Google galore

Google is all set to invade our lives. First there was the search engine. Then came blogger.com. And now, they have acquired picasa.com — a company that makes photo management software. With the much-hyped Google IPO later this year, this move established Google’s position as a big industry player even further. They also introduced a desktop search utility a few weeks back.

So what is Google’s future going to be? It certainly seems headed to become a giant — like Yahoo! or Microsoft. However, as Google management has pointed out, they are not going to be a profit-minded company and they are still going to operate much like a private company. Which is another way of saying that Google’s policies and products will still be tightly controlled by Larry and Sergey’s team of PhD’s.

The tide also seems to be settling down in the corporate IM market. Corporate IM had taken off big time as Yahoo! and M$ and AOL all tried to sell customized versions of their messengers to businesses. This was fine for a start, since the companies were mostly using messaging for internal uses. However, as businesses expand and the world continues to shrink, companies started facing the need to talk with clients and customers and providers, who are not surprisingly, often using a different network/service for their messaging needs. The demand for interoperability and compliance brought the market down a bit.

In a surprise move, both Yahoo! and AOL have announced to step back on their corporate IM businesses at around the same time. Even more surprising is the fact that they have agreed to make their current software and protocols interoperable with other products (those from M$ and AOL) using a Microsoft product called the Microsoft “something” server. Naturally, they earn royalty from M$ for using their server, but they also have conceded to let go of this market, leaving an almost clear ground for M$ to take over.