The Internet: love it or hate it, you probably spend a decent amount of time online both at work and at home. In 2010, comScore reported that the average American spent 32 hours per month on the Internet. With the vast amount of time we are spending (or wasting) online, wouldn’t it be nice to be rewarded for your browsing efforts? This wish has been granted thanks to Google’s latest venture: Screenwise Trends.

There has been much discussion lately surrounding Internet piracy as a result of Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Long before the creation of this act, Google made four promises to help fight online piracy in a 2010 blog post titled, “Making Copyright Work Better Online.” Recently, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) issued a report card lecturing Google on not following through with several of its promises. The report card, which gives Google an overall “incomplete” grade, also makes the bold request for Google to “stop making money from digital theft.”

Here is a quick look at the RIAA’s follow up to each of Google’s promises.

Yesterday Google announced “Search, Plus Your World,” a significant change to its search results that will put more emphasis on content within its social network, Google+. The new feature will allow Google robots to crawl data within Google+, and include this information along with public internet data when displaying search results.

The new Google “Personal Results” link delivers information relevant to searchers based on their search behavior, as well as their social connections. This means that two searchers will see different results for the same query. Regular, nonsocial search results will now be presented to users as “Other results.”

In a recent article by Search Engine Land, Googler Amit Singhal states, “The social search algorithm, and the personalized search algorithm are actually one algorithm now, and we are merging it in a way that is very pleasant and useful.” Only users logged in to Google will receive personal results, though each user has the capability to remove social content from their search results by disabling the option.

By Tiffany Houkom, Account Coordinator

Google is a tough competitor, but will Google Wallet be enough to go up against the banks?

As we all know, Google is one of the toughest and most resilient competitors in the digital market. Google’s dominance is due in part to its ability to consistently create highly innovative and quality products and services and in part to its host of loyal supporters and users. Also, Google frequently challenges its competition head-on and develops appealing alternatives to popular preexisting products and services. For example, Google took on Groupon with the introduction of Google Offers, it challenged Yelp with Google Places, and it began directly competing with Facebook by creating Google+. While the success of the latter is yet to be determined, Google’s foray into social networking is far from a failure. Thus, with the introduction of the search engine giant’s mobile payment service, Google Wallet, could Google’s next move be to directly compete with the banking industry?

There has been a decent amount of buzz on the web over the last year concerning the potential benefits of Google becoming a bank. It is important to note that Google already possesses bank-like characteristics. And in 2007 Google obtained a license to provide digital banking services from the Central Bank of the Netherlands. While there is no current evidence that Google is actively pursuing a banking coup, industry writer Dave Davies recently commented on this idea and discussed how such a move could benefit Google, businesses, and consumers in an article titled, “Why Would Google Become a Bank?” Here are some of the top benefits Davies poses:

The ability to track offline conversions: Many businesses currently face the issue of not being able to connect paid ad clicks that eventually lead to offline purchases. Davies suggests the use of Google payment options such as Google Wallet could close this gap. Also, Davies claims that “connecting purchases to users’ Google accounts would give [business owners] access to demographic data based on items purchased.” While this would be a huge advantage for businesses, there is no doubt that privacy concerns could hinder the ability for businesses to gain access to this information.

By Tiffany Houkom, Account Coordinator

Google is giving us another reason to stop forestalling browser updates. If you’re not sure if you have the latest version of your browser, click through to the rest of the story and find the links you need.

Google recently announced its plans to discontinue support for outdated browsers. As of Aug. 1, Google will only support what it claims to be “modern browsers,” which includes the current and prior release of popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. This will be an ongoing effort, as each time a new version of a browser is released, Google will discontinue support for the third oldest version. Users of Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari 3 will be the first affected by the change.

“Discontinuing support” does not mean that users will be unable to access Google. Rather, new features from apps like Gmail, Google docs and Google sites may not be available to users who prefer to stick with the antiquated browsers. Google’s reasoning behind this bold move? The search giant claims that in order for users to experience the web to its fullest potential, they need an advanced browser that supports HTML5. With ever-changing Internet technologies, older browsers simply do not offer the same high quality experience as modern browsers like Firefox 5 or Internet Explorer 9. Besides being able to access all of Google’s features, modern browsers offer improved speed, increased reliability, additional browsing features, and better privacy and security.

Google is not the only one interested in encouraging users to upgrade their browsers. For years Microsoft has been on a mission to get users to upgrade from IE6 and IE7. According to the Windows Blog, these two browsers “accounted for 38.51% of internet users worldwide.” In March 2011, Microsoft launched the Internet Explorer 6 Countdown, an initiative to get users to upgrade from the decade-old browser. Microsoft is also asking Web developers to aid in the demise of IE6 by placing upgrade notifications for IE6 users on their websites. Roger Capriotti, Director of Internet Explorer Product Marketing, states that popular sites such as CNET, Facebook and MSN currently feature this notification. The success of this campaign is already apparent, as Microsoft claims that worldwide IE6 usage has declined to 10.9 percent. While this number is still a far cry from their target goal of 1 percent, they have made tremendous progress in only four months.