Google’s Annual AdWords Livestream Set For May 5th

New product announcements will stem from mobile's prominent role in the customer journey.

Google has set the date for its (now) annual AdWords livestream to announce upcoming product launches. Mark your calendar for 9:30am Pacific Time/12:30pm Eastern Time on May 5, 2015.

Jerry Dischler, VP of AdWords Product Management, will host the 45-minute livestream, available on the Inside AdWords blog.  The theme will be mobile’s growing role in the customer journey.

Dischler said in a blog post that the products being announced will help advertisers:

• Create better mobile experiences for your customers at the moments when they’re looking for your products and services
• Measure all the moments that matter to your business – online and offline, across multiple devices and touchpoints
• Customize and scale everything you do in AdWords, to unlock the full potential of increasingly complex consumer journeys

Google appears to be taking a more low key approach to this year’s livestream. The hype built up around last year’s announcement wound up making the actual event come off as a bit of a let down in terms of delivering wild card surprises. Several of the new tools announced last year, including the most impressive — Multi-dimensional reporting and visualization — have yet to roll out. Though Google has finally said that the new reports tab will roll out this month and next.

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Bing Ads Adding Support For Upgraded URLs

The roll out will occur in two stages: one for AdWords imports and a second for full availability within Bing Ads.

In response to Google AdWords’ roll out of Upgraded URLs, Bing Ads will soon be adding support for the new tracking parameter feature to ensure a smooth process when migrating campaigns from AdWords.

In a blog post Tuesday, Jamie Chung, program manager at Bing Ads, said support for importing Upgraded URLs from AdWords will be available by early May.

The feature will then be available within the Bing Ads platform by the end of summer 2015.

When advertisers import their campaigns, Bing Ads will use any existing AdWords tracking templates to create a destination URL for Bing Ads. Note that Bing Ads cannot import URLS with custom parameters such as {_creative}=1234, for example. Any custom parameters will be skipped over during the import. (See below for additional ValueTrack support.)

Here’s a handy chart showing which type of URL Bing Ads will use on a text ad, keyword or sitelink extension during an import from AdWords:

Expanded Value Track Support

Bing Ads will be adding some support for the expanded use of Value Tack parameters now available in Upgraded URLs. Bing Ads will support three additional dynamic text parameters, with support for additional parameters coming at a later date. The full list of supported substitution parameters in Bing Ads is available here.

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Google Bolding Answers, Not Just Queries, In The Search Results

Google isn't just bolding the search query now, but also the answers to your search queries.

Google is now bolding answers in the search results, not just the query or the synonym of your query in the search results.

For example, if you search for [what color is the sky] or [the average age of a college student] or other queries that would return answers at the top of the page or in the search results, you would see Google bolding the answer.

In the first example, Google is bolding blue and red colors in the answer in the knowledge graph box, but also you’d find these words bolded in the actual search results below:

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Apple Maps Adds New Review Sources, Replacing Yelp Outside US In Many Cases

TripAdvisor and Booking.com reviews now appearing in search results.

Apple has added reviews content from TripAdvisor and Booking.com to Apple Maps. Spotted first by Apple Insider, the new review sources appear to be both for US and international locations, though predominantly outside the US.
Yelp reviews are still present, but appear to have been replaced for hotel and restaurant searches in most (though not all) international contexts. In the US, I wasn’t able to find TripAdvisor and Booking.com content except in isolated cases.
The new review sources show up in mobile results and on the desktop version of Apple Maps. Booking.com is being used for hotel reviews in most cases while TripAdvisor is used for restaurants.
I conducted numerous searches for restaurants, museums and hotels in various US cities and outside the country. While there was a pattern there was also some inconsistency in terms of when Yelp reviews would appear vs. the other sources.
A search for “museums, London” delivers a list of results with Yelp reviews. But a search for “restaurants, London” shows results with TripAdvisor reviews. A query for “hotels, London” shows Booking.com reviews (above). In these cases, Yelp reviews have clearly been replaced by the other two sources — but why not for museums? TripAdvisor has excellent attractions coverage.
A search for “hotels, Monmouth Junction, New Jersey” shows category results with reviews provided by Yelp. However a search for “Days Inn in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey” (the example in the AppleInsider Article) shows an individual listing with TripAdvisor reviews. 
In this particular example there were no Yelp reviews for the Days Inn so it may be that Apple is trying to fill perceived holes in Yelp’s coverage. That doesn’t explain the wholesale replacement of Yelp in many international results.
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VIDEO: The Power of Instagram for E-Commerce in Indonesia

Speaking at ClickZ Live Jakarta, Sri Safitri, chief marketing officer for Telkom Telstra, discussed how small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and brands in Indonesia are using Instagram as a central part of the e-commerce journey.

Instagram has a strong user base in Indonesia and sees benefits from the country's unique e-commerce environment. But the social platform should consider customizing its product offerings for the region accordingly, according to Sri Safitri, chief marketing officer for Telkom Telstra.

More than 30 percent of Indonesian Internet users are on Instagram, where the platform is used as a key component to generate sales for SMBs, often from traffic being directed via Twitter and Facebook.

However, as existing and new social media channels upgrade their e-commerce capabilities and enter the Indonesian digital scene, Instagram will need to customize and adapt its services if it hopes to maintain market share, says Sri.

"Instagram should understand the Indonesian landscape and also the uniqueness of how people use Instagram in Indonesia," she says.

"If Instagram is not following up or adapting to this change…many online shops will probably join Line or other platforms that may come to Indonesia with that e-commerce platform."

In this video, Sri tells ClickZ about the ways Indonesians are using social media, especially Instagram, for commercial purposes, and the importance of the hashtag.
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Avoid Google Chrome’s security flaw with these password manager apps

Online security has been a huge topic of discussion — that much is evident from the sheer breadth of passcodes you likely have within your arsenal. However, although passwords serve as a convenient and (often) effective means of preventing your identity and data from being stolen, remembering them all can prove difficult without having to refer to a multitude of Post-It notes haphazardly place around your computer’s monitor.
The right password manager should do more than just lock your passcodes within an encrypted vault in order to minimize your vulnerability against attacks. Many modern password managers now allow you to sync your Web-based passwords across devices and change them with a mere click, while giving you the option to automatically sign in to your favorite sites and granting you improved security in all facets of your data.
Below are a few of our current favorites, though we still highly recommend you lock your computer whenever you step away from it. Trust us, your co-workers can be cruel if left unattended. Damn you, Brad!

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Facebook Reportedly Testing WhatsApp Integration in Android App

After one year of acquiring mobile messaging service WhatsApp, Facebook has reportedly begun testing a new feature in its Facebook for Android app that includes the first major integration of WhatsApp.
The social networking site is said to have added a 'Send' button with the familiar WhatsApp icon as a part of the status actions buttons that appear under each status update.
The new button appears on the right side (for left-to-right languages) for some users in the most recent version of the Facebook for Android app, the Geek Time reported.
This move appears to be the first step towards connecting the two platforms in order to sustain growth and take control of the messaging market together.
According to reports, teams are already working on a deeper integration that will include the ability to send messages between Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
WhatsApp, which last said it had 700 million monthly active users, was acquired by Facebook for over $20 billion in February last year. Facebook Messenger now has 600 million monthly active users.
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Why B2C Ad Metrics Are Ruining Your B2B Campaigns

B2B marketers have long measured the success of their marketing campaigns with metrics like CPM and CTR, but columnist Rachel Balik suggests we need to take a new approach.

Every week, we get an automated email from one of display ad vendors with this subject line, “Rachel, you could get more clicks by increasing your budget.” Well, you don’t say!
What bothers me about this email is that they’re not promising me better performance or a more optimized campaign. This is basically the equivalent of saying, “Rachel, you could get a second coffee by paying for a second coffee!” To extend that metaphor into my display ad campaigns, I don’t want a second coffee. I want a higher quality coffee, maybe one with an espresso shot in it. I want to be able to say to my boss, “I got the most caffeine I possibly could by using our allocated budget of $3.”
But surprisingly, most advertisers are not opposed to the idea of spending more money to get more impressions, because our entire campaign planning and measurement framework is built upon the notions of CPM (cost-per-mille) and CTR (click-through rate).
Traditionally, when marketers negotiate, plan and purchase campaigns, the CPM metric is a critical metric. But implicit in the CPM metric is the assumption that advertisers need to buy impressions by the thousands so that their ads will reach just a few potential buyers. The idea is that if you reach enough people, you’re bound to at least get a few conversions.
As has always been the case with advertising, you’ve got lots of opportunities to hit eyeballs, but no guarantees about how many will convert to buyers. Essentially, trying to reach a potential customer with display advertising is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The problem is you’re not just looking in the haystack — you have to buy the whole haystack first.
Most of us have accepted the idea that we’ll be charged for every thousand impressions, even if we only reach one (or zero) possible buyers. That’s why my ad vendor is sending me an email saying, “Spend more money, and maybe we can find you a few more targets.”

Defining The Right Metrics For B2B

We accept this mostly because it’s all we know, and it’s worked for B2C advertisers for years. They’re willing pay for thousands and even millions of impressions because even at a .07% click-through rate, they’re driving purchases and gaining customers.
For B2B advertisers, though, it doesn’t matter how many impressions were served — it matters how targeted those impressions were. In fact, that’s why click-through rate (CTR) becomes such a perplexing and frustrating metric, especially for B2B marketers. Like CPM, CTR has outlived its own relevance.
Unfortunately, while they provided us with an unprecedented level of precision, these metrics distracted us from the simple, intuitive calculation we relied on in days of yore: Is this campaign a good use of our budget? At a time when technology is turning the world on its head, it’s easy to get caught up in tactics and details that don’t support our bottom-line business goals. That frenzy of activity can sustain you for a while, but it often backfires, especially in B2B advertising.
While publishers, vendors and technologists were busy optimizing for clicks and impressions, they created a situation where advertising is a “nice to have” but rarely seen as a critical element of any marketing or sales cycle.
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5 Tips to Boost Your Video SEO Strategy

Since YouTube is the second-largest search engine, video can and should be an integral part of your SEO strategy. During a session at ClickZ Live New York, Allen Gottfried, manager of Internet and online strategies at New Jersey's St. Peter's Healthcare System, discussed video and shared some ways in which search marketers can up their game.
When Gottfried created videos detailing a specific treatment option, the keywords quickly brought him from page three to the top of page two in the search rankings.
"I see a lot of websites writing relevant content and it's good, but the video performs so much better, even though the written content is the same," he said. "A lot of people just want to watch something for two minutes. They want to see a product in front of them, being demonstrated."
According to Gottfried, how-to videos and videos with numeric titles tend to garner the most views. Here are five more of his tips:

1. Leave No Field Open

Gottfried recommends taking advantage of all open fields in a video's description on YouTube, such as title, description, and annotations. In the empty space, you can put subscribe and social media links, or even the video itself, making it easier for people to share.

"The fields will just have 40 characters but you can have 5,000 characters to work with - it's just silly," he said.

In the description field, Gottfried recommends using all top keywords - which should also go in the metadata - and being very clear about what people ought to expect. What will they learn? What can they take away?

2. Don't Skimp on Production Quality

A bootleg-looking video will hurt your authority in the industry, so it's crucial to get the lighting and sound right, at the very least. You can get a professional-quality microphone for less than $20. Those standards should also apply to your thumbnails - Gottfried recommends taking still photos to use as thumbnail images to avoid the always-unflattering picture of a speaker gesticulating.
"One thing I hear a lot is, it's too expensive; we don't have the resources to do it," he said. "If this were five or 10 years ago, I would understand, but today, the resources are there if someone in your company has a phone that shoots HD."
A tight budget doesn't mean you have to do everything yourself. Gottfried said that outsourcing things like closed captioning, editing, and motion graphics can save you a lot of time without setting you back too much. "You can send someone your footage and $50 later, you get it back and it's edited," he added.

3. Be Mindful of Mobile

Smartphones have gotten sophisticated enough that you can shoot professional video with yours. Just remember to turn the phone sideways to avoid the distracting black bars on the side, Gottfried said.

The omnipresence of mobile goes both ways. Half of YouTube's views come from mobile, a number Gottfried doesn't expect to go anywhere but up as data plans become cheaper and Wi-Fi is more widespread. With that in mind, he recommends shooting video specifically for smaller screens.

4. Have a Schedule

Jenna Marbles is one of the world's most famous YouTubers, with nearly 15 million subscribers. Her fans know to expect a new video every Wednesday. You should be just as regimented.
"Google and YouTube look at user engagement," Gottfried said. "What's your upload frequency? Are you uploading once every three months? If so, that's not going to rank very highly. You need to come up with a plan - [upload] on a weekly or two-week basis."

5. Keep Them There

A simple YouTube widget on your website will drive more people to your channel. Once they're there, there are some simple things you can do to engage them further.

If you have a lot of videos, curating playlists is a good way to keep them organized. If you dedicate the last few seconds of a video to an end card, as people like Jimmy Fallon and Ellen DeGeneres do, that will remind viewers to subscribe and interact. Additionally, with YouTube being such a community, cross-promotion with other channels can help drive additional traffic.
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Bing Ads Power Tools: Ad Insights

Want to glean deeper insights into your search ad performance? Columnist John Cosley discusses four valuable ad insights tools within Bing Ads.

In sports, politics and business, you’re only as good as who you surround yourself with. But when it comes to strategy, you’re only as good as what you know — and having the right tools to keep you informed can mean the difference between great campaign performance and mediocre results.
With that in mind, I wanted to share my four favorite ad insights tools within Bing Ads to keep you informed – and outperforming both your advertising objectives and your competition.

Top Movers

Many shifting variables can lead to account performance variations, making tough work for marketers. Top Movers is an account-level report that is generated when certain click thresholds are met. The report provides a snapshot of changes in clicks, spend, and conversion over a selected time period, identifying campaigns and ad groups with the biggest performance changes.
Top Movers suggests possible causes of performance fluctuations, whether those are internal account changes, competition or eligible search volume. Even more important, it suggests possible actions to fix those undesirable performance fluctuations.
Top Movers is a one-stop shop to check account performance, increase productivity and reduce workload. Use this tool every week to quickly monitor your account’s performance over time.
Top Movers allows you to quickly diagnose your performance variation issues by providing the drivers (Campaigns and Ad groups) and possible causes of those changes. Bing Ads goes one critical step further, suggesting actions to resolve the issues.

Auction Insights

The Auction Insights report uses display URLs to help you quickly identify advertisers who are competing in the same auction, and to strategize how to compete effectively.
The Auction Insights report is generated at campaign, adgroup, and keyword level (preferred), providing an overview of who your competition is and where you stand against them in the auction – using parameters such as impression share, average position, overlap-rate, position above-rate, and top of the page rate.
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Google’s PAC-Maps Gets April Fools’ Ball Rolling Early, Turns Google Maps Into Pac-Man Video Game

Today's PAC-Maps release is most likely the first of many April Fools' Day gags from Google.

Google has started its April Fools’ festivities a day early with today’s release of PAC-Maps, a new Google Maps feature that lets users play Pac-Man via various Google Maps locations.

 

With this update, we’ve added imagery of dangerous virtual beings, starting with Pinky, Blinky, Inky and Clyde.

To play, open a Google Maps location and click on the Pac-Man map option in the bottom left of the screen.

 

“When navigating fruit-filled streets, determine at a glance which turns to pass to evade ghosts and get where you’re going safely,” writes Google Maps product manager Michelle Luo. She goes on to say that PAC-maps is “just the beginning” and mentions more possible April Fools’ features, including zombie incident alerts and intergalactic street views.
According to the announcement, users can play PAC-Maps on both their desktop and mobile devices.
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Google Glass could teach you to dance; identifies songs and suggests dance moves

Got two left feet? Don’t worry, Google Glass could teach you to dance by identifying songs and suggesting moves in real time.
Google has filed a patent to create a system by which Google Glass can recommend dance moves to those who wear the high tech device.
“The content identification module may provide information associated with a content of the media sample, such as identification of the song and the dance, to the wearable computing system,” the patent reads.
“The wearable computing system may determine dance steps corresponding to the content of the media sample and may generate a display of the dance steps on the HMD (head mounted display),” it reads.
That means Google Glass will have an ability to determine what particular song is playing in the background before suggesting dance moves from a possible library of moves stored in its database, ‘Tech Times’ reported.
The device may also show the user a video of other people dancing to the same song in order to help the user understand what moves they should be doing.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt recently affirmed Google’s commitment to the device and the technology behind it.
The initial research programme for Google Glass, called Explorer, was scrapped, but a new unit specifically devoted to the device is currently active.
“It is a big and very fundamental platform for Google. We ended the Explorer programme and the press conflated this into us cancelling the whole project, which isn’t true. Google is about taking risks and there’s nothing about adjusting Glass that suggests we’re ending it,” Mr. Schmidt added.
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Authorship Is Dead; Long Live Authorship

Google's authorship program may be over, but columnist Eric Enge notes it's still important to work on building authority.

 I will explain why you should still be actively cultivating that authority and discuss the benefits you can get from it.

Why Did Google Kill Support For Rel=Author?

At Stone Temple Consulting, we did a detailed study showing the lack of adoption of authorship tagging by both authors and publishers. The short story is that the adoption rate was abysmally low:

If Google was hoping for mass scale implementation of rel=author tags all over the web, it did not come even close to happening. Not only did the great majority of authors and sites not participate, but even among those who tried to implement the tags, a significant percentage did so incorrectly.
As a consequence, the scope of the impact of the authorship tags ended up being quite limited. This is important, as Google had to implement special algorithms to support scanning for these tags and implementing special search features, such as author photos. The benefit they were getting from the program was not enough to cover the expense of supporting it.
But is that all there was to it? Or did Google use the three years of authorship tagging data to help tune its own algorithms for recognizing and tracking authors? Then, once those algos were tuned, they simply shut the feature off?
To explain that in more detail, Google could have used authorship tagging as a way to train algorithms for identifying authors. This could work by running two algos in parallel: one that read the rel=author tagging, and a second that tried to identify the authors without use of the tagging. Then they could compare the results of the two algorithms and use the rel=author based one to tune the other.
My guess is that this is not what happened, for the following reason: If Google really wanted to train such an algorithm, it would not be a difficult project for them to go through and manually identify thousands of authors and then use that data to test and train their algo to better recognize authors automatically. This would save them from having to launch a public program around Authorship, and it would provide more accurate info than relying on third parties to implement rel=author correctly.
Bottom line for me on this “debate” is that I think that Google wanted author tagging to work, and thought it would benefit users, but it did not succeed on either score.
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Apple, IBM's New Apps to Help Business Get in Step With Mobile Customers

Nine months after Apple and IBM began working together on building mobile apps for businesses, some of the first fruits are about to appear at UK pharmacy chain Boots, which has begun equipping store employees with iPads to serve shoppers in the aisles.
These customer service apps are part of a bid by Boots to encourage consumers to pre-order cosmetics and toiletries online, similar to calling ahead for medical prescriptions, while turning its 2,500 retail outlets into convenient pick-up points.
"These apps put all of Boots' inventory at (employees') fingertips," said Robin Phillps, who is in charge of digital and e-commerce business at the company, now part of Walgreens Boots Alliance. "This makes it easier for them ... to interact with customers on their own terms."
Companies across dozens of different industries are now eyeing how these mobile business apps from Apple and IBM can hook up front-line staff to back-office systems and make them smarter in face-to-face dealings with customers in the field.
Businesses which first invested heavily in apps for mobile shoppers have just begun to put customer-service employees on an equally mobile footing, Forrester Research said in a report this month on the phenomenon.
With many companies' in-house technical staff struggling to keep pace with the ways their employees use mobile phones, Apple and IBM are part of a growing market for supplying business and government organisations with a new class of apps for employees on the move.
Technology consultants Accenture, Cap Gemini and Deloitte are also top suppliers to this changing way of doing business, along with dozens of other service providers and hundreds of custom designer app firms.
Making staff "smarter"
IBM says it now has more than 200 global companies gearing up to use mobile phone apps through its partnership with Apple. These include U.S. banking group Citi and Banorte of Mexico, Air Canada, and retailers American Eagle Outfitters and Boots UK.
The partnership has announced 14 app templates so far, which IBM then works with clients to customise with specific company data and analytics. Each app lets employees look up customer profiles and answer questions on the go rather than anchoring them to counter terminals as most businesses typically do.
"We are trying to bring that same 'wow' factor, the same changes we have had in our personal lives, to our working lives," said Katharyn White, IBM's global sales and marketing lead for the IBM-Apple partnership.
(Also See:Apps Go Beyond Selfies, With Live TV Broadcasts Starring You)
The goal is to create 100 business apps running on iPhones or iPads by the end of this year, White said. Companies pay a monthly subscription fee per device running the app, plus the costs of the secure iPhones or iPads running the software, as well as for services to hook them up to back-office systems.
For the airline industry, these apps will let flight attendants help passengers rebook flights in mid-air. Financial service apps allow bankers, wealth advisors or insurance agents to make on-the-spot account decisions with clients in the field.
Other Apple-IBM apps give police secure, instant access on iPhones to crime-scene maps, video feeds and suspect profiles.
Besides design expertise for the apps themselves, Apple provides remote technical support for a company's own technology departments managing the apps. And as part of the deal IBM sells iPhones and iPads along with the business apps, a potentially important new revenue stream for Apple as big businesses begin to mobilise more of their workforces.
For IBM, which has software and design teams developing the MobileFirst apps, the apps themselves also take corporate and government customers to a range of IBM services -- technical support, mobile device management, back-office software integration and cloud computing.
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WhatsApp calling feature coming to Windows Phone

If you are using WhatsApp on your Windows Phones, then get ready to enjoy the experience of making phone calls on a go via your favorite instant messaging space. The WhatsApp calling feature is expected to come soon to Windows Phones.
Earlier this year at MWC2015, the WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum revealed the plans of the company to add the voice services to its feature list. After rolling out this new functionality on the Android platform, the developers of WhatsApp are all set to showcase it to their Windows Phone users in the near future.

WhatsApp Calling feature for Windows Phone

According to an Italian website, the new voice calling feature will soon arrive on the Windows Phone platform, probably in the upcoming weeks. The email shown below from the WhatsApp team shows that the company is inviting the Italian developers to locate the menu items related to the new feature for Windows Phone. The text confirms that the feature will be soon headed to the WhatsApp Windows Phone version.

This new feature for VoIP calls will not only enables users to make voice calls over the Internet, but also allow them to access the history of incoming as well as outgoing calls. In order to enjoy this new feature, you might have to update your app to the stable version (without any bugs).
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How Microsoft should woo Android and iOS developers to build Windows 10 apps

It’s common knowledge that Microsoft has an app problem, both with Windows and Windows Phone. The state of both has been improving steadily for a while now, developers still largely don’t care anywhere nearly as much as they do about Android or iOS.
Internally, Microsoft has explored various ways of offering Android apps on Windows and Windows Phone, including by way of an emulator (similar to how BlackBerry allows Android apps to run on its devices). The rumor that Android apps will one day run on Windows devices is one that simply refuses to die.
While such a strategy is attractive for many reasons, mainly because it could potentially quickly solve the app quantity problem on Windows, it’s the wrong approach. Microsoft should instead woo Android and iOS developers to use its developer tools, and then deploy their apps to Google Play and/or Apple’s App Store, in addition to the Windows Store.
That way, the company avoids potential performance problems, possible legal issues, and can still ensure apps are built specifically for Windows 10, as opposed to simply getting a flood apps repurposed from other platforms. The pitch would be quite straightforward: ‘Use the best developer tools on the planet to build apps that reach the millions of new Windows 10 devices on top of the millions of Android and iOS devices.’
This is not a new strategy. Microsoft has done started down this road with Visual Studio’s adoption of Apache Cordova, an open source platform for building multi-device hybrid mobile applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But those are very basic apps.
Microsoft’s next step is to offer tools that could directly compete with Apple’s and Google’s offerings. iOS tools are already quite advanced and Google has finally ramped up its efforts with Android Studio, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room to wedge in between the two.
It’s no wonder the rumor of Microsoft acquiring Xamarin, which lets developers use C# to build native Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows apps, keeps popping up every few months. When it comes to supporting programming languages for building on non-Microsoft platforms, there’s absolutely no reason why Microsoft should stop at HTML.
Despite its failures in mobile, Redmond is still known for how well it supports developers. And again, the company would be able to make a very unique offer: if you use our tools, you’ll simply be able to reach more users. Instead of developing for just Android, or just iOS, or even just Android and iOS, why not build for Android and Windows 10, or iOS and Windows 10, or all three?
That’s something Apple would never do, and given its disregard for Windows Phone, neither would Google. Despite a multitude of mistakes in mobile, Microsoft still finds itself in a very powerful position: it has the money, resources, and expertise to win over developers. Furthermore, even though Windows Phone is a very distant third to Android and iOS, the Windows Store on Windows 10 will be pushed to millions of users because it will work across PCs, tablets, and smartphones. That’s potentially very enticing for app developers.
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WhatsApp chat history backup to Google Drive might soon be possible

WhatsApp is all set to make backing up chat history as well as media filed to Google Drive an easier and simpler process. Leaked text strings from the WhatsApp translation group have revealed that it will soon be integrating to Google Drive in order to backup/restore chat history as well as media.
According to a report in Android Police, a WhatsApp Translation group member has claimed there is a new string in the app. The report also claims that a leaked screenshot has shown that "there's a time stamp for the last Drive backup and an option to delete it."  Dutch website DroidApp.nl has reiterated these claims and has said it has received the same set of strings to translate.
The report in Android Police reveals that the media that can be backed up will not include videos and that a back up on Google Drive will only be possible through a Wi-Fi or cellular network.
One of the screenshots also reveals that the restoring option is only available on apps that have been installed on new devices. Upon not accepting this request, users will lose all backup. So far, WhatsApp has not confirmed the feature.
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