Chaque année, nous pouvons constater que Google soutient de plus en plus détudiants. Il y avait 400 étudiants en 2005 lors de la création de lévènement pour atteindre cette année un nouveau record. Pour plus de 7 000 projets proposés, environ 1125 étudiants ont été acceptés, soit 25 % de plus que l'an dernier. Ils sont en provenance d'environ 90 pays et ils travailleront pour 175 projets. Parmi les 175 projets soutenus, citons-en rapidement quelques-uns : - Systèmes d'exploitation : Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Fre... lire la suite
Tis the season for everyone to chime in with their predictions for the upcoming year — and here are mine. The past year was a good one for Google, their stock gained $200 per share, several new products/services/features were launched, their market share rose to nearly 60%, they have managed to keep their advertising earnings impressive, and have invested significant time and money into the mobile space. · Google Apps got several new features for enterprise users — including Postini, a company Google acquired. · Google Personalized Homepage got “themes” · “Universal Search” for Google Search lets users use a single search box to find anything from news to videos · Street View on Google Maps · Sky View in Google Earth Google Knol will be launched, and immediately be competition for Wikipedia in the SERPS This new product is set to take on Wikipedia — I am guessing it will be launched sometime after the official launch of Wikia, the over-hyped “Google Killer”. Google Knol is a service that will let subject experts create articles, and get paid for them if they are popular. We will learn more about Google TV I’ve been waiting for this forever it seems, and I’m beginning to think it will never show up. Even if there isn’t a dedicated application on the horizon, Google services have been starting to integrate “shared storage” — the stuff you can buy via subscription from Google — and it you will see more Google services using it as its back-end storage system. It seems that buying companies, or at least the people working at them, is what Google likes to do best. Google will continue picking up small companies, and maybe we will even see another massive billion dollar acquisition like YouTube or DoubleClick this year. Partnerships are important for Google too though. I think we will see a stronger partnership between Apple and Google this year — possibly in the wireless world. Rumor has it that Google and Apple bid on the 700mhz spectrum together. For more Google 2008 predictions, you should definitely check out Blogoscoped. Now it’s your turn to chime in — add your predictions to the comments below!
It isn’t a surprise that Google bid on spectrum in the FCC auction for the 700mhz spectrum, however I found the name it filed under interesting — Google Airwaves Inc. There has been speculation that Google and Apple entered the auction together, and maybe this is the reason for incorporating a separate company on November 26th.
Om writes that Google has inked a deal with satellite ISP, WildBlue, that puts Google’s “Office Suite” in the hands of average users — the right place for it. There are many reasons Google Apps works much better for personal use than for the enterprise — in fact, after over a year using Google Apps, the company I work for has decided to pull out their checkbook to hop onto the exchange bandwagon. There are just far too many “but can it do ” business needs that Google doesn’t offer and would never estimate when it will. Not to mention the limited, high level support that never really helps you. The right place for Google is at the consumer level — until it can take greater steps to cover the majority of needs enterprise users have, they should focus on doing exactly what they did with WildBlue.
Several people have noticed a new version of Google Talk (1.0.0.105) in the wild that is available to download from here. We’ve been waiting since January for a new version, and it’s unfortunate to see that when we finally get one, it removes several features that I thought were really great — including voicemail. In previous versions of Google Talk, if someone tried to call and you didn’t pick up, the caller would be asked to record a mesage. That recording would then appear in the recipients Gmail as a voicemail message. I guess it would be fair to ask, how many people actually used the voicemail feature? I liked it, but I’ve personally never received a real message, or left one — maybe this is the rationale behind its removal? Besides voicemail, it appears Google has also removed Orkut integration, and the “show what I’m listening to” feature. It would be nice to see a new version of the Google Talk client which includes great new features — it’s been far too long since we’ve see anything new in this application. This version does have some minor updates though — David Hetfield from the Google Blogoscoped forums noticed the following:
Google just announced their newest service tonight that gives users an easy way to share their knowledge — Google Knol. The service is still in testing and accessible by invitation only, but it looks pretty interesting. You can almost guarantee that information written inside of knol’s will find their way to the top, or at least scattered throughout, search engine result pages. Take this sample article on insomnia for instance — I can see this being a very useful piece of information for many people. I can’t wait to see if this actually takes off and becomes the standard for sharing and finding real, and useful information — it won’t be easy, but I think it’s possible. Wikipedia has enjoyed much success, and a loyal base of users, but there is no way for the authors of those articles to be compensated like what Google is proposing. Will deep pockets prevail?
The content analysis feature was added to give webmasters a heads-up about things that may hurt their site’s user experience, and things that may make it difficult for Google to crawl its content. You can find this information in Dashboard/Diagnostics/Content analysis area of Google Webmaster Tools.
It doesn’t work for email yet, but Google launched their BlackBerry sync application for Google Calendar. Now when you create events on either your device, or through the service itself, everything stays up-to-date. The new sync application works with both the traditional Google Calendar service, and the one you can find in your Google Apps account for your domain — this means it can now be used to replace Outlook + Exchange + BES for your calendaring needs. Even though the application solves a huge problem, it’s still a bit slow — by default it will only sync every two hours, which seems like decades compared with the performance you get with push technology. If you have a BlackBerry, visit http://m.google.com/sync from your device to download and install the application. [via Google Operating System]
Google has been gathering information about the power collected through their array of solar panels. Last October, Google installed hundreds of panels on the Googleplex in Mountain View. If you are wondering how much power is actually generated in a given day, Google provides a few examples. Based on the 644 kilowatt-hours of electricity produced today at the ‘plex, you can power:
Out of all the Google services, iGoogle saw the largest growth this year with a 267% increase according to comScore data. iGoogle is a personalized homepage where users can install “Gadgets” — anything from egg timers to interesting news feeds. iGoogle was launched May 20, 2005, and so the comparison between 2006 and 2007 is the first year over year comparison available. These impressive numbers may cause some companies with competing products, like NetVibes, to shake a bit in their boots. Other Google products that saw increased usage this year include: · Google Web Search (+20%) · Google Images (+35%) · Google News (+20%) · Google Book Search (+55%) · Google Blog Search (+27%) · Google Maps (+52%) · Google Earth (+11%) · Google Groups (+20%) Where there is success, there is also failure though. Google has a history of cutting fat — so my predictions for 2008 will include the following “losers” being discontinued, or at least completely re-thought. · Google Video Search (-12%) · Google Scholar (-32%) · Google Directory Search (-19%) · Google Products (-73%) Then there is Google Finance, this service hasn’t had any usage swings in either direction. The product just isn’t as powerful as the competition, and investors don’t feel the need to change yet. Google is going to have to think hard about what investors will actually find useful enough to make them “need” Google Fianance — without that, the service will continue to coast along at best.
Google introduced a new feature to Google Reader on December 14th that lets you view your friends publicly shared items — little did Google know, that feature somehow ruined Christmas for someone, gave away trade secrets, violated everyone’s privacy and created a huge anti-reader bandwagon that has plenty of room for passengers. People are massively upset that their public feeds are being publicized — to their friends. I think the problem here, as ParisLemon puts it, is Google’s system for determining if someone is a “friend”. Currently, someone is labeled as your friend if you have them in your Gmail contact list and you have talked with them using Google Talk. Those two things together can almost certainly determine if you know someone well, but it’s a bad way to tell if someone is your friend. They are available as a page at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/11452057738876564749 (and there’s a feed too)” — on the shared items page Are you upset that Google Reader shows your public shared feeds to your “friends”? Yes, Google really screwed this one up