Google Has a Need for Speed

Everyone knows faster Internet is better, but Google is actually doing something about it. The company wants to make the web faster with a variety of different measures detailed on the newly launched site code.google.com/speed, aimed at web developers and full of tips, tutorials and tools, all focused on speed.

“We are excited to discuss what we’ve learned about web performance with the Internet community. However, to optimize the speed of web applications and make browsing the web as fast as turning the pages of a magazine, we need to work together as a community, to tackle some larger challenges that keep the web slow and prevent it from delivering its full potential,” the official Google blog reads. Read more

Google Books Gets a Major Update

Google Books has made the headlines mostly with the controversy surrounding the project rather than with the product itself. But this hasn’t stopped the search giant from improving it and it has just announced a major update adding some very useful features.

“Today I’m excited to announce that we’re rolling out changes to Google Books that give readers and book lovers everywhere new ways to interact with the words and images contained within the books we’ve brought online. We’ve also made it easier for users to share previews of their favorite books on their blogs or websites,” wrote Brandon Badger, product manager for Google Books.

The most important new feature is a much simpler way of embedding the books on other websites. The Mountain View-based company now provides a small code snippet that should make sharing a book just as easy as sharing a YouTube video. Read more

Google Launches Google Squared

The amount of online data is increasing exponentially and everyone trying to keep track of it is having a harder time doing so. Even Google isn’t having it any easier and it has acknowledged that the current keyword-based search won’t be able to keep up for long. Adding structure to the data online, using it more like a database, would make it much easier to manage the volume of information. This is what the search giant hopes to do with its Google Squared project.

Having the web all organized, labeled and structured is what many companies are trying to do for the search engines of tomorrow. A recent popular example in this regard is the recently launched Wolfram Alpha, which works differently from most search engines, including Google’s, because instead of just indexing the data on the web it gathers it and stores it in its internal databases. Read more

Google to Allow Free Music Downloads in China

On Monday, Google Inc. has announced that it has begun offering free and legal downloads of licensed music on its Chinese servers, after the American company reached an agreement with the four largest music producers and distributors in the world – Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI and Universal Music. Google will pay for the songs by sharing some of its advertising revenues with the music companies, one of the first attempts made by the music industry to cash in on the large Chinese market.

In China, the most popular search engine is not the leader of the market, but trails behind giant Baidu.com Inc., which has the most visitors and registered searches per day. The President of Google for greater China, Lee Kai-Fu, said that one of the main reasons why the company lagged behind Baidu was the fact that Google offered no music downloads. “We are offering free, high quality and legal downloads. We were missing one piece – we didn’t have music,” Lee stated. Read more

Description from Google, but …

Google announced yesterday lived and here we have a problem, all the sites listed in search results led to malicious sites were shown in the category. This problem enough damage to a web site has on it an attack description added.

Google, the official blog, the first statement, that they work together to identify malicious sites and non-profit StopBadware.org site occurs because of the announced list. StopBadware.org is that with their own blog pages, this claim was rejected. Summarized in the following definition was told: “Google’s problem is causing us to list the claim is false. Google the list of sites that identify themselves, and this list we know that has nothing to do. With Google, a new description to do is to call.” Read more

GDrive Coming Soon?

Rumours of the fabled GDrive have been circulating for at least the last three years but just recently there seems to be a marked increase in chatter, with several normally reliable pundits predicting an announcement this year, so let’s add to the buzz.

But what it is it? We’ll, if you haven’t already worked it out, the GDrive is a multi-gigabyte online storage facility provided by Google. It’s not a new idea and several companies already offer such a service, but for a fee, and that’s the key difference. Everyone expects GDrive capacity to be free, and there would be plenty of it, possibly enough to match the kind of hard drive capacities we’re used to on desktop PCs. If that happens something magical and a bit scary could occur. Read more

Google Enters The Browser Business

Just a couple days ago Google released its own version of a web browser, dubbed Google Chrome. This is exciting news, because it now increases the pressure on Firefox and Internet Explorer to be all that they can be. It’s even surprising, considering that Google and Firefox were business partners in advertising. Just a while ago Google Adsense was paying people for referring people to Firefox. Read more

Google Enters The Browser Business

Just a couple days ago Google released its own version of a web browser, dubbed Google Chrome. This is exciting news, because it now increases the pressure on Firefox and Internet Explorer to be all that they can be. It’s even surprising, considering that Google and Firefox were business partners in advertising. Just a while ago Google Adsense was paying people for referring people to Firefox.

Google Chrome has a unique minimalist look that easily separates itself from other browsers. The browser bars are not cluttered full of different options, menus and toolbars, instead it only features your most used browser features, like the back and forward arrows, bookmark button, bookmark toolbar address bar, go button, and two pull down icons for page settings and internet options. Read more

Google Chrome all versions

Google’s newly launched web browser Chrome is all set to shake the web browser industry. On the first look and it looks like the later the better quote fits up for Google Chrome. Chrome has borrowed and acquired most of the features from Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer to emerge as a hybrid and fast browser.

You can clearly see in the screen shot below that Google Chrome has the dials feature which has been taken up from Opera. Another thing by launching its own web browser by Google means a complete dominance over the Internet. Google has it own search engine, its own social network etc. and at last its own browser Chrome to integrate all its services at one place. Read more

Chrome Plated Easter Egg

It didn’t take long for the hidden ‘Easter Egg’ in the new Google Chrome browser to be discovered. In case you haven’t heard, Easter Eggs are hidden features in a program, usually of a whimsical nature, put there by bored programmers. The one in Chrome is fairly good and quite amusing to watch but I won’t spoil it for you by giving the game away. To see if for yourself you will have to download and install Chrome then in the Omnibox (the name for the combined address and search box  one of Chrome’s best features – type ‘about:internets’ and see what happens. While we’re at it there are a couple of other things you can try. Typing ‘about:memory’ displays Chrome’s memory usage, ‘about:histograms’ shows a number of performance statistics and ‘about:crash’ does just that, and instantly shuts down the open browser window.