Category Archives: Google

Google is Amazing

Google Blogoscoped has a post about “Google’s Internal Company Goals.”

Some of the most amazing stuff is how Google wants to have “the world’s top AI research laboratory. They are also focusing on getting rid of spam in the top 20 user languages.” Also, Google wants to be carbon neutral. To that extent, Google recently announced a corporate policy to go solar. I hope that more companies follow Google’s lead. (Google partnered with El Solutions for this venture.)

Microsoft Virtual Earth???

Nice try Microsoft.

The only thing they “copied” was the dragability.

Um, they copied a lot more than that. They copied resizing the map window to fill up the browser window.They copied the general color scheme. They copied the ability to switch between street maps and aerial photos. They copied DHTML layering to show point data on top of the maps. They copied the entire design for searching, navigating, and finding points-of-interest. And they copied it so closely, they made it cross-browser functional (you can damn well bet if Google Maps didn’t exist as a cross-browser functional product, MSN VE would only work on IE).

And they copied the most innovative part of Google maps – tile-based pre-built raster images to assemble dynamic maps. As someone who has developed GIS applications, I can tell you, while this may sound trivial, it is not. Google thought outside the box. The GIS community for years has used vector data to produce one raster image on-the-fly at runtime (like Mapquest). Instead, Google creates small tiled images at every zoom-level they offer and stores them on the server, and thus can produce a map at any location and any zoom-level, and offer it with “dragability”. This is a completely new paradigm for interactive GIS apps. The old way does offer some advantages over the new way, but for web-based interactive GIS, the new way is pretty phenominal.

While the rest of the GIS community was happily working to make incremental improvements to the old paradigm, Google innovated a new paradigm. MSN just copied it. There’s nothing wrong with copying (well, until the USPTO grants software patents), but don’t mistake it for anything other than what it is.

Source: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156854&cid=13150014

Is it just me or does it seem like all MS is doing these days is just copy catting google? Google made a better search, MS tries to make a better search. Google makes a map, MS makes a map.

I think it’s rather obvious that the creative type who comes up with the ideas usually prevails over those trying to play catch up. When MS makes something new and Google has to copy it, that’s when you know the tables have turned.

Source: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156854&cid=13149282

Microsoft doesn’t create markets, it attempts to take over young markets through agressive (and sometimes illegal) marketing. It aims to achieve a monopoly, which it can then use to lock its customers in, creating a long-lasting cash-cow.

This is the technique used for Microsoft Windows, Word and Internet Explorer. It isn’t always successful, but it is successful often enough to make a lot of money and annoy a lot of people.

Source: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156854&cid=13149386

I feel that competition is good when it breeds the creation of new, more innovative, and better products. Yahoo, I feel, is doing a good job at innovating, though they did copy Google’s simple search layout… Microsoft is just see what products consumers like and then stealing those ideas and attempting to release them as a new, great thing from the creative minds at Microsoft. You have to wonder how many truly creative minds are left at Microsoft when everyone is leaving to work for Apple, Google, or Yahoo.

Google Doubles GMail Storage Space and Adds More Features

Neowin.net – Where unprofessional journalism looks better – Google Doubles GMail Storage Space

Google is slowly increasing the storage space. I’ve read that it will be up to 2GB (and maybe beyond…see below). I’m currently at 1083MB (and it is slowly increasing). Plus, there is now the ability to send emails with varying font sizes and colors in a rich text editor. This is on top of the free POP3 access. (And I’m hoping for IMAP support soon too. But the online interface is already so good that I don’t use any other email client anyway).

In other Google news they’ve made another addition to Google Labs: RideFinder

“Find a taxi, limousine or shuttle using real time position of vehicles.”

From Gmail’s new features:
G is for growth
Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn’t mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we’re giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people’s lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs. From Gmail, you can expect more.

Google to fix blog noise problem

Google is to create a search tool specifically for weblogs, most likely giving material generated by the self-publishing tools its own tab.

CEO Eric Schmidt made the announcement on Monday, at the JP Morgan Technology and Telecom conference. ‘Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as “blogs,”‘ reported Reuters.

It isn’t clear if weblogs will be removed from the main search results, but precedent suggests they will be. After Google acquired Usenet groups from Deja.com, it developed a unique user interface and a refined search engine, and removed the groups from the main index. After a sticky start, Usenet veterans welcomed the new interface. Google recently acquired Blogger, and sources suggest this is the most likely option.

Bloggers too are likely to welcome their very own tab as a legitimization of the publishing format. But many others will breathe a sigh of relief as blogs disappear from the main index. (continued on link below)

Source: The Register

I still think this is a great idea! Google was and is definitely getting clogged up with numerous weblogs linking to the same main article. Removing the weblogs from the main search index would allow the truly authoritative articles to be shown first. Then, should the searcher want commentary about an article he could go to Google’s Blog tab and find it. I wonder if they are thinking of developing their own blog search or if they will buy and intergrate Technorati. Either way I’m still looking forward to it.

—-Dear How Not To Blog,
Thanks for pointing out how old this article was. I didn’t even look at the article’s original publication date when I posted this. It was new news to me as of this morning. Regardless, I still think that this is an excellent idea. Why do you say that it is a “stupid idea?” Anyway, thanks for linking to my site. From such a “high quality site as yours” , I’m sure that I’ll move up quite a few places on Google (note sarcasm). By the way, your site is aptly named: Who runs a blog where comments are disabled??

2004 Year-End Google Zeitgeist

Based on billions of searches conducted by Google users around the world, the 2004 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year’s major events and trends. We hope you enjoy this aggregate look at what people wanted to know more about this year.

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

View the 2004 Interactive Zeitgeist
An interactive timeline looking back on the past year (Flash 6 required).