Google Access Google Docs and Gmail App for customers

Apparently Google has heard the mumblings and has started to roll out an application to selected Google Apps customers that will allow them to try out some of the otherwise-unreachable features for their business.

According to Wired, the service will start rolling out to “Trusted Testers” later this year and will enable Blogger, Reader, AdWords and Picasa, “among others” to be accessed via Google Apps accounts.

The thought, as has always been the idea behind Google Apps, is to give companies such as Microsoft a run for their money in the much-desired enterprise software market. While many Google Apps users already utilize services such as Google Docs and Gmail, the additional features will certainly be welcomed by all.

While Google Apps itself is a free service for up to fifty employees, there is a $50/month/user charge to get support and guaranteed uptime. That $50, for so long, has been a thorn in the side of many Apps users, as we were paying money for accounts that had limited connections to the other Google services that everyone else can use for free.

FCC Responds To Google-Verizon

The FCC has issued a public notice (PDF) stating that it would launch further inquiries into broadband industry practices and consumer concerns. Given how long these sorts of inquiries take, this almost certainly means that we’re not going to see regulation of service provider practices anytime soon.
 

On the positive side, the notice very strongly indicates that the FCC has sided with consumer interests against some of the more troubling parts of the regulation proposal put forward by Google and Verizon.

There are two main pieces to the inquiry. The first is to learn more about “Specialized Services” which may bypass or supplant the open internet. One of the big concerns about the Google-Verizon proposal is that a company like Google could put servers for YouTube on site with Verizon’s towers, allowing Verizon customers priority access to YouTube as they would not have to actually connect to the internet to use it, i.e. YouTube’s content would be on Verizon’s non-internet network.

Of the FCC’s proposed solutions, none of them are to prevent this sort of priority access, but the organization does seem to be edging strongly on the side of severe limitation. Two very good suggestions from the notice are 1) to limit how many priority services a carrier can provide, and 2) to guarantee the continued expansion of open broadband internet access so priority services don’t start to slowly replace the internet.

The other component to the FCC inquiry is to find out “how, to what extent, and when openness principles should apply to mobile wireless platforms.” Google and Verizon raised ire when they suggested that no net neutrality regulations should be applied to mobile internet access. This section does not propose any real protections for consumers, other than that providers disclose what services they would choose to “manage,” meaning how they would throttle traffic.

Google Maps in a US city

Next time you open up Google Maps in a US city, you may well see some new, but familiar landmarks. Google has announced that it is to allow well-known brands to add their own company logos to Maps in the USA.

The idea, Google says, is to help users find familiar brands and help businesses promote themselves. “By helping users identify popular businesses, we’re making it easier to browse the map and navigate the real world.” It’s available in the US on desktop browsers from today, with mobile phones following soon.

Google is pushing the serendipity factor of this beta program, which has already been trialed in Australia. Imagine “Fortunately stumbling upon a nearby ATM when you’re looking up the address of the new restaurant where you’re dining tonight, or exploring the neighborhood you just moved into by figuring out where the grocery store is relative to your new apartment.”

Some may find that corporate logos on their maps pollute the experience, although they appear to be small and subtle. There’s no doubt that many use well-known brand logos as landmarks to navigate modern cities so they should be useful as more than just a promotional tool for the businesses themselves.

Don’t expect to see Mom & Pop’s Grocery Store logo on the map though, this is only for “Companies in the U.S. with multiple locations and a well-known brand… across a variety of industries, from banking to retailers to self-storage” – for now at least. Companies have to pay to have the logo included, although Google isn’t saying how much.

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Google SketchUp 8, Maps built

Google has released SketchUp 8, its latest version of the popular 3D modeling software, with many new improvements, including Google Maps built right into the software. If you’re not familiar with SketchUp, it enables you to leverage Google’s geo data and quickly make 3D models of anything from furniture to entire cities. In addition to the integrated Google Maps, other new features in SketchUp 8 include:

• More accurate aerial imagery, for the first time in color
• Photo-tracing to build models
• BuilderMaker integration

Google made the announcement of the new version at its third bi-annual “3D Basecamp” conference in Boulder, Colorado today, and the software will be available in five languages to start (English, French, Spanish, Italian or German). For super-serious 3D modelers, Google also has a professional version, SketchUp Pro 8, for $495 or as a $95 upgrade if you have a previous pro version already.

Google has a couple of cool videos around the release, including this one:

Source:SketchUp 8

eBay to Google Checkout in favor of PayPal

Members of the eBay using world take note: the massive online seller is doing away with Google Checkout integration next July. PayPal will become the singular ‘checkout’ service that will allowed on eBay’s platform.

 

eBay’s vice president of seller experience, Todd Lutwak, said that this will “give eBay buyers a consistent, speedy checkout experience and [will help] to ensure support for fast-growing sales via mobile platforms.” And of course it will make even more money for PayPal, an engine of growth unlike eBay itself.

While eBay does view PayPal as the strongest checkout solution (a sentiment that I echo) this move is far more competitive than functional. Google Checkout is a perfectly usable payment system, albeit one that has never found its legs. eBay wants to control online payments, and playing their home court advantage as hard as possible is a simple way to pursue that goal.

PayPal claims to be “the world’s most-loved way to pay and get paid.” That is even true in some parts of the world, but what is also now true come next July is that eBay is about to have a single real payments provider, something that dedicated Google Checkout users might not like.

The legal implications of this announced move are yet to be determined. It could be that the lead time into the exclusion of Google Checkout is to allow for complaint to be filed by either Google or the FTC, giving eBay time to renig on the idea if it becomes untenable.

officials issuing notices to Google and Skype

According to Reuters, Indian government officials will be issuing notices to Google and Skype, requesting that they deploy servers in their country and then allow access to its internet data.
 

The notices follow RIM’s high-profile negotiations with the Indian government, where it faced having its messaging and email services blocked on 31st August if it didn’t allow access to its servers, potentially leaving around one million RIM handset owners without access to email or instant messages.

RIM submitted a proposal that has since gained the Canadian smartphone giant a reprieve but focus has now switched to Google and Skype, companies that both encrypt their internet data to provide security for its users. Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told Reuters that similar demands will be made of these companies but did not comment when.

We will be watching this situation with an eager eye. Whilst RIM are a huge company and have millions of Indian customers, Google has significantly more across all its services.

More on this as it develops.

Source

Google gets into the badges game

Google Powermeter, a service from Google.org to help you converse electricity (note: unless you are getting your power from one of three providers in the world, you’ll have to purchase a third-party – and expensive – device to use this service), has added personalize recommendations and game mechanics a-la-Foursquare to try to spur people into saving power, by introducing badges earned by carrying out the recommendations.
We’ve got to say, this is certainly taking game mechanics to an entirely new place.
You’d be forgiven if you mistook a post on the Google.org blog today as a post on the Foursquare blog:

“Collecting badges is a fun way of keeping track of your accomplishments to reduce energy waste and save money. And you might even strike up some friendly competition among family and friends to see who can collect the most badges the fastest!”

Of course, it’s great that Google is doing everything that it can to help people conserve power, but from a services perspective, it will be extremely interesting to see if giving badges to users in this context actually works. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to find out exactly what all of the badges are, but in the screenshot provided by Google below, you’ll see two gold badges: one that looks like a thermometer and one that has a TV in it (we have no idea what recommendation either badge corresponds to):

Google Translate new interface

Google has given Google Translate a face lift that it plans to roll out worldwide over the next few days (it’s live for us now).


The new look is cleaner and intended to highlight the many ways that users can use Translate, including in Gmail, search, and through the Chrome extension. It’s a nice graphical upgrade, and though Google uses the word “functional” in it’s blog post on the announcement, we don’t really see what has changed functionally. We’ve emailed Google for clarification.


UPDATE: A Google representitive responded that, “There were no functionality changes with this launch,” which is what we thought.
Here’s what the new design looks like:

Google ends the post by asking for people with stories about Google Translate to send them in. Google is also highlighting how Translate works behind the scenes, and provided this video done by JESS3 called “Inside Google Translate“:



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Real-time Blogger stats Google

It’s perhaps a surprise that this feature hasn’t been available before now, but Google hasannounced that all users of itsBlogger blogging platform now have real-time stats available to them.

After a few weeks’ testing as a ‘Blogger in Draft’ feature, Google says that all users now have a new ‘Stats’ tab on their dashboard.

The stats offer real-time tracking, updating almost immediately each time your blog is viewed, and Google Analytics-style insights into your audience like top search keywords, countries and browsers. Following the test period, Google says it has tweaked the service to offer the ability to filter out a user’s own visits, as well as visits from search engine crawlers and other bots.

Native stats are something that rival platforms such as Wordpress and Typepad have offered for several years, so it will be a welcome addition for Blogger users who until now have had to deal with custom code in order to insert external stats packages into their blogs.

Google Reader

One of the greatest parts about Google Reader is the ability it gives you to totally immerse yourself within the stories, while still remaining functional to its other features. Seeing this, Google has made that immersion even more complete by adding a new fullscreen option.

According to the Google Reader blog, you can use your “F” key to toggle fullscreen, and then also use “shift+u” to show or hide the navigation panel, without having to leave fullscreen.

Another change, which we started to hear buzz about late last week, is in your Google Reader trends page. Now, you can finally see what sources you’ve clicked most, as well as a count of all of your read items. Well, at least until you cross 300,000. At that point, Google will “stop counting for performance reasons”.

So give a look at your Google Reader and let us know what you think of the fullscreen option. Sadly, it appears that you can’t access the fullscreen version via an iPad, but please let us know if we’re wrong about that.

Associated Press renew licensing deal

The Associated Press (AP) is reporting on a deal involving itself today: the AP reports that it has come to terms on a new licensing agreement with Google, after as the AP writes in its own story, “…months of sometimes thorny negotiations. At one point in the talks, Google Inc. stopped hosting AP content.”

 

Google started licensing AP content in 2006, and that deal had expired. Google said in a short blog post:

“We’ve extended our existing licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. We look forward to future collaborations, including on ways Google and AP can work together to create a better user experience and new revenue opportunities.”

The Associated Press (AP) is reporting on a deal involving itself today: the AP reports that it has come to terms on a new licensing agreement with Google, after as the AP writes in its own story, “…months of sometimes thorny negotiations. At one point in the talks, Google Inc. stopped hosting AP content.”

Google started licensing AP content in 2006, and that deal had expired. Google said in a short blog post:

“We’ve extended our existing licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. We look forward to future collaborations, including on ways Google and AP can work together to create a better user experience and new revenue opportunities.”

Terms and length of the new agreement have not been announced.

Google showcases HTML5

Google’s love affair with HTML5 is well documented.Now, in a bid to show off what the latest web technology can do, it has teamed up with Canadian band Arcade Fire and writer/director Chris Milk to create a rather spectacular mashup.

The Wilderness Downtown combines “Google Maps and Google Street View with HTML5 canvas, HTML5 audio and video, an interactive drawing tool, and choreographed windows that dance around the screen.”

It’s certainly processor-intensive (with a warning to close any unnecessary programmes while you use it) and it takes a while to load. However, once it’s up and running it uses an address you specify to personalise an experience around the Arcade Fire song ‘We Used To Wait’. Among other things, you’ll see animated birds fly over the house you grew up in as different windows pop up on queue to enhance the song and its video.

Google has a ‘making of’ explanation here.

Google announces new Google Mobile YouTube Channel

In order to further highlight how important mobile is to Google (as if we hadn’t already noticed), Google has officially announced its new Google Mobile YouTube Channel. While Google announced the channel just now, it has apparently been live for a short time already.

The channel features a Rubik’s-Cube-like video box that lets you rotate it to find new videos in “3D”. The videos are all about how to use Google on your mobile phone, be it an Android device or not.

“In our channel’s “featured” section, we highlight some of our mobile search capabilities — like search by voice, sight, and location — that really help you take advantage of your phone’s unique technology. Since we understand that these represent new modes of searching for many of you, we’re going to launch some new videos that help illustrate the variety of practical and fun ways that you can use these features.”

The channel allows visitors to sort videos by mobile platform or by mobile app, and has improved sharing features, and replaces a previous channel (Google notes that you’ll have to subscribe again to the new channel, i.e. subscriptions won’t be carried over).

New Google Events could social network

The Google Calendar, for all of its uses, has always been clunky at best when it came to doing anything more than just posting in a new meeting or small note. Google, seeing this, has made some pretty significant changes to the Events scheduling system within Calendar, and it’s looking pretty slick.

 

Among the new features, you’ll find easier ways to edit repeating events. Instead of taking up your entire window as before:

 The new version is a tidy little box on the right side that gives you an easy way to schedule the repeat:

Beyond the repeating events, there is also a new tool to help you find an appropriate time for them. If other people have shared their calendar with you, the tool will look through the calendars of all parties and find a time when you can all get together:

While both of these features are quite handy, the interesting part is not so much the features themselves but rather the social aspect of the Find a Time tab. Facebook has been in the event scheduling business for quite some time, and has had a leg up on the competition in it.

The new Google Calendar features, to be honest, look a lot like event scheduling within Facebook, and I’m guessing that this is no coincidence:

For those who have linked their Facebook and Gmail accounts, you’ll already have your Facebook contacts within your Gmail list. That access opens the door to scheduling your events in Google Calendar, and inviting anyone whose email address you know, not just those people you have on Facebook.

As we’ve said in the past, Google seems to be aiming for a social system, rather than a social network site. As the new Google Calendar features roll out to more users in the coming weeks, could this be another piece of Google’s social puzzle?

While both of these features are quite handy, the interesting part is not so much the features themselves but rather the social aspect of the Find a Time tab. Facebook has been in the event scheduling business for quite some time, and has had a leg up on the competition in it.

The new Google Calendar features, to be honest, look a lot like event scheduling within Facebook, and I’m guessing that this is no coincidence:

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Google Product Ideas Blog
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Google not yet approved

Google may be one step closer to acquiring ITA Software, but the acquisition is by no means a done deal.
 

Just posted on their Public Policy blog , Google reports that they have received what’s called a “second request,” which means that the U.S. Department of Justice is asking for more information so that they can continue to review the deal.”

ITA Software, according to their site, is a leading provider of innovative solutions for the travel industry.  Founded in the mid-nineties by MIT computer science graduates, ITA Software has pioneered a new generation of travel technology. Our world-class engineers and travel industry experts are solving the industry’s most complex computing challenges, and in doing so reshaping its very foundations.

According to Google, the response they’ve received from the travel industry has been encouraging, with travel guru Arthur Frommer stating, ‘the existence of so many competing airfare search engines convinces me that the field will remain competitive even after Google enters it.”

Google’s plans if the ITA acquisition comes to fruition, would have the company constructing “new tools that will make it easier for consumers to search for flights, compare flight options, and get you quickly to a site where you can buy a ticket.”

What this means for the likes of  Kayak, Expedia, Orbitz and other online travel companies remains to be seen, but it can’t be good if Google acquires ITA Software.  With the power of Google behind ITA’s capabilities would make it difficult for other travel sites to compete, and moreover, succeed in growing each of their respective businesses.

One also has to wonder what impact Google’s potential entry into this space will have on Facebook, who recently acquired nextstop, as both companies continue to move in similar directions which appear to have them headed for a collision to determine internet dominance.

What do you think?  If Google’s ITA acquisition is approved, will Google become your default method by which you search for and buy airline tickets?

Google, Facebook, 8 others for patent infringement

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and who invested around $100 million in the 1990’s in a now long closed tech incubator called Interval Research, is suing Apple, Facebook, Google, AOL, Yahoo, eBay, Netflix, YouTube, Staples, OfficeMax and Office Depot over patent infringement from patents Allen still owns from Interval Research.

Not surprisingly, Allen isn’t suing Microsoft.

According to the Wall Street Journal;

“The suit lists violations of four patents for technology that appear to be key components of the operations of the companies—and that of e-commerce and Internet search companies in general. The technology behind one patent allows a site to offer suggestions to consumers for items related to what they’re currently viewing, or related to online activities of others in the case of social-networking sites.
A second patent, among other things, allows readers of a news story to quickly locate articles related to a particular subject. Two others enable ads, stock quotes, news updates or video images to flash on a computer screen, peripherally to a user’s main activity.”

We’ve had a lot of frivolous lawsuits recently from unknown companies claiming they own patents that huge companies are infringing on, but a lawsuit from Paul Allen is a whole different matter entirely. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Google buys Angstro to add

Google now has at least a triumphrate of executives now to run/build Google Me (or whatever it is called), adding Rohit Khare after acquiring his company Angstro, which among other things, provided tools to export data from Facebook.
 

Khare joins Vic Gundotra (the Caesar of the triumphrate) and Slide’s Max Levchin plus you know, everyone that built Google Wave and now has to do something else. So now they have a long time Googler in Gundotra, and two people that have worked on/with Facebook in Levchin and Khare.

At the Google Voice in Gmail press conference on Wednesday, we asked Google if this new implementation has anything to do with Google Me, and they predictably answered that they won’t comment on rumors of speculation. However, as many people have speculated (we’ll comment on speculation), Gmail is the most likely platform for Google to center its social strategy around. We also expect Google Profiles, Buzz, YouTube, Places and mobile/Android apps to heavily feature in Google Me. So yeah, the kitchen Google sink.

Acquisition Appetite: An Infographic (GOOGLE)

From February of 2001 to August of 2010. A look at every company that Google has acquired.

Research by Scores.org

Google’s Logo

A study commissioned by MyVoucherCodes.co.uk aimed at finding which online logos had the greatest influence amongst has found that UK web users see the Google logo once every 7 minutes with 47% of the people surveyed admitting that the search engine is either their homepage or the first page visited when logged online.

The survey, which polled 1,654 people asking “Which logo do you see the most during an average day?”, found that 34% of those surveyed said the Google logo was the most prominent. Microsoft came in second with 15% with the Facebook logo attracting 11% of the remaining votes.

Other interesting things to note were that 53% of the respondents admitted they used Google as a spellchecker and just under 25% of people had the Google search bar installed in their browser. 52% of people would typically search Google between 10 and 20 times a day.

MyVoucherCodes Top Ten Most Viewed Logos

1. Google – 34%
2. Microsoft – 15%
3. Facebook – 11%
4. Apple – 9%
5. Coca Cola – 8%
6. BBC – 7%
7. Sony -5%
8. Sky – 4%
9. Twitter – 3%
10. Blackberry -2%

I would estimate Google would be the most viewed logo on my list, maybe just behind The Next Web logo. What other logos do you see on a daily basis? I’m sure Twitter could rank quite highly for some.

Google Voice Phone Booth

As part of its roll out of Google Voice and Gmail integration, Google plans to install these red phonebooths across the US in universities and airports. Calls from the booth are free to any number in the world, though Google will post some kind of sign or something asking people to limit the times of their calls if there is a line of people. Here’s our interview with the Google Voice team as well as a demo of the booth in action: