A large scale adoption of WiMAX in India is going to only decrease the prices of the ‘smart phones’ globally.To me, all this sounds remarkably similar to how rapid internet adoption and falling internet prices kick-started the entire ecommerce industry.

Mcommerce – are you listening?

The clampdown is due to recent changes to India’s Information Technology Act of 2000, which bans the publication of pornographic material.

I wonder how long it’ll take before Google is forced to adopt similar filtering approaches for their Indian search results?

It turns out, I didn’t have to dig too far, Plurk’s blog post kind of say’s it all. TechCrunch, NYT, WSJ and many others have also covered this news.

To put it simply, Plurk, a Canada based micro-blogging service that is very popular in Asia is claiming that Microsoft China has “ripped off” their code, UI and design, for their own MSN Juku micro-blogging service. From the looks of the images representing the UI and the code base it appears to be a blatant copyright violation on Microsoft’s part.

So far, only TechCrunch seem to be reporting a statement made by Microsoft:

“Microsoft takes intellectual property seriously, and we are currently investigating these allegations. It may take some time due to the time zone differences with Beijing.”

It’s a weak statement, and looks like Microsoft is going to have a pretty bad week with this headache. However, I don’t think this is just a standard copyright violation, politics is playing a part here…. especially as Plurk is blocked in China!!.

What do you all say?

On this occasion the battle is a bit more mainstream with a great piece from WSJ about the different practices within China between Search heavyweights Baidu and Google. Aside from a slight digression to cover some of the localisation techniques adopted by Chinese sites such as TaoBao and TenCent IM, the article delves into the product range and local implementations of both Baidu and Google within China. The article implies quite strongly that Google is the main innovator while Baidu applies a more functional approach dedicated to the Chinese audience.

But Baidu also is an example of how many Chinese technology companies manage to outfox foreign competitors by tailoring existing technologies to China’s growing and fast-changing market. While that may not earn them respect as global innovators, their understanding of the Chinese consumer has allowed many of them to beat bigger foreign rivals at their own game in China, home to the world’s largest number of Internet users.

Definitely worth a read…

The Government of India recently announced that it is going to ask every school to have a website of its own. Schools will be required to publish updated information about its infrastructure and faculty.  This is going to be made into a law very soon. Every student will soon have a unique identification number, which will help monitor India’s primary education program. The first set of such numbers will get rolled out by 2010.

As a report compiled by PwC (Price WaterHouse Coopers) shows, for the Quarter ending on 30th September 2009 Search Engine Marketing (PPC) has grown while Displays ads have fallen.

As this Digital Media article confirms..

… the expenditure in the general display advertising market fell by 5% quarter on quarter and year on year. With separate Eyeblaster research showing Australians are among the least likely to click on general display advertising in the world, it appears that marketers may be looking to search, which grew by 12%, for more effective campaigns.

This is quite a significant milestone, and Search Engine Marketing is likely to continue making in-roads into Online Advertising as Advertising Agencies and Companies realise and recognise the power of Search in supporting brand campaigns and converting ROI.

Friendster has launched virtual gifts and the Friendster Gift Shop in Malaysia, which represents  the first in a series of upcoming products the social network will roll out to better monetise its global user base. The virtual gifts and the Friendster Gift Shop products will use the new Friendster Wallet allowing for its users to buy and send gifts to one another. The gift shop initially launches in Malaysia and will be rolled out within weeks throughout SE Asia and globally.

Earlier, Friendster has partnered with MOL AccessPortal Berhad (MOL) for the company to power a prepaid payments platform for Friendster’s 115 million users globally. The introduction of this payment platform, through its stored value Friendster Wallet system, is a critical step towards the social networking giant’s ability to monetise its global user base. Friendster Wallet credit is stored as currency called Friendster Coins and can be spent throughout Friendster’s site for goods and services. It will give Friendster the ability to develop other revenue streams surrounding virtual goods, gifts and games.

This initiatives is  somewhat similar to Facebook – which rolled out its virtual currency earlier whereby consumers can make use of Facebook credit to purchase and send gifts, even in the real-world. I guess it will only be a matter of time for Friendster to also roll this out to the real world. It would really be interesting to see whether consumers would adopt this new form of currencies to make their purchases.

It’s great to see Japan and Korea leading the pack so prominently… and more than 10 times the average speed in the US…

Japan 61 Mbps… at a cost of 0.27 US$ per 1 Mbps
Korea 46 Mbps… at a cost of 0.45 US$ per 1 Mbps
USA 4.8 Mbps… at a cost of 3.33 US$ per 1 Mbps

India’s WiMAX subscribers are expected to touch about 60 million by 2014. It is expected to grow faster in a country like India – with a low fixed line pentration in a large country. The opportunity is expected to be very valuable, with all major telecom players in the bidding race. The government aims to earn a minimum of $350 million from this auction, which is the reserve price.

Google has had an interest in India’s mobile, broadband and VASP space for some time, with some active lobbying being done by Google with the TRAI over matters of future policy – see here.  India has a far greater number of mobile users than internet subscribers. Because of this, search engines like Google as well as any company wanting to grab a share of this large and lucrative pie would want a piece of the WiMAX spectrum.

Essentially, Promoted Videos is a CPC paid model based on the Google Adwords keyword bidding model, and has been integrated into Adwords for easier management (for in-house marketing teams or agencies).

Here’s a clip about Promoted Videos from the YouTube Australia blog. Google is also offering Webinars to help early adopters get to grips with how it all works.