Fortune Watch

1. 10% market share for Google Chrome.

2. Google’s search engine will lose a significant amount of market share as Live Search’s position will consolidate.

3. Google’s Q&A service, used to implement Google help forums, will become a part of Google Apps.

4. GrandCentral will be publicly available in the US and the interface will integrate with Gmail.

5. Google will launch a mobile browser for feature phones and non-Android smart phones.

6. The popular Google Bookmarks service will improve the way you manage bookmarks, by adding hierarchical labels, sharing options and more intuitive visualizations.

7. Google will bring some of the Chrome features to other browsers.

8. Google Translate will be seamlessly integrated with many Google services and applications.

9. Google Reader will list popular posts shared by the community and you’ll be able to subscribe to OPML files dynamically (the changes will reflect in your subscription list).

10. Google Maps Live – Google’s service will showcase webcams that stream from all around the world, it will include a tab for Google Earth and the most recent custom maps, reviews and map edits from your contacts.

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The global automotive depression has finally reached all the way to the top — to Japan’s Toyota Motor Corporation, which on Monday said it now expects to lose money in its automotive operations. This will be the first such loss in 70 years.

Toyota, like its Japanese counterparts, has been staggered by the yen’s stunning appreciation against the U.S. dollar — which makes Japanese exports more expensive overseas — as well as plunging vehicle sales in North America and other major export markets.

For the fiscal year that ends March 31, Toyota still expects to eke out a modest profit of $555 million, which looks pretty good in comparison to the billions of dollars of losses incurred already this year by Detroit’s beleaguered automakers.

But the world’s largest vehicle manufacturer by sales volume and market value said it now expects to post a fiscal-year operating loss of nearly $1.7 billion, a dramatic turnaround from the $13.9 billion operating profit Toyota had forecast earlier this year and revised operating profit of $6.7 billion that it released in November. Media reports in Japan said it would be the first operating loss since just after the firm was founded in 1937.

Executives also said total revenues for the fiscal year now are expected to fall about 18 percent, to around $239 billion, revised downward from the earlier projection of $256 billion.
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It is important to look for positive points to find a way out of the financial crisis, apart from philosophic controversy.

All countries, whether separately or collectively, are working hard to contain the crisis, or at least to reduce losses, despite the gloomy picture of the global economy and the pessimistic atmosphere blanketing the entire world.

Although it is difficult to speak about positive points while the entire world is facing such a crisis, there must be some positive aspects.

The first of these positive effects is that the financial crisis ushers in an end to the domination of the sole magnate in international financial relations, which was a major cause of the crisis.

Wall Street was the world’s most powerful investment house, just a few months ago, where investments used to pour from the East and the West. Now Wall Street means bankruptcy, and investors in fear of losing their money do their best to avoid it.

At present, there are regions in Europe and Asia, including the Gulf region, emerging as hubs of huge investments, which will bring about more stability to the world financial system. This shift is important for restructuring international relations in the post-crisis stage.

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Are you planning to put up your own small business? Then as early as now, you must already be thinking of every aspect of our business and the things that you would need in order for your business to operate well.

For small businesses, one of the most convenient promotional materials to use is posters because they are easy to work with, very cost efficient and also poster printing when done well could reel you in with more customers than you expect thus, it would also mean better investment returns for you.

The innovations made in technology had totally changed the way businesses handle all their printing jobs. The introduction of online printing had totally helped business people handle all their printing projects without the need to leave the comfort of their homes. Thus with online printing business had achieved to attain fast turn around days and easy printing jobs.

Invitation printing is among the preferred printing services opted at present. Although it is often implied that invitations can be done through the word of the mouth, people still make use of invitation cards for formality, for their clients or friends not to forget about the affair that will about to happen.

Online printing can be an ideal choice of doing your invitation printing projects. Through online printing you only need to:

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But, some economists say that the slowdown in August could be a temporary blip, and may not be indicative of a long-term trend.

China’s industrial output grew at its weakest pace in more than six year last month, partly due to the industrial shutdowns ordered by the government ahead of Olympics, the government’s statistics agency said on Friday. The sharp decline continued to be affected by the global economic downturn.

Industrial production in China expanded by 12.8% in August from a year earlier, the National Statistics Bureau said after a gain of 14.7% in July. The August reading was less than the 14.5% median estimate of economists. This was slowest rate since August 2002 and well below the 17.5% recorded in August 2007.

But, some economists said that the slowdown in August could be a temporary blip, and may not be indicative of a long-term trend. China’s industrial activity will pick up with the re opening of factories in Beijing and surrounding areas, JP Morgan’s local securities unit wrote in a note.

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The site claims to scour far more of the Web than Google does. It promises to sift through more than 120 billion pages to arrive at the best results. Google no longer publicly offers up its breadth, though its silence there will only stir up the hype that Cuil is, in fact, the new Google.

Cuil is a search engine devised by a group of former Google employees. My initial impression of the site was that is was easy to use. It claims to have the largest database of indexed pages in the world, 121 billion – although Google won’t disclose the number of pages it has indexed. But how many pages a search engine has indexed may not mean that much. What matters is if it can find the one simple page a person is looking for.

So I did some tests of my own. I started with word “pirate”. Cuil’s top search result was a site called “Talk like a Pirate Day.” This site didn’t appear on the first page of Google’s results, although Google did find a wikipedia reference to it. Google’s top result was The Pirate Bay, a notorious file-sharing website. Pirate Bay was listed second in Cuil’s results. Beyond that, both sites offered, more or less, the same information.

But it was after the initial search that Cuil really began to shine. While Google offers some related searches, including pirate-related costumes, pictures and games, Cuil offered a much greater variety in alternative searches, including movies, games, software, sports, and even party suggestions.

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Yahoo founder and chief executive Jerry Yang accused Microsoft of trying to destabilize Yahoo with no genuine intent to buy the company, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Yang, on the defensive as billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn seeks to unseat the current Yahoo board and install his own people in order to propel Yahoo into Microsoft’s hands, told the Journal that Microsoft has not pursued talks with the company in earnest.

He noted in an interview with the newspaper that Microsoft has recently expressed interest in opening new negotiations to buy Yahoo’s search engine business if Icahn’s proxy fight succeeds.

“To trust Mr. Icahn and his board is really a bad choice,” Yang told the Journal.

“I think that the destabilizing by Microsoft has become more and more intentional. I am not happy about it.”

On Monday Yahoo’s stock price jumped nearly 12 percent after Microsoft said it is willing to reopen talks on a “major transaction” with Yahoo if its board undergoes a major shakeup.

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Shaking off the sting of its collapsed deal with Yahoo!, Microsoft bought addressable TV player Navic Networks in a deal that will extend its ad platform to television.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Navic works with top cable companies to provide targeted TV advertising with a nascent ad network called Admira. It works with cable companies like Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Charter. Dish Network also uses its technology. Its technology is used to run ad campaigns targeted to viewer groups, and also offers interactive features like the ability to click through for long-form content.

“We’re clearly making a commitment to emerging media,” Brian McAndrews, svp of advertiser and publisher solutions at Microsoft, said in an interview here. “In the long run, we want to be a platform across all media.”

McAndrews painted the move as a way to “accelerate” Microsoft’s efforts to build a wide-ranging ad platform that would allow advertisers to place, target and track ads on the Web, mobile, in video games and now TV. It has added capabilities through acquisition, such as the 2006 purchase of video game ad network Massive and the 2007 buy of mobile ad network Screentonic.

Buying Navic is also a way to keep pace with Google, which is making a push to enter the estimated $80 billion TV ad market. McAndrews said Navic differs from Google’s approach by working directly with cable companies versus satellite services, allowing greater targeting and not forcing broadcasters to use an auction. Project Canoe, which recently recruited Aegis Media Americas CEO David Verklin to head it, is attempting to bring ad targeting to TV through a consortium of cable companies.

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Analysts believe it’s “possible” that the software giant Microsoft could acquire an equity stake in eBay’s PayPal and Skype. So are we talking about minority stakes or total ownership? Is eBay even up for the sale?

No matter how you slice it, Microsoft has a lot to gain if eBay is willing to sell off any of its moving parts.

We can’t argue against the notion that Microsoft could swallow eBay whole. This was suggested as much three months ago. Such a move would make sense, especially since PayPal and Skype are good fits in Microsoft’s online strategy.

Microsoft once had dreams of taking on PayPal. It was hoping to transform its Passport platform into a transactional medium for third parties.

PayPal was too big to compete against back then, and it’s even bigger now. The only real threat to PayPal these days is Google Checkout, and not even that race is close. If Microsoft wanted to buy Yahoo! so badly, imagine how much it would love to own the micropayments standard that’s trouncing Google, which itself is smacking Yahoo! around these days.

Skype is another good fit. The leader in online chat dovetails nicely with Microsoft’s Web-based communications efforts through Windows Live Messenger.

Then we have eBay itself. Microsoft is no stranger to the leading consumer-to-consumer auction-listings website. eBay is part of the program, through which Microsoft rewards buyers with rebates.

Perhaps the most important aspect eBay can offer in Microsoft’s quest to take on Google is that eBay’s website traffic consists of consumers with a predisposition to spend money online. And Microsoft needs quality traffic, not simply the sheer volume of poorly monetized pages it would have gotten on a Yahoo! deal.

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The combination of Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines creates the world’s largest airline and will quickly test the theory that a bigger carrier can effectively confront record fuel prices.

US carriers Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines are combining to form the world’s largest airline if regulators and stockholders approve the deal.

In short, the combination strategy is focused on squeezing enough operating efficiencies out of a huge global network — and likely from culling weak-performing domestic flights — to make a mammoth enterprise strong enough to survive the current fuel crunch.The third and fifth largest airlines will marry under the name Delta with a combined value of $17.7 billion, the two announced after their boards approved the merger yesterday.

The merger boasts the creation of the world’s largest airline in terms of fleet, destinations and total passengers.

“Combining Delta and Northwest will create a global flag carrier strongly positioned to compete with foreign airlines that are continuing to increase service to the country-region,” a joint statement said.

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