Tagged: google

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.

Email wars


* Gmail == 1 GB
* Aventure Mail == 2 GB
* Yahoo! Plus == Virtually Unlimited Storage (2 GB)
* Lycos == 1 GB

Thanks to Gmail, a lot of non-Gmail users are also going to be able to enjoy larger storage space for their inboxes. Yahoo! is deploying larger inboxes for both free and premium email members over the summers. A mostly obscure Aventure Mail is offering 2GB for free for the first 10000 customers.

I thought the way people were buying and selling and swapping Gmail accounts was almost ridiculous. I mean, Gmail is so hot simply because it symbolises “cool” — I’m not sure how many people are after Gmail from the point of view of its utility or functionality. But where is all this going to lead? I mean what after 1GB? And how does this impact spam?

With Yahoo’s anti-spam proposal gaining momentum, we’re hoping that the amount of spam will reduce in the future. But it seems to me that more storage for inboxes might also imply more spam as well. Though that relationship is quite obscure, its more like a gut feeling. As Gmail suggests, archive, don’t delete.

Most people I know hate spam because they have to delete the stuff manually. If spam filtering really becomes effective, at what point will spam stop being a PITA, if at all it ever will. If you look at the most popular networking applications through the decades, starting in the 1970′s, you’ll see that email has been a constant contender. And it still remains, and will probably remain for the next decade as well.

Whats with gmail anyways?


Since everyone is talking about GMail these days, why should I be left behind? :) So here’s my two cents.

After a long long wait, Google is finally going for its IPO later this year. Following the company’s release of its financial report for last year, Google filed the IPO. And interestingly, there were some unexpected clauses in their initial announcement. For instance, the IPO has been designed in such a way that Brin and Page will still own majority stock of the company. AFAIK there are going to be two kinds of shares — the “less” powerful ones and the “more” powerful ones. Don’t ask me the technicalities, since I don’t know.

Google has also released a 7 page letter for investors, outlining Google’s plans and policies. Google makes it clear in the letter that they are not going to plan for short term benefits and that the investors should be aware of this. They say that Google was a private company, and it will carry on much of its values and traditions as it becomes a public company. Bottomline: they don’t want risk seeking short term investors looking to make quick money to invest. They’re going to aim for long term profits, and long term benefits.

That apart, the arrival of GMail has made the situation quite delicate. Clearly, Google had intended to make a splash with GMail and help them position themselves strongly for the upcoming IPO. Perhaps less anticipated was the reaction from the media and the internet community in general.

While there have been several mixed responses, there are a large number of people out there who are lobbying strongly against GMail. Most of the opposition is uncomfortable with the fact that GMail will be data mining all the personal emails of the users to place “intelligent” ads in users inboxes.

Controversies apart, at this point, Google is also at a philosophical and technical turning point. Considering the fact that Google has the world’s largest data mining and indexing cluster at its disposal, and a behemoth of raw data collected over the years that tells them what people like and dislike, love and hate, shop and sell; the future certainly looks interesting.

Over the years Google has worked hard to make its cluster work as efficiently as possible. Getting 15000+ machines to work together in a nice manner is not an easy task. Google had to hack around a lot of things, and eventually they ended up customizing a lot of the tools and utilities in the commodity boxes that they use to help things out. As things became bigger and more complex, they started doing bigger things like file systems and OS level stuff.

So there’s Google — enormous data bank, huge cluster running customized software. The big question is, what are they going to do with it next? A visit to Google labs will give you the tip of the iceberg. There’s probably much much more going on behind the curtains. Is Google working on their own OS? Who knows, and I won’t be surprised if they are. After all, none of the operating systems out there are really customized for a cluster the scale that Google has. Infact, it would probably be a good idea to invest in R&D in that area.

If you sit and think for a minute, Google has really become phenominal. I’m sure this is as true in academia as in industry, that if Google were to take down their search engine for even a few hours, it will cause massive chaos, frustration and financial losses!! Imagine wielding that kind of power. Is Google taking control of our lives? I think its a phase, and it will pass. But its definitely not happening in the next few years, and you can expect to become more and more dependent on search technology in the near future. Beyond that, wait and watch…

Business networking


First there was [[http://ryze.com/ | ryze]], and now there is [[http://orkut.com | orkut]]. Especially since being acquired by Google, orkut has been making a lot of waves.

So what is this hoopla about business networking anyway? Frankly, I doubt even 10% (strictly arbitrary guess!) of the orkut users actually do any business network. AFAIK, it always starts out with some friend inviting you to this “cool” new e-group type of thing. The first few days there is this flurry of messages when you go “hey cool, check this out!”. And with orkut, this phase can probably last a bit longer as people compete to have the largest number of “friends”, larger membership in communities, and highest ratings!

But eventually, it all fizzes out. People stop checking the messages, stop updating their profiles, communities become quiet and so on. Of course, there are exceptions to all of this, but from what I’ve seen this is generally what happens.

But orkut and ryze are both new, and still very much active. With Google backing it up, orkut it certainly posed to give some nice competition to ryze. May the best network win!