Two years ago next month, Google bought five percent of AOL for a billion dollars. Yeah, you might have forgotten that, but it was a really big deal at the time. While Google’s main motivation was to keep being the search technology for fifth-place AOL Search, there was a lot of talk on both sides about the two companies working together. The big get, mentioned right in the press release: Google Talk and AOL Instant Messenger integration.
What the hell happened? It’s been two years, and the two products have made less effort to work together than the U.S. Congress. Granted, development on Google Talk has gone dark, with a second version of the product either not in development or massively delayed, and AOL’s rising star software division suffered massive multiple layoffs that have decimated their ability to ship good products and hold talented engineers, but interaction between the protocols could have been done quickly if someone had made it a priority.
As we do every once in a while, we’re hearing more leaks about supposed GTalk/AIM integration, this time in the form of leaked screenshots of a future Gmail build. If Gmail Chat gets AIM integration, that would be great news, but if it gets it and Google Talk doesn’t, it might be time to declare development of Talk a dead project. All the new Google Talk features seem to be happening in other projects, while the desktop client lies fallow.
November 14th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Talk, Products, AOL |
one comment
Google Maps now integrates ratings from CleanScores, a website which shows you which establishments have failed food inspections. Now, when you search for a place to eat, if CleanScores has it in their database (which for now only includes San Francisco and LA), the Google Maps results will show you the violations the food inspectors discovered in that place.
From experience, I don’t think this is such a great idea, to expose people who don’t know anything about food inspections to raw data about them. I remember writing a story about a food establishment that had been shut down due to health code violations, and when I went to the health department’s website to look up other local eateries, I was shocked to discover that every place I liked to eat had some minor violations.
Even minor violations sound terrible, like mouse droppings and dead flies, but these are so commonplace that many normal, clean restaurants have these on their record, and they don’t get shut down. I don’t pretend to know why places that are on record as having mouse poo are okay, but the health inspectors seem to think so.
Either way, if these places are truly safe, then adding the data to Google Maps will only serve to frighten people, and those people have no context for what violations are no big deal (but sound terrible) and which ones they really need to be careful about before sitting down to eat. Merely listing the violations can sometimes be irresponsible and not at all helpful.
Still, once you understand that not all violations are created equal, the data is useful. Hopefully, Google Maps users will get the message quickly before they decide to stop eating anywhere, ever.
Image by Orin Optiglot under CC
November 14th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
General |
one comment
Google has this website, where working together with Weekly Reader, they help show educators how they can use Google Docs and its collaboration and revision features to help their students write better essays and other classroom writing assignments. Read the Google Blog post and check out the Educators Guide, tutorials and other articles here.
Image by Night Owl City under CC license
November 14th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Docs, Products |
one comment
