Now, that’s what you call a popular birthday boy.

A mind boggling achievement that underlined its huge global popularity. As a measure of how popular it is, that number is nearly double the number of people who tune into the US’s three prime time TV stations combined, according to the site’s owner Google.

Google should be pleased as the number is 50 times higher than the 100 million daily hits that was on record when Google decided to buy YouTube in Oct 2006 for US$1.65 billion. This will not turn into a AOL-TimeWarner-like acquisition nor is it likely to burst into premature closure like the Google phone.

Technically, I believe the performance of YouTube is nothing short than amazing. Anyone who has tried to stream a video on internet will know how difficult it is to get a fast-smooth-good quality viewing experience. Once your video have more than 10 concurrent viewers – it’s even worse. Yet, with 5 billion viewers using the site – the video experience is consistently satisfactory. Considering our consistently reliable

broadband service, they are still good enough to watch.

Come to think of it, YouTube videos from across the Pacific Ocean is much easier to watch than the videos from local video streaming sites like Gua.com.my, TV3 etc. Why is that? Logically speaking, these local sites should be faster as they are within local network

and not burdened by international gateway bottleneck.

Anyway, here’s a big thank you for YouTube for changing the the web forever and for enabling us to Broadcast Yourself

.

To finish, here are a few videos that are noteworthy to watch:

• Me at the zoo the first ever video uploaded to YouTube on April 2005 by its co-founder Jawed Karim.
• Susan Boyle the audition for Britain Got Talent that has been watched 92 million times. p.s. Watch Simon Cowell at 1:51 and then his cheeky remark at 5:29
• Obama’s You Tube interview Barack Obama, then a U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate, answer questions from YouTube in 2007.
• Lady Gaga: Bad Romance the most watched video on YouTube
• Charlie bit my finger

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is detecting an undercurrent of the start of series of jabs against the People’s Republic of China.

I tried to resist writing on this issue for the past 2 weeks, but this is a very interesting development. I’m looking at this issue using an out-of-the-box perspective.

It appears that a certain faltering economic giant has to do something to win a battle that it’s losing, and losing badly. And as it has done in the past, this lumbering giant will not hesitate to do anything necessary to win it. Any crack that it can inflict on the Great Wall, it will do.

No doubt that in today’s global world of capitalism, China unique political, social and economic system stands out like a sore thumb. But being different does not mean you’re wrong. As a sovereign country, China should be entitled to choose its own way. Anyone who has been a teenager should think back the feeling and the angst experienced.

Malaysia felt the brunt of being an outcast when it famously imposed capital control at the height of 1999 Asian Financial Crisis and later survived and proven right.

It is obvious that the huge market of China is very salivating to the big businesses. In a current economic turbulence where many so-called-developed economies have gone to the doghouse, the huge underdeveloped economy of China is seen as a potential savior. Not just to the businesses but to the whole countries’ economies.

Unfortunately, many have failed in their attempt to penetrate that fortress of the Great Wall. Not only due to the exotic business culture of that society but also the doggedly stubborn political and legal values and environment that are marked different from the western world.

In the early 19th century, there were opium war and rival factions that provided the cracks that led to the fall of Qing Dynasty in 1911. But the current Government looked solid, for now. So it seemed that the Google incident is being played to expose the evil system which hopefully will catch on by the international community and provided the crack to split open the Great Wall for the invading barbarians.

If anyone care to look back at the 1970′s emergence of Japanese economic juggernaut. At one time, the Japanese, with its unique business and management ethics, outproduce and outsold the then economic giants that it seemed that they’re unstoppable. If you remembered, Malaysia managed to hang on its coat tail using the Look East Policy to get its way against the Brits. But the Japanese economic managed to be screwed up badly when they agreed to open up and embrace the western capitalism amidst the influx of gaijin consultants and advisers. For more than 10 years now…. the Japanese economy has been mired in a state of flux.

So it remains to be seen, what is the effect of this jab at the Great Wall. Will it open a series of jab, hook and upper cut that will floor China? Or will the passive giant of China decide to exercise its power over the ailing superpower in tenterhook? Will China go for the jugular and withdraw the Dollar lifeline and put its massive money reserve in another currency?

Interesting game to watch. Will the mahjong strategy call the bluff on the poker player? Guess how will a 300 years old civilisation built from taking other people’s land win this war against a civilisation that’s thousands of years old. Using the method that they know best, of course.

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Before that Google threw its hat into the OS arena with Google Chrome OS. In my earlier post, I was not so impressed but others seem to be excited with it.

Now listen…. they want to pick a fight with Facebook and Twitter in the social networking business as well. Google is rumored to be set to release new features on Gmail allowing users to update their status for friends to see as part of a move that sees the search giant embrace social media initiatives popularised by other social networking sites (SNS).

The new service is reportedly similar to the status-bar tools seen on Facebook and Twitter, and will further incorporate photo and video sharing.

This new development – which is widely expected to be formally announced sometime this week – comes one week after Facebook marked its sixth birthday by revealing it has more than doubled its number of users in the last year to 400 million.

Google and Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, have recently looked to incorporate social-media services to make their offerings more relevant for users also active on SNS. In October, both Google and Bing announced they would adopt a Twitter function to reflect audiences’ growing interest and trust in social commentary. Microsoft was first to launch its Bing Twitter Search function and further connected with Facebook to offer search results on users’ updated statuses.

Further blurring the lines between search, portals and SNS, Friendster and Yahoo Southeast Asia last month also entered into a multi-year strategic partnership that lets mutual users more efficiently share information.

Now what?

Gmail certainly has a lot of users nowadays because of its simplicity to use. Many users have ditched Yahoo mail because of the clutter of news and other content that Yahoo tried to shove down the users throat. Will this move marked a grave mistake by Google?

As it is, Gmail is already pretty heavy to load with all the complex pageload. On days when the trust-worthy Streamyx typically hit bottleneck speed – one will have to switch to basic-view. Imagine, if status-update and more photo and video is added – can the users cope?

Whatever it is – welcome to the social networking bandwagon, Sir. May I introduce you to your fellow latecomer… Tan Sri Vincent Tan from Malaysia. Please get acquainted!

Update Wed 10 Feb 2010

Here it is! I checked my Gmail account this morning and there’s a new line ‘Buzz’ at the left menu column. Just under the Inbox link. Clicking on the link, it opens up a new Buzz page with a welcoming note that informed me that Gmail has conveniently made me follow 14 other people in my contact list – but for some reason none of them has a reciprocal follow on me. It also tells me that my post on Picasaweb photo services will be automatically posted into my Buzz.

If anyone is concerned about Facebook privacy… by comparison Google has even less care about my say who I want to follow or what I want to share with other people. If earlier, I was saying about how Yahoo shove unwanted content at its Yahoo! mail service… this time Google just shackle me down with forced connections. What if I’m a minor and some of those my contact list is shady characters? (contact list is, by default, automatically added based on your email sent put

)

The cheek and arrogance of them. In fact Google executives were reported at the Buzz launch to say that online social networking has become so widespread and disorganized that only Google, with its massive reach and immense computing power, can make sense of it all.

“It has become a core belief of ours that organizing the social information on the Web is a Google-scale problem,” Todd Jackson, Gmail product manager, said at the launch.

Yes… Gmail may have 176 million users. But not everyone is an active user and as I speak, a few people I checked who are inactive registered users, noted that the Buzz component isn’t in their page.

Related articles:

• Google Takes On Facebook, Twitter With ‘Buzz’ (wired.com)
• Microsoft, Yahoo Diss Google’s Buzz (wired.com)
• Facebook is the new threat to Google (guardian.co.uk)
• Google’s Bad Buzz: Microsoft, Yahoo Mock New Social Product (dailyfinance.com)
• Google flexes muscles against social networks (ubergizmo.com)

So is it worth the hype?

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Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, holds the Google Nexus One phone during a news conference at Google headquarters Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2010, in Mountain View, Calif.

CHIP team members have been checking their emails, IMs and faxes. Unfortunately, the good people at Mountain View has forgotten to send the invite to yesterday’s launch. And thus no first hand review to be had and we had to rely on modern-day sleuth technique – Googling…

Let’s get the facts straight:

• The phone is manufactured by the Taiwanese company, HTC
• It’s powered by the 1GHz Snapdragon CPU from Qualcomm
• It uses the same Android 2.1 OS that runs other Android phones
• It’s thin @ 1.15cm and light @ 130 gm
• On the front are four “hardware” buttons (just touch-sensitive spots on the display): back, menu, home, and search
• Navigation device is a trackball that lights up to tell you a message has come in, with different colors to indicate whether it’s an e-mail, text message, or part of a chat.
• Sports voice-recognition software that will transcribe spoken messages if you prefer reading to listening.
• It has a five-megapixel camera and (wee
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• You can buy it from Google’s Online Store
• They’ll ship to UK, Singapore and Hong Kong – unlocked – for US$529
• It featured built in GPS receiver which we assume will integrate well with Google Maps

Now tell me… any of that salivate you enough to take the next AirAsia plane to Singapore and make the order? Aside from the I-must-have-the-latest-gadget geeks, I suspect not many do. I know for a fact that I don’t.

The fact is: this Google Phone is no earth shattering, revolutionary iPhone killer that many have hyped it to be.

Look at this official picture from Google website. What does it reminds you of? Does Palm Pre come to mind?

I’ve nothing against Palm but the fate of the Palm series is not something that you aspire to be. Not if you’re the mighty Cloud King with billions of cash in your war-chest.

It has been said that Google has openly said that the decision to come out with its own Google Phone is largely down to an anti-Apple strategy. For all the resources that they command, is this all they can do? The stock market took note: Google stock dropped slightly after the announcement today. Apple’s stock went down slightly as the hour of Google’s announcement approached, but then recovered.

But then again – Google has always been a software company and not much of a hardware manufacturer. So I suspect that they have not really put in as much resources into it as they could have.

In light of their ongoing search-engine and online-apps running battle with Microsoft, this new battle in the mobile industry must be part of a bigger overall strategy. What i will call the “Our banner-ads kingdom will not last forever, look for new sources of income

” strategy.

After the veil was lifted last Tuesday, many has noted that the revolutionary part of the Google Phone is not the phone itself – but the decision by Google to go into retail and sell the phone itself. As was captured by a post in Arstechnica:

The real news at Google’s event this morning—news that could shake up the mobile industry just as thoroughly as the original iPhone announcement—wasn’t a phone at all, but a URL: http://google.com/phone. An online storefront that, if successful, could knock one of the major pillars out the current, much-reviled US carrier model and result in faster, cheaper, more flexible service for mobile users….

By offering a lineup of phones that is essentially carrier-independent (with the radio compatibility caveat), Google has separated the two previously interlocked parts of the phone/plan-buying experience—phone selection and carrier selection—and has done so in a way that threatens one of the most important enablers of carrier lock-in….In short, what Google announced today wasn’t just the Nexus One, but the world’s first carrier-independent smartphone store.

This sentiment is echoed by Good Morning Silicon Valley:

No single device is going to “kill” the iPhone, and that’s not really Google’s intent anyway, iPhone users being the heavy Web traffickers that they are. But Google does have a strong interest in fostering enough competition to keep Apple from dominating the mobile market, which is why it chose the strategy it did — providing a strong and improving platform that could support multiple manufacturers offering multiple models to multiple demographic segments across multiple carriers. Google doesn’t need to tear down the iPhone; it just needs to make sure there are plenty of attractive alternatives for smartphone shoppers who for various reasons don’t feel compelled to join the Apple-AT&T axis. As an Android flagship, unlocked but initially aligned with T-Mobile, the Nexus One fits as part of that plan.

It’s still early days. Reports have came out from lucky-testers in USA that have generally said that the Nexus One is ‘better than other Android phones’ buy have come out short of saying ‘this is better than an iPhone’.

I believe the real trick will be in the roll-out of 3rd party application developers. There are millions of iPhone apps available at AppleStore compared to 17,000+ apps so far available on Android platform.

Until one unit magically lands itself on my desk… not much I can say about user experience. Hopefully the day will come soon… eh So, I sneaked a visit to the Google phone store and was warmly greeted by the message ‘Sorry, the Nexus One phone is not available in your country.

‘.

Before I gave my verdict (oh.. I already did in the title.. silly me

), this new chapter in the ongoing saga between the Cloud King and the Desk King whet my appetite as I thought, “hit them where it hurts most, dude” and I was eagerly anticipating a slash and burn attack on the formidable fort of the Desk King – the OS.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed. Google decided that its kingdom is in the internet-cloud and that’s where the focus will be for the new Chrome OS.

• all application in Chrome OS is web-apps. They will be hosted online and to be powered by online servers.
• all data will be kept online. Google Chrome OS will not store any of your data locally. As long as you’re online, it will constantly cache your data and settings in the cloud. that will also mean that no hard-drive is necessary
• Chrome OS will not work on any PC. After reading the first two points above, you may think your netbook is a perfect candidate. Sorry bro… Google is saying that certain criteria are necessary – like fullsize keyboard, bigger screen and 802.11n connectivity.

This is even worse that an Apple OS – a selective OS. Truly disappointing development. You would have thought that a company that’s built on the power of the masses would appreciate the need to grab market share. Instead – they seem to be going on a syok sendiri course.

For all intent and purpose, I’ve uninstalled Chrome browser from my PC and stick with Firefox. I’ve no intention to include Android-powered phone on my list. And after hearing this, I certainly have no intention to bother download the Chrome OS.

To trust my life’s work on the availability of internet and servers god-knows-where-located-and-who-accessed? No way man. I’ve seen too many Terminator and other Hollywood movies to do that.

After launching a jab at Google via the Office Web announcement, Microsoft today delivered a left hook that it hoped will deliver the solid punch to rock its rival, Google the Cloud King.

Microsoft and Yahoo seal web deal screamed the headline today. Microsoft’s Bing search engine received a shot in the arm with this deal that allows Microsoft to take control of Yahoo’s search engine and search advertising technology.

Funny eh.. Yahoo! who once ruled the search engine world ago is now resigned to be the sales-rep. Yahoo! new CEO, Carol Bartz, thought that this is a great deal. Let someone else deal with the techie stuff headache, we’ll still get to keep 88% of the ad-revenue – plus the deal would “boost Yahoo!’s annual operating income by $500m and secure $200m in savings“. The income is from guaranteed revenues per search for the first 18 months of the 10-year deal + rights on premium adverts. Premium Adverts is trade talk for advert deals that are concluded face-to-face (usually with major accounts) as opposed to those placed online by mere mortals like us and these deals accounts to almost half of Yahoo!’s advert income.

Apparently, it does not matter that Yahoo! doesn’t get a single cent of cash upfront out of giving away its family jewel. Some CEOs sure think ‘out-of-the-box’. Maybe she’s been visiting PKFZ to pick up some tips. Using my Casio calculator, I can’t figure out how (US$500 million + US$200 million) x 10 is better than US$47 billion – that’s before taking into account the fact that the income is only coming in over ten years.

Ask this: What happens in 10 years, when the partnership ends and Microsoft’s Bing engine powers all of Yahoo’s search queries? Maybe the same way when Yahoo! send the out-of-date Geocities to its demise.

On the other hand, Microsoft is obviously delirious that its effort to take control of Yahoo! since late 2007 has finally borne fruit. And it appears to cost Microsoft a lot less than US$47.5 billion that was offered in Jan 2008.

“Through this agreement with Yahoo, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers, and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,” said Mr Ballmer. “Microsoft and Yahoo know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search,”

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What does this mean?

• In one stroke, Microsoft will now get to control 30% of the US advert market. (We wonder how will this translated into iron-clad features of the to-be released Windows 7) and Microsoft finally gets to be a genuine contender in the search-ads world
• Yahoo! is now no more a search engine company, but is an advertising and media company (like AOL)

The King of Cloud, meanwhile, still controls over 2/3 of the ad-sales market. Looking down at the Babel Tower being built by the pretenders. As at the time of writing, we haven’t received any reports of shudders from the throne yet.

Yeah… it seems that the catfight is going to get more interesting by the day. Yesterday, Microsoft announced that they are putting their cash-cow app “Microsoft Office” on line. By 2010, a new lite version of Microsoft Office called “Office Web” will be available online for free.

Will the Cloud King shudders with fear? After all, the Desktop King recently encroached the Cloud Kingdom with their own search engine called ‘Bing’ and now they have put their most potent arsenal in the Cloud. (Office brought in US$4.5 billion of revenue for first quarter of 2009 out of the total US$13.6 billion earned by Microsoft)

Office Web will be part of the Office 2010 general release, which is slated for the first half of next year. And if your organisation is a ‘volume license customers’ – you can run it through your own webserver. Mere mortals like us though will have to access Office Web through Microsoft’s Windows Live portal.

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Live service. Thank you very much…

How will you accept this new development? Personally, I’ve tried Google Apps. And with our standard of Internet connectivity in this country, it is a very frustrating experience. So I don’t give much thought about it and I suspect the same nonchalant attitude will be reserved towards Microsoft’s new project.

Really, if I want free office applications to do my work, I could just take out this month’s CHIP cd and install the free OpenOffice.org 3.1. They’ve improved a lot recently and I don’t have to be a slave to the Net to do my work. PS. just in case, we should also avoid the birth of Terminator’s Skynet Superman II: Director’s cut release .

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The latest buzz this week in the IT world has to be the news from Mountain View that after dallying with the Chrome browser, Google wants to go into OS development next.

The hegemony of Microsoft is continually being challenged by the Google boys. Google is undoubtedly the King of the Cloud – now that they have dominated the search engine world. Get this… for the year 2008, Google generates US$21,128,514,000 just from advertising income alone. (That is a cool RM74 billion).

The King is not happy with his current kingdom, which king ever has

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, and wants to extend his kingdom down to desktop-earth. His logic said that since the internet cloud is accessed through the plain old browser, the next step would be to conquer the browser world. Voila! Google Chrome was born.

Unfortunately, the Cloud King discovered that the browser by the incumbent Desktop King, ‘IE’ ,is hard to beat. Most of the world netizens are tied to the operating system provided by the Desktop King. 87.8% to be exact. And the Desktop King has sneakily made his browser intertwined with the OS. No amount of legal challenges and court orders have managed to separate them.

What is the Cloud King to do?

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What else, let’s build our own OS

, say the King. We’ll say that the OS will be simpler and fresher. Surely the faithful netizens would love a new thing that’s clean and elegant as Google interface – compared with the complex overbearing system they have to bear with now. The Fruity King Pretender? We’ll deal with him later. Let him rest first. Corvette Summer buy

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And that’s how we are faced with Google Chrome OS – supposed in one year time. Of course, they put it in a nicer context:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

That will be interesting to watch eh. I just hope that it does not become gajah dengan gajah bergaduh, kancil ditengah mati tersepit.

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What do other people think?

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Microsoft may look vulnerable, but it’s a behemoth with loyal (if not enthusiastic) users, billions in cash and a willingness to eventually catch up to faster competitors.

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Ms Foley, who writes under category ‘All About Microsoft’ in Zdnet cautioned whether Will Google’s Chrome OS look rusty by late 2010?.

All the world is a playground – and when your salary comes to RM78 billions – the Cloud King can afford to play a lot!