Location-based services could become a $10-billion-per-year business by 2016, despite recent concerns over privacy and what companies do with location data once they've gotten it, according to a new research firm report.

"The recent kerfuffle over Apple iPhone tracking and other privacy concerns will barely be a speed bump in the evolution of location-based services (LBS) because there is simply too much money at stake," said the research firm Strategy Analytics in their new study called "The $10 Billion Rule: Location, Location, Location."

"Consumers are increasingly demanding services such as search, maps or navigation, for which location information is either fundamental to or provides greater context, utility and therefore appeal," the firm said. "For advertisers, location data provides opportunities for ad targeting and optimization."

In Strategy Analytics estimations, location-based search advertising could account for "just over 50%" of the predicted range of $10 billion in 2016.

Location providers will have to become more transparent with users about how location data is captured, managed and stored, but that won't stop the growth of location-based services for mobile phone and tablet users, the firm said.

"For advertisers, location data provides opportunities for targeting and optimizing ads," said Nitesh Patel, a senior analyst at the company. "Strategy Analytics sees strong evidence of consumer demand for LBS in line with rising smartphone and data plan penetration."

An example Patel noted -- Google recently disclosed that 40% of all Google Map use takes place on mobile phones.

And it will likely be Google and Microsoft, the current leaders in Web search, that end up dominating the market for advertising associated with location-based services, despite challenges from smaller players such as AT&T's Yellow Pages, Telmap, TeleNav and Aloqa, the firm said.

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Photo: Google Maps on an Apple iPhone. Credit: Juan Pablo Gonzalez via Flickr

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced a new version of its underdog Windows Phone operating system, available to manufacturers this fall -- and many of the phone's new features ring a bell.

Phones running the new system, called Mango, will let users search for restaurants and businesses in their immediate area, perform voice-based Web searches, identify music playing in their surroundings, and switch back and forth between applications.

Those features are, by and large, innovations that well-known companies developed months or years ago.  The Yelp app -- on Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry operating systems -- has led the way in helping users find nearby businesses. Android phones have had voice search for close to a year.  The Shazam app has been the go-to service for song identification.  And most smartphones already allow users to run multiple apps simultaneously.

Microsoft's strategy, it appears, is to create its own version of these popular features and build them directly into its smartphone's browser.

"Web browsing now also has an added layer that allows users to take advantage of functionality such as location awareness, the phone's camera and its microphone," the company said in a release.

Microsoft noted a number of other features intended to make messaging easier and faster, as well as improved graphics and speed for its Web browser.  But Microsoft's announcement lacked some of the dramatic flair that regularly accompanies new products from rival Apple Inc. 

One feature that appeared unique to the new phones was what Microsoft called App Connect -- a trick that would enable the phone to guess which apps users might want to bring up next. If someone did a Web search for movie showtimes, say, the phone would then offer to open the Fandango app so they could purchase tickets.

In February, Microsoft did a $1-billion deal with Nokia in which the Finnish company will adopt the Windows phone system for many of its upcoming handsets. In April, Microsoft phones accounted for only about 8% of the U.S. smartphone market, according to ComScore Inc. That was well behind leaders Google (33%), RIM (29%) and Apple (25%). 

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Image: A Windows phone running the Mango operating system, to be released in the fall.  Credit: Microsoft Corp.

Google led search-engine traffic in April, with 65.4% of Web searches taking place on Google-owned search sites, according to the research firm ComScore.

The Mountain View, Calif.,-based company's search traffic, while dominating, was down slightly from March when Google-owned sites took up a 65.7% share of the market, ComScore reported.

Coming in second place last month was Yahoo, which accounted for 15.9% share of online searches, up 0.2% from March, the research firm said.

In third came Microsoft search sites, which were also up 0.2%, taking up a 14.1% slice of the market, ComScore said.

In a distant fourth place slot was the Ask Network, which nabbed a 3.0% share of online search queries, followed by AOL which had a 1.5% take in April, ComScore reported. Ask and AOL's April numbers were each down 0.1%, the report said.

Yahoo and Microsoft's search sites are powered by the Microsoft Bing search engine. When Yahoo and Microsoft's search sites are combined, Bing powered a 30% share of the online search market.

Like Microsoft, Goolge too powers searches for sites it doesn't own, one of them being AOL.

When AOL and Google's performance is counted together, Google's numbers rise slightly, accounting for 67.3% of searches in March and 66.9% in April.

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Image: Google's homepage Wednesday. Credit: Google

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the stage at the BlackBerry World conference in Orlando, Fla., on Tuesday and reportedly pitched Windows Phone 7.

Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft's smartphone operating system -- a rival to Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones.

Ballmer was on stage at the BlackBerry event to formally announce that Microsoft's Bing Search and Bing Maps products would be built into the operating system of future mobile devices from RIM and not simply available in the form of an app (as Bing already is), according to a report from InformationWeek magazine.

The move makes Bing BlackBerry's default search and mapping technology, nudging Google out of that spot on RIM products. Time magazine's Techland called the teaming of the two competitors unholy.

The Microsoft chief executive was given the chance to speak about the collaboration between the two companies during the keynote address from RIM co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis, InformationWeek said.

Neither Lazaridis nor Ballmer said when the Bing-equipped BlackBerry gadgets would hit stores, but the Microsoft head "alluded to the fact that it will be part of BlackBerry OS 7, which will first be available on the Bold 9900/9930 this summer as RIM's refreshed user interface," the report said.

After talking up the Bing and BlackBerry relationship, Ballmer went on a bit of a tangent in his company's favor, InformationWeek said.

"This announcement, by Microsoft, was the biggest news to come from the BlackBerry World conference keynote," Eric Zeman of InformationWeek wrote in the report. "But Ballmer didn't stop there. Oh, no. He actually pitched Windows Phone 7 to the audience, albeit briefly. Read that again: Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, took the stage at BlackBerry World and pitched Windows Phone 7, its competing smartphone platform.

"Microsoft just owned RIM at RIM's own event. What was RIM thinking?"

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Photo: Steve Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive, addresses the audience at the Blackberry World conference in Orlando, Fla., on Tuesday. Credit: Phelan M. Ebenhack/Bloomberg

Microsoft is taking Streetside, it's rival to Google's Street View, to the streets of Europe.

According to the BBC, cars fitted with 360-degree panoramic cameras have hit boulevards, roads and avenues in London, snapping scenes to be used in Microsoft's Bing Maps, which competes with Google Maps.

And Microsoft is planning to map out images of other roadways in other English cities and European countries next month, the BBC said.

No date was offered as to when Streetside scenes would go live for Europe on Bing Maps, and Microsoft officials were not available for comment on Wednesday morning.

Streetside is already available in most major U.S. cities and is an effort Microsoft is continuing to expand in America as well.

Google's Street View efforts have run into a bit of trouble due to the wrongful collection of private data from unsecured W-Fi networks while its photo-taking cars and bikes cruised around the U.S. and Europe over the last few years.

Last week a Swiss court ruled that Google must guarantee that faces and license plates are unrecognizable before publishing street scenes from Switzerland in its Street View maps. Google said it was considering its appeal options for the court order.

Last month Google was fined 100,000 euros by France for improperly gathering and storing data collected by its Street View cars and bicycles.

Google has apologized for wrongfully collecting Wi-Fi data with its Street View vehicles multiple times over the last few months and promised to delete the data it has collected.

It may then come as not much of a surprise that Microsoft is saying it won't make the same errors when collecting Wi-Fi data on its Streetside routes, which will be less ambitious than Google's Street View routes, for now.

"We're not setting out to record every street. We believe it is most valuable in urban centres where people want to find services," Dave Coplin, Microsoft Corp.'s director of search, told the BBC.

Microsoft is collecting some Wi-Fi data, which will be used to pair Streetside with "location-based services," Coplin told the BBC.

Among the data being collected while snapping photos will be the "unique number that identifies the location of a hot spot," along with the hot spot's signal strength and what type of Wi-Fi signal is being used, the BBC said.

But, while Microsoft has already taken some Streetside photos, it has so far collected no Wi-Fi data, the report said.

"We took the decision to postpone Wi-Fi data collection," Coplin told the BBC. "We'd like to do it the right way."

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Image: A screenshot of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles as depicted on Microsoft's Streetside view on Bing Maps. Credit: Microsoft Corp.

Bing, last month, elbowed its way to a 30% share of the U.S. Web search market, stealing a bit of ground from Google.

In March, Bing accounted for 30.01% of the search market, while Google -- still far and away the leader -- took up 64.42% of the market, according to the research firm Experian Hitwise.

Microsoft topping the 30% threshold comes on the heels of a healthy February of 28.48% of the search market. In February, Google had a 66.69% slice of Web search.

Bing may have a slight advantage in that it powers Yahoo's search results. Bing.com searches jumped from 13.49% to 14.32% of the search market in March, while searches at Yahoo.com rose from 14.99% to 15.69%.

The traffic increases for Bing, which apparently cost Google a bit, come after Google accused Bing of copying its search results in February. But it would also seem that there is still much room to grow in the search market too. In December, Google said its search traffic from mobile devices rose by 130%.

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Photo: The Bing search app for the Apple iPad. Credit: Microsoft

First, man landed on the moon. The next step might be mining it for minerals.

At least, that’s the business plan for Moon Express Inc., or MoonEx, a Silicon Valley start-up building robotic rovers capable of scouring the lunar surface for precious metals and rare metallic elements. The company joins a growing group of entrepreneurs in the private space race.

The private company is building its hardware alongside scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center northwest of San Jose. It was co-founded by Naveen Jain, who made a fortune off his previous start-up InfoSpace Inc.; Barney Pell, the head architect behind Microsoft Corp.'s Bing Internet search engine; and Robert Richards, a commercial space entrepreneur.

From my article in Friday’s Times:

MoonEx's machines are designed to look for materials that are scarce on Earth but found in everything from a Toyota Prius car battery to guidance systems on cruise missiles.

While there's no guarantee the moon is flush with these materials, MoonEx officials think it may be a "gold mine" of so-called rare earth elements.

"From an entrepreneur's perspective, the moon has never truly been explored," said Naveen Jain, chairman and company co-founder. "We think it could hold resources that benefit Earth and all humanity."

Aside from its founders' personal wealth and other outside investments, MoonEx has received a NASA contract that could be worth up to $10 million.

The company is among several teams hoping to someday win the Google Lunar X Prize competition, a $30-million race to the moon in which a privately funded team must successfully place a robot on the moon's surface and have it explore at least 1/3 of a mile. It also must transmit high definition video and images back to Earth before 2016.

In the meantime, MoonEx is on firm financial footing, Jain said, notable because a moon launch would require massive investment. MoonEx hasn't decided which rocket or company will launch its hardware quite yet, but one of the contenders is Hawthorne-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, Jain said.

"MoonEx should be ready to land on the lunar surface by 2013," Jain said in the article. "It's our goal to be the first company there and stay there."

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Images: From top, MoonEx logo and photo of company co-founder Naveen Jain. Credit: MoonEx.

Yahoo on Wednesday debuted Search Direct, a new search engine feature that will offer results and site previews before a search query is even completed.

 In a drop-down menu below Yahoo's search box, Search Direct forecasts what a user might be looking for, ranging from links to popular search phrases or even weather listings, depending on what's typed.

The results can change as a user types, with speedy predictions produced without having to hit a search button.

Yahoo said the new feature is a "simple search experience that goes beyond a list of blue links," in a not-too-subtle jab at rival Google.com's blue-link list of search results.

Before Google's rise, Yahoo was the dominant search engine of the Internet. 

In an attempt to revive its declining search business, Yahoo scrapped its own search engine, letting Microsoft Bing power searches on its websites in a move made last August.

That, so far, hasn't worked out too well for Yahoo, with its search traffic continuing to fall, leaving Bing among those benefiting from Yahoo's drop.

The research firm EMarketer projected that Yahoo's share of the multibillion-dollar search advertising market in the U.S. sank to about 10% in 2010, down from about 13% in 2009.

This year, it's likely that Yahoo's share will drop even lower to about 8% of the market, according to EMarketer.

Google, the leader in the search market, nabbed about a 71% share in 2010 from about 70% in 2009, EMarketer said. And Google's search growth doesn't look to be changing any time soon, the firm said, estimating that the search giant could end up with a nearly 75% share by the end of 2011.

Search Direct is currently only available at search.yahoo.com in the U.S., but Yahoo said it was planning to add the feature to other Yahoo websites and regions later this year. And eventually, Search Direct could pop up on non-Yahoo sites, too, said Jason Khoury, a Yahoo spokesman.

"This is exclusive to yahoo right now, but we are looking to expand to partners down the road," Khoury said.

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Video: Search Direct in action. Image: Search Direct on search.yahoo.com. Credit: Yahoo

Nokia is set to pair its hardware with Microsoft's Windows Phone software in an effort to fend off the increasing success and competition from its rivals; Apple's iPhone, Google's Android operating system and Research In Motion's BlackBerry handsets.

The Finnish company made the widely expected decision official on Friday morning during a London news conference. 

"The entire smart phone market is growing rapidly, and we should be setting the pace," said Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop. "The game has changed. The game has changed from a battle of devices to a war of ecosystems."

In a Nokia internal memo leaked to the media Wednesday, Elop used much more dramatic language, writing that the company was "standing on a burning platform" with "more than one explosion -- we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us."

Microsoft's Windows Phone software, currently in its seventh iteration, will replace Nokia's Symbian operating system on the majority of handsets from the company after the two firms complete a partnership agreement, Elop said.

Neither Nokia or Microsoft offered any specifics dates on when the agreement between the two tech giants would be finalized or when the first Nokia Windows Phone would hit retail, though Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the process had begun.

"We're already working together to create the first Nokia Window's phones, and we've reached out to chip vendors, mobile operators and developers, and you'll hear more from us in all of those areas over the next weeks and months," Ballmer said.

The agreement will also give Microsoft access to Nokia's worldwide mapping and navigation services and access to large cellphone carriers in international markets that it hasn't had before, Elop and Ballmer said in a statement.

"In this partnership with Nokia, Microsoft brings its Windows Phone software and the brands mobile consumers want like Bing, Office and of course Xbox Live," Ballmer said Friday.

Nokia's mapping and navigation technology will be integrated into Microsoft's mapping services, such as maps used in the Bing search engine, and Microsoft's adCenter business will also sell and distribute ads across Nokia phones, the companies said.

Although Nokia is choosing Windows Phone 7 as its main strategy in smart phones, the company made clear that it is not planning to completely abandon its Symbian and under-development MeeGo operating systems.

Once the "long-term strategic alliance" is finalized, it will end up as a major departure from Nokia's past strategy in the smart-phone market, which had the home-grown Symbian at the core.

In January, Android dethroned Symbian as the world's most used smart-phone operating system -- a title Symbian had held since the inception of the market about a decade ago. Google's Android OS is comparatively young, having debuted in 2008.

Elop is fairly new to Nokia, having been hired as CEO last September from a senior executive position at Microsoft. He is also the first non-Finnish citizen to run Nokia, a company that is looking to him to turn around its large losses of market share in crucial markets such as the United States and Asia.

Nokia accounted for about 41% of the global mobile phone market in 2008, but that number fell to about 31% in 2010, according to the Associated Press. Despite the falling numbers, Nokia remains the world's top seller of mobile phones.

Below is a video of the Nokia news conference with Elop and Balmer.

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Photo: Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (left) and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announce that Nokia will carry the Windows Phone as its main smart phone platform during a news conference Friday in London. Credit: Nokia / Getty Images

Video credit: NokiaConversations via YouTube

Google is accusing Microsoft's Bing of copying its search results.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Web spam team, wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning:

I'm about to be on a panel with Bing and ask them how http://goo.gl/m3IWc on Google showed up as http://goo.gl/CTjsE on Bing

The two images that Cutts tweeted, shown above this post, gets to the point which SearchEngineLand first reported Tuesday morning.

Google says it can prove that Bing has watched what people search for on Google and tailored its results to mirror the leader in Web search, according to SearchEngineLand.

Harry Shum, Bing's corporate vice president, wrote a blog post Tuesday morning addressing the SearchEnglineLand story without denying that Bing monitors some Google user activity, but rather saying that it monitors all sorts of Web user habits to improve Bing's results. Shum wrote:

We woke up to an interesting (and interestingly timed) article by Danny Sullivan about some complaints Google has about how it says Bing ranks results," Shum wrote. "The Bing engineering team has been working hard over the past couple of years to deliver the best search relevance and quality in the industry and for our users. This is our top priority every day.

We use over 1,000 different signals and features in our ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is clickstream data we get from some of our customers, who opt-in to sharing anonymous data as they navigate the web in order to help us improve the experience for all users.

To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today's story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we'll take it as a back-handed compliment. But it doesn't accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience.

Shum was on the panel that Cutts mentioned in his tweet Tuesday morning at the Big Think Farsight conference in San Francisco.

During the panel, Cutts accused Bing of using Google search data for improving its search results.

Shum, a former college professor of Cutts', said he resented being called a "cheat" and again stated that Bing is just using the data its customers make available online to build up its search algorithm, just as Google does, according to a recap of the panel posted on the Big Think Website.

Rich Skrenta, the chief executive of the Blekko (a search engine that uses crowd-sourced input to filter out spam), was also on the panel. Skrenta said the problem is there are only two dominant search engines left on the Web and that there should be more options.

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Images: Screenshots taken by Google in its accusations of search result copying. Credit: Matt Cutts/Google