GOOG Up Against The Market As the debt ceiling gridlock continues and the adjusted seasonal home prices' fall, markets continue to sell off. Shares of GOOG are up, however, against a volatile tech tape. Catalysts include continued
Android momentum in the smartphone and tablet markets; regaining ground in China; updated software, adoption and media partners for
Google TV; the roll-out of
Google Music and social network Google+; and progress in other newer initiatives (location-based services, mapping, gaming, Chromebooks, etc.). The stock trades at approximately
13x Enterprise Value / EBIT, inexpensive relative to peers and historical trading levels.
AT&T Eases Fragmentation For Android Developers (PCMag) All AT&T
Android phones released in 2011 will get
Gingerbread. The carrier-led synchronization of Android versions across Android smartphones is long overdue and incomplete, since the announcement only targets 2011 devices, but as the first major carrier to commit to upgrading its handsets it does signal a welcome commitment to fixing fragmentation issues that have long plagued the Android OS.
Read » Samsung Estimated To Have Topped Apple Smartphone Sales In 2Q (Bloomberg) Samsung, the world's second-largest handset maker, may have surpassed
Nokia and
Apple in smartphone sales in the second quarter, driven by the popularity of Android-based models, according to Strategy Analytics. While no exact numbers are known yet until
Samsung reports earnings on Friday, such an achievement would be a victory for
Samsung and
Google.
Read » Streaming Video Market Will Come Into Its Own (ReadWriteWeb) When it comes to premium content,
HBO has long been the preferred destination for the big movie studios to make money on their "long tail" of content. The long tail is now shifting to
Netflix.
Netflix and DreamWorks Animation are reportedly in negotiations to bring DreamWorks movies to the video streaming service. Even though that is a blip on everyone's radar, it illustrates that somewhere near 2013 is when the premium streaming market comes into its own. Which, if Google ever gets
Google TV off the ground and can figure out
YouTube, stands to win share.
Read » Chrome Continues To Expand Rapidly At The Expense Of Most (ZDNet) Chrome is a force to be reckoned with; 6% more people are using it now than they were last year.
Safari is the only other major web browser to see some growth, while
Opera, Firefox, and Internet Explorer are seeing some chunks of their user bases swallowed up. Safari now accounts for 7.48% of all web traffic, largely in part due to
iOS. Chrome is at 13.11%,
Firefox is at 21.7%, and Explorer is at 53.7%, just over half.
Read » Baidu Continues To Dominate In China (Reuters) Extending its lead from Google,
Baidu reported a 95% increase in net income, beating Wall Street expectations and sending the company's shares up 7% in after-hours trading. The company said strong traffic growth and increased ad spending powered the blockbuster results.
Read » The iPad Wins The Enterprise (Good Technology) Despite Android's strong overall growth, enterprises appear to continue to be wary of the mobile operating system, according Good Technology. Overall,
iPad activations made up 27.2% of all new devices during the second quarter. Android tablets made up just 3.1% of overall tablet activations, a decline compared to the first quarter.
Read » Google Polices Its New Social Service; Some Users Get The Boot (SlashGear) Google's stance on users listing their real names on Google+ continues to cause headaches on the fledgling social networking site, with a spate of account deactivations as users with non-typical names or pseudonyms found their profiles locked. Google VP
Vic Gundotra admits that some of the first filtering decisions have been incorrect, and promises that as well as improving on that, Google will also make communications with those affected more comprehensive.
Reading between the lines, Gundotra wants Google+ to be approachable. In the meantime, high-profile victims of Google+ policies continue to stack up.
Read » Google Buys Face Recognition Startup (TechCrunch) Google has gobbled up another startup that could align nicely with its new social network. PittPatt began as a Carnegie Mellon University project, and it can spot people in photos and
videos with facial recognition and tracking technology. With a strict privacy policy in place,
Google could use PittPatt's technology to enhance YouTube, Google+, Images and even mobile experiences.
Read » 
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