In the latest target of Chief Executive Larry Page’s moves to focus the Internet giant on fewer efforts, Google Inc has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal.

On Tuesday, Google said it was pulling the plug on seven projects, including Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal as well as a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia service known as Knol.

From in.news.yahoo.com:

The plans, which Google announced on its corporate blog, represent the third so-called “spring cleaning” announcement that Google has made since Google co-founder Page took the reins in April.

The changes come as Google is facing stiff competition in mobile computing and social networking from Apple Inc and Facebook, and as some investors have groused about rising spending at the world’s No.1 Internet search company.

“To recap, we’re in the process of shutting down a number of products which haven’t had the impact we’d hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward,” wrote Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Holzle in the blog post.

If you consider yourself as a creative entrepreneur and looking for some source of inspiration to get going, this compilation of inspiring quotations will help you feel the best of both worlds.

If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours. – Ray Kroc

Winners take time to relish their work, knowing that scaling the mountain is what makes the view from the top so exhilarating. – Denis Waitley

Management is nothing more than motivating other people. – Le Iacocca

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong question. – Peter Drucker

Why did I want to win? Because I didn’t want to lose! – Max Schmelling

To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business. – J. Paul Getty

To win without risk is to triumph without glory. – Pierre Corneille

To succeed… You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you. – Tony Dorsett

Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business. – Zig Ziglar

I wasn’t satisfied just to earn a good living. I was looking to make a statement. – Donald Trump

Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes. – Bill Gates

Nokia and Microsoft have teamed up to take on Google and Apple in the fast-growing smartphone market as Nokia, the Finnish cellphone maker, makes an attempt for regaining its leading position in the sector.

Nokia revealed that it would use Windows Phone as the software platform for its smartphones as part of new chief executive Stephen Elop’s overhaul of the world’s biggest cellphone maker.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

Investors were not convinced by Elop’s eagerly anticipated strategy announcement and shares in Nokia tumbled more than 11 percent as the market reacted to Nokia’ saying that 2011 and 2012 would be “transition years” as it built up the partnership.

Friday’s deal marks a major breakthrough for Microsoft after years of struggling to establish itself in wireless. Its Windows Phone had a mere 2 percent market share in the last quarter.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform is widely recognised by industry experts as a leading edge technology but has not yet gained success among consumers.

“This is a partnership born out of both parties’ fear of marginalisation at the hands of Apple and Google but there is no silver bullet,” said analyst Geoff Blaber from CCS Insight.

Elop said ahead of an investor day in London, “Nokia and Microsoft will combine our strengths to deliver an ecosystem with unrivalled global reach and scale. It’s now a three-horse race.”

Facebook, the social networking site, is about to experience its saturation point in Britain and growth of the networking site has gone down over a period of last six months.

Britain presently occupies the second largest member population of Facebook in the world, at 25 million, which is spearheaded by the United States and followed by Indonesia and Turkey at the third and fourth positions, respectively.

From in.news.yahoo.com:

Despite Facebook getting its 500 millionth user in July, the average amount of time spent on the social networking website by a Briton has decreased from 30 minutes in December 2009, to 27.36 minutes in July 2010, a study by web-analytics firm Hitwise said.

Facebook is, however, still the second most visited site in Britain, after Google, and it accounts for one in every six webpages accessed in the country.

Robin Goad, Hitwise’s research director, says the figures show that Facebook is nearing its saturation point.

Goad also said that growth of Facebook in Britain has slowed to a significant extent over the last six months though market share of the social networking site in terms of page views has trebled over the last five years.

Blogs, in today’s times, are used by individuals and businesses to promote different interests. While a blog can be written to create awareness about some one’s specialty, it can also be used to create awareness about a product or service, offered by a business.

Whatever the reason may be, the fact that these blogs are appreciated by search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN to name a few with good page rankings is enough to suffice that blog marketing is an easy yet highly effective way to market products, services, and interests.

If you take a close look at some of the most successful websites in the last few years, you will see that most of them depend heavily on blogs. The success of blogging sites such as Blogger.com and WordPress.com needs no introduction. The fact that corporate blogs are meant and relied upon as personal blogs and not profit-motivated and sales-inducing blogs sends “good vibes” to potential customers and other interested parties (creditors, shareholders, press, and potential investors).

In addition to that, blogs are easy to be written and posted. In addition to that, they evoke huge interest and even lead to generation of qualified leads, which are needed by every business in this world to sustain.

To conclude, blogging is not something that is a luxury these days but an absolute necessity. But, the onus of effective blogging and its mass-scale promotion still lies with you.