Google vs China
Posted on January 13th, 2010 by Richard Catto 415 views
Yesterday, Google reacted strongly to what it alleges is widespread surveillance by the Chinese government of the gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists all over the world.
According to a blog post on the Official Google blog posted on January 12 2010, Google detected “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack” on their corporate infrastructure originating from China in mid December 2009. Google alleges that the cyber attack was successful in stealing intellectual property. In addition, Google discovered that 20+ other large companies had also been targeted by the Chinese attack.
Further investigation by Google has allegedly revealed that the Chinese cyber attacks had as its real goal the hacking of gmail accounts belonging to Chinese human rights activists. This led Google to discover that many such gmail accounts had already been comprised and were regularly accessed by (unauthorised) third parties.
It is clear from Google’s post that they feel the Chinese government has abused the trust they once shared, and as a direct result of that breach in trust, Google has now decided that it is no longer prepared to dance with China. Google has announced that they are now no longer willing to offer a localised Google.cn, which is censored, and if that means ending its operations in China, then so be it.
Tags: China, Google
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Will Google ChromeOS compete with conventional operating systems?
Posted on November 20th, 2009 by Richard Catto 1,192 views
Perhaps, but it’s too early to tell.
Earlier this year in July, Google announced on their blog that they were building a new operating system, The Google Chrome Operating System, or ChromeOS for short. Yesterday, Google announced on their blog that they are open sourcing ChromeOS and they published a whole bunch of videos to YouTube describing their vision and released their source code to the public.
Google’s idea, in a nutshell, is that they believe there is demand for an operating system that is really fast, really secure and exists purely to facilitate Internet access. All user created data is stored in the cloud, in fact on Google’s servers. All applications are web applications. So the only thing installed on the computer is the operating system. Everything else is accessed via the Internet.
Is such an operating system competition for Windows, Linux, Apple Macs?
Well, for starters, Google’s ChromeOS is not going to be designed to run on any old white box pc, like Windows and Linux are. ChromeOS is going to have custom firmware and a narrowly defined hardware specification, because that is necessary to achieve its goals of fast boot and security. Businesses which deployed ChromeOS based workstations, would have to be comfortable with storing their data on Google’s servers instead of their own, unless Google builds a ChromeOS server, but that is not currently envisaged.
So the market for ChromeOS seems to be people who are prepared to accept a machine that is very locked down, runs a limited set of applications and is tightly integrated with Google’s online services.
Personally, it doesn’t hold much appeal for me because I want to be able to play games on my PC for relaxation. Yes, it is true that a lot of what I do depends on having an Internet connection, but not everything. If my Internet connection is unavailable, I still have access to all my data, which allows me to continue developing applications, for instance. It seems to me, that ChromeOS is so tied to the Net, that if it loses it’s connection then the box running it reverts to being a giant paperweight.
If ChromeOS was developed to run on a wider range of hardware, store its data on user chosen servers and allow continued productivity if the Net connection is lost, it would be of greater interest.
UPDATE:
This Wired article (Why Google Should Cool It With Chrome OS) agrees with me and suggests that Google ChromeOS should be engineered to co-exist with other operating systems on NetBooks so that people can enjoy a hybrid experience.
Tags: ChromeOS, Google
Filed under ChromeOS | 1 Comment »
Firefox add-on Search Cloudlet for Google and Yahoo
Posted on December 20th, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,233 views
This is a truly innovative add-on for the Firefox web browser, that is causing me to rethink my use of Google Chrome as my browser of choice.
Currently Google Chrome does not support add-ons, but apparently will in the future.
With the Search Cloudlet add-on, when you search with either Google or Yahoo, you will get a tag cloud generated which summarises your search results into a tag cloud. The tag cloud comprises all the keywords relevant to your search term. Clicking a tag, adds it to your search terms and refreshes the search with results which zero in on what you want.
You can also see which sites are represented in the search results.
This add-on was written by a research organisation - The International Software and Productivity Engineering Institute (INTSPEI).
Tags: Firefox, Google, INTSPEI, search, yahoo
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Google assassinates Wikipedia from its (grassy) Knol
Posted on July 25th, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,222 views
The web has lit up with stories about Google’s release of its alleged Wikipedia killer, Knol, yesterday.
However, despite the numerous comparisons drawn between Knol and Wikipedia, upon investigation, it appears to me that Knol is a very different beast to Wikipedia.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how to classify Knol. One can describe its features and abilities, and yet still not arrive at a correct classification because ultimately to correctly identify what Knol represents to the web world it is not so much what it can do but how it will ultimately be used which is relevant, and that is so very very much dependent on us.
Will people adopt Knol in great numbers?
Knol’s stated aim is to be a repository of authoritative articles written by users with expert knowledge in the topic.
On Wikipedia a topic is covered by one article authored and edited by numerous users. On Knol a topic can be covered by numerous articles authored by numerous different people. Although collaboration is possible on Knol, by default any edits made must be approved by the article’s owner (the person who created the article).
Wikipedia’s editors work on a purely voluntary basis and receive no remuneration whatsoever. Knol, however, has a revenue sharing model whereby a Knol user can associate their Adsense account with their Knol account and earn ad revenue from their Knol articles.
Knol also allows articles of a commercial nature to be published, for instance, covering your own business interests. Wikipedia, by contrast, strongly discourages editors from editing articles in which they have a personal interest to avoid having to deal with the conflict of interest issues that arise. Wikipedia also demands that articles meet notability requirements. Those articles which do not are deleted. Wikipedia articles also may not contain original research. Knol makes no such demand.
So, it’s clear that Knol is a very different beast to Wikipedia entirely and I therefore posit that Knol will fulfill a very different function. It will not become an encyclopedic reference that Wikipedia is.
Personally, so far Knol does not appeal to me. For starters, there’s very little content on it as yet. There’s no active community to interact with. There are also no stats associated with Knols, so I cannot even tell how many times a knol I author is viewed. I want full metrics on all Knols I author, so that I can tell whether it is worth my while expending the effort on the site.
Google now offers so many publishing tools that I’m sure some may be getting confused as to which online publishing tool is best suited to them. Google also offers personal blogs, Google Pages, and Google Sites (collaborative Wikis).
FURTHER READING:
Google’s Knol Launches: Like Wikipedia, With Moderation
Tags: blogger, Google, Google Pages, Google Sites, Knol, Wikipedia
Filed under Google, Knol | 1 Comment »
Why Yahoo! and Microsoft are both crap
Posted on February 10th, 2008 by Richard Catto 2,692 views
It actually doesn’t matter if Microsoft buys Yahoo! or Yahoo! buys Microsoft or they give each other to the other in holy matrimony because at the end of the day they are both very crap companies.
The big difference between them is that Microsoft still makes huge annual profits (last year it was over $16 billion) while Yahoo! is on a sharp decline. It’s share price has halved in the past two years down to under $20 from $40.
Google’s profits last year are also less than expected.
The only company doing really well financially still is Microsoft. Financially, Microsoft is very stable due to its Windows and Office products. Vista sales are up. The financial future remains rosy for Microsoft.
So if this is the situation, why does Microsoft want Yahoo?
I believe it is out of fear of what Google might do to undermine Microsoft’s core business in the future.
Fact is, Google is already undermining Microsoft’s Office product with its online Google Documents service.
If you compare Google’s online web 2.0 services with Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s then Google’s are superior except in one instance – Yahoo’s flickr.com is better than Google’s Photos (Picassa Web Albums).
Yahoo’s 360 and MSN Spaces are both shit blogging platforms. Blogger rules them. In turn, Blogger is ruled by self-hosted WordPress blogs.
Google’s gmail rocks Yahoo mail and hotmail into the garbage tip.
Anyone I’ve ever introduced to gmail has ended up dumping both yahoo and hotmail for gmail. The only hottentots who refuse to get with the gmail program are those poor technically challenged neaderthals who still crave their daily Microsoft Outlook fix. I pity those poor bastards.
What else you got? Search? Hahahaha!!! Yahoo and MSN are both useless at search and since they still haven’t been able to engineer a new search service that puts Google’s in the shade in the 10 years that Google has dominated the field, we can safely assume that they will never achieve that Herculean feat. It is simply beyond them. They have no clue how to build a better search engine. Or they would have done it already.
Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live both have more chatters than GoogleTalk has. GoogleTalk only does text chat and voice whereas both the former offer video as well. Thing is, based on extensive use by myself over the past few years, I can quite confidently assure you that you will get no better VoIP voice quality than via GoogleTalk. Even the much venerated skype is shit. For vid conferencing I find Windows Live the best at the moment. Thing is, Google is so good at producing quality services that I expect that when they do release a Vid service on GoogleTalk that it will knock the socks off all competitors.
I believe that the best company to buy Yahoo! is in fact Google, because Google knows how to make web 2.0 services work and be financially viable. Microsoft is clueless and Yahoo is trailing Google in its core competencies.
If this Microsoft buys Yahoo! deal goes ahead, Yahoo! will be obliterated by a clueless, clumsy and outclassed Microsoft.
Microsoft is a bad company with a lot of cash and an installed base that feeds it – for now. However, at some point, I believe Microsoft and ALL its technologies will be wiped out by better Open Source Software products.
I strongly believe that young people should not invest their time learning Microsoft developer technology skills. They should invest themselves in the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) platform. Businesses building in-house software systems on the Microsoft platform will regret it.
Tags: Google, LAMP, Microsoft, web 2.0, yahoo
Filed under Google, Microsoft, web 2.0, yahoo | 12 Comments »
