At Google Developer Day, New Browser Extension Provided to Developer Community

Google Developer Day 2007

SYDNEY, Australia–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) today announced at Google Developer Day 2007 that it is providing developers with Google Gears??, an open source technology for creating offline web applications. This new browser extension is being made available in its early stages so that everyone can test its capabilities and limitations and help improve upon it. The long-term hope is that Google Gears can help the industry as a whole move toward a single standard for offline capabilities that all developers can use.

Google Gears marks an important step in the evolution of web applications because it addresses a major user concern: availability of data and applications when there’s no Internet connection available, or when a connection is slow or unreliable. As application developers and users alike want to do more on the web—whether it’s email or CRM or photo editing—enhancements that make the browser environment itself more powerful are increasingly important.

“With Google Gears we’re tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud,” said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google. “We believe strongly in the power of the community to stretch this new technology to the limits of what’s possible and ultimately emerge with an open standard that benefits everyone.”

Google is offering Google Gears as a free, fully open source technology in order to help every web application, not just Google applications. As a first example of what is possible, the Google Reader™ feed reader (http://reader.google.com) is available today with Gears-enabled offline capabilities.

Industry support

Google will be working closely with all members of the web community to converge upon a standard so developers have one consistent API for offline functionality.

“We’re very excited to be collaborating with Google to move the industry forward to a standard cross-platform, cross-browser local storage capability,” said Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe. “The Gears API will also be available in Apollo, which enables web applications to run on the desktop, providing developers with consistent offline and local database solutions.”

“This announcement is a significant step forward for web applications,” said Brendan Eich, CTO at Mozilla Corporation. “We’re pleased to see Google working with open source and open standards bodies on offline web applications.”

“Opera and Google share the common goal of making Web applications richer and more robust,” said Håkon Wium Lie, CTO, Opera Software. “Developers have long desired the functionality and flexibility Google Gears can offer browsers. Because Opera has always prioritized giving our users what they want, we’re excited to work with Google to extend the reach and power of Web applications.”

Another tool in the application development toolbox

Google Gears builds on the web’s existing programming model by introducing new JavaScript APIs for sophisticated data storage, application caching, and multi-threading features. With these APIs, developers can bring offline capabilities to even their most complex web applications. Google Gears works with all major browsers on all major platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux.

Google Gears is available now at http://gears.google.com/.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Google, Google Gears, and Google Reader are trademarks of Google Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

I missed the first time I read it but in the Google Gears  press release you can read this quote from a Kevin Lynch comment :

“We’re very excited to be collaborating with Google to move the industry forward to a standard cross-platform, cross-browser local storage capability,” said Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe. “The Gears API will also be available in Apollo, which enables web applications to run on the desktop, providing developers with consistent offline and local database solutions.”

Wow … Now things gonna be more and more interesting.

Oprah takes us on a tour of what it’s like to what at Googleplex, the company headquarters of Google. If you thought your company had perks, you’re wrong. Googleplex is outfitted with gyms, on-site doctors, dry cleaners, free laundry rooms, two swimming pools, a sand volleyball court, and nearly a dozen cafeterias that charge nothing for the food!
It’s a no-brainer why Fortune magazine just named Google the #1 place to work in the United States. This final quote in the video sums the experience of working at Google:
“I love working at Google. It’s the next best thing to probably not working at all.”

Google will make a significant push toward integrating results from a variety of its search engines in an attempt to deliver as relevant and comprehensive a result set as possible to search queries.

Although Google and its competitors have been moving in this direction for years, Google’s announcement on Wednesday is its clearest and most concrete statement of direction yet regarding its efforts in this area. The announcement was made by Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, at an event in the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,131929-c,google/article.html

The Google Dance Tool is provided as a tool to help you, the webmaster, determine when the Google search engine is spidering the internet. This is extremely useful if you want to know when your site(s) will rank in Google.

We have also written a nice little script that is FREE for you to use that has deamed itself useful. With the use of the Google Web API, it is now possible to perform search queries on the Google search engine to find information concerning a variety of information. These include how many sites link to yours site, search results on any particular keyword, your site’s ranking in Google, and much more.

Excerpts from a note published by Citigroup analysts Mark Mahaney and Jason Brueschke released yesterday:

Head of Google (GOOG) in China said that Google is open to using M&A in China as a way to grow its talent base, technology and portfolio.

Our reading of GOOG’s M&A history to date and its strategy is that the most likely M&A candidates in China would be small technology/R&D shops or unique localized applications. That said, there are several potential candidates that might offer distinct advantages in terms of increased user bases or expanded Web traffic.

We think Google is likely looking for companies with unique technology skills sets or companies that can help Google localize its offerings for the China market.

If Google were to depart from its practice of making primarily technology-based acquisitions, it is interesting to consider who, among publicly-listed Chinese Internet/Media companies, Google might consider acquiring:

Baidu.com Inc (BIDU): The Obvious Choice. The issues are likely to be: (1) Management resistance – Baidu founder Robin Li is the obvious person to run the China operations were such a deal to happen, but Google has hired two talented people to run its operations already; (2) Government resistance – While it is a generally held view that the Chinese government is reluctant to allow Sina (SINA) to be acquired, it is unclear if the Chinese government feels the same way about Baidu and the Search market. Our view is that a takeover of Baidu would meet significant government resistance; (3) Google needs Baidu more than Baidu needs Google – Baidu is the leader and appears to be pulling away from Google in China. As a result, there are fewer reasons for Baidu to sell, in our view. Nevertheless, Google already owns a small percentage of Baidu, purchased when Baidu was a private company, so a deal is not out of the question. Near-term, we expect Google to choose to compete with Baidu, rather than trying to take control of Baidu.

Sina (SINA): The Best Fit. Sina has tremendous Internet traffic that continues to grow. Google could benefit from this traffic. Moreover, Sina’s search engine has basically failed, meaning Sina is not likely to effectively monetize its traffic on its own via CPC Search anytime during the next several years, in our view. A deal would thus benefit each party significantly, and they could be natural allies similar to AOL and Google in the U.S. However, the Chinese government would likely prohibit Google taking a controlling stake in Sina. As a result, we believe the most likely result would be for Sina and Google to reach an agreement whereby Sina uses Google’s search engine to monetize its traffic in exchange for most of the revenues — perhaps 90%+ of the search revenues. It is possible that a small equity stake by Google – say 9.99%, which would not trigger the Sina poison pill – could cement the deal without being vetoed by Beijing. However, in our view, such an equity stake is not necessary for such a Sina-Google strategic partnership.

51job (JOBS): Leader in Online Classified Job Market. 51job would bring Google access to the dominant player in the online job market in China. While 70% of 51job’s revenues are print based, its online business and traffic is still the strongest in China, in our view. The #2 player, ChinaHR, is already controlled by Monster Worldwide, and hence is not available. 51job investors recently sold a 15% stake to Japan’s Recruit, with the option to take this stake to 40% over the next three years, which could make 51job a less attractive target for Google (unless an accommodation with Recruit could be reached).

Sohu (SOHU): Strong Assets, But Not Likely. Sohu would be an attractive fit for Google, as its seven properties have traffic levels on par with Sina and Baidu. However, Sohu has a strong search effort fully under way, and Sohu has been publicly quoted as saying it believes Google will ultimately fail in China. With a controlling shareholder/founder determined to beat both Baidu and Google, Sohu seems an unlikely seller, in our view. Finally, Sohu likely faces similar government approval issues as Sina would.

Online Gaming Companies: NetEase (NTES) a Possibility, But Not Likely. While NetEase has significant traffic, much of it is youth-focused due to the company’s strength in online gaming. If Google were to acquire a gaming company, NetEase would be the one, in our view. Shanda and, especially, The9 are more pure-gaming plays and thus likely to be less desirable to Google, in our view.

Wireless VAS Players: Tom Online (TOMO). Like NetEase in Gaming, only one player makes any sense in the WVAS sector: Tom Online. The largest player in this space, Tom excels at monetizing traffic via mobile phones. However, Tom actually is weak in terms of traffic compared to the Portals, and needs to grow its own traffic and brand ahead of full-scale 3G launch in China, in our estimation. Such a deal would add little to meet Google’s most pressing needs, in our view.

What Google Should do in ‘06
by Mark Evans at 03:55PM (EST) on January 1, 2006 | Permanent Link | Cosmos
There was no doubt 2005 was yet another eventful year for Google, highlighted by its stock roaring through $400 and the $1-billion investment in AOL for a 5% equity stake. That said, I’m looking for even bigger things from Google in 2006. With $7-billion of cash, Google has the potential to do more than hire more engineers and continue its ambitious campaign to corner the market on the biggest brains (Vinton Cerf, Louis Monier, Kai-Fu Lee, etc.) in the high-tech world. Google has a lot more to offer than launching new services such as Google Talk and Google Maps - not to suggest they aren’t cool and useful. In terms of services, I’d like to see Google get serious about its portal with some more bells and whistles and seamless integration between its applications. It would be the ultimate mash-up to see Blogger, Google News, Maps, RSS Reader, Talk, Picasa and search thrown together in one place. Google should also take a serious look at offering a browser (a.k.a. the GBrowser). As the Web-based applications company, it makes little sense not to control the browser, which is becoming the Web’s operating system. So far, it appears Google is content to work behind the scenes to support Firefox but there’s nothing wrong with giving Firefox a helping hand and developing your own browser. (By the way, Google owns the domain gbrowser.com) I’d also like to see Google get more ambitous about video/television - whether it’s acquiring Tivo or working with content providers to deliver free and fee-based video streams and downloads. Apple’s deals with ABC and NBC are just the tip of the video-on-demand iceberg, and Google could be a key player in the market’s growth. It would be good to see Google enlighten us on its Internet access plans. Instead of strategic tidbits (i.e. a proposal to build a Wi-Fi network in San Francisco and the sponsorship of a Wi-Fi system in New York), I want to see Google come clean on why it has been buying tons of dark fiber. Is it going into the access business or creating simply a network and data centre plan to reduce its telecom costs while beefing up its services? What’s interesting about all of these “suggestions” is do not require a lot of money. This gives Google the opportunity to move forward on a lot of different front and still have the cash to make a major acquisition. Maybe Google should take a harder run at AOL. Maybe it should buy a wholesale telecom carrier with lots of high-capacity pipe to carry all of those Google packets. Maybe Google should buy Knight-Ridder and turn the newspaper industry upside down. While few or none of these ideas seem to fit the modus operandi of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, I’d still like to see something really dramatic from Google in 2006.
For a look at what Google did in 2005, BetaNews has an extensive review.