Google’s Beating Apple—But Not Where You’d Expect

In all the hubbub of the Nexus One premiere this week, another Google milestone has gone largely unnoticed. (Even I saw the headline earlier this week, but opted to cover a Nexus story instead.) While we’ve all anticipated Google coming out with a smartphone to end all smartphones (and start calling them “superphones” ), they’re beating Apple in another area: the browser wars.

According to one measure, Google’s Chrome browser is now the #3 most popular browser, behind IE and Firefox. And why is that so important? Because the guy they just beat out, #4, is Apple’s default browser, Safari. Metrics firm Net Applications reports that Chrome has cornered 4.63% of the browser market, enough to edge out Safari’s 4.46% of the market.

PCWorld points out that the 0.7 percentage point bump for Chrome in December may have been fueled by the release of the browser for Mac and Linux. Safari gained 0.1 percentage point in December, so it doesn’t appear that Google directly stole a lot of their marketshare.

IE continues to dominate, with 62.7% of the market, although it lost nearly a percentage point in December (continuing a six month trend of around 0.9 point losses). Firefox also lost ground in December, falling 0.1 point to 24.6%.

With such a narrow margin of victory, Chrome and Safari will probably continue to vie neck and neck for that third-place spot for some time. Chrome was officially released for Windows in December 2008—pretty quick to take over that spot in the first place. What do you want to bet Google would be happy to repeat that victory in other areas?

What do you think? Is this a turning point for Google and/or Chrome, or for Apple? Or is this just another battle in the Google-Apple war?

Facebook Receives News of A Merry Christmas Indeed

While most of us in the Internet marketing “industry” were all aghast at the Facebook privacy problem of ’09, the rest of the world could have cared less. You know those people, right? The ones who don’t live and breathe this stuff to the point that all perspective is lost? These are the ‘everyday’ Facebook users who don’t give a rip about Mark Zuckerberg and the continued search for 7,000 people who care enough to impact any policy changes with the social media giant.

So those regular folks pushed Facebook to a point where it had never been before: the number one site during the Christmas holiday. ReadWriteWeb tells us

Christmas is a holiday that brings people together, so perhaps it should be no surprise that Facebook has become a part of millions of peoples’ Christmas experiences. For the first time in its history, Facebook was the #1 most visited website in the United States on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year, according to traffic analyst firm Hitwise today.

Makes sense doesn’t it? Personally I was more prone to using Skype rather than updating everyone but that is certainly a personal preference.

So while the site finished third for the year behind Google and Yahoo Mail it was certainly a milestone to be seen as the Christmas site of choice. Last year Facebook finished second in this contest to Google but was able to flip positions this year.

See what a year of gigantic growth can do for you? Wonder if Santa will be as nice to Facebook next year after the rest of the world catches on that their “goings on” at Facebook aren’t as private as they used to be?

Twitter’s App Nest Is Big and Growing

At the LeWeb conference in Paris Twitter is busy making sure that all the developments in the real-time search and social media world aren’t just coming from the Googleplex. Maybe it’s the end of the year rush or it’s the need to create excitement going into 2010 since 2009 was a rough year for many. Whatever the reason the news is fast and furious inthe space in general.

Twitter’s busy letting the world in on the sheer volume of apps that have been developed for the service and how they are going to help foster more growth in the near future. TechCrunch is convering the event and tells us

Twitter’s Director of Platform Ryan Sarver just took the stage at LeWeb a couple of minutes ago, and shared some announcements with the audience about the future of the platform and the effect this will have on the ecosystem.

He also shared a milestone for the company: Sarver said 50,000 registered applications to date have been built using Twitter APIs.

The roadmap ahead:

Transparency: “we need to be more public about our policy and intentions”
Communication: “we need to be out there and let our developers know what’s going on”
Utility: “we need to keep providing our robust APIs and enable third-party developers to thrive”
Profitability: “when our partners succeed, we succeed” (more details coming early 2010)

Of course, since this is Twitter most people will laser in on the P word (profitability). Some of the significant ‘details’ around these areas is that everyone will have full access to the data stream in 2010 (what that actually means is TBD). Look for a new website for developers with dashboards and the like for the development community.

Also, as a sign that the development of apps is truly a big deal there will be a Twitter developer conference in 2010 called Chirp in San Francisco next year

The conference, which will be geared towards developers, is likely to be similar in some ways to Facebook’s F8 conference that is held each year in San Francisco. Not too many details were given but there is a landing page up already for the event (which is scheduled to take place sometime in 2010).

So Twitter continues to flourish and develop to try to handle the continued growth despite some concern about visitor fall off recently. I suspect that some of the developers are the very reason for this ‘concern’ as many people access Twitter through third party apps to begin with and those growing numbers are not tracked by these number crunching entities.

Looks like 2010 is going to be another big year for Twitter.

Yahoo, Microsoft Close Search Deal

It’s somewhat ceremonial, but also an important milestone: Yahoo and Microsoft have announced the finalization and execution of the search deal that was first announced in late July.
The companies issued this statement:
“Microsoft and Yahoo! believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers [...]

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Google Formally Announces New DoubleClick Ad Exchange

DoubleClick’s advertising exchange has been in the works since at least 2007 and before Google acquired the company. But this morning Google is formally announcing the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which reflects a milestone of technology and platform integration between Google and its DoubleClick unit.
Google sees this an an opportunity to attract more display and brand [...]

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A Billion Reasons for Twitter to be Happy

So it looks like Twitter has entered some rarefied air for sure. According to ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch the micro-blogging juggernaut is moving into an exclusive club by securing a new round of funding ($50 million) based on a valuation of $1 billion (yup, it’s a b). No doubt, this will begin to stir the supporters and detractors alike. Unless we have ridiculously short memories or just think that this time will be different one has to wonder how a company that no one can figure out revenue wise can be valued at that much.

While I am not an analyst I did think about staying at a Holiday Inn Express over the past year so I qualify for jumping into the fray, right? Let’s hear what the RWW folks had to say first though.

While it’s unlikely that Twitter CEO Evan Williams was wearing a Dr. Evil costume when he delivered the news, he had the pleasure of announcing his company’s $1 billion dollar valuation today at an all hands meeting. According to TechCrunch, the company has raised a $50 million dollar funding round and the money will be in the bank shortly. Given the fact that Twitter turned down an offer to be purchased by Facebook earlier in the year, it appears the two are about to tango.

So of course, this conversation wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without bringing Facebook into the mix. Facebook is starting to look almost like IBM compared to Twitter. What with actual revenue generation plans and actually having the audacity to be cash flow positive one begins to wonder if Facebook is going to actually merit its own valuation. As we mentioned yesterday, Master of the Universe, Mark Zuckerberg, has something to say in the Facebook blog.

We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.

So is Twitter in for the long term? They certainly still have the buzz going and now there appears to be a a real Facebook faceoff looming for the foreseeable future.

In the past, ReadWriteWeb has looked at Twitter’s platform potential. The service has already been used to create meme trackers, emergency alert services, news feeds and brand monitoring tools. As the infrastructure and search have improved, Twitter has become the go-to site for real time media. But can the company make a Facebook-like leap?

Facebook has added Twitter like features so why not? So what’s your take? I bet there at least a billion opinions on this one.

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