Google acquired Future Predicting company

Google the internet giant comes to news once again with an aquisition of a future predicting company named "Recorded Future". "future predicting COmpany" sounds strange ... Well as said earlier Google policy is to acquire a small company every month and go with bigger acquisitions every 6 months.

The company, Recorded Future, based out of Boston, has developed a data analytics technology that could be used to try to predict future stock market events or even terrorist activity.

On a the company’s YouTube channel it explains:

“Recorded Future allows financial analysts, intelligence analysts, and predictors to organize and aggregate future observations with ease,”

On its LinkedIn page, the startup says it has “some of the top government agencies and trading firms in the world,” according to a February profile in The Boston Globe.

Christopher Ahlberg, co-founder and CEO of Recorded Future, is the founder of business intelligence firm Spotfire, which was Spotfire was acquired by Tibco in 2007, for $195 million in cash. Similar to Spotfire, Recorded Future seems to have operations both in Boston and in Sweden, Ahlberg’s country of origin.

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HCL bags $500 mn Contract from Merck & Co.

HCL tech, the fifth-largest Indian IT giant has bagged an excellent contract from a US Firm. HCL has got contract of $500 mn from Company named Merck which is major pharmaceutical company. Merck has been an HCL client for six years but the deal marks a substantial enhancement of the relationship.

“HCL’s deal with Merck is one of the largest strategic engagements in HCL history. We will add jobs in north Carolina for the project"
Well this is one of the biggest deals in the recent times i guess, as this contract will pan out for 5 years. I see Indian IT giants are picking pretty big deals in the recent times as TCS had a pada deal with UK government is pegged around $600 million although it did attract political backlash. Patni in the mid size space also bagged $200 million deal from the insurance company Universal American.

For the past two years i can see like Indian IT sector was really missing the bigger deals , i mean to say the deals which are near and above $500 mn , the average size of the deals was reduced to $50-$200 million range. But the recent deals from TCS, Patni or HCl can give hope to Indian IT sector is market is still open for the bigger deals.

Well i see HCL is doing a great business, Last year, HCL bagged a $350-million outsourcing deal from media house Readers’ Digest and now it has got much bigger deal than that :-).

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Motorola acuires Azingo

Motorola is making it clear that it building up its strategies to safeguard from the Andriod devices which are making thier way into the market with few significant differences between each other.

Motorola may be getting ready to build mobile devices on a proprietary OS. The company has acquired little known company Azingo that makes Azingo Mobile 2.0, a mobile OS based on Linux with development tools and a Webkit-based browser.

Motorola has already stated it's ready to take the charge for growing the company by acquisitios and this is could be the beginnning.

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Social Networking impact on Companies strategies.

Social Networking the big thing that exists in the virtual world as of now. Well the sites like ORKUT, Facebook, twitter has made an enough impact on the market, celebs, sports, retails industry etc. These sites are so effective now for example, media is eyeing on these sites for what celebs are chatting around. Any controversies around these sites filled up with huge comments around.

For example recent Contraversy of IPL , Tharoor was giving comments on twitter to the public which was acting like an unofficial media to publish his comments to the people. Now these sites both positive and negative impact on the people using these sites.Well as of now i am gonna share only positive thoughts about these social networking sites.

Concept of social networking has shown way to many entrepruniers as new way to interact. And also in the segment of retail industry this is shown an impressive impact. Now this social network has created its own platform where companies are forced to follow these sites to know about the feedback or their place in the market or puclic view about their products.

A few days ago, a customer from Jammu & Kashmir wrote on M&M vice chairman and managing director Anand Mahindra’s Twitter page about the delayed delivery of a Mahindra Scorpio. The effect was instantaneous. Mr Mahindra replied with just two words ‘Arun, Vivek?’, referring to his senior executives Arun Malhotra and Vivek Nayer. That’s the power of social networking.

“Earlier, if you were happy or unhappy with a brand, there wasn’t any platform to discuss it so openly.Now there are some websites like Mouthshut.com which is very effective in sharing the reviews about the products used by the consumers. There were limited avenues. Even for brands, connecting with consumers was never as easy as it is today,” says Saloni Nangia, vice president at management consulting firm Technopak Advisors. Social media has provided the perfect powerful medium to express positive or negative feedback.

Traffic to these social networking sites has been dramatically increased in past two years.Facebook has nearly 14.1 million unique visitors which is very near to orkut 18 million visitors. Twitter is a very huge platform too. Looking at these companies comedown to these sites and start advertising and also companies like dell is registered with twitter and people who following Dell will get messages instantly if Dell annouces any discounts or any other new launch. This can be very effective in increasing the sales for a Company.


Traditional product management doesn’t apply to social network/media since the primary relationship is no longer user-to-platform, but user-to-user.
Jennifer L Aaker, General Atlantic professor of marketing at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University says, “Traditional product management doesn’t apply to social network/media since the primary relationship is no longer user-to-platform, but user-to-user. Therefore companies need to think about themselves as a market regulator, setting the rules and users creating whatever they want within those limits.”

Well companies are creating communities for the users to interact with them and conduct promotional activities etc. This concept was not only helpful for the virtual world players but also to the mobile world. I mean many of the big players of Mobile industry is opting for Social networking now, harldy we can see any mobile in the range of Rs 5000 to Rs 7000 without a social networking option.

I think there are many industries which needs to use the concept of social networking yet.May be this concept is so simple yet very powerful, this concpet can say like simplicity is always effective.

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