Tag Archives | Google

Google Ties Chrome to Cloud Services

Posted by David Worthington on August 3, 2009 at 6:07 pm

chromelogo5Today, Google fired a new salvo in the browser wars, announcing an upcoming synchronization service for its Chrome browser. A preliminary mockup of the service will be released to developers later this week, with general availability possible later this month, according to reports.

The service will first deliver bookmark synchronization –something that’s already possible with Firefox via plug-ins as well as Opera. Google will add other types of browser data incrementally. If Google carries out its plans effectively, Chrome will provide users with a seamless user experience across many devices. Other browser makers will have to follow.

Netbooks, which have the focus of Google’s most ambitious development efforts, will be an obvious beneficiary. The synchronization service will also give a boost to OpenID, which Google users to authenticate digital identities (with its own proprietary twist).

All in all, Google is continuing to blur the line between desktop software and the cloud. It is not alone in its thinking–I’m convinced that Microsoft, which is often perceived as its biggest competitor, will eventually follow suit.

Last year, I detailed Microsoft’s Midori operating system development plans. While Google has not announced anything as ambitious as Midori, it is going down the path that Microsoft laid out in the memos that I reviewed.

One of Microsoft’s principal  design motivations is to support the ability of users to share resources remotely, and for applications that are a composite of local and remote components and services. The Web browser is just beginning to enable the application side of that vision.

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Eric Schmidt Disappears From the Apple Board

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 3, 2009 at 8:09 am

schmidtdisappearsAfter three years as a member of Apple’s board, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is stepping down. “Eric has been an excellent Board member for Apple, investing his valuable time, talent, passion and wisdom to help make Apple successful,” Steve Jobs is quoted as saying in an Apple press release. “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest,” Steve Jobs is quoted as saying in an Apple press release. “Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple’s Board.”

The news comes the Monday morning after it became public that Apple had rejected Google’s Google Voice application from the iPhone App Store, a development that the FCC wants to know more about. The timing is intriguing even though that ongoing minidrama might well have developed even if Apple and Google weren’t OS competitors. But it’s also evidence of just how fast Google’s ambitions have expanded that it was as recently as three years ago that it sounded logical for a Google representative to sit on Apple’s board at all.

There’s no reason why Schmidt’s exodus will necessarily usher in an era of fierce rivalry between the two companies. But it’ll surely have some impact on their relationship, and not just in the areas of phone and computer operating systems which Jobs references in the press release.

Google’s mission statement famously refers to organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful–and for awhile now, I’ve wondered if it was mere coincidence that it steered clear of organizing the world’s music or otherwise engaging in businesses that competed directly with Apple’s iTunes Store. (Google did try to sell video content for awhile, but it turned out to be a short-lived experiment.) May Schmidt’s disappearance from the Apple board usher in an era in which Google enters even more of Apple’s businesses without blinking. That sort of healthy competition would surely benefit consumers more than the last three odd years of Apple/Google coopitition have.

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No Google Voice Apps for the iPhone

Posted by Jason Meserve on July 28, 2009 at 9:23 am

Google Voice LogoGoogle Voice aficionados–of which there are more by the day–were excited to see mobile apps for the service launch for Android and BlackBerry devices. The general consensus: A similar iPhone app must be right around the corner. Not so fast.

The unofficial GV Mobile app written by Sean Kovac has been rejected by Apple or, more likely, AT&T, according to Mashable and Kovac. GV Mobile lets Google Voice account holders dial numbers through the address book or keypad, send SMS messages, retrieve call history data and take calls on a different phone–all functions the Google Voice web site offers. Google too had its official Voice application rejected by Apple, according to TechCrunch.

The problem with Kovac’s app, Apple says, is that this duplicates functionality of the iPhone and therefore is not needed. “Richard Chipman from Apple just called–he told me they’re removing GV Mobile from the App Store due to it duplicating features that the iPhone comes with (Dialer, SMS, etc). He didn’t actually specify which features, although I assume the whole app in general,” Kovac wrote on his blog.

Continue Reading →

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Google Latitude on the iPhone: Impressive! Not Confusing!

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 24, 2009 at 11:38 am

LatitudeGoogle’s Latitude–which lets you use your phone to share your location with friends–has finally debuted on the iPhone, months after it showed up for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile. On the iPhone, it’s a Safari-based Web app rather than an iPhone app. But it’s apparently only a Web app because Apple was unhappy with the native app that Google developed. “We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users,” says the Google blog post announcing the iPhone version. “After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.”

Of course, this is the iPhone we’re talking about, so Apple’s requests aren’t really requests; if it had a problem with the native version of Latitude, it would presumably never the the light of day in the App Store. I’m not entirely clear on why Apple believed that Latitude would confuse iPhone owners, since Apple not only permits other mapping-related apps to be distributed on the App Store but encourages their creation by helping developers embed maps in their wares. And Latitude’s functionality is almost completely unrelated to what you get in Apple’s Maps app.

Also, iPhone owners aren’t dummies, and at least some of us would rather risk the possibility of being confused in return for the possibility of being pleased by a useful new app.

That said, the Web-based version of Latitude is impressive stuff. Google builds some of the best iPhone Web apps there are–like its iPhone-ized version of Gmail–and it’s hard to imagine that a native iPhone version would be much better than what it’s done in Safari. Latitude for the iPhone has one fundamental limitation that the other versions don’t: It can’t broadcast your location to your buddies unless you’re running the app. But it would have to deal with that even it were a native iPhone application, since Apple doesn’t permit third-party software to run in the background. (If the company doesn’t loosen up the multitasking limitations, maybe it can add some sort of ability for a GPS-related app to continue to send your location even when it’s not running, akin to the Push Notifications the iPhone already has.)

In the long run, apps like Latitude and Glympse might end up being features in a program like the iPhone’s Maps, not standalone software. For now, though, I want them to flourish–and I’m sorry that Apple thinks they’d befuddle us, and that its monopoly on distribution of iPhone apps means its gut check on such matters is gospel.

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iGoogle Does Comics

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 23, 2009 at 11:51 am

I’m in San Diego for the massive pop-culture convention known as Comic-Con–along with roughly half the world’s population, judging from the crowds. And when I jumped online, I discovered that Google is here in spirit, too:

Google Comics Logo

On my display, at least, that art is a bit tough to make out, but those are four DC Comics heroes: Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Plastic Man. But the really cool part of Google’s comics celebration is that it’s come up with more than fifty iGoogle themes based on comics. The variety is spectacular: There’s Mutts, Peanuts, and Nancy; Superman, the Hulk, and Krazy Kat; Beat Girl; designs by Jaime Hernandez, Daniel Clowes, and Kim Deitch; and lots more. Including–inevitably–Ziggy.

At the moment, I’m enjoying E.C. Segar’s Popeye:

Popeye iGoogle Theme

Like other iGoogle themes, these ones auto-change depending on the time of day. Nicely done–but I hope Google decides that every day is comics day, and continues to add more. If there was a Pogo theme, I’d install it in a heartbeat…

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To the Moon With Google

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 20, 2009 at 9:39 am

Google Earth LogoGoogle is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 in the most logical way possible: It’s added the moon to Google Earth in much the same way it took us to Mars a few months ago. You can now circle the moon and explore its geography and landmarks, take a couple of tours (including one narrated by Jack Schmitt, the last man to set foot on the moon), and view videos and high-resolution photos. As a technological feat, it’s not as amazing as getting to the moon with the help of computers as they existed in 1969, but it’s an impressive and fun addition to one of Google’s most impressive, fun products.

Google Moon

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Report: Microsoft Days Away from Yahoo Search Deal

Posted by David Worthington on July 17, 2009 at 7:07 pm

A cadre of Microsoft executives is in Silicon Valley to iron a search and online advertising deal with Yahoo, All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher is reporting.

The executives include senior vice president of the company’s Online Audience Business Group Yusuf Mehdi, Online Services Group president Qi Lu, and Online Services senior vice president Satya Nadella, according the report. The terms of the deal allegedly involve Microsoft paying Yahoo billions of dollars upfront to run its search advertising business; Yahoo will receive certain guaranteed payments.

Some sticking points have involved who will have control over data, and traffic acquisition cost rates, the report says. However, I thinkthat Yahoo will take the deal: Despite its new technology initiatives, its market share is slowly decaying.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Bing search engine has been received favorably, and it has managed to steal some market share away from Google and Yahoo. It is still too soon to tell whether a trend if developing (it launched last month), but Microsoft’s $90 million advertising campaign won’t hurt its chances at popularity.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is like a pit bull–he never lets go after he sets his jaws around something. There has been a persistent campaign to strike a deal with Yahoo. All Things Digital says that it could happen as soon as next week. Now we wait.

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The Ongoing Unfulfilled Promise of Gears

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 17, 2009 at 12:17 pm

Gears LogoI persist in believing that we don’t know enough about Google’s Chrome OS to either love the idea or hate it. But this I know: If Chrome OS netbooks only work when they’ve got an active Internet connection, they’ll make no sense at all. The day may come when Internet access is available everywhere and everywhere. But for now, computers need to provide some level of functionality even when they’re cut off from the Net.

I’m assuming that Google wouldn’t dispute that and is building a Chrome OS that will work offline in one fashion or another. Which got me thinking about a Google project that’s both one of my favorites and a major disappointment: Gears.

When Google announced in 2007 that it was developing a framework to help Web services run even when the Web wasn’t available, my PC World pals and I got so excited that we named Gears as the year’s most innovative product. Then another few months passed, and I got worried that the Web wasn’t jumping on the Gears bandwagon as quickly as I’d hoped it would.

Gears is now more than two years old, and the list of services that support it remains remarkably short. Actually, I’m not sure if there is an official list of Gears-friendly services: Google’s Gears site refers to a “select group” of services, but doesn’t mention them. In this case, “select” is presumably a synonym for “short.”  The Wikipedia page for Gears mentions fifteen Gears-enabled services, six of which are from Google itself. For the most part, they don’t replicate all their Web functionality within an offline browser–even Gmail, which may have the neatest Gears implementation to date, offers a reduced set of features.

Making Web services work sans Web is, clearly, really hard. Even for a company with as many smart people and resources as Google (and Gears is an open-source project, so it’s not even limited by the amount of attention Google is able to devote to it). I’m still a Gears fan, and I’m still hopeful that Gears will turn out to be a late bloomer rather than a cool idea that never caught on. For now, though, it’s proof that Web technologies still benefit mightily from having access to the Web.

As far as I know, Google hasn’t said what role Gears plays in Chrome OS. It’s a safe bet that it’s part of the OS, and that Gears-enabled services will work on Chrome OS netbooks. But does it provide Chrome OS with its only offline features? We just don’t know. Chrome OS is based on a Linux kernel, so it’s also entirely possible that it’ll have some level of support for Linux apps. Any guesses?

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