Everybody’s doing it, or so it seems. Just open your computer, connect to a P2P network, and you get movies from around the world, even the more recent ones, available for download. For free.
But the question remains whether it is legal or not.
Monthly Archives: December 2008
What will happen to the Internet if Google and Yahoo combine?
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Google has been Yahoo’s bane for years, after Yahoo lost its dominant position in search and online advertising to Google’s more innovative and dynamic search engine. Now that Yahoo is actively looking for a company that will take Yahoo under its wings, Google has been mentioned as a likely candidate.
Google’s market share in search has steadily been increasing over the past few years. In October 2008, Google processed over 7.1 billion searches to get a 71% share of the total search market. Yahoo, on the other hand, processed more than 1.9 billion queries in October this year, which translates to a 19% market share.
So, taken together, Google and Yahoo corners 90% of the search market, with MSN/Live, Ask and AOL taking up the other 10%.
It is quite clear that Google is not going to gain anything from a merger with Yahoo in terms of market dominance. At this point, Yahoo does not even get a third of Google’s numbers. A merger between Yahoo and Google, however, creates a virtual monopoly in the search market, which would almost guarantee higher prices in online advertising. Without a notable opponent, Google could increase its advertising prices and get away with it.
It would also spell problems for companies like Microsoft, which could benefit from Yahoo’s strong online expertise in order to compete with Google, which is currently looking at expanding its online business to include other applications that are not related to search.
An unlikely, but not impossible scenario would be consumers paying to use Google/Yahoo to search for information. Can you imagine having to pay for something that you have been getting for free for years?
Bottom line is, while a Google and Yahoo merger might sound like a charity case for Yahoo, it is consumers and Web browsers that will be hurt. The decreased competition will give rise to complacency or increased prices, or both. Having a worthy competitor would be better for everybody involved, including us.
The Future of Mobile Web
Cellphone Browsing the Internet
Nowadays, people do not have to stay in the office or at home to check their e-mails. All they have to do is to switch on their BlackBerry’s and voila! They can read their co-worker’s latest office shenanigans or detailed instructions from their boss. They can even delete spam mails or reply to that long-awaited invitation for a date from the copy machine operator.
E-mail vs. SMS
Years ago, when people used computers to surf the Web and send e-mail and then used mobile phones to talk to friends or send them SMS messages, e-mail and SMS co-existed peacefully and even complemented each other. When one is stuck in traffic, or in an elevator somewhere, and does not have access to a computer, he or she can SMS a very important message to a colleague. On the other hand, e-mailing someone that very important document or anything that cannot be said in 160 characters seems only logical.
Making Money Online
Making money online, just like any types of business (whether it’s selling shirts, golf equipments, or content writing services) needs constant preparations. You can’t just barged in and say “Hey people I have a new online business! Come and shop to my store!”. If you are new to this kind of industry, electronic commerce, or more commonly abbreviated as Ecommerce, is also like putting up a conventional brick and mortar store. The only difference is, online business revolves around “technology”. To some people, doing an internet-based business is only for the “techno-geeks”. However, ecommerce is for everybody’s grab. In fact, most people who earned a lot online are the same people with no backgrounds in computer programming or HTML. What they have are the cravings and the right plan (plus, of course, a little financial capability).
The Origins of Internet
Nowadays, people rely on the Internet for everything: from communication, to sharing media, to even for something as simple as keeping in touch or meeting new people. It’s difficult to imagine what life would be without the Internet, although it’s something that most of us born in the 80s or 90s would be familiar with.
The Internet was first envisioned in the 1960s by JCR Licklider, who proposed a global link of computers and called it the "Galactic Network." One of Licklider’s believers back then was Lawrence Roberts, a MIT Researcher. During the latter part of the decade, Roberts would be working with several others to develop ARPANET, which along with other packet switching systems developed in other parts of the world, would become the backbone of today’s Internet.
The term “Internet” itself was not used until 1974, when Stanford University’s Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine published "RFC 675", the first full specification of TCP. It took another decade, however, before the first TCP/IP-based wide area network was introduced. It was then that all ARPANET hosts switched over from the older NCP protocols.
By the late 1980s, the early incarnations of e-mail went on the Internet platform with the approval of the interconnection between NSFNET and the commercial MCI Mail system in 1989. Other e-mail companies like Compuserve and Telemail soon followed.
The Internet, as most people know now, began in 1991 with the introduction of the World Wide Web project. The launch of the Web made the Internet more user-friendly that even today’s children without programming backgrounds could understand and operate it. With the widespread use of computers at home, schools and offices, and the development of high-capacity and reliable telecommunications systems, the Internet is now a very common part of everyday life for more than a billion people worldwide.