GURGAON BOY DOODLES HIS WAY TO GOOGLE

Puru Pratap Singh, a Class 4 student from Gurgaon, won the Doodle for Google competition. Singh’s doodle was chosen from 4,000 entries across India. Log on to Google and you will see the logo

For once, Puru Pratap Singh’s (9) folks will allow him to surf the Net late at night. In fact, his whole family will be up till midnight.

Friday, to see his artwork displayed as an icon on the homepage of Google India.
Singh, a Class IV student of Amity International, Saket, won the GoogleDoodle contest in India, edging out 4,000 others. His will be the search engine’s first “made in India” doodle.

But having won the contest, and a laptop in prize, Singh has other plans for the future: “I want to be a scientist, not an artist as they aren’t very well paid.”

The Gurgaon boy had a little help. His art teacher mother, Arti Singh, pitched in with the artwork while his father, N.P. Singh, helped him think up the concept, ‘My India full of life’.

“The first ‘G’ is in the shape of a peacock; ‘O’ represents the wisdom of our country; the other ‘O’ shows the discovery of water on the moon by India, ‘G’ revolves around Kashmir; ‘L’ is designed as the rifle at Amar Jawan Jyoti at India Gate; and ‘E’ depicts Mahatma Gandhi,” said Singh.

To see Singh’s doodle, a Google India spokesman said, all you have to do is log on to www.google.co.in.

YAHOO PLANS TO EXPAND, HIRE PEOPLE IN INDIA: CEO

Yahoo! Inc plans to grow its business in India and hire additional people there, its chief executive Carol Bartz said on Tuesday.

Bartz, who was speaking at a luncheon in Singapore, said she was heading from the city-state to India where she would meet the country's prime minister and other senior officials.

She also said Yahoo! is "happy" with its investment in China's Alibaba, although it recently sold a small part of its shares in Alibaba.com, the Chinese firm's listed unit.

GOOGLE TO BUY ADMOB FOR $750 m

Google is to pay $750 million to buy AdMob, a provider of advertising on mobile phones, the internet search leader announced Monday.

The deal is the third largest ever undertaken by Google and underscores the company's strategy of extending its online advertising dominance to the mobile web, where its Android smartphone operating system is becoming increasingly popular. Google said it expected antitrust regulatory review in the US but not in Europe.

AdMob has a system that serves display ads on mobile phones and its purchase could give the still nascent market a powerful boost, analysts said.

'Google could have built this itself, but this gives them a head start,' says mobile analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence. 'It will thrust Google into the forefront of mobile display ads.'

'AdMob is a great Silicon Valley story,' said Google in a blog posting to announce the deal. 'We are looking forward to having them join the Google team and work with us on the future of mobile advertising.'

DEADLINE IN GOOGLE BOOK DEAL EXTENDED TO FRIDAY 13th Nov.

A judge has given Google Inc. more time to revise a legal settlement that has drawn government scrutiny because it would give the Internet search leader the digital rights to millions of out-of-print books.

Under a change approved Monday, Google and groups representing U.S. authors and publishers now have until Friday to change an agreement reached more than a year ago. It marked the latest twist in a copyright lawsuit that the authors and publishers filed against Google's digital book project four years ago.

The revisions to the settlement were supposed to be filed by the end of Monday, but Google and its negotiating partners told U.S. District Judge Denny Chin they still needed to address objections raised in September by the U.S. Justice Department. Chin signed off on the extension without comment.

The Justice Department has warned it probably would try to block the current agreement from taking effect because antitrust regulators had concluded it threatened to thwart competition and drive up prices.

Some of the Justice Department's preliminary findings echoed concerns from a chorus of critics that include Google rivals Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., had insisted the settlement merited court approval until the Justice Department raised red flags.

In its current form, the settlement would entrust Google with a digital database containing millions of copyright-protected books, including volumes no longer being published. The Internet search leader would act as the sales agent for the authors and publishers, giving 63 percent of the revenue to the copyright holders.

The Justice Department believes the arrangement could lead to collusion that would raise the prices for digital books — a format that is expected to become increasingly popular with the advent of electronic readers such as Amazon's Kindle.

Google contends its plan to make digital copies of so many hard-to-find books would benefit society by making more knowledge available to anyone with an Internet connection.

For that reason, the Justice Department has said it hopes an acceptable compromise can be worked out.

GOOGLE PROVIDING BETTER VIEW OF PERSONAL DATA

Google is offering a new privacy control that will make it easier for people to see some of the information being collected about them.

The "Dashboard" feature unveiled Thursday pulls together all the data that pour into Google's computers whenever Web surfers log in to one of the company' services.

That includes summaries of an individual's e-mail, search requests and viewing habits on Google's video site, YouTube. Before, a user would have to check multiple places for all that.

The snapshot doesn't include any activity that occurs when a person isn't logged into a Google service.

Dashboard represents Google Inc.'s latest step to give its users more control over their personal information and appease privacy watchdogs.

MICROSOFT INDIA SEEING GOOD RESPONSE TO WINDOWS 7

New Delhi: The Indian unit of Microsoft is seeing a good early response to Windows 7, its recently launched operating system, its chairman said on Monday.

The Indian unit, which employs 5,300 people, has "no significant plans of hiring" this year, Ravi Venkatesan told reporters at the World Economic Forum.

India and China contributed a very small portion of Microsoft's global revenues, but he said "we are seeing good double-digit growth".

MICROSOFT TO CUT JOBS WORLDWIDE

Global software major Microsoft will slash hundreds of jobs globally as part of its effort to realign business activities.

The layoffs are expected to be across different locations and businesses. Sources said the number of possible lay-offs could be close to 800.

When contacted, a Microsoft India spokesperson said the impact on the company's India headcount would be in single digits. The firm currently employs about 5,300 in the country.

"We continue to review our business needs and align our resources accordingly, be it our headcount or our spending.

The impact on India remains minimal and in single digit. At the same time, we continue to hire in priority areas," the spokesperson said.

In January, the software major had announced plans to trim 5,000 jobs. At that time, Microsoft said it would cut up to 5,000 jobs in research and development, HR, marketing, sales, finance, legal, and IT.

Four months later, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had warned the company might axe more jobs depending on the impact of the economic downturn.

"As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure, including additional job eliminations," Ballmer had said in May.