Finally! Derek Jones reports that Google has finally given Blogger RSS feeds, perhaps abandoning part of their stubborness in sticking with the less popular Atom format. In my mind, it was always “evil” to use Atom purely as part of some sort of agenda. RSS/Atom should be chosen by users, not publishers, since users deserve choice. I think many of us should be glad to see the new RSS feeds.
Randy Morin gives the feeds an A-, since there are some elements that are incorrectly implemented.
Andy C calls it a “shock”, and says:
Odd to compare Google’s relative inactivity with all the features, languages, statistics, themes and functionality added to WordPress in the last six months.
June 7th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Blogger, Services, General |
one comment
Philipp spotted a very, very interesting link on Picasa.com, that read “New! Picasa Web Albums”. While we can speculate all we want about what this might refer to, Mahlon seems to have already figured it out. He noticed that the accidental Powerpoint notes from earlier this year included this sentence:
Picasa – provide better organization for our digital lives and with the release of online photo management, organize/store more of our important/cherished data with Google.
Yeah, looks like Picasa is readying some sort of online version, possibly a Flickr competitor. Further supporting all of this is the fact that Google registered picasawebalbums.com on May 17, just a few weeks ago (spotted by iZeitgeist in the Blogoscoped forums).
This could turn out very interesting. Google has done a thing or two lately to remind us that Picasa still exists (including the Linux release), and it would be smart of them to move into this space. I’m just hoping they have the brains to realize that users want all of Google’s products to share a photo service, and not have different storage sites in Blogger, Orkut, and other places.
Maybe Google could reuse Hello.com for the photo site? It would be a great use of an excellent domain name, one that they already own.
June 7th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Hello, Products, Picasa, General |
6 comments
eWeek, looking at Google Spreadsheets, has a shocking (yet shockingly accurate) summation of Google’s ambitions.
It’s not for Fortune 500 companies yet. So is Spreadsheets any kind of competition for the incumbents in this space, namely Microsoft?
The answer seems, for now, to be that Google continues to prove with its actions it’s shaping up to be a kind of 7-Eleven of office desktop software, which is likely to pose little immediate impact on Microsoft’s cash cows.
Ouch.
I wonder if Larry Page and Sergey Brin, working on their PhDs and creating genius algotithms, building a company by hiring geniuses, bucking all the trends and innovating in so many ways, ever thought they’d be called “the next 7-Eleven”. That is the sort of comparison that needs to give you pause and maybe consider that you are totally blowing one of the greatest opportunities since AOL fell apart.
The fact is, Google has a product that the entire internet loves and lives on. They had incredible popular and media support. They had incredible support from Wall Street. But what have they done to show they are interested in doubling their success? Or tripling it? Where is the ambition at Google?
Google’s problem stems from its culture. The founders have done everything in their power to instill a startup-like culture, one that produces innovative products for little money, and very quickly. Problem is:
- Startups don’t make money
- Google needs billions, not small thinkers
Does anyone think Google is developing anything that will make the billions Microsoft Office pulls in? Office is Microsoft’ number two product, selling billions every year. How in the hell will Google Spreadsheet ever make Google billions of dollars? Where is the big idea from Google? Where is the new market? Where is the category killer?
Why doesn’t Google think big?
UPDATE: Turns out this is the “meme of the day”, so to speak:
ZDNet
Om Malik
Paul Kedrosky
Nick Carr
TechCrunch
June 7th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Culture, General |
8 comments
Philipp points out a search page created by David Coallier which has a Google Suggest-like AJAX drop-down that updates as you type in the search box, but shows you synonyms. It isn’t quite perfect, since it only shows synonyms of what you type (and not autocompleting what you are in middle of typing), but it works really well, and checks synonyms against the entire thesaurus. Maybe David goes down to Google for a job interview?
Oh, and if you are searching your head, feeling like an idiot:
syn·o·nym: A word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or other words in a language.
June 7th, 2006
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Google Suggest, Search, General |
one comment
