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April 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Google tonight stepped into the burgeoning cloud computing game, launching Google App Engine, a Web services initiative that allows developers to host applications on Google's infrastructure.

Available free to the first 10,000 developers, the service taps a fully scalable Web platform with Python-based application servers, GFS (Google File System), and BigTable data storage system at its core.

It is a move that competes obliquely with Amazon's well-established AWS (Amazon Web Services) platform, with Google offering AppEngine as a tightly bundled package and Amazon serving its S3 storage, EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), and Simple DB database a la carte.

Considered by many to be a necessary entrant for legitimizing the nascent cloud computing model, Google will allow developers the opportunity to serve up to three applications on App Engine, each with a cap of 500MB of storage and 10GB of bandwidth per day, which will serve an estimated 5 million pages per month.

In other words, don't expect full-blown enterprise-class utility computing from Google off the bat. Instead, single-developer widget shops and bootstrap startups will be among those to first test Google's initial foray into the infrastructure-for-hire space.

[ For an in-depth look at cloud computing, see What cloud computing really means ]

Posted by Jason Snyder on April 7, 2008 10:16 PM

February 27, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Google transforms JotSpot into Web-site-building tool

Google Sites' ease-of-use, tight integration with Google services strengthens company's position in Web-app race

Google today unveiled a powerful new weapon in its arsenal of lightweight Web-based productivity applications: a tool for easily and collaboratively creating and editing Web sites. Dubbed Google Sites, it's built around JotSpot, the wiki platform that Google acquired in October of 2006 -- and whose previously unclear fate has been cause for quite a bit of hand-wringing.

The search behemoth appears to have a broad range of applications in mind for the freely available tool, from building a private company intranet, accessible and customizable by users on a permissions basis, to developing a public-facing Web site for all the world to see.

Google has aimed to make the Google Sites easy enough for a beginner yet feature-rich enough for a power user. For example, building a Google Site requires no HTML, according to the company: It's "as easy as editing a document," the company says. There's also a "growing list" of page templates to get users started, including "Web page, announcements, file cabinet, dashboard, and list," according to Google.

At the same time, Google Sites lets page creators easily insert content such as videos, docs, spreadsheets, presentations, photo slide shows, and calendars -- thanks in part to its integration with other Google apps and offering.

Ah yes, Google's collection of shining Web gems: Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube, and Picasa. By integrating Google Sites with those aforementioned services, Google boosts the value of the entire array significantly. "This is a key last hole in the Google Apps suite," Matt Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise, told CNET. "It is the nucleus for other pieces to fit into for online collaboration."

Moreover, the unveiling of Google Sites further fortifies Google's enviable position in the increasingly important Web services space -- a point that Microsoft clearly can't ignore. (I say that as someone who buys into the theory that Redmond's bid for Yahoo had a lot to do with having an eye on extending its own Web-app reach.)

More information is available at the Google Sites home page.

Posted by Ted Samson on February 27, 2008 11:02 PM

January 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Google gears up for offline Apps

Beat to the offline punch enabled by its own Google Gears technology, Google appears on the verge of leveraging Gears to enable users of its Google Apps online productivity suite to work on documents and spreadsheets while not connected to the Net.

Ever illuminating the guts of the search giant's wares, Tony Ruscoe of Google Blogoscoped stumbled across experimental offline access to Docs while "playing around with one of Google's not-so-private experimental sites."

Although Ruscoe was able to rename and star documents while offline, the crown jewel of the proposed functionality, being able to actually view and edit documents, lays in wait. This functionality is an essential component to any serious push to unseat Microsoft Office as king of productivity in the enterprise.

Even when the functionality is present, however, a lack of business-grade service-level agreements and increasing security concerns will remain significant impediments to widespread Google Apps enterprise adoption.

Gears, the technology that will eventually fuel Google Apps' future offline capabilities, was first put to use by Google Apps competitor Zoho, a move Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering at Google, cheered as a victory for the Web as a platform, and thus for Google itself.

Google has implemented Gears into its Google Reader, the synching capabilities of which are reminiscent of what Ruscoe uncovered in this experimental Docs iteration, as he points out.

In other recent Blogoscoped sightings of highly anticipated Google functionality, Ruscoe uncovered a Google Sites-related icon in a stylesheet, suggesting Google's proposed integration of Wiki capabilities obtained in its now long-ago purchase of JotSpot may also be around the corner.

Additional resources
Thin vs. Fat: Google’s plan to kill Microsoft Office
Google security under fire
Google revs up security play

Posted by Jason Snyder on January 28, 2008 04:44 PM

January 09, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Google Fellows discuss parallel processing model

Google Fellows Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat have published a paper in this month's Communications of the ACM, a publication of the Association for Computing Machinery, detailing the programming model Google leverages to process more than 20 petabytes of data per day on commodity-based clusters.

The paper is an update of a prior article on the process and includes deeper insights into the effect the model has had on operations at Google in the time since first publication.

The methodology, known as MapReduce, allows users to break computations into a map and a reduce function, which the runtime system automatically parallelizes across large clusters, navigating machine failures and honing the efficiency of network and disk use in the process.

Inspired by similar primitives in Lisp, the methodology abstracts parallelization, fault tolerance, data distribution, and load balancing into a library. More than 10 thousand programs have been implemented at Google using MapReduce, which can also be used to parallelize computations for multicore processing on a single machine.

The model has been used for large-scale graph processing, text processing, data mining, machine learner, and statistical machine translation, among other algorithms, Dean and Ghemawat write.

The clusters on which MapReduce jobs run consist of thousands of commodity PCs connected by Gigabit Ethernet. The Linux-based dual-processor x86 machines have between 4GB and 8GB of memory per machine, with two 160GB IDE disks directly attached. Google's homegrown GFS (Google File System) manages the data stored to the disks.

Computations are submitted to a scheduler, which maps tasks to available machines. The MapReduce library splits input files into pieces typically between 16MB and 64MB and implements a master/worker model to perform tasks across the cluster.

MapReduce use has scaled significantly in its first four years of use at Google, with map input data topping 403 petabytes in September 2007. More than 11,000 machines were used that month to process 2.2 million jobs, with an average of 394 machines taking 395 seconds on average to complete each job.

As Dean and Ghemawat note in the paper, the most significant use of MapReduce has been a rewrite of the indexing system used for Google search. The MapReduce system has reduced computations from approximately 3,800 lines of C++ to 700 lines.

Posted by Jason Snyder on January 9, 2008 05:59 PM

January 09, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Google employees trade on optimism

A recently released study of trades undertaken in an internal predictive market in place at Google surfaced a quantifiable can-do spirit among the company's employees.

Analyzing the predictive market trading behavior of 1,463 participating Google employees from April 2005 to September 2007, Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz, economists at Wharton and Darmouth, respectively, along with Google economic analyst Bo Cowgill, found that "internal markets overpriced securities tied to optimistic outcomes by 10 percentage points."

Meaning, in essence, that participating Google employees were, on the whole, willing to pay a 10 percent premium to place a bet on success.

[ PDF download: "Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence From Google" ]

Part of a larger trend attempting to glean insight from the wisdom of crowds, predictive markets allow participants to perform trading-style transactions on the outcome of various short- and long-range conjectures. Participants are given tokens -- in Google's case, "Goobles" -- to place bets. The flow of this currency is believe to provide a credible prediction engine for future events -- more accurate, some believe, than knowledge gleaned from polls and surveys. Much of this accuracy is attributed to the assurance of vested participation in the form of financial compensation for individual participants' predictive accuracy -- for Google, this took the form of a $10,000 prize budget pool per quarter.

[ For a deeper look at predictive markets and crowdsourcing, see "Mob wisdom means business" ]

Google's market, which the authors believe is the largest such company market in operation, has been up and running for four years. Similar markets are under way at Abbott Labs, Arcelor Mittal, Best Buy, Chrysler, Corning, EA, Eli Lilly, Frito Lay, GE, HP, Intel, InterContinental Hotels, Masterfoods, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Pfizer, Qualcomm, Siemens, and TNT, according to the authors of the report.

Conjectures ran the gamut, from demand forecasting (number of Gmail users at the end of a particular quarter), performance (Google Talk quality rating), company news, industry news, decision markets (will users of feature A use feature B more), to plain-old fun (how many rotten tomatoes will Star Wars III get?).

In all, 270 such "markets" were opened at Google, each with between two and five bet outcomes.

Participants in the Google market, who were more likely to be programmers at the Mountain View campus, exhibited a bias toward outcomes linked to a positive outcome for Google. Moreover, the economists found a measurable correlation between bullish predictive market behavior the day after Google's actual stock price experienced a better-than-average boost.

According to the economists, such optimism is akin to what is known as the "entrepreneur's curse," in which "firms are started by those most overly optimistic about their prospects." Such optimism, the authors conjecture, is desirable for leaders and employees in such environments, as it generates motivation, leads to risk-taking, and "makes employees cheaper to compensate with stock options."

Optimism, according to the study, was correlated most prominantly with more recent hires, as experienced employees tended to be less likely to overspend on optimistic outcomes.

Also of note from the study was a correlation of like-mindedness with physical proximity, as strong correlations in trading were found among employees with 10 to 20 feet of one another in a shared office setting, suggesting that being on the same page means being in the same environs.

Moreover, trading correlations were also found among employees sharing the same "three-levels-below-SVP" manager, which at Google, usually means working on the same broad set of products, according to the authors of the report.

Analysis of holdings and trading activities is used to determine how an organization processes information.

Interestingly, the authors did not find friendship to be a strong correlation factor in Google's predictive market. Apparently, work-farm architecture and workforce organization have a demonstrable effect on siloing information.

Organizations looking to foster cross-departmental collaboration, take note.

Posted by Jason Snyder on January 9, 2008 01:41 PM

October 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

What's the 411 on GOOG-411?

Just as Google has become synonymous with "performing a Web search," 411 is understood to mean "information" -- as in "what's the 411?" I was thus surprised to discover, from a billboard, no less, that the king of search is taking on the long-reigning ruler of phone-directory assistance with its new free GOOG-411 service. (Apparently, the service has around for a while now; it was just under my radar until I saw the sign.)

The service is pretty straightforward: Dial 1-800-GOOG-411 on your telephone. The recorded voice on the other end will ask for your city and state (you can also provide a ZIP), then the business name or category you're looking for. If you specify a business name and it's the only one in town, it will offer to connect you or provide more details, i.e. phone number and address.

If you asked for a general category ("gourmet croutons") or a business that has more than one location in your city ("McDonalds"), it will (theoretically) provide you a numbered list of businesses that meet your criteria. When you hear what you want, you say the number, after which you can connect to the business or get more info.

Just like 411, right? Well, not exactly.

First, like I said, it's free.

Second, you don't need to know the name of the business you're calling; you can ask for a generic type of business, then sift through the listings to find what you seek.

Third, you can say "text message" during your exchange, and the service will send you basic information about your requested business via SMS.

Fourth, you can say "map it," and you'll get a text message with the details of your search, plus a link to a map of your results.

And fifth, you don't ever speak to a human being, which isn't necessarily a good thing if you're not entirely sure about the name of the business, for example.

I gave the service a try this afternoon, just to see how well it worked. While there's potential here, perhaps, Google has some kinks to work out.

On my first attempt, I got a recorded message saying the system was swamped and that I needed to try calling back again later.

My second attempt proved successful: I recited my city and state, then the name of a local business that I know exists. It quickly found the listing, provided me the details I wanted (number and address), and offered to connect me.

My third attempt was another disappointment. I said "Sacramento, California" for my city and state. For my business type, I said "sushi." Yet the service thought I said "fishing" and started calling up a list of fishing businesses. It would be nice if the service would repeat your request, just to confirm it was interpreted correctly. I tried to start over by saying "start over," but I got disconnected. (Apparently, you can also use your keypad to type in your business type, just in case you're inarticulate, as I appear to be.)

On my fourth attempt, I said "Sacramento, California," then "Japanese food," which it did correctly understand. But from there, the experience was downhill once again. It rattled off the first listing, too quickly for me to understand. Then it disconnected me again before I could hear any more listings.

On my fifth and final attempt, which was also a success, I gave my ZIP code when it prompted me for my city and state. It correctly identified my city. I then said "Starbucks," and it came up with the closest one in the area. When it offered to connect me or provide me details, I said "text message." The service immediately disconnected me, without a word of confirmation or farewell -- but seconds later, I indeed received a text with the address and number of the Starbucks. That's pretty slick.

While there are some neat features here, the service needs some work. The fact that it was swamped and that it disconnected me twice suggests Google is having problems on the back end. Maybe the company wasn't expecting its service to be so successful. Also, the voice recognition might just need some tweaking (or else I need to work on my enunciation if, indeed, I pronounce "sushi" as "fishing").

Also, the computerized voice that helps you is a bit grating and talks too quickly when rattling off a business name. Moreover, unless you've done some research in advance, you won't know that you can give a ZIP instead of a city or state, that you can key in information instead of saying it, or that you can request a text message.

Technical issues aside, it will be interesting to see where Google takes this service once it's perfected. The GOOG-411 FAQ says that advertising opportunities aren't currently available, though one wonders if that will change. Will companies be able to pay a premium to be the top listing when Bob calls up asking for "pizza" or "fishing gear"?

And at a higher level, what does Google have to gain from this? Well, it's a means of further enhancing its search services, of course, making it an even more compelling one-stop shop for all your information needs, both from the desktop and on the go. The "map it" has obvious utility, in case you don't have the time or the free hands to do a search yourself on your mobile device (if, for example, you're driving.)

I also imagine scenarios where a user with a smart phone looks up a business through Google on his or her mobile Web browser, then clicks a "call it" feature to connect and talk, rather than dialing the digits him- or herself.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 3, 2007 12:54 PM

August 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google phone won't be about "voice ads"

A very curious quote cropped up in Ben Ames' coverage of the rumored Google phone. Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications industry analyst, raised the following point of criticism about Google's rumored ambition to deliver the device and the service for free and expecting for it be paid for by ad revenue.

Here's what he said. (The underlined bit is this quote is my emphasis.) "The average adult who can afford a cell phone is not going to want to listen to ads. So this is mainly for teenagers, twenty-somethings, high schoolers or people who can't afford a phone."

I wonder if Kagan got wind of part of Google's plan that I missed, because frankly, when I first contemplated a Google phone back in March, it never, ever occurred to me that Google would force users of the device to listen to droning voice ads between phone calls. And I still don't see that happening. I'd bet that if Google were to try pulling something like that, the phone would indeed be a flop.

But the Google phone isn't going to just be a "phone" in the old-school sense of the word (i.e. a portable device capable for just making calls). Check out the Wall Street Journal's description. It's going to be a wireless mobile device that happens to have voice capabilities. "The specifications Google has laid out for devices suggest that manufacturers include cameras for photo and video, and built-in Wi-Fi technology ...", the WSJ reports. Google is also asking for a slide-out keyboard, according to the Journal.

It likely won't be as flashy as, say, the iPhone. People will be able talk on it, of course, but more important, they'll use it for checking e-mail, performing Web searches, getting directions, and all the other things you can do from a browser on a mobile device.

And, of course, while you're using all those browser-based services, you'll have ads delivered to your screen, just as you do when you access those services on your desktop PC. And that's where Google will rake in the revenue, I'm wagering; not through annoying and disruptive droning voice ads between phone calls.

Seriously, think about. When has Google ever been outright disruptive with its ads? I think one of reasons the company's search business is so successful is that it's not ridiculously in-your-face with advertisements. Rather, it delivers ads quietly and intelligently, targeting them with pinpoint precision at users as they use Google search, GMail, and other Google services.

Google's a smart company. It knows the search game. Heck, it practically runs the search game. And it knows that mobile search is the next lucrative frontier. What better way to stake a huge claim then to practically (or literally) hand out free mobile devices and services to the masses, giving them access to all those free services it already offers, then watch the ad clicks and dollars roll in?

Posted by Ted Samson on August 3, 2007 02:00 AM

July 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google argues for right to comment on Microsoft case

By Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service

Google still hopes to influence changes that Microsoft plans to
make in Vista's desktop search function, even after the parties involved in Microsoft's 2002 antitrust settlement agreed to alterations to the search system.

On Monday, in response to Microsoft's opposition to an earlier request, Google asked that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia allow it to weigh in as an interested party regarding the way the search function should be changed. The filing comes two weeks after Microsoft and the plaintiffs in the antitrust suit said that they had worked together and agreed to changes.

The concerns about the desktop search function initially arose after Google complained to the plaintiffs and state attorney generals late last year that Microsoft's desktop search put third-party desktop search providers at a disadvantage. According to the terms of Microsoft's antitrust settlement, third parties such as Google must address their complaints about Microsoft's compliance with the settlement to the plaintiffs and the states.

In their quarterly report to the court on June 19, Microsoft and the
plaintiffs told the judge that based on Google's complaint they had agreed on a way for Microsoft to change Vista desktop search to satisfy third party concerns. However, on June 25, the night before the judge was set to meet with the parties to discuss the quarterly report, Google made a filing to the court, asking to weigh in on the case. In addition to the request, Google included the comments that it wanted to file as a third party.

In a response filing, Microsoft called the move an attempt at an "end-run" around the terms of the settlement agreement, which require third parties to work with the plaintiffs, not directly with the court. Microsoft also argued that the matter is settled already and so there's no issue for Google to participate in resolving. It also argued that Google isn't qualified to participate because it isn't a party involved in the antitrust case.

During the discussion of the quarterly report last week, the judge appeared to agree with Microsoft. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly remarked then that the plaintiffs serve as representatives of the consumer and that Google isn't a party in the case.

Google's filing on Monday is in response to Microsoft's filing. Google argues that it can offer an important and useful perspective to the
situation because it is a developer of a desktop search product and
because it initially drew the attention of the plaintiffs to the Vista desktop search issue. Google is also asking for more information about the agreed changes so that it may determine whether they go far enough. If Google thinks the changes aren't enough, it wants to have the opportunity to offer its opinions to the court, according to the filing.

The next step is for the judge to decide whether to allow Google's
participation.

Posted by Mike Barton on July 4, 2007 08:27 AM

June 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Survey: Undergrads gaga for Google

While Apple is also a highly desireable place of employment among undergrads, Google dominates the field

There's a common thread among career aspirations for undergrads studying IT, business, science, liberal arts, and government: a desire to work at Google.

In fact, Google ranks as the No. 1 most desireable place to work among all undergrads nationwide, according to the 2007 Universum IDEAL Employer Survey. No. 2 on the list is Walt Disney, followed by Apple, which also was deemed the most innovative company by the 44,000-plus students who participated.

Broken down by majors, Google ranked as the No. 1 most desirable place to work among IT students. Microsoft, IBM, Apple, and Intel rounded out the list, according to Universum, an "employer branding company."

But Google was the only technology company to consistently rank in the top five most desired employers for student pursuing non-IT academic tracks. For example, business students ranked Google as their No. 2 choice after PricewaterhouseCoopers. Ernst & Young, Disney, and Goldman Sachs follow.

Google is the No. 5 choice among government students, after the U.S. Department of State, the CIA, the FBI, and the Peace Corps.

For liberal arts students, the Department of State is also the top place to work, followed by the Peace Corps, Teach for America, Google, and the CIA.

And for science students, the companies of choice start with the Mayo Clinic, followed by Pfizer, the Peace Corps, Merck and, of course, Google.

Google's allure is pretty obvious. As the company's stock has soared to over $500 since Google went public, plus the company is known for having a highly desirable corporate culture with lots of nifty perks, as evidenced by its top ranking" on the Fortune's 2007 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Best of luck landing a job at Google, kids: The company reportedly gets more than 1,300 resumes per day, so be sure to prepare.

Posted by Ted Samson on June 11, 2007 12:11 PM

June 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Privacy group accuses Google of smear campaign

Google questioned integrity of recent privacy report by suggesting "conflict of interest regarding Microsoft," non-profit says

Privacy group accuses Google of smear campaign Just one day after slamming Google with the worst privacy ranking among top Internet companies, London-based Privacy International (PI) has publicly accused the search behemoth of attempting to undermine the non-profit's report, saying Google suggested to the media that PI has a "conflict of interest regarding Microsoft."

Meanwhile, Google has lashed back at PI's report, released Saturday, saying in a statement that it the company "aggressively protects its users' privacy and stands behind its track record," according to reports.

"We are disappointed with Privacy International's report, which is based on numerous inaccuracies and misunderstandings about our services," said Nicole Wong, Google's deputy general counsel.

In " A Race to the Bottom: Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies," PI ranks the privacy practices of 23 of "the best and the worst performers both in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 across the full spectrum of search, e-mail, e-commerce and social networking sites, including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Skype, Wikipedia, Yahoo, YouTube, and Google.

Overall, Google scored the absolute lowest, deemed "Hostile to Privacy" for its "track history of ignoring privacy concerns. Every corporate announcement involves some new practice involving surveillance."

Among the reasons for the low ranking, PI says that:

Google account holders that regularly use even a few of Google's services must accept that the company retains a large quantity of information about that user, often for an unstated or indefinite length of time, without clear limitation on subsequent use or disclosure, and without an opportunity to delete or withdraw personal data even if the user wishes to terminate the service.

Google maintains records of all search strings and the associated IP-addresses and time stamps for at least 18 to 24 months and does not provide users with an expungement option.

Google has access to additional personal information, including hobbies, employment, address, and phone number, contained within user profiles in Orkut.

Google collects all search results entered through Google Toolbar and identifies all Google Toolbar users with a unique cookie that allows Google to track the user's web movement.

Google fails to follow generally accepted privacy practices such as the OECD Privacy Guidelines and elements of EU data protection law.

Google logs search queries in a manner that makes them personally identifiable but fails to provide users with the ability to edit or otherwise expunge records of their previous searches.

"Sour grapes?"
After releasing the report yesterday, PI today published on its Web site an open letter from PI director Simon Davies to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In it, Davies accuses the company of calling into question the integrity of the group's findings, saying that Google "representative or representatives" contacted journalists about the study before it was released and "made particular reference to one member of our 70-member international Advisory Board. This man is a current employee of Microsoft."

While Davies doesn't deny that, indeed, one of PI's advisory board members is a Microsoft employee, he stresses that the member "joined our Advisory Board well before he was headhunted by Microsoft" and that "he is a decent, skilled and honorable man who upon his appointment with Microsoft offered us his resignation. We refused to accept it, and he continues to serve on the Board in a private capacity."

Further, Davies vehemently defends the group's independence and integrity, noting that it has campaigned against many company's over privacy, including Microsoft: "[We] publicly supported the EU Commission investigation into Microsoft, that we nominated Microsoft for the US Big Brother Award in 2003, that we awarded Microsoft the "Worst Corporate Invader" award at the 1999 US Big Brother Awards, [and] that we publicly accused Microsoft of subverting its software security ... ."

PI points out that while Microsoft did earn a rating of "Serious Lapses" -- two ranks better than Google, Windows Live Space was deemed a "Substantial Threat." Meanwhile Google's Orkut was not tagged with the worst rating as Google was; rather, it also received "Substantial Threat" status.

"Can I be so bold as to suggest that your company's actions stem from sour grapes that you achieved the lowest ranking amongst the Internet giants?" Davies writes. "We have no specific axe to grind with Google. It is one of many companies demonstrating a poor privacy performance, and in assessing that performance we are acting solely with the intention of raising public awareness."

He goes on to write, "I believe an apology from you is in order, but if you cannot deliver this then I think you should reflect carefully on the actions of your representatives before embarking on what I believe amounts to a smear campaign."

Privacy International's report can be downloaded here [PDF].

Posted by Ted Samson on June 10, 2007 12:10 PM

June 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google now tells whether trains are on time

Google Maps is great, but -- let's face it-- the company has always had a blind spot when it comes to getting around in something other than a car. Whether it's getting from Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts to Kings College in England (Google's recommendation: swim the 3,400 miles across the Atlantic Ocean), or getting around notoriously car-unfriendly places like Boston, San Francisco or New York, Google has always had a blind spot when it comes to alternative modes of transportation.

As others have noted, Google Transit, a site ostensibly devoted to making mass transit info more accessible, drills down on places like Tampa Florida, Duluth, Minnesota, and Reno, Nevada. Hardly the kind of cities that come to mind when you think "mass transit." That kind of myopia is probably understandable for a company with roots in car-crazy California, but recently some enterprising startups have come along to fill in the void. Notably, HopStop.com, which provides bus and subway directions for folks in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. -- cities that know a subway when they see one!

Judging from the news today, though, Google is finally wrapping its brain around the public transportation problem. The latest evidence that the folks at the Googleplex "get it" is a new feature that integrates train and bus schedules into Google maps. For cities like Boston and New York, this means mentions of what public transit lines run through subway, bus and train stations, as well as links to Web sites with scheduling information. In some cases, Google links directly to scheduling information.

That's cool, but with Google Transit still still suggesting that I drive from Post Office Square in Boston to Harvard Square in Cambridge, when everyone knows that it's just four stops away on the MBTA's Red Line, Google still has a way to go before it will be a credible transit information resource!

Posted by Paul Roberts on June 5, 2007 09:11 AM

April 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google Presentation just another 'Docs' feature

Google's planned presentation application will be just another feature of the Google Docs application, Rajen Sheth, product manager for Google Enterprise Applications told InfoWorld.

[ Hear podcast: Google's Rajen Sheth discusses its latest acquisition ]

Rather than appearing as a separate application within the Google Apps suite, the new Google presentation features will be just another feature, along side the document and spreadsheet features that are accessed by clicking on Documents within the Google desktop environment, he said.

"What you'll see is similar to something like Google Docs. In terms of naming and branding, the way we look at it is as a feature of Google Docs and Spreadsheets," Sheth said.

That decision is consistent with the approach Google took when it unveiled its Docs and Spreadsheets features in February, 2006. Rather than treat each application separately, as Microsoft Office does, Google combines them within a user environment built around collaboration and online sharing.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt unveiled plans for the new application yesterday at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. The application, which will use technology Google recently acquired from Tonic Systems, a Java-based presentation software firm with offices in the Bay Area and Melbourne, Australia.

Google is still developing the product and can't say yet what the core features will be when it is unveiled this summer. The company is also trying to figure out exactly what role the Tonic technology will play in the final product, Sheth said.

"They have a lot of expertise in presentation file formats and presentation software in general. They're going to be adding that expertise into the mix here and that will,in the end, make it a better product," he said.

While CEO Schmidt was greeted with skepticism if not outright laughter when he tried to suggest that Google wasn't trying to take on Microsoft and its Office franchise, Sheth confirmed his company's view that comparing Office and Google Apps is like comparing apples (no pun intended) and oranges.

"I think a lot of traditional office tools were built on the notion of individual productivity -- you built tools that were there to make one person on one PC very productive. What's missing is team productivity -- the ability to make it so that people working on things together can quickly publish and share information with coworkers or others outside the company or friends. Thats where this adds to it," Sheth said.

In fact, "traditional office tools" as Sheth calls them (aka Office) only cover one fourth of what Google considers must have functionality: document creation. The other three fourths -- collaboration, document publishing and retrieval (aka search) aren't part of the traditional Office suite, but are central to Google's vision.

"A lot of traditional office applications grew up in a world before the Internet was widely available. (Google) Apps have grown up in a world that's based on the Internet. Because of that, the paradigms of how people work together are very different and things grow in different directions," he said.

Though Google Apps was initially envisioned for small enterprises, Google is seeing traction even at large enterprises and Fortune 500 firms, which are warming to the software as a service (SaaS) concept, he said.

Recent stories, like the revelation that some public Google Calendars have been leaking sensitive scheduling information from brand name companies companies is just proof that there's hunger in many large firms for the sharing and collaboration features that Google Apps offer, he said. (Noting that companies can keep confidential information from leaking out by using Google's Apps suite, rather than the public calendaring feature.)

But Sheth ruled out a full fledged marketplace for Google Apps, akin to Salesforce.com's successful AppExchange.

"Our strength is in end user collaboration applications. What Google is great at is connection to the end user. What we want to do is set a framework for how people can collaborate, but allow extensions to that framework so that customers can customize and collaborate in ways that are specific to their industry or applications," he said.

For now, Google is happy with what it is seeing on forums like Google Gadgets, where third party developers can post their Google Desktop add-ons for download, and from its Google enterprise professional program.

As for the future, Sheth says anything is possible, given the rate of change in the tech community as Web 2.0 development and deployment paradigms take hold.

"The great thing about Web 2.0 and the development model on Web is that you can iterate things and get them out quickly ... A year and a half ago, I could not have looked you in the eye and said that we'd have a viable spreadsheet program on the Web. The same thing will happen in the next couple years, we're going to see things happen we can't even anticipate happening today."

Posted by Paul Roberts on April 18, 2007 11:42 AM

April 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google CEO says company isn't after Powerpoint

Call it Chutzpah 2.0: Google CEO Eric Schmidt gets up in front of a capacity crowd at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and claims that a new presentation software package that his company is unveiling isn't intended to compete against Microsoft's Powerpoint, the dominant business presentation software on the market.

That takes nerve, alright, but that didn't prevent Schmidt from saying it all the same. As reported by InfoWorld and others, Schmidt made little of the comparisons between his company's growing suite, Google Apps, and Microsoft Office.

"I don't think we compete with them. We're not as fully functional as MS Office -- we're more in line with how people use the web than how they use the desktop."

To his credit, tech guru and author John Battelle, who was interviewing Schmidt, was having none of it: "Come on!" Battelle exclaimed "This totally competes with Microsoft Office," forcing Schmidt to concede that there were similarities, despite the fact that Google Apps "doesn't have all of Office's functionality," (translation: no BLOAT) and "is more focused on Web collaboration (a.k.a "the future") than Office."

Why so coy? Two words: plausible deniability. Frankly, it does nothing for Google to come out swinging at MS Office and saying that Google Apps is a replacement for Office. First off, it may just get Microsoft to shake off its doldrums and wake up to the reality of how vulnerable their Office monopoly (and thus, their bottom line is) to a fast shift in the competitive landscape towards Web-based applications and SaaS. With Microsoft's cash reserves and competitive spirit, it's still to Google's interest to show its belly and pretend that there's no real competition, even when everyone knows there is.

In addition, playing into the media's desire to cover the "horse race" aspect of Office vs. Google Apps comparison ultimately favors Microsoft and hurts Google. How so? By allowing Microsoft to play the "feature comparison" game and emphasize the greater capabilities of the Office applications.

What Google really wants to do is change the conversation entirely, away from Windows and Office and towards things Google is happy talking about: the Web, SaaS, collaboration, presence. Continuing to talk about Windows and Office and how the compare makes it hard to do that -- you're still arguing with terms that Microsoft invented and owns. So for now, Google is happy to trade on its stellar reputation to pick low hanging fruit from the Office tree (mostly price-conscious SMBs, EDUs and non profits at this point) and to pretend as much as it can that Office doesn't exist, at least until Office doesn't exist anymore.

Posted by Paul Roberts on April 17, 2007 07:14 PM

April 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google April 1 gotcha: Gmail Paper

Google April 1 gotcha: Gmail Paper
When I logged in to Gmail on Sunday night I almost fell to this April Fools from Google: Gmail Paper.

The new feature promises to allow you to snail-mail any of your Gmail messages. Some people would not doubt welcome this, and I was taken by the irony of it for InfoWorld, which was announcing the end of print, with Monday our final print issue.

So, here was Google reintroducing paper and we were balling it up and chucking it into the bin.

On second take, I realized the ridiculousness of it with the handler in one photo (above) delivering a whole box of Gmails. Oh, and the copy saying, "Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment."

Good one, Google.

Posted by Mike Barton on April 2, 2007 12:40 PM

March 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google packing more into Google Pack

Google said on Tuesday that it is packing more stuff into its Google Pack software bundle. In an e-mail message, the company said that it was adding a number of new programs to "satisfy users fun and sensible sides." Among the additions:

Google Photos Screensaver, a program taht allows users to "turn their screen into a digital picture frame that displays the latest photos from friends, family, and favorite photographers." (Wait -- doesn't Windows already offer this?) The Screensaver links with Picasa Web albums or photo feeds from other sites.

Symantec's Norton Security Scan, a basic computer virus scanner.

PC Tools Spyware Doctor Starter Edition, an antispyware program that is free but offers "limited active protectioN"

Google introduced the Google Pack in January of 2006 for Windows XP and Windows Vista users. The free package of software that is vetted by Google and is intended to enhance users desktop experience and includes a bunch of Google software, including Google Desktop Search, Google Talk, Google Earth and the Google Toolbar for IE. It also includes free downloads like the Mozilla browser and Adobe Reader, as well as the new additions.

Posted by Paul Roberts on March 27, 2007 07:51 AM

March 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Report: Google execs counter phone rumors

Report: Google execs counter phone rumors Maybe Google is developing a phone. Maybe it isn't, judging by comments attributed to a couple of the company's highers-ups.

"At this point in time, we are very focused on the software, not the phone," The Australian Financial Review quoted Richard Kimber, Google's South-East Asia managing director of sales and operations at the Search Engine Room conference in Sydney, according to reports. The report attributes a similar comment to the company's chief Internet evangelist.

OK. Fine. In the grand scheme of all things Google, it doesn't really matter whether the search behemoth comes out with a phone as it vies for further dominance of the Internet ad market. Google's goal with a phone wouldn't be to generate revenue the way Apple seeks to with the iPhone. Like I said yesterday, Google's business is putting as many Internet ads in front of as many eyeballs as it possibly can. That's how it's made its billions. Providing a wireless Net device would just be a means to that end.

So maybe Google's not going to deliver the physical device which with Joe Mobile will log on. But the company has made it clear that it's ready to dole out free wireless Internet access, and if it doesn't make a phone of it's own, it's surely going to partner with device-makers to optimize users' online-Google experience. All the better to connect them with ads.

Posted by Ted Samson on March 20, 2007 11:54 PM

March 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google phone just a step toward Net-advertising dominance

Google phone just a step toward Net-advertising dominance The rumors of Google's plans to release an Internet-optimized, BlackBerry-like device have not only created quite a buzz; they've been confirmed, at least according to some reports.

"According to Nomura phone analyst Richard Windsor, the company has confirmed the project. 'Google has come out of the closet at the CeBIT trade fair admitting that it is working on a mobile phone of its own,' he said in a note. 'This is not going to be a high-end device but a mass market device aimed at bringing Google to users who don't have a PC,'" directtraffic.org reports.

Meanwhile, engadget.com also claims to have new info about the device, which it refers to as the Google Switch. The site even includes what could be a screen image of the phones contact program.

Google corporate, however, continues to neither confirm nor deny the report.

Still, that Google will deliver a phone is a possibility, and the question remains: "Why would Google want to mess with the phone business?"

Dan Nystedt at the IDG News Service posed the question the other day, and came up with this: "The commentaries have been mostly about rumors, and they lack a good motive for such a move. Google makes software, not hardware, and rumors that it was developing a PC a few years back turned out to be wrong -- it was simply making software for PCs."

Well, I have a different perspective, with all due respect to Mr. Nystedt. Google wants to make a Google-y phone for the same reason it wants to give free WiFi to Mountain View, San Francisco, and -- as observed in a fascinating article on Daily Wireless -- perhaps the entire nation.

The Daily Wireless article lists eight signs that Google is planning to build a national wireless network. Among them (and in addition to the free WiFi in Mountain View and offer to San Fran), the article notes that: Google is investing heavily in dark fiber (dark fiber has such an ominous ring to it. I bet the Death Star was laden with that stuff); it's investing in power-line based broadband technology; and it's planting datacenters left and right.

So then: If Google is sowing the seeds for a nationwide wireless network -- perhaps even a free one -- why would it do so? The company could launch such a venture under the guise of delivering knowledge to the people, and perhaps that truly is part of the Google ambition. But it certainly wouldn't just be a charitable endeavor. Google surely realizes that the more people in the U.S. (and beyond) who get online and use Google services, the more money Google makes through advertising. And what better way to generate more Net users, AKA ad-clickers, then giving away wireless service to the masses?

Internet-ad revenue is, after all, Google's bread and butter, and the company is introducing more and more ways to deliver targeted ads aimed squarely at your cerebral cortex via your eyeballs. Do a Google search for info; get an ad. Do a Google Maps search for, say, pizza; get an ad. Check your Gmail; get an ad. Access files via Google Apps; get an ad. Hop over to YouTube (which Google bought last year); get an ad. Log in to an online game, and soon enough, I expect you'll find Google-delivered ads, because Google recently scooped up AdScape, an in-game advertising startup.

Of course, the notion of offering free Internet access, essentially paid for by advertisers, isn't a new one. You may recall that NetZero gave it a whirl back in the early days of the Internet Age. Alas, the venture was a flop, arguably because the Net had yet to prove itself as a successful medium for businesses to advertise to consumers. Thus, the company couldn't support the infrastructure and deliver a useful, reliable service.

But now we know just how lucrative the world of Internet advertising is. Suddenly, NetZero's original business model looks quite viable, though updated to the current state of the Internet Age.

And Google can certainly afford to build up a wireless Internet infrastructure and deliver Net access, gratis, along with delivering all the fabulous aforementioned services, just like NBC and ABC and other major TV stations can bring you daily programming for free. The cost of the hardware and development is all paid for through advertising.

So there you have it. Google can practically hand out Google-optimized smart phones through which you and I can access the free wireless GoogleNet to partake in just about any (Google-delivered) service we might want or need, from e-mail and calendar to maps to entertainment like streaming video -- again, for free.

OK, so not entirely free. If that above scenario were to play out, and you're a business that depends on Net advertising, you may find that Google really is the only company that can bring your message to the masses, and you'll really have no choice but to pay a premium for that privilege.

And personally, I still find it all just a little bit troubling.

Posted by Ted Samson on March 20, 2007 12:56 PM

February 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google Maps does scenic route in Sydney

The Sydney Morning Herald reports of an embarrassing gaffe with Google's new Maps for Down Under: The route for a three-second walk across the street from The Herald's offices -- it shares a building with Google Australia -- is a 10.4-kilometer jaunt, according to Maps.

Journalists at The Herald would know better - it's "the local", or closest pub, for the thirsty, hard-working journalists who frequent the Shelbourne. Heck, I know, I used to work there and take my breaks between editions of the paper over a schooner.

I don't think I'd be willing to pay the $3 bridge toll, but would not mind the cab ride for a breather.

The Herald reports:

The blame for the wayward directions appears to lie with MapData Sciences, the Sydney-based company that supplies the mapping data to Google.
It incorrectly locates 201 Sussex Street on the Western Distributor, one street south of where it should be.

A similarly inaccurate set of driving directions is given on the Telstra-run WhereIs.com mapping service, which uses data from a different provider. But the directions don't include crossing the harbour.

Some comments on the find on my former SMH boss's blog are worth noting:

"I asked [Google Maps] to give me directions to go from my home to work in Manly. Wow , was I surprised when I found out that there was a short cut that I have never known about. Alas upon further investigation my new short cut was through a bush walk track through the national park that was signposted at the entry to the park as a 1 hour walk! I think I will stick to the old less scenic route!" --Harvey

And a more sobering note from "bloody google":

Bloody google maps had me screwed while skiing in the US... I followed it to Squaw Valley, and rather than enter the turnoff it took me to the next exit, into a side road and a cull de sac... on a decline.. in 2 feet of snow. The van promptly bogged with no way of getting out.
Stuck I had to leave it there for the weekend.. got drunk on schnapps waiting for a snow taxi .. luckily the snow plow had dug me out by the time I had to leave..."

Posted by Mike Barton on February 7, 2007 11:18 AM

December 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google Notebooks open to public

Google Notebook users are being warned to think "privacy option" with some recent breaches, TechCrunch reports.

It looks like some people using Google Notebook are bookmarking sensitive personal information, including social security numbers and email passwords. And others are finding that sensitive information via the Google Notebook search tool.

A Digg post, Google Notebook Search: Go through people's notebooks, shows how many have turned example of easy access to personal data -- apparently only available to the public once Google Notebook users manually turn of the default privacy option.

Regardless, question is: When does Google become responsible for monitoring such user neglect?

TechCrunch followed up its post with a note that Google had begun removing private data from Notebook, so this could get interesting and lead to some changes at Google, at least for this product.

Posted by Mike Barton on December 28, 2006 09:46 AM

December 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google's search secret revealed

This article in the American Mathematical Society describes Google's PageRank algorithm and how it returns pages from the web's collection of 25 billion documents that match search criteria so well that "google" has become a widely used verb.

Google's PageRank algorithm assesses the importance of web pages without human evaluation of the content. In fact, Google feels that the value of its service is largely in its ability to provide unbiased results to search queries; Google claims, "the heart of our software is PageRank." As we'll see, the trick is to ask the web itself to rank the importance of pages.
Summary: Brin and Page introduced Google in 1998, a time when the pace at which the web was growing began to outstrip the ability of current search engines to yield useable results. At that time, most search engines had been developed by businesses who were not interested in publishing the details of how their products worked. In developing Google, Brin and Page wanted to "push more development and understanding into the academic realm." That is, they hoped, first of all, to improve the design of search engines by moving it into a more open, academic environment. In addition, they felt that the usage statistics for their search engine would provide an interesting data set for research. It appears that the federal government, which recently tried to gain some of Google's statistics, feels the same way.

There are other algorithms that use the hyperlink structure of the web to rank the importance of web pages. One notable example is the HITS algorithm, produced by Jon Kleinberg, which forms the basis of the Teoma search engine. In fact, it is interesting to compare the results of searches sent to different search engines as a way to understand why some complain of a Googleopoly.

Hold on to your math hats and read on in How Google Finds Your Needle in the Web's Haystack.

Posted by Mike Barton on December 7, 2006 05:37 PM

November 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google News gets on the (site)map

On the heels of last week's pact between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo on search with Sitemaps.org, Google has added Sitemaps for Google News, to give organizations more "transparency and control" over which of their content appears on the engine-aggregated news site.

"We're turning it on and announcing it today," Google News Product Manager Nathan Stoll told InfoWorld on Tuesday. He has also blogged on the news here (extracted below).

Now, English-language publishers who are currently included in Google News will be able to use their existing feeds -- or define a more advanced Sitemap of their current news articles -- to tell us exactly which articles they'd like us to crawl. While they've always been able to use technical solutions such as robots.txt to govern which portions of their sites Google crawls and indexes, this will give publishers more granular tools to tell our crawlers exactly what should be included.
We also want to provide content owners more visibility into which articles are ultimately included in Google News, so we're now offering error reports specific to Google News. These error reports will explain any problems we experienced crawling or extracting news articles from a publisher's site. Although we try to make our crawl and analysis as comprehensive as possible, there are always a small number of sites and articles that we're not able to correctly analyze and include. We hope these new tools will help publishers resolve such issues.

Webmaster tools also offer publishers detailed information on the types of queries that lead visitors to various pages on a website, which can be helpful for understanding user information needs and access patterns.

We plan to extend webmaster tools for Google News to additional languages soon.

He told InfoWorld the rollout follows alpha testing with a few news organizations.

Google Search would still index a whole site, but news sites registered with Google News sitemaps would benefit, Stoll said. "We're going to crawl that very quickly."

Google News would remain the domain of news organizations, not individual bloggers. But that was the only hard-fast rule in what was news because "we're kind of format agnostic", Stoll said referring to the growing number of blogs within news organizations.

Stoll said with Sitemaps for News, Google was making it easier for Webmasters and the process more transparent for publishers, saying: "We're relying on the organizations"

A Google spokeswoman said: "This is only available to Google News publishers, so it does not pertain to any efforts around the new Sitemaps.org protocol."

The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog has this post for more info.

Posted by Mike Barton on November 21, 2006 10:52 AM

November 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google to overtake UK TV on ads

Google is set to mark a milestone for the Internet by overtake the UK's main commercial TV channels for advertising revenue, the BBC Online reports a study has found.

The BBC reports that Google's 2006 UK revenues are expected to surpass Channel Four's predicted £800m ($1.5bn) returns, and that the online darling will overtake ITV1 within 18 months, reports in the Financial Times said.

Google's buy of YouTube, which is being sued by UTube, should be more of a worry for broadcasters, with its 100 million videos viewed daily, and an estimated 72 million visitors monthly.

I still want to know what Google was/is planning to do with dark fiber?

Google Fiber to the House (FTTH) could mean the end of broadcasters as we know them, and usher in a new era in interactive services. I would also hope such an IP revolution would lower telecom and broadcast (read: Cable TV) costs across the board.

Boob tube to turn Goog tube? Talk back to us.

Posted by Mike Barton on November 2, 2006 09:22 AM

October 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Expert talks 'GooTube', copyright

Everyone seems to be weighing in on whether legal problems stemming from copyright infringement will hobble YouTube and make Google's $1.65 billion buy a mistake.

To find out I called a top copyright infringement attorney Barry Cohen at Thorp Reed and Armstrong to see what he thought.

[Good thing he didn't charge by the hour because he kept me on the phone quite a while explaining the intricacies of copyright law.]

Cohen told me at the beginning of the conversation he believes there is no way Google would have made the buy before hiring legal experts on copyright to analyze what YouTube does.

Cohen says, "there is no doubt that there has been and will be copyright infringement" on YouTube and that technically it is illegal.

However, is YouTube and soon Google, liable for the copyright infringement?

There are two parts to the answer to this question.

Part one, according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [DMCA] there is something called Safe Harbor.

Safe harbor was put into the DMCA to protect ISPs. If, for example, Verio hosts a Web site that uses a copyrighted picture is Verio liable? Under Safe Harbor they are not.

"They are excluded under the DMCA Safe Harbor provision."

YouTube is already making an effort to qualify under Safe Harbor by implementing what is required of the provision, having a Take Down system in place.

Upon receiving notice from say NBC, as in the case of YouTube's having a full Saturday Night Live skit called Lazy Sunday on its site, they had a system in place to take down the skit immediately.

However, the law also requires that the service provider, like YouTube, was not aware of it and that they did not receive a direct benefit attributable to this material.

Is a site getting revenue from showing the infringed material, that is the question that the courts would ask.

The second part of the answer to the question of whether or not YouTube and Google are liable fom copyright infringement centers on what is called Fair Use.

Generally, under Fair Use you can refer to lyrics in say a Bruce Springsteen song if you are writing about Springsteen. Or you can show a short clip from 60 Minutes in history class. That is Fair Use, says Cohen.

In other words using it for criticism or comment.

However, at this point the only person who can decide if a piece of content falls under Fair Use is a judge.

"I could show a one minute clip of movie and a judge might say it is not fair use. It depends on the portion of the content you are taking it from, and context you are showing it in," said Cohen.

There are other challenges as well to copyright infringement. Say you are showing a ten minute video clip of a movie, while ten minutes qualifies under Fair Use, that clip might contain the full three minutes of a song. That would be clear infringement.

Finally, Cohen believes much of this will be settled by licensing agreements as YouTube already has with Universal. However, Cohen also warns that it is not safe to assume that just because it is helping a company's marketing effort to be on YouTube they might not litigate.

While the chances of YouTube suffering the fate of Napster are slim, it is possible, said Cohen.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on October 18, 2006 01:27 PM

October 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Missteps could stifle Google office

Google is forging ahead with its online office plans, but yet another security misstep is urging caution with trusting Google to store one's documents on the do-no-evil giant's servers versus keeping them on a local drive.

A Google employee who intended to post on her personal blog accidentally published to the official Google blog covering Blogger (post now removed), Google Blogoscoped reports.

Blogoscoped links to other recent gaffes, such as when Google's official blog was hacked and a false message was posted saying that the company had decided to cancel a joint project with eBay.

TechCrunch has a timeline of recent missteps that it suggests could sour Google's office attack, with the latest move combining Docs and Spreadsheets online apps (See slideshow.)

Earlier security worries, from TechCrunch:

July 2004: Gmail security issue allows unauthorized access to others' registration information.
January 2005: Gmail security flaw allows unathorized viewing of others' emails.

November 2005: Gmail bug allowed hackers to take complete control of a victim's Gmail account.

March 2006: Google accidentally deletes its main official blog. They write "We've determined the cause of tonight's outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d'oh!)"

July 2006: Writely document appears that seems to show internal confidential Google information on the Platypus project.

October 2006: Google blog hacked and fake post published, quickly taken down.

October 2006: User complains that blog posts through the Blogger API are being published on someone else’s blog.

October 2006: Google accidentally releases Google Platypus software.

Are these missteps a worry for you, and will Google office face hurdles with user trust? What does Google need to do to gain your trust? Talk back to us.

Posted by Mike Barton on October 18, 2006 12:44 PM

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