Chicago (IL) - Google Drive, or Gdrive as it is better known, has to be the most anticipated Google product so far. When it arrives, Gdrive will likely cause a major paradigm shift in how we use computers and bring Google one step closer to dethroning Windows on your desktop.The service has the potential to eclipse even Gmail, Google's second best-known product after their google.com search engine. That said, it's no wonder users have been ripe with anticipation for years - yes, that's how long the rumors have persisted. Gdrive is basically online storage where Google servers have enough capacity to hold the entire contents of your hard drive. It will likely also come with enough brains to do cool tricks now with bigger things down the road - like booting your computer from online drive to load the Google operating system.Gdrive is basically a cloud-based storage that should have two faces: A desktop client that keeps local and online files and folders in two-directional sync via a web interface for accessing your desktop files anywhere and anytime, using any network-enabled computer. In addition, it will come tightly integrated with other Google services to enable editing of supported document types, like spreadsheets and presentations via Google Docs, email via Gmail, images via Picasa Web Albums, etc.This opens powerful possibilities. For instance, you could start working on a spreadsheet at home and continue via Gdrive web interface accessed in an Internet cafe. When you arrive back home, changes to the spreadsheet have already trickled down from the cloud to your desktop. The idea, of course, is all but revolutionary, but Google's execution could set it apart. http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-41094-140.html
Friday, April 03, 2009 12:10 PM PDTWhile rumors of an imminent Google acquisition of Twitter were apparently offbase, it wouldn't be surprising to see the companies strike up a formal collaboration or partnership.google twitter acqusitionTwitter, a microblogging service in which millions of people post brief text messages, has emerged as the custodian of a valuable online index of real-time facts, comments, musings and announcements, information that is clearly valuable for Google's search engine index.google twitter acqusitionGoogle routinely collaborates with major Web sites to determine the best way to crawl and index their content for its search engine, so sitting down with Twitter for that purpose would be consistent with its modus operandi."Twitter is clearly hot. The phenomenon of real time search and the ability to capture this stream of 'tweet' discussions is an important development in social media and search because people are trying to mine data for information that might otherwise be sought in a search engine," said industry analyst Greg Sterling from Sterling Market Intelligence in a phone interview. "This whole phenomenon Twitter represents is here to stay and needs to be addressed by search engines."However, it's much less clear why Google would want to spend major-acquisition money on Twitter at this time. After all, Twitter doesn't represent anything close to a clear and present danger to Google in the search market. "Twitter exemplifies the category of real-time search, but it's not a Google killer," Sterling said.In addition, Google, like most companies, is in cost-cutting mode and Twitter, while wildly popular, hasn't figured out a way to generate much revenue yet."There's a very interesting parallel between Twitter and YouTube. When Google bought YouTube, they did it because it was extremely popular, got tons of traffic and represented this new trend of video hosting and sharing. Now, Google still hasn't found a way to effectively monetize YouTube in a big way," said Allen Weiner, a Gartner analyst, in a phone interview. "Does Google really want to spend another huge amount of money on another extremely popular service that hasn't figured out a way to make money? I don't see it happening."Others aren't so sure.In an e-mail interview with IDG News Service, IDC analyst Karsten Weide said Google would gain "tremendous stickiness and traffic" from Twitter. "Microblogging is becoming an accepted new channel of online communications in addition to email and instant messaging, and it is here to stay," he said.But he agreed that Google needs to know that it's highly likely Twitter will never make significant amounts of revenue. "That would mean -- just as Web mail -- it would be a loss leader that one cross-finances in order to have the indirect benefits," Weide said.While Google doesn't need to boost its audience, the acquisition might keep Twitter out of the hands of competitors, namely Yahoo and Microsoft, he said. "I think an acquisition would make sense, and if they can get it for less than $1 billion, the better it is," Weide said.Others believe Twitter should actively entertain the option of getting acquired by Google and strike while the iron is hot."Other tie-ins short of an acquisition could make sense, but would be harder to sustain since Twitter already uses such open interfaces. It will be hard to do something that others can't replicate. Now is the time for Twitter to sell. It is at the top of its hype range now. Monetizing on its own would be a long, hard slog," wrote Gartner research vice president Jeff Mann in a note e-mailed to reporters.The rumors erupted late Thursday when tech blog TechCrunch reported the companies were engaged in "late stage negotiations" for an acquisition, citing two anonymous sources. TechCrunch later tempered that report, saying a third source characterized the discussions as "early stage" and possibly revolving around a search engine collaboration. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital tech blog, also quoting anonymous sources, said no acquisition discussions were on the table, but rather talks about collaboration on real-time search and better crawling of Twitter's content.It would be interesting to see what emerges from a collaboration between the companies to fine-tune Twitter's usefulness for search engine users, Sterling said."Right now, it's problematic using Twitter as an alternative search engine. There's a lot of noisy results you get on Twitter's search," Sterling said. "If you can remove some of the noise, it could be quite powerful."For example, Twitter could turn into the next evolution of question-and-answer search engines, especially for users tapping into it from mobile devices, Sterling said. "It becomes a word-of-mouth network that is kind of instantaneous," he said.That would complement all the different ways in which Twitter is already very useful, like for marketing, Sterling said.There would be technical challenges in making Twitter into a more useful search engine, and it would involve Google coming up with a way to weigh the reliability and authority of different Twitter users, Weiner said.While Google declined to comment, Twitter's co-founder Biz Stone posted a note on the company's official blog saying the company's plans are to remain independent."It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects," he wrote. "Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we're just getting started."Stone also encouraged people to apply for jobs at the company, an interesting document to peruse for clues to Twitter's current plans and business and technology strategies.Interestingly, Stone appeared on Stephen Colbert's "Colbert Nation" on Thursday evening, and during the interview he also said the Twitter's intention is to be a strong and independent company."We're recognizing a difference right now between profit and value. Right now, we're building value," Stone told Colbert.That means extending Twitter globally, tapping not only into Web-based users but also into mobile phone networks, as well as adding features and refining the service, Stone said."When we get to a certain point where we feel we've gotten there, we'll begin experimenting with a revenue model. This isn't unlike the way Google approached their revenue model," he said. The revenue-model testing and experimentation will begin this year, but Twitter will take its time getting it right, Stone said.Stone's comments may signal a potential tension with Twitter's financial backers, who have poured $55 million into the company. "Investors may agitate for an acquisition because the idea of an IPO is unlikely if not impossible," Sterling said.Another issue that might derail a Google acquisition is that several Twitter staffers, including Stone and co-founder Evan Williams, already went through the experience of working for Google, after Google acquired Pyra Labs and its Blogger blog publishing service in 2003.At the time, Blogger was the undisputed leader in the blog publishing space, but as part of Google its rate of innovation slowed down and competitors like Wordpress and Six Apart delivered more sophisticated services."Blogger was ahead of the curve when Google bought it and then it became the AOL of blogging platforms: an early leader that then lost ground," Sterling said.If Google bought Twitter, the Twitter service would see some immediate improvements, Sterling said. Twitter posts would be incorporated into Google search results. Twitter's own search would be improved. Google would monetize Twitter with ads. But in the end, it could face Blogger's destiny."You might see Twitter maintain its current leader status for a while, but maybe not see if evolve as dynamically as it would under the stewardship of its founders," Sterling said.It can't be encouraging that Google decided to stop actively developing Jaiku, a Twitter competitor Google acquired in 2007. Instead, Google has decided to port Jaiku to Google App Engine, and later to release the Jaiku engine as an open-source project under the Apache license.The Jaiku service is maintained by volunteer Google engineers. Google also recently put mobile social-networking service Dodgeball out to pasture.Other signs that would point against a Twitter acquisition are recent comments made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who called Twitter "a poor man's e-mail" and wondered whether it will remain a stand-alone service or become an e-mail feature. Schmidt has also said recently he doesn't foresee Google making major acquisitions in the immediate future.
Web search giant Google may be planning to buy microblogging site Twitter, according to TechCrunch. The tech news Web site, citing unnamed "people close to the negotiations," says that if Twitter bites, it would get cash and/or publicly valued stock from Google. Just five months ago, the increasingly popular Twitter turned down a $500 million offer from Facebook that was reportedly chock full of that company's stock.The treasure Google seeks is Twitter's large database of information, which expands daily in real-time as so-called tweeters fill their personal feeds with snippets of current events and observations (140 characters max at a time). Twitter also has a very effective search engine for mining this database, which would give Google plenty more Web pages to sell to advertisers, TechCrunch notes.PC World, which floated this possibility in February (albeit without TechCrunch's anonymous sources), pointed out that Twitter is dealing from a position of strength, attracting nearly 2.7 million U.S. visitors in December alone and in February raising an additional $35 million in funding from venture capitalists, including Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital (both based in Menlo Park, Calif.).Google, one of the companies that helped launch the Web 2.0 movement to carve cyber communities out of cyberspace, has snatched up other Web 2.0 firms, most notably buying YouTube in October 2006 for $1.65 billion. And this wouldn't be the first time Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone would be cutting a deal with Google—they sold their Blogger site (for helping people publish their own blogs) to the search engine giant in February 2003 for an amount never disclosed publicly.
1 May 2009French hacker cracks into Twitter exposing millions of accounts to dangerSophos advises Twitter to improve its securityIT security and control firm Sophos is advising that Twitter hardens its security as a French hacker claims he broke into Twitter's internal administration system, enabling him to access the accounts of millions of Twitter users - including Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher and Lily Allen.The hacker - known as 'Hacker Croll' - claims that he was able to access Twitter's internal administration system after stealing a password from a staffer at the micro-blogging website. It is alleged that by resetting the employee's Yahoo password after guessing his 'secret question', Hacker Croll found the information about the staffer's Twitter login credentials.Claims appear to be confirmed by screenshot images uploaded to a French blog, which give a glimpse into the micro-blogging site's admin panel revealing that the likes of Kutcher and Allen have blocked other Twitter users, such as celebrity gossipmonger Perez Hilton, from contacting them. Amongst the private information accessible was the email addresses of compromised accounts, mobile phone numbers (if one was associated with the account), and the list of accounts blocked by the affected user."This is just the latest in a string of security issues at Twitter in recent months, and the website is surely in danger of losing the confidence of its users who will be rattled by yet another breach," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "Just like with the recent Twitter worm outbreaks, this is not so much a case of Twitter raising awareness amongst its many users about sensible online security, but learning a few lessons itself. Careless security by the micro-blogging site could potentially put millions of Twitter users at risk."Sophos advises that Twitter's internal security could be improved if staff were forced to log in using authentication tokens that provide a randomly generated key upon login, meaning that even if a staffer's username and password is compromised hackers would not be able to gain access."If a Twitter employee loses their password, it seems hackers can run riot on the site and cause all sorts of problems. By making staff adopt the kind of hardware authentication keys that many online banking customers now need to use to login online, Twitter would make it far less likely that an attack like this could succeed," explained Cluley. "Let's not forget, although many will blame Twitter for not ensuring that its staff followed sensible policies to better secure critical administrator accounts, the real criminal here is Hacker Croll."Posted by wnj at 2:22:00 PM
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090708/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_google_operating_system[SIZE="6"]Google's new operating system to take on Microsoft[/SIZE] * By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer - Wed Jul 8, 2009 3:32AM EDT SUN VALLEY, Idaho -Google Inc. is working on a new operating system for inexpensive computers in a daring attempt to wrest away Microsoft Corp.'s long-running control over people's computing experience.The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google's Web site, will be based on the company's nine-month-old Web browser, Chrome. Google intends to rely on help from the community of open-source programmers to develop the Chrome operating system, which is expected to begin running computers in the second half of 2010.The Mountain View, Calif.-based company disclosed its plans for the operating system shortly after an online technology news service, Ars Technica, and The New York Times telegraphed the news on their Web sites.Google is designing the operating system primarily for "netbooks," a lower-cost, less powerful breed of laptop computers that is becoming increasingly popular among budget-conscious consumers primarily interested in surfing the Web.The operating system represents Google's boldest challenge yet to its biggest nemesis — Microsoft.A high-stakes duel between the two technology powerhouses has been steadily escalating in recent years as Google's dominance of the Internet's lucrative search market has given it the means to threaten Microsoft in ways that few other companies can.Google already has rankled Microsoft by luring away some of its top employees and developing an online suite of computer programs that provide an alternative to Microsoft's top-selling word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications.Meanwhile, Microsoft has been trying to thwart Google by investing billions of dollars to improve its own Internet search and advertising systems — to little avail so far. In the past month or so, though, Microsoft has been winning positive reviews and picking up more users with the latest upgrade to its search engine, now called "Bing." Microsoft is hailing the makeover with a $100 million marketing campaign.Now Google is aiming for Microsoft's financial jugular with Chrome its operating system.Microsoft has drawn much of its power — and profits — from the Windows operating system that has steered most personal computers for the past two decades.Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, and its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have made little attempt to conceal their disdain for Windows in recent years.Schmidt maintains Microsoft sometimes unfairly rigs its operating system to limit consumer choices — something that Microsoft has consistently denied doing. Google fears Microsoft could limit access to its search engine and other products if Windows is set up to favor Microsoft products in the default settings.Page and Brin have frequently derided Windows as a clunky operating system susceptible to computer viruses and other security problems.Google made a veiled reference to Windows' perceived shortcomings in its blog posting."We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better," wrote Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management and Linus Upson, Google's engineering director.A Microsoft spokesman didn't immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment sent early Wednesday morning.Schmidt and Brin are expected to discuss Google's new operating system later this week when they appear at a media conference hosted by Allen & Co. at the Sun Valley resort in Idaho.Despite its own power and prominence, Google won't have an easy time changing the status quo that has governed the personal computing industry for so long.As an example of how difficult it is to topple a long-established market leader, Google estimates about 30 million people are now using its Chrome browser — a fraction of those that rely on Microsoft's market-leading Internet Explorer. And there have been various attempts to develop open-source software to undermine Microsoft with relatively little effect.The Chrome operating system will run in a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel — computer coding that has been the foundation for the open-source software movement for nearly two decades.Google has already introduced an operating system for mobile devices, called Android, that vies against various other systems, including ones made by Microsoft and Apple Inc.The Android system worked well enough to entice some computer makers to begin developing netbooks that will eventually run on it.Google, though, apparently believes a Chrome-based system will be better suited for running applications in netbooks."We believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google," wrote Pichai and Upson.
i think i go for google mobilephone os instead.
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