That's OK - they're still reporting the news accurately and I'm not knocking that. But I would like to add that there is a rather worrying bigger implication in this announcement than simply one related to smartphone business in a few specific markets.

The problem with Yandex is that they have a somewhat dubious record of 'interfering' with results in a way that consistently does favours to the Kremlin. Very often these discrepancies will take the form of some high-profile opposition rally, event, or campaign - which is well covered online in blogs, images etc and thus ranks highly on Google.ru results - but is nowhere to be seen on Yandex. The excuse has usually been that the omission is down to technical difficulties but, the more often this happens; the less convincing the excuse seems (more examples here and here).

The other problem is that Yandex is otherwise pretty good at Russian language searching and has over 60% market share in Russia, as well as a strong presence in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey totalling 56 million users worldwide. The latest announcements suggest that these numbers will only increase if they manage to establish a similar dominance in the smartphone market (although the prospects for Windows phone generally don't look amazing so that might hold things back a bit).

The bottom line though is that Putin's anti-democratic regime initially underestimated the power of the internet to undermine autocratic and repressive rulers. Instead they focused much more on censoring visual media - especially television. This was pretty effective as long as Russia's internet connectivity rates were low - which is becoming less and less the case these days, a process accelerated by the advent of smartphones.

This has meant that now events like the 31st-of-the-month opposition rallies get a huge web presence and thus increase the visibility of the campaign, while Youtube music videos of pro-democracy songs are now regularly attracting over a million viewers very quickly (whereas as recently as 2008 or 2009 such figures would have been unimaginable). Events in the Arab world have probably furthered the sense that the internet now represents a much more real threat to repressive and autocratic regimes than before.

Now, there is one other search engine that comes to mind here: China's Baidu, which effectively censors the internet for the benefit of the ruling regime, silencing any attempt at dissent, opposition, or even democratic activity. Google eventually backed out of that territory on ethical grounds (not wanting to be complicit in this censorship - and also probably concluding that they could afford to do so without it being that financially disastrous), but then Bing came in to try and lap up some of the slack by partnering up with Baidu to deliver English language results. And you know who owns Bing? That's right - Microsoft, the same company behind Windows obviously, and also Windows Phone.

Why am I bringing this up? Because we know from Microsoft's track record with Bing and Baidu that they will happily comply with even the most repressive regime to censor the internet if it means they can get a little slice of market share. That means that they are a perfect match for Yandex, who also seem to err away from the principle of a completely free internet, and thus that this potential expansion in market share (via the smartphone deal announced above) could also be evidence of Russia's internet sliding slowly towards something which resembles the situation in China. That is not simply business news and nor is it something which should pass by unnoticed...

(p.s. If all this sounds a little hyperbolic to you, don't forget that in some other parts of the world even using the Facebook 'Like' button can be a political act that might land you in jail...)

This long term question of who will come out on top will of course be decided by how small and large businesses assess their own short term priorities and options regarding what each of the two packages offers. At this early stage it's pretty hard to review precisely which performs better for which tasks, though it is fair to say that Google's offering is cheaper than most of Microsoft's 11 different Office 365 package options.

Anyway, for those business owners starting to think about which option would best suit their needs going forward, here's some handy resources to compare and contrast the two offerings:

1. Google's own blog featured a detailed analysis of why they felt their product was superior (they would say that wouldn't they?) as well as providing a nice tabulated summary of the various features and price-plans:

2. The Guardian online featured a detailed review of Office 365 for all those who've yet to try it out for themselves, pointing out that while Office 365 is one the one hand essentially a re-branding of Microsoft's failed Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), it does also feature a raft of new and improved features. While telephone integration is annoyingly still lacking, there are also some excellent aspects on offer - namely the option to subscribe for fewer than 5 users a month (great for smaller companies), as well as its Sharepoint 2010 and Lync 2010 features (for managing documents and combining video conferencing with IM respectively).

3. A decent review from IT PRO website, good on screenshots.

Anyway, I'm sure that this subject will become a key point of discussion for businesses over the coming months as competition between the two tech giants increasingly yields a broader range of options for companies to meet their workplace computing needs - and that can only be  a good thing...

The main theme is HTML5 (as it was with IE9), with the native support being the key point. In addition, even at this early stage, there seems to be plenty of relevant CSS developments including support for emerging standards of CSS3 multi column layout, CSS3 grid layout, CSS3 gradients, and plenty more.

Anyway, have a look for yourself over at IE blog - there's a nice (brief) video demonstration as well as an overview of the current state of play (which is in an early stage it should be stressed - development only began three weeks ago). No doubt as more specific details emerge we'll be revisiting this subject to discuss precisely what IE 10 will mean for users and developers alike.

The whole thing is not unlike the episode wherein villages and streets were recently discovered on Google maps (including one called Argleton in N.W. England) which did not in actual fact exist - leading many to suggest that this might be an instance of a modern equivalent of a 'trap street': the practice whereby a cartographer invents a small side street which exists only in his map as a way of uncovering those who have simply copied it (and thus also the fake street) without doing their own mapping.

Well, this latest incident is more of a big deal perhaps since Google's latest trick has ensnared rather a bigger fish - Microsoft's search engine Bing, now accused by Google of copying their results instead of generating their own independent ones. According to Google, they have developed a number of 'synthetic queries' which essentially connect two search terms that actually have no connection whatsoever and thus, shouldn't ever coincide in a genuine, un-manipulated search.

The problem for Bing is that not long after Google instated these synthetic queries into their algorithm, they started showing up also in Bing's results - suggesting that they were actually coming from Google's algorithm  - i.e. that Bing was simply producing what has been called a 'cheap imitation' of Google's results. The way in which Google claims this is coming about is not as simple as Bing linking direct to a Google search, but instead involves IE 8 and its mechanisms for collecting data which, in conjunction with the Bing toolbar, are working to provide info on what people are searching for and the results other engines are providing so that Bing can match this in some (slightly impoverished) way.

Bing, perhaps unsurprisingly denies the accusations, and they have their own version of how the events can be explained, but if you look through Google's detailed post on exactly how they have seemingly exposed Bing (it genuinely is quite fascinating) it seems hard to accept the Microsoft rebuttal. If Google is right then the entire episode could be summed up by saying that Bing's (relatively weak) position in the search market is artificially maintained by Microsoft's dominant position in the OS market, where Windows prevalence ensures that IE is still the number one browser - and thus provides a tool for propping up Bing (legitimately in the eyes of the law, but not in a way that many would accept as fair or particularly laudable).

So, if you fancy learning a thing or two (I certainly did) about doing business in the tech and web market, you could do a lot worse than have a gander at faberNovel's excellent analysis. Perhaps most interesting for me was the role that services such as the App store play in the Apple revenues (the contribute almost nothing relatively speaking - less than 1%). Nonetheless the App store is an absolutely essential facilitator of Apple's consumer lock-in and vertical integration goals.

iTunes for example once occupied a similar position a few years ago (before digital music sales really took off), but now forms an indispensable component of Apple's overall product line. Clever stuff indeed - and very thought-provoking for anyone involved in this market sector, whether in web or hardware design, consultancy, analysis or whatever else. Many of the lessons of Apple's success can be applied and localised across various tech sub-sectors, so it's a pretty smart idea to learn a thing or two from the current sector high-flier!

Enjoy!

Dejan Levi

As anyone following any sort of technology-orientated media sources in recent years will be aware, the likes of Google, Apple, Twitter and Facebook tend to get about three to ten headlines (this is a blatant guess from me, let me know if you disagree) for every one Microsoft is able to get. And even when MS does get a headline, more often than not it is about various un-sexy PR disasters (racism in its Polish ad campaign last year, complaints over vomit ad, monopoly lawsuits etc), while others like Apple usually seem to have some pretty morale-boosting sales figures or mega-hyped product launches to throw in the mix (though they of course get the odd bad headline too...).

Among others I also questioned some of Microsoft's long term prospects in recent months, particularly the difficulty they have in muscling in on the disproportionate media coverage given to some of the aforementioned rivals. Well, Frank Shaw's post yesterday is intended exactly for people like me: a dose of bare hard facts to set the record straight.

And guess what? All in all, it makes for pretty impressive reading, and I must applaud Shaw for his astute use of the blogosphere to restore some perspective and redress the balance of coverage given to major players in the tech world.

The main gist of the post is that Microsoft is BIG, getting BIGGER, and outperforming all its rivals if one looks at the companies balance sheets as a whole (profits for 2009 stand at well more than Apple and Google combined for example).

However, Shaw is keen to illustrate that the extent of media coverage devoted to Microsoft's rivals is highly disproportionate to the relative size of the companies involved. Again, point well made, though Shaw seems unwilling to acknowledge that this is because much of what is offered by these high profile rivals tends to offer mainstream news media with viable stories (about social networking, fancy new phones etc), while operating systems tend to be of little interest to 'mainstream' media channels (BBC news for example is unlikely to report on Windows 7 sales, while iPhones of course are big news). The lesson here is that MS needs to get its 'sexy' stuff working a little better in the mainstream news and media arena - something like the xBox for example might be just the product to do this.

In any case there's a wealth of expert analysis of Shaw's figures floating around already, with Guardian tech and Techcrunch being my two top tips so far (check the Guardian one for some excellent 'reading between the numbers', and TC for some more comical analysis).

However, one thing which neither have yet discussed is the question of who Shaw's figures are intended for? After all, if Microsoft is happily smashing profit targets and dominating markets in a relatively quiet and understated way, then who cares if the press want to discuss iPads all day and night? Ultimately, as Shaw points out, Microsoft's profits and growth rates are such that they need not worry too much about what others are doing. And yet they clearly do worry somewhat about their inability to be the media darlings that Apple and Google currently are.

For example, Shaw points out that Nokia's smartphone sales far outstrip iPhone sales in 2010 - the message being simply 'shut up about Apple already - they're not even that big...' But isn't it funny that Nokia don't seem half as bothered about endless iPhone hype, they're just calmly reeling in mega-profits year after year, mainly by letting products speak for themselves. I somehow feel Microsoft's best strategy, judging by their self-evident success regarding sales numbers and profits, might be to follow suite, since I doubt they'll ever succeed in out-cool-ing Apple or Google in terms of media image.

Dejan Levi

Ballmer opened the last day of the conference, accompanied by his chief software architect, Ray Ozzie. For those who weren't able to attend, there is now some very interesting video highlights available online over at Guardian technology. What's most interesting for me here is the difficulty Ballmer has in keeping the discussion focused on Microsoft, and not simply discussing the innovations of successful rivals like Google and Apple.

There's some interesting points from both Ozzie and Ballmer - as well as the odd, slightly confusing, ramble, but all in all, it's hard not to be left feeling that Microsoft is a company that is currently struggling to convince on its prospects for innovation and creativity. While there can be no doubt about Ballmer's experience and insight into market trends, question marks remain over his charisma in situations such as this one - though indeed it's always easier to appear charismatic and camera-friendly when you have some sure-fire hit products to discuss (i.e. Steve Jobs).

Anyway, while certain products such as Microsoft's xBox console have been enjoying massive success, it's hard not to get the impression watching Ballmer, that Microsoft could really do with some fresh, original ideas - and the positive press that comes with it sooner rather than later. After all, for a company of such size and impressive massive market share almost in every field they're involved in, it's hard to say that they have the number of market leading and original products that one might expect. While it would be foolish to imagine that Microsoft has any sort of short-term difficulties as a result of this, it does not bode well in the long game...

Dejan Levi

So, in the interests of following the extensive fallout from these developments (which extends into not just business and technology spheres but also into those of politics and international relations) here's a quick round-up of some of the most useful and insightful articles and blogs out there covering this extensive subject.

A good place to start is Isaac Mao's piece on the Guardian tech page, which provides an allegorical overview of the entire episode - very few concrete details but a good and quick way to get an idea of what's happened with an entertaining metaphor. You may then wish to read a statement on Google's blog for a more detailed account of changes to their operation and what the official reasoning behind this is. Finally this quick video on Youtube from tech journalist Tania Branigan offers a brief history of Google in China right up to the recent spat and withdrawal.

One key question for the future of business in China in general has been over the nature of the response of the US government in the episode, and indeed Google co-founder Sergey Brin has called upon the Obama administration to push for a crackdown on web censorship, not only in China but globally. The US gov't have however wisely decided to attempt to calm tensions and ease the threat of escalation by playing down the degree to which this impacts upon US-China relations. Even if they had wanted to support Google, it would be largely impossible without the support of other tech giants such as Microsoft, Yahoo, and Myspace - all of whom have announced no plans to alter the nature of their Chinese operations.

While those in China once more suffer from a lack of access to the full range of reporting and comment that is emerging on the issue, elsewhere we are fortunately able to access a wide variety of opinions and analysis of which some of the most interesting examples can be found below.

1. Michael Arrington over on Techcrunch highlights some of the hypocrisy that underlies much of the outrage at Chinese censorship policies - for example, while bloggers' rants can be found two-a-penny condemning the 'great firewall', we nonetheless continue to consume plenty of Chinese-made products every day across the Western world.

2. A detailed post over at Search Engine Land offers quite a thorough analysis of Google's motives in making decisions on its China policy, and raises a number of key problems which undermine the simple good vs. evil narrative.

3. Finally, Timothy Garton Ash offers a broader contextualisation of how the entire episode currently relates to global politics and international relations, as well as an essential consideration of what the concept of the 'netizen' in the 21st century means following the Google/China events.

That's plenty for now I should think - there is of course much, much more out there (feel free to post links below if you've come across something particularly interesting) and indeed it seems certain that plenty more will follow in coming weeks and months. As always, we'll be keeping you in the loop with all major developments...

Dejan Levi

Anyway, the design group seems to have been quite clever in having a bit of fun while also generating some excellent publicity for itself with the event (coverage has been featured on various other sites, including Techcrunch). It's certainly one way to do some effective but also creative and fun advertising, and I'll bet the whole thing cost far far less than an expensive advertising campaign would at a major ad firm (check Alexa to see the rather compelling evidence that the comedy event has had quite serious business benefits).

Head over to Flickr to see the photos, or see videos over at Techcrunch for an amusing diversion (there's even a sermon and some eulogies), and meanwhile well done to the Aten team for a smart bit of thinking which will no doubt benefit the company somewhat as well in what is proving to have been a very respectable combination of business and pleasure...

Dejan Levi

While the new release is nothing major (basically some added privacy controls, added control over cookies and java plug-ins for individual sites and a neat translation service),  it does come at a time when Chrome's market share is showing continued progress at eating away at Mozilla and IE's users (both shares of the market continued to fall incrementally, but consistently, over the past three months). 

At the moment however the relative numbers involved hardly indicate a collossal swing away from the previous status quo (IE still has almost two-thirds market share, Firefox just under one quarter, and Chrome around one-twentieth) - but it seems undeniable that in the next year or two these imbalances will even out drastically.

Indeed it might not even be too fanciful to imagine that Chrome could one day dominate the browser market in the same way that IE did for years. Regardless of what happens though, the reason I indulge in this hypothetical speculation is not to be alarmist but to highlight the fact that, even though I'm a happy Chrome user myself, I'd sooner switch to another browser than see Chrome displace IE as market dominator (or any other competitor for that matter - I only focus on Chrome because at present it is the only one which could maybe one day achieve this, as things stand right now).  

What the EC ruling mentioned above recognises (and the reason I fully support it) is not that IE is somehow a mandatory inferior product and hence must be punished - but that the browser market will on the whole benefit from an extension of diversity and a more evenly divided playing field. Not just for the sake of greater innovation, but also even more immediately in order to reduce the security risks from malware (it's just far too easy for hackers to target vastly significant numbers of users simply due to IE's market dominance). 

In fact the more one thinks about it, there is pretty much no reason to feel that this greater diversity is a bad thing. Maybe governments will find it trickier to regulate over legal issues now that they'd need the co-operation of more browsers than before, but one surely envisages that the creation of a universal body with representatives from each company could easily solve this issue. Otherwise, with regard to negatives, I'm stumped - if you can think of any reason why this might be a flawed decision please do share your thoughts below (please don't say it makes it tricky for developers though - those guys and girls are learning new stuff all the time anyway; it's part of the job!), but until then I'm very firmly in support of this major ruling from the EC.

Dejan Levi