US search firm made the official announcement on Thursday, saying it had purchased the New York and Philadelphia-based company which has developed a platform that allows “advertisers and agencies to use ‘real time bidding’ to buy display ad space, and to optimize display ad campaigns, across multiple advertising exchanges”.

Advertisers have the choice of buying ad space from sellers including Google’s DoubleClick ad exchange, Yahoo’s Right Media and Microsoft’s AdECN Exchange.

Google said it is “investing significantly in the display advertising ecosystem” but this strategy and the acquisition of Invite has put the wind up competitors in the display ad market.

According to The Register, one rival to have expressed concerns over the deal, which is believed to have cost Google $70m, is The Media Innovation Group (MIG). The company, which is a major player in the online display advertising industry, believes the move might “stifle” the display ad market.

The Register says the main concern revolves around the fact that it could lead to a conflict of interest, with Google owning the exchange and competing against other rivals in a trading environment.

Writing on his blog, gartner analyst Andrew Frank said the move “Rekindles the issue of whether an entity such as Google, which happens to be the largest seller of online advertising, can continue to provide both media and the platforms for trading media in a neutral way.”

Invite Media was bought through DoubleClick, which Google purchased in March 2008 in a $3.1bn deal.

By Richard Morris

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US search firm Google is phasing out the use of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, due to security concerns.

According to a report by The Telegraph, the company is now asking new employees to choose between Apple’s OS X system or an open-source Lynux platform.

Speaking to the Financial Times, a Google employee said: “We’re not doing anymore Windows. It’s a security effort.”

In January, news emerged that hackers had launched an attack on the Gmail accounts of several Chinese human rights activists. Security experts now believe the attackers managed to exploit a loophole in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in order to gain access.

Officially the company has said it will not comment on operational matters.

By Richard Morris

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Google is expected to release details of its plans for a compromise with EU data protection bodies this week.

The American company has admitted it made a software coding mistake in 2006 and this led to its Street View photography cars collecting payload data from private, but unsecure WiFi networks.

The company has been facing pressure from various European Union bodies including authorities in France, Spain and Germany, to hand over the data it collected, but Google has so far resisted.

According to the Financial Times, Google’s lawyers have advised the company against this course of action.

Google is set to offer a compromise solution this week, although details have not been released.

A Google spokesperson said: “We are working through it and will have some answers for the data protection authorities during the course of the week.”

By Richard Morris

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Google can expect to see a rise in paid search advertising revenues from China, despite its public falling out with the government, according to US research firm Covario.

The company said in spite of the fracas which has led to the search giant re-routing Google.cn searches through Hong Kong, the firm will see its PPC takings from high-tech and consumer electronics companies rise by 43 per cent from quarter one.

However, PPC spend with Baidu, Google’s rival in China, is expected to rise by 210 per cent during the second financial quarter of 2010, compared with Q1.

In a post, Covario said: “Overall strong growth aside, it appears that the prognostications of massive defections from Google are unfounded — the spending on the network in China remains robust.

“However, this strategy by Google clearly is a boon to Baidu — whose spend is up markedly.”

Worldwide, Covario estimates Q2 spending on paid search in the high-tech and consumer electronics sector will be up 24.9 per cent on Q1.

According to the firm, Google will lead the way, benefitting from a 24.9 per cent increase in spending while Yahoo will experience an 11.3 per cent boost. Covario believes Bing will lose out with spending down 13.3 per cent on Q1.

By Richard Morris

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