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Google's Risks

Here's a list of the things that could slow down Google's growth. The list is from Google's quarterly report and it's not complete:

* We face significant competition from Microsoft and Yahoo.

Microsoft has more employees and cash resources than we do. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have longer operating histories and more established relationships with customers and end users.

* We face competition from other Internet companies, including web search providers, Internet access providers, Internet advertising companies and destination web sites that may also bundle their services with Internet access.

* We face competition from traditional media companies, and we may not be included in the advertising budgets of large advertisers, which could harm our operating results.

* We expect our revenue growth rate to decline and anticipate downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.

* If we do not continue to innovate and provide products and services that are useful to users, we may not remain competitive, and our revenues and operating results could suffer.

* We generate our revenue almost entirely from advertising, and the reduction in spending by or loss of advertisers could seriously harm our business.

* Proprietary document formats may limit the effectiveness of our search technology by preventing our technology from accessing the content of documents in such formats which could limit the effectiveness of our products and services.

* Our corporate culture has contributed to our success, and if we cannot maintain this culture as we grow, we could lose the innovation, creativity and teamwork fostered by our culture, and our business may be harmed.

* We are, and may in the future be, subject to intellectual property rights claims, which are costly to defend, could require us to pay damages and could limit our ability to use certain technologies in the future.

Certain entities have also filed copyright claims against us, alleging that features of certain of our products and services, including Google Web Search, Google News, Google Video, Google Image Search, and Google Book Search, infringe their rights. In addition, our planned acquisition of YouTube may subject us to additional copyright claims upon the closing of the transaction.

* We compete internationally with local information providers and with U.S. competitors who are currently more successful than we are in various markets, and if we fail to compete effectively in international markets, our business will be harmed.

* If we fail to detect click fraud or other invalid clicks, we could face potential litigation as well as lose the confidence of our advertisers, which would cause our business to suffer.

* Index spammers could harm the integrity of our web search results, which could damage our reputation and cause our users to be dissatisfied with our products and services.

* Privacy concerns relating to our technology could damage our reputation and deter current and potential users from using our products and services.

* If we were to lose the services of Eric, Larry, Sergey or our senior management team, we may not be able to execute our business strategy.

* Our CEO and our two founders run the business and affairs of the company collectively, which may harm their ability to manage effectively.

* We may have difficulty scaling and adapting our existing architecture to accommodate increased traffic and technology advances or changing business requirements, which could lead to the loss of users, advertisers and Google Network members, and cause us to incur expenses to make architectural changes.

* Our business depends on continued and unimpeded access to the Internet by us and our users. Internet access providers may be able to block, degrade, or charge for access to certain of our products and services, which could lead to additional expenses and the loss of users and advertisers.

* More individuals are using non-PC devices to access the Internet, and versions of our web search technology developed for these devices may not be widely adopted by users of these devices.

On a completely unrelated note, this is the post number 1111. And today is 11/11.

Photosynth - Transform Photo Collections into 3D Models

Photosynth is a very interesting software from Microsoft that takes a large number of photos from a place and tries to combine them into a 3D model of that place. Photosynth lets you understand the relation between your photos. Using similar photos from the Internet, the program can improve the rendering of the model.

"Each photo is processed by computer vision algorithms to extract hundreds of distinctive features, like the corner of a window frame or a door handle. Photos that share features are then linked together in a web."

Photosynth has the ability to process large collections of pictures fast and also uses Seadragon technology to ensure a smooth zooming.

Microsoft thinks this technology will be available for mass consumption next year and photo sharing websites will be the first to use it.

You can see a live demo here, but it requires Internet Explorer and Windows XP SP2 (or Vista), as it uses an ActiveX control.

Get a Live.com Mail Address

Update: This trick doesn't work anymore.

If you couldn't get a satisfying mail account at Yahoo Mail, Hotmail or Gmail, you can now get it at live.com. Although it's not yet official, it's quite easy to get a mail address like your.name@live.com.

You have to create a new account, press "sign up", then copy the location of this link and paste it in the address bar of the window where you loaded the page from live.com. Now you'll have live.com and a list of other localized domains for you to choose from.

{ Solution found by mess.be, no permalink available. }

Mute Annoying Threads in Gmail

Google's Adam Lasnik writes about another new feature in Gmail. If you subscribe to a mailing list and you receive each new message in Gmail, you may run into boring threads that just continue to be boring. Gmail lets you mute these threads, so you still receive new messages but they're automatically archived.

To mute a thread, just type m while reading it. Each muted thread gets the label mute (and also muted), so you can find all your muted threads by searching for label:mute.

Note that this works only for mails that are not sent directly to you, which is the case for mailing lists.

Related:
Hidden labels in Gmail
Create an email blacklist in Gmail

{ Via Googlified. }

Making Use of Google Search History

Google Search History records the queries and the search results you've clicked on. How would you use this service?

1. Search History Trends shows you statistical information about your Google searches. For example, you can monitor your daily search activity or see how often you've used Google in July.

2. Google Recommendations is a gadget for your personalized homepage that lists searches, web pages, gadgets, and videos recommended for you, based on your previous searches.

3. Browse the Search History and bookmark interesting sites. Just click on the small star next to the search result.

4. Find how often you search for something.

5. If you know you found a site using a Google search, you can use the Search History to find it again. It's easier because the scope is limited.

6. Use the calendar from Google Search History to see what searches you performed on a certain day. It's like going back in time.

7. How many times did you visit a site from Google search and when was the last time? Enter the address in the search box and you'll see the answers next to the title.

8. Grab a feed that contains your latest Google queries: https://www.google.com/searchhistory/?output=rss. Note that your feed reader needs to support SSL.

9. If you search for sensitive information or you don't want to include certain queries in Search History, either pause Search History, or remove the sensitive queries and search results.

10. Google Desktop extends the concept of search history to all the websites you visited using your browser. You are able to search it only from your computer by default or from other computers if you enable Search Across Computers.

Google Maps in Search History

Google Maps is now included in Search History, so you can access all your searches, even if you try to find a location, a business or just directions. Search History also saves the search results you've clicked on.

Search History was launched in April 2005 and grew from web search to image search (July 2005), news (November 2005), Froogle (February 2006), Google Video (June 2006) and the music you listen (August 2006). Search History is automatically enabled if you activate Google's Personalized Search and can be accessed by clicking on "Search History", next to your Google username.

You can think at Search History as a persistent memory that can help you search over your past searches.

The Need for Speed in Web Applications

Marissa Mayer explained yesterday at Web 2.0 Summit that speed is one of the key issues for a web application. She said that the major reason why Google shows 10 search results by default is that the page loads faster (on average, in 0.4 seconds).

When launched, Google Maps was pretty slow, but a speed improvement brought a lot more traffic. "When the Google Maps home page was put on a diet, shrunk from 100K to about 70K to 80K, traffic was up 10 percent the first week and in the following three weeks, 25 percent more."

Also the upload process in Google Video took a day or two, so people couldn't see their video online instantly. Marissa says that's one reason why YouTube had more success than Google Video.

Instant gratification plays a big role in a great user experience. Just imagine a search result page loading in 20 seconds. How often would you use that search engine, even if the results are great?

Design Enhancements in Gmail

After letting you forward conversations and send offline messages, Gmail has yet another batch of new features.

If someone sends a message to a list of people, including yourself, it may happen that while you read the message, someone replies with an important information. Now Gmail shows a small notification at the bottom of the window, so you can see the new messages from the current conversation.

Gmail has a new design for displaying messages. To see more information about a message, you have to click on "show details". You can easily reply to someone by clicking on "reply" on the first line of a message. All the actions available for a message (reply to all, forward, print, delete) can be found by clicking on a small arrow and opening a small menu. Before you had to click on "more options" and see the same actions displayed in a list.

There is also an option to invite a contact to Gmail, if you send him/her a mail. The "invite to Gmail" dialog now shows a list of your top contacts.

The changes are available only in the US version of Gmail, but you can modify Gmail's display language in the settings.

{ Thank you: Trey, Brian, Guillaume, Torben and Nathan! }

Create a Personalized Homepage from Google Desktop

Google Desktop has an interesting new feature. When you install it for the first time or when you install a new version, the software can create a personalized homepage using information from your local history and not other sources.

"In order to make the personalization process simple, Google Desktop will analyze the way you interact with your computer before recommending a gadget. For example, Google Desktop can often predict your local weather, favorite stocks, frequently viewed news and variety sites, and more. The program will base its suggestions on the prior web sites you have visited, the Sidebar gadgets you use most, your preferred news sources, and the applications you run."

When you install Google Desktop for the first time, the software most likely looks at your browser's history and the programs you use. But the recommendations will improve after Google Desktop runs for awhile. There is also a section of recommended Google Desktop gadgets (in Add/remove gadgets), that uses the same information described above.

Google Maps Mobile Integrates GPS for Helio Drift

Google Maps Mobile is more useful if you have a GPS device, because you don't have to enter your location, in case you know where you are. Until your mobile phone has GPS, you can only crave for the newly launched Helio Drift, a Samsung phone created for Helio, that's GPS enabled and also works with Google Maps Mobile.

"We think that integrating GPS capabilities into Google Maps for Mobile will make our phones much smarter - and you've told us that too.

When you use Google Maps on the Helio Drift you always know where you are. Start Google Maps and a blue dot is placed on the map at your current location. You can even see yourself move on the map as you change location," emphasizes Alex Medina from Google.

Worm in Google Video Newsletter

Ok, maybe security isn't Google's strongest point. Google Video has a blog, which you can read it on their site, using a feed reader or by email, the messages being delivered by Google Groups.

Those who subscribed by email to Google Video blog received this week some emails that contained a worm.

"On Tuesday evening, three posts were made to the Google Video Blog-group that should not have been posted. This has now been addressed and fixed.

Still, some of these posts may have contained a virus called W32/Kapser.A@mm -- a mass mailing worm," says Google Video Team.

Fortunately, the worm only copies itself in Windows directory, tries to disable some well-known anti-virus products and sends itself to a list of e-mail addresses as an attachment. On the third day of every month if destroys the documents from the infected system.

Google Checkout Offers Free Processing for Holidays

The rumors have been confirmed. From November 8 through December 31, those who use Google Checkout to sell their products will get free processing. This comes just in time for the holidays and will definitely attract more stores to Google Checkout.

In case you forgot about Checkout, this post and the next video may remind you:

Google Wants to Store All Your Data

CNet quotes Eric Schmidt who says Google's goal is not to beat Microsoft. Google wants to store all your data on their servers, by making it accessible everywhere and more useful.

Google's applications rely on the storage of data on servers in the "cloud," which was the premise of network computing, he said. (...) "Finally, now the architecture works."

"Fundamentally, it's better to keep your money in the bank than in your pocket," Schmidt said, adding that the metaphor could be applied to keeping your software on the server.

According to Wikipedia, "a network computer is a lightweight computer system that operates exclusively via a network connection. As such, it does not have secondary storage such as a hard disk drive – it boots off the network, but runs applications locally, using its own CPU and RAM."

A network connection and a simple browser could replace an important part of your computing experience.

10 Differences Between This Blog and Google's Blogs

1. Google Blog says it's official in the title. This blog says it's "not affiliated with Google".

2. Google's official blogs are written by more than one person. Here, there's only one person who does that.

3. Google's blogs use possessive to show their origin: "Googler insights into product and technology news and our culture".

4. Google's blogs are copyrighted by Google. This blog uses Creative Commons license.

5. Google's blogs don't show ads. This blog used to do that.

6. Every Google blog lists all the official Google blogs.

7. Google's blogs talk only about Google services and products. This blog also talks about competitor's products.

8. Google's blogs don't accept comments. This blog does.

9. Google's blogs don't have posts about yet to be released features or personal opinions about Google products. They don't start a post with: "The latest version of Google Toolbar for IE has a strange new feature: keep Google as the default search engine."

10. Usually Google's official blogs don't talk about a Google Operating System. Basically because it doesn't exist.

Update: If this post seems confusing, a post and some discussion from Google Blogoscoped might be helpful. Also read this disclaimer.

orkut: Free to All and Integrated with Google Talk

As written before, orkut's plans to become available for everyone are closer to reality. Now everyone can join orkut. This information is confirmed in orkut's help.

orkut's integration with Google Talk is also live. You just have to go to settings and click on "enable Google Talk". You can automatically add your orkut friends or only some of them. You also gain new options in Google Talk for orkut contacts, like sending scraps.

orkut SMS and Photo Tagging

Besides the integration with Google Talk, orkut is about to have other new features. Here's what I found:

orkut SMS

With orkut SMS you can send and receive scraps with your mobile phone as well as other cool stuff. But first you need to register your mobile phone to use orkut.

Photo Tagging

You can tag your friends in photos. To create a photo tag, click and drag the mouse to select a friend.

I don't use orkut, so maybe someone who does could make an educated guess about these new features. Photo tagging might be useful to train a face recognition program, like Riya does, as you can see here.

Repeat a Google Video

Now Google Video shows a button that says "play again" at the end of a video. This is useful, although a little redundant, as you can always click on the play button after the video ends.

If you click on the arrows next to the number of views, you'll discover more information about the video: the number of views from the day before, the rank of the video and its evolution. It might be useful to see the popularity of a video.

To increase the number of views, Google should show related videos overlayed on the video, like YouTube does. There is a list of related videos in the right sidebar, but not many people look there.

{ Thank you, Kent Dodds. }

Virtual Earth 3D

The new Windows Live Local shows the Earth in 3D. Although it requires to download a 5MB application and it needs a lot of resources, the result is an attempt to emulate Google Earth in a browser. Unfortunately, that browser is Internet Explorer.

You'll be able to see 3D maps only for major cities in the US. But they won't look very nice unless you have a broadband connection and a graphics card that supports Microsoft DirectX 9, with 3D hardware acceleration enabled.

Microsoft did an interesting thing by adding 3D maps into a browser, but they need to improve the performance of their app and the imagery.

Note: to try this, set your regional options in Control Panel to United States and open this site in Internet Explorer. But only if you have Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista.

More about Virtual Earth 3D, in NewsWeek.

Disclaimer

I hate to disappoint the two people who thought this blog is created by Google™. This blog is not affiliated in any way with Google™. I don't work for Google™.

For those who thought this blog tries to mislead people, I say it just tries to be an unofficial source of information about Google™. I didn't use this BlogSpot subdomain to trick people that might be looking for the Official Google™ Blog or other Google™'s blogs. In fact, when I started this blog, Google™ didn't have too many blogs.

Google™ repeatedly said it doesn't build an operating system (or a browser), so the name of my blog is just a metaphor for all their web applications that might diminish the value of a real operating system. It's not the name of a Google™ product.

I try to be objective, although I don't pretend to be a journalist, and try to create the blog I'd like to read in the morning on my laptop. That means the opinions presented here are my opinions and Google™ is not responsible for them.

Note: this post (and hopefully this blog) respects Google™'s Guidelines for Third Party Use of Google Brand Features, Google AdSense™'s terms of use and other policies and terms of use.

*Google and Google AdSense are trademarks of Google Inc.

Proofs of Google Talk's Integration with orkut

I wrote last week that orkut and Google Talk are about to become friends. Checking the resource files from the last version of Google Talk using Resource Hacker, I've noticed there are already some messages that talk about an orkut integration:

45901, "orkut"
45902, "New feature! Chat with your orkut friends."
45903, "View orkut profile"
45905, "Change how your orkut friends are shared with Google Talk."
45906, "Send scrap"

From the other side, here's an example of mail invitation from orkut.

Your orkut friend, [email], would like to chat with you using Google Talk.

Google Talk is a downloadable Windows application that lets you chat, make free voice calls, and share files with friends inside and outside your orkut network.

Now, it's easy to add your orkut friends to your Google Talk friends list. You'll see their chat availability in orkut, and you can even send scraps (and get scrap notifications) right from Google Talk!

But if you want, you can disable Google Talk's integration with orkut.

Google Tests AdSense for Print

New York Times reports that Google plans another test for AdSense for Print, this time with 100 advertisers and 50 important newspapers from US (including New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune). Google will introduce the system officially next year.

Google wants to expand its advertising system to many mediums, like radio, TV, newspapers, direct mail, and "build a single computer system through which advertisers can promote their products in any medium".

In case you were wondering why they want that, this chart might help you understand. U.S advertising market share in 2005 (source: Universal McCann).

Grouping Feeds in Google Personalized Homepage

Google's personalized homepage has tabs, but what if you want to group related feeds even more? Feeds in tabs is an official Google gadget that lets you read multiple feeds using tabs. Unlike the regular way of reading feeds, this gadget displays the date of each item and a summary.

The idea is interesting and you can add multiple instances of the gadget. But it would be nice to let me give a name to each tab, instead of using "Feed 1", "Feed 2", etc. and also to change the name of the gadget to reflect the content of the feeds. Google should implement this as an option in IG and let you add feeds using drag and drop.

This gadget uses a new feature of Google Gadgets API, so you can now include tabs in your own gadget easily.

Options for Gmail Attachments Yet to Come

Now that Gmail added the option to open XLS files in Google Spreadsheets, it's time to add options for more file types. Here's my wishlist:

1. Image files (.jpg, .png, etc.)
* add to Picasa Web Albums
* create a slideshow

2. Videos
* upload to Google Video

3. Music (MP3, WMA, AC3, OGG)
* listen
* find lyrics
* information about the artists

4. Archives
* view file structure
* extract file

5. KMZ files
* view in Google Maps

6. MBX, EML files
* import in Gmail

7. C, CPP, etc.
* syntax highlighting
* compile

8. ODF, ODS
* convert to Microsoft Office formats
* open in Google Docs & Spreadsheets

9. PDF
* OCR this

10. All documents (DOC, PDF, PS, TXT)
* summarize
* find related web pages

What would you like to see?

Open Excel Attachments in Google Spreadsheets

When you receive an Excel spreadsheet as an attachment in Gmail, you'll see a new option next to "View as HTML" and "Download": "Open in Google Spreadsheets". If you click on that link, the file will be imported to Google Docs & Spreadsheets and you can start editing it. This is useful if you don't have Microsoft Office, OpenOffice or other office suite. You can also invite the person who sent your document to Google Docs & Spreadsheets, so you don't have to email the new version of the spreadsheet.

You can use the mail that contained the attachment as a bookmark: the next time you click on "Open in Google Spreadsheets", a dialog will offer to open the existing copy.

This is a good way to create an user base for Google Office, and we can expect to see other file types treated the same way in Gmail.

CSV files can also be imported this way, but there's no link in Gmail yet. If you want to try to import CSV files, you have to copy the link for "Download" and replace view=att with view=txatt.

Here's the message you see when you open an attachment:

This file is your Gmail attachment imported to Google Spreadsheets. Save your spreadsheets here, and get to them from any computer. Share with others, and everyone can edit online at the same time. No more emailing attachments back and forth!

Google 2.0 Gets an Update

Google search's playground, also known as SearchMash, has changed from last month.

Each search result page has 3 sections: web search, image search and results from Wikipedia. The sections can be minimized and you can hide the snippets from web search results. The results from image search are placed at the bottom of the page, while the first three results from Wikipedia can be shown if the user expands Wikipedia section.

If you click on "more web results" the next 10 results are displayed instantly, as Google prefetches them.

We can expect to see more sources mixed in one page, some of them by request, some contextually. The idea of having a single result page is not new, but it's a good opportunity to integrate Google's different kinds of searches.

A New Dimension in Search?

From November 7, Microsoft promises to give us "a new dimension" for search, by enhancing its Windows Live Local service.

Virtual Earth Blog announced that Microsoft "will release a new version of the Virtual Earth Map Control on Tuesday, November 7th 2006".

I wonder if they're adding the third dimension to the maps. Windows Live Local (powered by Virtual Earth) doesn't have a great coverage for its imagery, but includes some great features like bird's eye view, scratch pad and location finder.

Screen Estate in Webmail Applications

Space is important when you use an application every day. I compared three webmail sites: Windows Live Mail, Yahoo Mail (Beta) and Gmail, to see which one uses screen's size better.

I loaded Yahoo Mail and Gmail in Firefox 2.0 and Windows Live Mail in IE7, as it had problems loading in Firefox.

Gmail: 1275x612 page -> 847x457 mail content (49.6%)
Windows Live Mail: 1275x622 page -> 847x386 mail content (41.2%)
Yahoo Mail: 1275x612 page -> 914x321 mail content (37.6%)

In Yahoo Mail you can open a message in a new tab, while in Windows Live Mail you can hide the list of messages. But, by default, both sites devote much less to email's content than Gmail. As a comparison, Mozilla Thunderbird uses 51.3% from the window size to display message. So, although Yahoo Mail Beta and Windows Live Mail try to look similar to a desktop application, they neglect an important aspect: how easy is to read mail?

Note: These numbers were obtained using the default settings and 1280x800 resolution.