January 2007 Recap: More Integration

After an alarming number of security problems (Gmail contacts exposure, flaw in Blogger Custom Domains plus last month's problems), things got back to normal. Google removed the self-promoting tips, started to show stats for Google Reader and for custom search engines.

January 2007 brought a lot of updates for Google web search: new or updated OneBoxes (blog search, local, maps), related searches. January was also a month of redesigns for image search and Google Groups, and a month of mobile partnerships (Samsung, China Mobile).

We found out that Google Video will become a video search engine that will aggregate videos from other sites, while YouTube will remain independent and will allow revenue-sharing with video creators.

Gmail started to show more links to Google Docs, Google Book Search displays maps for books that talk about many locations, while Personalized Homepage shows (buggy) feed snippets.

Google respected their promise: features, not products, so you didn't see any new product. In fact, the latest addition in Google Labs is from October last year. That strategy might work since Google's popularity increases beyond web search and the profits are strong.

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All the posts from January