Google after the bell for 8-14-06: Yahoo! battles and small homepage change

Google shares closed up today to end the start-of-the-week trading session at $369.43, an increase of $0.93 or 0.25% from last Friday's close. What's Google up to these days? Releasing a free wireless Internet service in the hometown of its headquarters and continuing to battle with Yahoo! for starters. Although Terry Semel, CEO of competitor Yahoo!, said that "just being really good at one thing may not be enough" -- a barb directed at Google most likely -- Google continues to do pretty darn well every quarter, although I believe Google shares continue to be overvalued.

But what is Google doing with its products that seem to be chomping along, slowly gaining marketshare? It's rearranging the deck, so to speak. Google Video replaced the link to Google Froogle on the Google homepage last week, which seems a minor tweak all things considered. If you visit www.google.com -- like hundreds of millions do each day -- you'll now see Google Video as a featured link on Google's minimalist homepage.

So, what's going on with Froogle? Nothing -- yet. The comparison shopping site is a feature I'm a fan of, but the marketing of this against online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay has been dismal, or non-existent. I continue to believe that Google's products, while incredibly easy to use and well-designed, still suffer from poor marketing. This from what is almost one of the world's largest advertising networks, the Google search engine. Talk about irony.

Brian White has worked in various executive positions in technology and telecommunications and now focuses on editing and writing.