Google's new phone to protect mobile advertising base

Google has said it is defending its online advertising empire with the launch of its own brand mobile phone.
It is the first time Google has designed and sold its own consumer hardware device.
Google said the Nexus One represented the next frontier in the company's $20bn (£12.4bn) core business - selling advertising through search.
"It's all about the mobile web, and advertising is their bread and butter," said analyst Michael Gartenberg.
"It's the latest salvo from Google on the wireless industry. The landmark news here is that Google is now a consumer electronics retail company," added Mr Gartenberg, of Interpret

Google, like many in the industry, recognises that more and more people are accessing the web via their mobile phones rather than through their desktop or personal computers.
In the developing world, the majority of users are going online for the first time using a smartphone.
"The new paradigm is mobile computing and mobility," David B Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School, told the New York Times.
"That has the potential to change the economics of the internet business and to redistribute profits yet again."
Apple 'cool' fading?
Google has called the Nexus One a super phone, no doubt to set the device apart from the other players, including the BlackBerry and Apple's iPhone.
Despite its much anticipated arrival on the scene, many industry watchers do not think the Nexus One is an iPhone killer, though they do believe it will force Apple to step up its game.
NEXUS ONE HANDSET

3.7 inch touchscreen
1GHz snapdragon processor
5 Megapixel camera with LED flash
GPS and compass
Accelerometer
Noise cancellation technology
Voice recognition can be used with all applications
Light sensor changes screen brightness to conserve power
512MB Flash memory with SD card slot (expandable to 32GB)
"Google is coming at the mobile industry with a lot of horses and I think 2010 is the first time Apple is going to have to chase something," said technology blogger Robert Scoble of Scoblizer.com.
"For the last three years the iPhone has been way out in front in the mobile space in terms of mindshare. The Nexus One means this will be the first time Apple has to be reactive," Mr Scoble told the BBC.
To date, the iPhone has sold about 30 million units and spawned countless imitators, including this new phone.
The technology blog TechCrunch said that the Nexus One looked more like the iPhone than any other phone on the market.
There is no physical keyboard, it has a removable battery, a 5 megapixel camera, touchscreen, and is driven by Google's Android operating system.
Google says the phone is as thin as a number 2 pencil, at 11.5mm, and as light as a Swiss army knife keychain at 130g.

The Nexus One is an important milestone in the smartphone market," said TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington.
"This is a software company frustrated with making compromises with hardware manufacturers, that has taken the product bull by the horns. When combined with Google Voice, there is no phone on the market today that can touch the Nexus One."
Google has voice-enabled all text boxes on the device, which means that users can put together an e-mail message or tweet by speaking into the phone rather than typing text on the touch screen.
Pricing models
As well as going into the hardware business, Google is also trying out something different by offering the phone to users without being tied to a contract with a mobile phone operator.
It is offering the Nexus One through its online store at $179 (£112) if users sign up to a two-year plan with T-Mobile, or $529 (£332) without a plan.

Google will host a web store that will sell the Nexus One
Some believe Google should have been braver with its pricing options and offered a sweetener by subsidising the phone through its advertising revenue.
"It would have been nice to see them roll out something a bit more unique," Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand.com, told BBC News.
"Google has speculated in the past that there one day might be phones that are entirely ad-supported and because Google is this huge ad behemoth, this was a natural opportunity to roll out a phone like that."
The Nexus One was built by Taiwanese electronics manufacturer HTC.
It joins about 20 other devices that already run on the Android operating system.
At the moment, the Nexus One is only available in the US but will be sold in Europe, Hong Kong and Singapore in the spring through Vodafone. Google said it hoped to add other devices and carriers for sale in the future.
Crossover
Google's emergence as a retailer is regarded as an escalation in the budding rivalry between Google and Apple.
But it is not all one way.
Ahead of the launch of the Nexus One, Apple announced a deal to buy mobile advertising service Quattro Wireless. It is seen as an effort to counter Google's planned $750 million acquisition of rival AdMob.
"If there is any doubt that 2010 is the year of Mobile Advertising, Apple just cleared up any speculation," said Paran Johar, chief marketing officer of competing mobile ad network Jumptap.
"For pessimists who thought the Google acquisition of Admob was a fluke, this reinforces that mobile advertising is here to stay," he said.
"Handset manufacturers, software providers, infrastructure vendors, and carriers are all looking to connect the dots and carve out a share of what will be the primary access point of the Internet in five years."

US lifts HIV/Aids immigration ban

The US has lifted a 22-year immigration ban which has stopped anyone with HIV/Aids from entering the country.

President Obama said the ban was not compatible with US plans to be a leader in the fight against the disease.

The new rules come into force on Monday and the US plans to host a bi-annual global HIV/Aids summit for the first time in 2012.

The ban was imposed at the height of a global panic about the disease at the end of the 1980s.

It put the US in a group of just 12 countries, also including Libya and Saudi Arabia, that excluded anyone suffering from HIV/Aids.

The BBC's Charles Scanlon, in Miami, says that improving treatments and evolving public perceptions have helped to bring about the change.

Rachel Tiven, head of the campaign group Immigration Equality, told the BBC that the step was long overdue.

"The 2012 World Aids Conference, due to be held in the United States, was in jeopardy as a result of the restrictions. It's now likely to go ahead as planned," she said.

In October, President Obama said the entry ban had been "rooted in fear rather than fact".

He said: "We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the Aids pandemic - yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people with HIV from entering our own country."

New visa proposal to help create the next big thing

A proposal that will make it easier for foreign entrepreneurs in the US to start the next Google or Yahoo will be debated in the new year.

Congressman Jared Polis has proposed a start-up visa to entice "foreigners with good ideas" to stay in the US.

The issue has been gathering steam in Silicon Valley where half of all tech company founders are immigrants, according to Duke University research.

The idea is part of a proposed overhaul of the US immigration system.

"Every day the American economy is losing ground - not to mention high-tech jobs and technologies - to India and China because foreign-born entrepreneurs cannot secure a visa to stay in the US," he said.

Lost opportunity

Eric Diep, who has just turned 22, could be regarded as one entrepreneur who got away.

He came to Silicon Valley as a student like many immigrant founders who have helped start companies such as Google and PayPal.

Mr Diep was one of the first developers to get into social games

with his application called Quizzes, initially launched on the social networking site Facebook.

Over a year ago he started to apply for a visa to allow him to carry on working in the Valley, but he soon encountered problems.

"The reason it was so difficult for me was because I dropped out of university and the stipulation for a lot of visas is undergraduate experience. My age also seemed to be an issue for the attorneys

"At the beginning it wasn't the expense in terms of legal fees but the big problem soon became one of distraction. I was trying to spend as much time working on perfecting my product but then I would have to go away and figure out the legalities of applying for the visa," Mr Diep told BBC News.

In the end, Mr Diep decided to base himself in his native Canada and travel back and forth to Silicon Valley.

"The flying is so tiring between the two places and it's expensive. At one point, I had no money left in my bank account but at the last minute money came in and now I feel pretty fortunate that I can still do this.

"It was a pretty close call," he added.

He backs a start-up visa because, for him, being in Silicon Valley is where he needs to be.

"Being there at the time really launched me. I would never have spotted the social gaming opportunity had I not been there."

Visa details

The start-up visa is aimed at streamlining the country's EB-5 visa system which was initially introduced in 1990 to attract foreign capital to the US.

Each year 10,000 EB-5 visas are available but to get one, applicants need to invest $1m and create 10 full-time jobs.

Mr Polis said he wants "a new class of eligibility" with the start-up visa.

It would be granted to foreign entrepreneurs if their business plan attracts either $250,000 from a venture capital operating company that is primarily US based or $100,000 from an angel investor.

They must also show that the business will create five to ten jobs or generate a profit and at least $1m in revenue.

Some of these requirements may well be changed when the bill goes to committee in the new year.

"Immigration reform is a big discussion in Washington," said supporter Brad Feld, who is also a managing director with venture company the Foundry Group.

"We think the start-up visa is an easy thing to talk about and get consensus around in terms of having a positive spin on entrepreneurship and creating jobs."

Job creation

Some critics fear that making it easier for entrepreneurs to set up shop will hurt Americans by taking jobs away from them.

"I feel incredibly strongly that that is a misinterpretation of the proposal," said Eric Ries a venture advisor and author.

"Some people have called those opposed to new immigration reform xenophobes and that is why I think it is important we craft this proposal so it addresses those concerns. This is not a new visa category but reform of an existing but flawed category," he told BBC News.

The proposal's backers say that far from taking away jobs, new jobs will emerge that were never there in the first place.

"If the capital is available for the market, we should jump to bring those people here. Those jobs only get created once the founders get funded. This is a market driven decision," said Dave McClure, an internet entrepreneur, investor and start-up advisor.

YouNoodle is a start-up company founded by two British entrepreneurs. It tracks the start-up sector and said the figures speak for themselves.

"If just ten thousand start-up visas were made available this would mean over 3000 additional new innovative and funded companies would be based in the US every year," said Kirill Makharinsky, YouNoodle co-founder.

"They would generate more than 10,000 jobs on average every year. In the first 10 years that would add up to over 500,000 highly-skilled new jobs

"So the upside is huge and the downside is negligible because no jobs are being taken away from US citizens," Mr Makharinsky told BBC News.

And for Mr McClure, the consequences of not establishing a start-up visa class are obvious.

"We will lose out because we are not being competitive with the rest of the world," he said.

"There are similar programmes in Canada, the UK and Australia. They are all vying for the top entrepreneurs and if we only look at our own citizens, we are only taking 10-20% of the world's talent into consideration here. That would be short-sighted in the extreme."

Google's Admob plans scrutinised by US regulator

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has asked for more information about Google's plans to buy Admob, a company specialising in ads for small screens.

The search engine giant said last month that it hoped to buy the Silicon Valley start-up for $750m (£449m) in stocks.

Google's group product manager Paul Feng wrote in a blog post that the company "doesn't see any regulatory issues" with the proposed deal.

He admitted that the scrutiny meant the deal would not be closed immediately.

It took months for the FTC to approve Google's earlier purchase of another internet advert company, DoubleClick.

"Closer scrutiny has been one consequence of Google's success," added Mr Feng.

Admob was founded four years ago and sells adverts designed to run on mobile phones.

Firefox for mobile 'days away' from launch

he first mobile phone version of the popular web browser Firefox is "days away" from launch, the head of the project has told the BBC.

The browser, codenamed Fennec, will initially be available for Nokia's N900 phone, followed by other handsets.

It is currently going through final testing and could be released before the end of the year, said Jay Sullivan at Mozilla, the group behind Firefox.

The open-source browser will be able to synchronise with the desktop version.

Apple is very restrictive. It doesn't allow other browsers Jay Sullivan Mozilla

Software will mean that any web pages open in a user's desktop browser will automatically open in the mobile version.

"At the end of the working day you can walk away from your computer and keep on going on your phone," Mr Sullivan told the BBC.

"It encrypts all of the information and sends it back through the cloud between your desktop and mobile."

He said that providing there were no "show stoppers", the software could be available to download "within the year".

Desktop success

The browser will be available to download from the Mozilla website and then offered in Nokia's Ovi store, so that N900 owners can download the software.

The organisation is also developing versions for Microsoft's Windows mobile and Google's Android operating system.

Internet explorer is still the world's most used desktop browser

However, he said that it would be some time before iPhone users would be able to use the browser.

"Apple is very restrictive." he said. "As it's a pretty closed platform we don't see that happening soon."

Apple only allows browsers based on its Webkit engine, which is used to power its Safari browser, to be loaded on to the iPhone. Firefox uses alternative technology.

When it launches, Fennec will compete with browsers such as Opera, which is the most popular mobile browser according to analytics firm Stats Counter.

Safari, which comes bundled with the iPhone, is the second most popular, whilst Nokia's own browser is third.

The mobile version of Firefox will hope to follow the success of its desktop browser.

Stats Counter has reported that the latest version of the Firefox browser has overtaken Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) as the World's most popular browser with 21.93% of the market, compared with IE7's share of 21.2%.

However, other firms suggest IE still has the lead on Firefox, whilst most agree that the various versions of Explorer combined still dominate the web browser market.

App craze

Fennec has been in development for the last year and a half.

The new software has many of the features of the desktop version, such as tabbed browsing, and an address bar that doubles as a search box.

Opera is currently the most popular web mobile browser

However, the mobile version will also scale pages to fit the device and will support functions such as tapping the screen to zoom in on a page.

Mr Sullivan said it would also be the first mobile browser to have "add-ons", small pieces of software that add functionality to the browser such as news readers or online games. They can also be used to customise the look and feel of the browser.

"Because it is a browser for a mobile device, the add-ons will be different," said Mr Sullivan. "You'll see ones that use geo-location and exploit how the device is tilted."

The add-ons will add functionality to the phone that is currently offered by mobile apps.

These small specialist pieces of software have become increasingly popular.

For example, Apple now offer more than 100,000 apps in its store ranging from games and social networks to news readers and tools that allow people to use sites such as eBay or Amazon on the go.

Blackberry, Google, Nokia, Symbian and Microsoft all offer their own app stores.