While the behemoths of the business world are feeling the pressure of the continued macro-economic downturn, Google is one such name which still manages to reek in better revenues.

In the second quarter ending June 30, Google’s year-over-year (YOY) revenues went up by 3% and as per their CEO, all these happened because Google remained focused on investing in technical innovation to drive growth in its core and the new businesses. That of course and their cost reduction policies (19,786 full-time employees as of June 30, 2009, down from 20,164 full-time employees as of March 31, 2009)

The reported revenue for this quarter is $5.52 billion, an improvement upon the $5.37 billion from same quarter last year.

Google-owned sites raked in $3.65 billion which is 66% of the overall share and this again is a 3% increase compared to the $3.53 billion in 2008. The revenue from partner sites (the AdSense Program) generated $1.68 billion which is 31% of the total revenue. Revenues from outside US totaled $2.91 billion, which is 53% of the total revenues in the second quarter.

“Google had a very good quarter, especially given the continued macro-economic downturn. While most of the world’s largest economies shrank, Google’s year-over-year revenues were up 3%. These results highlight the enduring strength of our business model and our responsible efforts to manage expenses in a way that puts us in a good position for the economic upturn, when it occurs,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “We remain focused on investing in technical innovation to drive growth in our core and new businesses.”

[via DeviceMag]

Twitter has undoubtedly taken the social networking by a storm but what could cloud its future are security concerns — and for the last few days it’s been really difficult to keep track of the number of problems Twitter has faced. From user accounts, to admin accounts, Google Docs or Google Apps, everything related to Twitter is getting busted.

It’s time for Twitter to cater to each of these security problems, individually.

A month back, a Twitter administrative employee’s personal and email account has been hacked. Since then, there have been security audits and Twitter has reminded everyone of the important personal safety guidelines.

Interestingly however, the company is blaming web applications yet advises for strong password to stay away from such problems.

Concerning the latest stolen documents, Twitter is arrogant, and believes that even if everything goes public in there, it will hardly make any kind of a difference. Twitter is already seeking legal counseling to handle those who hacked the documents and the ones who intend to publish them.

We’ll keep all these in perspective, it is still visible that there is a major problem with the security that needs to be addressed quickly or we’ll start seeing adverse affects.

[via TechCrunch]

Facebook, the fast-growing free-access social networking website, has obtained a $6.5-billion valuation for its common shares.

There’s a catch though! This development, which stresses the website’s high ranking among the giants in the technology and media sector, follows Digital Sky Technologies, of Russia, agreeing to pay $14.77 a share for Facebook common stock. Now, the Russian company’s stake in Facebook will be 3.5%.

The deal shows that Facebook has a higher market value than many other established media and technology companies that make considerably more money. While CBS Corporation, which earned $13.95 billion in revenues in 2008, has a market capitalization of $4.06 billion, Salesforce.com has a market cap of $4.72 billion.

According to Mark Andreessen, board member, Facebook is expected to exceed $500 million in sales in 2009.

As of today Facebook has reached 250 million active users on its social network – up from 100 million nearly a year ago – thus ranking higher than the rival social networking website MySpace.

So how about, would you like to own stock in Facebook?

Image courtesy of LaughingSquid

Internet Explorer 6 is certainly not on the credibility list of big names from the Web 2.0 world. It was Digg that earlier hinted at cutting the support for the Web Browser and now it is suspected that YouTube is also phasing out the Browser shortly — a screenshot taken by an IE6 user is pretty much conclusive that the time for the IE6 is up.

“We will be phasing out support for your browser soon. Please upgrade to one of these more modern browsers”

Given the bugs and issues on the site, and the fact that only 5% of users on Digg are using IE 6 — hence causing a minimal 1% of diggs, buries and comments, the website announced that they’ll remove support for Internet Explorer 6.

Following on the same lines as Digg, YouTube will also prefer its developers spending time optimizing the service for newer and better browsers rather than paying attention to the fading Microsoft browser. Google is going to have their efforts concentrated on more “modern browsers” like Chrome, Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.5 or Safari.

Totally understandable, don’t you think?

[via TechCrunch]

With the economy on the grind, even Microsoft’s Windows 7 may have a cold opening on October 22 when its due.  And although Windows 7 has already been acknowledged as an effective OS much better than the Windows Vista, even this repute will not help the cause.

In a survey conducted by ScriptLogic Corp – a firm that helps companies in managing their Microsoft Windows-based networks – the main patterns hinting at this cold response are primarily related to money, while after money there are compatibility issues with the already in use applications. More than 1000 companies who responded to the survey said that they have kept money in their pockets by keeping software updates at bay.

Even the likes of Intel has stayed with the XP variant fueling rumors that the Windows 7 is unstable. Statistically talking, 60% of the participants will not deploy Windows 7, with 34% to do it in 2010 and only 5.4% to get it this year.

• 42% mentioned that the biggest problemwould be lack of resources
• 35% of the lot is doing it to avoid upgrades or delaying purchases to save money
• 39% of these participants expressed concerns over compatibility of the Windows 7 with existing applications.

So are you going to get Windows 7 on your machine? If so .. when?

Source: Reuters

It is been an intriguing query for years now. Google being the giant it is, they could never get of the beta tagging from all their applications, making people curious as to why such a huge concern has to stick to beta testers and not the ready form. While you might go looking for answers, the better option is to rejoice for the fact that Google Apps are out of beta tagging.

There wasn’t much in the query anyway. It’s just that Google felt the application wasn’t ready for the whole public. The tag would now be removed of Google Apps services, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Docs.

Gtalk incidentally has borne the tag for the longest duration of five years.

Ever since the Google Apps suite have been introduced two years ago, Google offered a service level agreement, 24/7 support, and has met or exceeded all the other standards of non-beta software. It wasn’t just fitting for more than 1.75 million large enterprises around the world, Google itself run their business on the Google Apps.

Great news eh?

[via GoogleBlog]

The iPhone 3GS jailbreaking app Purplera1n is here, reports CNET.

Teenage hacker Geroge Hotz, who was first unlocked the iPhone, released Purplera1n yesterday in a blog post titled “I make it ra1n.”

Technicallly, this is bad news for AT&T and Apple, since people can use their jailbroken on any phone service, and for Apple because users won’t have to go to the app store to buy add new ones to their jailbroken phones.

But in reality, this news doesn’t pose much threat to either company at all. Only a small subset of geeks jailbreak iPhones.

Purplera1n is available for Windows only, a Mac version will be available shortly. Purpera1n runs on iTunes, and installs an app called Freeze. Freeze then installs the installer Cydia, which lets the user download applications not authorized by the iPhone app store.

John Biggs of CrunchGear jailbreaked his iPhone 3GS and declares the process extremely simple. He has a step by step instruction on how to do it.

Office photos feature – Missing Link – specialist presentation firm