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Consumer Watchdog advocate John Simpson pored over Google’s 2009 Form 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and made a striking discovery. While Google listed only Microsoft and Yahoo by name in its 2008 10-K filing, the search engine listed 10 companies that it views as competitors in the 2009 document. Yahoo and Microsoft Bing are listed as Google’s chief competition in search. No surprises there. What is surprising is what company isn’t listed as a competitor. Has Apple become Google’s Lord Voldemort to the point where it dare not speak its name as the maker of the iPhone and iPad? See who and what Google regards as its foremost rivals in this eWEEK slide show.
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News Analysis: Microsoft Office is a key product for the software company. It contributes heavily to its bottom line. But as the market changes and Microsoft’s focus strays, Office could have a less-than-stellar future ahead of it. Here are 10 reasons why Microsoft needs to pay attention to the competitors that are creeping up on Office’s dominant position.
– Microsoft Office contributes heavily to Microsoft’s bottom line. It’s also
one of the key services that the enterprise clings to in day-to-day operations.
And with
Microsoft Office 2010 right around the corner, Microsoft is poised to
capitalize once again on those that want to deploy the newest …

A version of Google’s Chrome OS tuned for business users might be made available to enterprise customers in 2011. But if the OS is to be successful, Google needs to improve its appeal to corporate customers. Take a look at the essential features Chrome will need to make it in the business world.
– Reports are suggesting that Google Chrome OS for enterprise users will be
available in 2011. Google has yet to make a definitive statement on it, but it
seems rather likely that the search giant will work toward offering the service
sooner rather than later, so it can capitalize on the burgeoning…

RightNow Technologies on March 4 introduced its Cloud Service Agreement, which it claims will give clients far greater flexibility in negotiating contracts for its software-as-a-service customer experience applications. RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte contends the Cloud Service Agreement will make it easier and less expensive for prospective customers to start using RightNow’s Web-based applications compared with the terms offered by its competitors, such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft and Oracle.
– SAN FRANCISCO RightNow
Technologies, competing as one of the smaller players in the software-as-a-service
market with the likes of Salesforce.com, Oracle, Microsoft and SAP,
offered a “Cloud Services Agreement” that it claims is a radically better deal
for customers than the contracts offered by…

It’s true that experience can be the best teacher, but there also can be real-world costs to learning things on the job. If mistakes are made, those costs can be substantial for a company’s bottom line. That has proved harmful to many IT management careers. So when you want to introduce something new to your IT system, such as internal or external cloud infrastructure or services, do your homework to find out how others have fared. Because cloud systems are trendy, a lot of IT managers are looking at how they might work for them. Good advice, gained by front-line experience, is gold.

Here eWEEK has consulted with Seagate Technology’s wholly owned subsidiary, i365, for its advice. Formerly called Seagate Services, i365 handles online storage and e-discovery, disaster recovery and file sharing services for midmarket companies and SMBs. Chief Technology Officer David Allen shares his and i365’s experience for eWEEK readers.
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Socialtext, the enterprise wiki pioneer, released version 4.0 of its platform March 3. The new release boasts a new Groups object to provide users with a virtual gathering place, to rally around a particular topic or goal. Socialtext Signals, the company’s microblogging tool, now lets users filter the short messages colleagues share with them by group. Socialtext Desktop lets users flashback from any microblogging message to see the context of the discussion at the time it was published. In this slide show eWEEK walks through the new capabilities, geared to trump offerings from rivals Yammer and Socialcast.
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At a shareholder meeting earlier this week, Steve Jobs told Apple investors that his company has $40 billion in cash-on-hand ready to be invested in technology and other strategies that will help the company continue to succeed going forward.

Having that much cash and enjoying the kind of success it does is extremely important for a company such as Apple. It gives it leverage. And it ensures that if problems arise, it can address them with cash.

But since Jobs has opted against a stock buy-back program, it seems that he will likely invest some of that cash into new projects. Exactly what he will do is unknown. But that won’t stop us from spending it for him. There are several things that Apple can do with $40 billion in cash. And all of those ideas will help its business going forward. Let’s take a look at what Apple can do with $40 billion.
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Google March 1 bought Web-based photo editing specialist Picnik for an undisclosed sum, adding another cloud computing tool to its arsenal. Picnik lets users import their photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr and the other aforementioned sites and make changes to them. Google will be working hard to integrate Picnik within Google and will add new features in the future. Picnic boasts 20 employees, who will join Google’s Seattle offices. One of these new employees is Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato, who joined the Picnik team after selling his company Phatbits to Google.
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Google March 1 agreed to acquire Web-based photo editing
specialist Picnik
for an undisclosed sum, acquiring yet another startup created by a fomer Google
employee.
The Web is full of photo-sharing tools and destinations,
including Google’s own Picasa Web albums, Flickr, Photobuc…

When Yammer CEO David Sacks unveiled Yammer Communities on Feb. 25, he opened a new door for companies interested in using Twitter-like status updates to communicate with customers and partners. A free service, with the potential for additional security features, Yammer Communities lets users who don’t share the same e-mail domain communicate securely. Available March 1, the offering could help Yammer gain more traction as it seeks to compete with Socialtext, Socialcast and others that offer enterprise microblogging. See a tour of Yammer Communities here.
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As an enterprise grows, its IT system needs to grow along with it. In fact, it’s optimal for an IT system to stay a few jumps ahead of current production requirements. For many businesses, the idea of outsourcing key applications to a trusted cloud service is beginning to look more and more attractive, as data storage and server hardware/software and I/O needs expand. What does it entail to make the jump from a safe, fairly predictable local data center environment to an outsourced service provider with a data center or colocation center that’s somewhere in the world? Sajai Krishnan, a 30-year storage veteran who started up cloud infrastructure provider ParaScale last year, has definite ideas about this subject. He shares his insight here with eWEEK readers.
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