Google Buzz’s launch earlier this week has attracted as much attention about the “why” as the “what”. Among the leading “why” questions:
1. Why did Google launch Buzz?
Is it merely to establish a better foothold in the social media universe given Google has a low presence? Does Google see a problem that it can tackle such as filtering the amount of social media “noise”? Or, as Steve Rubel suggests, is Google Buzz an attempt by Google to protect GMail from Facebook’s bigger plans for the e-mail market.
2. Why has Google spent the past few days upgrading, fixing and re-loading on Buzz, highlighted today by a “new start-up experience”? It’s difficult not to get the impression that Buzz was rushed out the door...
I started using Google Chrome recently. Although it’s an extension-free version, it’s very good – fast and with a cool search feature that also doubles as the place where URL addresses appear. It’s yet another Google tool with my digital toolbox, along with search (regular, blog and image), GMail, Google Reader, Google Maps and YouTube.
As much as you may want to resist, it’s difficult to not be part of the ever-expanding Google empire. Most of their services work really well, and they’re free. Before you know it, your digital world is dominated by Google.
One of the questions it raises is whether there’s a limit to the size of Google’s empire, and whether are any markets that it is not prepared to enter. This week, for example,...
I haven’t been able to try Google Buzz yet but here are some more thoughts from the outside looking in.
The decision to use GMail as the platform to establish a foothold within social media is smart – probably the second best thing Google could have done aside from buying Twitter. The idea of creating a service within something that 175 million people use each month makes total sense.
Google Buzz also scores points with a nice suite of features so it can be used to provide links to other social media platforms – something will expand down the road. Being able to create mini-Web sites from each update is also interesting.
That said, Google Buzz faces some major challenges. Perhaps the biggest is how willing people will be embrace yet another social media service when many...
The blogosphere is abuzz about Google’s plans to integrate a “Twitter-Killer” into GMail – and there are already people such as Robert Scoble boldly suggesting it’s not going to happen.
Twitter is the dominant micro-blogging service, having forced Pownce (remember them?) to go away while a score of such as StatusNet and Plurk quietly toil away in the background. Meanwhile, Google’s first stab at the market, Jaiku, was a dismal failure.
That said, anyone who dismisses Google’s chances of posing a threat Twitter would be making a mistake. Here’s a few reasons:
1. Despite Twitters’ large user base – 50 million or so around the world – it’s growth appears to be slowing, particularly in the U.S. where it has been flat in...
The Globe & Mail’s business section had an interesting feature story yesterday about how Google taking “aim at everything” – a thesis driven home recently with the launch of the Nexus mobile phone.
With Google seemingly everywhere and anywhere, it starts to beg the question about whether trying to all things to all people is too much, and whether, at some point, consumers will push back against Google’s dominance. Sure, Google offers great services – most at no cost – but are we getting sucked in too much into the Google empire.
At one point does being too much of a Google user start to get dangerous? And at what point will consumers start to realize that it’s unhealthy to have too much Google in their lives? If that every happens will...
In 1958 Isaac Asimov wrote a short story titled "All the Troubles of the World" (included in the collection "Nine Tomorrows"). It described a world transformed by Multivac, a giant all-knowing computer. Asimov died in 1992, a mere four years before Larry and Sergey started their project "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." Below are selected quotes from Asimov’s story (no spoilers), next to relevant imagery from Google.
via Neil Fraser: News: Google Multivac....
According to TechCrunch, Google is looking to buy Yelp for $500-million, a move that would boost Google’s presence in the local search and directory business.
Maybe it’s just me but over the past few months, Google’s strategy to take over the world is becoming more evident. If it’s not acquisitions (60 and counting), it’s new (and free!) services such as Google DNS or the recently-unveiled Goo.gl URL shortening service.
This may sound naive given that capitalism is capitalism but does Google need to own everything and offer every online service? Doesn’t it make sense to leave some scraps for competitors so that there’s still some competition?
Don’t get me wrong, Google offers some terrific (and free!) service but the bigger it gets, the more...
Copyright © 2009 Miss604. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2009/12/favourite-places-on-google-maps-vancouver-edition.html.Google has just launched their “Favourite Places on Google Maps” for the first time in Canada and they have profiled spots around Vancouver. The favourites are all marked on the maps with little maple leaf pins and have been hand-picked by local experts.
View Rebecca Bollwitt’s Favorite Places in a larger map
This includes venues and destinations submitted by: Premier Gordon Campbell, Olympic Gold Medallist Ross Rebagliati, Olympic Gold & Silver Medallist Simon Whitfield, Iron Chef Champion Rob Feenie, Singer-songwriter & breast cancer survivor Bif Naked, Children’s book writer Kit Pearson, Monte Clark of the...
It has been a fascinating and, in some respects troubling, week for Google in the wake of a several announcements.
These include:
- the decision to offer a service that lets people see an archive of their search results even if they haven’t logged into Google – a move that has alarmed privacy advocates
- the launch of Google Public DNS, which could give Google all kinds of information about what do on the Web.
- the acquisition of AppJet, which was seen as a rival to Google’s much-hyped Google Wave service. Critics suggests the deal is just another way Google snuffs out competitive threats before they gain any traction.
While there are obvious benefits in using Google personalized search and Google Public DNS, they bolster the growing reality that Google’s goal to...
News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch has proved, yet again, that he is a dinosaur who does not fit in with today’s world in the 21st century. Miffed by aggregators, like Google News, Murdoch has sworn to fight Google and other online aggregators with all his might. Apparently, the old chap does not like the enormous traffic that aggregators like Google drive to his online assets. Another fool, but not yet as old as Murdoch, is Newsweek’s Daniel Lyons, the magazine’s “pundit” on technology. Lyons shares Murdoch’s views of online aggregators and even calls them “parasites” (as if anyone would ever find or read Lyons’ articles if it were not for Google). Like Murdoch, Lyons calls for an end to aggregators and bloggers linking to specific pages. Both Murdoch and Lyons do...
It has been documented to death that the business of journalism is broken but no one has come up with a widely-embraced killer idea to save it.
The exception, however, is News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch who has been leading the charge recently about introducing paywalls – something already done at the Wall St. Journal.
Now, Murdoch has raised the idea of not letting News Corp.’s Web sites be indexed by Google. In an interview with Sky News political editor David Speers, Murdoch suggests that while Google drives a lot of traffic to News Corp. sites, he’d rather have fewer people visiting but have those people pay for content.
“They shouldn’t have had it free all the time. I think we’ve been asleep,” he said after Speers asked him about the fact...
When Google unveiled Google Wave a few months ago, the excitement was palpable. The hype has been based on Google Wave’s potential to become a powerful personal portal (aka PPP) that you could configure to meet your specific digital needs and goals.
But it’s difficult not to get the feeling that Wave is not only over-hyped but whether it will live up to a smidgen of what people believe it could be. So far, Wave has been underwhelming. I realize it has just been rolled out to only 100,000 users but the buzz has been, at best, modest. Meanwhile, it has been interesting to hear excuses being made for Google Wave’s lack of sizzle such as “Well, it’s really just a tool for developers right now.”
The uncertainly surrounding Wave is also becoming evident among...
Google recently launched Street View in Canada, including major cities such as Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, among others. Google Street View first launched in May 2007, it allows users to virtually navigate neighbourhoods. The technology behind Street View is interesting, last summer Google cars equipped with directional cameras on their roofs captured the images by driving down city streets, and there are Google tricycles for those hard-to-reach locations.
Street View has come under fire since it’s launch, people think it is infringing on the privacy of those found in its images. Google has said in a statement that it has “gone to great lengths to ensure Canadians privacy”. I guess that is what they mean when faces and car license plates are blurred out in its...
Copyright © 2009 Miss604. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2009/10/vancouver-history-before-and-after-part-eight.html.For the eight installment of my Then and Now Vancouver photography series I thought I would change things up a bit. I’m going to be using images from the City of Vancouver Archives but instead of modern day images for the “now” portion of the post, I will be using Google Street Views.
Hornby @ Robson Back of the Court House (now the Vancouver Art Gallery with the 2nd Hotel Vancouver in the background)
1923
ITEM #: CVA 677-7
2009
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Burrard @ Pender – Looking West
1939
ITEM #: CVA 1376-155
2009
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Granville @ Davie – Looking West on Granville
1912
Major Matthews collection – ITEM #:...
The blogosphere was abuzz yesterday when it was disclosedt that Twitter is having discussions with Google and Microsoft about giving them access to the firehose of data generated by Twitter users, including links.
There were enthusiastic discussions about whether these potential deals would finally mean Twitter would be able to create a viable business model given Google and Microsoft may be willing to pay millions of dollars for access to the data. My first thought was that Google pays Firefox millions of dollars in referral fees to drive traffic so striking a data deal with Twitter could see the same kind of financial return.
While a deal with Google and/or Microsoft is definitely interesting, a far more intriguing story comes from Silicon Valley Insider, which reports that Twitter is...
miss604 posted a video:
"Time Stands Still" by Cut Copy...
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Copyright © 2009 Miss604. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2009/10/google-street-view-comes-to-vancouver.html.Google Map’s Street View service has officially launched in Canada and includes sidewalk-level images of Vancouver, Squamish, Whistler, Banff, Calgary, Kitchener/Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec. Vancouver’s coverage also includes Richmond, New Westminster, Surrey, and all Metro Vancouver cities as far East as Chilliwack.
This morning at the launch we got the full rundown of the service, its privacy measures, and how the City of Vancouver, Tourism BC, and other partners such as ChicWalks will integrate Street Views.
Quick video I made to demo Google Maps Street View
Here’s how it works: Basically the Google car drives around...
miss604 posted a photo:
Vancouver Mayor, Gregor...
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A post by Louis Gray about the Blogger recently celebrating its 10th anniversary caught my attention for several reasons. One, it’s hard to believe anything on the mainstream anything on the mainstream Web is a decade old until you remember it has been 14 years since Netscape’s IPO, which symbolically marked the official transformation of the Internet into the Web.
While Blogger ranks among the world’s leading blogging platforms, it really doesn’t get the respect it probably deserves. Meanwhile, Wordpress basks in the spotlight, although a recent security hack, which I experienced a couple of week ago, is probably not the kind of attention it wants.
Blogger struggles to get its props because, frankly, it is buried deep within Google, which acquired Blogger in 2003...
There’s been a lot of hype and excitement since the idea of Google Wave was launched a few months ago – fueled by a tantalizing video.
jkOnTheRun, for example, gushes about Google Wave even though James Kendrick hasn’t been in the beta:
“Google Wave is an incredible technology that is hard to fully understand. It is messaging, email and real-time web collaboration all rolled into one, and the implications are far-reaching.”
The excitement about Google Wave has a lot to do with the idea it can be the place where you can do everything and anything, driven by a ecosystem of developers creating applications.
Having seen a demo of Wave yesterday, and been walked through it by co-founders Jens and Lars Rasmussen, I’d suggest Wave has potential but it’s...
Since blogging entered into the mainstream a few years ago, it has pretty much been an anything-goes landscape with bloggers have the freedom to say anything about anyone.
And while journalists had to worry about libel laws, bloggers seem to have free reign given the medium was so new, so fast-moving and attracting scores of wanna-be journalists and writers opining to their heart’s delight.
But is the say-anything party about to end? A recent court decision against Google Inc. could be an indication that things may be about to change.
The case involves a Canadian model, Liskula Cohen, who launched a lawsuit against Google after a Blogger.com user wrote five posts on a site called “Skanks of NYC” that featured photographs and derogatory comments about her.
Cohen...
It seems like a long time ago but it was only 2004 when Google went public at $85/share.
In hindsight, what’s particularly amazing about the $2.7-billion IPO was the distinct lack of enthusiasm about it. This forced Google to reduce the price of the shares from $95.
Some of the concerns included legal issues and a downturn among high-tech stocks. There was also uncertainty about the “Dutch Auction” approach Google decided to use, which distributed shares directly to individual investors rather than the traditional approach that involves investment bankers and major brokers.
“I would not be stunned if Google closes down. Internet search companies have been through the ringer for the past few weeks,” Brian Bolan, an analyst with Marquis Investment Research,...
You know the economy is still mired in recession when a cash-machine such as Google decides to lay off the capital “G”, which was likely making more money than the lower-case “g”.
Apparently, “G” took the news hard, feeling a combination of glum, guilty and god-awful. The other “g” is giddy and gleeful about still having a job....
There seems to be no lack of entrepreneurs willing to take a crack at developing a new search engine – even if it means going to head to head with Google. Whether it’s Wolfram Alpha, Bing, Cuil or Blekko, there is no lack of search start-ups.
What’s puzzling about this search landscape is the lack of start-ups focused on blog comments. Sure, there’s BackType but it seems to be a lonely voice in the woods. In doing some research on comment search engines, it’s surprising to see so few options.
The question is why the dearth of comment search engines when there are dozens of general search engines, search engines focused on verticals such as travel, and search engines for Twitter?
Sure, there are social media monitoring and analytics services such as Sysomos...
Time will tell if it was Bing’s inherent abilities or Microsoft’s deep-pockets spending that caused the initial bump of 8% in unique users after the first month — but its clear what is suffering from a lack of Buzz … Wolfram Alpha.
About two months after its initial launch, there’s been thundering silence from the blogosphere / socialstream on WolframAlpha’s computational awesomeness. And now, even with some buzzworthy stuff, it seems like its wholly underwhelming [not being a stats nut, I will take WebWare's take on VORPs for example].
While WolframAlpha was never meant to in any way replace Google, its got to be a little disappointing to see a 50% drop off in traffic and an almost complete drop off in buzz.
With its growing community, some pretty...
Nice pick up from the USA Today on privacy concerns regarding Google’s upcoming Google OS. In particular
Privacy advocates want more transparency from Google about how it plans to monetize the vast amounts of behavioral data it collects. Google could charge a pretty penny for this intelligence, which could help advertisers better target their pitches, says Court.
“Even though the company espouses that it doesn’t do evil, the potential for a lot of evil exists,” says Court. “It may start with simple ads you get based on whether you like soccer or baseball, but the evolution of being spied on, not only through your searches, but on all the files you create, that’s pretty frightening.”
At times like this, I like to remind myself that as...
So, I’m not disparaging any company that gets 3M or so uniques per month, but its funny. I remember that when Mahalo was launched some year(s) ago, in its initial incarnation / hype, I remember someone saying something about building its index to the 25k most common terms, and then trying to own those terms in Google. I can’t find the actual link, so I may have hallucinated that last bit.
Long story short, over the past few years, I know that Mahalo has evolved its strategy, and that it now has a community, has an ongoing video that did have Veronica Belmont at some point, and has an answers-like program as well.
Interesting thing — I have never, ever, found Mahalo in Google’s SERPs since its inception. Mind you, I’ve never, ever, deliberately looked...
Perhaps the key to Google OS’s success is in this key statement that might have been overlooked yesterday:
Messrs. Schmidt and Page were also careful not to position Chrome as a competitor to Microsoft Windows. They argued that Chrome will expand the market for netbooks, rather than eating into Windows’ share of the netbook market.
Messrs. Schmidt and Page were also careful not to position Chrome as a competitor to Microsoft Windows. They argued that Chrome will expand the market for netbooks, rather than eating into Windows’ share of the netbook market.
Rather than the hubaloo around “of course Chrome is a competitor”, I find the more interesting statment the latter half of that statement — Google’s planning to expand the market for netbooks....
If a picture tells a thousand words, then the screen capture below of the front page of Techmeme illustrates the interest and excitement in Google’s new operating system.
Keep in mind this screen shot was captured 24 hours after the initial announcement, which goes to show how much attention the news continues to receive - amazing for a product not expected to be released for at least another year.
Technorati Tags: google, microsoft, OS...