There doesn’t seem to a  quiet moment to be had for Google, who had a rather mixed bag this month. The eagerly anticipated ’superphone’ - the Nexus One was launched and despite all the hype surrounding the smartphone, sales figures have reportedly been poor. Comparatively, The iPhone 3GS sold over a million units within 72 hours of it’s launch, the Motorola Droid sold over 250,000 units in it’s first week, and the Nexus One? The initial week saw only an estimated 20,000 units being sold. Coupled to this is the fact that there have been a few complaints surrounding the phone itself, with some consumers reporting issues with the 3G connectivity and the fact that customer support for the device is lacking has made the launch of the Nexus One a bit of a bumpy one.

As Google’s products and services have become more and more a part of our daily online lives, so we have put more trust Google storing and keeping lots of valuable information safe. Unfortunately there was a recent breach of Google’s security originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property. The primary focus of the cyber attack seems to have been to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists - read more at the Official Google Blog here.

It hasn’t all been bad news however, the announcement of the fourth quarter and 2009 fiscal year financial results were very positive. Revenue is up 17% and paid clicks on ads saw an annual increase of 13%. So, despite widespread economic problems the search giant remains incredibly buoyant and continues to go from strength-to-strength financially.

Geo location is a hot topic at the moment, not just for Google, but many other companies as well. If you are using an iPhone or Android based device ‘Near me now‘ will make suggestions for services in your local vicinity such as ATMs or coffee shops. Another location based feature rolled out recently is optimized search suggestions based on where you are - read more at the Official Google Mobile Blog here.

Gmail is used by a lot of people and as such is a great platform for Google to display ads (it’s main source of revenue). As such the algorithms related to what ads display in your inbox have recently been updated to (hopefully) improve the relevancy of the ads that you see. Read more at the Official Gmail Blog here.

A few other odds and ends - Check out a demo of the Nexus One apps at the Google Nexus One web store here. ‘GDrive‘, it’s been talked about by many people for a long time, a much wanted cloud based storage solution from Google. Though not officially called ’GDrive‘ Google has rolled out the ability to upload and store any type of file to Google Docs up to 250 MB in size, with a limit of 1GB free storage (though you can buy more if needed) - read more at the Official Google Docs Blog here. And just in case you didn’t know, by tracking certain search queries, Google is able to estimate the current flu trends in near real time - read more here.

The online game is all about rapid change and 2009 was no different, here is a round-up of some of the good stuff from last year and how it affected (or will affect) the search market.

Missing something? Well, that would be Live Search from Microsoft, in it’s place we now have the (rather oddly titled) Bing. Strangely enough, the Live.com domain still ranks at No. 5 worldwide (at the time of writing) according to Alexa whilst Bing sits at No. 21, quite a way down. Microsoft is pushing Bing in a big way though, and whilst MSN and/or Windows Live never quite managed to catch up to Yahoo!, Bing has managed to pretty much bridge that gap (worldwide) in a short space of time and it’s gains in the US market vs Yahoo! continue. Shortly after the initial launch there were already a slew of updates to Microsoft’s ‘decision engine‘. Striking a deal with Wolfram|Alpha, launching a free Bing App for the iPhone and completing a very expensive deal with Verizon Wireless, much to the dismay of some Verizon customers, are all moves to promote Bing in Microsoft’s continuing struggle to raise it’s presence in search. Bing users are apparently more advertising click happy though, so even though there are less users, they are more likely to click on ads.

Yahoo! is still ranked No. 3 worldwide and though many people may talk them down, they are still a favourite for many internet users.  Their stock price is (currently) looking good and they are doing their best to fight off the aggressive push by Microsoft. On a site interaction level, the Yahoo! approach remains very different to that of Google or Bing, with a much more social ‘home page’ than Google’s minimalism or Bing’s really good-looking daily photos. They are now offering localized business results, integrated tweets into search results and have struck a deal with Facebook Connect, all moves which contribute to it’s targeting a different demographic of the search market.

Google dominated search in 2009 once again, branching out further and further into internet users daily lives. During the year Google’s products continued to infiltrate our online activities, not just in search but clever moves like Android (plus Nexus One), the much anticipated Chrome OS (and soon to come netbook), Google Voice and not forgetting the innovative Google Wave, mean things can only improve for the superpower in search. We are still waiting on Google Caffeine, an upgrade to Google Search, and rather peculiarly only got a fade-in effect on the homepage instead. The Top 10 Official Google Blog posts of 2009 are worth reading and don’t forget about the Google AdWords Blog for a refresher of what happened in search advertising in 2009. Whether Google can still be termed a ‘search engine‘ or rather now as a ‘lifestyle‘ is a debatable topic and 2010 will only continue to further this contention. Add to this the fact that even though many big firms may lose value in 2010, Google are still expected to turn a tidy profit, and we clearly have a winner amongst the big three.

What’s looking hot for 2010? Realtime search is something everyone is trying to incorporate into search results. Couple this with the equally hot trend in geo-location and you start to think of interesting opportunities for marketing and search results. An Apple iSlate vs Chrome OS Netbook war is on the cards as is one between the Nexus One (with Google Android) and iPhone, with Google trying to take a bigger slice of Apple’s pie.

Finally, the official search engine 2009 trends are here:

• Google Year-End Zeitgest
• Yahoo! Year in Review 2009
• Top Bing Searches in 2009

And, just for fun, check out the 2010 New Year’s Search Engine Logos here…happy new year!