Here’s a helpful reminder, via a Bernstein research note out today. By 2016, analyst Carlos Kirjner predicts, the majority of Web search queries will come from mobile devices.

One interesting caveat to that projection: It doesn’t include searches from tablets. I gather this is because Kirjner is trying to distinguish between searches conducted via wireless networks and those made using broadband connections, via Wi-Fi, although I’m not quite sure why that matters.

But if you added tablet searches, you’d reach the tipping point that much earlier. And it will get there much sooner in the U.S., anyway, because smartphone penetration is much higher here than other parts of the world.

Given that Apple’s iOS devices use Google search now — last fall, Google said that two-thirds of its search traffic comes from iOS — all mobile growth is good for Google.

But at some point, Kirjner suggests, Apple may decide to jettison Google for a competitor like, say, Microsoft. And that could cause real problems for Larry Page and company. But those problems would be much, much worse if Google hadn’t created an iPhone competitor in the first place.

In short, it’s offering an open API.

For casual app users and non-techies, hearing that a company is opening up its API may present yet another confusing tech acronym to puzzle out — or lead them to believe the company is opening up some sort of striped-awning storefront.

An open API, or application programming interface, is common among popular Web and mobile apps, enabling the growth of the application while other developers tap into the basic functions of what the app does. Google, Facebook and Twitter all have open APIs, which is why you can use so many applications that tap into their feeds and functions. On a much smaller scale, apps that create photo magnets and canvases emblazoned with your Instagram photos are tapping into Instagram’s open API; apps that offer “tips” on venues or remind you where you “checked into” a year ago are using Foursquare’s open API; and the list goes on.

Because TaskRabbit is a Web service that isn’t just a Web service — you use it to hire real people, who are vetted through a multistep approval process before joining the Task force — this means other apps can now have a button or feature that allows you to hire someone for your needs.

The best use case might be integration with a “to-do” app: Let’s say you’re using an app to stay organized, and hiring someone to walk the dog or digitize your contacts is on the list — now you can use a TaskRabbit to do it.

That’s exactly how TaskRabbit’s open API is rolling out: A “to-do” app called Astrid is integrating TaskRabbit into its Android, iPhone and Web apps, while task-management app Producteev is putting TaskRabbit-hiring options onto its Web app. For mobile, the TaskRabbit API will be available across iOS, Android and Windows platforms.

YouEye, a Web site for user testing and feedback, is tapping into TaskRabbit’s API for business purposes, to staff Rabbits as testers for its site.

TaskRabbit was founded in 2008 by Leah Busque, a former IBM-er who now holds a chief product role at the company, and is run by CEO Eric Gross, the former president of Expedia Worldwide. The service is currently available in five seven cities across the U.S., though it has detailed plans for aggressive expansion over the next year.

In December, the company raised $17.8 million in a Series B round of funding from existing investors, as well as from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Allen & Company and the Tornante Company; TaskRabbit brought former Disney CEO Michael Eisner on board as a strategic adviser.

As we’ve noted before, TaskRabbit is not alone in the market for outsourcing domestic duties: Competing platform Zaarly raised $14 million from Kleiner Perkins and Sands Capital Ventures this October, and added Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman as a board member. Another company, GigWalk, offers a mobile app that finds local workers for on-the-spot small jobs by tapping into the inherent GPS capabilities of smartphones.

(Photo courtesy of The.Sprouts/Flickr)

The 2012 election cycle is proving a big one for Google NetPAC, the company’s political action committee.

According to a year-end report filed with the Federal Election Commission, Google NetPAC raised $836,305 between July 1, 2011 and Dec. 31, 2011 — the first half of the 2012 election cycle. And so far it has donated $221,250 of it.

That’s more than a 50 percent increase over what Google NetPAC spent at the same point in the 2010 election cycle. Which is significant. Keep in mind, we’re a little over halfway through the current cycle, and the committee still has some $740,960 cash on hand to spend.

Among the donations made: $5,000 to Rep. Lamar Smith, the Texas congressman who concocted the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that Google so vehemently opposes.

An odd disbursement, considering that Google NetPAC’s stated goal is to “support federal officeholders and candidates who share Google’s goal of promoting the Internet as a free and open platform for communication and innovation, to the benefit of our users.”

Hopefully the committee’s contributions to SOPA opponents canceled it out.

Feature image credit: iStockphoto | penfold

The photo-viewer started rolling out earlier this month, and appears to have been implemented widely in the last few days. Plenty of folks have noted that it’s similar to the format Google uses in Google+. I think the ad treatment is much more interesting.

Here’s the old format, via a Huffington Post screenshot:

And here’s the new one:

Those screenshots give you some idea of the new prominence the ads get, but it’s even more obvious in real life. Put it this way: I look at Facebook a lot, and I didn’t even realize that Facebook had been showing me ads when I clicked on photos. Now I can’t avoid them.

For now, that is. Entirely possible that I’ll develop the same “banner blindness” that I have for lots of other Web ads.

Also worth noting that these ads only seem to show up on photos that don’t have many comments on them. Photos that do have lots of comments display those comments instead. So if you’re looking at, say, pictures posted by Mark Zuckerberg, you won’t end up seeing ads next those images at all.

I asked Facebook reps for comment, and they offered a boilerplate response: “We’re constantly testing new designs and layouts on Facebook.”

So I’ll take the liberty of adding what they might say — if they had a beer or two and weren’t talking to a reporter: “See? This is one reason why you guys should trust us when we explain that we’re in the early stages of social advertising. If this format works, it means we’ll have opened up a huge slug of real estate we weren’t using. Boom! Instant revenue stream! And it’s also why you should just chill out about the fact that we don’t yet make any money from mobile. Of course we’re going to figure out how to put ads on your iPhone! We just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

Thanks, imaginary slightly tipsy Facebook rep! Look forward to chatting with you again soon.

The tiny, Atlanta-based company launched in October 2010. Run by CEO Juan Pablo Gnecco and CTO Alan Queen, Movl (pronounced (MOE-vul) develops what it calls “multiscreen, multidevice” apps that are meant to enhance the connected-TV experience.

In early 2011, Movl’s Pictionary-like WeDraw app won $200,000 as part of Samsung’s Smart TV apps competition. Last month, Movl announced that it had developed an app called SwipeIt, which works on Android phones and Samsung TVs (and is technically owned by Samsung), allowing users to “swipe” content from their phones and have it appear on their TV screens.

Now the company is working on something called Direct Connect, which adds to the existing Connect service and is designed to work with both the Wi-Fi and 3G capabilities of mobile devices. One example the company gave was tapping into a smartphone’s built-in accelerometer and using the phone as a game controller.

Movl is also experimenting with a multiscreen, interactive ad platform and something it has code-named Kontrol TV, which will offer shortcuts for users to find multiple TV apps from the same app — and not just channel apps, but also trends, tweets, and other social media references related to TV shows. The company is aiming for a May launch of Kontrol TV.

Essentially, Movl is to Samsung TVs what AirPlay is to TVs using the Apple TV box. While enabling users to “throw” content from their mobile devices to their TV screens, Movl also wants to package all the various TV-related apps on that mobile device into one “shell.”

The apps currently work on Samsung TVs, Google TV-equipped sets, iOS and Android devices. Movl said that it is becoming increasingly focused on developing everything in HTML5, which Gnecco and Queen say they see more smart TVs moving toward.

Cuban explained his interest in the company by saying he thinks smart TVs, as a platform, are getting ready to take off, as new TVs get more powerful by the day.

He also said he feels the introduction of an Apple TV — as in an Apple-manufactured television set, not Apple TV in its current form — wouldn’t necessarily disrupt small fish like Movl, because they might have an already-established user base if or when an Apple TV comes out. Apple won’t ever have 100 percent of the TV market, and both Samsung and Vizio have a solid foothold, Cuban believes.

There’s also the question of whether Movl’s new applications could potentially raise the ire of cable operators, who have been introducing their own apps for mobile devices, and who might not like Movl’s idea to aggregate all TV-related apps into Movl’s Kontrol “shell,” as the company describes it.

But Movl says it’s not looking to usurp other apps — it mainly just wants to make it easier for a user to toggle between various TV apps during a multiscreen viewing experience. The company has been speaking with some cable providers that are interested in using Movl as a possible white-label solution, it says.

The effort marks the Internet company’s first full-fledged effort to design and market consumer electronics devices under the Google brand, and represents a sharp shift in strategy. Google has up to now mainly focused on developing the Android software that powers devices such as smartphones and tablets and allowing other companies to build and brand the hardware that uses it.

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At any given Summit, you might rub elbows with Bill Clinton, Russell Simmons, the president of Georgia, or drummer ?uestlove from The Roots. The event is not lecture-driven; it’s meant to inspire open discussions and connect people through out-of-the-box activities.

The atmosphere at this year’s Summit Basecamp was even more dynamic and powerful than in previous years. It took place in Squaw Valley, Calif., and brought many attendees together on a deeper level. Regardless of the range of business icons, politicians and artists, Rishi Malhotra, President of Bollywood content distributor Saavn notes, “Summit has this unique ability to make everybody equal.”

Unlike other multi-discipline events, Summit Series doesn’t just promote back-patting and lofty ideas, it actually drives action. Connections kindled through the event have led to hundreds of start-up investments, non-profit initiatives and new art programs.

Here are four trends buzzed around the Summit that could spur the next wave of innovation:

1. Technology fuels an education revolution. Catalyzed by cloud computing, online video, and the lower cost of tablet PCs, a crop of new initiatives are set to change the way the world learns. Four notable examples are:

   Free classes: Khan Academy, with its mission to “provide a free world-class education to anyone anywhere,” is leading this entire space. Over 2600 online videos are now free to the world, covering a variety of educational topics.

   The Behaving Game: ClassDojo has built an entirely new model for managing student behavior in real time. The rewards system feels like the future of getting a “gold star” for good behavior. The company came out of the U.K. last summer and is already one of the fastest growing education technology companies, ever. ClassDojo is diving into the realm of behavior management, a completely untapped area of education innovation.

   Extreme PC makeover: Neverware is another awesome company looking to make “old school computers” new again, thanks to one central server installation. The Neverware Juicebox is a server appliance that ends the need to upgrade all desktops in a school. Once installed on the school’s network, all of the PCs run Windows 7 as though they were new, fast computers. So instead of being forced to replace old PCs, schools can use Neverware’s affordable service to keep machines up to date with the newest OS available.

   DIY coding: Thanks to Codecademy, programming is no longer a skill reserved for the Internet elite. With its interactive self-teaching JavaScript course, Codecademy encourages individuals with no coding background to dive in and learn how to build Web sites at their own pace.

   New companies like these, coupled with Apple’s push behind its iBooks textbook store and Pearson Education’s incubation AlleyOop, which gamifies adaptive learning, demonstrates that major corporate support for the sector is also happening. Combined with this group of start-ups and many others, 2012 should be the year of education innovation.

2. Beyond Facebook. Despite Facebook’s pending IPO, this year’s Summit buzzed about a new cadre of social media gathering spots.

   Google+ was a popular topic among many Summit attendees. Discussions revolved around Google’s ability to scale its social network and leverage assets such as Gmail and Android. Some attendees believed that Google’s ability to potentially turn on a requirement that any new Android user sign in via Google+ could be a major game changer, resulting in hundreds of millions — if not a billion — new users.

   Interest-based social networks were a hot topic this year. These services, many of which are primarily accessed via smartphone or tablet, cater to specific passions — with particular buzz around services like Pinterest, Thumb, Foodspotting and Instagram.

3. Go global or risk losing out to your copycat. The old rules of building a start-up in America meant incremental growth: Build a critical mass and then expand, country by country, only making moves when a service or product could meet the needs of a new market and its economics.

   Today’s start-ups are going global at a faster rate than ever before because a good idea spreads faster than ever. The rate of copycat creators in Asia, Europe and Latin America is forcing U.S. start-ups to launch and then expand quickly, before spinoffs of their own products surpass them. A new crop of gatekeepers appeared at this year’s Summit, offering effective ways to take businesses to China, India and the Middle East. Lesson of Summit: Once you create a hit service, you need to rapidly scale it before someone else does.

4. Self-Measurement. The past two Summits have spread a powerful message of self-measurement. Based on the nearly full sessions ranging from breathing to yoga to self-confidence, tomorrow’s leaders are more in tune with their spiritual, physical and mental health.
   As Tim Chang, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund summed up nicely, “Summit was a great checkup and check in on the power of self-evaluation and the potential for innovation in every aspect of our lives.”

   Additionally, technology and self-measurement are aligning with each other. From blood-pressure-monitoring iPhone apps to memory-strengthening online videos, there was an emphasis on ways to improve one’s daily routine, focusing on a true work/life balance. Expect technology and self-measurement to continue to grow in sync and produce amazing new services.

Let’s see how these trends play out in 2012.

As Chief Talker of VSCpr, Chattha’s agency has led strategy and public relations efforts for over sixty technology brands representing a combined $20bn in public market capitalization and disruptive start-ups that have successfully exited for a combined $4.7bn to the likes of Google, Visa, Nokia, AOL and Omnicom Group. Chattha received the gold star award for Publicist of the Year and Digital Communications Professional of the Year as judged by reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post in the 2011 Bulldog Reporter Stars of PR Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @vijaychattha.

Like Dropbox, Google’s storage service, called Drive, is a response to the growth of Internet-connected mobile devices like smartphones and tablets and the rise of “cloud computing,” or storing files online so that they can be retrieved from multiple devices, these people said.

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Google’s very first employee, Craig Silverstein, is leaving the company to join the high-profile online learning phenom, Khan Academy.

News of the departure first appeared yesterday in a line in a newsletter on education-tech entrepreneurship EdSurge, and the search giant confirmed the departure to me.

[UPDATE: Here's a statement from a Google spokesperson -- and not CEO Larry Page (classy and appreciative of others as ever!, Larry!) -- on Silverstein's leaving: "Craig's been with Google since the early days. He was instrumental in the development of search and made numerous contributions to Google over the years. We wish him all the best at the Khan Academy and know that he will do great things to help them promote education around the world."]

Silverstein, who was actually Google’s No. 3 employee — that would be after its pair of founders, Page and Sergey Brin — has had a variety of technology jobs at the company over the years since it was founded in 1998.

But his first — helping them build the famed and lucrative search engine itself — was perhaps his most important. An experienced techie, Silverstein worked with Brin and Page on Google, from their dorm rooms as Ph.D. students at Stanford University, to their garage days, to the giant and diversified behemoth it is today, with tens of thousands of employees.

Currently, he has been working on a variety of projects, including mentoring engineers.

Having spent some time with him over the years, I can tell you that he’s a lovely and adorkable guy, whose infectious enthusiasm and joy of tech has always embodied what I always refer to as “Good Google” (as opposed to, well, you know).

Silverstein will simply be a developer at Khan Academy’s Mountain View, Calif., offices, but I have emails for more details in to all parties.

Speaking of party — IMHO, Larry and Sergey should throw him a really nice one. Really nice — it’s well-deserved.

Here is Silverstein’s cute goodbye email to staff that I obtained (natch!):

[I couldn't possibly remember everyone who I should be sending this mail to, so please feel free to spread the word to anyone I missed!]

It is with decidedly mixed feelings that I announce, after more than 13 years, that I’m leaving Google. My last day will be Feb 10. I’ll be joining the Khan Academy as a developer.

Some of you thought this day would never come (as one person once put it: “Will you die at Google?”), and it was an extremely difficult choice. I am as passionate about Google’s mission now as I’ve ever been, and as proud of the work we’re doing to achieve it. While a lot has changed at Google over the years, I think we’ve done a remarkable job of staying true to our core mission of making the world a better place by making information more accessible and useful. I am looking forward to pursuing that same mission, though in a slightly different way, at Khan.

I’m extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such smart, passionate, and interesting people — not just a few, either, but (almost :-) ) everyone I worked with. I’m grateful not just that I had so many co-workers I could respect, but even more that I had so many that I could count as friends. I will miss that most of all, and I hope you will continue to be in touch. I also accept lunch invitations!

When I write my massive 4-volume autobiography, “Craig Silverstein: the Man Behind the Legend,” I will devote an entire volume to my years at Google. I can’t emphasize enough how meaningful my time at Google has been, and how meaningful all of you have been to it. I mean it literally when I say: all the best,

craig

And here’s the video of a speech Silverstein gave at the University of North Carolina in 2008, about Google’s origins:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Tech companies have recently ratcheted up their offensive use of intellectual property, especially in the mobile space — but not so much in social networking.

Just in case patent wars happen to be contagious, it seems worth evaluating which social networking players are best-equipped.

I wrote on Wednesday about a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is hopeful that Google may pursue some of the patents and patent applications he filed on behalf of a company he started that Google later acquired.

Also on Wednesday, on the occasion of Facebook filing to go public, two patent researchers from Envision IP posted a good summary of the distribution of social networking patents among tech companies.

Here’s a breakdown:

Facebook: Facebook told prospective investors that it has “56 issued patents and 503 filed patent applications in the United States and 33 corresponding patents and 149 filed patent applications in foreign countries relating to social networking, web technologies and infrastructure, and related technologies.”

(Here’s a list of some of the granted patents, direct from the USPTO.)

This Facebook news feed patent lists Mark Zuckerberg as the first inventor.

Facebook’s patents cover inventions created at the company, like its news feed and some privacy features, as well as some additional intellectual property it acquired.

The biggest patent acquisition deal Facebook has done was with MOL Global, for the Friendster patent portfolio of seven patents and 11 patent applications in May 2010. That cost $40 million — something insiders considered a steal, given the risk of the patents falling into someone else’s hands.

The Friendster patents cover topics like making connections on a social network, friend-of-a-friend connections through a social graph, and social media sharing.

At Facebook’s most recent internal valuation, the stock alone spent on the Friendster patent deal is now worth more than $100 million.

(Personal side note: The Friendster patents are something I’ve now written about for years. I broke the news, for Red Herring, on Friendster being awarded a patent on social networking in 2006, then reported on Facebook acquiring them at GigaOM.)

Google: Though Google hasn’t been a major social networking provider for all that long, it has 25 U.S. patents and 40 pending U.S. patent applications on the topic, by Envision IP’s count.

Google has aggressively hunted intellectual property about social networking. As I referenced earlier, it got a patent portfolio through its acquisition of the Dealmap (previously Fatdoor). That includes patents and patent applications on things like regions of influence within users of a network.

Image from the core Dodgeball patent

Last year, Google also acquired some patents from the shut-down social search engine Wowd, including one on user-driven ranking of Web pages. In an interesting twist that resulted from a three-way split of Wowd’s assets, Google currently licenses those patents to Facebook. Backstory here.

Back in 2005, Google also bought Dodgeball, the mobile social application created by Dennis Crowley, which predated Foursquare. And it turns out that because of Dodgeball, Google is assigned what looks to be a broadly worded patent on “location-based software for mobile devices” that describes messaging between two users who are in close physical proximity to each other.

The Six Degrees patent: Back in 2003, Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus paid $700,000 in an auction for a seminal patent from the failed social network Six Degrees, in part to keep it away from Friendster’s control. Hoffman recently told me that he and Pincus bought the patent as individuals, and then assigned it to their companies, LinkedIn and Tribe.net.

Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM: Envision IP notes that Apple has 35 U.S. patents and 76 U.S. patent applications that seem to be about social networking and collaboration, many of them focused on mobile. Yahoo has an armory of patents on all sorts of general Web technologies, while Microsoft and IBM have about 80 patents on file sharing, messaging and infrastructure that could be used for social networks.

LinkedIn and Twitter: LinkedIn has one patent, on evaluating user reputations within a social network. Twitter doesn’t seem to have applied for a single patent (at least, not prior to 18 months ago, since that’s the period after which patent applications are published).

What are the other pockets of social networking intellectual property out there, at other companies and around the world? I’m sure I’ve missed some, so please add to this list in the comments.

How can I burn a slideshow that I made in iPhoto on my MacBook Pro onto a CD?

A:

You can export the slideshow as a video (a QuickTime movie in Apple parlance) and then burn that video to your CD.

Here’s how: In iPhoto, after you’ve created the photo slideshow, with titles, music and so forth, click on the “Export” button at the bottom of the slideshow-creation window. Choose an option for the resolution of your movie and click “Export.”

Then, choose a destination on your hard disk where you’ll temporarily store the movie. Next, insert the recordable CD, and copy the movie into the window representing the CD. Finally, click on the “Burn” button at the upper right of that CD window.

Q:

I have recently gone almost all Google: I moved my business email to Google, am using Google Docs, etc. I am in need of a new laptop and am considering a Google Chromebook. My question / concern is: What about programs I may need, such as iTunes, or some printer / scanner software, or an accounting suite? Will there be room for some of these programs and if so, will they operate on Chrome OS?

A:

Google’s Chromebook doesn’t run traditional programs. It is designed to only run so-called Web apps—app-like Web sites, from Google and others, that operate inside the Chrome browser. Also, it has very little local storage and depends on the Cloud—remote Internet servers—for most storage of apps and data. So, the bad news is you can’t install iTunes or your favorite Windows or Mac accounting suite on a Chromebook.

The good news is Google and others are churning out more and more Web apps for Chromebooks. For instance, there are a variety of music and accounting apps that might meet your needs. You can check these out at chrome.google.com/webstore.

Q:

I recently switched from BlackBerry to an Android-based phone. Do I need to install any anti-virus or firewall apps on an Android smartphone like what we do on a PC?

A:

It all depends on your tolerance for risk, your tolerance for running security software, how adventurous you are at downloading apps—and who you believe. Various reports have claimed that Android malware is surging, but last week Google disclosed a fairly new technology called “bouncer” that it has been using internally to weed out harmful apps. And the company claims there has been a big drop in malware in its app market in recent months.

My recommendation would be that if you are a safety-first person, or someone who experiments with lots of apps from companies you don’t know, you should consider using security software on Android.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Evidently, Google has no trouble with that percentage at all.

In a letter to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) today, Google said that should it complete its proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility, it will license the company’s standard-essential patents under “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory” terms (FRAND). To that end, it will honor Motorola Mobility’s existing essential patent licensing commitments and grant new ones going forward with “a maximum per-unit royalty of 2.25 percent.”

Now that might not sound like an untoward sum, but applied against a device’s selling price, it’s sizable. A rate of 2.25 percent on 2011 iPhone sales, for example, would have amounted to about $1 billion in potential royalties for Motorola.

That doesn’t seem fair or reasonable. More to the point, it runs contrary to the principles of FRAND licensing commitments, and bolsters arguments recently made by both Apple and Microsoft that the mobile industry really needs a consistent patent-licensing scheme.

“It’s a prohibitive royalty rate as long as they want to apply it against the selling price of what they call the ‘relevant end product,’” says FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller. “If they asked for 2.25 percent of the price of a baseband chip, they would at least propose a reasonable royalty base and one could then talk about how many patents go into such a chip and what the relative value of their patents is. But 2.25 percent of the selling price of the product as a whole is absolutely out of step with the concept of FRAND and with industry practice.”

However, antitrust enforcers in the U.S. and Europe remain concerned about Google’s commitment to license key Motorola patents to competitors on fair terms, those people said, and are likely to closely monitor Google’s use of the patents. The European Commission has set a deadline of Monday to decide whether to approve the acquisition.

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In after-hours trading, the company’s shares were down 10 percent, or $2.49, to $22.09.

Still, for its first earnings report since going public, Groupon was able to report a number of strong operating financials. (See notes from the company’s first earnings call below.)

Full-year revenues increased 419 percent to $1.6 billion, compared to $312.9 million in 2010. The company also drastically cut back its losses, reporting a loss of $350.8 million, or 97 cents a share, compared to $456.3 million, or a loss of $1.33 a share.

Analysts had expected the daily deals giant to report quarterly revenue of $475 million, according to Thomson Reuters.

Analysts also expected it to be Groupon’s first profitable quarter in nearly two years, as it slashed marketing expenses ahead of its IPO to become more efficient. Estimates were expecting the company to report a profit of three cents per share.

The company was not able to meet those expectations and reported a net loss of 8 cents a share during the fourth quarter.

Other notable highlights Groupon provided:

• Trailing 12-month gross billings per average active customer, which is a proxy for the total annualized spend per average customer, increased to $188 in Q4 from $160 in Q4 2010.
•  Groupon’s active customer base worldwide hit 33 million, increasing 275 percent year over year and more than 20 percent quarter over quarter. Active customers are defined as those who bought a Groupon in the past year.
• More than 26 million people have downloaded the Groupon mobile app on their smartphones worldwide.

In November, Groupon raised $700 million in an initial public offering.

At that size, it was the largest IPO by a U.S. Internet company since Google raised $1.7 billion in 2004, which was more recently beat by Zynga, which sold $1 billion in a December stock offering.

The company’s closest competitor, LivingSocial, lost $558 million on revenues of $245 million. The results of the privately held company were disclosed as part of Amazon’s fourth quarter results. Amazon owns a 31 percent stake in the second-largest daily deals company.

In the company’s first quarter guidance, the company is forecasting revenue of $510 million to $550 million and income from operations of $15 to $35 million, compared to a loss of $117.1 million in the same period 2011.

Notes from the conference call:

• CEO Andrew Mason jumps on the call, his first for the company!
• He mentions that they’ve made several tech acquisitions and that the company now has four times the technology headcount as part of its new office in Palo Alto that it opened in fourth quarter. I featured the new office in a story today.
• The strategy remains to invest in the future, he says. The Groupon of five years from now will require investments in technology and innovations. Despite rapid growth, he estimates that they participate in less than 1 percent of all local transactions.
• He’s definitely talking up how the company is becoming a technology-driven company. This could conceivably build a bigger barrier to entry in the market.
• The call is now being handed over to CFO Jason Child to go over all the quarter’s financials.
• He says a majority of the marketing spend is continuing to go toward increasing its subscriber base, especially in new markets.
• Q&A is now starting.
• Mason gets the first question about how fewer competitors is affecting his decision to spend money on marketing. He says: “Historically, we haven’t made any decisions based on the behavior or [market]share of our competitors, so while we are encouraged by developments in the marketplace, we continue to operate against our own roadmap rather than the behaviors of the competitors.”
• A question about the company’s $40 million loss in international markets: Comparatively, Groupon made $35 million in Q4 in the U.S., its oldest market. “That’s the model for how we want all the markets to look,” Child said. That’s down from the previous quarter, and Child says he expects to make progress over the next few quarters in all regions and countries.
• Mason concludes the call by saying: “Thanks, guys, this was a lot of fun, and I look forward to many more of these.”

But the Hulu CEO is still running his site, a full year after angering his owners/bosses with a “Jerry Maguire” manifesto. And Hulu itself generated more than $400 million in revenue last year — just a few years after all the smart money was sure that the “ClownCo” would never work.

So what was Kilar thinking when he published that memo, anyway? And more important, what’s next for him and his site? We got to ask him directly at D: Dive Into Media last week — his first onstage interview in a very long time.

You can watch the full interview here, but you’re also going to want to watch Hulu carefully in the next few months. That’s because its strategic owners — Comcast, Disney and News Corp., which also owns this site — still don’t seem to have figured out what they want to do with the joint venture. And financial backer Providence Equity has a chance to get its money out this spring, which could directly impact Kilar’s plans, too.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120208/hulu-ceo-jason-kilar-is-still-standing-the-full-dive-into-media-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120208/behind-the-scenes-at-groupons-tech-headquarters-as-it-prepares-to-report-earnings/ http://allthingsd.com/20120208/behind-the-scenes-at-groupons-tech-headquarters-as-it-prepares-to-report-earnings/#comments Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:00:33 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=172207

In a three-story building in Palo Alto, Calif. — formerly occupied by Danger, the developer behind the T-Mobile Sidekick — Groupon has been trying to build out a Silicon Valley technology center, one acquisition at a time.

The pursuit was kicked off two years ago with the purchase of mobile app development shop Mob.ly. Mihir Shah, the company’s CEO, started recruiting for the social buying company, and then became the Groupon’s VP of mobile.

Since then, there has been a hodgepodge of acquisitions, including Campfire, which builds chat, calendar and media-sharing tools, as well as Zappedy, which makes a platform for merchants to redeem Internet-based offers more easily.

Last week, it continued with Adku, a low-profile San Francisco start-up that helps e-commerce retailers fine-tune their recommendation engines using external factors, such as whether it is hot or cold outside.

None of the teams have been extremely big or expensive, but Groupon insists that they already are having a major impact on the company.

That may be hard to believe in a company of more than 10,000 employees, most of which are salespeople who are not working on technology.

But Adku’s co-founder Carlos Whitt, who is joining the company along with five others from his team, said the entrepreneurial vibe in the building is “ridiculously exciting.”

“The opportunity, the innovation and entrepreneurs are all there,” he said. “It’s a good intersection.”

Still, Groupon has not been able to attract every entrepreneur it pursues. It had been actively trying to buy other social start-ups, such as Gowalla. That particular deal went to Facebook. Another would-be Groupon acquisition target, Clever Sense, was won by Google.

No matter, according to Mob.ly’s Shah, who said Groupon is actively evolving beyond a daily deals service into a company that builds a set of key marketing tools for local merchants that increases sales, cuts costs and boosts productivity.

Some of the early tools include online calendars to make it easy for spas or gyms to book appointments online, and rewards programs that allow merchants to identify loyal customers who return and spend a lot of money.

Groupon also recently revamped its merchant center, where its customers can manage their daily deals and other programs in an online dashboard.

Shah said the idea is to create a marketing suite that makes small businesses more efficient and productive.

“We never want to stand still and be a big company,” he said.

But the big question is whether those tools will be sticky enough to keep merchants coming back to offer new deals, which is where Groupon gets all of its revenue from. That’s because most of the new tools are expected to be given away for free and not generate any additional income — at least for now.

It will also have to be enough to keep away other close competitors, such as LivingSocial, Google and Amazon.

The ability to spur innovation and keep ahead of rivals will be on the minds of analysts when Groupon reports its first financial results as a publicly held company this afternoon.

Wall Street is expecting the company to report three cents per share profit on revenue of $475 million in its fourth quarter earnings, according to Thomson Reuters.

That’s up from $430 million in revenues in the third quarter and will be Groupon’s first profitable quarter in nearly two years

In particular, analysts will be listening for updates on some of the company’s core programs, such as Groupon Now, which is its mobile product that allows consumers to purchase deals minutes or hours before redeeming them based on their location. Other metrics may be shared regarding loyalty and retention programs.

This is also Groupon CEO Andrew Mason’s first big chance to speak to the investment community since the end of the company’s quiet period (which he wasn’t really good at keeping, anyway).

Groupon’s stock increased nearly three percent yesterday to close at $24.19, which is just above its IPO price of $20 a share.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120208/behind-the-scenes-at-groupons-tech-headquarters-as-it-prepares-to-report-earnings/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120207/googles-worlds-collide-as-chrome-comes-to-android/ http://allthingsd.com/20120207/googles-worlds-collide-as-chrome-comes-to-android/#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:40:46 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=171896 No, hell hasn’t frozen over.

But Google has finally brought its two big platforms together, with Chrome for Android arriving on Tuesday.

There are some big caveats at first. It’s just a beta, and will only work on phones and tablets running Ice Cream Sandwich. Over time, though, Google expects Chrome to become the default (and only Google browser) in Android.

Chrome for Android brings over much from the desktop version, though not everything.

It also adds some mobile-specific stuff, including an easy way to manage tabs and the ability to preload pages it thinks you might be about to enter.

Most interesting, though, is the way it synchronizes with a desktop version of the browser. Those who opt to sync with a logged-in desktop version of Chrome can automatically take with them any open tabs they have from their PC or Mac. It’s particularly nice for those who often find themselves emailing directions or other data from one device to another.

For those who want to go for the opposite experience, Chrome for Android supports an Incognito mode in which cookies, Web sites and other browser data are not saved from session to session.

The big promise of Chrome is that browsing on the phone would shift to something that people do often instead of something only done when one has to.

“We can really take a leap forward on the mobile Web,” Chrome boss Sundar Pichai said in an interview. “Previously, it is something you would do once in a while. You would hesitate.”

That Chrome would eventually come to Android isn’t a surprise. Sergey Brin predicted as much back in 2008, when the desktop browser first launched.

However, its arrival could mean stepped up competition for the other platforms when it comes to Web browsing as well as potentially a smaller market for third party Android browsers, such as Mozilla and Dolphin.

Pichai said that the company has actively been working on Chrome for Android for more than a year. The time is right, he said, thanks to some software improvements with Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as the improved hardware hitting the market from various phone makers.

There are a few differences from the desktop version. Notably, Chrome for Android doesn’t currently support plug-ins, though it does have an architecture for such support. Consistent with what Adobe said last year, though, there are no plans for Flash support.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120207/googles-worlds-collide-as-chrome-comes-to-android/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120207/meet-spongecell-a-profitable-ad-tech-company-with-10-million-in-new-funding/ http://allthingsd.com/20120207/meet-spongecell-a-profitable-ad-tech-company-with-10-million-in-new-funding/#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:00:12 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=171918 You hate Web ads, or you ignore Web ads. Ah, but what if those Web ads weren’t boring old Web ads, but they danced or sang or jiggled around?

This is the pitch, more or less, for Spongecell, a start-up that helps produce “rich media” Web ads. That’s not a new idea, by any stretch, and there are plenty of competitors that do similar stuff. But last year the company’s story still attracted angel investors like Google chair Eric Schmidt.

And now the company has new funding: Tech investor/holding company Safeguard Scientifics has taken all of a $10 million B round.

The money will go to help Spongecell expand smaller product lines, like video ads, and eventually move into new ones, like mobile ads, says CEO Ben Kartzman.

Spongecell is a full-fledged “pivot”: Prior to 2008, it had raised $3 million and was trying to sell some sort of “event management” widget that Kartzman readily admits got no traction. Then it moved into ad tech, and things have been humming since. Kartzman says that last year he grossed around $10 million and cleared “seven figures” of profit.

Big picture: Smart people keep telling me that the ad tech ecosystem has too many start-ups funded with too much money, and that something has to give. But then I keep hearing about another ad tech start-up raising another round. Assume we’ll see more of these for a while.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120207/meet-spongecell-a-profitable-ad-tech-company-with-10-million-in-new-funding/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120206/motorola-seeks-slice-of-iphone-ipad-sales/ http://allthingsd.com/20120206/motorola-seeks-slice-of-iphone-ipad-sales/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:21:17 +0000 Ian Sherr and Harriett Torry http://allthingsd.com/?p=171864 Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. asked Apple Inc. to pay a potential royalty of 2.25 percent of sales for some iPhones and iPads last year, representing possibly billions of dollars in licensing fees.

In a letter filed in a California court last month, a lawyer said Motorola, which is being acquired by Google Inc., had “demanded” the royalty for a license of its patents.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120206/motorola-seeks-slice-of-iphone-ipad-sales/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120206/facing-lawsuit-google-drops-some-content-in-india/ http://allthingsd.com/20120206/facing-lawsuit-google-drops-some-content-in-india/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:30:30 +0000 Amol Sharma http://allthingsd.com/?p=171755 Google Inc. removed some controversial content from its Indian services to comply with a court order in a civil lawsuit, the latest twist in the legal drama over Web censorship in the world’s largest democracy.

A person familiar with the matter said Google removed content from its search service, YouTube video site and Blogger after receiving an order to do so from Judge Mukesh Kumar of a New Delhi district court.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120206/facing-lawsuit-google-drops-some-content-in-india/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120206/twitter-ceo-dick-costolo-the-full-dive-into-media-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120206/twitter-ceo-dick-costolo-the-full-dive-into-media-interview-video/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:30:04 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=171635 Last week, we got to talk a deep roster of old and new media heavy hitters at D: Dive Into Media. Now we’re bringing you the full interviews from that conference, kicking off with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.

Costolo and I started out by talking about Twitter’s recent dustup with Google, but we jumped around a lot, touching on everything from Twitter’s deep integration with Apple to its response to government censorship.

The core of the interview, though, focused on Twitter’s evolution as a business and its relationship with media companies, who use the service to promote their products. (See: Yesterday’s Super Bowl.)

I think it’s quite obvious that Twitter itself is a media business — it attracts its users’ attention, then rents that attention out to advertisers.

Costolo says that advertising will be Twitter’s core revenue driver, but he disagreed with my assessment: “We’re in the media business, but we’re not necessarily a media company,” he said. It wasn’t the only time Costolo disagreed with something I said that night:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120206/twitter-ceo-dick-costolo-the-full-dive-into-media-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120206/paypal-says-its-full-speed-ahead-on-mobile-payments-after-president-resigns/ http://allthingsd.com/20120206/paypal-says-its-full-speed-ahead-on-mobile-payments-after-president-resigns/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:00:37 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=171569 When Scott Thompson announced he was stepping down as president of PayPal to become CEO of Yahoo, the company was shocked.

But a month later, both PayPal and its parent company eBay say they have the depth of leadership necessary to execute its plan to enter the world of in-store payments.

In an interview, David Marcus, PayPal’s VP of mobile, made the case for why its mobile payments strategy will prevail in a market surrounded by incumbents like Visa, MasterCard and American Express, as well as new entrants like Google.

On the matter of Thompson’s departure, he downplayed the role of one executive.

“The strategy wasn’t one man’s thing,” he argued. “It was a shock for 24 to 48 hours, but we control our destiny, and it’s about execution now. So far, so good.”

In addition to speaking to Marcus and several other executives, AllThingsD got an exclusive look at the company’s newly constructed “Shopping Showcase,” which will be used to demonstrate to potential partners how it envisions next-generation payments will occur at the register.

From the ground floor of the company’s San Jose headquarters, it has built several realistic-looking facades, including a hardware store, a grocery store, a clothing store and cafe; users can walk from one experience to the next. I also tried out the experience of making a real purchase at Home Depot, where it is currently being piloted at many San Jose-area stores. (See the slideshow here.)

To be sure, Thompson’s departure was abrupt. He gave PayPal only 15 hours’ notice before the planned announcement that January morning by Yahoo.

But the company now maintains that its strategy for the next two years had long since been cemented, making it much easier to absorb the blow.

Over the next few years, PayPal will be trying to take its online relationship with 106 million consumers worldwide into the physical payments world, by extending its digital wallet services to cash registers at grocery stores, hardware stores and other retail locations.

It plans to do this through a series of different technologies, including PIN codes, credit cards and other services.

Meanwhile, other providers are trying to attack the market using near field communication, where users will tap their mobile phone at the register in order to pay.

Google, Visa, MasterCard and a consortium of wireless carriers, including AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, are all working on similar solutions, which will require retailers and consumers to upgrade their point-of-sale technology and mobile phones, respectively.

“Yes, NFC will be useful, and we’ll be there, but today we are trying to do more than replace swiping with tapping,” Marcus said.

He envisions shopping becoming a more fluid experience. Today, you pick out the items you want, place them in your shopping cart and then stand in line at the checkout.

But in the future, he asks, why couldn’t that change? What if you paid for items in the store’s aisles, or purchased them online before picking them up in the store?

NFC can be restrictive, because you have to be at a physical location in order to tap a terminal and pay.

The scenarios are possible, given how fast things are already changing.

Last year, PayPal exceeded its own expectations, reaching $4 billion in mobile payment volume. This year, it expects to increase that to $7 billion. One of those purchases last year was a $40,000 backhoe, which someone bought using PayPal on their phone.

“By the time NFC catches up, we will be in a world that will move away from the point-of-sales terminal,” he predicts.

As with PayPal’s traditional business, it expects to make money on fees, also called the interchange rate, which the retailer is responsible for paying. Its goal is not to provide a cheaper solution than the incumbents. Rather, it wants to provide other perks that will help retailers and provide incentive for the retailers to want to work with PayPal.

Such perks could include platforms that will allow the retailers to offer loyalty programs, shopping lists, credit options or coupons.

“If you add a payment method that adds 30 to 40 percent more volume [in business to the retailer], then the interchange doesn’t matter,” Marcus said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120206/paypal-says-its-full-speed-ahead-on-mobile-payments-after-president-resigns/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120206/paypal-says-it-is-full-speed-ahead-into-mobile-payments-a-month-after-president-resigns/ http://allthingsd.com/20120206/paypal-says-it-is-full-speed-ahead-into-mobile-payments-a-month-after-president-resigns/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:30:42 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=168764 During a recent visit to PayPal’s San Jose headquarters, I got an exclusive look at the company’s brand-new Shopping Showcase.

Completed two weeks ago, the showcase is designed to woo major retailers and other potential partners that may be considering adopting PayPal’s mobile payments services.

The room includes several realistic-looking facades, including a hardware store, a cafe, a grocery store and a clothing retailer.

In each scenario, it demonstrates how it uses a mix of new technologies, offers and loyalty programs to make it faster and easier to and pay and stay engaged with the retailer.

What you won’t see is demonstrations of near field communications, which is a technology being used by many of its competitors. (To learn why it is not using NFC, read an interview with PayPal’s VP of Mobile David Marcus, coming later today.)

I also visited Home Depot in San Jose to buy something using my PayPal account. The service is now live at many of the Bay Area hardware stores.

Today, PayPal is one of the leading online payments companies, with 106 million users worldwide; but this year, the eBay-owned company is attempting to move offline, by partnering with retailers like Home Depot and other major chains to be announced later this year.

Here are the photos from the Shopping Shopping Showcase and Home Depot shopping visits:

View the slideshow

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120206/paypal-says-it-is-full-speed-ahead-into-mobile-payments-a-month-after-president-resigns/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120206/phone-maker-htc-reports-tough-quarter-and-forecasts-continued-pain-ahead/ http://allthingsd.com/20120206/phone-maker-htc-reports-tough-quarter-and-forecasts-continued-pain-ahead/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:18:17 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=171636 Taiwanese phone maker HTC on Monday reported a lackluster fourth quarter and predicted a further drop in sales and profit margins amid strong competition.

For the fourth quarter, HTC said it earned 10.94 billion Taiwanese dollars ($369 million), or 13.06 Taiwan dollars per share (44 cents U.S.), on revenue of 101.42 billion Taiwan dollars ($3.42 billion).

That’s a revenue drop of more than 2 percent from a year earlier, for a company that until recently had been seeing sales doubling those of prior periods.

HTC had already warned of the sales drop when it released unaudited results last month. However, its outlook for the current quarter offered a further disappointment.

The company forecast that, for the current quarter, sales will drop to between 65 billion and 70 billion Taiwanese dollars, with gross margins falling to 25 percent from last quarter’s 27 percent. HTC said it expects the dip in margins to be temporary.

“While short term performance may not meet the results as expected, we have gained further experience and advancement in the areas of brand management and product innovation,” CEO Peter Chou said in a statement. “These fundamental strengths and the groundwork we have laid will take us into 2012 with a renewed focus and determination.”

HTC was on a roll for much of 2010 and 2011, rapidly growing sales amid the surge in Android demand.

In Monday’s earnings release, the company reiterated its plans to focus on fewer new devices this year, a strategy similarly being undertaken by also-struggling Motorola.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120206/phone-maker-htc-reports-tough-quarter-and-forecasts-continued-pain-ahead/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120205/a-super-social-bowl/ http://allthingsd.com/20120205/a-super-social-bowl/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:32:47 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=171511 You could have watched the Super Bowl without checking Twitter or Facebook, but you probably snuck at least a few peeks in throughout the game. And a lot of you ended up typing something, too.

Bluefin Labs, a “social TV” start-up that analyzes commentary during TV broadcasts, says it saw 11.5 million comments during tonight’s game. That’s up more than 6x over last year’s broadcast.

(Bluefin competitor Trendrr says they saw a similar leap: They count 15.8 million comments for the game, up from 3.01 million.)

I’ve asked Bluefin if they’ve got any additional insight into the data, and to make sure that they’re comparing equivalent data sets. Last I recall, Bluefin had said that they get a lot of data from Twitter, and less from Facebook, and none from Google+, which wasn’t around last year, anyway.

But assuming Bluefin is comparing apples with apples, the logical conclusions here are that:

A) People are using Twitter and Facebook a whole lot more than they were a year ago; and/or

B) People are using Twitter and Facebook a whole lot more when they watch TV.

More B than A, says Bluefin marketing head Tom Thai, via email: “Sure, social media itself (Twitter, Facebook, etc) has grown in the past year. But the Social TV consumer activity growth has outpaced it. Generally seeing triple digit growth in Social TV.”

That conclusion — again, the two ideas aren’t mutually exclusive — would be good news for both Facebook and Twitter; especially Twitter, which has bet big on the idea that it can provide a “second screen” experience for programmers. CBS strategy honcho Zander Lurie seems like he’s a believer:

Twitter is helping live broadcast events more than axe bodyspray is helping dudes with the ladies

— zander lurie (@zlurie) February 6, 2012

 

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and I spent a bunch of time talking about that idea last week at D: Dive Into Media, and we’ll have more on that tomorrow.

In the meantime, we’re expecting a series of usage updates from Twitter about tonight’s game. Here’s the first, which would mean more if we had context, so I’ll ask for that.

In the final three minutes of the Super Bowl tonight, there were an average of 10,000 Tweets per second.

– Twitter (@twitter) February 6, 2012

Update: And here, with speed, is some of that context from Twitter PR folks, on other recent high-volume Twitter events:

Tim Tebow overtime playoff win (January 8, 2012): 9,402 TPS

2011 MTV Video Music Awards (August 28, 2011): 8,868 TPS

End of FIFA Women’s World Cup (July 17, 2011): 7,196 TPS

Brazil eliminated from the Copa America (July 17, 2011): 7,166 TPS

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