Yahoo! and Indiatimes- Changing times for IndiaWritten by John Benjamin (ProMinds Inc)
Yahoo! and India- A strategic move.The latest news about Yahoo! buying a stake in Indiatimes couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment. In a release by The Financial Times, states that "Yahoo, US internet search engine, is in talks to acquire a minority stake in Indiatimes, online operation of Bennett Coleman, India's biggest media group" So why this interest for Yahoo! towards Indiatimes? Let us first put forth present Internet Market in India. With an increase in awareness of potential of Internet Marketing, and with various big companies such as ICICI, Citibank, HDFC considering Internet marketing as part of its budget, this only substantiates fact of growing online market in India. Capturing a share of still nascent Indian Markets If all goes well between Yahoo! and Bennet Coleman group, Yahoo can have upper advantage in terms of reaching out to Indians. We all know how aggressive Google has been in terms of improving its search features, and MSN following suit. This only intensifies battle for number 1 search engine. However, each search engine has its own loyal customers. However, Yahoo! has not been that aggressive and has been intelligent enough to diversify its services and not just relate to Search Engine marketing alone, targeted to Indian Sub Continent. Lets take a look at what Yahoo! has in store if everything goes well. Indiatimes portal is owned by Bennet Coleman group, which also publishes dailies such as "The Times of India" which was originally launched in 1838, English language daily has a circulation of more than 21 million, apart from magazines such as Femina, etc and other journals. The biggest competitor to Indiatimes comes from Rediff.com However, Yahoo! has partnered with Rediff in terms of ecommerce. This gives Yahoo! advantage in terms of partnering with 2 of most popular portals in India in order to reach out to most ignorant consumer who just recognizes Internet as a medium to send mail and chat.
| | What is it with FireFox?Written by Pete Crewdson
I don't like FireFox. I'm not afraid to divulge fact that I don't like it. I don't like people who insist on running on about how great it is, or people who try to push it in my face. I can't ignore it though, and this is why:Whilst looking over FireFox website I noticed increasing number of downloads it is garnering, this inspired me to try and work out why people are so keen on this browser over its Microsoft Counterpart. So why do so many people choose to switch to FireFox? The Hype? FireFox has garnered more and more media hype as downloads increase, and more it gets hyped, more people download it. It's a never-ending circle of over hyped confusion, and one of many reasons people have chosen to download browser. The Cross-Compatibility Issues? I'm not a fan of FireFox but even I own a copy on both my home and work machines. Cross Browser compatibility on websites is a must to for every website, you cannot afford to lose out on visitors/potential customers because your website doesn't work in other browsers. Remember, FireFox now have almost 20% of browser market share - that's 20 out of every 100 visitors you will be potentially losing if your website is not cross browser referenced! The Tabbed Browsers? Though you wouldn't think this would be a top competitor in this field, it is. A lot of people I asked said they decided to go with Mozilla and FireFox browsers because of tabbed browser bar. This enables you to open more than one Internet page within same browser window, in turn, saving on computer usage and virtual memory capacity. Internet Explorer opens a new window as opposed to this, and in turn, uses up a lot of computers memory, which can lead to unresponsiveness and crashing. The Security Issues? Nearly everyone I spoke to said one thing, "It's secure." And I'm not going to deny it, but is Internet Explorer really that unsecured that people feel they have to switch - well, in reality - no. The reason for this is that so many people have hacked and hunted down flaws in Internet Explorer, that Microsoft has been forced to fix them, and made them more secure. Yes, there are still holes in Internet Explorer, but FireFox has not been on market long enough, or holds enough of a market share for hackers to try and discover all holes in it. And already, a few companies have in fact, found vital flaws in FireFox (which have now been fixed).
|
