Posts Tagged ‘google’

Chrome No Longer Beta

Google announced today something that I didn’t realize they were capable of doing. They removed the “beta” label from Chrome and announced it was ready. Chrome is the search giant’s new browser and has been in a beta release stage since early September of this year and it was announced by Google today that it is ready and will remove the beta label. Google will also be working on Mac and Linux versions that are “coming soon”. Google is boasting better stability, speed, bookmark manager and privacy controls in the new non-beta release. They stated in the announcement that the 1.0 release is 1.4-1.5 times faster than the first beta at interpreting JavaScript using its V8 JavaScript Engine. The announcement also admits some of this early release’s shortcomings: missing form autofill, an RSS interpreter, an extensions platform, and support for other OS’s besides Windows.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Dec 12th, 2008

Google Pulls a Microsoft

Several PC vendors have come forth and stated to Google that they want Google’s Chrome to ship pre-insatlled on their PCs. Dell, HP, Acer, and Toshiba have all said they would rather be shipping PCs with Chrome as the default browser rather than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. IE has become the most-used browser on the web consuming about 70% of all users on the web after Microsoft started shipping it with Windows in the mid 90’s as the default browser. Microsoft has been at odds with OEMs over the last couple of years blaming them for the failures of Vista. As Mac sales surge, OEMs have to be looking in other directions for some help in losing the public perception that PCs are less secure and less reliable. The argument really lies in OS X vs. Windows, but both companies have gone by the terms “Mac vs. PCs”. Chrome is expected to be out of beta early next year and Google plans on pushing their product to try to take over IE as the dominant browser. Microsoft has been setting their sites on Google to take down their dominance as in the search market and it seems Google is trying to turn things around on Microsoft. Consumers tend to use the default browser with default settings that ship with the computer. Given that Chrome will come with Google as the default search provider, it will continue to dominate the market as well as hopefully gain a stronghold in the browser market as well.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Nov 22nd, 2008

Google iPhone Search App Problems with British Accents

On Monday, Google’s new voice search application for the iPhone hit the iTunes AppStore. It’s a free application that allows users to speak their search text to perform Google searches. The application works great.. as long as you have an American accent. It’s been reported to be returning especially strange results for users with British accents. The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper in the U.K. has reported that users had the device interpret the word “iPhone” for several different words including “sex”, “sledding”, “my sister”, and “Einstein” (I hope they’re not related..). Google has stated that the application is available in U.S. English only so far, but there were definitely some confused users before the clarification was made. The application actually works quite well with an American accent but has made for some confusing and funny search queries.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Nov 19th, 2008

Microsoft Says No Deal to Yahoo

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a public statement today stating that the company is no longer interested in a deal with Yahoo. The two companies have been going back and forth about the issue dating back as early as May of 2006. Yahoo received a large offer in January of this year for $45 billion or $31 per share. Yahoo turned the offer down and sought other opportunities. Potential deals between Yahoo and Google and Yahoo and AOL both surfaced in the interim, but both deals seem to have fallen through.

Just a couple of days ago, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang stated that he thought “the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo.” Yahoo’s stock closed today at $12.20, barely a third of its value in the deal proposed by Microsoft that Yahoo shot down. Ballmer’s response to Yang’s statement went like this: “Look, we made an offer, we made another offer. It was clear that Yahoo didn’t want to sell the business to us, and we moved on.”

Microsoft wanted to purchase Yahoo’s business as a way to get a jump start on its battle to contest Google for the search market share. Microsoft and Yahoo, however, seem to be losing ground on Google on market share. According to seoconsultants.com, Yahoo and Microsoft both lost around 3% of their market share from the end of 2007 through October. Google swept up that market share jumping just over 6% over that same time span. Sadly enough, that 3% that Microsoft lost was almost half of its market share. Google seems to be eating up the market and there’s nothing anyone else has been able to do about it. According to Alexa, Yahoo does have the most visited site on the Internet. Also, Yahoo recently picked up Zimbra which looks like it could be one of the biggest rivals to Microsoft Exchange, so the future of Yahoo isn’t entirely bleak assuming they can stop the bleeding and pull out some profits.

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Filed under News, Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Nov 7th, 2008

Googles Do It Too

Silver bullet syndrome has struck again. This time in the form of Google Android fans. Apple has taken a lot of flack from the media and blogosphere lately over its attempts to control what applications can be installed on its devices. Of course, this all comes just before the release of the Google Android-based phone. For months we’ve been listening and reading about how the Android will be an answer to the iPhone after all this controversy. It would seem, however, that Google either hasn’t learned from or drinks the same Kool-aid as Apple. The Register points out that Google states very clearly in the terms and conditions that Google has the capability to remotely remove applications from the phones:

Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement … in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion.

Okay, so Google was a bit more open about its policies. I’ll give them that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if you walk in to a bank with a gun in plain sight or steal the money secretly over the web: you’re still guilty of the crime. I’m tired of hearing about the Android as the answer to everyones woes. Please don’t take this as an anti-Google entry.. I am simply becoming tiresome of people claiming the Android as the iPhone but without the limitations. Just like the Apple iPhone, yes the Google Android is less than completely open. I’m sorry to those who thought the grass was going to be greener on the other side.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Oct 16th, 2008

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