Google draws upon rival ideas with search changes

Google Inc. prides itself on setting trends, but it appears to be copying some of its smaller rivals with the latest refinements to the way it displays Internet search results.

After months of testing, Google tweaked its technology Tuesday to occasionally display longer descriptions of Web sites in response to search requests consisting of several words. The expanded snippets will contain three or four lines from Web sites instead of the usual one or two lines.

The switch is designed to give Google's audience a better sense of what information a Web site has even before users click on the link. It's something lesser known search engines already have been trying to do, either by posting longer descriptions or providing capsule snapshots of the Web pages that show up in their results.

In another minor change, Google said it has improved its formula for posting suggestions pointing to other topics that might be tied to a search request.

For instance, entering "principles of physics" into Google's search box will generate the usual list of 10 results on the first page, punctuated by a group of links at the bottom suggesting eight other related subjects such as "big bang physics." Now, however, Google thinks it can do a better job of deciphering complicated search requests and will highlight some suggestions near the top of the results page instead of the bottom.

This clustering concept was popularized years ago by IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s Ask.com and has since been copied by other search engines. Google's upgrade was hatched by Ori Allon, who joined Google in 2006 after selling a search startup called Orion to the Mountain View-based company.

Even as it appears to be catching up to Ask.com, Google also may be trying to stay a step ahead of its biggest rival, Microsoft Corp., said Danny Sullivan, who heads the Search Engine Land newsletter.

Microsoft has indicated it plans to introduce new ways to suggest searches to its users, giving Google more of an incentive to upgrade its own system, Sullivan said.

Google executives get one-dollar paychecks in 2008

Google's co-founders and the California Internet titan's chief executive Eric Schmidt each took only a dollar in pay last year, a filing with US regulators indicates.

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Schmidt stuck with their usual one-dollar annual paychecks despite tough economic times that have eroded billions of dollars in value from their Google stock holdings.

"Eric, Larry and Sergey have voluntarily elected to receive only nominal cash compensation," Google said in a proxy statement filed Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Their primary compensation continues to come from returns on their ownership stakes in Google."

The trio at the top of Google's command structure received no bonuses either.

Page owns about 29.2 million shares of Google stock while Brin holds 28.6 million shares, making them the firm's biggest stock holders and giving the duo controlling interest, according to the filing.

Brin, 35, and Page, 36, started Google while students at Stanford University.

The pair incorporated Google in 1998 and have taken a dollar each in annual pay since the company went public with a stock offering in 2004.

Schmidt has the third largest stake in the company; owning just shy of 9.4 million shares.

Google did compensate Schmidt to the tune of about a half million dollars in 2008, but the bulk of the money paid for security and some travel.

Google stock closed Tuesday trading priced slightly above 347 dollars per share.

The stock had soared to nearly 700 dollars a share in late 2007, but tanked along with the rest of the market in the ensuing year.

Microsoft Sees Growing SaaS Opportunity Among SMBs

2009 will be the year SMBs start adopting software as a service (SaaS) in earnest, presenting an opportunity for Microsoft and other vendors to offer services to them despite the economic recession, according to a Microsoft survey.

Eighty-six percent of SMBs said they plan to deploy SaaS in their organizations before the end of the year, according to the survey, called the 2009 Microsoft SMB Insight Report, which polled 600 small-business specialists in five countries -- the U.S., U.K., Canada, France and Brazil. Microsoft released the results of the survey, based on information collected in February and earlier this month, on Wednesday.

In an interview about the results, Eduardo Rosini, corporate vice president for Microsoft's worldwide small and midmarket solutions and partners group, said the survey shows that SaaS is at a "tipping point" and the recession could actually be contributing to the projected uptick in adoption.

Fifty-five percent of SMBs surveyed said they were thinking about spending the same amount or even more on IT in the next 12 months, he said. However, they are still interested in "doing more with less" and optimizing the IT resources they already have, he said. SaaS allows SMBs to do that while also letting them embrace new technologies they might not otherwise afford, since they don't have to deploy new IT infrastructure to deploy new software, Rosini said.

"Clearly it's now becoming a very, very viable and preferred option as it comes to laying out new technologies," he said.

SMBs said they were considering replacing the e-mail, document sharing and communications infrastructure that they currently have on premise with hosted services, Rosini said. Microsoft is well-positioned to provide those services to them, he said.

Microsoft began offering its first hosted collaboration services this year with its Business Productivity Online Suite, which combines online versions of Microsoft's messaging and portal software -- Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, respectively-- as well as Office Communications Online, a hosted unified-communications offering, and Office Live Meeting, a hosted Web-conferencing application. Microsoft also sells those services separately.

Microsoft also lets its hosting partners sell hosted versions of its collaboration and messaging software to customers, and Rosini also stressed the importance of Microsoft's VAR community to service SMBs, who often don't have their own IT staff, or who have very few dedicated IT employees.

Sun, IBM Merger Talks Will Continue This Week

IBM is still in talks to buy Sun Microsystems Inc and discussions could take several more days as IBM studies various parts of Sun's computer server and software businesses, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, called IBM's examination of Sun's assets standard procedure. They added that any deal is unlikely to be reached before next week at the earliest.

IBM and Sun declined to comment.

If they reach agreement, Sun would be IBM's largest acquisition and bolster its offering of computer hardware, software and services.

A combination of the world's No. 1 and No. 4 makers of server computers, however, could draw antitrust scrutiny from regulators in the United States and abroad, analysts said this week.The merged company would hold 65 percent of the $17 billion market for Unix servers, which major companies and governments rely on for critical operations, according to market researcher IDC.

IBM and Sun were the top two players in that market in 2008, with 37 percent and 28 percent respectively. Hewlett-Packard Co was third, with 27 percent.

Not Yet Final

CNBC, citing a Wall Street Journal report, said earlier on Friday that International Business Machines Corp's due diligence process was holding up the Sun deal.

IBM is examining the terms of Sun's various technology licenses to check for any conflict with IBM's business, the Journal reported on its website. It said a deal could be worth $6.5 billion to $8 billion.

Some analysts also have questioned whether it was worth IBM paying what would amount to a 100 percent premium for Sun, whose shares had plunged 70 percent in the past year before the talks with IBM were first reported on Wednesday.

Analysts and bankers told Reuters in November that Sun, which rose to prominence in the 1990s, could be forced to sell itself as it struggles to regain profitability and bring its operating expenses under control.

The company never fully recovered from the dotcom bubble burst in the earlier this decade, when demand for its high-end servers plummeted.

Its ambitions to move into software through acquisitions like database maker MySQL have been slow to produce results and it has failed to fully commercialize the Java software it invented in the early days of the Web.

Some analysts have said that IBM, with greater manpower and more effective management, may be able to make better use of Sun's assets.

Many also have said that they see a potential deal between the two companies as part of a consolidation trend, as IBM and rivals like HP and Cisco Systems Inc compete to offer software, services and hardware based on emerging technologies that can power complex corporate transactions and networks.

Sun shares closed Friday's session down 6.14 percent at $8.10 on the Nasdaq, giving the company a market value of about $6 billion based on about 745 million shares outstanding as of January 30.

IBM shares closed down 0.16 percent at $92.51 on the New York Stock Exchange.