Category — Google

Google Maps has just launched a new and nifty feature: suggestions of similar places to your search query in maps. So if you search for Best Buy in your designated area, Maps will suggest (in the more information tab) nearby businesses and places that might be of interest to you, such as other Best Buy stores in the area. Apparently, suggestions to places aren’t based on a specific characteristic. Google uses a “broad set of signals” to deliver recommendations. Google says they are working on the technology and from my experience, it’s definitely rough. For a search for Best Buy in Chicago, I received recommendations for any businesses that had the terms “Best Buy” in it. Once the feature’s technology is streamlined, it should be a pretty useful addition to any search. It would be especially useful when searching for hotels, restaurants or bars in a given area. Google Maps will also be rolling out another compelling feature soon: Store Views.Similar to street views, Google Store Views will allow people to visually walk into the store from Maps.

Over-sharing the minutiae of your life is already difficult, so why complicate things with Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare when you only need one service to rule them all? That’s where Google Buzz comes in and makes annoying your friends with news about your snacking habits that much easier.Google Buzz is rolling out today, and over the next few days it should appear in everyone’s Gmail accounts. With Buzz, you can share status updates, images and videos like you can on social networking sites like Facebook, but it’s more streamlined in Buzz. Videos play within status messages and images pop open into a gallery for quick stalking browsing. It might seem overwhelming and unnecessary when you’re already using so many other social networking services, but Buzz allows you to integrate Picasa, Flickr, Twitter and your Google Reader so you can be as transparent as ever right in one place. And, of course, I’d imagine that the bulk of our sharing takes place while on the go, so there is a mobile version, too. For now, let me step aside and have Google explain the new service along with how the mobile version works.

As the Internet world continues to wait for Google to fully push online its next generation infrastructure called Caffeine, its best to understand why its doing so and then how best to prepare for it. Over 5 months ago Google stated its purpose with Caffeine is to “push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions” and then Matt Cutts made official at PubCon back in November 2009 that with Caffeine a slow page load time will negatively affect your site’s search engine rankings.

Google’s purpose in its declared goal of making the web faster goes well beyond increasing general user retention but in its end goal of dominating the surging growth in mobile searches done principally on the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, & Android phones. There is no declared page load standard but a general rule is no more than a 5 second page load time which can be affirmed via page speed tools or within Google Webmaster Tools. The main ways to reduce page load times is with server compression and reducing HTTP requests by externalizing your CSS & JavaScript references to optimally a single file with the CSS file(s) referenced in your code BEFORE the JavaScript. It will be interesting to see the Caffeine Effect on Flash sites which along with it hamstringing SEO efforts its also a page load hog. Never mind that Flash is not able to render on mobile phones (exception being certain Android phones), although this will be changing soon for smart phones that don’t start with an I, but I will save that for a later post.

y new product from Google was bound to have a lot of interest in it so for a few months we were obsessed with Wave trying to see what it can do and what it could/would be used for. Invites were rare and coveted defeating the entire point of the service which was to collaborate/share/communicate. Early users like me found that not many people I knew had been able to sign up for the service and so could not give it a chance. The problem this time was that Google did not make Wave because there was demand for the product in the market. This was something new. Well, not quite. The concepts already exist in the form of forums and email groups. Google basically reinvented the forum albeit with less features like quoting, subforums, moderation and added scripting and bots and gadgets. When I first tried out the service I found it confusing, cluttered and lacking in any specific purpose. Sure, you could embed videos and media and things and make it a colourful and interesting visual experience but would you really use Wave for this over a social network? Do you really see yourself and your friend/contacts doing stuff like what you see in the Wave ads?
I always thought that Wave wasn’t unique enough. It felt like an AJAXified forum with a lot of multimedia features and that simply wasn’t interesting/useful enough right now. If some of these features move into social networking sites and emails I would welcome it but using Google Wave as an application is just too vague a concept.
Now all the interest has died away and you see no more mention of it anywhere. Let us leave it to die a dignified death from disuse and work on something else.

Spring Design, developer of the dual-screen Alex eReader, has struck a deal with Google that gives users of the device access to more than one million Google Books online or downloaded using Alex’s touch-screen browser and search apps. Spring Design is set to debut its Alex eReader at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas later this week. The device will feature a Google Android-based platform with full Web browsing capabilities, Wi-Fi connectivity, audio and video playback and image viewing in a variety of formats. The Alex eReader will also be able to run a number of Android apps. The Alex eReader boasts a 6” EPD (Electronic Paper Display) screen which allows users to browse the Web in full color while simultaneously searching for and reading digital books. Users can thus click on hyperlinks within online books that lead to relevant information or multimedia content found online in order to enrich their reading experience. EPUB digital books can be searched and downloaded using Google API applications provided by Alex’s eReader. Spring Design made headlines late last year when it sued Barnes & Nobles for alleged infringement by stealing trade secrets and copying features from the Alex eReader for its Nook product. Google, meanwhile, is still caught up in litigation with authors and publishers over its Book Search product, although preliminary approval of a settlement was reached on November 19, 2009.

The Nexus One marketing blitz continues. The first official “Google phone” is now being prominently featured on the search giant’s famously spartan homepage. This is the kind of advertising that money can’t buy, because it simply isn’t for sale. And because Google almost never features ads on the page, you can be sure it’s going to be catching quite a few eyeballs. Last time an ad popped up here John Gruber called it “the most valuable ad space on the entire Internet”. Yes, Google has done this before for previous Android launches (the Droid and the G1), so this wasn’t totally unexpected. But it’s clearly not the kind of move Google takes lightly. It’s also the first time Google has featured an ad on its homepage since it rolled out its even-more-minimalist fading homepage. You’ll notice that the Nexus One ad is one of the few elements of the page that appears on load, before everything else fades in.

This morning saw the launch of Google’s highly anticipated Nexus One “superphone”. During the demonstration, Google showcased a variety of the phone’s features, including a very impressive new photo app, voice input, and more. They’ve now posted a handful of videos showing off each of these features, which we’ve embedded below. The most impressive video of the bunch is called Web Meets Phone. It’s sleek, stylish, and has catchy music — and was clearly inspired by Apple’s hugely successful iPhone ads. Google’s video weighs in at a hefy 1 minute 54 seconds, which obviously makes it long for your average TV commercial. Still, given the production values of the clip, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google starts running a shorter version of this on TV. It may even splurge for a few extended showings. You can find more videos of the Nexus One YouTube Channel (note that most of the others are showing features that are available on other Android phones.

Later today at CES, Glide will be debuting its extension for the Google Chrome browser, which it claims turns the software program into a full operating system. The extension, which is also available for Internet Explorer 7+ and Firefox 3.0+, can already be downloaded here. What Glide does is extend the most popular Internet browsers with a suite of applications that can interact with multiple remote Windows, Mac and Linux desktops and mobile platforms. These tools include a rights-based file management system, a word processor, presentation app, photo editor, e-mail client, drawing tool, contact manager, calendar and more. When the extension is installed, you’ll see a bunch of new options upon clicking the new Glide icon in the toolbar, but you’ll need to register first.

The Glide extension for Google Chrome also equips the browser with needed file synchronization and automated file format translation features. On top of that, Glide’s solution comes with 20GB of free storage, and doesn’t include ads. I’ve been playing around with the OS / extension for about half an hour, and the biggest take-away as far as I’m concerned is that while Glide comes with a host of features and applications, the interface is clunky and not aligned with the browser experience very well. If this is the future of convergence between operating systems and the Web, I don’t want it.

Glide is free for up to 6 users, and offers a premium version with 50 GB of storage and support for up to 25 users for $4.95 per month (or 49.95 per year. Glide is bold enough to state that its extension for Google Chrome effectively one-ups Google’s own, recently announced but unreleased Chrome OS because it supports virtually any device and platform today whereas Google Chrome OS will only run on a limited number of devices.

In the first half of 2010, Glide expects to ship a bootable version of the Glide OS for Netbooks, making it possible to launch the Glide OS at startup. The company aims to provide netbooks with a unified desktop, file management system and a suite of native versions of the Glide Application Suite. If the experience is anything remotely like the one I’m having with the Chrome extension, I’ll stick to Jolicloud, thanks.

Spotify. The elusive European streaming music startup that you just can’t get access to in the U.S., unless you know someone or jump through a few hoops. The U.S. launch has been delayed over aggressive negotiations with the labels over the price users will pay in the U.S. Spotify insists on free, the labels want to move away from that model entirely. We’ve heard that a compromise has been reached. Spotify will be free for users, but a “very limited” number of people will be able to use it. Much more interesting, though, are the conversations with Google that we’ve confirmed. The two companies sketched out a plan where Spotify’s excellent Android application would be build into the 2.1 version of Android and would launch in the U.S. with the Google Nexus One phone on January 5. The application – which is available in Europe and allows for offline syncing of songs – would give Google a much needed competitive answer to Apple’s iTunes. The Android could realistically be seen as a media consumption device, like the iPhone, with things like Spotify built into it.

Google wanted Spotify badly enough that they were willing to cover the label costs for every user of $3 – $4 per month. Spotify would add advertising on top of it, as they do with the free version in Europe, to make additional revenue. Without Google paying those label fees there was no way Spotify could handle the costs of the user flow that 2.1 would provide. Currently, European users must pay for Spotify Premium to use the mobile versions of the service. We haven’t heard whether the deal was done, and there’s a chance Spotify will be part of the January 5 Google announcement. But our sources say the deal has likely gone cold, at least for now.

When Spotify does launch in the U.S., though, look for a new version of the player that adds social elements – like social playlists – to the product. That’s a big weakness Spotify has against MOG, which uses social elements to aid discovery of new music. And Spotify will also supposedly let you play songs that you have on your hard drive (like via iTunes) that they don’t have in their library. That will help fill in the ever-decreasing gaps in their library, and make Spotify that much more compelling for users.

GrandCentral, which Google acquired in 2007, relaunched as Google Voice way back in March. It’s still technically in private beta, but invitations aren’t all that hard to find. From what we’ve heard, Google is very seriously planning to add a version of the Google Voice product to its Apps/Office suite of applications for businesses. Currently, businesses are offered enterprise versions of Google Docs (online Office), Gmail, calendar and other applications. More than 2 million businesses and 20 million people use Google Apps. Google Voice gives users a phone number that they can then redirect to any phone – mobile, landline, VoIP, etc. My Google Voice number rings my home Vonage line and multiple mobile phones simultaneously. And the Android Google Voice application effectively takes over the phone for all outbound calls and text messages, too. The consumer service will supposedly launch publicly sometime early next year. But an enterprise version, which will act as a virtual phone system for small businesses, may come soon after. Small businesses currently have a variety of choices for their phone system. Regular phone service is just one of those options. Services like Ring Central, which is funded by Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital and DAG Ventures, offers a robust virtual phone system for businesses. Pricing ranges from $50/month. Vonage and others also offer business-focused products.There’s no reason for Google not to enter the enterprise phone business. There’s lots of potential revenue there from tens of millions of small businesses. And they are already selling Google Apps into those businesses.