Microsoft’s Skydrive online storage service has prompted Google to jump in the bandwagon albeit a shade late, just a few hours to be precise.

Google has announced pricing options for both Gmail (email) and Picasa (photo services). The paid model would come in handy for those users who would want much more than the existing free allowance namely 1GB for picasa and 2.8 GB for Gmail. Annual prices are pegged at $20 for 6 GB. Other pricing models fall in the realm of 25GB for $75,100GB for $250 and 250GB for $500.

Tech blogger and former MS employee Robert Scoble has done a Nostradamus predicting that Mahalo, Facebook & Techmeme can put the curtains on Google as far as search is concerned. His latest hyperbole unfortunately does’nt pass much muster.

• Number One, Mahalo by itself a dmoz clone whose goal is to human-write the top 20,000 search terms does’nt have the scalability that Google has. They simply cant capture the loooong tail of search and to know that more that a quarter of Google queries are completely new just shows where Mahalo is going to go kaput.  

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The North American continent might go gaga over Google, but in Asia, it is Yahoo that has stolen a march as a favourite with web users. A comscore survey this May in 10 asian countries has seen Google panting hard playing catch up with its perennial search rivals.

Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan have given the thumbs up to Yahoo while Australia, China, and New Zealand users prefer Microsoft to the much vaunted Google. The survey results would imply that the search stakes would just not a one horse race especially when Internet penetration in the most populous countries like India and China hits an upward trend.

Blogging might bring you joy if you can monetize it effectively, but the term ‘blogosphere’ does’nt appeal much to a lot of people if a recent survey by British pollsters YouGov is to be believed. This survey was done for Lulu.com, coverters of blogs into books also known as Blooks. When one considers that a lot size of just 2091 adults took part in the poll, it just does’nt seem a fair representation of the burgeoning web world.
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Vanessa Fox, Head Operations of WebMaster Central has bid goodbye to Google. Zillow, a real estate search engine will be her new lair. Google will definitely miss her presence since along with Matt Cutts, she has been one their pro-active public faces with a positive halo.
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In a bid to offset privacy concerns and improve its privacy protection ratings, Search behemoth Google has agreed to cut down retention of user web search histories to 18 months from 24. This move apparently would mean that search information would be made anonymous after a year and a half.
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