Yahoo! today introduced Yahoo! Buzz, an extension to Yahoo.com that opens up the Internet’s leading starting point by uncovering the most interesting and relevant content from websites across the Internet and bringing more buzz-worthy stories to the homepage of Yahoo!. Currently in beta, Yahoo! Buzz measures consumer votes and search patterns to identify interesting and timely stories and videos from large news sources as well as niche blogs around the Web. Top stories are then given primary editorial consideration for feature placement on Yahoo.com.
Yahoo! Buzz can highlight anything – a major news event, an intriguing video or image, or an interesting blog post – and instead of editors, real people vote and search for their favorite stories to determine the top rated content from across the Web. Yahoo! Buzz ranks the most popular content of the moment using a unique approach that combines consumer votes with search popularity to give a story a Buzz Score. This new initiative creates a lens on what people are most interested in to enhance relevance on the popular Yahoo.com, and help publishers deliver their best content to Yahoo!’s broad and diverse audience of more than 500 million users.
“Yahoo Buzz is a good example of how we are continuing to innovate and open up our key starting points to third party publishers, making Yahoo! more social and personally relevant for our half a billion consumers,” said Jeff Weiner, executive vice president, Yahoo! Network Division. “In addition, we recently announced that we will be opening up our user interface for Yahoo! Search, as well as creating a smarter inbox by opening up Yahoo! Mail, two other key ways that consumers start with Yahoo!.”
“With Yahoo! Buzz, we are building on the recent success of the homepage of Yahoo! and improving consumers’ favorite online starting point, by combining popular stories with the wisdom of real people to determine what is most engaging and relevant,” said Tapan Bhat, vice president, Front Doors and Network Services, Yahoo!. “Consumer engagement with the Yahoo! homepage has increased nearly 20 percent year-over-year, evidence that continuing to open up and provide consumers with direct links out to third party publishers keeps people coming back to Yahoo! again and again.”
Yahoo! Buzz Brings Publishers’ Content to Internet’s Largest Audience
Yahoo! Buzz builds on an openness initiative Yahoo! launched last year in which editors began highlighting third-party content from across the Web in the “Featured Today” module on Yahoo.com. This effort has already provided tremendous value for consumers and publishers, representing a first step in the creation of a more open system for Web content. “When Yahoo! linked to People.com’s Sexiest Man Alive coverage, referrals from Yahoo! increased by over 11 times versus the average day,” said Fran Hauser, President, People Digital.
“Getting a link on Yahoo!’s Front Page is like connecting to a fire hose,” said Evan Hansen, editor-in-chief, Wired.com. “Thanks to this program, we got more than 2 million page views in less than two hours from a single headline, helping to drive a 1400 percent increase in Yahoo! referral traffic versus the previous month and enabling us to reach a vast audience that may not otherwise see the stories we publish on Wired.com.”
In its beta phase, Yahoo! Buzz includes content from nearly 100 publishers, ranging from large online publishing brands to small, influential blogs, and will grow from there to open up to all publishers interested in having their content included in Yahoo! Buzz. Participating publishers are given an online ‘badge’ enabling their readers to vote and submit stories to Buzz in real-time. Stories with the highest Buzz Scores will be highlighted via direct links to the publishers’ sites from http://buzz.yahoo.com and submitted to Yahoo.com’s editors for possible coverage on the Yahoo! homepage. Additionally, Yahoo! allows users to submit Buzz stories to social news sites including delicious, Digg, Facebook, Propeller, Reddit and Stumbleupon.
New Tools for Publishers and Advertisers
As Yahoo! Buzz evolves, it will form the basis for an open ecosystem of publishers, advertisers and consumers. Yahoo! will develop this ecosystem by building out new syndication and monetization tools that enable publishers to share relevant content, connect to more advertisers and reach a broader audience. For example, a Yahoo! Buzz API will enable publishers to add customized Yahoo! Buzz modules or shortcuts to their sites to showcase their own most buzzed items or other popular stories on relevant topics. Over time, we expect this to extend into a powerful content exchange that connects owners of content with distributors of traffic.
February 26th, 2008
A consortium of six international companies announced they have executed agreements to build a high–bandwidth subsea fiber optic cable linking the United States and Japan. The construction of the new Trans–Pacific infrastructure will cost an estimated US$300 million.
The new cable system — named Unity — will address broadband demand by providing much needed capacity to sustain the unprecedented growth in data and Internet traffic between Asia and the United States. Unity is expected to initially increase Trans–Pacific lit cable capacity by about 20 percent, with the potential to add up to 7.68 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific.
According to the TeleGeography Global Bandwidth Report, 2007, Trans–Pacific bandwidth demand has grown at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 63.7 percent between 2002 and 2007. It is expected to continue to grow strongly from 2008 to 2013, with total demand for capacity doubling roughly every two years.
“The Unity cable system allows the members of the consortium to provide the increased capacity needed as more applications and services migrate online, giving users faster and more reliable connectivity,” said Unity spokesperson Jayne Stowell.
The Unity consortium is a joint effort by Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Google, KDDI Corporation, Pacnet and SingTel. The name Unity was chosen to signify a new type of consortium, born out of potentially competing systems, to emerge as a system within a system, offering ownership and management of individual fiber pairs.
This new 10,000 kilometer (km) Trans–Pacific cable will provide connectivity between Chikura, located off the coast near Tokyo, to Los Angeles and other West Coast network points of presence. At Chikura, Unity will be seamlessly connected to other cable systems, further enhancing connectivity into Asia.
The Unity consortium selected NEC Corporation and Tyco Telecommunications to construct and install the system during a signing ceremony held in Tokyo on February 23, 2008. Construction will begin immediately, with initial capacity targeted to be available in the first quarter of 2010.
The new five fiber pair cable system can be expanded up to eight fiber pairs, with each fiber pair capable of carrying up to 960 Gigabits per second (Gbps). By having a high fiber count, Unity is able to offer more capacity at lower unit costs.
February 26th, 2008
Yahoo! today announced that it has expanded its growing network of newspaper partnerships with the addition of four publishers, including Shaw Newspapers and its 25 daily and weekly newspapers covering northern Illinois and Iowa, The Buffalo News and its paper that covers Buffalo, NY, the Times Publishing Company that produces The Erie Times News in Erie, PA, and the Columbian Publishing Company that publishes The Columbian in Vancouver, WA. With the addition of these publishers, the Newspaper Consortium now includes 634 participating newspapers, 425 of which are dailies – 30 percent of all U.S. daily newspapers and 37 percent of all U.S. Sunday circulation.(1)
“Yahoo!’s continued momentum with the newspaper industry shows that current and new Consortium members value the opportunity to combine the newspapers’ own unmatched local news and deep local advertising relationships with Yahoo!’s leading technologies and extensive online audience,” said Lem Lloyd, vice president, Newspaper Consortium for Yahoo!, Inc. “We’ve already seen tremendous growth and have captured valuable local audience share across every major U.S. region through integration with Yahoo! HotJobs and the newspaper partners.”
Yahoo! has more than tripled the number of member companies in the Consortium since its inception in November 2006, significantly strengthening its Advertiser/Publisher Network and advancing its advertising strategy to be the “must buy” for the most advertisers.
“We’re in the infancy of a relationship between Yahoo! and our newspaper consortium that already exceeds our expectations,” said Jay Smith, President of Cox Newspapers, Inc. “Roughly one-third of the U.S.’s newspapers, including ours, believe a better day is here with this unique partnership of 634 newspapers and Yahoo!. We are seeing impressive results as our sales teams offer Yahoo! inventory to our local advertisers. As our consortium grows, so, too, will our success.”
Yahoo!’s partnership with the Newspaper Consortium spans multiple initiatives, including for many members, the adoption of Yahoo! HotJobs as their exclusive online recruitment solution, the distribution of headlines across Yahoo!, the adoption of Yahoo! Search on newspaper sites, cross-selling of advertising with newspapers’ local sales forces selling local advertisers’ inventory on Yahoo! and Yahoo!’s national sales force selling national advertising on newspapers’ sites. Many of the members also will be exclusively using the Yahoo! ad platform to sell display advertising on their sites.
To date, Yahoo! HotJobs has launched co-branded career sites serving more than 425 U.S. newspapers. By integrating with the newspaper partners and delivering better reach, relevance and performance, Yahoo! HotJobs has experienced 50 percent year-over-year traffic growth, becoming the fastest growing Web site among the leading job boards and surpassing Monster.com in the U.S.(2)
In addition to the Yahoo! HotJobs implementations, the first phase of advertising cross-sales has begun, with the sales staffs of several newspapers integrating Yahoo! inventory into sales packages for their local advertisers. The program will be expanded during the next several months, allowing Consortium members to target ads to specific audience segments. To date, 126 of the Consortium newspapers now also feature Yahoo! Search on their sites.
The newspaper publishers that have most recently joined the Newspaper Consortium are:
Shaw Newspapers, based in northern Illinois and publishing 25 daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Iowa, all of which will be implementing Yahoo! HotJobs on their sites. Of those newspapers, 13 of them will also participate in the Yahoo! Core Services components of the Newspaper Consortium-Yahoo! relationship, providing them with Yahoo! Search on their sites, as well as enabling their local sales forces to sell their local advertisers ads on Yahoo! and the Yahoo! sales force to sell national advertisers onto the newspaper Web sites. Additionally, these newspapers’ content will be distributed in key locations on Yahoo!, including Yahoo! Mail, My Yahoo! and Yahoo! News.
The Buffalo News, which serves the Buffalo/Niagara region of the state of New York, will participate in all aspects of the Yahoo!-Newspaper Consortium partnership, including Yahoo! HotJobs and all the Core Services components.
The Times Publishing Company, which produces The Erie Times News in Erie, Pennsylvania, also joins the Newspaper Consortium to co-brand its ErieCareers.com classified business with Yahoo! HotJobs. The Erie Times News serves Erie County and surrounding towns on the shore of Lake Erie, including eastern Ohio, western New York and northern Crawford County.
The Columbian Publishing Company of Vancouver, Washington, publishes The Columbian and will join the Newspaper Consortium to incorporate Yahoo! HotJobs into their site. The Columbian serves the Portland, OR / Vancouver, WA area.
With the addition of these newspapers to the Newspaper Consortium, it now includes 26 publishing companies and has a presence in 42 of the top 50 DMAs in the United States.
Other Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium members include: Belo Corp.; Calkins Media, Inc.; Columbus Dispatch; The Day Publishing Company; The E.W. Scripps Company; GateHouse Media, Inc.; Hearst Newspapers; Herald Media, Inc.; Journal Register Company; Lee Enterprises; McClatchy Company; Media General, Inc.; Morris Communications Company, LLC; MediaNews Group, Inc.; Paddock Publications, Inc; Paxton Media Group; Philadelphia Media Holdings, LLC; The New York Daily News; The New York Times Regional Group; Times-Shamrock Communications; and the Tribune Review Publishing Company.
The newspapers represented by the Newspaper Consortium include major market dailies such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Boston Herald, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, The Florida Times-Union, Houston Chronicle, The Miami Herald, New Haven Register, The Philadelphia Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Rocky Mountain News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and The Tampa Tribune.
(1) Editor and Publisher, 2006
(2) comScore Media Metrix Career Resources, 2008 vs. 2007
February 21st, 2008
The Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF), Omidyar Network, and Google.org announced today a new $17 million Small to Medium Enterprise Investment Company for India to create job opportunities and spur greater economic participation for a larger segment of the population. This joint Investment Company will provide capital to small and medium businesses in underserved markets.
“With this investment, we will meet the huge demand to serve smaller businesses in India that have little access to finance,” said Neal DeLaurentis, Vice President of Soros Economic Development Fund. “Long ignored by commercial capital markets, small and medium businesses are an attractive investment opportunity as well as an engine for economic growth for India.”
Many small to medium Indian businesses lack formal funding options because of a market gap between the microloans offered by microfinance institutions and the larger investments of commercial banks and private equity funders. Most of the existing Small to Medium Enterprise funds make investments in the $3-$5 million range, leaving out a significant portion of this market. The Investment Company will target this “missing middle” with equity investments between $500,000 and $3.5 million.
“We have seen what microloans can do at the individual level and are excited about bringing that same opportunity to small and medium businesses,” said Jim Bunch, Director of Investments at Omidyar Network. “A new generation of entrepreneurs and their families will benefit economically and socially, and as their enterprises grow, these benefits can be shared with employees and their families, as well as the community at large.”
“While SMEs in rich countries represent half of GDP, they account for a much lower portion in developing economies like India, partly because SMEs don’t have access to the same type of financing,” said Sonal Shah of Google.org. “Our goal is to increase the flow of capital to SMEs in India. This is an important step in helping to attract commercial capital and reduce dependency on philanthropy or soft capital to fund this industry.”
SEDF, Omidyar Network and Google.org plan to locate the Investment Advisor at the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad to leverage the school’s SME expertise. Dr. Reuben Abraham, currently the ISB’s Director of the Base of Pyramid Lab and a board member of SEDF, will be named Senior Advisor.
The Investment Company will hire an experienced Investment Advisor and two experienced senior investment analysts based in India to recommend and build the pipeline of portfolio investments.
February 19th, 2008
Yahoo! today announced that it has sent a letter to its stockholders, outlining the reasons the Board believes that Microsoft’s proposal significantly undervalues Yahoo! and is not in the best interests of Yahoo! stockholders.
In the letter Yahoo! says:
“(Yahoo!’s) assets – our brand and its audience, our relationships with marketers, our financial strength, our technology, and our strategic investments–are the core of our value and our leadership position in the industry.
“We have a huge market opportunity – and are uniquely positioned to capitalize on it. The global online advertising market is projected to grow from $45 billion in 2007 to $75 billion in 2010. And we are moving quickly to take advantage of what we see as a unique window of time in the growth – and evolution – of this market to build market share and to create value for stockholders.
“Today, Yahoo! is a faster-moving, better-organized, more nimble company than it was just a few months ago. We have redeployed our resources to drive Yahoo!’s key strategic priorities – taking important steps to streamline our organization and close down or scale back businesses that don’t support these critical growth initiatives. We are well on our way to transforming the experiences of Yahoo!’s users, advertisers, publishers and developers – an important shift that is at the heart of our plan to create stockholder value.”
A copy of the letter follows:
Dear Stockholders,
On February 1, 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited proposal to acquire your company. As much has been reported in the press recently, I wanted to reach out to you personally to let you know why your Board of Directors, after a careful review by Yahoo!’s management along with our financial and legal advisors, believes that Microsoft’s proposal substantially undervalues Yahoo! and is not in the best interests of our stockholders.
Most importantly, I want you to know that your Board is continuously evaluating all of Yahoo!’s strategic options in the context of the rapidly evolving industry environment, and we remain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all our stockholders.
We have a unique combination of strengths
– Yahoo! is one of the most recognizable and admired brands in the world. We have over 500 million users (nearly 1 out of every 2 internet users worldwide). In the U.S., we are # 1 in many of the most used online services including personalized home pages, mail, news, music, shopping and travel. Because we have leadership positions in so many indispensable online services, users spend more time on Yahoo! sites than anywhere else online.
– Yahoo! is an attractive partner for marketers. Yahoo! is #1 in online display advertising, which represents 90% of the advertising inventory on the web, and we are also a leader in search marketing and a pioneer in the growing fields of mobile advertising and online video advertising. Through Yahoo!, advertisers can now connect with consumers on our owned sites as well as those of our growing network of partners including eBay, Comcast, AT&T, a consortium of over 600 newspapers, Forbes.com, Cars.com, WebMD and more.
– Yahoo! has the financial flexibility to execute our plans, thanks to our healthy cash balance, which exceeded $2 billion as of December 31, 2007, and our substantial operating cash flow, which we expect to grow double digits in 2009.
– Yahoo! has made important investments in our core computing infrastructure enabling us to dramatically increase the speed of our search engine updates even while handling vast and growing quantities of data.
– In addition, we have the added value of our substantial, unconsolidated investments in Japan and China. We have substantial positions in Yahoo! Japan, the leader in its market, and Alibaba, which is strongly positioned in China, a market with enormous growth potential.
These assets–our brand and its audience, our relationships with marketers, our financial strength, our technology, and our strategic investments–are the core of our value and our leadership position in the industry.
We have a huge market opportunity – and are uniquely positioned to capitalize on it
The global online advertising market is projected to grow from $45 billion in 2007 to $75 billion in 2010. And we are moving quickly to take advantage of what we see as a unique window of time in the growth – and evolution – of this market to build market share and to create value for stockholders.
We are executing our strategy – and making headway
We have taken significant but disciplined steps to refocus our business on our objectives to become the starting point for the most consumers and the must buy for the most advertisers and enhance Yahoo!’s long-term performance.
Starting Point Objective: Our goal is to grow visits to key Yahoo! starting points and properties, where users enter the Internet, by 15% per year over the next several years. We are the most visited site in the U.S., and we continue to grow – we experienced double-digit growth in U.S. users in 2007 on our Yahoo.com home page.
In addition to traditional starting points on the PC – including our home pages, mail, My Yahoo! and search, we are particularly excited about our growth prospects in mobile, the biggest emerging starting point in the world. Globally, there are twice as many users of mobile devices as users of personal computers, and mobile advertising is projected to grow substantially in the coming years. We have an important competitive edge as the number one mobile destination in the U.S., and we are building a superior mobile experience for Yahoo! users globally so we can further capitalize on this opportunity.
Must Buy Objective: We are working to make online advertising easier and more effective for marketers, opening up new ways for them to connect with consumers. We’ve successfully completed the global roll-out of our search marketing system, Panama, which improved the search experience for our users, boosted returns for our advertisers, and increased revenue for Yahoo!. Last year, we bought Right Media, an exchange that enables buyers and sellers of online advertising to come together. Another 2007 acquisition, Blue Lithium, brings us best-in-class performance marketing capabilities, complementing Yahoo!’s existing offerings for advertisers. We also integrated our search advertising and display advertising sales forces, creating a one-stop shop for all of advertisers’ online marketing needs. All of these – Panama, Right Media, Blue Lithium, and our combined sales efforts – complement and enhance Yahoo!’s existing capabilities and will make it easier for advertisers and online publishers to buy and sell advertising online.
We are also creating a unique and valuable network of premium websites to serve our advertisers. We are making it easier for our advertisers to provide interesting and relevant offers to our users by combining advertising space on Yahoo!’s owned sites with that from a growing group of premium partners including eBay, Comcast, AT&T, a consortium of over 600 newspapers and many others.
As we reach more users both on our own websites and on the sites of our premium partners, and better monetize the ad space on Yahoo!’s owned and operated sites, we are striving to increase the percentage of total online advertising demand we touch from an estimated 15% in 2007 to 20% over the next several years.
These key strategies will be enhanced by our adoption of new, more open technology platforms that will encourage the development of new applications and the involvement of third-party developers – and help enrich the user experience.
We have accomplished a great deal in a very short time – and we are focused on building this momentum
Today, Yahoo! is a faster-moving, better-organized, more nimble company than it was just a few months ago. We have redeployed our resources to drive Yahoo!’s key strategic priorities – taking important steps to streamline our organization and close down or scale back businesses that don’t support these critical growth initiatives. The fact is that we are well on our way to transforming the experiences of Yahoo!’s users, advertisers, publishers and developers – an important shift that is at the heart of our plan to create stockholder value.
I want you to know that the Yahoo! Board of Directors and management team remain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all our Yahoo! stockholders. This is a great company and we are moving quickly to make it even better.
Jerry Yang
February 14th, 2008
Nokia and Google today announced that Google’s popular search engine will be integrated with the Nokia Search application. The integration will begin in select markets with the Nokia N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 6220 classic. Google search will be extended to additional Nokia handset models in the future. Ultimately, Nokia will make Google search available to its customers in over 100 countries around the world, serving mobile owners speaking more than 40 languages.
Nokia Search, now with Google, offers fast and easy access to web information from the handset. In addition, Nokia Search also makes it possible for users to search content on their device and use local search engines for a complete search experience. Nokia Search is available on many devices and provides direct access with one click from the active standby screen, saving users time and steps in their searching. Once users have found the information they are seeking, Nokia Search enables users to act on that information by engaging device assets such as maps, messaging or the browser with just one click.
“Providing choices for our consumers is an important driver in Nokia’s Internet service strategy,” said Ilkka Raiskinen, vice-president, software and services at Nokia. “This integration allows our consumers the ability to use the innovative search technologies, which have made Google almost synonymous with Internet search.
“Adding Google to Nokia Search provides mobile users with fast, relevant and comprehensive search experience that will be familiar to the people who use Google to search the web from their desktop,” said Google’s VP of Engineering and Products for Mobile Vic Gundotra. “Google search combined with the high quality applications on Nokia devices help make information available to Nokia device users wherever they are and provide an excellent overall experience.”
The collaboration announced today builds on previous cooperation between Nokia and Google. Google search has previously been available on Nokia Internet tablets, and last year the Nokia N95 8GB became the first mobile device to fully support YouTube, the video-sharing platform owned by Google.
Nokia Search is available on more than 40 Nokia devices in over 40 languages and in more than 100 countries. For the latest list of compatible Nokia devices, please visit www.mobilesearch.nokia.com.
February 12th, 2008
In a first for the web hosting industry, Yahoo! Small Business today announced a new service that gives small businesses unlimited room to grow online. The new Yahoo! Web Hosting service includes unlimited disk space, data transfer, and email storage space, for one low price of $11.95 per month. The new plan offers small businesses a simple, inexpensive solution for launching a new business or growing an existing one online, while eliminating worries about bandwidth and storage limits. With more than 1.5 million customers, Yahoo! Small Business is one of the world’s leading providers of reliable, secure hosting services for small businesses.
“Yahoo! understands that small business owners face a number of obstacles to success, and we don’t think that the growth of their online presence should be one of them. By going unlimited, Yahoo! is freeing its customers to focus on growing their businesses and driving traffic to their sites, rather than calculating the costs of megabytes,” said Guy Yalif, director of web hosting products, Yahoo!. “Yahoo! has long been the trusted partner of choice for small businesses looking to launch or expand online. The new unlimited offer shows our ongoing commitment to driving value for small business owners, who are an important part of the ecosystem of partners that we’re focused on serving.”
Yahoo!’s unlimited hosting service includes award-winning, easy-to-use web site design tools that allow business owners with little or no technical knowledge to quickly create professional-looking web sites. Yahoo!’s service also includes a free domain name, 1,000 personalized email accounts, live 24-7 toll-free customer support, and a new 30-day satisfaction guarantee.
To help small businesses generate leads and get noticed online, Yahoo! automatically submits its customers’ web sites to top search engines. In addition, web site building tools automatically optimize customers’ sites to be found by search engines. Other features help convert site visitors into customers including automatically generated maps and driving directions, business contact information on every page, compelling content guides, and lead submission forms. Yahoo! Web Hosting also makes it easy to quickly attract web site traffic by providing discounts on marketing services such as sponsored search advertising and email marketing.
“Yahoo! has taken a major step forward in delivering more value to small business owners looking to grow through the Web. Whenever you reduce costs and complexity for small business owners, you add tremendous value to their companies by freeing them to focus on their core businesses, and not worry about technical issues like bandwidth and storage — which they don’t understand,” said Sanjeev Aggarwal, vice president for SMB infrastructure solutions at AMI-Partners. “This is an aggressive move to lower the barrier to entry for small business owners, and significantly boosts the value Yahoo! offers small businesses looking for complete solutions for getting online.”
The unlimited-service offer follows a series of significant enhancements to Yahoo!’s hosting solution that focus on making it increasingly easy for entrepreneurs to quickly create attractive, high-quality web sites, including:
- Award-winning tools that guide small business owners through a simple, step-by-step process to open their businesses online;
- Web sites that are optimized right out of the box for lead generation;
- High-impact, professional site designs created with specific types of small businesses in mind, from attorney’s offices and home-repair services to accountants and spas;
- One-step email setup and an award-winning online email interface;
- A lead-capturing tool that automatically sends the business owner an email whenever potential customers submit contact information or request service from the business;
- Detailed guidance on how to develop compelling content for each page of the small business owner’s web site.
“I never thought building a web site would be so easy, and now I’m thrilled that I don’t have to worry about bandwidth and storage limits,” said Kaitlyn Sharp, owner, Custom Plumbing and Hardware (http://www.customplumbingandhardware.com). “The Yahoo! designs were great, and the simple instructions allowed me to quickly add pictures and information, and then to launch the site with a series of clicks. Our site went live after only a few hours, leading to an appointment and then a fabulous sale — all in the first week.”
February 10th, 2008
Google today announced a series of security products Powered by Postini™ that deliver message filtering, encryption and archiving for any business environment. Google’s new security services work with any mail system, including Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, and Novell Groupwise, and with pricing starting at $3 per user per year can accommodate the budget of any business. Customers can sign up online and immediately begin to improve the security of their email.
“As threats rise in volume and complexity, and compliance requirements pile up, IT is struggling to find the resources to keep up,” said Scott Petry, director of product management, Google. “Now, Google can take care of this for you. Organizations of all shapes and sizes can get access to Google’s industry leading security and compliance technologies.”
Companies of all sizes are seeking solutions to the challenge of security and compliance. For instance, outbound message filtering helps prevent sensitive data from going outside the company firewall, which could result in identity theft or compromise a client’s personal information. Also, increasing industry regulations are creating demand for better message storage, with quick and easy retrieval.
Businesses can choose the Google security and compliance services that best suit their needs:
Google Message Filtering™
- Postini’s industry-leading service for filtering incoming spam and malware
- for companies looking to handle the growth of spam, virus and other email threats, and want to shift the burden off of on-premises resources
- $3 per user per year
Google Message Security™
- includes Google Message Filtering, plus enhanced virus detection, outbound processing, and content policy management
- for companies worried about growing external security threats and internal risks, such as email data leaks or content compliance violations
- $12 per user per year
Google Message Discovery™
- includes Google Message Security, plus one year of message data archiving, retention, and discovery
- for companies seeking to reduce security exposure, and improve legal discovery readiness and message compliance
- $25 per user per year for one year of archived data (additional years of data retention available separately)
The new packages are part of the Google Apps platform and are available immediately at www.google.com/a/security, direct from Google, and through channel partners, and can be deployed within hours. The Google Apps suite also includes Gmail™ email services, Google Docs™ for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, Google Calendar™ shared calendaring, Google Talk™ instant messaging, and the Start Page feature for creating a customizable home page. Policy management and 90-day message discovery services are also available at no additional charge to Google Apps Premier Edition users.
February 6th, 2008
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