Posts tagged drops
Chrome’s Market Share Drops In January; Was It Due To Google’s Penalty?
Feb 3rd
After 17 straight months of gains in market share, Google’s Chrome web browser dropped 0.17 percent in January, and the company that tracks browser market share suggests that it’s because Google penalized Chrome after a botched sponsored blog post campaign. The figures come from Net…
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Google+ Drops Age Restriction, Now Accepts All Teenagers
Jan 26th
Google today dropped the age requirement from 18 to 13 for teenagers who want to join Google+, bringing Google+ in line with Facebook’s age policy. Bradley Horowitz, Google VP, product management, also announced new features for teen users.
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Coffee & Power Drops Virtual Currency For Real-World Work
Jan 11th
Coffee & Power, the experimental “meta-company” that lets remote workers hire each other for small jobs, has decided to drop its virtual currency in exchange for regular old U.S. dollars. The change will have no impact on functionality or in-progress jobs; it’s simply intended to make Coffee & Power easier to adopt. Existing balances in the virtual C$ will be automatically converted to US$.
Coffee & Power was founded by Second Life creator Philip Rosedale, whose interest in virtual currencies built a thriving economy in that virtual world. But for Coffee & Power, whose users do real-world work, Rosedale thinks a real-world currency will be easier to understand.
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When Coffee & Power launched, Rosedale hoped the “sticky” nature of virtual currencies would stimulate more work. He says buying into virtual currencies – even when the exchange rate is 1-to-1 as C$ were – is an investment in the community, encouraging reinvestment rather than cashing out.
Coffee & Power charges a 15% transaction fee for money withdrawn from the system, which is how the company makes money. There’s no fee to add money, so the decision to drop the virtual currency is intended to reduce the friction even further.
Rosedale says the change is “only a brand issue.” The key aspect of Coffee & Power’s economy, he says, “is the ability to earn money and then re-spend it on others without needing to put in money of your own.” Until users withdraw money, there are no fees, so C&P workers can participate, create value and spend it without even needing a credit card. This functionality is unaffected. “For now,” Rosedale says, “it seems more likely that people will understand and start using the service if it looks like dollars.”
Last December, Coffee & Power’s first real-world workclub outside San Francisco opened in Santa Monica, Calif. It’s currently working on expanding to the Portland, Ore. and Chicago, Ill. areas. Coffee & Power is available anywhere, but the physical workclubs provide workspaces and community hubs for its members.
Yo #Chicago – we need your help to find a new CP Workclub space in the windy city: ow.ly/8p24M
— Coffee and Power (@coffeeandpower) January 11, 2012
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Google Drops Tele Atlas & Uses Their Own Maps Data For UK Maps
Dec 9th
Google announced on the Google Maps blog that they are now powering their own map data in the UK, Germany, Finland and Sweden. Google maps data in the U.S. and many other countries is powered by Google’s own data. But this week, Google dropped their third-party map data provider, Tele Atlas,…
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Irish Hotel Drops Autocomplete Defamation Case Against Google
Nov 24th
An Irish hotel was suing Google for an autocomplete suggestion that implied the hotel was in financial trouble. That case has now been withdrawn, although no details of any settlement have been released.
Hotel Defamation Case Withdrawn
The …
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Google Drops Chromebook Prices & Adds A Black Friday Model
Nov 21st
Google gave Chromebooks a refresh for the holidays, introducing a new Samsung Series 5 notebook and dropping the price of Acer and Samsung Chromebooks to $299. The new Series 5 is sleek and black (and Wi-Fi only), an impressive-looking refresher for the ailing netbook category.
Google has also overhauled parts of the Chrome OS user interface. The login screen is now so fresh and so clean, and the new tab page now includes a shortcut to the file manager.
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“The computer that keeps getting better” lives up to that promise, but the Chromebook category hasn’t caught on. It advertises “nothing but the Web” as a feature, but our experiences have found that to be a limitation. We weren’t sure why Chromebooks had to be more expensive that plain old netbooks, but today’s price drop – and for a sleek, new model, too – is a welcome gesture.
The Chromebook and Chrome OS have gotten some important updates this year. Will you be getting one for the holidays?
Read more on the Google Blog.
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A Case Of The Drops: Is Third-Party Smartphone Insurance Necessary?
Oct 17th
The danger with carrying a smartphone in your pocket is that it is essentially a piece of glass held together with metal and plastic with sophisticated electrical innards. Warranties from original equipment manufacturers tend to not cover a phone if it is broken or has water damage. What if you drop your brand new iPhone 4S into a puddle? The glass is going to break and it is going to get water inside. When that happens, you are in trouble like a half-plucked turkey the day before Thanksgiving.
The folks at SquareTrade like to break things. SquareTrade is a third-party device warranty company that basically offers insurance for what Apple or the other OEMs will not cover in warranties. The company posted a video positing a Samsung Galaxy S II against an iPhone 4S. The results are not for the fanboy faint of heart.
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For most of us, the idea of third-party device insurance feels like a scam. Isn’t that the way it always feels with insurance? You do not trust the provider, and things never seem to be covered when you want them to and the deductible is too high. The carriers offer additional warranties on the devices they sell, but the carriers are even worse than the average door-to-door salesman. It is also expensive, with either a flat rate that costs as much as the phone or a monthly fee attached to your bill.
SquareTrade’s iPhone 4S policy
The big retail stores offer the same type of services. What do you think the Geek Squad is but device insurance and warranty protection? In addition to SquareTrade, there is also Securranty, a company that offers the same functionality and pricing as SquareTrade. What these companies will not cover is data or device loss. There are other ways to find lost phones though, with mobile device management solutions (if your phone is tied to your business) or “find my phone” services through Apple or security companies like 3LM, Lookout and Norton.
What do you think about a third-party $99 warranty for your iPhone 4S, Android or other device? Is it worth it? Maybe, if you have a serious case of the drops. Let us know in the comments.
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Google Plus Traffic Drops, 1269% Gains Erased
Oct 10th
Remember when Google Plus traffic went up 1269% in one week? Well, you can scratch that. New traffic data from analytics firm Chitika show that the insurgent social network has erased those gains entirely, now down by over 60% since the peak.
Google Plus opened to the public on September 20, leading to the huge spike in interest that we reported, peaking around two days later. But just in the four days that followed, traffic sunk back down to where it was.
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Chitika didn’t label the Y axis on its chart, but its “traffic index” shows the big peak over the same time period as the Experian Hitwise numbers we reported. The public launch generated tons of interest, but that interest wasn’t sustained for long.
We at RWW can informally corroborate Chitika’s findings that interest in Google Plus is on the wane. Our monthly referrals from there are down 38% since their peak, while Facebook referrals are up 67% and Twitter referrals up 51% over the same period.
As we reported last week, the +1 button isn’t gaining much traction, either. Despite all the new features and responsiveness to user feedback, Google Plus just doesn’t seem to be catching on. There’s only so much time in a day for social networking, and this newcomer isn’t converting many users.
We’ve reported some sneak previews of upcoming Google Plus features, like Google Voice integration and a Quora-like Q&A service. Maybe those will help Plus stand out.
Why aren’t you using Google Plus?
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Rdio Drops Music Streaming Fee, Following MOG and Spotify
Oct 6th
It hasn’t even been three months since Spotify launched in the United States, but the freemium music streaming service is certainly having an impact on its competition. Rdio, one of those competitors, announced today that it’s taking down the paywall around its Web-based streaming service.
The move comes three weeks after MOG, another popular music service, did the same. Both Rdio and MOG still charge for unlimited access and for the ability to stream music from one’s smartphone or tablet. Listening to music in the browser, however, is free.
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Rdio’s Web listening experience doesn’t include advertisements, but there are some limitations to the new free account tier. Listeners can only a stream a limited amount of music each month. A meter located at the top of free users’ profiles will show much free music is left.
Spotify, which has been hugely popular in Europe for a few years, made a big splash when it launched in the United States in July. At that time, Rdio and MOG were both pay services, starting at $5 per month. Spotify, on the other hand, launched with a free, albeit somewhat limited, version of its service, forcing existing competitors to rethink their pricing plans.
The move also comes just two weeks before the release of Apple’s iCloud content sycning feature and iTunes Match, a “cloud locker” for music similar to initiatives launched by Amazon and Google. Although Apple’s new initiatives are somewhat different from the all-you-can-stream subscription services like Rdio and Spotify, the prospect of a tech giant launching a music service is something worth keeping an eye on for smaller startups, especially when that tech giant has already had a substantial impact on the music industry.
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Google Search Share Plateaus, BingHoo Gains, AOL Drops
Sep 13th
The comScore search market share numbers for August are out. What they show is Google seeming to hit a kind of plateau. Over the past year it seems to be bumping up against a market share ceiling of around 65-66 percent. By contrast Yahoo and Bing gained slightly and now have a combined 31 percent…
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