A Conversation About Google, Microsoft and Yahoo

The following video, created by Andrew Filippone Jr. and titled 'Charlie Rose' by Samuel Beckett, analyzes the hostility between the three companies and Microsoft's absurd strategy to buy Yahoo. "The erudite conversations and sober intellectualism have been replaced by an absurd world where illogic, inane dialogues, and open hostility rule. The one-on-one interview between Charlie [Rose] and his guest begins as usual but quickly goes awry, so much so that Charlie is warned that, somewhere, a man named Steve is not happy."

The "dialog" reminds me of the repetitive and nonsensical phrases from Eugene Ionesco's plays and it's much more interesting than all the news about Microsoft and Yahoo.



Here's the transcript for those who want to understand the text better:


CR1: Welcome to the broadcast. Tonight, a conversation about the future of technology and the internet and mobile devices and all that. We talk to Charlie Rose for the first time. Welcome. The future of technology... coming up.

What will the web do to content in terms of high cost, expensive, time-consuming content?

CR2: My perception is... but... you would know this much more than I do. OK, tell me four or five of those that we are to take a look at that are start-ups that have a brilliant idea.

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Microsoft... Yahoo.

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Microsoft... Yahoo.

CR1: Microsoft

CR2: Microsoft

CR1: Yahoo

CR2: Yahoo

CR1: Microsoft

CR2: Yahoo

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Microsoft... Yahoo.

CR1: Why wasn't Yahoo...?

CR2: Yahoo... Steve is not happy with the process so far.

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Don't do that! Google... Google... Google...

CR1: No, we're not gonna do that. I can never get Craig to talk to me about his economic model.

CR2: Google...

CR1: No

CR2: Google

CR1: No

CR2: Google

CR1: No, we're not gonna do that.

CR2: Google

CR1: Radiohead

CR2: Blogs

CR1: Google

CR2: Google... Google... Google...

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Google.

CR1: Microsoft and Yahoo.

CR2: Google.

CR1: Microsoft...

CR2: Google

CR1: Yahoo...

CR2: Google

CR1: Google... Yahoo...

CR2: Yahoo

CR1: We're making all this money and now the stock's price is going through the roof. And how can we use this advantage to enter new markets, to expand our market share, to beat the hell out of everybody?

CR2: Steve is not happy.

CR1: What's gonna happen?

Update: And the answer for "what's gonna happen" is... "Microsoft officially pulled its offer for Yahoo". "After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal," said a certain Steve Ballmer.

Customize Google Docs Forms

Adding forms as a way to include information in a Google Spreadsheet was one of the best decisions made by Google lately as it increased the adoption of the product. Unfortunately, Google doesn't offer options to customize the forms or validate the input. But just because Google hosts the forms for you doesn't mean you can't copy the code on your web pages and edit it.

After copying the code, you can edit the CSS rules to customize the form, remove the references to external files or the links to Google's terms of use. This article has a list of pretty forms customized only using CSS. If some of the fields need to have a certain format (for example: dates, email addresses etc.), you may include some JavaScript code that validates the input before submitting the form or after a certain field loses the focus. This JavaScript library includes the code for some common validations, so you can use it without too much programming effort. LiveValidation requires to write some code, but it validates the input as you type.

Here's a simple styled form that validates the first field using an annoying alert (you can submit the form only if JavaScript is enabled):

In what year did you first use Google?
What search engines did you use before Google?



And here's the code:


Validation only works when JavaScript is enabled in your browser. Note that if you edit the form using Google Docs, you need to change the code from your web page.

{ Thanks, A. }

Leaving Google: From Big to Small


Testimonials from former Google employees:

"The decision to leave was a tough one. Google clearly is an amazing company to work for. After consulting with many companies during my time at Adaptive Path, it's clear that Google is like no other: they move fast, think clearly, and push strategic decisions out to the people closest to their users. But in my career, I've always swung between the big and the small and it's time for another shift." (Jeff Veen, Design Manager - May 2, 2008)

"I'm doing something pretty goofy today: I'm leaving Google. My tattered old employee badge goes back to HR during my exit interview at 4:00 this afternoon. After that I'll be an ex-Googler. Working at Google was as amazing as everyone says it is. Sure, the perks were nice. I'll miss the delicious meals, the ski trips, the commuter shuttle, and TGIF. But any company could provide such benefits, given enough free cash flow. What makes Google unique is its culture of respect. The tough interview process means that engineers are treated with respect from their first day. In such a supportive environment, even the most timid person works with self-confidence, which is marvelous to witness. This element of the company's culture was the biggest difference between Google and every other place I've worked in the past. I hope to take it with me throughout the rest of my career. (...) My new venture is a software startup called FSX. I think of the company as a mashup of eBay, Charles Schwab, and American Idol. FSX will use a highly accurate, simulated brokerage to identify skilled stock portfolio managers." (Mike Tsao, Google Gears - April 23, 2008)

"Google is an amazing company. Especially for a company of this size (and impact), it is highly impressive that they have managed to maintain this kind of work environment, company culture, and integrity. (...) But in the end, I have realized that I am just much more of a startup person than a big-company person. Perks and everything are great, but this is ultimately not what motivates me. At an early stage startup, every single individual has a tremendous impact on the company (good or bad…), along with a much broader set of responsibilities (everybody has to wear many hats). Then, there’s the pioneering spirit, which is extremely energizing and contagious. These days, it seems like a lot of the true innovations are made at small startups, which have the benefit of being orders of magnitude times more agile and efficient than a large company will ever be." (DigitalHobbit - April 13, 2008)

"Working at Google has been an amazing, life-changing experience. It's an incredible company with a unique, quirky culture and tons of passionate, talented people. I feel very lucky to have been able to work with so many brilliant engineers on such fascinating products used by millions of people. Leaving Google was a tough decision for me. I was very happy working on Google Maps and oftentimes felt like I had the best job in the world. I became the Maps PM at age 22 and was blown away by how much responsibility they were willing to give someone so young. The work was fun, challenging, and very rewarding. I wasn't looking for a new job, but a great opportunity fell in my lap that I felt I had to take." (Jess Lee, Google Maps Project Manager - March 15, 2008)

"After a life-changing four and a half years of working with the most talented group of people I have ever met, I've decided to take the plunge and do it all over again, working for a very small start-up. Today is my last day at the Big G. (...) Leaving Google is different than any other job I've left. Joining Google in 2003, it was the first time I took a job without knowing at the outset the reason I'd eventually leave the job (even if my employer didn't), and so it's strange to have found success there and yet feel a need for greater fulfillment sufficient to pull you away from what's generally recognized as the best workplace in America. It's even stranger that Google is the first place I've ever worked where I feel that I'm part of the company as opposed to working for the company." (Kevin Fox, user experience designer - Jan 4, 2008)

"I deeply admire how Eric, Larry, and Sergey are trying to build a 100-year company. Google encourages team leaders and entrepreneurs to take actions that traditional public companies, who are being managed quarter by quarter, would never be able to take. This allows Googlers to forget about short-term distractions and instead focus on accomplishing deep and fundamental changes to an industry or space. It's not fluff. I saw it every day and it was inspiring. (...) The one thing I began to miss at Google as it grows was the ability to be a generalist within the company. In a startup, it is easy and encouraged for folks to wear multiple hats. I used to buy data centers and fiber, manage an acquisition, work on Google Talk, pitch an access partner, receive a dignitary and give a speech about the future of media all in the same week. As a company gets bigger, inevitably, it begins to organize itself vertically and employees are pushed to specialize. As I focused my efforts almost exclusively around wireless, I began to miss the excitement and learning that comes with having touchpoints across the entire company on many different teams." (Chris Sacca, Head of Special Initiatives - December 20, 2007)

"For the last two years, I have had a fantastic time helping to build Google Webmaster Central. I have loved working with the (ever-expanding!) team, writing about search on the blog and for the help center, and designing features for the webmaster community. (...) Now I have an all-new opportunity to work on the unique challenges of the vertical and local search space at Zillow. (...) Making the move was a very difficult decision, but the challenge of creating something new in a space that’s so young and evolving was too great to pass up." (Vanessa Fox, Google Webmaster Central Product Manager - June 14, 2007)

"Today's my last day as an employee of Google. I've been on leave since December, so it's not really a big change this day. But now the decision's made. It feels a bit strange leaving such a great and productive company. But I'm ready to do something new with a smaller group of people." (Nelson Minar, he created Google's first APIs - April 7, 2006)

iGoogle, a More Profitable Google Homepage


Time has an article about the latest campaign for promoting iGoogle using chic themes. Google tries to attract more users to the future social network and the new themes are a good opportunity to make people aware that Google's homepage can be more than just a simple logo, a search box and a bunch of links.

But iGoogle can be much more than a potential alternative to Facebook and other social networks: iGoogle users are more likely to have a Google account and use other Google services. Even if Google always says that users can customize the homepage with their favorite feeds and gadgets, it's much easier to find gadgets for Google's services than for Yahoo or Microsoft. iGoogle users are also more likely to visit Google's homepage and even to set iGoogle as the browser's homepage.

A Google spokesman told Time.com that "iGoogle currently accounts for 20 percent of visits to Google's home page", which is a lot if we take into account the number of unique visitors from November as measured by comScore: 500 million users for Google Search vs 22.5 million users for iGoogle. If these numbers are accurate, we could say that 5% of the users account for 20% of visits.

And the great thing is that, after clicking on the iGoogle link, Google sets a cookie preference so that all visits to google.com will be redirected to iGoogle. Of course, people can always reset the preference by clicking on "Classic Google", but probably few notice the link.

The classic homepage will probably remain an option for all those who want a simple interface and iGoogle will slowly become the default Google homepage. "The personalized homepage is a complement to the existing Google homepage - not a replacement. Keep using the original Google homepage if you want to. (We expect many people will.) But if you're keen to organize and customize your information, take a stab at designing your own homepage," explained Marissa Mayer in May 2005, when iGoogle was launched. The service has changed a lot since then and now is about to become the place were you collect, organize and share your online information.


{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

Google for iPhone, Widely Available

Google's unified interface for iPhone is now available internationally and for Google Apps users. Launched in December 2007, "Grand Prix" integrates the most popular Google services in a fluid interface that loads fast and is customizable.

Google Mobile Blog announces that the interface is available "in 33 new markets and 16 new languages, from Argentina to New Zealand, from Swedish to Chinese". If you have an iPhone, a simple visit to google.com should direct you to the special interface, while allowing you to go back to the "classic" interface. For Google Apps users, the address is a little bit complicated: http://www.google.com/m/a/DOMAIN (for example: http://www.google.com/m/a/google.com).

Google for iPhone packages rich mobile interfaces for Google Search, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader, Picasa Web, Google Notebook and now Google News. Unlike the mobile interfaces offered for other devices, Google shows search suggestions, auto-complete for Gmail contacts, slideshows in Picasa Web and includes a presentation viewer in Google Docs.

I'm sure the plan is to extend the availability of this mobile offering to other high-end phones.


Update: an older iPhone interface is still available at http://www.google.com/m/i and there's also a classic Google homepage at http://www.google.com/m/classic. iGoogle for iPhone can be found at http://www.google.com/ig/i.

Download Google's Help Files


Did you ever want to get a help file for Gmail, Google Docs or for Google Desktop so you can print it or save it on your computer? All Google services have help centers that include information about features, tutorials, troubleshooting guides, but you need to find the information in a complicated hierarchy of topics or use the search box.

Fortunately, there's a way to save all the information related to a Google service: append ?fulldump=1 to the address of a Google help center. This doesn't work for all Google services, but here's a list of addresses that dump all the information from a help center (note that the pages are very large and are frequently updated):

Gmail Help: http://mail.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Google Calendar Help: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/?fulldump=1

Google Docs Help: http://docs.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Google Spreadsheets: http://docs.google.com/support/spreadsheets/?fulldump=1

Google Presentations: http://docs.google.com/support/presentations/?fulldump=1

Google Reader Help: http://www.google.com/support/reader/?fulldump=1

Google Video Help: http://video.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

YouTube Help: http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/?fulldump=1

AdSense Help: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/?fulldump=1

Analytics Help: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics?fulldump=1

Google Desktop Help: http://desktop.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Picasa Help: http://picasa.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Google Toolbar for IE: http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/?fulldump=1

Google Toolbar for Firefox: http://www.google.com/support/firefox/?fulldump=1

Google Earth (PDF): http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/google_earth_user_guide.pdf

To convert the HTML pages to PDF, try doPDF for Windows or any other free PDF printer. This Wikipedia article also has a list of PDF converters.

Google/YouTube Priorities

YouTube tests a new player and it looks great: the chrome is less pregnant and almost invisible, two rarely-used buttons have been removed, the volume control takes less space, you can finally use keyboard shortcuts (up/down arrows for volume, right arrow for fast forward, space to pause the video).


In other YouTube news, Eric Schmidt said in an interview for CNBC that the highest priority for YouTube this year is figuring out how to make money. "We believe the best products [for monetizing YouTube] are coming out this year. And they're new products. They're not announced. They're not just putting in-line ads in the things that people are trying."

Asked whether gaining a larger share of the ad market is Google's biggest priority, Eric Schmidt changed his mind. "Well, our number one priority is end-user--end-user happiness. Literally, are people happy with the results that they get using Google search? So it's literally search, and every day we bring out new improvements and indices that are--taxonomies that are understanding of language, more content, bigger--all of the things that make Google such a great search experience. That's our number-one priority, even more important, for example, than advertising."

It makes you wonder if the new minimalistic YouTube player intends to improve user experience or make room for the cutting-edge monetization features that will be announced later this year. "Well, our number one priority is end-user--end-user happiness. (...) I don't think we've quite figured out the perfect solution of how to make money [from YouTube], and we're working on that. That's our highest priority this year."

But maybe the two priorities converge at some point. "Google believes that advertising itself has value. The ads literally are valuable to consumers. Not just to the advertisers, but the consumers," said Eric Schmidt in the same interview. Maintaining the right balance between all these priorities is a difficult challenge for Google and one of the reason why, after one year and a half since the acquisition, YouTube still doesn't make significant money.

{ Thanks, Daniel. }

Show the Real Number of Search Results in Gmail

When you search for something in Gmail and there are many search results, you'll see a vague message like "1 - 20 of thousands". In other cases, Gmail shows that there are about 80 results, when the real number is 78. But what if you want to find the actual number of results instead of an estimation? If you have the new version of Gmail, it's really easy to add more precision thanks to permalinks.

(Small digression: I'm sure that Opera users will stop reading this post because Gmail 2.0 doesn't support their browser, but the User JS file from this page fixes the compatibility issues and you can use the tip below. )

Let's say you want to find the number of conversations that contain Google, but don't have the label .Comments. You will search for:
google -label:.Comments (a shorter query: google -l:.Comments)

The address bar should display this URL:
http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/google+-l%3A.Comments


If you go to the next pages of search results, you'll notice that Gmail appends /p2, /p3 etc. to the previous URL. To see the actual number of search results, force Gmail to display an arbitrary page. For example, you can display the page #1000 if you estimate that the number of search results is smaller than 20*1000=20000. Just append /p1000 to the address and get something like:

http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/google+-l%3A.Comments/p1000

or more generally:
http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/YOURQUERY/p1000

Unfortunately, if you manually modify the address, Gmail no longer updates it when you go to a different section, so you need to refresh the page.

Google Analytics for Blogs


Two years ago, Google bought Measure Map, a very intuitive analytics software for blogs designed by Jeffrey Veen. Since then, Google Analytics borrowed some elements from Measure Map's interface. It seems that the transition is about to end soon as Google Analytics will integrate Measure Map's functionality: blog stats.

Measure Map users received an email that instructed them how to access the new version of the software.
Convert your Measure Map account to Google Analytics

We're giving our earliest users of Measure Map an opportunity to use our new service, built on the powerful Google Analytics platform and continuing to use the interface you're familiar with.

1) Create an account at Google Analytics.

2) Install the Google Analytics tracking code on your blog.

3) Tell us the URL of the blog you're using. (Option: This is a Blogger blog. If so, we'll put a "Stats" tab on your Blogger dashboard.)

It's clear that the standalone Measure Map is history and all of its features will be added in a new Google Analytics section for blogs with information about comments, links from other blogs, popular posts and, hopefully, real-time stats. FeedBurner is also a good candidate for integrating with Google Analytics and providing the big picture of your blog's traffic.

Another good news is that Blogger users will finally have a stats panel that can be accessed directly from Blogger's interface. Hopefully, Google will also include options like showing the number of views for each post or adding a list of the most popular posts in the sidebar.


{ The first image is licensed as Creative Commons by Andy Zeigert. }

Update. Google sent this:
Recently at South by Southwest, we announced our new Google Analytics for Blogger reporting interface. This integration marks the transition of Measure Map users worldwide to a new Google Analytics interface specifically designed for Blogger users. We've rebuilt Measure Map as an integrated feature of both Google Analytics and Blogger, which will give bloggers daily stats such as the number of visitors they receive, how many posts get traffic, and new referring links. Users can also use Google Analytics, of course, to track their blogs. More information is available on our Help Center.

We'll be refining the new interface in the coming months before we release it to the general public, and we're excited to help bloggers further understand the impact they're having on their readers.

Update 2: Google Analytics Blog has a screenshot of the Blogger integration. Google says it "will support all blogging programs. Bloggers who don't use Blogger will see a new reporting interface that resembles Google Analytics."

iGoogle Artist Themes

"Now you can put the work of world-class artists and innovators on your personalized Google homepage." Google added a gallery of iGoogle themes dedicated to fashion designers (Oscar de la Renta), musicians (Coldplay, Beastie Boys), actors (Jackie Chan), sportsmen (Lance Armstrong), photographers (Yann Arthus-Bertrand), choreographers (Mark Morris), cartoonists (Robert Mankoff), illustrators (Camilla Engman), architects (Cameron Sinclair) and more.

It's a great way to discover interesting people or to decorate iGoogle with the work of people you love. And I'm sure many companies will start to create themes to maintain the brand loyalty.

"As you may know, iGoogle has always provided you with great tools to access and arrange the content you want on your homepage. Just like a person's book or music collection is an extension of their personality, a user's iGoogle page is also a reflection of their loves and interests, both in terms of content, and now, visually," says Julian Sonego on Google Australia Blog.




In an unexpected move, Google promotes the gallery on the homepage using a graphic designed by Jeff Koons and an invitation to check the new feature: "What happens when great art mixes with your homepage?".

{ Thanks, Jeng, Jaime and Andrew. }

Update: If you can't decide which theme looks best on your iGoogle page, try the sampler theme. "With this theme, you'll get to try out a new featured theme every day and decide whether you want to keep it."

Google Combines Driving Directions with Street View


Google Maps finally made Street View imagery useful by integrating it with driving directions. If you try to find driving directions in one of the 42 US cities that have Street View images, Google will include these images for each intersection. "It's not always easy to find your way around an unfamiliar place. To help with this, we've been hard at work integrating Street View into the driving directions feature of Google Maps so that now you can preview your route before hitting the road," says Google Lat Long Blog.


This sample for Google Maps API shows an even cooler connection between Street View and driving directions.

FeedBurner Moves to Google Accounts


After Google bought FeedBurner in June 2007, we didn't hear too many new things about FeedBurner. A post from February detailed the benefits of the future Google integration: connecting with other Google services, better performance and new features. "Why not build new services and integrate at the same time? (...) Our perspective is that the time you lose trying to continuously merge an updated legacy codebase with a new rewrite causes you [to] be in a world of never actually getting the integration done because you're constantly working on merge problems."

It seems that the Googlizied FeedBurner will be brought to life soon. FeedBurner Blog announces that "in the coming weeks, upon visiting www.feedburner.com, selected publishers will have the opportunity to sign in using their Google Account". That means you will be offered the option to choose a Google account as a new home for FeedBurner. The posts mentions that the integration with other services will be added gradually and it's easy to anticipate the relaunch of AdSense for feeds or a new tab in AdWords.

The most visible side-effect of the Google ownership is that the premium accounts and MyBrand are free, so you might save at least $96/year. In the past 11 months, FeedBurner doubled the number of users and now has "882,989 publishers who've burned 1,570,012 feeds".

{ Thanks, Hebbet. }

Google Video Categories

The latest Google Video redesign removed yet another useful feature from the interface: restricting search results to a certain category. The feature is still available, but you need to use the genre: operator in your searches. Here are some of the most popular genres:

genre:animation
genre:comedy
genre:documentary
genre:educational
genre:gaming
genre:movie_feature
genre:music
genre:sports
genre:tv_show

Examples of searches:
ufo genre:documentary
charlie chaplin genre:movie_feature
data mining genre:educational

You can also use the genre: operator to better describe your search when you want to subscribe to a Google Video feed or to get an email alert when new videos are uploaded.


At some point in Google Video's history, you could browse videos by genre directly from the homepage, but you can still use the genre: operator without any other keyword to see popular videos from a certain category, like TV shows.

Improving Google Image Search Using Implicit PageRank

Image search engines have a very limited usefulness since it's difficult to accurately describe images in words and since search engines completely ignore the images, preferring to index anchor texts, file names or the text that surrounds images. "Search for apples, and they haven't actually somehow scanned the images itself to see if they contain pictures of apples," illustrates Danny Sullivan.

Image analysis didn't produce algorithms that could be used to process billions of images in a scalable way. "While progress has been made in automatic face detection in images, finding other objects such as mountains or tea pots, which are instantly recognizable to humans, has lagged," explains The New York Times.

An interesting paper [PDF] written by Yushi Jing and Google's Shumeet Baluja describes an algorithm similar to PageRank that uses the similarity between images as implicit votes. "We cast the image-ranking problem into the task of identifying authority nodes on an inferred visual similarity graph and propose an algorithm to analyze the visual link structure that can be created among a group of images. Through an iterative procedure based on the PageRank computation, a numerical weight is assigned to each image; this measures its relative importance to the other images being considered."

The paper, titled "PageRank for Product Image Search", assumes that people are more likely to go from an image to other similar images. "By treating images as web documents and their similarities as probabilistic visual hyperlinks, we estimate the likelihood of images visited by a user traversing through these visual-hyperlinks. Those with more estimated visits will be ranked higher than others." To determine the similarity between images, the paper suggests using different features depending on the type of images: local features, global features (color histogram, shape).

The system was tested on the most popular 2000 queries from Google Image Search on July 23rd, 2007, by applying the algorithm to the top 1000 results produced by Google's search engine and the results are promising: users found 83% less irrelevant images in the top 10 results, from 2.83 results in the current Google search engine to 0.47.

For example, a search for [Monet paintings] returned some of his famous paintings, but also "Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil" by Renoir.


It may seem that this algorithm lacks the human element used to compute PageRank (links are actually created by people), but the two authors disagree. "First, by making the approach query dependent (by selecting the initial set of images from search engine answers), human knowledge, in terms of linking relevant images to webpages, is directly introduced into the system, since the links on the pages are used by Google for their current ranking. Second, we implicitly rely on the intelligence of crowds: the image similarity graph is generated based on the common features between images. Those images that capture the common themes from many of the other images are those that will have higher rank."

For now, this is just a research paper and it's not very clear if Google will actually use it to improve its search engine, but image search is certainly an area that will evolve dramatically in the future and will change the way we perceive search engines. Just imagine taking a picture of a dog with your mobile phone, uploading it to a search engine and instantly finding web pages that include similar pictures and information about the breed.

In 2006, Google acquired Neven Vision, a company specialized in image analysis, but the only new feature that could be connected to that acquisition is face detection in image search. Riya, another interesting company in this area, didn't manage to create a scalable system and decided to focus on a shopping search engine.

More Synergy Between Google's Communication Services

Google Talk has four flavors (Google Talk, Gmail Chat, Google Talk Gadget and Google Talk Labs Edition) and all of them have different features: you can transfer files only in Google Talk, chat with AIM contacts only in Gmail, get calendar notifications only in Google Talk Labs Edition and upload pictures from webcam only in the gadget. It's quite confusing to switch between all these implementations of the same service. Apparently, the main reason behind the launch of Google Talk Labs Edition was to unify these versions in a common platform. Here's a recent post from Ollie, Google Talk Guide:
We certainly haven't forgotten about our client users and we've been listening to your comments (here, in the Google Talk Help Discussion Group, and on the feedback forms). We hear you loud and clear; you love the client and you want it to have all the great new features that have been added to Gmail Chat or the Google Talk Gadget. We know that it's important to be able to chat inside and outside of your browser and that it's important to have a full array of features at your fingertips in both places. In short, you want to be able to choose how to connect to the Google Talk service without having to make any major feature trade-offs. We're completely with you on this one -- we want that too!

Now, I suspect some of you are thinking: if you're with us on that, why aren't all features available on the client right now? Well, we've got a lot on our plate here at Google Talk and we're always negotiating what we can get done. At the moment, we're focusing our energy on developing platforms that will let us make Google Talk better for all our users, whether they want a web-based experience or a client experience. There is still much to done, but we're committed to continually improving the Google Talk user experience for everyone.

As Jeff suggested in the comments, all these delayed Google Talk updates could be caused by a future integration with GrandCentral. "Although you haven't heard as much from us in the past few months as you did before, we are working hard every day on the next great version of GrandCentral and a ton of cool new features," informs up a post from GrandCentral Blog.

{ Thank you, Ender. }

Labels

Web Search Gmail Google Docs Mobile YouTube Google Maps Google Chrome User interface Tips iGoogle Social Google Reader Traffic Making Devices cpp programming Ads Image Search Google Calendar tips dan trik Google Video Google Translate web programming Picasa Web Albums Blogger Google News Google Earth Yahoo Android Google Talk Google Plus Greasemonkey Security software download info Firefox extensions Google Toolbar Software OneBox Google Apps Google Suggest SEO Traffic tips Book Search API Acquisitions InOut Visualization Web Design Method for Getting Ultimate Traffic Webmasters Google Desktop How to Blogging Music Nostalgia orkut Google Chrome OS Google Contacts Google Notebook SQL programming Google Local Make Money Windows Live GDrive Google Gears April Fools Day Google Analytics Google Co-op visual basic Knowledge java programming Google Checkout Google Instant Google Bookmarks Google Phone Google Trends Web History mp3 download Easter Egg Google Profiles Blog Search Google Buzz Google Services Site Map for Ur Site game download games trick Google Pack Spam cerita hidup Picasa Product's Marketing Universal Search FeedBurner Google Groups Month in review Twitter Traffic AJAX Search Google Dictionary Google Sites Google Update Page Creator Game Google Finance Google Goggles Google Music file download Annoyances Froogle Google Base Google Latitude Google Voice Google Wave Google Health Google Scholar PlusBox SearchMash teknologi unik video download windows Facebook Traffic Social Media Marketing Yahoo Pipes Google Play Google Promos Google TV SketchUp WEB Domain WWW World Wide Service chord Improve Adsence Earning jurnalistik sistem operasi AdWords Traffic App Designing Tips and Tricks WEB Hosting linux How to Get Hosting Linux Kernel WEB Errors Writing Content award business communication ubuntu unik