As more and more everyday communication takes place over email, lots of people have complained about how hard it is to read and respond to every message. This is because they actually read and respond to all their messages.
SAN FRANCISCO - Four of Google Inc.'s top executives each received 2008 bonuses of more than $1.2 million for helping the Internet search leader eke out modest earnings growth during a recession that battered much of corporate America.
The bonuses disclosed in a regulatory filing Tuesday were less than the awards doled out in 2007 when Google's profit rose 37 percent, dwarfing 2008's gain of 1 percent.
The Mountain View-based company's market value plunged by about $120 billion, or 56 percent last year, reflecting concerns that the weakening economy will eviscerate the online advertising market that generates virtually all of Google's revenue.
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt gave investors little hope Tuesday. Speaking at a technology conference, Schmidt described the conditions in the economy as "dire" and predicted things were unlikely to improve until 2010.
"We are not immune to this," he said. Google's stock fell $10.78, or 3.3 percent, to $314.70 in after-hours trading. It had closed the regular session down $1.68 at $325.48.
Tuesday's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission didn't include any information about the salaries or stock compensation paid to Google's top executives last year. Those disclosures are expected within the next few weeks when Google files its proxy statement.
Following company tradition, Google didn't pay bonuses to Schmidt or co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Those three men are all billionaires, thanks to their large stock holdings in Google.
Jonathan Rosenberg, who oversees Google's products, received the largest bonus at $1.64 million, a 3 percent decrease from 2007's incentive award of $1.68 million.
Omid Kordestani, Google's top sales executive, and Alan Eustace, who oversees the company's engineers, each got bonuses of $1.38 million, an 18 percent cut from $1.68 million in 2007. The documents didn't elaborate on the reasons why the bonuses paid to Kordestani and Eustace were lowered more than Rosenberg's was.
Google gave a $1.24 million to its chief financial officer, Patrick Pichette, for his contributions after joining the company in August. Pichette has been widely credited for engineering a cost-cutting effort that helped Google offset its slowing revenue growth.
George Reyes, Google's CFO before Pichette, received a 2008 bonus of $675,000, down from $1.68 million in 2007 when he was with the company the entire year.
Google's top executives are eligible for annual bonuses of up to $6 million apiece.
Schmidt's mostly somber presentation at Tuesday's conference made it sound as if Google's management team shouldn't expect large windfalls this year.
Although he doesn't expect it to happen this year, Schmidt said he believes the U.S. economy will rebound if the government's stimulus package can ease concerns about sinking home values and rising unemployment.
"Once these things are done, Americans will go back to what they do best — that is, spend money," Schmidt said.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Computer users doing Google searches during a nearly one-hour period Saturday morning were greeted with disturbing but erroneous messages that every site turned up in the results might be harmful.
The company blamed the mistake on human error and apologized for any inconvenience caused to users and site owners whose pages were incorrectly labeled.
The glitch occurred between 9:30 a.m. EST and 10:25 a.m. EST, Google Inc. said in an explanation on its company blog. Anyone who did a Google search during that time likely saw the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanying every search result, the company said.
Google said it routinely flags any search results with that message if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously, a practice aimed at protecting its users. Google said it maintains a list of suspicious sites based on criteria developed with StopBadware.org, a nonprofit project headed by legal scholars at Harvard and Oxford universities who research consumer complaints.
Saturday's error happened when Google erroneously applied one of its periodic list updates in such a way that the warning would apply to all URLs, the company said in a statement.
The glitch was caught by on-call staff and the file was quickly fixed, Google said. Since the updates are applied in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing at 9:27 a.m. EST and disappeared no later than 10:25 a.m. EST, with the duration for any particular user approximately 40 minutes, it said.
"We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in to prevent it from happening again," said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, in the statement.
To turn these case-sensitive shortcuts on or off, click Settings, and then pick an option next to Keyboard shortcuts.
| Shortcut Key | Definition | Action |
|---|---|---|
| c | Compose | Allows you to compose a new message. |
| / | Search | Puts your cursor in the search box. |
| k | Move to newer conversation | Opens or moves your cursor to a more recent conversation. You can hit |
| j | Move to older conversation | Opens or moves your cursor to the next oldest conversation. You can hit |
| n | Next message | Moves your cursor to the next message. You can hit |
| p | Previous message | Moves your cursor to the previous message. You can hit |
| o or | Open | Opens your conversation. Also expands or collapses a message if you are in 'Conversation View.' |
| u | Return to conversation list | Refreshes your page and returns you to the inbox, or list of conversations. |
| e | Archive | Archive your conversation from any view. |
| m | Mute | Archives the conversation, and all future messages skip the Inbox unless sent or cc'd directly to you. Learn more. |
| x | Select conversation | Automatically checks and selects a conversation so that you can archive, apply a label, or choose an action from the drop-down menu to apply to that conversation. |
| s | Star a message or conversation | Adds or removes a star to a message or conversation. Stars allow you to give a message or conversation a special status. |
| ! | Report spam | Marks a message as spam and removes it from your conversation list. |
| r | Reply | Replies to the message sender. |
| a | Reply all | Replies to all message recipients. |
| f | Forward | Forwards a message. |
| Escape from input field | Removes the cursor from your current input field. | |
| Save draft | Saves the current text as a draft when composing a message. Hold the |
# | Delete | Moves the conversation to Trash. |
| Mark as read | Marks your message as 'read' and skip to the next message. | |
| Mark as unread | Marks your message as 'unread' so you can go back to it later. | |
| [ | Archive and previous | Archives your conversation and moves to the previous one. |
| ] | Archive and next | Archives your conversation and moves to the next one. |
| z | Undo | Undoes your previous action, if possible (works for actions with an 'undo' link). |
| Update current conversation | Updates your current conversation when there are new messages. | |
| q | Move cursor to chat search | Moves your cursor directly to the chat search box. |
| y | Remove from Current View* | Automatically removes the message or conversation from your current view.
|
| . | Show more actions | Displays the 'More Actions' drop-down menu. |
| ? | Show keyboard shortcuts help | Displays the keyboard shortcuts help menu within any page you're on. |
Combo-keys - Use the following combinations of keys to navigate through Gmail.
| Shortcut Key | Definition | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Send message | After composing your message, use this combination to send it automatically. (Supported in Internet Explorer and Firefox, on Windows.) | |
| y then o | Archive and next | Archives your conversation and moves to the next one. |
| g then a | Go to 'All Mail' | Takes you to 'All Mail,' the storage site for all mail you've ever sent or received (and have not deleted). |
| g then s | Go to 'Starred' | Takes you to all conversations you have starred. |
| g then c | Go to 'Contacts' | Takes you to your Contacts list. |
| g then d | Go to 'Drafts' | Takes you to all drafts you have saved. |
| g then i | Go to 'Inbox' | Returns you to the inbox. |
| g then t | Go to 'Sent Mail' | Takes you to all mail you've sent. |
| * then a | Select all | Selects all mail. |
| * then n | Select none | Deselects all mail. |
| * then r | Select read | Selects all mail you've read. |
| * then u | Select unread | Selects all unread mail. |
| * then s | Select starred | Selects all starred mail. |
| * then t | Select unstarred | Selects all unstarred mail. |
Sunnyvale -- Yahoo! Inc. and Google Inc. have agreed to a plan in which Google-brokered ads will appear with some Yahoo! search results, the Los Angeles Times said Thursday.
Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., announced the deal following the end of talks with Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft had announced earlier in the day it and Yahoo! had broken off talks on "an alternative transaction" following the collapse of talks two weeks on a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo!
In a statement, Yahoo!, said the deal with Google could be worth an additional $800 million in its annual revenue.
In addition to Google-brokered ads appearing along with some Yahoo! search results, such ads would also appear on some of Yahoo!'s Web pages.
Yahoo! said the deal is non-exclusive, so it is free to reach similar agreements with other ad providers, the newspaper reported.
The companies said they would wait 3 ½ months before inaugurating the new arrangement to give the Justice Department time to review it, even though they said it did not requite regulatory approval.
Microsoft had been exploring acquisition of Yahoo! as part of a strategy to rival Google in the Web advertising market, but the effort instead led to the new arrangement between Yahoo! and Google, the Times said.
Shares of Yahoo Inc. fell in premarket trading Friday after the Internet pioneer ended Microsoft Corp.'s bid to merge the companies and instead sought a deal with rival Google Inc.
Yahoo (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) announced its decision to let Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) handle some of its advertising sales late Thursday, leaving Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )'s $47.5 billion buyout offer for dead.
Yahoo shares lost 2.3 percent to $22.97 from Thursday's close of $23.52, while Microsoft's stock rose 9 cents_ a third of a percent - to $28.33. Google shares rose $6.05, just over one percent, to $559 in early action.
Shares of Perfect World Co. Ltd. soared 9 percent to $23.85 after the Chinese online gaining company raised its guidance for the second quarter on favorable marketing results and new product launches.
well today Yahoo is giving some its work to the Google ..........
and in the future .............. what.?????????
Google on Tuesday announced its new Google App Engine, and opened a preview version to the first 10,000 users to sign up. The service essentially does for Web apps what Google Blogger does for bloggers: provides a hosting solution for Web developers to build their apps on top of, integrating with other Google services and sparing developers the trouble of server maintenance and scalability. Basically, Google wants to be your (free) sysadmin.
As Google says in Tuesday's press release, "The goal is to make it easier for web developers to build and scale applications, instead of focusing on system administration and maintenance." This looks to be a good way to counteract the "TechCrunch Effect"—server slowdown in the early days due to the traffic crush from early adopters. Google App Engine gives users enough CPU power and bandwidth to handle around 5 million page views per month.
The other benefit Google touts is easy integration with other Google services, through both built-in components and Google's APIs.
The first 10,000 registrants will get access to Google App Engine and 500MB of storage for free. More storage and bandwidth will be available for purchase at a later date. As of right now, there are still spots open for registrants, so go claim yours.
