Google Acquires Songza

Google has reached a deal to acquire Songza, the playlist site it had been rumored to be scouting for several weeks. Financial terms weren’t revealed, but a source with knowledge of the situation said the price was substantially higher than the $15 million figure reported by the New York Post in early June.

Songza employs about 50 music curators, who program playlists designed for moods, activities, times of day, or even weather in the listener’s area -- say, “Southern Soul Barbecue” or “Black Tie Bump ‘N Grind.” Google plans to hire all of Songza’s staff, and leave the Songza.com web site intact for now.

Google plans to incorporate Songza’s playlists into its Google Play Music All Access subscription service, enhancing its radio function. Google Play already has some human-curated playlists, but largely relies on algorithms for much of its radio-style programming. Songza may also be integrated into a paid YouTube service, which Google acknowledged it is readying.

“Over the coming months, we’ll explore ways to bring what you love about Songza to Google Play Music,” Google said in a statement announcing the deal. “We'll also look for opportunities to bring their great work to the music experience on YouTube and other Google products.”

“No immediate changes to Songza are planned, other than making it faster, smarter, and even more fun to use,” Songza said in a separate statement.

Expert-curated playlists were a differentiating factor for Beats Music, the service Apple acquired along with the Beats Electronics headphone business in a $3 billion deal announced in May. Beats allows users to fill in the blanks of a sentence describing a type of music they’d like to hear in their present circumstances -- “I’m on a boat and feel like celebrating with my family to R&B” -- and generates an appropriate playlist.

Songza began in 2010 as Songza Sets, a discovery-oriented product within MP3 store Amie Street. Its founding team sold Amie Street to Amazon the same year, and focused on Songza instead. Amazon invested in both Songza and Amie Street.

The deal gives a payday to company management and investors, including two prominent music-business figures: Scooter Braun and Troy Carter, the managers of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, respectively. Songza raised about $6.7 million during its lifespan.

A Google executive, VP of retail sales John McAteer, invested in the company as part of a 2012 convertible note worth $1.5 million. Songza most recently closed a $4.7 million round in September 2013, with investors including Metamorphic Ventures, Deep Fork Capital, Lerer Ventures, William Morris Endeavor, and author Gary Vaynerchuk, as well as Braun and Carter. Other prior investors include former NBA star Baron Davis, artist manager Julius Erving Jr., 24/7 Real Media co-founder Geoff Judge, and 1-800 Flowers.

Although Amazon added music to its Prime service last month, including a number of playlists, none of them came from Songza, according to CEO Elias Roman. The executive did not reply to requests for comment about today’s deal.

Amie Street acquired the original Songza, a search engine that located and streamed music files found on the web, in 2008. Designed by user interface expert, Mozilla designer and serial entrepreneur Aza Raskin, Songza derived its moniker from its creator’s name.

Although the windily named Google Play Music All Access was described in a March report from IFPI as “the fastest-growing [music] subscription service in 2013,” its market share remains very small compared with Spotify’s 10 million paying users worldwide. Google Play Music All Access has a library of 25 million songs, is available in 28 countries, and gives users a locker to store up to 20,000 of their own songs that can be played from various devices.

Google also made a bid for 8tracks, a site that hosts user-generated playlists, last fall. A source closer to that company told Billboard last month that a proposed deal was an “acquire-hire” arrangement, in which 8tracks’ staff would be at least as important to the buyer as its playlists and technology. But the profitable 8tracks chose to remain independent, the source said, due to factors beyond the deal’s proposed price.

Source: Billboard

Google fixes lengthy, widespread Gmail glitch

A Gmail glitch that took about 10 hours to fix and hit close to 50 percent of the webmail service's users has been fixed, ending one of the longest, most widespread Gmail disruptions in years.

Affected users endured email delivery delays and difficulties downloading attachments due to a still unexplained bug first acknowledged by Google at around 10:30 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time Monday. The company declared it patched at 10 p.m.

On its Google Apps Status site, the company pegged the start of the problem at close to 9 a.m. and its resolution at 6:30 p.m.

Prevention

On Tuesday, Google offered more details about the cause of the problem and the steps it's taking to prevent it from happening again.

The cause was a "very rare" dual network failure, which brought down two separate, redundant network paths, according to a blog post from Sabrina Farmer, senior site reliability engineering manager for Gmail.

"The two network failures were unrelated, but in combination they reduced Gmails capacity to deliver messages to users," she wrote.

Over the next few weeks, Google staffers will work on bulking up network and backup capacity for Gmail, as well as on making Gmail's message delivery more resilient in the event of a network crash, according to Farmer.

"Finally, were updating our internal practices so that we can more quickly and effectively respond to network issues," she wrote.

The issue affected individuals who use the free version of Gmail as well as businesses, schools and government agencies that pay for it as part of the Google Apps cloud collaboration and email suite.

In the U.S., the disruption covered most of the workday on both coasts, which heightened the impact of the bug for millions.

People who depend on Gmail for critical tasks took to Twitter, discussion groups and other online forums to express their frustration.

The last time Google gave an official figure for active Gmail users was more than a year ago, when it said there were more than 425 million.

Assuming conservatively that the service now has about 450 million active users, Monday's disruption likely affected more than 200 million users, plus senders on other email platforms whose messages weren't received in a timely fashion.

Even Google gets data outages

Google said that the severity and length of the impact varied among users. About 29 percent of messages received were delayed by an average of 2.6 seconds, but some mail was "severely delayed."

"We apologize for the duration of today's event; we're aware that prompt email delivery is an important part of the Gmail experience, and today's experience fell far short of our standards," the company wrote on the status site.

The incident is a big deal for both Google and those affected, but it shouldn't on its own dissuade CIOs from using the suite, said Forrester Research analyst TJ Keitt.

"Data centers hosting multi-tenant collaboration services aren't immune to disruptions. So, when they happen, the way to judge the vendor is on how well they identify and resolve the problem, and then inform the public to how they resolved the issue," Keitt said.

Using that criteria, Google's updates throughout the duration of the incident could have been more transparent and detailed regarding the nature of the problem and the strength of the fix that was put in place, he said via email.

"They have clearly not communicated this publicly, so I hope they've been forthcoming with this information with their clients," Keitt said.

Meanwhile, Matthew Cain, a Gartner analyst, said the incident raises fundamental questions about what is considered downtime, especially as it relates to service-level agreements from cloud application vendors.

"If message delivery is delayed 15 minutes, is that considered downtime? What about 2 hours?," he said via email. "The move to cloud email puts a spotlight on these essential questions about how to meter and compensate for subpar messaging performance that is not traditionally classified as 'downtime.'"

Updated 10:15 a.m. 9/24/2013 with information from Google's Sabrina Farmer

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049306/google-fixes-lengthy-widespread-gmail-malfunction.html

A Constitutional Primer from Google

Whether you’re a high school student struggling through U.S. history class or a legal expert helping a budding nation write a new constitution, Google’s new tool for examining and comparing founding documents from around the globe is a neat new resource.

Launched Monday, Constitute is a digitized archive of founding documents from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe that also helps visitors examine hundreds of constitutional themes, such as rights, duties, culture and identity. As Google’s Brendan Ballou explains, “If you are writing a constitution and want to know what African constitutions have to say about the rights of women after 1945, you can do that in just a few clicks.”

Using seed funding from Google Ideas, the internet conglomerate partnered with researchers from the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP), who hatched the idea to source and reference the content in 2008.

With the turmoil in Somalia, Syria and Egypt leading to either new constitutions or or revised ones in those nations, exploring the international landscape of constitutions feels especially timely.

Watch the Google video below to learn more about how it works:

Source: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/09/24/a-constitutional-primer-from-google/

New Google Play Edition devices have a new camera app, drawer, and wallpaper

The new HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S 4 with stock Android have been released, and with their version of Android 4.2.2 comes a few unique touches to the UI. The camera app, which was rumored to get an update in 4.3, has a new stacked menu system for easier navigation. Another big change is that the app drawer has been switched from a 4×4 layout to a 4×5 layout to take advantage of the different screen sizes of the One and S4.

Other minor changes are the addition of a new red Phase Beam wallpaper to add to the purple and blue versions, and a new custom boot animation. The lockscreen clock on the S4 is a little different from Nexus devices, probably so that the phone correctly works with Samsung’s S-View flip covers.

Source: Computer World

Changing SEO Strategies Post-Google Penguin

The Google Penguin algorithm update is the latest spam-fighting wave to crash against the shore of search and it has heralded something of a new dawn for SEO, especially in terms of offsite strategy.

In 2011, Google ran an algorithm update, known as the Panda update. It may sound cute and cuddly, but the Panda update was the first major algorithm update to focus on the quality on of onsite content -- pushing sites with rich content and a great user experience to the top of its search rankings, and relegating low-quality sites to the bottom.

Whilst the Panda algorithm, which is still refreshing 18 months on, is arguably more concerned with onsite factors, its not-too-distant relative, Google Penguin, was designed to focus on the other significant realm of SEO: offsite.

The Google Penguin update has led to the ice cracking under many websites tried and tested offsite strategies, which until now have involved the use of a high quantity of low-quality links.

Google has long advised web users to make sure their content adheres to the "Google Webmaster Guidelines," and the presence of the heavily referred to "Web Spam team" has contributed to the common consensus the days of low-level linkbuilding were numbered. Indeed, with the rise of personalized search and social signals seeming to be an increasing factor in ranking, it could be argued those SEO-ers who have not started to adapt their strategy could be left out in the cold.

It was around mid-March 2012 that webmasters began to receive messages warning of detected unnatural links pointing to domains, and gave advice on how to spot them:

"...artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site which could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass Page Rank or participating in link schemes."

Search personalities such as Google's Matt Cutts and SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin have long spoken against using the black hat techniques of high volume, low-quality linkbuilding, but this was a first from Google, in the sense of the volume of sites contacted.

Over 700,000 messages were sent by the end of Q1 -- more than the whole of 2011 and for many, this represented the beginning of the end for many SEOers current offsite strategies. And if it didn't, the ranking drops and the subsequent Webmaster Tools messages should have.

"We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results."

Now, Google's initial messages sent in March 2012 were the equivalent of an organic visibility death sentence, but their hard-lined message was blurred when a new wave of messages were sent in July, only this time sites which hadn't been participating in shady link schemes were receiving them too.

How could a site which had never built any links be receiving such messages?

Matt Cutts was quick on the scene and cleared things up via his Google+ account, insisting the latest batch of messages were not to induce panic, but were sent as a transparency exercise to allow greater clarity as to what Google likes and doesn't like. Another round of Webmaster messages were sent insisting Google would only take action against specific links which contravened their guidelines, and not on the domain as a whole (as they previously did back in March).

Confused?

Whichever way you look at it, the future is NOT in low-level link building, so start planning and move one step ahead with a new offsite strategy immediately.

Most SEOers reacted by balancing the following two strategies:

1) Identifying possible links that may contravene the Google Webmaster Guidelines, contacting the sites and requesting that these links be removed. Google has de-indexed a substantial portion of "spammy" sites, so removing these links from your site should become a top priority before a site could/should be submitted for a reconsideration request.

Since so many historical links pointing to a site had been de-valued or de-indexed, all previous link equity would have been removed, thus weakening the authority and trust of your site.

How could a severely weakened offsite profile be strong again?

2) Agreeing and implementing a new content-focused strategy built around engagement with relevant communities.

The ideal way of obtaining natural links is by creating content that is so useful/informative/entertaining that it begs to be shared, retweeted, '+1'd, and embedded on blogs that attract the same demographic of users that visit your site. This might also mean some actual natural traffic from your offsite efforts (something low-level linkbuilding does not provide!).

Creating content to be shared is a longer-term strategy than the quick fix of buying low-level links. But a natural strategy should engage the right audience along the way, moving SEO into the realm of more creative marketing. It also means that the great content which has been produced can take on a life of its own and be shared and linked to long after its inception.

Guest blogging, too, is a natural way of building brand recognition. Partnership with popular blogs in your industry means that more people will read your content, and the potential for natural back links, and natural traffic as a result of this, should not be underestimated.

So, Google Penguin has arrived and ruffled the feathers of SEO and offsite strategies. With so much great, unique content being shared such as infographics, widgets and videos, Google deemed now the perfect time to rid its index of low quality sites with low quality content, destabilising many offsite strategies, and penalizing those who implemented them.

For SEO offsite strategy, it means adopting a longer term strategy revolving around unique, high-quality content and utilizing social platforms to drive engagement and exposure. Creativity should be at the heart of offsite strategies moving forward, and if it isn't you may well be left out in the cold... like a Penguin.

Source: Huff Post

Google Cloud vs. Amazon Cloud: How They Stack up

Google's new IaaS cloud boasts strong compute performance but lacks the breadth of features in Amazon Web Services' 4-year-old Elastic Compute Cloud, according to one industry analyst's side-by-side comparison of the services.

Neither company provides details of the silicon chips within its servers, but analyst Chris Gaun from Ideas International (recently acquired by Gartner) has used information in public statements to determine the hardware behind each vendor's cloud. Google has said it uses Intel Sandy Bridge processors and that each unit of its Compute Engine delivers performance matching that of at least a 1.0- to 1.2-GHz 2007 Opteron chip. Other media have reported that Google uses 2.6-GHz processors, which leads Gaun to believe the company has Xeon E5-2670 chips, the only ones on the market at the time of Google's announcement that deliver that level of raw compute power.

Gaun believes Google is running the high-capacity chip across its cloud infrastructure, while Amazon makes it available in certain instance types for Elastic Compute Cloud customers, including in its recently announced high I/O extra large cluster compute offering. "Google seems to be running only the latest and greatest chips on the market, while Amazon has a wide variety of chips for customers to use," Gaun says.

Amazon isn't standing pat either. AWS on Wednesday, for example, announced the ability to set the input/output operations per second (IOPS) in Elastic Block Storage.

There are other differences between Google Compute Engine, which is still in limited preview mode, and Amazon cloud services. AWS has 11 different sizes of compute instances, ranging from small virtual machines with 1.7GB of memory, to extra-large compute clusters with 60.5GB of memory, whereas Google has only four. Google also makes the fiber-optic links between its own data centers available to cloud customers. AWS has a variety of accommodating features in its cloud though, such as the EBS volumes, relational database services, load balancers and others.

The two companies are appealing to different customers, Gaun says. While AWS is targeting technology-reliant businesses that are turning to the cloud to host their websites, databases and storage, Google is focused initially on research and development teams that may have a need for high-performance computing to complete a project, for example. The strategy is seen in the pricing models: AWS offers reserved instance pricing discounts, in which customers agree to use a compute instance for months or even years. Google's cloud is priced by smaller time chunks and therefore aimed at shorter-lived projects.

Gaun says if Google wants to compete in a broader market with Amazon, it will likely have to offer a discounted pricing option for long-term use. That may come in time, Gaun predicts, given that the company's cloud computing offering isn't even generally available yet.

Source: PCW

Google debuts super fast broadband service in Kansas City

Google has kept its long-stated promise of super high-speed Internet access by debuting a new fiber-based Internet service in Kansas City with speeds more than 100 times faster than most U.S. Internet systems.

Google Fiber TV service is priced at $120 a month for a package that includes television channels, one gigabyte per second Internet speeds and one terabyte of cloud storage. For $70 a month, the service is available without the television channels.

Advanced level subscriptions offers the ability to record eight TV shows at one time and store up to 500 hours of high-definition programming on the cloud. The subscriber can use a tablet or smart phone as a voice-activated remote control if desired. The service comes with router and a Nexus 7 tablet that can act as the system’s remote control.

The TV service allows subscribers to search live channels, Netflix, YouTube, recorded shows and tens of thousands of hours of on-demand programming.

“The Internet is a huge positive force, and yet we are at a crossroad,” said Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer. Internet speeds, he said, have leveled out for broadband since around 2000 and Google will be making it 100 times faster with the new service.

“We will make Kansas City a place where bandwidth flows like water,” Milo Medin, vice president of access services at Google, told the Los Angeles Times.

Google invested in building out fiber in Kansas City, Missouri in 2011 after earlier inviting cities to help identify communities that would be interested taking part in the project. For months, the company has been laying a network of fiber optic cable in the city.

Ron Josey, an analyst at ThinkEquity, told the newspaper that Google has long been frustrated by Internet speeds offered by other providers. A faster online infrastructure, he said, would let Google create more products.

“This is their way of showing, if we offer a better pipeline, look at what we can do on the Web in terms of innovation,” Josey said.

Sameet Sinha, an analyst at B. Riley & Co., said the project hopes to stimulate others to follow Google’s lead. “They want to get the government to notice that higher broadband should be a strategic priority,” he told the newspaper. “Second, it could force cable companies to start offering higher-speed Internet.”

Source: BroadcastEngineering