Google, Amazon | featured news

Revenue at Barnes & Noble stores fell 10.9% during the holidays, as sales of Nook devices slipped, a sign that the retailer is falling behind in the tablet battle with Amazon, Apple and Google.

Google moved to take on Amazon.com in the fast-growing market for what the industry calls cloud services, allowing companies to run their applications and store data on computers managed by the Internet giant.

After watching Amazon corner the online retail market, Google is in talks with merchants to begin a delivery service that would allow users to order items online from local stores and receive them within a day. But does it make sense for Google to directly take on the online retail giant?

"You know, Google, I think, in some ways, is more competitive and certainly is trying to build their own little version of Facebook," Zuckerberg says. "But you know, when I look at Amazon and Apple and I see companies who are extremely aligned with us, right? And we have a lot of conversations with people at both companies just trying to figure out ways that we can do more together, and there is just a lot of reception there."

We recently broke the story of a small search software outlet named Masterobjects taking on Amazon.com in a notable patent infringement lawsuit, later also taking Google to court. Now it's apparently Microsoft's turn to get sued by the company, and my guess is more will follow.

Amazon.com, apart from being a major online retailer of books, DVDs, music, games, apparel, and other merchandise, also has a small business of providing cloud and other Web services. It offers Web services like cloud computing and cloud storage service offerings, in which it competes with bigger players like Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.com. Amazon also owns and operates websites such as Audible.com, IMDB.com, and Shelfari.com.

One in four young professionals wants to work at Google, according to a recent survey. Apple ranked second, with Disney, the State Department and Amazon rounding out the top five.

Akamai’s real-time ad targeting solution could well be an important growth driver in the future for the company given the growing importance of behavioral targeting technology in the context of web advertisement. Companies such as Amazon and Google currently use similar technologies to identify user behavior and then offer suggestions or products that might interest users.

Netflix’s marketing costs increased 39% to $81 million in the latest quarter from $58.5 million in Q3 2009 [1]. Netflix continues to win new subscribers despite competing with a host of other online and offline video services offered by players like Apple, Amazon, Google, Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Google plans to help publishers sell digital versions of new books direct to consumers, for use on phones or e-book readers.