Google acquires MetaWeb…seeks to understand Search better.

Yesterday, Google acquired Metaweb, a company that maintains an open database of things in the world. The Aim? To improve search and make the web richer and more meaningful for everyone.

Google says it is acquiring Metaweb to enable it better respond to Semantic Search queries, queries like “How many Nigerian Schools are in the North?” or “actors over 40 who have won at least one oscar?”.


Another reason for purchasing Metaweb, according to Google, is the possibilities for Freebase, Metaweb’s free and open database of over 12 million things, including movies, books, TV shows, celebrities, locations, companies and more.

Google and Metaweb plan to maintain Freebase as a free and open database for the world. To learn more about Metaweb’s technology, read their post and do check out the helpful video there.

I believe this is a good purchase by Google because I find it hard making Semantic search queries on the google Search engine. This merger should make Semantic search better. However, I am beginning to think its “Build it, and Google will buy it” nowadays. lol.

What do you think of this acquisition?

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Google Earth 5.2 Now Out !!! With Great New Features…

Google Earth users can now see the elevation and speed they covered during a recent trip. (Credit: Google)

Google updated Google Earth 5.0 on Monday with some exciting new features such as better GPS graphs and an inbuilt browser.
Read more

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UNN gets N3Billion Wireless Internet, Google to the rescue

University of Nigeria Nsuka is to get a massive wireless internet connection, first of its kind in Africa. The project will be completed in August. Companies joining forces to make it a reality; led by Google, then MTN Nigeria, Hewlett Packard, HP, and Cisco Systems as well as the project contractors, Business Connexion of South Africa. Network infrastructure would be provided by Xirrus Inc of USA and Wavion Technologies of Israel.

The report said;

Google is said to have committed to provide a minimum 25megabytes per second (mbps) of international Internet bandwidth to the university over an initial three-year period, as well as also contributing US$40 000 for the last mile/local loop costs, and another US$15 000 for consultancy and training to ensure optimal utilization of the IT services. The company would also made available its email and collaboration tools and guidance to them.

In a short breakdown;

It will offer Internet connectivity of 1-4mbps per 1000 students and staff, and have a central storage area network of at least 10-400 Terabytes on which students and faculty can store data

Now this is broadband!

Cisco will provide training and certification for staff and student and also establish a model incubator programme to stimulate entrepreneurial development.

This is a welcome development and achieving it will be a milestone. What if we dash down to Enugu to have a broadband access? Cool!

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Apple Vs Google the battle continues, enter Bing

The battler between the two tech giants just got fiercer since the refusal of Apple to approve Google Voice application on iPhone and subsequent resignation of Eric Schmidt ( Google CEO) from Apple’s board.

Currently, both companies are competing in mobile technology, mobile ads and OS. As they now right into same territory, each now have their turfs to protect.

Apple will be launching is new version of iPhone next month, and romour around has it that, Apple is set to replace Google with Bing as the default search engine on iPhone. The deal has ran for 3 years and was said to be worth $100 million a year. It will be a super win for Bing and Microsoft seem to be out of fashion in the smart phone market!

Strategically, it’s a smart business (taking out users’ loyalty to Google) to do as Apple as being taking various steps to protect it’s cashcow products. Apple recently banned application developed with Adobe software.

Google on the other hand as we all know, has contiued it’s innovation and launching couple of products and deals.  Google’s acquisition of AdMob was recently clarified by FTC and Google TV was also announced a week ago..

The bottomline

Don’t expect the battle to settle down any time soon, technology is converging to mobile so they are both trying to own the future! Looking at how things are shaping up and historically, it might favour Google in the long run. It’s Android is open and available to other phone manufacturer (which will improve adoption) while Apple’s iPhone is closed. Android users are increasing by the day and will surely continue.

Apple on the other hand is not sleeping; it launched iPad less than two months ago and have sold more than 2 million units. Apple TV has also been romoured to be sold for $99.

The battler has just started, let’s keep a tab!

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Google TV Launched

Wow! We are right at the middle of the Google economy! As Google continues to bring innovation to every doorstep, expect the Google effect in your room!

What does it aim to achieve?

On Google’s official blog page, this statement summarize it all

“Google TV is a new experience for television that combines the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet. With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web. This opens up your TV from a few hundred channels to millions of channels of entertainment across TV and the web. Your television is also no longer confined to showing just video. With the entire Internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV — it can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more.”

Google TV also helps you browse the web, search for interesting Video and photo to view on your TV. Imagine having a 48″ screen tv, wow! The web truly comes alive!

On the business side, it also give Google more space to sell its ever growing ad inventory!

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Google CodeJam Africa 4 Nigerians in top 100

Google announced the annual CodeJam Africa recently to enable African programmers check their programming skills with others around the continent.  For now, Egypt has the most programmers in the ranking leader board, followed by South Africa.

I went through Google CodeJam Africa and it’s only 4 Nigerians I can see among the top 100. Are our programmers not in for this contest?

Are you participating in the contest? Are you a programmer? Why not join you can become the next Nigerian to go for internship in Zurich after.

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Are You in Ghana? Send Free SMS from your Gmail

Google has continued its investment in Africa as a new service was just rolled out of its lab; Google SMS. The feature allows you to send and recieve SMS from your Gmail account.  Guess what? The SMS is free (though a standard charge require if you are sending from your mobile phone)!

In Google’s own word: Let’s say you’re in Ghana and you need to chat with somebody in Gmail Chat, but they don’t respond because they just walked away from their computer. Or maybe you’re in the middle of chatting with them just as they need to leave. But you still need to tell them something — something really important, like where you’re going to meet tonight … or perhaps it’s about a new spot for delicious kelewele. This is why we’ve built a way to chat with your friends even when they’re away from their computers. Now you can keep the conversation going with a new feature that lets you send SMS text messages right from Gmail: you chat from your computer, and your friends can reply from their mobile phones.

The goal is to keep you connected with your friends wherever they go! Google understands that mobile penetration in African is much more than internet penetration and most people still log on to the internet via their mobile phone.

Nigerians at the last G-Nigeria Day asked the question… when will Google SMS come to Nigeria? Google said, very soon! so keep your fingers crossed!

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G-Nigeria Day 2010, What has it changed?

We covered the event live on our website and twitter through out the three days. I wrote a follow up article on the impact of Google on Nigeria and African Internet market.

The Organization of the event was above average, except for the first day when all startup glitches showed up. The second day was the best in my own opinion given the interaction level and the VCs invited.

Yea, the G-team! Excellence! They are the best! I am still learning on how to build a company that will have that highly dedicated staffs. They were ready to listen and very smart!

The audience, I think we need to step up our quest for knowledge and to know that though we are late in the technology market, but we can grow faster by leveraging the technology of the advanced countries (Google, Microsoft, Facebook and the likes). Majority of the questions asked could be gotten from Google search! Also on the code side, the code repository has all the information you will ever need for their APIs. A note my people, when there is an event, I think we could explore the products online before coming to learn from the expert, learning before the actual teaching I think will stimulate “Action Learning”.

The online audience following the event were also awesome as they kept asking what is happening if there is a long silence! I believe they enjoyed the flow of the event to have wanted more! The event was covered both on twitter and Google buzz, which was a great product for events back channels, very engaging!

All said and done, I think the way forward is to continue to engage the African community, keep casting the vision on them, support and training the techies. There are Google User Groups one for Lagos and Abuja. These are great was to make sharing easier.

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This week on the Web, weekly recap

Interview with Chiemeka Ozumba, CEO of ishopinlondon.com

As Nigeria ecommerce market continues its aggressive growth, ishopinlondon.com joins the league of site launch this year.

Mpesa comes to South Africa

In a move that could pitch Vodacom competitively against local banks for the first time, its parent Vodafone has announced that it will launch M-Pesa, Kenya’s wildly popular mobile money transfer service, in SA.

Africa Meet AppStore

Apple in a bid to consolidate usage of its products in Africa, Apple on the 18^th of February launched the AppStore for Africa. This will make buy app for Apple platform for African countries easier. Countries listed are: Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia, and Uganda. The question you may want to ask is where is Nigeria on the list?

Facebook Drives 44 Percent Of Social Sharing On The Web

If you are still wondering why Google is pushing so hard with its new product Buzz, it is because it wants in on social traffic. For many sites on the Web, social traffic coming through Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace is beginning to rival, and in some cases overtake, search traffic as the single biggest source of traffic. This traffic comes from shared links, photos, and videos. By its own numbers, 5 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook every week.

Microsoft Fights Google With Google-Hosted Videos

Yesterday, we saw Microsoft shamelessly go after the iPhone with a video which played at Mobile World Congress for its new Windows Phone 7 Series. But it’s not just Apple that Microsoft is taking on with videos, it’s competitors like Google and OpenOffice.org as well.

How we built secret London in a weekend

This is a guest post by Tiffany Philippou who started the Secret London Facebook Group. Two weeks after launch the group had amassed over 180,000 members, propelling its 21 year old creator into her first startup – see our previous coverage.

Google Launched New Maps domains in 30 African Countries

As Google increase its penetration in Africa, it has improved effort to put Africa on Google Map. Haven launched the products in Kenya and South Africa, this latest effort is a big step forward in reaching the Africa audience.

G-Nigeria kick starts with day one

Google starts the much anticipated event, G-Nigeria in university of Lagos on Thursday 17^th of February. The event saw a large turn-out and the auditorium was filled up. Google introduced its technology to the African developer and how to market better use of them. Google believe, than local developers are needed for the next phase of advancement on internet.

G-Nigeria Day two

The second day accommodated technopreneur, web markets and business people with interest in Google. This day was the best day I must say, well organized and coordinated. Google top products, Adwords and Adsense were explored and questions answered from the audience. The entrepreneur and VCs, session was mind blowing as young people asked the VC how to raise fund, develop business mentoring.

G-Nigeria Day three

On Friday was the focus on Computer Science students, a repeat of day one but focus was made on the students. Google believe the university community and students are the next point to expect great idea, hence the need to help them get started faster. Students asked question from the G-team and was delighted to learn from Google.

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Impact of Google Presence in Nigeria Internet Market

I was at the Google event for 3 straight days and covered the event; it was very interesting as hundreds of developers and internet business people in came around. Read more on Day One, Day Two and Day Three.

The Nigerian internet market is growing progressively; in recent stats, Nigerian internet users are over 11 million second only to Egypt in Africa. Social media adoption is also on the rise as more than a million Nigerians now use Facebook. Before this, Nigeria is widely known for scam in Nigeria, but now things have changed! With the rate of internet adoption and technology development, in the next couple of years, the perception would have changed.

Google, the brand!

Google is hugely a successful company with more than $171.95B market capitalization. World biggest internet service firm company and biggest advertising company in the world. If there is one thing Google is known for, that is search! Google’s goal is to organize world’s information and make them accessible from any device connected to the internet.  With its success in search, it has leveraged it to launch other successful products!

Google has to a large extent done well and has earned brand loyalty and trust! It has so far acquired 61 companies since 2001 and has projected to acquire at least 1 company per month. The acquisition is largely influenced by available cash-at-hand of over $23billion and strategic plans of Google to organize world information.

Google launched its first phone (Nexus One) this January and will be launching Chrome laptop this year. This has set it against Apple and indeed, (as I think) is a very strategic step by Google; because 1. the future is mobile 2. Platform is key (hence android) 3. Data is awesome 4. Mobile ad will be the future of Adsense (Google Acquisition of AdMob) the cash machine for the company. Innovation in the mobile hardware industry is not fast enough, and Google known for software prowess.

Google Around the World

Google has a mantra, which is “Don’t be evil” this has been their guideline around the globe. Google’s presence is felt everywhere in the world. With offices in 35 countries and serves the whole world except countries with censorship and restrictions.

Google in Africa

Google have offices in Egypt, South Africa, Kenya and now Nigeria. Google is increasing its presence in Africa and hope to accelerate development in the continent.

Google’s mission for Africa is to make the Internet an integral part of everyday life.

Make the Internet relevant and useful to Africans through;

• Content
• Education
• Relevance

Eliminate access as a barrier to all potential users
* Internet affordability
* Devices – affordable devices
* Latency – drastically improve latency

These were highlighted in the on-going G-Nigeria Day holding in University of Lagos, Nigeria.

Google in Nigeria and the future

Some of the understanding of Google about Africa and Nigeria is that;

• More than 50% of 16yr olds who are familiar with the Internet don’t use it due to “lack of access to a PC” (SSA ICT Survey)
• Africa: 14% of the world’s population but 2% of Internet users.
• Nigeria has one of the highest mobile adoption rates.
• Local content for African countries is scarce.

Google is willing to enable local developers to collaborate on content generation, API integration and other Google products so as to accelerate the growth. It is wonderful to note that, Google has youth-like corporation and supports open source projects and other technology development around the world.

Impact on Local Developer and Internet Market in Nigeria

Well, in as much as we understand that Google is not an NGO, so for every investment made, there should be corresponding return on investment (which is great for every business), so Google’s entrance into the Nigerian internet market will get the attention of other internet giant who are still skeptical about the Nigeria. I see it stimulating the growth as it has in other countries.

Google projected to acquire a company per month, yeah! So for developers who thinks that funding is a problem, get started with something now, bootstrap it with a little fund you can, if you get Google’s attention you can become a good candidate for acquisition. Imaging joining the Google EconomyL!

For other Nigerian internet companies who are yet to get creative in there web business, I think the faster you do that the better, 1. You could be acquired or compete with Google 2. You will become a late comer to the party. Google brand capital is enormous and anything it touches turns to gold, so how will Google turn Nigerian internet market to gold now?

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