Google Docs Gets Lots of Updates Google Docs added lots of new stuff, including saved searches, offline Google Gears access for spreadsheets and presentations, custom document stylesheets (using CSS), speaker notes in presentations, and embedded YouTube videos in presentations.
Move Your Life To Gmail With Gmail Uploader Google released last month the Gmail Uploader, a free application that moves your email and contacts from Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird (on Windows XP and Vista only) to a Google Apps Gmail account. Considering the huge number of limitations (only three email programs, two operating systems, and one very specific and less popular edition of Gmail), you may never get the chance to use it, which is a shame, because most new Gmail users would love the easy migration method.
Google Charts Now Does QR Codes
Google has been trying out QR Codes (a type of 2D bar codes) in its print ads, and now they’re making it easier to generate them on the web. Before, you’d have to use a web app or software to create a QR Code, then save the image to use on your website, but now the Google Chart API can be queried to get them automatically. Right now, all you get are website URLs, though hopefully Google will extend the API to handle more complex data.
Here’s an API-generated image for this site, using the URL http://chartserver.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300&chl=http://google.blognewschannel.com/:
Blogger Adds Future Posts
Google’s Blogger has added the ability to schedule posts to be published in the future by specifying a date yet to come for your post. This feature was tested in Blogger In Draft, and is yet another feature to make its way into the ever improving Blogger.
Google Invests In New Clearwire Google entered into an agreement with Sprint and others (Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Trilogy Equity Partners), investing half a billion dollars in a new formation of wireless ISP Clearwire. The new company will be 51% Sprint-owned, taking Sprint’s Xohm WiMax business. Google’s a wireless provider of sorts, now, and will help get open devices, including Android devices, on the network, and provide search and applications for the network.
Google Me - A Documentary About Search
This documentary features a guy searching for others with this same name as him. A concept we’ve heard before, though it seems to have resulted in an interest project.
Google’s Head of PR Goes to Facebook
Elliot Schrage leaves for Facebook, costing Google its vice president of global communications and public affairs. Of course, Google’s corporate PR policies haven’t been that smart the last few years, so maybe this isn’t great news for Facebook.
Google Maps Interface Slimmed Down
Google has finally trimmed some of the cruft building on Google Maps, combining and simplifying an interface that was getting too complicated and cluttered.
Blogger Gets Integrated Analytics
Google has integrated Google Analytics into Blogger for Blogger users that are interested, giving access to stats inside the Blogger Dashboard along with special stats tracking relevant to blogs. They’re also letting Measure Map users roll over their accounts into Google Analytics now.
Yahoo has announced at CES that its Yahoo Go platform will now allow independent software developers to design their own applications to run inside the platform. A software development kit is expected to be released within the next few weeks, and eBay, MySpace and MTV have already created their own Yahoo Go apps.
Yahoo Go is Yahoo’s all-inclusive mobile platform, designed to run on a variety of operating systems and phone types and allow access to all of Yahoo’s services. Anyone with a compatible phone can download and install it, but the real push by Yahoo is to get device makers and mobile service providers to pre-install it. With the new open application capabilities, Yahoo doesn’t just have its own application, but a platform to extend the features of mobile devices, a change which may make it very appealing to device makers.
The appeal of Google’s Android is that it can, in theory, enable more advanced phones at minimal or no cost. If Yahoo’s free platform does the same, but runs on the operating system the phone already has, it could be very popular. The more thriving platforms, the better, so I wish them the best of luck.
Google has released the Google Mobile Updater for the Blackberry, a small bit of software that keeps an eye on Google applications and helps you install updates to them as necessary. Right now it works with the only real Google applications for the Blackberry, Gmail and Maps, as well as giving you the ability to add icons for Search, News, Picasa and Reader to the app launcher, but over time it would become ground central for Google’s expansion into the mobile space.
Presumably, Google is building this program for all platforms (Windows Mobile, Palm, Java) and just got the Blackberry version out first. With an updater on every device, Google has the means to promote new products to existing users and grow market share very quickly, and they know it. Don’t be surprised to see this become a cornerstone of Google’s mobile strategy.
A seperate question: Do you think Google should build an Android application runtime for other mobile platforms? Is it advantageous to Google to enable Android apps to run on Windows Mobile, or Java, or Palm, or should they lock Android down to Android phones?
Google confirmed over the weekend its plans to participate in the FCC’s auction for the 700 megahertz wireless specturm being vacated by analog TV. Google says that regardless of if it wins, consumers will win because it convinced the FCC to allocate a slice of the spectrum for open devices and open applications.
Google has put together a neat timeline explaining the auction process, starting with this past Monday’s submission deadline (and the beginning of the anti-collusion rules which prevent anyone involved, including Google, from discussing the auction):
December 3: By Monday, would-be applicants must file their applications to participate in the auction (FCC Form 175), which remain confidential until the FCC makes them available.
Mid-December: Once all the applications have been fully reviewed, the FCC will release a public list of eligible bidders in the auction. Each bidder must then make a monetary deposit no later than December 28, depending on which licenses they plan to bid on. The more spectrum blocks an applicant is deemed eligible to bid on, the greater the amount they must deposit.
January 24, 2008: The auction begins, with each bidder using an electronic bidding process. Since this auction is anonymous (a rule that we think makes the auction more competitive and therefore better for consumers), the FCC will not publicly identify which parties have made which bid until after the auction is over.
Bidding rounds: The auction bidding occurs in stages established by the FCC, with the likely number of rounds per day increasing as bidding activity decreases. The FCC announces results at the end of each round, including the highest bid at that point, the minimum acceptable bid for the following round, and the amounts of all bids placed during the round. The FCC does not disclose bidders’ names, and bidders are not allowed to disclose publicly whether they are still in the running or not.
Auction end: The auction will end when there are no new bids and all the spectrum blocks have been sold (many experts believe this auction could last until March 2008). If the reserve price of any spectrum block is not met, the FCC will conduct a re-auction of that block. Following the end of the auction, the FCC announces which bidders have secured licenses to which pieces of spectrum and requires winning bidders to submit the balance of the payments for the licenses.
Brian White speculates that Google could team up with Apple to combine their bids for the spectrum. Google could use the spectrum for its mobile aspirations, and Apple could use it for VoIP in order to escape the need to partner with AT&T on the iPhone.
Verizon has done a surprising about-face, joining up with Google instead of becoming their biggest enemy, at least when it comes to Google’s Android mobile phone operating system. Verizon says it is joining up in order to reduce customer service costs, as in an open architecture, it would only be responsible for making sure the phones can make calls, and not tech support for any other aspect of the handset or software.
When Verizon Wireless was founded in 2000, it ran 27 call centers to provide customer service. The company cut back to as few as 17 centers at one point, but the count is now back to 25, each with about a thousand employees. The company’s 2,300 stores, staffed by 20,000 employees, are also costly. While workers in those stores used to spend nearly the entire day signing up new customers, now only a tenth of their time is consumed by new subscribers. Instead, the bulk of their energy goes to helping current subscribers with questions and problems. McAdam & Co. decided the business model was not sustainable. “If we get to 150 million customers, boy, that’s a lot of overhead,” says McAdam.
In an open-access model, though, Verizon Wireless won’t offer the same level of customer service as it does for the roughly 50 phone models featured in its handset lineup. Though the company will insist on testing all phones developed to run on its network in the open-access program, Verizon plans only to ensure the wireless connection is working for customers who buy those devices. “They have to talk to their handset provider or their application provider if they have particular issues,” McAdam says.
If that’s Verizon’s only motivation, it’s a smart one. Reducing customer support costs and handset subsidies ultimately is great for Verizon and for the consumer, turning the industry on its head and reducing the “free phone, two year contract” mentality that is ruing the wireless industry. Verizon has been making some good moves towards openness lately, ones that may mean the company is finally wising up.
On the other hand, those of us who have followed and dealt with Verizon over the years know that, at its core, Verizon is definitely one of those “evil” companies with little regard for anything except revenue growth. Most likely Verizon isn’t trying to be the good guy, it’s trying to go with the “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, then use your insider knowledge to destroy them”.
If Google and Android winds up with an edge, Verizon can combat it, exploit it, or as a provider for it, control the spin of a competitor (for example, painting Android phones as low end and its own phones as high end). Google has to sit back and be all buddy/buddy with Verizon, and Verizon can stab Google in the back while still selling Google’s devices.
Is Verizon an undeniably evil company? Can this leopard change its red-and-black spots? No matter what, Google gets a very important network (with excellent call quality in many areas) for its platform, even if it has to fight off that network. The way to look at it? Everybody wins, and everybody’s keeping their enemies closer.
