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Facebook closes gap with Google, the Internet's most powerful company

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Facebook is growing at an exceptional pace as it enters adolescence, propelling it into a better position to challenge Google as the Internet's most powerful company. 
 
Facebook's fourth-quarter report Wednesday provided the latest gauge of the company's impressive strides. 
 
It marked the first time that Facebook's quarterly revenue has surpassed $5 billion — more than fading Internet star Yahoo now generates in an entire year. Facebook's earnings also more than doubled to $1.56 billion, even as the Menlo Park, California, company invests heavily in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, Internet access in remote parts of the world and a mobile ad network for services other than its own. 
 
The performance lifted Facebook's stock by $11.37, or 12 per cent, to $105.82 in extended trading after the report came out. 
 
Although Google remains three times larger by revenue, Facebook has been closing the gap as it sells more mobile advertising on its addictive social-networking app. And it's just beginning to mine revenue from its trendy Instagram service and a rapidly expanding video library. 
 
This spring's debut of the Oculus Rift headset, part of the virtual-reality technology that Facebook bought for $2 billion in 2014, could open another lucrative market. Google is now hiring more virtual-reality specialists, a sign that is trying to catch up with Facebook in a still-nascent field that could transform computing. 
 
Social networking remains Facebook's foundation. The service picked up another 46 million users during the final three months of last year to expand its worldwide audience to 1.59 billion users. 
 
"I'm excited about our progress and the chance to build something great for the future," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts in a Wednesday conference call. 
 
Google, now a part of the recently created Alphabet Inc., is thriving too, with more than 1 billion users on its search engine as well as its YouTube video site and its Android software for mobile devices. That makes it unlikely that Facebook will topple Google anytime soon. 
 
Powered by the world's dominant Internet search engine, Google still sells the most digital advertising by a wide margin. Just how much more will be disclosed Monday, when Alphabet is scheduled to announced its fourth-quarter earnings. Alphabet is expected to report fourth-quarter revenue of nearly $17 billion, after subtracting ad commissions, nearly triple what Facebook generated during the same three-month period. 
 
But consider this: Facebook will be turning 12 years old next week and it just posted revenue of $5.8 billion in its latest quarter. At the same stage of its existence in September 2010, Google's net revenue stood at $5.5 billion. 
 
What's more, Facebook's revenue is climbing at a more rapid clip than Google's was at a comparable stage. Facebook's revenue in the past quarter represented a 52 per cent increase from the same time a year ago. When it turned 12 years old, Google's quarterly net revenue rose 25 per cent from the previous year. 
 
In another sign of Facebook's progress, its share of the digital advertising market rose from 8 per cent in 2014 to 10 per cent worldwide last year, according to the research firm eMarketer Inc. Google's share shrank from 32 per cent in 2014 to 30 per cent last year. 
 
That's still a lot of ground for Facebook to make up, but it's not impossible, given the digital dossiers that it has compiled about its users' passions, friendships and other services that they visit while signed into the social-networking service. 
 
All that data could help Facebook deliver ads tailored for each individual's interests even better than Google has done by analyzing search requests, emails and people's locations, eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson said. 
 
"I wouldn't underestimate Facebook," Williamson said. "They have shaken up multiple types of businesses and completely changed the way that people communicate." 
 
Google knows better than to dismiss the threat posed by Facebook. After all, when it went public in 2004, Google was still smaller than Yahoo. It didn't take long for Google to trounce Yahoo, partly because its rival focused on being on an all-purpose destination while overlooking the lucrative business of search advertising. By contrast, Google has been vigilant about protecting its search business while developing YouTube, Android and other popular products such as Gmail and the Chrome browser. 
 
Investors are betting on both companies. Facebook's stock climbed 34 per cent last year, while Alphabet's stock (formerly Google's) surged 47 per cent. Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor's index dipped 1 percent. 
 
"Some people have been wondering if Facebook wins, does that mean Google loses?" said Rosenblatt Securities analyst Martin Pyykkonen. "For now, I think both of these stories can win. They are the two big gorillas in digital advertising."</div>

Facebook closes gap with Google, the Internet's most powerful company

Facebook is growing at an exceptional pace as it enters adolescence, propelling it into a better position to challenge Google as the Int...

WhatsApp goes down briefly in India, four other nations

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Facebook-owned smartphone messaging service WhatsApp temporarily crashed in an array of countries from the US to India, potentially affecting hundreds of millions of users. 
 
Reports of people having trouble with WhatsApp in countries including Japan, India, Malaysia, Colombia and the United States hit the Internet about 0200 GMT Tuesday. 
 
The outage appeared to be resolved in most locations in an hour or so, according to Downdetector.com, which calls itself "the weatherman for the digital world." 
 
Comments posted by users indicated they were having intermittent difficulties with WhatsApp during the problem period. 
 
Facebook did not respond to an AFP request for comment. 
 
The disruption came on the heels of media reports that Facebook is working behind the scenes to integrate WhatsApp more snugly into the world's leading social network by providing the ability to share information between the services. 
 
California-based Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in late 2014 and the messaging service has grown to nearly a billion users.</div>

WhatsApp goes down briefly in India, four other nations

Facebook-owned smartphone messaging service WhatsApp temporarily crashed in an array of countries from the US to India, potentially aff...

Apple expected to report lowest iPhone sales in history

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Apple Inc is expected to report iPhone sales increased slightly more than 1 per cent in the holiday quarter when it announces earnings on Tuesday, its slowest growth ever and far from the double-digit growth investors have come to expect. 
 
The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, which boasted record weekend sales when they launched in September, are now facing weak demand, according to analysts, because they have fewer distinguishing features than their popular predecessors. 
 
The new iPhones also face tough comparisons with the strong sales of their older siblings. 
 
Apple tapped into a crucial market when it unveiled its bigger-screen 6 and 6 Plus phones in 2014, grabbing the attention of Asian customers, who had previously lapped up phablets from players such as Samsung Electronics. 
 
"Apple has become a victim of their own success as the blockbuster iPhone 6 product cycle was hard to replicate as many customers are either buying an older, cheaper iPhone 6 or waiting for the iPhone 7," FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives said. 
 
China, the company's fastest-growing market, may also have weighed on first-quarter results, as a slowdown in the country's economy forced consumers to tighten their purse strings. 
 
Analysts estimate Apple sold 75.5 million iPhones in the October-December quarter, a 1.3 per cent increase from a year earlier, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount. 
 
This compares with a nearly 46 per cent year-over-year jump in iPhone sales in the first quarter of 2015. The slowest growth in quarterly iPhone sales so far has been 6.8 per cent, in the second quarter of fiscal 2013, according to data from Statista. 
 
To make matters worse, Apple is expected to forecast a drop in iPhone sales for the March quarter – the first time that sales will fall since the iPhone was launched in 2007. 
 
This was foreshadowed by disappointing March-quarter forecasts from the company's Asian suppliers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Largan Precision Co Ltd. 
 
Apple is expected to sell 54.6 million iPhones in the March 2016 quarter, according to FactSet. The company sold 61.2 million iPhones between January and March, 2015 - a 40 per cent year-over-year increase. 
 
Analysts said the company will have to wait until the launch of the iPhone 7, expected later this year, to return to growth, as buyers upgrade to the latest version. 
 
Analysts, technology blogs and company watchers say the iPhone 7 could include waterproofing, wireless headphones and use its new force touch technology to kill off the home button. 
 
Apple shares closed down 1.98 per cent at $99.41 on Monday. They have fallen nearly 10 per cent since the start of October, steeper than a 2.2 per cent decline in the S&P 500 index. 
 
Out of the 50 brokerages that cover Apple, 43 have a "buy" or higher rating on the stock. Their median 12-month price target is $141.50. 
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Apple expected to report lowest iPhone sales in history

Apple Inc is expected to report iPhone sales increased slightly more than 1 per cent in the holiday quarter when it announces earnings ...

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Facebook closes gap with Google, the Internet's most powerful company

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WhatsApp goes down briefly in India, four other nations

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Apple expected to report lowest iPhone sales in history

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