Baidu Profit up by 80%

Chaina's most popular search engine announced that the profit of the latest quarter is up by 80%. It says more companies are stated showing Ads in their search engine and this makes the competition in online Ads more competitive.

Similar to Google, Baidu also growing fast and Google's exit from China helps Baidu to grow faster. Baidu has steadily increased its market share since Google Inc. closed its China search engine in March 2010 after saying it no longer wanted to cooperate with the communist Beijing government's censorship rules.

Baidu has increased its share to 76% from  64% same quarter last year. At the same time Google share went down from 31% to 19% during the same time frame.

Baidu, long seen as a Google copycat, has launched a series of initiatives including a music download service to expand its appeal and differentiate its brand.

Saravanan

Solarwinds announced their Q3 results

Solarwinds announced their Q3 2011 results. They haev done $53.9M in Q3. They have done more than projection ($51.9M) by the analysts.

Their Q3 total revenue growth is 31% y-o-y. They had a lower new revenue (license) $25.5 M 22% growth y-o-y. But their maintenance revenue is high. It is 28.4 M that is 40% growth y-o-y.

Their marketing and sales spending is high. It is 15M and it has gone up by 31% (y-o-y). They have a projection of $52.8 - $54.2M for Q4 and the year projection is $195M -$197M.

Their Spending to new revenue percentage is 55% this year and it has gone up by 3% y-o-y. This shows the competition is high in the IT market. There are more low and medium end companies coming into business and that make the Solarwinds to be more dynamic.

Solarwinds has a cash and cash equivalent at the end of Q3 2011 is $165.8 M which is dropped by $37M from Q2 2011 end. They have paid $35M to TriGeo aquisition during Q3 2011. They have released Two products Synthetic End User Monitor and Web Transaction Watcher. This is going to add value to their recent aquisition TriGeo product Event Log Manager Product.

Saravanan

Bid-per-Call in AdWords

AdWords is introducing bid per call in US and UK. With our Ads, phone number also will be shown and on getting a call, we will be charged for the call as well as the click. Similar to the Quality Score, Phone Call Quality Score also will be there to decide the position of the Ads.

When we start bidding for the call, Ads will be shown in computers and tablets and will be charged when we receive a call to that number. As this is new, there is a good possibility of conversion at a reasonable cost for the early users.

To take advantage of bid-per-call, select the option to use a Google forwarding number when we set up Call Extensions so that our systems can measure when a call to our business occurs. With bid-per-call, we'll also get the benefit of detailed call reporting right in AdWords, which includes:

• Summaries of completed calls, phone-through rate (PTR), and phone call cost on the Ad Group and Campaign tabs. 
• Details for each call, including call time, duration, caller area code, and the ad group that drove the call on the Dimensions tab. 

When we enable call extensions with a Google forwarding number, Google provides and displays a unique phone number in our ads, on both mobile and desktop devices.

If a potential customer calls the Google forwarding phone number from our ad, AdWords will route the call to our business phone number. We'll then be able to see the number of calls we received, including call duration and the inbound area code, in our call reports.


http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/10/introducing-bid-per-call-in-adwords.html

Google Announced Q3 Result

Google has announced its third quarter earnings 9.72 billion 33% growth y-o-y. Google owned sites earned a revenue of 6.74b (69%) and the partners sites generated a revenue of 2.7 b 27% of the total revenue.

The paid clicks on the Ads in Google sites and the Adsense program has increased  28% y-o-y and 13% Q-o-Q. But the cost per click has dropped by 5% in Q3 2011 compared to Q2 2011.

Q3 2011 growth % is the best percentage of growth this year. Also this is the second best in the last couple of years.

In the recent past the contribution of US for the Google revenue is coming down. This quarter the contribution of US is 45% which is the lowest ever. It cam down from 46% in Q2.

The cost per click has gone down in Q3 compared to Q2. The core revenue of Google is Advertising revenue which is more than 90% of their total revenue (9.2b is their advertising revenue). The other revenue from GApps, Android and others are around 0.5 b only for the Q3.

Google is completely depending on their Advertising revenue which is dangerous for them. But there is no one to compete in that domain.

Saravanan

Creating a Payment Gateway Account

When you start a company, having an online store become essential. Especially when you start a SaaS business, getting the transaction done through online is one of the critical activities. Setting up store is comparatively easy in US. Most of the Payment Gateways support USD and transaction in US. If you want to do transaction in other currency or setting up store in other countries, the payment gateway must have international transactions enabled.

Identify the top few service providers. Check whether they are fulfilling your requirements. Then check charges for the transactions. The charges will be between 2.15% and 2.75% in addition to $0.25 per transaction. The rate for recurring billing will be different. Discuss with the service provider and get the account creation link. They will send you the account creation form after getting details like Transaction Volume, whether you have used the online transaction or not etc. 

If you are freshly starting the online transaction, you have to submit the company’s last two years revenue report. Once you receive the link, you have to fill the form and activate the account. 

For this, you need the below details

• Payment Processor
• Employee ID Number (TaxID) or SSN number of the owner
• US Bank Account
• Bank Name
• Routing Number
• Bank Account Number
• Bank Address
• US Billing Info.

You have to have a US bank account to start any sign up with the payment gateway. In addition to the Gateway you have to sign up with a processor. For doing transaction in AMEX, you must have the AMEX processor signed separately. The service provider like Merchente-Solutions will automatically link the AMEX processor to the gateway in addition to the Visa and Master card processors. 

In India, if you want to set up the store, it is very difficult. Most of the payment gateways like Google Checkout, PayPal, Authorize.net, ChasePaymentTech. are not supporting INR. In addition, from March 2011 onwards, these gateway providers must sign an agreement with RBI. If they don't sign that agreement, they are not authorized to provide online transaction service. Many providers not want to sign the agreement and stopped supporting in India. PayPal is working on the agreement (may be ready by this time) and they will definitely provide service in India.

Saravanan

Where is TN education system heading to?

At last the "Samacheerkalvi" has been in place after the Supreme court order. Is it the right? Is the syllabus is in competing with CBSE? Can we expect the kids will gain knowledge through the existing system?

There are different thoughts among parents. Many gave the comment that the syllabus is nowhere near the CBSE or Matriculation syllabus. It is two grade lower compared to the CBSE/Matriculation syllabus.

I was comparing the syllabus of two subjects Maths and Science. Maths syllabus was ok, but Science (which is core) is having very less content and in fact it is three grades lower than the CBSE. I just compared the syllabus only. The content and the type of evaluation are other factors that are entirely different topic.

Already the college education system is in a worst shape whereas the students are wasting three/four years of their life in reading subjects that are not at all helping their future life. If the basic education also in that direction, then it is going to be tough time for the kids.

In AP, more schools are becoming CBE in rural areas and the standard of the students in villages are improving. But in TN, we are doing the other way by bringing down the town/city students’ standard and we are keeping the village schools standard same. This is going to affect the next generation greatly.

In the present system there were very few students entering into IITs from TN. Last year we had only 200+ students from TN qualified for IITs where as 1500 + students got IITs from AP. There are other factors behind this count. Even then the number of students entering IIT from AP is 7 imes more than from TN.

TN had a poor performance in service commission exams few years back and now the trend has changed. In the recent years it has been changed. More people are getting top ranks in the service commission exams. The credit goes to few individuals/private centers that train and encourage students at free of cost or affordable cost. We hope the same will happen to our school education also.

Now most of the Matriculation teachers are uncomfortable with the syllabus and many of the managements are thinking of alternative. Mostly they will move from Matriculation system to CBSE. I feel in the next couple of years many schools will apply for the CBSE board and will move to CBSE system of education.

Saravanan

Google is aggressive in Acquisition

Google has been very aggressive in acquiring companies in different domain. Last week they acquired "Zave Networks" a digital coupon company. Already Google has "Google Offers" to compete with Groupon, adds Zave Networks to strengthen the service in that domain.

This year Google already acquired 18 companies. This is the second max. acquisition in any year (in 2010 it acquires 27 companies). They are acquiring companies in different domain. The major acquisition this year includes, Motorola Mobility (Android), AdMeld (online Advertising), BeatThatQuote (Price Comparison), Deal Map.

Last year they acquired ITA Software (online flight booking), Like.com (Visual Search Engine), Slide.com (Social Gaming) etc.

Google is proving that instead of developing in-house products/services, by acquiring companies that are strong in a particular domain, they can broaden their product line. As Google culture is always better than other companies, they are not getting any major issue in that area. In addition, they are doing more acquisition, and so they are becoming expert in addressing the culture problem. 

They are moving clearly in all directions and are going to be the most successful company for next few decades. 

Saravanan