The internet has opened the doors for almost anyone in the world to make money and significant amounts of it with little or no initial investment. All it takes is the right knowledge and guidance and a little perseverance to create income that could quite easily replace your day job. There are several ways to make money online. Here are a few of the top strategies being used right now by the best internet marketers.

– Affiliate Programs

Affiliate marketing has exploded over the last few years and it is continuing to grow as more and more people realize the benefits of this type of marketing. The benefit to affiliate marketing is that you do not need to create your own product instead you can make money by promoting products created by other industry experts. This is great especially if you are a beginner as it can save you a lot of time and money when you are starting out.

There are many ways to promote affiliate programs but the first step is to choose one or at most a handful of affiliate programs that you would like to promote. Make sure that the affiliate program pays you a generous commission. If you are promoting e-books or software programs from a place like Clickbank you will usually receive a very good commission around 50 – 75%. Commission Junction has many pay per lead programs in the credit card and mortgages sections that pay pretty well too.

Ensure that the affiliate program you select is high quality. This is especially important for Clickbank products because otherwise you could get very high refund rates which can cut significantly into your profits. Buy the product if you can and ask yourself if you would be comfortable recommending this product to close friends or family.

You can use paid and free methods of advertising to promote your affiliate programs. Google adwords can be a great way to promote your affiliate programs so make a point to learn more about it and how it can be used to promote affiliate programs. If money is an issue then you can write and distribute articles to promote your affiliate programs. At the end of every article is an author resource box where you can place a few links back to your site. Do not link directly to your affiliate program but rather to a review type page on another separate site.

– Adsense

The Google adsense program along with other similar programs offered by Yahoo and other smaller search engines is another very popular and effective way to make money online. You do need a website in order to take advantage of this opportunity so make it a point to learn about how to create search engine optimized websites.

Once you have a website that is getting a fair amount of traffic then all you need to do is place your ads strategically to obtain maximum click through rates and thus make the most money possible. Place some of your ads above the fold, that is the part of your site that is first seen without scrolling down. This should help to increase your click through rates dramatically.

Also make sure that the color of the links in your ads match the general link color of your site. If you can try to make the text on your site have the same size as the text in the ads. The main idea is to blend in the ads with your site content so that they get noticed by the visitors on your site. Place some ads directly into some of your article content by having the article body wrap around the ads. You can use tables in html to accomplish this.

These are a couple of the top ways that large amounts of money are being made on the internet. Stick with one or both of these approaches and make a real commitment to make them work for you as you will undoubtedly encounter challenges along the way. Do not give up, keep learning from your mistakes and it will only be a matter of time before you learn how to make the amount of money you desire from the internet.

Unless you have been hiding under a rock, I'm sure that you have heard that the "money is in the list". If you don't have an opt-in email list then you are missing out on a whole lot of revenue.

In this article you will learn of a very powerful technique that will not only build your list quickly, but will also increase sales and it won't cost you a dime to put into practice, even a total newbie can do it!

The technique I'm talking about are joint ventures. Now before you hit the back button, hear me out, this list building technique is often overlooked or passed over, especially by newbie's who think they don't have what it takes to even think about starting a joint venture.

Joint ventures aren't complicated, don't worry if you think you don't have any "credibility" either, it doesn't matter, ANYONE can do this, it just takes a little effort and a few simple guide lines to follow.

The Product

Your product needs to be good, don't think you can throw a bunch of articles together and call it an e-book, if you are selling e-books they must be of original content that is useful to the buyer, it doesn't matter if you're selling them for $7 or $97, or how good your sales page is, if your product isn't of any helpful information you will be inundated with refund requests.

You don't have to write a 50 page report either, you can make money from just ONE page, it's the VALUE of what is written that counts.

Finding Joint Venture Partners

Look for top sites in your niche, you are looking for people who have large opt-in list, for example, if your product is about dog training, search on Google for "dog training" and look at the sites with the top results, they will usually have a "contact us" link somewhere.

Check out the forums, blogs and ezine owners in your niche, you only need a few people with big opt-in lists to say "yes" to your joint venture offer to get you well on your way to building your own list and making some money.

Contacting Joint Venture Partners

This is where you need to work smart, you can't send and email to the website owner with the subject "Joint Venture Proposal" an expect them to respond, they won't even read your message, they're busy people and they get several proposals a week.

Make it personal in both your subject line and text, always use the list owners first name, be friendly, comment about their site or ezine etc, a bit of grovelling doesn't do any harm.

Offer them the best deal you can, remember they get several proposals a week, make yours stand out from the crowd, make them an offer they can't refuse, even if you give them 100% profit on each product sold it doesn't matter as your primary goal is to build your opt-in list, you can make money on your backend sales and follow-ups once you have built your list.

Remember, this technique isn't just for the "guru's" or "heavy hitters", anyone can do this, it works, it's easy to do, and just a couple of joint venture partners can make a very big impact on both your opt-in list and sales.

Both SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) require keyword research as part of the preparation stage. While some of the methods are similar, there are major differences when conducting keyword research for PPC when compared to research for SEO purposes. You will typically need to use different tools and certainly need to ascertain different information. A good SEO keyword may not be a good PPC keyword and vice versa; these two marketing styles should be treated separately in every aspect of the campaigns.

Individual Campaigns

Not only should you treat each page of your website as a separate campaign, you will need to differentiate between each keyword or key phrase you use on each page. This helps when it comes to optimization of your campaign because you can concentrate on the profitable keywords and avoid those that lose you money. Every website is different – it targets a separate set of demographics, offers different products, and uses unique content. Therefore, every site will have its own unique PPC campaigns to gain the greatest success and the best possible ROI.

Categories And Top Level Keywords

Before you begin using any software or keyword research tools you will have to do some manual brainstorming. Consider the different categories and top level keywords that are relevant to the page you are looking at. For example, if you sell trainers, then relevant keywords might include shoes, trainers, footwear, sports shoes, and so on. Keyword research tools will only work with the information you enter and so a thorough analysis can only be done with all the possible category connotations.

Locale

The Internet is a global marketplace, but your business may not be. If you only offer your services or products to a local catchment area, or to a specific country, make note of these areas too. By narrowing your keyword possibilities down to a region it is possible to greatly reduce the amount of competition that is vying for advertising positions. This, in turn, will reduce costs and potentially improve profits.

Generic Keywords

You should have an idea of the kind of keyword or phrase that your customers would use when looking for your type of business. Think of as many generic keywords as possible, at this stage. Later in the keyword research process, especially when using the appropriate tool, you will greatly narrow these generic keywords down to much more specific ones. For now, though, keep them general.

Tools And Software

When you have several lists of keywords and phrases, you will ideally need to use keyword research tools. Tools can provide information regarding the number of searches conducted on a monthly basis, while most of the PPC networks provide tools in order to see how competitive and, therefore, costly a keyword proves.

Streamlining Your Keyword List

Now, you need to choose targeted and relevant keywords that are likely to convert into clicks. You also need to ensure that those clicks won't prove too expensive when compared to the average value a customer spends. Once finished you should be left with a list of your most profitable keywords for your PPC campaign.

Ongoing Campaign Optimization

Like any advertising, PPC needs to be an ongoing process. Bid prices change and so too do customer and market trends, especially search trends. Keep an eye on all of the relevant figures to make sure that your ROI does not drop in any of your individual campaigns, and if any are seriously underperforming then pause or remove them.

PPC Keywords

Keywords are a vital part to a PPC campaign. Every page of your site will usually require several campaigns, each with separate keywords, in order to get the greatest results. Even once you've found the best balance between cost and revenue, it is imperative that you analyze and continually look to improve your PPC results.

Web application development has provided an efficient and effective route to deal with foreign clients, aimed at purely gain in cost cutting methods. Through the deployment of customized and specified web applications, a diverse range of purpose can be served. Web applications or computer programs help you to gain information, collect data and to find out anything that you actually desire. The basic purpose is to get the targeted knowledge and information within a short time.

For example, if you are located in India and want to get connected with people residing in other geographical destinations, you can easily do that with a variety of web application services connected through the internet with your preferred browser. The system of web application is not only important for making clients or facilitating proper communication with clients but also for making business relations strengthen and workable. This personalized system gives you a chance to hobnob with your existing clients and prospective clients to interact you in free and trustable manner and co-ordinate each other to make their relationship better and profitable. Business-to-Business interactive is one of the main features of successful web applications. With this customized service, you can identify the individual needs and requirements of your clients and serve them better. To facilitate the security in the business, companies are making private business networks that work through the internet to give you excellent results. This process is becoming increasingly popular with a lot of overseas companies who outsource projects to each other.

In other words, web application development has boasted the growth of a virtual business market that is working and growing like a real market. Application developed on Web are generating better business strategies and policies to smoothen the business working and initiating better concepts to gain profitability and success for all. So, when you use web application for your business purpose or your personal purpose, you are actually transferring the data and inputs to make the system more workable and gaining like never before.

For a follow-up to the post on link-building techniques, I’ve decided to take some articles off of my compilations for creative link-building ideas on the Search Marketing Wiki. I hope you enjoy these ideas for more and more are coming ― Feel free to add any ideas you feel relevant in the comments field of this post and I will add them to the Search Marketing Wiki. I am constantly combing the web for more ideas, feel free to let Search Engine Journal and the iMarketingGuru wiki know of your ideas.

Here are the following top tactics to creative link-building:

1. DO give as much away as possible – If you’re a designer, create WordPress, Mediawiki, Joomla, Drupal, Pligg and other highly authoritative CMS solution themes. If you are a programmer/know a bit about how to code some cool gadgets/widgets, make a Firefox plugin, make Facebook Applications and iPhone applications.

There are also various open source scripts and apps out there you may put your name on. There are the Firefox plugins and themes of course, but have you thought of Thunderbird plugins, SalesForce/vTiger/SugarCRM plugins, Feedburner add-ons, Del.icio.us. Add-ons and creating API-related widgets/tools?. Are you an expert on a given subject or niche?

2. Submit guest posts at other blogs and network within the community of your niche ― Grouping up with others results in higher levels of synergies concerning both linkability as well as monetization of your site(s). What about joining a site network or blog network and contributing content as much as possible? This Does work. Look at Engadget and the WebLogs, Inc. blog empire. Build up a lot of bad authors, slap on a brand with a whole lot of link building and networking = high advertising revenues and exponentially increasing levels of revenue.
3. Aggregate all of the stories that made it to the front page on the Social Bookmarking Sites ― Post them to your blog and resubmit remixed copies of them every 3 months or so while giving attribution to the original author. Wikipedia is also a great place to find great articles for submission to the social bookmarking sites ― Just add a bit of viral social media content to the ideas found in the articles, and you’ve got yourself some SERIOUSLY authoritative content.
4. The Amazon Book Review Trick (links & traffic) – Write reviews for all books in your industry in order to get your reviews out there very well (Make an “About Me” page, which includes your email or even something like “Webmaster of iMarketingGuru.com”). If the book has an amazing sales rank, your review will be read hundreds to possibly thousands of times a day. *Hint* Of course, there is that whole section of Author blogging with commenting systems on most after all…*Hint*
5. Exploiting eBay for Traffic – Figure out a legitimate way to auction something that actually promotes your site. Have a gift certificate or store credit, or a sample product of some sort / lists of tips, etc. The second step is to get people to find your auctions. Use the eBay Marketing article for ideas…
6. Do Co-operative advertising online with others - what about building links by riding the links of other authors through their newsletters or co-marketing to get more newsletter/blog subscribers.
7. Promoting your website on the P2P File Sharing Networks ― You can name it “Complete_Guide_To_SEO.mp3″ or “Top_10_Secrets_to_SEM.mp3″. When naming, it’s important to remember that people will be searching using keywords, so you must try and incorporate those keywords into your title. (Get a list of all P2P Networks & just get your site names EVERYWHERE – spam these sites/networks if necessary (this is VERY black-hat, be wary))
8. Become an Expert : Yahoo Experts, AskMe, ABuzz – New York Times, AllExperts.
9. Free “Radio” Advertising… Online Submit your music requests on behalf of your URL once to several times per day. For a pretty comprehensive listing of stations on the internet, visit Internet Radio List. Get your URL out there as having the song requested by the staff of yourdomain.com
10. An Interesting “Twist” on Message Board Posting (Stories on Publicly Traded Companies) If you have an article or idea on your site, especially a TIMELY article or idea, that relates even indirectly to the operations of an important publicly-traded company, you can post a brief note, including the page’s URL, to the Yahoo! Finance/Google Finance message board under their ticker symbol. You can also post this to Raging Bull.
11. Get interviewed on podcasts, the radio, TV and various venues including print and web content. � Get as many links as possible from these sources for extra link love.
12. Exploit the Corporate PR Agencies and PR depts. – All major corporations have PR people devoted to combing the web for positive (and negative) mentions of their company. Most of their web sites have press centers or press rooms. If you target large, reputable companies, you can incredibly increase your PR. This will result in both traffic and more links ― Just have the content on your site to support this affluent traffic. Publish book reviews, product reviews, etc. �> Manufacturers, software companies, authors and publishers will generally consider posting a link to positive reviews.
13. Courtesy Website Reviews Visit & critique a few of the sites these sites have listed for review, and then submit your own URL to be reviewed. Coder.com, Critics-Corner.com, SiteOwnersForums.com. Followed by this tactic, you should visit the webmaster forums and review sites in exchange for even more reviews of your site. The DigtialPoint forums are excellent for this as well as Sitepoint and all other forums dedicated to Webmasters.
14. The eBay Leveraging Idea – The main idea: objects that get LOTS of attention on eBay: original Van Goghs, Lambourghinis, Paris Hilton/Celebrity memorabilia, houses in the most elite places in the world, etc. ― Of course, most of us don’t own any of these items, but if you know someone who owns a Ferrari or any of the above item(s), hit him/her up (you could possibly even place ads of products you don’t own, for the products would NEVER sell – their only purpose would be publicity). He/she would likely let you try to auction it on eBay if you set the reserve at, say $1,000,000. You could then place your URL in the image prominently so as to gain more traffic ― Anyone else have ideas on this tactic? I’m sure there are more creative inputs than this.
15. Make your audience into Superstars ― Start by doing profiles of the other webmasters and sites in your niche ― Also, do biographies and profiles on the BIG names in the media in order to influence even larger people ― Can anyone say, fan site networks solely created for links?
16. Make’em laugh. Hire a comedian to do a great Youtube video. GIGMasters or Entertainment Unlimited may be a good place to look for someone. (This is in attribution to Trafficology.com)
17. Give testimonials – If you have a favorite software solution you use or you love someone’s product/service, contact them, they will love to have a testimonial from you on their site (with a link back to your site of course). You can also do this for content developer sites who post great content and put up great information for their users.

The list does go on and can be added to in the Link Building article on the Search Marketing Wiki ― Feel free to give yourself link credit for your idea(s) and man, the list is a mess so try to keep it clean.

Miles Price is the publisher of the iMarketingGuru Search Wiki and President of iCluck SEO Services, a Buffalo, NY based search marketing firm.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the optimization of a web page in order that it ranks higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) for specific keywords or keyword phrases. The pages that rank higher typically gain the greater amount of search engine traffic compared to pages ranked lower for the same keyword. The majority of web users click on one of the top 5 results on the first page when they complete a search. As such, the ultimate goal of any SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) is to gain one of these coveted top spots, with the number one ranking being the primary objective.

Targeting Keywords

However, a top position for any keyword won't suffice. In order to increase your ROI, it is vital to ensure that you target the most appropriate keywords for your pages, and for your business. While generic, or very general topic keywords, may have the highest number of searches conducted in a month they are also the most competitive and typically least productive.

Competitive Keywords

The more competitive a keyword the more pages that you need to compete with in order to benefit from an SEO campaign. Many of the pages that appear at the top of the list will also be well optimized and have a powerful link profile, making it difficult to rank highly.

Improved Conversions With Targeted Keywords

General topic based keywords have also proven to have lower conversion rates compared to more specific keywords. Targeted keywords generate targeted visitors, and targeted visitors are much more likely to be active while on the pages of your website.

How Keyword Research Helps

Keyword research helps you to identify keywords that are relevant, targeted, and preferably less competitive. By finding the right blend of these factors you can minimize the time it takes to rank well, actually increase the number of visitors, and improve your conversion rates. Targeted keyword research leads to better profit opportunities and improved ROI.

Tailoring Your Keyword Research To Your Needs

Every page of a website needs to be treated as an individual project, especially in terms of marketing. Each page will usually attract different visitors in different stages of the purchasing process. Deep product pages will often catch visitors while they are at their most profitable – when they're ready to buy. General pages and even product category pages can be used to attract more general terms, but they should still be properly researched and targeted very precisely to your target market.

Niche Keywords

Niche keywords are often talked about as being the ideal variety of keywords for a page. A niche keyword is a highly targeted, very specific keyword. It is geared towards a corner of the market in which you operate and typically has very few competing pages. Niche keywords don't usually create much in the way of traffic but the traffic that they do create is highly targeted and very active. It attracts excellent conversion rates ensuring that you get a good return on your marketing investment.

Long Tail Keywords

Many web pages will gain visitors from natural keywords within the text. These long tail search terms again produce highly targeted visitors and while each individual term will not produce more than one or possibly two visitors over the space of the month, they do all add up. It is virtually impossible to research long tail keywords because of their infrequency, but by using popular keywords you heighten the chances of seeing more on your website.

Why Keyword Research Is Important

Keyword research is an important aspect of SEO because it helps to identify the terms that surfers use to access sites similar to yours. This, in turn, enables you to optimize the pages of your site and your link profile in order to attract those visitors. By doing so, you may also improve the number of long tail searches that lead to your site, and these product highly targeted visitors for little optimization effort.

Yahoo’s take on open source is totally different from what Google previously launched. Instead of focusing on an opensocial movement focused on the alliance of social networks, Yahoo is focusing more on the advancement of research and development of systems software for distributed computing. To do this, Yahoo launched M45, a supercomputing cluster that is a key component of Hadoop, an open source distributed file system and parallel execution environment that allows users to process massive amount of data.

Hadoop has been the adopted by many groups and had been the software of choice for supporting university coursework in internet-scale computing. And Yahoo has been one of the main contributor of Hadoop. Yahoo is making the m45 available to in supercomputing class data center to the academic community for research on systems software.

Yahoo expects to run m45 with the latest version of Hadoop as well as other state-of-the-art, Yahoo-supported, open-source distributed computing software developed by its Research arm.

To kick-off M45′s development, top researchers at Carnegie Mellon are conducting simultaneous activities on M45 that includes instrumentation and evaluation, information retrieval and large-scale graph problem analysis on the cluster, processing of large-scale computer graphics, natural language search processing and machine translation problems. After passing through the Carnegie Mellon researchers, Yahoo plans to make M45 available to other universities as well.

Here’s what Randall E. Bryant, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon has to say about Yahoo’s M45:

Hadoop has become an important computing environment for data-intensive applications and Yahoo! is playing a leading role in its development. We are excited about collaborating with Yahoo! on systems software research, helping to advance the state-of-the-art, and creating new research possibilities in this critical area,

Ron Brachman, vice president and head of Yahoo! academic relations, sums up the relevance of M45 in the Academic community:

Launching this program and M45 is a significant milestone in creating a global, collaborative research community working to advance the new sciences of the Internet. This milestone is a key element of Yahoo!’s growing Academic Relations effort.

Although different in what Google has announced two weeks ago on “collaboration and cooperation” among social networks, or mobile operators, once can’t help but notice the fact that Yahoo’s announcement is more substantive and specific than the generally over-hyped announcement that Google made recently. Yahoo’s M45 may not have as big as an impact as the Open Handset Alliance or OpenSocial, but at least Yahoo clearly stated what it wants to achieve and what it is doing to achieve it.

As pointed out by Matt Cutts in his posted comment below, Google and IBM have partnered with Univ. of Washington to undertake a similar initiative earlier than Microsoft did.

Generating MLM blog traffic depends first and foremost on what you have to say. If it is boring, lame, or focused on blatant advertising of products and services, you will get very poor results. this article discusses ten proven ways to generate MLM blog traffic.

Very good content will dominate your niche. The platform you use for your mlm blog will determine how well it dominates. And how often and consistently yo post to your blog, ping and buzz your posts and link to other bloggers will dictate how long you dominate.

Here are ten excellent ways new bloggers generate MLM blog traffic and find new readers.

Top Ten MLM Blog Traffic Tips

10. Write at least five major "pillar" articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are at least 500 words but less than 600 and have plenty of very practical tips or advice. The more pillars you have on your MLM blog the better you will generate MLM blog traffic.

9. Write at least one new blog post per day.. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should get those those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. it is important to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time.

8. Use a proper domain name.

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger's article you can do a trackback to their entry. This leaves an abbreviated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – much like your blog telling someone else's blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

A trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, It also gets the attention of another blogger.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. Always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog . This will help you generate mlm blog traffic as you will get one to ten subscribers a day with this method.

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com.

1. Write more pillar articles. Without strong pillar articles you may bring in readers but they will not bother to come back. Shoot for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over fifty strong feature articles that will work hard for you to generate mlm blog traffic and more readers

The Times is to make it easier for readers to contribute to its website by allowing them to blog by phone using voice to text services provided by SpinVox.

The service is initially aimed at travel bloggers as part of the site's YourWorld promotion with BMW. TimesOnline users will be able to give accounts of their travels from anywhere in the world, and read those posted by other readers.

SpinVox launched its voice to blog service earlier this year, and already provides a voice to text voicemail service, which it claims is 97% accurate.

The service is potentially very useful to bloggers, as it allows instant blogging from any location via mobile phone, and could open up blogging to technophobic readers.

Times readers can leave a two minute message which, after being translated into text will be moderated and published online, with the best entries to be considered for the newspaper's print edition.

It is unclear whether the use of SpinVox will be extended to the rest of the newspaper's website, but it may be one method of increasing user participation on the site.

Google Inc on Monday spelled out long-rumored plans to enter the mobile phone market in 2008 by building software that could help the industry make the Internet run more easily on phones.

German mobile network powerhouse T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom's mobile unit, plans next year to start selling Google-software-based phones, while China Mobile Ltd, the world's largest mobile carrier, and top carriers in Japan said they would offer Google-based handsets.

Google, which has no immediate plans to make phones of its own, said it was working with 30 companies, including phone makers Motorola Inc Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and High Tech Computer Corp. Also taking part are major communications chip makers, including Qualcomm Inc, Texas Instruments Inc and Marvell Technology Group Ltd.

The leading Internet company has long been rumored to be working on a new class of free or low-cost advertising-supported mobile phone of its own, popularly known as the "Gphone." Google's Schmidt would not rule out the company developing its own devices but said it had no imminent plans to do so.

The Web search company is looking to expand the range of Internet services it now offers through computer browsers to the far larger mobile phone market, where a range of conflicting handset designs and software standards have hobbled Internet use.

The move will put Google in competition with major mobile device operating systems backed by Nokia and Microsoft Corp. A number of Google's partners said they would continue to work with those rival systems.

Google said it aimed to deliver software kits to handset makers in a week and sees phones based on its platform becoming available in the second half of 2008.

"It will open the mobile phone to do things that people now do on their PCs," said Todd Greenwald, a financial analyst with Nollenberger Capital Partners in San Francisco.

"This approach is going to be far less costly," Greenwald said, contrasting Google's open partnership to proprietary phone industry strategies. "It should position Google to be an early leader in the mobile advertising market."

The Mountain View, California-based company has set up an industry consortium including 30 partners so far that it calls the Open Handset Alliance (http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/).

It said the software system, known as Android, will be "the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices."

Android was the name of a small start-up Google acquired in 2005 that was founded by Andy Rubin, a veteran Silicon Valley gadget designer. Rubin earlier this decade created the innovative "Sidekick" mobile Internet device while at start-up Danger Inc.

Sprint Nextel Corp, the No. 3 U.S. mobile service and a member of the alliance, said the system will be based on open-source Linux code and available to phone makers and carriers without license fees.

It is expected to support applications from different developers as well as Google Web search, e-mail and mapping, according to Sprint.

Sprint said it has not committed to putting the software on its phones but is in negotiations with Google about financial terms with a view to offering the system to its customers eventually. Sprint did not give a time frame.

John Garcia, Sprint senior vice president for product management, said an agreement between Google and Sprint could cover everything from delivering mobile ads to putting Google's brand on phones designed especially to support its operating system.

"Rather than trying to restrict customers and saying you can only use my services, which we think has limited growth potential, we'd rather give customers exactly what they want and benefit that way," said Garcia.

Google shares were up 1.9 percent, or $13.32, to $724.57 on Nasdaq after reaching a new intraday high of $730.23 earlier.

The stock traded around $500 in mid-August before speculation about the impact of Google's push into mobile phones — as well as new forms of online advertising, such as video — propelled shares to current record levels.