PayPal and eBay Sue Google over Mobile Payments Trade Secrets

PayPal and eBay Sue Google over Mobile Payments Trade Secrets. PayPal and Google had been working together to establish a deal in which PayPal would be the payment processing system for Google's Android operating system for mobile phones

As the world moves from paper currency, credit cards and debit cards to a virtual payment system based on mobile phones and handheld devices, the major companies driving the revolution are going to clash. In the latest example of this, eBay and its wholly-owned payment processing system, PayPal, have filed suit against Google, claiming that two of its new executives brought and illegally shared trade secrets that were obtained during and after their previous employment with PayPal.

The fine details of the suit have yet to emerge, but the primary complaint is based on the fact that two of PayPal's former high-level employees are now working for Google and helped the company develop and launch its new Google Wallet service, which was unveiled today. eBay claims that there was information transferred to Google while one of the executives still worked for PayPal and that the same former employee attempted to recruit other staffers at PayPal to join Google, which is a violation of the original employment contract.

Until very recently, PayPal and Google had been working together to establish a deal in which PayPal would be the payment processing system for Google's Android operating system for mobile phones. Now that Google Wallet has been officially unveiled, its clear that Google and PayPal will probably not be working together - now or in the future. As we move more toward a world where currency is no longer something that you hold in your hands, significant changes will come to the way in which we live, work and consume. Wealth and financial worth may become even more abstract notions than they are today. 

PayPal and eBay Sue Google over Mobile Payments Trade Secrets

Is Email Killing the Post Office?

Is Email Killing the Post Office?  The rise of mobile, and smartphones in particular, must also play a role, as it caters to increased use in email and social media, not to mention text messaging, and even….the phone call!

Is email killing the post office? It’s not a new question. In fact, it’s been around nearly as long as the mainstream use of email itself, but it’s also not gone away, and the USPS has seen better days. I’m not normally one to buy too much into the typical x is killing y kind of hype, but the Postal Service is clearly severely injured.

BusinessWeek.com has put out a lengthy report looking at the decline of the USPS and its contributing factors. While the seven-page pice just briefly touches upon the subject of email, comparing the performance of the USPS to that of FedEx, UPS, and DHL, as well as counterparts in other countries, there’s no question that email and online communication in general have done their fair share of damage. 

People have been using email for years now, and despite some predicting the death of email (at the hands of social media), it’s clear that it’s hear to stay for quite some time. Even if email were to die, it wouldn’t do much to help the postal service. 

As we’ve seen just in the past week alone, email is an incredibly important part of business for companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Twitter. Even Facebook has its own email now, and social networks all still rely on email to keep users engaged – that goes for the professionals too (ie: the newly public LinkedIn). 

In a recent study, 45% said that their use of email at work will most likely increase in the next five years. 51% said that it would likely stay the same. Only 4% thought it would decrease. At home, 36% of those surveyed thought their email use will increase, 55% said it will stand pat and 6% said it will likely decrease.

The majority of important online communication still takes place through email, whether that be B2B or B2C. C2C online communication may be trending more toward social media, but again, email still plays a role here, in terms of notifications, and there is still plenty of C2C communication through email. Even from heavy users of social media. Not everyone is on the same social network. That even goes for Facebook. Email is universal. You pretty much need an email address to have any kind of account online. 

The rise of mobile, and smartphones in particular, must also play a role, as it caters to increased use in email and social media, not to mention text messaging, and even….the phone call! The point is, communication is always as close as your pocket. It’s a lot easier and cheaper (at least on an individual interaction basis) than writing letters. And it’s in real time. 

“With the rise of e-mail and the decline of letters, mail volume is falling at a staggering rate, and the postal service’s survival plan isn’t reassuring,” Devin Leonard says in the Bloomberg BusinessWeek report, noting that the USPS is the country’s second-largest civilian employer after Walmart (with more post offices than the retail outlets of Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald’s combined). Last year its revenues were $67 billion, with even greater expenses, he says. 

According to the report, first-class mail, which the USPS gets the majority of its money from, has been steadily declining, and in 2005 fell below junk mail for the first time. Total mail volume has decreased 20% just from 2006 to 2010. The USPS hasn’t been able to cover its annual budget in three years. 

Well, there’s still packages right? Sure, but there’s also stiff competition from companies like FedEx, UPS, and DHL, along with an increase in digital goods replacing physical goods. Think movies, music, and books. Amazon, the largest retailer on the web, announced last week that Kindle books are outselling print books. Never mind that there are a bunch of free ones too. 

Plus, everybody’s going paperless these days. The Director of Physical Infrastructure at the U.S. Government Accountability Office is quoted as saying, “What happens when Bank of America or Citigroup says you are going to have to pay to get your statement on paper? That’s going to change a lot of behavior. It’s going to affect the postal service. That’s how they make most of their money.”

The Bloomberg BusinessWeek report includes some interesting ideas on how the Postal Service could get back on track, at least to some extent, but the outlook is looking pretty bleak. You have to wonder what this will mean for the future of digital communication like email.

Is Email Killing the Post Office?

Facebook Places and Check-In Deals

Facebook Places and Check-In Deals Come to Pages. Facebook is certainly not new to business pages, but the increased functionality, stacked up to new and forthcoming features for Google’s Place Pages, means more direct competition as the go-to place for consumers

Facebook is making changes that make it easier for businesses to manage their Facebook presence and get customers to engage. 

InsideFacebook reports that Facebook has confirmed with them that it has started bringing Facebook Places functionality (including Check-In Deals) to Facebook Pages that have street addresses. Local businesses, pay attention. 

Josh Constine says: “Facebook tells us this automatic merge of Pages and Places ‘makes things easier for Page administrators’. We agree that it is a better solution than the now removed option to manually merge Places with Pages. By expanding the number of Pages that can run Checkin Deals, Facebook may be looking to drive user awareness and engagement with the product and earn money off of it through ads promoting the incentives.”

Local is an increasingly competitive space right now, and businesses have more and more ways to reach consumers online and through mobile devices than ever before. What will be particularly interesting to me is to see how this plays out with regards to competition with Google, which has essentially taken the place of yellow pages for many consumers. 

Facebook is certainly not new to business pages, but the increased functionality, stacked up to new and forthcoming features for Google’s Place Pages, means more direct competition as the go-to place for consumers to look up local business info, find deals, and even check in. Add to that, the fact that Bing continues to expand on its own Facebook integration and has made some big deals to greatly expand its mobile presence (via Microsoft partnerships with Nokia and RIM), and Google may end up feeling the heat from that angle as well. 

Facebook also recently rolled out Page tagging in Photos. Google is actually sending photographers out to businesses to take professional shots of interiors for inclusion on Place Pages. 

Facebook Places and Check-In Deals Come to Pages

Bing Teams Up With Facebook for Personalized Results

Bing Teams Up With Facebook for Personalized Results. Will you log into Facebook and use Bing’s new social search? Here is a detailed description of what the Facebook integration will look like on Bing, courtesy of the official Bing blog

Today, Microsoft’s search engine has announced that its “decision engine” will now be influenced by what they are calling the “friend effect,” basically what is popular with one’s Facebook friends. If you log into Facebook through Bing, you will now receive information on what your friends “like” when viewing search results. 

 

Not only will the new Bing with Facebook simply show you that your friends like a certain result, but the search engine will use the information is gleans from Facebook to actually modify your search results. 

Here is a detailed description of what the Facebook integration will look like on Bing, courtesy of the official Bing blog:

• “Liked” Results, Answers & Sites

Instantly see which stories, content and sites your Facebook friends have “liked,” from news stories, celebrities, movies, bands, brands and more. With the “thumbs up” from your friends you can jump right to the stuff that matters the most to you. Bing shows the faces of up to three of your friends that like a search result, offering a visual and virtual seal of approval from your trusted social network. 

• Personalized Results

Bing delivers a more personalized search experience by using the interests shown by your friends. Now you won’t miss potentially interesting information that may have been buried deep within the search results. Bing will surface results, which may typically have been on page three or four, higher in its results based on stuff your friends have liked. And, how often do you go beyond page one of the results?

• Popular Sites

Bing shows well-liked content, including trending topics, articles and Facebook fan pages, from sites across the web, to help you dig in and quickly find exactly what you’re looking for. Looking for a great recipe? Now when you search for a recipe site, you’ll see what recipes people have liked on that site, allowing you to cut through the clutter and find the perfect recipe for dinner. 

• Integration of Social Messages

Bing not only shows you what your friends like and share online, but also what major brands and companies are saying. For example, when you search for Avis, the answer on Bing will integrate any recent Facebook posts alerting you to a new deal. 

Bing is also integrating Facebook profile search into the engine, so that when you search for a person, Bing will provide a detailed “bio snapshot” of the person based one their Facebook profile. 

Bing is basing this partnership on the idea that recommendations from friends and family are what people want when making decisions. This shift towards social search might even be a bigger deal than it initially looks like on the surface. Bing says that “search remains largely driven by facts and links” and that this Facebook integration means that “it’s time to change that.” This may in fact be the first step in search becoming a truly social experience. 

As they say above, they are surfacing results, possibly from page three or four, to page one based on their popularity with friends. Is this indeed an algorithm change?

Will you log into Facebook and use Bing’s new social search? 

Bing Teams Up With Facebook for Personalized Results

Microsoft Buy Skype

Microsoft  Buy Skype. The team also discuss an apparent schism within Anonymous, and examine the group's denial of an attack in which credit card details were stolen from Sony's PlayStation Network

This week Aleks Krotoski and Charles Arthur are joined by Tom Loosemore to analyse this week's biggest tech stories.

We begin with Microsoft's purchase of Skype for $8.5bn. At the time of recording, the deal was only expected, and so the team look back at Skype's 7 year life, and how it has changed hands in that time. Charles finds it hard to see why Microsoft needs the VoIP service - and predicts a hard time for it within their Redmond HQ.

Charles also takes a look at the latest sales figures of mobile phones in western Europe, and finds Nokia has been pushed into second place by Samsung and Apple in the handset and smartphone markets respectively. It's more bad news for Nokia, and neither Tom nor Charles can foresee a rosy future for Nokia - with Tom predicting fatal consequences for the company.

The team also discuss an apparent schism within Anonymous, and examine the group's denial of an attack in which credit card details were stolen from Sony's PlayStation Network. Aleks, Charles and Tom talk through the group's aims, ponder the ramifications of a split, and attempt to describe the structure and motivation of Anonymous - with mixed success.

And finally, Tom talks to us about his attempts to build a single, central government website which will deliver information and services from recommendations made by the UK's digital champion Martha Lane Fox. Tom explains what his aims are for Alphagov and what it has been like working on such a large project, and within a huge government bureaucracy.

Microsoft  Buy Skype

Google Releases Site Speed Report

the Site Speed Report feature will automatically use a small sample of pageviews to measure the page load time. If the site speed set up procedure is done correctly, users will be able to see report data in a few hours

Google has announced the inclusion of a new feature the Site Speed Report, in the latest Google Analytics. This feature will allow you to measure the page load time on pages of your website. According to the company, Google Analytics users can now understand how load times impact their ranking at Google, user experience and eventually the conversion rates.

Google says, “To improve the performance of your pages, you first need to measure and diagnose the speed of a page, which can be a difficult task. Furthermore, even with page speed measurements, it’s critical to look at page speed in context of other web analytics data.”

The company cites four different functions Google Analytics users can perform using the Site Speed Report. Users can apply the Site Speed Report to:

• Content: To find out which landing pages are slowest?
• Traffic sources: Measure which campaigns correspond to faster page loads overall?
• Visitor: How does page load time differ, with visitor to visitor or from place to place?
• Technology: Does the site load time differ from browser to browser or one OS to another?

Once the cause of the issue is diagnosed, users can take perform the necessary improvements or changes to speed up the loading of those pages that has been taking more time to load.

How to set up and use the Site Speed Report?

The Site Speed Report feature comes turned-off by default, denoting only 0s in the report. To start using the feature and measure your website’s load speed, you need to turn it on and make a little change to the Analytics tracking code. The required tracking code changes are explained on the Site Speed page at the Analytics Help Center. When this tracking code change is made, the Site Speed Report feature will automatically use a small sample of pageviews to measure the page load time. If the site speed set up procedure is done correctly, users will be able to see report data in a few hours.

It seems that the Google Analytics team and the Make the Web Faster team are working really hard to speed the web up and provide a better search experience.

Google Releases Site Speed Report

Sony Online Entertainment taken offline

 The SOE network is responsible for hosting games like DC Universe Online, EverQuest, and Free Realms – so you can imagine the magnitude of such a crime

Somebody needs to give Sony a break. After being attacked over a week ago, and only just starting to recover, Sony has a bout of bad news again. This time it isn’t the Sony PlayStation Network, but the Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) servers. The SOE servers were taken down earlier this morning, with Sony citing it was due to an intrusion.

Now, it has been reported that personal details and about 12,700 credit card numbers were stolen have been stolen from the SOE servers. The SOE network is responsible for hosting games like DC Universe Online, EverQuest, and Free Realms – so you can imagine the magnitude of such a crime. However a silver lining surrounds this dark cloud; the stolen details are claimed to be from the year 2007, which means most of the credit card info stolen should have been expired by now.

There’s no telling when SOE will be back up, so for folks looking forward to their MMO fixes will have to find an alternate hobby in the meantime. Stay tuned for more updates.

Sony Online Entertainment taken offline