Following the movements (both real and anticipated) of Google has become a sport in and of itself. It’s an exciting company that never quite does what the industry expects it to, and this actually seems to be at least part of the secret behind its enormous success.

And this trend-bucking tendency has been in stronger evidence than ever in recent weeks, as the company has made a couple of eyebrow-raising announcements that may send it into the skies — or even beyond, into outer space!

First is the news that the company is looking to get into the wireless provider service game — via balloons. From the Wall Street Journal:

Space Data Corp. … launches 10 balloons a day across the Southern U.S., providing specialized telecom services to truckers and oil companies. [The] balloons soar 20 miles into the stratosphere, each carrying a shoebox-size payload of electronics that acts like a mini cellphone “tower” covering thousands of square miles below.

[The] idea has caught the eye of Google Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. The Internet giant — which is now pushing into wireless services — has considered contracting with Space Data or even buying the firm, according to one person.

… Expanding rural telecom services is a priority for regulators. About 36% of rural Americans don’t have Internet connections. The problem is that it’s expensive to string cable or build cellphone towers in areas with so few customers. Space Data says a single balloon can serve an area otherwise requiring 40 cell towers.

Maintaining a telecom system based on gas-filled bladders floating in the sky requires some creativity. The inexpensive balloons are good for only 24 hours or so before ultimately bursting in the thin air of the upper atmosphere. The electronic gear they carry, encased in a small Styrofoam box, then drifts gently back to earth on tiny parachutes.

This means Space Data must constantly send up new balloons. To do that, it hires mechanics employed at small airports across the South. It also hires farmers — particularly, dairy farmers.

… Google believes balloons like these could radically change the economics of offering cellphone and Internet services in out-of-the-way areas, according to people familiar with its thinking. The company is among the registered bidders for a big chunk of radio spectrum at a government auction currently under way in Washington.

But why stop there? Google doesn’t intend to. The company also recently made official their competition to award tens of millions of dollars to the first two teams to land a robot on the moon:

The return to the moon is part of the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition sponsored by Google with $30 million in prizes for the first two teams to land a robotic rover on the moon and send images and other data back home.

At Google’s headquarters here on Thursday, 10 teams from five countries announced their intention to participate in the competition.

… “This is about developing a new generation of technology that is cheaper, can be used more often and will enable a new wave of explorers,” said Peter H. Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation.

Addressing the X Prize teams and journalists, Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, compared his company’s support of the competition with other companies’ sponsorship of yacht races. “The idea we can help spur the return to the moon and maybe even do it more quickly than some of the national plans is really exciting to me,” Mr. Brin said.

Google will pay $20 million to the first team that lands on the moon, sends a package of data back to Earth, then travels at least 500 meters and sends another data package. The second team to accomplish the goals will win $5 million. Bonuses are offered for feats like visiting a historic landing site and finding and detecting lunar ice, but the prize money starts to shrink if the mission is not accomplished by 2012.

So what does Google have to gain from funding engineers to get back on the moon? The article uses the phrase, “jump-starting an age of space commerce,” which, to us, says it all.

Of course, there are a lot more details to both of these stories. Click here to read “Floating a New Idea For Going Wireless, Parachute Included” in the Wall Street Journal. Click here to read “A Google Competition, With a Robotic Moon Landing as a Goal” in the New York Times.

The latest news on the economy shows that the Federal Reserve is still struggling with how to handle the demands posed by a weak economy. Rising consumer prices, a soft dollar, the “housing crisis”, higher gas prices (now over $100 a barrel!), and new worries over inflation are dominating business headlines this week.

The question is, what can the government do at this point? After having made several significant rate cuts in recent weeks, further rate cuts are not likely, and may even pose more of a threat than a boost if they did happen.

From today’s Chicago Tribune:

Consumer prices accelerated their upward trend last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday, in a report that suggests higher petroleum costs are beginning to infiltrate into the broader economy.

The latest evidence of intensifying inflationary pressures means the Federal Reserve, which has been focused almost completely on stimulating the slowing economy to prevent recession, “needs to stop ignoring inflation,” said First Trust Advisors economist Brian Wesbury.

“With high inflation and slow growth,” said Danske Bank analyst Peter Possing Andersen, “the Fed is caught between a rock and a hard place.”

The New York Times has a similar analysis:

Consumer prices rose more than expected last month, the government reported on Wednesday, reinforcing concerns at the Federal Reserve that inflation still poses a threat to the American economy.

The rise in the Consumer Price Index may make life more difficult for the Fed as the central bank considers a new round of interest rate cuts aimed at preventing a recession. Rising oil prices, the cheaper dollar and the coming stimulus package could all potentially lead to increased price pressures this year, economists said.

Lower interest rates help stimulate economic activity but can also cause prices to rise. Fed officials have indicated they are focused on dealing with risks to growth, but minutes of their most recent meeting revealed concerns about a potential rise in inflation over the next few months.

One Fed official, Richard W. Fisher of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, dissented from the Fed’s decision to lower rates by a half-point, arguing that he viewed “upside risks to inflation as being greater than the downside risks to longer-term economic growth,” according to the minutes.

Those concerns were reinforced by the most recent reading on the Consumer Price Index, which rose 0.4 percent in January, a bigger gain than economists had predicted.

What does this all mean to the average small business? It’s hard to say, and it depends largely on what kind of business you’re running. But rising consumer prices are rarely a good thing for the business community; anything that stifles consumer spending tends to hit small businesses harder than bigger companies.

What do you think? Are any of these developments directly affecting your online business? Do you welcome another rate cut, or think there’s been too many lately? Do you think the government is taking all this seriously enough? Feel free to sound off in the comments and let us know how your business is reacting to these economic difficulties.

Today we at Aplus.Net are very excited to announce the official opening of our second state-of-the-art data center facility in Phoenix, Arizona.

This announcement marks a successful migration of a key segment of our dedicated server hardware to the new facility, which is our second, and which will operate in conjunction with our original military-grid data center in San Diego.

The migration involved the transportation of 2,600 servers complete with firewalls, load balancers, KVM switches, and all other related equipment. The move was conducted during off-peak hours over a space of several weeks, resulting in minimal service interruption to customers.

Boasting direct fiber-optic connectivity, uninterruptible power from multiple UPS systems, a back-up diesel generator, and sophisticated climate-control systems, the new 25,000-sq.-ft. data center is fully modernized and optimized for security. We’ve partnered with a diversified selection of six major Internet backbone providers to allow for a multi-homed bandwidth that is perfectly suited for continuous connectivity.

Both of our data centers offer high-quality Intel and AMD processors as well as Unix, Linux, and Windows servers to optimize flexibility and performance. Server areas also have restricted access, and are monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Reflecting our concern with the rise of identity theft and on-site burglaries, both facilities are fully protected against flood, fire, and criminal invasion.

“These days more than ever, data center security is on everyone’s mind,” comments Ryan Elledge, our COO. “So we’re proud to state that we’ve gone all out to ensure that this facility is as secure as possible. Keeping our customers’ data safe is our top priority.”

“We’re a rapidly growing company, and we work hard to stay on top of all the latest developments the dedicated hosting industry has to offer,” adds Nicholas Gaugler, the company’s Vice President of Development. “Given that, a data center expansion was a necessary move for us. And, after months of searching, we decided that Phoenix was the right location for Aplus.Net.”

Company officials cited Phoenix’s fast-growing technological infrastructure, predictable climate, favorable real estate situation, and status as a telecommunications industry center as among the motivating factors behind the decision to open a new dedicated hosting facility in that city.

The new data center has been operational as of December, 2007.

Click here to check out our official press release.

No matter what kind of business you’re running, growth is essential. The market is competitive — to remain stagnant is to fall behind.

But beware the downside of growth: As you carefully and painstakingly grow your business, many new problems arise. You may be surprised to learn (if you haven’t already) that the bigger and better-recognized you are, the more you’ll become a target.

That’s where media relations comes in. If you want to reduce all the misinformation and bad press that comes with any sort of market recognition, you need to know the basic rules of PR and media relationships.

For all its difficulties, the media is ultimately a necessary tool you need to learn how to use to achieve success. From learning how to communicate to the market to getting newspaper coverage, from managing crises to building your brand, the media is a resource that can’t be neglected.

With this in mind, we recommend checking out this list of their five favorite media relations white papers put together by the staff over at BNET Media. (Registration is required, but it’s free.)

So now that Yahoo has said no to Microsoft’s recent takeover bid, where does that leave the two companies?

Industry expectations seem to point toward Microsoft continuing its attempt to acquire the company. ABC News’ Tampa affiliate recently picked up an AP story stating as much:

Microsoft says Yahoo’s rejection of its multi-billion buyout offer is “unfortunate,” and that moving forward on a deal is in both companies’ best interest.

Microsoft Corp. said Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo Inc.’s response “does not change our belief in the strategic and financial merits of our proposal.”

The Redmond, Wash., software maker added Monday that it reserves the right to “pursue all necessary steps” to ensure Yahoo’s shareholders have a chance to benefit from the $31-per-share offer.

Opinions are mixed, however, as to whether or not Microsoft will be able to succeed in this goal. For its part, Yahoo is trying to escape Microsoft’s clutches by courting other potential buyers. According to the New York Times:

“It seems like Yahoo’s strategic options are relatively limited,” said Mark Mahaney, an analyst with Citigroup. “It is hard to see a scenario that could create as much value for shareholders as quickly as a Microsoft offer.”

The latest to have intensified talks with Yahoo is the News Corporation, but participants on both sides describe the discussions as “a long shot.”

The talks center on merging some of Fox’s interactive assets — led by MySpace — with Yahoo. The News Corporation would emerge as a major shareholder of Yahoo. It is engaged in the talks partly because, as one participant said, “there’s nothing to lose.”

The News Corporation had sought a similar combination of MySpace and Yahoo last year, people involved in the talks said, but Yahoo rebuffed the overture before a formal bid was ever made.

At the time, the News Corporation had teamed with Providence Equity Partners, a private equity firm that focuses on media. The latest round of discussions is unlikely to include Providence, these people said, though it remains a possibility.

Yahoo and the News Corporation both declined to comment.

The talks with the News Corporation follow a show of interest from Google, whose chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, called his counterpart at Yahoo, Jerry Yang, to offer his company’s help in keeping Yahoo independent after Microsoft’s bid. The two companies discussed the possibility of Yahoo’s outsourcing its search-related ad business to Google, according to people briefed on the talks.

Among all these possibilities, the speculated merger with Rupert Murdoch’s gigantic News Corporation is getting the most attention. AP Business Writer Michael Liedtke
puts it all into perspective:

If nothing else, the possibility of Yahoo joining forces with one of the world’s largest media empires could prompt Microsoft to sweeten its bid, which was originally valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 per share.

Yahoo is believed to want at least $40 per share, or about $56 billion.

The details of the proposed News Corp. alliance were still being worked out Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the situation. The person didn’t want to be identified because the talks are considered confidential.

Most analysts believe Microsoft will do whatever necessary to buy Yahoo because the world’s largest software maker views the acquisition as the best way to counteract Google Inc.’s dominance of the online search and ad markets - a battleground that is rapidly reshaping the technology and media industries.

The News Corp deal may be a long-shot, but analysts are having a field day speculating about it and what it would do to the Google-Yahoo competitive dynamic. Lastly, from today’s Washington Post:

A deal with Yahoo could involve a spinoff of the entire Fox Interactive group, which was under discussion last summer.

Such a combination would make News Corp. the largest single shareholder in a Yahoo/Fox Interactive unit. That would marry the world’s most popular social-networking site, MySpace, with Yahoo’s 4 billion page views per month to make a formidable opponent for Google.

Over the last three months of 2007, Yahoo’s share of all Internet searches dropped from 20 to 18 percent, according to Nielsen Online. Google’s rose from 54 to 56 percent.