Posts Tagged ‘google’

WIND, Canada’s newest cellular operator, is eyeing the Nexus One, Google’s first phone and is hoping to be the first operator in Canada to carry it, a move which they hope will put an end to contracts for good. There are no reports on how the talks are going, but Chris Robbins, WIND’s CCO says ”We’re trying,” but since the company is pretty much brand new it’s harder to negotiate a deal. “Canada’s a small market to these guys. We’re not getting a lot of face time,” he added.

Why would an upstart company that only launched service in December be the first (or even exclusive) avenue for getting the Nexus One? There are a few reasons that make sense. First, Google has been very clear they want to offer the phone directly (even though it will be still available for cheaper on a T-Mobile contract). One of WIND’s core philosophies is the “no contract” policy, which fits in perfectly. The second and more important reason is that Google’s phone only has 3G capabilities on the newest AWS network, and WIND is the only operator in Canada (except for another Quebec-specific company) that is on that network, meaning that Bell, Telus, and Rogers networks are too outdated. T-Mobile is also on the AWS network, hence those two companies would be the ideal choice for North America. If one was to buy the phone and run it on Rogers, for example, they would only get 2G service.

You can see now why WIND wants so hard to be able to offer the phone, it’s about time that consumers realized the Big Three are not investing any money in advancing their networks, but would rather keep the money for themselves.

WIND is a trademark operated by Globalive Wireless Management Corp. and in addition to Canada, the brand name has also operated in Greece and Italy for over 10 years. The company has received a major investment from Orascom Telecommunications, one of the biggest telecommunication companies in the Middle East and is based in Cairo, Egypt.

Never out of surprises, Google has made a new announcement on Monday – it will block all music videos for the UK on its popular YouTube site.

The reason is that negotiations with it and the PRS for Music, a British entity that holds royalties for over 50,000 composers, have failed. 

Google claims that PRS asked for “many, many times” more money than a previous agreement and that ”The costs are simply prohibitive for us — under PRS’s proposed terms, we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback”

PRS has a different story to tell though, apperantly Google walked out in the middle of negotiations - ”We were shocked and disappointed to receive a call late this afternoon informing us of Google’s drastic action,” the PRS for Music CEO Steve Porter said. According to the company, Google wants to pay “significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies, despite the massive increase in YouTube viewing.”

Who is right is not clear yet, but one thing is for sure – labels want another outlet for making profits after seeing CD sales have taken a plunge. Enough is never enough.

Source: Reuters

Yesterday Barack Obama chose Vivek Kundra for the post of Federal CIO, entrusting him with the task of overseeing the IT architecture of the federal government. Kundra is very fond of Google and what it has to offer.  ’Why should I spend millions on enterprise apps when I can do it [with Google] at one-tenth cost and ten times the speed? It’s a win-win for me,’ he says.

This is one of the many ways the new administration is catching up with technology and its commitment to be a more open government with larger public involvement through available Web 2.0 tools.

The only question is, isn’t this too much power for one company, especially for Google, which has its hand on almost anything that’s on the Internet? You can also catch the announcement of the DC-Google Partnership a few days ago on YouTube: