Gartner has released its data on operating systems. No surprise -- Google leads on mobile, but Microsoft and Apple continue to battle it out for No. 2. Worldwide device shipments will near 2.5 billion units this year, up about 4% from 2014, per Gartner. Android runs more than half all the devices this year and next, which leaves Microsoft and Apple battling for second. Microsoft already holds a commanding lead over iOS and Mac OS combined sales, and it appears the gap will widen in the future.

Apple has a contract with Google making its Web browser the default on Apple products. The contract expires in 2016, but rumors suggest Apple will not renew. Statcounter, a market research firm, estimates that Safari accounted for more than half of Google’s mobile traffic last month. Apple may replace Google’s search engine with Yahoo's or Microsoft’s Bing. Not much more to tell. Just food for thought. How will the landscape change?

Search Marketing Daily reported on a Google Buy Now button months ago, and debated the possibility with brands in December at the Search Insider Summit in Park City. Now Kenneth Hamner tells marketers what they need to know about Google's rumored button. He believes the button would not turn Google into an online retailer like Amazon, because it would only facilitate orders and not fulfill them. Just as we discussed, Hamner said clicking the "Buy Now" button would confirm and process the order directly from the search result page so consumers would not need to be redirected to a different site. …

Cloud storage company Box filed an amended initial public offering (IPO) Friday pricing its shares between $11 and $13. Overall, the IPO would raise as much as $187 million for Box and value the company at nearly $1.6 billion. The company had filed for an IPO in March, but pulled it. Victor Luckerson tells marketers more.

Bing launched a carousel on its search engine displaying the New York Times best-selling books. The categories serving up in Bing search results at the top of the page include fiction, non-fiction, and more. The New York Times best-sellers list appears at the top of the page. Books are ranked by The New York Times based on weekly or monthly sales data. Clicking on individual titles provides more information about each book. Microsoft will change the carousel with the best-seller list.

A freshly designed Internet browser from the ground up could provide all the backend technology and security required for the next generation of online advertising and communication. So, the rumors that Microsoft will launch a new browser, code name Spartan, make sense. No surprise here. Internet Explorer has gained a bad reputation over the years for its numerous glitches, heavy-handed proprietary features, and various security breaches. Greg Shultz analyzes some of the buzz and digs in behind the scenes for answers.

As the use of mobile phones continues to climb, so will the amount of click-to-call volume from search and display ads, even video. The challenge becomes managing inbound calls and analyzing the data at the call centers. BIA/Kelsey estimates phone leads driven by mobile search will reach 72 billion annually by 2018, and its Local Commerce Monitor (LCM) survey of SMBs pegs phone calls as the most valuable form of customer lead. 

Ad extensions like Sitelinks typically drive an increase in traffic and click-through rates (CTR). In fact, the add-on can increase click-through rates by an average of 15% to 25%, per Jon Mette, but with a fierce competition for traffic is that enough? Mette runs through some options and ways to combine extensions that could prove higher yields.

Google Capital has invested an undisclosed amount in CommonFloor, which claims to be India’s largest online real estate platform. This is Google Capital’s third investment in Asia since the firm launched in February 2014, per Catherine Shu. Prior to the investment, CommonFloor, founded in 2007, had raised $47.9 million from Tiger Global and Accel Partners.

As marketers continue to get more comfortable with content marketing strategy and tactics, finding the best way to measure the effectiveness of content continues to plague the industry. Larry Kim believes marketers need a metric he calls content analysis needs to help understand how well your content resonates with audiences, converts lookers to buyers, and works toward the achievement of your business goals. He explains.