Google On Hiring, Acquisition, And R&D Spree

According to the Advertising Bureau, Internet advertising increased 15% last year to $26 billion, compared with a 3% decline in 2009. The report found that the top 10 online ad companies contributed to 75% of all business in the last quarter of 2010. Search advertising, led by Google, accounted for $3.3 billion revenues in the last quarter and contributed 46% of total Web ad revenues for the year. Search advertising grew 12% over the year. Display ads contributed 38% of total Web ad revenues last year. Mobile advertising is also becoming a significant player, with revenues estimated to be $550 million to $650 million for the year.

>>>

Featured Videos

BitTorrent Trying To Improve Image Through Content Partnerships

Peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent announced early in the year that it has more than 100 million monthly users of its two software products—the original BitTorrent Mainline, and µTorrent. Founded in 2004 by Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin, BitTorrent has raised more than $40 million in funding from investors. BitTorrent makes it easy to share and download large files of movies, videos, music, and games online and has oft been accused of facilitating illegal file sharing. However, the company has been making efforts to become a legitimate distribution system.

>>>

Akamai Holds Good On Its Promise

Akamai has achieved its target of $1 billion in annual revenue and set itself the goal of achieving annual revenue of $5 billion. Recent results show that Akamai’s media and entertainment revenue has rebounded dramatically. To increase it even more, Akamai has over the past quarter renewed its long-term deals with Netflix and several other top media customers. Netflix accounts for about 20% of peak U.S. Internet traffic, and this deal augurs well for Akamai.

>>>

Accenture Makes Important Acquisitions In Mobile And Automation

Gartner continues to raise its estimates of worldwide IT spending. Its latest report forecasts 2011 spending to increase 5.6% over the year to $3.6 trillion. The inclusion of handheld tablet devices to the computing hardware category has helped increase the forecast. Worldwide media tablet spending is projected to grow to $29.4 billion in the year from the $9.6 billion reported last year. Computing hardware spending is expected to grow 9.5% over the year to $409 billion followed by 7.6% growth in enterprise software to $255 billion. IT services are projected to grow 5% to $824 billion and telecom services are expected to grow 4.9% to $2.1 trillion. Improved IT enterprise spending is already boosting the financial performance of IT outsourcers.

>>>

Job Search Sites Overview – Monster Facing Stiff Competition

Monster’s recently released monthly job index for March showed an 8.8% increase over the year and 5.4% over the previous month. The index saw growth in 14 of the 20 industries and in 17 of the 23 occupations it tracks. This growth was driven by demand for workers in the healthcare support, mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sectors. Monster’s index for Europe grew 24% in February driven by growth in industrial production related sectors. The Index for India grew 21% over the year, attributed to 45% growth in the retail sector.

>>>

Strong And Steady E-Commerce Growth In Latin America

The Internet population in Latin America grew 15% over the year to 112.7 million visitors in January 2011, according to comScore. Brazil was the largest online market in the region and reported 20% growth over the year to 40.5 million users. Venezuela reported the highest growth rate of 27% to 2.9 million users. Mexico’s online population increased 21% to 18.1 million. To put this in context, China’s Internet population is more than 457 million Internet users, making the Chinese market the biggest Internet market in the world. The U.S. is the second-largest market with 207 million users and is followed by India, whose Internet population is estimated at more than 100 million users spending 16 hours a week on the Web. Among other developing markets, the entire African continent is estimated to have close to 111 million Internet users. While the numbers in Latin America are smaller than those of other regions or countries, growth is strong and steady.

>>>

Quora, Yet Another Valuation Without Revenue Startup?

Quora calls itself a startup building a continually improving collection of questions and answers. It was founded by former Facebook employees Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever in 2009. Initially launched as a private, by-invitation-only initiative early last year, the question-and-answer site was opened to all in the summer of 2010. >>>

China Struggling With Fraud and Copyright Amidst Massive Internet Growth

Access to the Internet in China is continuing to expand rapidly. According to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), last year the number of China’s total Internet users increased 19% to reach 457 million. Not surprisingly, growth in the number of Internet users is driving online sales. In a report published by China e-Business Research Center, Internet sales in China, which includes business-to-business, business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer transactions, increased to 4.5 trillion yuan (~US$684 billion) in 2010. Overall, consumer online spending doubled to 513.1 billion yuan (~US$78.3 billion) in 2010 from a year earlier and accounted for nearly 3% of total retail sales in the country. The report predicts online retail sales to grow to over 1 trillion yuan (~US$153 billion) in the next two years.

>>>

Looking Inside The Foursquare Hype

Geolocation services are becoming one of the next hot things in the social marketing space. While players such as foursquare and Gowalla are dedicated providers of geolocation-based marketing services, bigger players, including Google and Facebook have, have entered the space with their own offerings  – Google Places and Facebook Places.

>>>

Hulu Gains From Online Video Momentum

Today, viewers can watch online video content free on sites such as Google’s YouTube or by accessing a subscription-based service such as Netflix or Hulu Plus. While analysts believe that the availability of content in this way has led to cord-cutting and trouble for traditional cable companies, the recent financial performance of leading cable players like Comcast has indicated otherwise. Still, market reports by Convergence Consulting Group estimate that 1.6 million U.S. households will have replaced their cable connections with alternate video content models by the end of the current year. Researcher SNL Kagan estimates that by 2014, 46.3 million homes will have at least one TV with a broadband connection to the Internet and 7% of the country’s population, an estimated 8.1 million homes, will switch to online video content instead of cable.

>>>