Below is Google Logo featuring Sayed Darwish

comScore has announced that Android, the 2 years old platform, is now the most popular operating system on smart phones in the US, having just surpassed BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Phone 7 (WP7),  having now a market share of 31.2%.

The irony here for Nokia  is not just the lost opportunity to catch up the leading mobile operating system but also the loss  of market shares of the new partner Microsoft which has down to only 8%. This must be very frustrating for Microsoft, they launched their new WP7 last October aiming at competing Android and iPhone, what you typically expect is that their market share would grow due to this new product or at least stabilize but not fall down.

Smart Phone Market Share, Jan 2011

A good question to ask here, was Stephen Elop’s choice of Microsoft as a partner influenced by being an ex Microsoft executive or by believing so much in Microsoft products? Somebody has to answer this.

Nokia must now share Microsoft’s frustration, apple must be happy that they didn’t loose any ground against Google’s Android but rather Android took from the market shares of the other market players especially BlackBerry…

I wonder if the same market dominance will be possessed by Android on other markets worldwide.

What we are using is google maps API for the GUI. However, the data is compiled by us, what we do is geocoding our database. i.e. specifying the exact latitude and longitude for each listing we have. This sounds like a tough job, actually it is but we are performing very well in doing it. 

I guess it’s logical to ask why we are doing all this effort. The answer can be found if you visit Google Maps and try to find a restaurant in Egypt and if you visit Egypt Yellow Pages website 

On Google maps searching for La Bodega will produce 7 or 8 results, some of them might be correct and some are not. This is because the data source is the user generated content, which is not correct in many cases. 

La Bodega on Google Maps

on Yellow.com.eg when you search for La Bodega, you get one and only one map location, the map location is accurate and is geocoded by our local search team. If we are not sure about a map location, then we do not enter it, if you see a map location online this means the location is accurate. 

La Bodega on Yellow.com.eg

click here to see La Bodega restaurant profile page 

The nice thing about having our geocoded database is not only the accuracy, but also the flexibility of using any maps for the GUI, we have tried both Google maps and Microsoft virtual earth (now known as Bing maps), Google maps has proven so far superior in Egypt.

This probably explains why Eric Shmidt joined Twitter yesterday. It was actually an unexpected move from Google for me, at least the speed they have completed this. Shmidt said about one month ago that the social media is still a grey area for Google, and that the content on facebook is mostly private content that they can’t use. It seems that a strategic decision has been made after this that they should avail this real-time feature right away for one reason or another.

Moving away from politics  back to the real-time feature. It is very cool, the thing that makes it useful it that you are actually seeing very relevant content to what you are looking for… Google are the masters of delivering relevant content. Below is what you get when you search Copenhagen climate conference

Read more about this from Google official blog

The idea behind Google wave is to replace the email system which was invented 40 years ago with a more modern and advanced communication media. The wave or a communication stream is a single entity that is stored at Google server and allows people to communicate, cooperate and collaborate. Share their media, photos, videos, and gadgets and even chat in a real-time manner. You can say it is something trying to put all the social media and web 2.0 buzz that we see these days.

I think it’s gonna be a big thing if people use it the way it is meant to be… otherwise it will be a mess, a really big mess… idea of a wave is to be one topic under which people put their contributions in one centralized place. Imagine that some recipients will open the same wave and start putting their comments  branching the topics into other topics that were not intended when the wave already started… It will be a complete mess. Imagine also that there will be no webmaster or owner of the wave, anyone can do whatever he/she wants…. No rules…

Imagine when you receive an email and you reply to it. Then after a couple of days the same person wants to send you another email, so he replies to your old email and talks about a new topic… isn’t that a mess an email that has something that is not related to the original email subject… How would this happen in Wave? much worse.

What i want to say is that wave will only work good if people get the right education to use it… and it becomes a culture… otherwise it will be one of those things that looked good at the beginning and then started to make our life more complicated after this like emails and mobile phones!

I created a campaign for the Egyptian stock market section that we launched at Yellow Pages, i thought it could use some more traffic. I followed the guidelines and chosen my words and the minimum bidding CPC that google recommends for each word to appear in a good place in the search results page and in the Google partner network websites that are relevant to that topic. After this i specified the daily budget that i want which was 2$ per day that i reduce later to 1$ when i was about to run out of credit later

Here are some words i have chosen that were approved by google as good traffic words: Egyptian stock market, Egyptian stock market news, Egyptian Bursa, EGX30 prices, Talaat Mostafa Stocks, Mobinil Stocks, ….

CPC was pretty cheap, $0.05 for Egyptain Stock Market, some words were cheaper other words were more expensive…. I’m just gonna focus here on this word…

So everything was set and i got around 80 hits on the first day of campaign July 16th 2009.. The larger portion was coming from Google network website not from Google search results page but it doesn’t matter… very nice, i though i just put this to bed… but i was wrong.. look at the below:

On 17 July, hits dropped to 25, so i opened the control panel to see what was wrong, if found that google suggest me to change the CPC bid amount to $0.07 for Egyptain Stock Market instead of $0.05. I did that and here we go again, hits reached 80′s again.

On 21 July and 27 July, I had to re-adjust the CPC again and again until it reached $0.21 which seemed after this that it was not enough… I just started to give up, i can’t keep monitoring this way on aday to day basis… I have other more important stuff to do than adjusting some keywords CPC… I took a look after a while and i found that the CPC recommeneded by google Passed the $1.10 margin!!

I was paying 5 cents for a keyword and getting good traffic. Now i am paying 21 cents and hardly getting any traffic.. Then i was expected to pay one dollar for each click!! All the credit i have (60$) and was planning to use for one month would now evaporate in one day.

I don’t really understand the pattern, what happened during these 2 weeks that raised the bid amount for Egyptain Stock Market from 5 cents to 1 dollar?? is it really people paying more in that word suddenly, does it make any sense that no one was interested in this word at all and all in a sudden everyone wants it?? or was this some way Google AdWords drag their customers to invest more and more by offering words for a little price at the begining and then gradually increasing the value until it reaches the market amount? i don’t really know but i know 2 things for sure:

1.  I don’t like PPC model, too much complicated.
2. Normal end users and SME would find it extremely difficult to manage this on their own unless provided to them by an advertising agency that manages their account. Putting in mind also the special needs of customers in the middle east and that they would rather have someone do these things for them instead of doing it themselves because it is too “technical”. Self provisioning and PPC model might not be the best advertising solution for MEA region.

The Yellow Pages time-based contractual model is simple, efficient and easy. If you compare it to PPC model it is also much more cost-effective.

Dear Google Analytics User,

As a Google Analytics customer, we know that you care about the quality of traffic coming to your website, so we wanted to introduce you to Google AdWords. AdWords works by placing targeted advertising alongside Google’s search results.
To help you get started with AdWords we’ve sent you a voucher for 50USD of Google AdWords advertising. The voucher is risk and commitment free, so start advertising today and drive more traffic to your website.

Welcome to Google AdWords!
Google Analytics Team

So i signed-up for a Google AdWords account to try it with the 50$ voucher i was given, to claim my voucher i had to pay an additional 10$ from my credit card, so although the voucher is free, you still have to pay something to claim it.

This was not what i expected from the email above which seems to me as if it is really something free to try. It’s just like someone offering you a free cup of coffee or a free snack at his cafe to try it and if you like it you would come back yourself after this. However, at the moment you stepped inside his cafe he asked you to pay some entrance fees that you will get you an extra drink.

Normally i would refuse such an offer. However, i wanted to try Google AdWords platform anyways and 10$ isn’t that much after all…

My Story doesn’t end here. More to come…

I just tried it out, there is nothing but a browser, just Google Chrome browser and nothing else… So far…I wouldn’t recommend downloading and running it unless you are planning on reading the source code or contributing to the project. This is what you get after you login to Chrome OS

Chrome OS

Read more from the Official Google blog or watch their video