Google

Google, The Next Dark Empire?
Google, a name synonymous with Internet searching, is now permeating the desktop. Currently it’s the PC (i.e. Windows environment) they’re moving into, but Apple Macs and even Linux are the likely next moves.
Microsoft (MS) has traditionally owned the operating system (OS) and many of the applications, but Google’s new tools allow searching in that space without having to directly access any of the aging empire’s software directly.
Google Desktop Search
The newest version (2) has the option of a sidebar or deskbar and searches can be entered directly into these. It also installs a search bar into Outlook. It’s possible to directly search items using these without ever going through the Windows “Start” menu. Whereas MS has had tools such as Lookout (actually produced by another company, which MS bought) which allowed searching in Outlook, it’s no longer needed as Google does a better job and searches more file types.
There are potential privacy concerns as Google will search Email, Chats, Web history, Media files, Text, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Journal and other files and send relevant info back to Google, however that can be turned off.
Once Desktop is started it sits there a while locally indexing the info and then searches are very fast, new files are indexed as they are created or arrive etc. Google Talk
Though Google Desktop (ableit in an more limited form) has been around for a while, Google Talk is new and is their take on the Instant Messaging world.
The client is quite basic, it currently supports simple chat and voice. You need a Google Mail login to use the service (GMail accounts now support 2.5GB as standard) and it can check your GMail inbox. Chats can now be logged into the Google Mail system.
The voice quality is superb, Google have licensed some pretty good codecs (the software that translates analogue voice into digital form or vice versa) and it’s as good as Skype if not better.
Google Talk actually uses the XMPP open protocol (better known as Jabber) so any Jabber client can be used with Google’s server (including Gaim for various platforms and Apple’s iChat for Macs), though voice functionality is currently only available with their own client. However, that’s about to change as Google have released ‘libjingle’ a programming library which implements their voice services so others can incorporate them into their IM clients.
Jabber allows server connectivity to other networks and sure enough Google have just enabled this feature, so Google users can chat with Jabber users on other Jabber networks (if the other network connects).
Since the client is only v1, new functionality will be added as time passes, one can only wonder what but it’s likely they’ll be some form of search capabilities, maybe even adwords based on the conversations that are taking place.
Jabber itself has a lot more to offer itself, like conference rooms, which Google are sure to implement.
Google Mail
Another service that’s been around for a while (and again sparked heated privacy debates) Google Mail or GMail now offers 2.5GB of mail storage. The premise is you never delete mail, but just keep everything. All mail arrives in your INBOX, but then it can be sorted using various criteria and moved to various folders.
This concept isn’t new, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation, now long gone) had this idea with their Altavista mail service, whereby all mail arrived in your INBOX and the client just put everything in the right place. Google just got it right and made it a Web service.
Some people will use all their space, but many struggle to use even a small percentage of it. An enterprising developer has made an application that allows Windows XP users to utilise it as a remote file store with drag and drop capabilities. There’s no guarantee it will keep working as Google can alter their systems at anytime. There’s a link at the end of the article.
Part two of this article will be out tomorrow.
GoogleMail
GoogleTalk
1 June, 2006
Google Web Toolkit: Analysis Of Its Impact
Back on Tuesday Google released their latest offering, the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). For those who didn’t catch the news at the time, it’s a downloadable application that lets developers write Java code that is translated into Javascript.
At first glance this appears a pretty strange concept, outputting JavaScript from Java, but code is the near-mythical AJAX code, heavily assisting the production of Web 2.0 applications.
You’ll know we think AJAX applications are special, not for the buckets of hype that’s surrounding Web 2.0, but because the taking up of AJAX marked the death Microsoft’s dominance of the interface. It’s the point where using an application through a Web browser became less tiresome because information is updated without the Web page having to be refreshed.
Google slowly remove the gloves
Google’s attacks on Microsoft have been consistently more intense. Early moves like the extended beta of Gmail chipping away at Microsoft’s Hotmail service.
The moves on to the Windows desktop via Google Desktop Search (GDS) stepped it up a gear. When we saw the release of GDS, we advised our friends to buy Google stock. This was the point where users no longer needed to use Windows Explorer to locate the documents that they had created on their machine. A Google application became the route to documents on ‘their’ platform. The vice-like grip in place for so many years was starting to weaken.
The interface – Now they’re ready to box
We see the release of the Web Toolkit as Google’s most direct pop at Microsoft yet.
There is still a mystique around creating AJAX applications, primarily because most of the people who are trying to make them are not programmers, but are enthusiastic amateurs, designers, or people who have never learnt the basics of programming logic.
While GWT still requires programming skills in Java, there are more programmers around that know the inaccuracies that each version of browser requires, to have the interface working consistently.
It’s not just Microsoft that is getting a bloody nose from this, it’s also quite an aggressive move against Java, effectively removing its usefulness as a Web interface language. If this tool gets wide usage – and given the buzz (real or otherwise) around Web 2.0, it’s likely – it’s going to be pushing Java to the server, although many would argue that it doesn’t have much benefit there either.
Summary I’ll leave you with the key point – Google Web Toolkit gives people the tools (literally) to write applications that work in any Web browser, circumvent Microsoft’s crown jewels, the Windows interface.
We know an AJAX toolkit won’t be a surprise to Microsoft, but it will be a big blow.
Google Web Toolkit
19 May, 2006
Nokia 770 Adds VoIP and IM
Nordic mobile goliaths Nokia have unveiled an upgrade for their Nokia 770 Internet Tablet which gives the chunky device VoIP and instant messaging capabilities through Google Talk.
The announcement, made at the VON Europe conference in Stockholm, marks Nokia’s first foray into Voice over Internet Protocol, with Ari Virtanen, vice president of Nokia’s Convergence Products commenting, “VoIP has really been the No.1 request for us.”
Despite the enthusiasm from Ari at the launch for the upgraded Nokia 770, he insisted that the technology wasn’t expected to cut into the market of traditional mobile telephones.
“I would not say this kind of technology competes with traditional mobile telephony. There will always be stand-alone devices where telephony is the main function,” he said.
Originally unveiled in May 2005, the Linux-powered Nokia 770 was the company’s first non-phone mobile device, designed for users to access the Internet around the home over a wireless broadband connection.
Sales weren’t too hot though, but Nokia reckon that by bolting on VoIP phone capabilities they can turbo charge unit-shifting, with Virtanen insisting that internet telephony is “the key for us to reach higher sales volumes.”
Customers who already have bought the 770 can upgrade their device to use the new Google Talk features for free over the Internet.
Updated OS
The newly introduced OS 2006 edition with Google Talk pre-installed gives users access to Google’s free instant messaging service so they can chat and make calls through the Internet on the 770.
The updated OS also boasts enhanced text typing with full-screen finger keyboard, improved memory performance and a ‘refreshed’ look (did they throw a bucket of water at it, or something?).
The upgraded device is expected to knock out for about €370 (US$470), Nokia said.
Nokia 770
16 May, 2006
Google Splashes 4 New Tools
Google took the opportunity of their annual press briefing at the Googleplex to inform the assembled hacks of four new applications. The theme they were trying to push was ‘honest we _are_ a search company.”
In no particular order, the new apps are …
Google Notebook
Yet to be launched, but supposed to be making an appearance next week. Used when you skip around Web sites and want to gather bits and pieces from them such as text, URLs and graphics. These will then be stored online and you can choose to make them available to others.
Google Trends
Ever wanted to have access to the information that Google gathers on all of the billions of searches that flow through their simple search box? Yes, you’re not alone, we’d love to as well. This is the closest that Google is going to let you get to it. Type in a search term and you’ll get a plot of how popular the term has been with peaks highlighted on particular news stories.
There’s also a feature to compare two search terms, our favourite so far being good vs evil (glad to see good winning). Breakdowns that can be further explored are cities, regions and languages.
Google Co-op
Adds user knowledge to the power of Google’s search engine. Individuals or companies will add their particular knowledge to sites or searches that they share with people who subscribe to them. Those who you do subscribe to, will appear in your google search results.
This is what we’d long imagined. It’s an expansion of the idea of blogging where people gather knowledge and share. Could become the most significant announcement of the set, marking the next stage in search.
Google Desktop 4 & Google Gadgets
Not surprisingly the fourth release of this app that indexes all of the content on your machine, including what you get up to online. When this first came out, we realised that Google had beaten Microsoft as they’d become the way to locate your document on your PC, side-stepping Windows Explorer.
Everyone and their wife appear to be knocking out different versions of Apple’s Dashboard or Desktop Widgets. For examples Yahoo bought Konfabulator (arguably ‘the original’) and then gave it away to the Yahoo-faithful.
Like Yahoo, Google are making them programmable, so code-fanatics will be able gain global fame.
Either this is a me-too product, which is pretty unlikely, or one step further into Google taking over Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop, by placing apps on the desktop.
Google Trends
Google Co-op
Google Desktop 4
12 May, 2006
Google Calendar Finally Launches
Search giant Google has announced a free, Web-based ‘shareable’ calendar service called, appropriately enough, Google Calendar, which allows users to post up events and share them with others.
Calendar owners can send out invitations to their chums and keep track of their responses and comments (like, “Bog off weirdo – we’re not coming to your party”).
Conveniently, friends can still receive and add responses to your invites even if they don’t use Google Calendar themselves.
A neat ‘Quick Add’ feature uses Google’s clever-clogs technology to understand phrases like, “Dinner at the Old Scrote And Hounds with Tony, 1.30pm Saturday” and automatically slap it in the right place in your calendar.
Gmail Integration
Gmail can also recognise events mentioned in emails, letting users add events without leaving their Gmail inbox.
Naturally, you can search your own calendar, with Google adding the ability to search public calendars to look for interesting events to add to your own diary (like Cardiff City FC fixtures, for example).
Powered by Javascript and XML, the calendar offers support for Microsoft IE 6.0+ and Mozilla Firefox 1.07+, although users will need JavaScript and cookies to be enabled for the calendar to work.
Based on open calendar standards, events can be imported from popular programs like Microsoft Outlook and Apple iCal, while schedules can be viewed by any external application or device that accepts iCal or XML files.
Taking on Yahoo!
Although Google is offering compatibility with Yahoo’s popular calendar service (events can be shared between the two services), there’s no question that they’re looking to move in on Yahoo’s patch.
In fact, Google have added a whole page explaining how users can migrate their entire Yahoo! Calendar to Google Calendar, which suggests that things might get a little lively between the two services soon.
Google Calendar
13 April, 2006
Google Releases Toolbar v2 for Firefox
Google is launching an upgrade to its toolbar for Mozilla’s Firefox browser, adding enhancements to the search box and an antiphishing feature.
Google Toolbar 2.0 will now offer suggestions on the fly for narrowing queries and correcting spelling – great news if yore speling esn’t up to muuch.
The all-new, turbo-charged search box also remembers previous query terms inputted by a user – as well as bookmarks – and serves them up as query suggestions, with a handy drop-down menu letting users select which part of Google’s empire to search.
The new release includes feed integration with the Google Personalised Homepage, with the toolbar automatically detecting Web content available for subscription, and a click of the “Subscribe” button taking users to their preferred feed reader.
Pheck Off Phishers
To help battle against pesky phishers, the upgraded Firefox toolbar includes Google’s Safe Browsing extension.
Previously an optional add-in, this feature warns users when they innocently roam onto Websites that could be a phishing trap, with Google using clever-clogs advanced algorithms and reports about dodgy pages to flag up the iffy sites.
Gmail users should like the new feature that opens mailto: links on webpages straight into a compose window in Gmail – no need to copy and paste emails off Webpages.
“We’ve made searching better by including previous queries, spelling corrections, and suggestions for popular choices”, a company employee purred on the Google Blog.
Google blog
Toolbar 2.0 features
7 April, 2006
Google Increases US Search Dominance
After reporting Google’s huge dominance of the UK search market, new figures reveal that it also looks set to grab a gorilla-sized chunk of the US search market.
According to the latest statistics from ComScore Networks, Google is increasing its lead over rivals Yahoo and Microsoft, with its US domestic market share soaring to 42.3 percent in February, up from 36.3 percent in the same period last year.
While the vintage champagne corks popped (or water, if we know Google’s public modesty) in Google’s San Francisco’s offices, it was Woodpecker cider for the fading stars at Yahoo who saw their market share slump to 27.6 percent from 31.1 percent a year ago.
Elsewhere, Microsoft’s MSN share of the search market tumbled down to 13.5 percent from 16.3 percent , while Time Warner’s America Online saw their popularity ebb in a downwards direction, falling to 8 percent from 8.9 percent.
Only the newly rebranded Ask.com could muster any cheer, with the Jeeves-less company seeing their share rising to 6 percent from 5.3 percent.
Analysts reckon that that Google could be on an unstoppable roll, with RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan commenting, “We see little to stop Google from reaching 70 percent market share eventually; the question, really, comes down to, ‘How long could it take?”
Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Fine predicted that, “Google’s increased market share and better monetisation of queries will lead to an increased share of ad dollars relative to competitors in the first half of this year.”
Fine also said that Google’s clear strategic focus on search will continue to give the company a competitive edge in the coming months as leading competitors “struggle” to improve their search platforms.
Microsoft fightback
Although Google looks to be running away with the search market, things may get interesting later in the year when Microsoft roll out their new Live.com search and Windows Vista and IE7 packages.
“Microsoft is making a business and technology transition that could affect search in the short term. The company has placed its bets on long-term gains,” commented Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox.
“Strangely, Microsoft seems to deliver best when the pressure is greatest. So, Google gains might actually benefit Microsoft over the long haul,” he added.
29 March, 2006
Google Grabs 75 Percent In UK
With a leather-gloved stroke of the company white cat, Google’s mastermind cackled loudly as new figures revealed that their plans for UK domination are nearly complete, with almost three out of every four searches in the UK using their search engine.
During February, 2006, Google referred a whopping average of 74.67 percent of all U.K. visitors to other sites on the web – streets ahead of their nearest competitor Yahoo, who could only muster a comparatively feeble 9.3 per cent.
The figures were released by analysis company WebSideStory, who used a fancypants-sounding “statistical barometer” featuring “techno-graphic trends” (weren’t we dancing to that last night?) to reveal Google’s near-total domination of the UK search market.
It looks like the Brits have taken a particular shine to the San Francisco-based search giant, with February’s search referral stats outperforming Google’s US average for the the month (55.39 percent) and their global average (62.4 percent).
“Even more so in the U.K. than in the U.S., when people think of search, they think of Google,” commented Rand Schulman, Chief Marketing Officer for WebSideStory.
“This has large implications for U.K. marketers, whose search engine marketing and optimization strategies should be Google-centric,” he added.
Looking down to the sorry gang of search engines trailing several laps behind, we can see Yahoo at 9.30 percent, MSN at 5.46 percent, AOL with 4.21 and a coughing, spluttering Ask (Jeeves) with just 2.28 percent.
27 March, 2006
Google Finance Beta Launches
Like Dr Strangelove with a modem, Google has made another stride in its plans to take over the virtual world, with a new Google Finance service announced today.
Pitched directly against well-established financial information and news sites like Yahoo Finance and Microsoft’s MSN Money, the free service was dreamt up by Google engineers in India looking for ways to improve financial information searching.
Katie Jacobs Stanton, a senior Google product manager, said that Google Finance was created in response to user surveys which found that their customers craved a financial information service.
Google hopes that their service will steal a march on rivals by providing an easier way to search for stocks, mutual funds, public and private companies.
There’ll also be a broad range of company news and information, an interactive chart correlating news and other events with stock price spikes and falls, delivered in a “clean, uncluttered user interface.”
For those who like this kind of thing, Google Finance will incorporate interactive charts correlating market data with corresponding dated news stories, letting you track how a company’s stock reacted to related news.
These charts can also be clicked, dragged and zoomed to reveal different time periods and more detailed information.
Google Finance also provides a personalised area for keeping track of stock quotes for selected companies along with any related news.
For a bigger financial picture, blog postings and (moderated) content from related discussion forums will also be incorporated in the service.
Although financial sites like Yahoo Finance, Marketwatch.com and TheStreet.com currently enjoy loyal followings, pundits are predicting that Google’s advanced features and simplified interface could have a serious impact on the market.
Google currently has no plans to display ads on Google Finance, with a spokeswoman saying that all information on the site will be free of charge.
finance.google.com
22 March, 2006
Google – Read, Right? Edit
Suppose you ran a Web site, and got a little money in advertising. And then suppose someone came along, and said: “I can give you more readers, and extra advertising!” – would you be grateful? Especially if this was genuine, and tested out? Well, Russell Buckley isn’t grateful.
His moan sounds silly, but effectively, his gripe is that when Google Mobile take pages for his site and configure them for mobile phone surfers, they take out the adverts, and put their own adverts on. And he’s complained to Google about this, and blogged it, and still, they don’t respond.
He has, nonetheless, a point. His actual argument, when you strip away the egotism of comparing his complaint about Google with the collapse of Kryptonite business, is that Google is actually editing his page, not just formatting it.
The Kryptonite comparison, summary: inhabitants of the InterWeb Blogland discovered you could steal a bike locked with Kryptonite even if all you had was a ball point pen, and Kryptonite dismissed those quaint Bloglanders as irrelevant. Well, yes; if you sell a product which is shown to be non-functional, you need to deal with the bad press.
But the comparison viewed in one way is empty. Google is doing nothing of the sort – its product works, and works as described. It adds extra revenue to the Web site owner’s income stream, and it does it by making a sensible call on how to format pages.
Viewed from another position, you might think that Google should start of listen to the buzz on the blogs (it’s not like they don’t have the tool to find out is it!), in the way that Kryptonite _didn’t_.
That said, Google is arrogating to itself a decision which you’d normally expect the Web site manager to make: what appears on the Web page. And it really ought to have the consent of the site manager to do that. And if it hasn’t, then it should talk.
Now, I can see Google’s point. “What is this guy’s problem?” you might say. After all, most adverts on Web pages are there without the explicit consent of the site manager. One-click and other advert providers post adverts “on the fly” and track the individual user. Click on one advert for fast cars, and they’ll probably show you more next time you visit; and they don’t ring up the Web site manager and ask specific permission. They just download the advert. (Eventually. When you’re almost out of patience, and thinking of switching to Firefox and running Adblock. Another story…)
What Google is doing is even more sensible. They are saying: “This advert is simply too big to run on a mobile phone. It will cost the phone owner real dosh to download, it won’t render properly, the advertiser will be horrified to see how it looks, and it will hide the actual page content which the subscriber wants to see. We’ll hide it, and show a Google Adsense advert instead.”
And frankly, most of us would say: “Exactly what we want you to do!” – and at the end of the day, the site owner gets a share of the Adsense revenue, from readers who wouldn’t have seen the page otherwise.
But if Russell told Google he didn’t want them to do that. He’s entitled to do so. And he blogged it when they ignored him. And yes, his blog got some traction – in that other bloggers linked to it – and Google still ignored him.
I get the impression his bona fides are not altogether clear, here, because someone who ought to know, has said that Russell has (or has had) an association with a rival outfit – Yahoo. It would be good to hear his response to that – but if true, it’s definitely something he should have disclosed. We’re pleased to say that Russell did get in touch, and we thank him for that. He assures us that he has no connections with Yahoo, and therefore has no axe to grind on this one.
At the end of the day, whatever the rights and wrongs of his approach, and whether he’s exaggerating the influence of his blog and the blogworld, or not, he has a point: Google is being arrogant. It is making decisions which its mobile clients have not asked for, and even, have specifically asked them not to do – and when they complain, it isn’t responding.
It may be small beer to Google, but it’s exactly this “faceless bureaucracy” which is its Achilles heel. Anybody who deals with the company will tell you that getting a real person to respond, is harder than getting a refund out of City Hall; and that the “don’t be evil” motto appears to be one which Google parses according to its own standards, not necessarily those of the rest of us.
17 March, 2006