Google hearts Jaiku

The Google acquisition train just keeps on rolling down the tracks.

I logged on to Jaiku this morning to be greeted with the information that it has become yet another member of the Googleplex.  The acquisition seems to have created quite a stir across the tech news blogosphere (for example here, here and here).  There seems to be two common themes:

1. Jaiku isn't nearly as good as Twitter, so why didn't Google buy that service instead? (rubbish by the way, I grew to hate Twitter very quickly as an unreliable, US-centric elitist self-congratulatory club, but that's just me)
2. It's all got something to do with the rumoured GPhone and competing with Facebook

My money is on the latter of the points, regardless of my own personal opinion of the Twitter service.

What I find most disappointing is that finally I was enjoying using a service that wasn't a Google owned one, which meant that at least some of my online presence wasn't being absorbed by the 'Plex at Mountain View.  Every time I try and break away, they just suck me right back in *sigh*

On the other hand, I'm very happy for the Jaiku crew who have all acted like a bunch of upright gentleman (and one of the co-founders is a sociologist by training, which is even cooler - I love finding fellow sociologists!) so I feel this is a well deserved break for them.

Citizen cartography

A career in cartography used to be the prerogative of well-funded adventurers — men like Rennell or Lewis and Clark — with full government backup ... Now, suddenly, mapmaking power is within the grasp of a 12-year-old.

- Wired: Google Maps is changing the way we see the world

I use Google Maps almost on a daily basis, particularly when trying to find the location of specific rural services. The ability to quickly locate remote locations is becoming invaluable to me.

In fact, a work-related mapping project popped in to my head which could be quite useful in informing some upcoming policy development and review processes. I wouldn't have been able to do this 12 months ago, yet alone two, three or five years ago.

Once again I find myself thinking that it is an amazing time to be alive right now, where geographically disparate chunks of information can be collated and visualised with a few clicks of the mouse.

Another spectacular Google service

Gmail Paper.

Be sure to read the program policies. I know EULAs can be boring most of the time, but you are definitely going to want to check these policies out before signing up.

Google buys again

Two recent posts on the Official Google Blog (here and here) show that Google is on the buy-path again.

Google have bought the Trendalyzer software produced by Gapminder and Adscape, who have been working on technologies to put advertising in games (link now only shows a press release about the Google acquisition and the Internet Archive doesn't have any older information either).

At least these acquisitions make immediate sense. The Trendalyzer (which is totally fun to play with) helps make sense of massive amounts of statistics and data through visualisation. If there's one thing Google has a lot of, it's data.

The Adscape technology is quite clearly linked to Google's core functionality these days - selling advertising (it's obvious to me at least that search is number 2 on Google's list).

It's been a while since Google bought anything. It will be interesting to see if this is just the start of another round of strategic buys. I wonder who the next target is?

New Gmail funkiness

Update 2: It even lets you label all incoming mail from other accounts so you can tell at a glance where mail has come from. Even funkier. (2/3/07)

Update 1: Works like a charm, and even allows SSL connections (if supported by your ISP) which means I can use Internode's securemail features. Funky. (1/3/07)


I have no idea how long this has been going on but Gmail is now letting selected users collect email from up to 5 other POP enabled email accounts into your Gmail inbox. It will then let you have customised settings so that you can send email from your Gmail inbox but it will look like it was sent from your other POP-enabled account/s.

It can be enabled in the Settings/Accounts section. I'm in the process of setting it up with my ISP email address as a trial but it requires some verification and my verification email hasn't arrived yet.

I can see this being very useful.

Edit 2/3/07 19:23: I changed my original edit to an update. It makes more sense this way and fits in with the second update.

Google Maps optioned up in Australia

It might not sound like much to some, but a beefed up Google Maps service is finally being launched in Australia.

The pundits seem to be excited about Google's partnership with News Ltd, the Australian subsidiary (and former parent company) of News Corp, to create a domestic business search function, putting it in competition with Telstra and it's offshoot Sensis, which manages the Yellow and White Pages, as well as the sometimes excellent Whereis.com, which provides a mapping and directions service (particularly useful for mapping out routes or working out how far away your hotel is from the nearest pub). Apparently, this will spark some sort of competition, leading to improvements for all consumers. Something like that anyway.

Me? I'm just excited that finally Google Maps provides some decent coverage and linked services for Australian cities. I can't wait to see what funky mash-ups the kids will come up with using the Maps API. There's a good round-up of mash-ups already available at Google Maps Mania, but I want even more funkiness.

I'd do it myself, but that would take skill, talent and possibly even a fresh idea, all of which are currently in short supply with the pixelated one.

See also:
news.com.au - Web deal for Google, News
Sky News Australia - Google Maps launch

Google tweaking Gmail interface again

It's only a little thing, but Google have been playing with the Gmail interface again.

They've moved the various reply options from the header view to a pull-down menu off to one side. How very 2.0 of them. It;s part of the "Five new features"update which also includes:

• an update conversation button you can click to make sure someone didn't email the same witty Al Jaffee snappy answer while you were typing;
• a "forward all" to forward entire conversations (because there obviously isn't enough junk circulating with Reply To All);
• saving Gmail chats if the chattee logs off while you were typing but before you hit send (I thought it did this already?); and
• a new Java app to read your Gmail on your mobile phone (which I could do now if I wanted to).

Nothing all that exciting but I am curious to see what they do to the overall Gmail experience.

Google buy YouTube

After days of rumours, and countless convincing arguments from many people as to why it was pure speculation and why they would be mad to do it, Google went and acquired YouTube in a stock-for-stock deal worth approximately US $1.6 billion (or about A $2.2 billion). With that kind of money floating around, I am clearly in the wrong business.

(And is it just me, or is the Web 2.0 business model for so many companies:

1. come up with an idea
2. attract some hype
3. get bought out by Google
4. PROFIT!!

Swap out Step 3 with Launch IPO, and you've got the dot.com boom. Or am I just being cynical?)

There were many good reasons why this was never going to happen:

• Google had their own video offering, Google Video (surprising name, huh?). Sure, YouTube was more popular with apparently a better user interface (I never saw it myself - they're as bad as each other in my opinion - ugly and confusing - but it may be a different story for people uploading video)
• If YouTube was really serving up 100 million videos daily, it must have been pouring through the bandwidth at an alarming speed. I shudder to think what the burn rate was on any venture capital that had been poured in to YouTube
• YouTube is rife with copyright material. If Google took it over, they would be exposed to potential legal action from copyright owners like the big entertainment conglomerates. There may not have been much point in suing YouTube as who knew if they even had any money. Google, on the other hand, clearly and publicly has very deep pockets
• US $1.6 billion is a hell of a lot of money. Even MySpace only went for US $580 million. This values YouTube at 3 times that

It just didn't seem to make sense, but Google went ahead and did it anyway. Of course, more than anything else, Google has become an advertising company first, search engine second, cool toys for geeks and normal people alike a distant third. Serving 100 million videos a day must translate into a gigantic number of unique hits and pairs of eyeballs, just waiting to be served ads while the latest viral video is streaming to their desktop. I'm sure the advertising potential is mind boggling.

Apparently Google Video and YouTube will remain separate entities. I'm not sure why yet, but perhaps they will serve different markets. I honestly haven't thought this part through yet.

I also don't know if the announcement that Google and SonyBMG have signed a deal that will see all of SonyBMG's music video collection available for free on Google Video was before or after the YouTube announcement (they're both dated 9 October 2006). Did Sony sign on because the acquisition of YouTube was in the works, or was it a surprise to them as well? Sony had to have known - otherwise that's a huge thing to keep secret in a deal like this.

Anyway, it's all very interesting. The more the internet seems to move away from traditional entertainment models with Web 2.0, IP TV, podcasts, Creative Commons mashups and the like, the more it seems to be dragged back in to the standard way of things - free content paid for with inescapable advertising.

The more things change...

pwnd by Google

I just realised that Google has sucked me in and owns me. Big time.

My email is Gmail.

My news reader of choice is Google Reader.

I regularly use Google Notebook for transporting information across computers so even if I don't have my ubiquitous thumb drive (which means I've forgotten my house keys and therefore am in deep shit anyway) I can still access whatever I'm working on.

I use Writely. Not very often, and mainly for writing up blog posts in my lunch time at work before doing a copy and paste at home, but still...
(incidentally, Writely is damn fine and coming along very well. I wouldn't use it for anything mission critical, but it's very easy to use and certainly has a role in this brave new AJAX-enabled Web 2.0 world).

Every morning at work I browse Google News.

This blog uses Blogger, and the beta requires a Google Account (which of course, I am in possession of).

I use Picasa to organise my photos, and I use a PicasaWeb gallery to display them to my family and friends.

If a GDrive ever eventuates, I'm sure I'll use that too.

I don't consider myself a Google fan boy by any means. I continue to remain "alert but not alarmed" about Google's privacy policies, keep an eye on what they do in China and try and understand their dilemma when coming up against situations like the recent events in Brazil.

At the moment one of Google's 10 corporate philosophies is "6. You can make money without doing evil" (it used to be the catchier "Do No Evil" but that must have been the more care-free, pre-Wall Street philosophy).

While Google continues to do no evil, I'm happy. For my sake, and Google's, I hope they keep it that way.