Google

Google Launches Online IM And Voice Chat Service
Thanks to Mathew for corrections to this piece
Google has slapped down a big leathery gauntlet to the communications industry with the beta launch of its instant messaging service with voice-over-IP capabilities today.
Currently in beta, the Google Talk program will link its instant-messaging service to its e-mail service, Gmail, letting users contact each other over email, IM or a VoIP call.
The program, Google Talk, is based on the open source Jabber protocol and competes directly with the three major providers of instant messaging – AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo.
With the company trumpeting the service’s integration with GMail, Google Talk will use the same log-in information as their email account, with users able to access their inbox from within the Google Talk interface and send e-mails from there too.
Interestingly Google appears to refer to the accounts as a Google User Account – an interesting shift, pointing to the continued rise of additional Google services.
Users will be able to chat via IM and then talk to contacts on Google Talk by clicking on a “call” button in an open chat window or by clicking on the phone icon next to names on the contact list.
The software will let users have multiple voice sessions open at the same time, but only one can be active at any given time.
Gmail contacts will be loaded automatically into the Google Talk interface, letting users exchange instant messages with those who have downloaded the IM software.
Jabber is an open standard messaging protocol called eXtensible Message and Presence Protocol, or XMPP, and Google have stated that the company hoped to use the standard to interconnect the messaging industry. Many feel XMPP have advantages over SIP (Session Initiation Protocol, commonly used for VoIP) for voice communications.
Currently, the three major messaging services are closed shops that generally don’t permit users to send messages to and from competing services – a source of continuing frustration for many IM users.
Jabber have been reported as preparing to interconnect with AOL, whose AOL Instant Messenger system is the largest provider of messaging.
“We are going to start working to federate all the other networks,” said Georges Harik, a Google director of product management who is responsible for Google Talk and several other services.
According to figures from comScore Media Metrix, more than 80 million Americans chattered on instant-messaging services in July, with 30.9 million using AIM, 23.3 million chatting on MSN Messenger and 23.2 million connecting via Yahoo Insider.
Peter Saint-Andre, executive director of the Jabber Software Foundation, estimated that 13.5 million use the Jabber standard, based on figures from Osterman Research.
The company is yet to announce how the new service may earn its keep, but Google has stated that it intends to look for revenue opportunities in the future.
Google Talk reveals the company’s continuing ambitions provide to extend beyond Web searching, with some analysts predicting that Google will soon be taking on voice-over-Internet phone services like Vonage and Skype as well as the communication industry big boys.
How the industry reacts to this onslaught should be entertaining.
Google Talk
24 August, 2005
Google Desktop Search 2 Beta Released
Many who used the original of Google Desktop Search loved it. If you had a mention of the word you’d searched for, whether it be in a word document, an email or even in a IM session, up would come the list of mentions.
The new version of Google Desktop Search (or GDS2 as it’s bound to become) builds on its past strengths and adds to it.
Beyond an enhanced search facility, which now searches network drives too, the big addition is the Sidebar feature. An aggressive move, that will unsettle Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL as it’s moving into their territory.
When in this mode, a configurable selection of information is displayed down the height of the screen either on the right or the left of the screen. You don’t have to go to your Web browser to find the information you’re interested in, it comes to you.
Standard setup comes with email to your gmail account (a new feature), news headlines, stock prices, weather and interestingly Web Clips. Web Clips are RSS feeds – and will come with some controversy attached to them.
Last week a lot of fuss was generated in the blogging world when Microsoft decided to refer to RSS as Web Feeds in their upcoming updated browser, Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1. It will be interesting to see if equal vitriol will be reserved for Google as they ‘rename’ RSS to Web Clips.
We think the interesting boost is the API (Application Programming Interface) and SDK (Software Development Kit) for Sidebar, which enables developers to write plugin to display in Sidebar, but also embed Google Desktop Search into their own applications, bringing fast, convenient search to their users.
There are already some interesting new plugins at the site, such as gdTunes which lets you control iTunes from Sidebar, without having to actually go to iTunes.
Ever mindful of income, Google also are offering an AdSense Status plugin that offers information about your earnings through AdSense.
After a brief look at it, we found that it appears to have rectified one of the problems with the old version – primarily that it slowed your machine down when it was loaded. This slow down often was so significant that it caused those with slower/older machines, or those who actually needed the power of their processors, to remove it – despite its benefits.
As before, there is a long list of software that Desktop won’t work with – the majority of it being anti-virus and anti-spam.
There will be many software and services organisations that will be looking at GDS2 with more than a little concern – they’re starting to tread on a few toes.
At a time when there’s much talk about how there may be a lot of selling of Google shares (the tax paid on selling shares that have been held for more than a year is considerably reduced), and the drop in share price that might bring, isn’t it fortunate timing that this, and the full release of Google Earth is coming on the first day of trading after the one year period is up.
Google Desktop Search 2
22 August, 2005
Google File For A Further $4Bn
The big news late yesterday was that Google announced a second round share offer – on the first anniversary of their IPO.
In their now-to-be-expected kooky way, their planning to sell 14,159,265 shares, which of course is derived from the value of pi.
At the current valuation for their stock, this would bring in another $4Bn, on top of the approximately $3Bn they have sitting in the bank currently.
Why do they need that money? Is the question on many lips. There’s been many project been floating around with Google’s name attached, among them, becoming a WiFi provider.
S&P analyst Scott Kessler view is that with Microsoft ($37.8 billion in cash) and Yahoo ($3.4 billion) having a ton of cash in the bank, Google needs the money to be able to compete in the global Internet market, in an “arms race” as he puts it.
Acquisitions would appear to be an obvious use of the money. To date Google hasn’t had to spent that much when it’s brought companies in to its fold, as it’s bought them at early stages, but perhaps their future targets are larger now.
Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley clearly feels the same, “this cash balance could allow the company increased flexibility to consider large strategic acquisitions.”
Of the names that we’ve heard being knocked around as possible targets for a Google purchase including Tivo and Infospace and a number of Chinese companies.
Interesting extracts from the S-3 filing reveal some areas that they think are threats.
We face significant competition from Microsoft and Yahoo.
We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, and particularly from other companies that seek to connect people with information on the web and provide them with relevant advertising. Currently, we consider our primary competitors to be Microsoft Corporation and Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft recently introduced a new search engine and has announced plans to develop features that make web search a more integrated part of its Windows operating system or other desktop software products. We expect that Microsoft will increasingly use its financial and engineering resources to compete with us. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have more employees than we do (in Microsoft’s case, currently nearly 14 times as many). Microsoft also has significantly more cash resources than we do. Both of these companies also have longer operating histories and more established relationships with customers and end users. They can use their experience and resources against us in a variety of competitive ways, including by making acquisitions, investing more aggressively in research and development and competing more aggressively for advertisers and web sites. Microsoft and Yahoo also may have a greater ability to attract and retain users than we do because they operate Internet portals with a broad range of content products and services. If Microsoft or Yahoo are successful in providing similar or better web search results compared to ours or leverage their platforms to make their web search services easier to access than ours, we could experience a significant decline in user traffic. Any such decline in traffic could negatively affect our revenues.
Other headline include
We expect our revenue growth rate to decline and anticipate downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.
We rely on our Google Network members for a significant portion of our revenues, and we benefit from our association with them. The loss of these members could adversely affect our business.
New technologies could block our ads, which would harm our business.
Google
Google’s S-3 filing document
19 August, 2005
MSN Virtual World Goes Live, Apple Vanishes
Microsoft has launched the first public beta of its Virtual Earth, an online mapping application overlaying satellite images with local searches and maps.
MSN’s Virtual Earth will provide both street-map and satellite views of locations and serve up driving directions between places, competing directly with Google’s popular “Google Maps” service.
Virtual Earth has a trick up its sleeve through its ability to transform Wi-Fi enabled PCs into “location-determining devices” without the need for any separate hardware, as we reported earlier.
The system works by noting the latitude and longitude of available Wi-Fi access points and then triangulating a user’s location after consulting Microsoft’s huge database of router MAC addresses.
A user’s current location is then highlighted onscreen with subsequent search results tailored around that location.
Virtual Earth will also have the capability to visually point out locations for ATMs, restaurants, and petrol stations – something that the rival Google Maps service has been able to do since incorporating satellite imagery in April this year.
“MSN Virtual Earth provides a deeply immersive search experience that lets people see what it’s like to be in a location and easily explore what they can do there,” purred Stephen Lawle, general manager of the Microsoft Mappoint business unit.
The service which currently shows US-based satellite images only and users must download the Microsoft Location Finder client application access the location-finding services.
Microsoft plans to knock out updated versions of Virtual Earth every four months, with the next beta release set to incorporate bird’s-eye imagery licensed from Pictometry International which will add cities, landmarks and points of interest to the product.
Microsoft also plans to integrate traffic data and weather data to the service in the coming months.
Mac users, however, will have to wait until autumn for a version that runs on their machines.
MSN Virtual Earth project manager Mark Law has insisted that MSN Virtual Earth is not a purely consumer-based site only, adding that Microsoft will be making the application-programming interface available to developers.
Microsoft has said that future versions of Virtual Earth will allow users to create their own interactive maps, and add their own reviews of restaurants and other places.
Wags on the Internet are claiming that Microsoft has virtually wiped Apple off the face of the Web, noting that Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters – which can be seen in their full glory on Google Maps – appears as nothing more than a deserted parking lot in Virtual Earth.
Microsoft insisted that because the service was still in its testing phase, it’s just a coincidence that they used older, black-and-white photographs to display the barren wasteland around Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California in 1991.
Others might put it down to wishful thinking.
MSN Virtual Earth
26 July, 2005
White PSP: Microsoft Patent Emoticons: Google Rule – News Catch-Up
Microsoft Wants To Own Emoticons
Microsoft has filed an application with the US Patent & Trademark Office to safeguard its rights on “methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons.”
In case you’ve been living under a rock, emoticons are representations of faces made up by keyboard characters and originally all looked like this :) and :-/.
Nowadays, many mobile phones and computers automatically replace the text characters with an appropriate custom image when it spots emoticons in text messages and emails.
It’s far from clear what makes Microsoft think they should own Emoticons – there again, it’s never held them back before.
Microsoft’s patent application
Microsoft emoticons
Sony Whips Out A White PSP
Sony has confirmed that it will be launching a groovy white version of its PSP, but – surprise, surprise – only in Japan.
Sony has a long history of serving up different coloured units in different territories, with the PS2 being released in Aqua, White, Yellow and Silver in the past.
The company has also announced a firmware update (in Japan, natch) so that users can surf the Internet directly from the console.
Some techie users have already been enjoying Web access on their PSPs after a hack was discovered that took advantage of a hole in the operating system used by certain games.
There’s no date set for a US and European patch, although Japanese firmware updates traditionally precede roll-outs in other markets. Sony White PSP
Google Grabs 47% Of All Searches Online
Nielsen//NetRatings “MegaView Search” report has ranked Google as the Big Cheese of search engines, registering 47% of all searches conducted online.
Lagging some way behind was Yahoo! at 22%, with MSN limping into third place at 12% and AOL Search only managing a comparatively feeble 5% of all searches.
Image searching grew hugely in popularity across all the search engines, with MSN seeing the largest increase in its image searches with a massive 90% surge. AOL’s image search zipped up 74%, Yahoo!’s soared 55%, and Google’s jumped by a rather modest 12%. Nielsen//NetRatings
25 July, 2005
Google Profits Rocket Another 300%
Champagne corks were firing off at Google like a military salute as the Internet search engine kings revealed that their profits had jumped more than 300 per cent in the second quarter this year.
Fuelled by continued growth in Web advertising, Google raked in a revenue of $1.38 billion (~£788m ~€1.13bn) its second 2005 fiscal quarter, up 98 per cent compared with the same period last year.
Once you take off the $494 million (~£282m ~€406m) paid by Google to its ad network partners (known as traffic acquisition costs), revenue racked up to a wallet-delighting $886 million (~£506m ~€728m).
Net income came in at $343 million (~£195m ~€282m), favourably comparing with the $79 million (~£45m ~€64m) recorded in 2004’s second quarter, while revenue from Google sites totted up to $737 million (~£421m ~€606m) – up a thumping great 115 per cent.
Revenue from Google ad network partners was similarly rosy, totalling $630 million (~£359m ~€518m), an increase of 82 per cent.
“We are very proud of our results. Business is very good here at Google,” said chief executive Eric Schmidt, dodging the flying champagne corks. “It’s really because we’ve figured out ways to stay focused on end users and innovation.”
Although the vast majority of Google’s revenue comes from paid advertisements on search results pages and on partner sites, the company has been diversifying with new products and services like video search and mapping.
The company’s fortunes are currently on a stratospheric trajectory, with April’s first-quarter profit almost six times higher than a year earlier.
Not surprisingly, Google’s share price has soared, nudging above $300 (~£171 ~€246) a share for the first time last month and giving the company the honour of being the world’s biggest media group by stock market value.
Recent figures from Nielsen/NetRatings revealed that Google has attracted in excess of 78.5 million US visitors last month, up 25 per cent from a year ago, with the Google and Blogger brands ranked numbero uno in search and Web hosting, respectively.
Meanwhile, Yahoo had to make do with cheapo Cava as figures posted on Tuesday revealed a higher second-quarter profit but with revenue falling short of analyst expectations.
This news sent Yahoo! shares tumbling down as much as 10 per cent in after-hours trading.
Google
22 July, 2005
Google Moon ‘launches’
In honour of the first manned Moon Landing back in July 20, 1969, Google have launched an out of this world version of their Google Maps service – Google Moon.
The clever boffins at Google have created a scrollable, zoomable map of the Moon’s surface, adding NASA imagery to the interface.
Google explains that they put together the map because they figured the best way to commemorate the first Lunar landing would be to let their users “surf around the Lunar surface themselves”.
Although you can use a sliding scale to zoom into the surface – just like the terrestrial version – and view landing sites, there are limitations to how close to the surface you can zoom because of insufficient NASA imagery.
However, viewers zooming all the way in are in for a treat! We won’t spoil it for you, but do take a look.
The cheeky chappies at Google have also added a fun FAQ:
“4. Is Google Moon a result of your Copernicus initiative?
Glad you asked, and yes, the development of our Lunar hosting and research centre continues apace.
We usually don’t announce future products in advance, but in this case, yes, we can confirm that on July 20th, 2069, in honour of the 100th anniversary of mankind’s first manned Lunar landing, Google will fully integrate Google Local search capabilities into Google Moon, which will allow our users to quickly find lunar business addresses, numbers and hours of operation, among other valuable forms of Moon-oriented local information.”
Google are also advertising jobs at their Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E.), offering “high-density high-delivery hosting (HiDeHiDeHo) and de-oxygenated cubicle dwelling.”
Someone at Google must have had a lot of time on their hands, because there’s pages and pages of space-related nonsense available, including references to the “hyperbolic trajectory of Britney Spears” and “projections correctly predicted random spikes in search traffic due to wardrobe malfunctions”.
We like it!
Google Moon
Get an out of this world job – G.C.H.E.E.S.E.
20 July, 2005
Google Adds New Personalised Search Features
Google has launched an updated beta version of its personalised search tool that learns from your history of searches and search results you’ve clicked on, shuffling more relevant results to the top of the page.
Here’s how it works: if a mad keen boozer was always searching for man-sized glasses to sup his ale from, Google would learn from his search history with future searches for the keyword “glasses” automatically serving up glass-related results, while ignoring results for the four-eyed variety.
Similarly, if the surfer was a teetotaller with an Elton John-like obsession with spectacles, Google would only serve up spec-related results and links when they searched for “glasses”.
According to Google’s Marissa Mayer, the more users search and build up a search history the better the results will become.
“We need to have a history of the user,” Mayer added. “When people first sign up they may not see results right away, but it will build over time.”
Consumers need to have a Google account for the free service and those using the previous version of the personalised search service will automatically be switched to the new version.
The service only works when the user is signed on to their Google account.
Clearly, there could be a shedload of potential privacy concerns here with the search history feature compiling a detailed list of every page you’ve ever searched for, but sneaky surfers hoping for a bit of discrete titillation can sign out of the personalised search service, pause it or remove it through their accounts page.
Furtive track-coverers can also remove individual items from their search history as well.
This latest personalised search beta is a refinement of the previous version, launched in March 2004, which only customised searches after users had manually selected categories of interest.
Like all Google public betas, the new personalised search service is currently sitting in Google Labs, described by the company as an “engineer’s playground”.
Mayer said she could not speculate on when a final version will be launched, adding that Google will not be customising advertisements based on the personalised search.
This latest search development reflects Google’s drive to let users customise their Web experiences, and follows on from the personalised Google home page feature introduced in May.
Google labs
29 June, 2005
Google Wallet Looks To Challenge PayPal
It’s not yet confirmed, but it appears that Google is preparing to challenge PayPal with its own online electronic payment system, rumoured to be called ‘Google Wallet’.
The Wall Street Journal website reported Google’s plans late Friday, citing sources “familiar” with the company’s plans. No details about Google’s strategy were revealed.
Analysts have commented that a rival Google payment system would prove a mighty bummer to PayPal’s owners, eBay.
In the last quarter, revenue from PayPal amounted to $233.1 million (~£128m, ~€190m), equal to nearly a quarter of eBay’s revenue during the period.
Diversifying into the online payments business looks a wise move for Google who are currently dependent on advertising, accounting for almost all of its first-quarter revenue of $1.26 billion (~£690m, ~€1bn).
Sellers who run auctions on eBay are major buyers of Google’s ads, which appear alongside search results, so it’s not surprising to see the company angling in for a slice of the payment action.
Rumours about the new Google service heated up after a panel discussion at a Piper Jaffray Internet conference, where Scot Wingo, chief executive of e-commerce consulting firm Channel Advisor, said he believed the payment service would be launched soon.
According to the story in the Wall Street Journal, Wingo said he based his statement on questions from retailers with which his company works. They’d apparently asked him whether his company would be supporting the “Google Wallet” service, thus sending the cat fleeing from its bag.
A Google spokesman declined to comment on the report.
Wall Street Journal
20 June, 2005
Google Web Accelerator Gets Flak, Website Goes Down
It was a bad weekend for Google as the entire site was rendered unavailable on Saturday night and their new Web Accelerator application drew criticism on privacy and security concerns.
The free Web Accelerator app was designed for broadband users to speed up access to Web pages by serving up cached or compressed copies of sites from Google’s servers.
Within hours of release, critics were pointing to a flaw that meant that users could be served cached copies of private discussion groups or password-protected pages.
The issue was first discovered when users of Backpack, a wiki-like service for individuals and small businesses, complained that their Web pages were suddenly disappearing.
Jason Fried of 37signals, the company behind Backpack, discovered that Google’s Web Accelerator was behind the problem, explaining in his company’s blog, “Google is essentially clicking every link on the page – including links like ‘delete this’ or ‘cancel that.’ And to make matters worse, Google ignores the JavaScript confirmations.”
A clearly miffed Fried continued, “So, if you have a ‘Are you sure you want to delete this?’ JavaScript confirmation behind that ‘delete’ link, Google ignores it and performs the action anyway.”
Deeply unchuffed, Fried complained that “Google’s Web accelerator can wreak havoc on Web-apps and other things with admin-links built into the UI.”
Other users of Google’s tool also found themselves loading pages previously cached by other users on Internet forums – letting them view that user’s account information and private messages (Web Accelerator doesn’t cache secure Web sites written in “HTTPS”, so online transaction sites were unaffected).
Web publisher have raised concerns that, if Google is caching the publishers content and readers are using the Google cached version to access the information, the number of people that the server logs are reporting as accessing their content may not truly reflect the number of people reading their site. If this is the case, there would be a direct hit on the publishers advertising revenue.
Conversely, there are others claiming that there were other problems associated with the application’s ability to prefetch Web sites that are never viewed by a user – this could inflate page view numbers and exaggerate views of advertising banners.
Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of Web products, acknowledged the problems while downplaying the threat, saying that it had only affected a small number of sites.
“It looks worse than it is. We’ve cached the page with that username on it. But you are not actually signed in; you couldn’t operate as that person,” she added, before cranking up the PR spin machine, “We’re committed to provide users the utmost of integrity in security and privacy, and we’re working with urgency to solve this problem,” she added.
The program is currently no longer available from Google, with a notice on the Web Accelerator homepage saying, “We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support.”
Sadly, things went from bad to worse on Saturday night when the world’s leading Internet search engine shut down from 6:45 to 7 p.m. eastern time, with some users experiencing longer outages.
It wasn’t just the search engine that had gone down – Gmail, Google News, Froogle and the entire caboodle of Google’s services had all vanished off the face off the earth.
Curiously, when some surfers typed in ‘google’ they found themselves being redirected to a SoGoSearch page, sparking rumours that the site had been hacked.
Google spokesman David Krane pooh-poohed such talk, declaring, “It was not a hacking or a security issue,” while insisting that that the problem was related to a DNS (Domain Name System) problem.
Google Web Accelerator
Google speed bump draws scorn
9 May, 2005