Media Mates: MANAGEMENT COMPASS: Bizz Buzz

Events that rocked the business world in the past one month

Tata-Jaguar team up
Roles were reversed in 2008 when Tata colonised itself in the British lands by taking over Jaguar-Land Rover (JLR) ownership. Now, in 2010 Indian engineers will play a major role in the makeover of Jaguar and Land Rover engines as JLR looks forward to slash the costs of its models for meeting the market demands in China and Russia. A management team comprising of experts from both the sides will be formed in which the engineering part will be assigned to Tata Motors while the designing would still be done by JLR executives. The decision came as a surprise as JLR is known to cater to the high-end market while Tata is known for its dominance in the lower segment – Nano being a prime example. But this move by JLR was justified by the fact that it is looking forward to cut the costs of its models significantly by manufacturing common parts for both the models, which will be released in the Chinese and Russian markets. According to a senior JLR executive,” With the company making country-specific models of Jaguar and Land Rover for certain markets like China and Russia, common parts will reduce expenses.” Tata Motors have become increasingly efficient in handling the European markets and they proved the same by posting a net profit of Rs.2571 crore as against a loss of Rs.2505 crore a year ago. Tata will initially limit its engineering operations to Land Rover but will subsequently move on to Jaguar. “As India is a preferred source of production, we’ll source the engines here with the design left for the JLR team,” a Tata Motors spokesman voiced the decision to jointly develop engines.

No more Windows in Google
The iconic name in web search industry – Google is all set to purge the usage of Windows operating system developed by its rival company Microsoft. The decision came in the wake of an incident where the Google operations in China were hacked in January. According to Google, the operating system by Microsoft poses a major security threat to the firm. The shift is in progress to other operating systems such as Apple Inc’s Mac OS and open source Linux. The internet security firm McAfee said that the attacks on Google were made by exploiting a previously unknown flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser and it is found in all recent versions of the Windows operating systems. A Google employee said,” We're not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort. We're always working to improve the efficiency of our business, but we do not comment on specific operational matters." Google has already launched a series of e-mail, web and other software products and will be soon developing its own operating system based on its browser – Chrome. How this decision of Google will affect the giant Microsoft Corp’s reputation is yet to be discovered.

Google- Invite(s) Media
Google’s acquisition program saw the addition of another firm in the long list of possessions on the first week of June when it took over advertising technology startup – Invite Media. Invite Media is known for its path breaking idea to allow advertisers to bid on ad space online. They developed a manner in which the advertisers could bid for the online display ad space hence creating a common buying platform. Google vice president of product management Neal Mohan explains this acquisition, like; "We're investing significantly in the display advertising ecosystem and are seeing great momentum. Real-time bidding technology is an important part of this ecosystem." Google’s strategy is to invest heavily in Inviting and then eventually merging its technology into DoubleClick, which is another acquisition of Google. DoubleClick – bought by Google three years ago is also an online ad targeting business.

Although the price of the acquisition is not disclosed till now yet the estimates go as high as 70 million dollars (US). Invite originated in Philadelphia and has branches in New York City. Although the ink has hardly dried on Google’s latest acquisition, the Internet rights group for Digital Democracy has called on the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google’s purchase of Invite Media. Just a week before this deal, the Internet giant acquired mobile advertising network – AdMob at a price of 750 million dollars. Their aim was to integrate the technology from both sides and expand their Internet advertising domain to the lucrative world of mobile advertising.