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Keith Coleman posted a link

Challenges of building modern web apps with all the browsers out there (thanks to everyone who made IE6 Gmail work!)

Friday at 2:00 pm - Link

Ihar Mahaniok, Varun Mahajan, Dustin, Niv and 12 other people liked this

I love this: "Over the last few months, we've been working with the IE engineers at Microsoft to address these issues: they released a critical update to their JavaScript implementation that fixed a performance problem with how the script engine allocates and frees memory." - Paul Buchheit

Perhaps Google won't bother addressing these challenges in future, and instead tailor everything for Chrome? - Slippy Lane

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No, things will have to work with ie6 for a long time, but what they can do is make some of the enhanced features be Chrome-only (things that aren't possible in other browsers). - Paul Buchheit

That's probably a much fairer assessment, given your exposure to the aforementioned, lol. In that case, then, I suppose it's up to the boys and girls at Microsoft and Mozilla to take advantage of the opportunity and get in on the action. I imagine they're already studying the guts of chrome as hard as they can :-) - Slippy Lane

Hopefully, we'll never see "to get this cool feature in Gmail, install Chrome". A plug-in like Gears is a reasonable requirement, though. - Ionut

I wonder if that IE fix addresses the problems we've been having. Does anybody know the KB article for it? - Gabe Schaffer

What is the issue Gabe? I believe the problem they fixed was with GC performance once there were a large number of objects. - Paul Buchheit

Here's the KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/k... - Keith Coleman

Paul: The problem is that after running for some time the app just becomes untenably slow. Our hypothesis was that the GC would run a collection on every allocation once there got to be too many objects, and we were exceeding that limit. I seem to recall you were quite skeptical at the time, Paul, because Gmail hadn't run into that problem. - Gabe Schaffer

Matt Cutts posted a message

“Ah, I forgot to pre-debunk the "Dude, Google claims that they own everything you do in Chrome!" conspiracy. Debunked that last night in a Mashable comment and then again this morning: http://bit.ly/2toGWg . Sheesh.”

Wednesday at 9:56 am - Link

Atul Arora, BeeLing, Shey, Jon-Paul Bussoli and 14 other people liked this

Chromium snapshots: http://build.chromium.org/buil... (the license is BSD) - Ionut

I also debunked this in my "common Chrome conspiracy theories" post at http://bit.ly/3CLLwe too. - Matt Cutts

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Thanks for setting us straight Matt! - Anne Haynes

When we are discussing legal documents, it's the verbiage that matters, not the intent. As long as clauses 11.1 and 11.2 are in the EULA, they have full effect. - Franci Penov

that is how Mozilla reads it and why they are not scared - Fred Grott

Thanks for setting people straight, Matt. It was so obvious that the EULA was a c/p job from another service that I never gave it a second thought, and I was utterly stunned that so many people lost their minds over it. Guess expecting common sense is just entirely too much to ask these days. - Vincent Ferrari

I have a feeling they actually launched Chrome too early and simply did not have time for such a stupid legal thing. Unfortunately for a company attracting attention like Google does it is something to avoid. - Svetlana Gladkova

why all the google bashing? Chrome SHOULD be a more secure browser than FF when Google is finished.. isn't it still in beta? hello? - paisley via twhirl

Yes Matt, but then why the legal language that says otherwise in the TOC? What Google say and what they did are two different things here and the law upholds what is written. - Sally Church

Most times I'm really glad I'm not in Matt's shoes. Other times i think it would be pretty neat to have 'a view' at the Plex :) - Charlie Anzman

Sally Church, that's why I'm glad we changed the TOS/EULA. - Matt Cutts

Lindsay Donaghe posted a link

Using Chrome to post content gives rights to that content to Google??

Wednesday at 8:57 am - via Reshare - Link

silpol, Walt Ruppar, Victor Ryden, Lisa L. Seifert and 12 other people liked this

This is a bit scary... I hope they fix or clarify this... - Lindsay Donaghe

Wait . . . seriously? I will totally remove if that is the case - Lindsey Smith

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Upon reading this and checking the EULA itself: Uninstalling. - Michael W. May

I'm going to go with Michael. - Lindsey Smith

I read the TOC's and didn't download this morning - Sally Church

Suggest you guys read Matt Cutts' piece yesterday before uninstalling http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/... can find similar stuff with almost any browser out there, in most cases worse - Charlie Anzman

I don't see how this addresses the TOC/EULA concerns. I can see what they were aiming for with the EULA language but I don't play around with my copyrights. Ever. - Lindsey Smith

this is the kind of EULA that sounds kinda bad but would almost never result in any of the horrors you are thinking of. Don't get me wrong, they should remove it... but I can't imagine what you really think will happen in the real world? - Stefan Hayden

I agree Stefan . . . in 99.999999999% of cases nothing will happen with it. But . . . - Lindsey Smith

I suspect this EULA term came about due to Google Picasa/Blogger/Pages/Sites, where Google really does require perpetual rotalty-free rights. - Denton Gentry

Wow, you give up rights to your pictures with Picasa? And content with Blogger? Glad I don't use either... - Lindsay Donaghe

Always assume that you're giving away the rights to anything you store on a Google Service, whether shared or not. It has ever been thus. This is just a step further on. I don't imagine Google is being evil, probably just protecting itself against frivolous yet damaging lawsuits. - Slippy Lane

Lindsay: I suspect that the Chrome EULA problem has nothing to do with Google going evil and everything to with cut-and-pasting from the Picasa / Blogger / Sites etc EULAs. - Tudor Bosman

@lindsay when @denton said "requires" I think he means it in a technical sense. They require the right to "redistribute" or "publish" royalty free because they need the right to render your content within a web page multiple times for as long as your content exists on their servers. It's a technicality that should probably be reworded, but no, Google is not trying to steal people's copyrights. I'm guessing as @denton said that this language is in Chrome to prepare for eventual picasa/blogger/etc integration - Jason B.

I'll agree to their intent but what you agree to as worded is what you are bound to. Rarely does intent work in your favor. - Lindsey Smith

and: (IANAL, but) you don't give up the rights to your pictures; you grant Google a license to display your pictures (according to the TOS of the particular service). This is to prevent someone from posting a picture on Picasa, and then trying to sue Google for displaying their picture to the whole wide world without paying them royalties (EDIT: what Jason B said). - Tudor Bosman

The deal is, Chrome is not a "service" it's an application... I don't upload anything TO Chrome... I use it to upload content to other services... but this seems to imply that using it as the transport mechanism also gives them rights to the content that I transport with it. - Lindsay Donaghe

read the fine print again its not just display rights as in other Google TOS's - Fred Grott

I think you all need to actually read the TOS. I quote: "11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services." All they essentially want is the right to *republish* them. How else will it work? I don't see anything particularly troubling there. - Vinay | विनय

The right to republish your work is a core right of copyright laws. If they take the right to republish my work without monetary compensation then they publish it anywhere, make money off of it and you get bent over and screwed royally - Lindsey Smith

@lindsay The whole point of Chrome is for google to start blurring the line between service and application. Before long you're going to start seeing tighter and tighter integration of the browser with the service (especially when the browser and service are made by the same company). This TOS uproar is probably 80% prepping for future integrations, 10% bad cut/paste job from existing EULAs and 10% poorly researched articles being posted to The Register - Jason B.

Nonetheless Jason . . . I don't want to make a mistake based on Google's mistake. They cover their ass . . . I'm going to cover mine. - Lindsey Smith

If I understand correctly, Chrome's EULA is identical to Google Terms of Service ( http://www.google.com/accounts... ), which is a general document applicable to all Google services and products. The section quoted in the article is titled "Content license from you" and you'll find it in the TOS of almost any service that accepts user-generated content. Since Chrome is a browser and not a web service, I think that section is not applicable. If you are worried about licensing or if you want to get the latest build of Google Chrome, install Chromium, the open source project used to create Google Chrome. - Ionut

Chromium snapshots: http://build.chromium.org/buil... (the license is BSD) - Ionut

Lindsey, Google is asking for a "non-exclusive license to reproduce", which means that you do not lose the rights. - Vinay | विनय

also worry about hidden or obscure "features" that make it easier for Google to track queries and browsing behavior to "improve" the browsing experience - Wilma Stoneflint

Vinay, I don't want Google to have any rights to republish something I created simply because I decided to use their browser. - Lindsey Smith

*yawn* - Dieter Schwarz

@Jason this all TOS stuff is all about one thing -- it is not enough to use dataceners data to make money for Google shareholders, so they sprawl further down the customer... this is LITERALLY as if bank would find counting your money on your account at their bank as NOT ENOUGH to do business and draws your to count money in YOUR REAL POCKETS - silpol

FYI, as suspected, cut and paste error (or something similar), and already fixed. http://beta.friendfeed.com/e/f... - Tudor Bosman

Tony Ruscoe shared an item on Google Reader

Announcing Google's New Browser

Wednesday at 3:31 am - Link

Quote: "Because Google Chrome was not launched externally until today, we haven't yet changed Google Analytics to recognize it when you segment by browser within reports. However - this will change in the coming weeks (until then, the browser will show as Firefox). We'll let you know when the change happens." So Google Analytics has been lying to us? Did they pick Firefox so that it would look less suspicious that Safari and get lost in the other stats? - Tony Ruscoe

"The browser will show as Firefox". Why not Safari? I suppose not many people used it before launch. - Ionut

ⓞnor posted a link

Yay Hooray | Google Chrome

Tuesday at 11:01 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

Hein Roehrig, Ruchira S. Datta, Chieze Okoye, Steve Weis and 3 other people liked this

Creative Commons at work. - ⓞnor via Bookmarklet

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives http://creativecommons.org/lic... - Ionut

Well, that's no fun. - ⓞnor

The Goodger one is the best. - j1m

Some people see "Creative Commons" and think that means they're free to do whatever they like. Could it get away with being parody? - Tony Ruscoe

Tony Ruscoe shared an item on Google Reader

Add Inline Language Translation to your Website with Google AJAX API

September 2 at 8:23 am - Link

John Mueller liked this

The solution has at least two major bugs: it doesn't split the text into words and it doesn't have a way to properly merge the results from the asynchronous requests. So you'll almost certainly get bad results. - Ionut

TOMHTML shared an item on Google Reader

IE8 ne protège pas tant que ça la navigation “Inprivate”

September 1 at 4:34 am - Link

I can't reproduce this. Web pages visited in private browsing mode don't appear in cache or browser history. - Ionut

Ionut shared an item on Google Reader

Dear Google Streetview: I'm Ready for My Retake

September 1 at 3:32 am - Link

From the post: "In the interest of setting the record straight I think it's incumbent on Google to send their little camera van back around and get a more accurate photo of how the house looks today. After all, I invested a lot of my vacation time this summer getting the landscaping done out front and the house looking as it does today." - Ionut

Self-centered much? - Michael J Cohen

Likey. - Russellreno

I heard similar requests, but this is one is pretty funny... "I think it's incumbent on Google to send their little camera van back around and get a more accurate photo." - Ionut

Matt Cutts posted a message on Twitter

“Huh. Turn on "Suggested Sites" and IE8 sends your queries, surfing data, IP address and clicks to MSFT. Read http://bit.ly/24y5er closely.”

September 1 at 12:26 am - Link

HollowMarkeD, Dana Willhoit, Tapio Kulmala, Chris Martin and 9 other people liked this

"some information such as IP, browser type, regional and language settings" - one assumes they already know the browser type :-) - Alex Gawley

I couldn't figure out how they show the suggested sites when you visit https://ieonline.microsoft.com... . They don't use cookies or user accounts. - Ionut

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There are certain scenarios that require user data to be sent in order to make the user experience better, as suggested by http://tinyurl.com/3yue6c. Which if you read closely, discloses that Google collects exactly the same information if the user installs Google Toolbar and opts in particular features. - Franci Penov

Hi, Franci Penov! Remind me what part of MSFT you work at? I guess I thought that Google's disclosure at http://bit.ly/2Jiwrg with the big red capital letters and disclosure in the first sentence was more clear than MSFT's disclosure, which was buried deep in the IE8 privacy page. - Matt Cutts

Doesn't it say that it is the search provider which collects this data, and not the browser? That means it's more equivalent to the third bullet on this page. http://www.google.com/intl/en/... - David Owens

Ah ok, wrong bit... - David Owens

9 processes are loaded with the browser in Windows (No doubt toolbar type tracking processes). You can turn them off but it's not as easy or obvious as recent efforts by Google and Yahoo to opt out. - Charlie Anzman

hmm.. well you can find out this much information about visitors to your websites and blogs too. But if MSFT finds out this info, they're blasted? - Imran Hussain via feedalizr

Matt, I work on Windows Live Toolbar. :-) I have not seen the big red letter warning you point to, as I have not installed Google Toolbar (exactly because of the product I work on). But you could've just mention that you have a problem with the disclosure clarity. I'll make sure your feedback gets to the IE guys. - Franci Penov

http://tinyurl.com/6q9vou - Chrome Privacy Policy. Not as obvious as Google Toolbar big red letter warning; I personally had to dig a little bit around before I found it. I'd say about as clear and discoverable as IE8 Privacy policy you complained about. :-) - Franci Penov

Franci Penov, thanks for passing on my feedback to the IE guys. I don't think Google Chrome has anything to hide (e.g. it doesn't send your browsing info to Google as you surf the web). In fact, I just did a separate write-up on the communication between Chrome and Google. Read it at http://bit.ly/2jnBYZ - Matt Cutts

Imran, I think it's fair to point out that IE8 gives users virtually no disclosure that their wholesale surfing data (including queries done on other search engines) will be sent to Microsoft if they turn on this innocent-sounding feature. - Matt Cutts

@mattcutts the Google reputation manager? :) - HollowMarkeD

Ionut posted a link

Google Groups & search

August 30 at 4:07 pm - Link

The top web search result is much better: http://www.google.com/search?q... - Ionut

[Google Search Group]: http://groups.google.com/group... - Ionut

[Google News Group]: http://groups.google.com/group... - Ionut

Google OS Forum: Ionut posted a link

Migrating FeedBurner to Google Accounts

August 30 at 3:54 pm - Link

Tony Ruscoe liked this

Insteading of sending an email, you can now complete a form. "Migration will soon be offered as a self-service process." - Ionut

Just done this. They'd sorted it within an hour so. - Tony Ruscoe

Ionut posted a link

TinEye Image Search - Open Signup

August 30 at 3:50 pm - Link

immaterial and John Mueller liked this

" What is TinEye? TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where and how that image appears on the web, or to find modified or edited versions." - Ionut

Ionut posted a link

Truth In Advertising

August 30 at 2:18 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

Paul Haahr liked this

"Spoof of the world of marketing - From Cannes Film Festival 2001 - Directed by Tim Hamilton". - Ionut via Bookmarklet

Ionut posted an entry on Google Operating System

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 - IE Looks Good Again

August 30 at 10:10 am - Link

Aram Zucker-Scharff, Cristi, Denis and Varun Mahajan liked this

How many reboots does it take? - John Mueller

One. - Ionut

1 unless you count the one's when you roll back to IE7 - Steven Hodson

+1 steven - Michael J Cohen

3 for me. - John Mueller

Google OS Forum: Tony Ruscoe posted a message

“I don't think importing the comments feed here really works because comments get truncated and have no context until you click through.”

August 28 at 7:57 am - Link

Blogger truncates the comments to 50 characters. It would be nice to post them as FriendFeed comments, but I don't think it's possible. - Ionut

Ionut shared an item on Google Reader

Search experiments, large and small

August 26 at 12:54 pm - Link

Philipp Lenssen liked this

"We figure out what works by running experiments - tiny tests for a small number of users which help us determine whether that feature helps or hurts. At any given time, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments on Google sites all over the world." - Ionut

Ionut posted a link

Apple's Steve Jobs: "Phelps Inspired and Invented the iPhone"

August 26 at 12:37 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

Kevin Cearns, Rodrigo Jaroszewski and Tom Harrison liked this

"Steve Jobs held a press conference today and revealed that Michael Phelps was the inspiration behind the iPhone. Jobs said in a pre-written statement, "In early 2003 Michael Phelps approached me with the idea, and at first I was skeptical--not to mention perplexed as to even how such technology would be created. However, Phelps came with the idea, design, and even a prototype. After discussion with our engineers they said it was the beyond the scope of our labs." - Ionut via Bookmarklet

Big lols. - Rodrigo Jaroszewski

The blog is called: "Michael Phelps Saves Children" http://phelpssaveschildren.blo... - Ionut

Tudor Bosman posted a link

Googleplex: Google's food perks on the chopping block

August 25 at 8:40 am - via Bookmarklet - Link

Kirb and Anne Bouey liked this

"There's no such thing as a free dinner. A worker at Google tells us the company is taking evening meals off the menu: "Google has drastically cut back their budget on the culinary program. How is it affecting campus? No more dinner. No more tea trolley. No more snack attack in the afternoon."" - Tudor Bosman via Bookmarklet

Note that this is from Valleywag, I have no inside information and don't (yet) know whether it's for real or not. - Tudor Bosman

ⓞnor, do you work at Google or have friends there? - Philipp Lenssen

"The company told CNBC’s Jim Goldman this afternoon that the rumors, started yesterday by Valleywag, are completely untrue and that they don’t know where they came from." http://www.alleyinsider.com/20... - Ionut

I am shocked, shocked to discover that once again ValleyWag has got something wrong. I'd expect this sort of thing from random bloggers but ValleyWag employs professional journalists.</sarcasm> - Adewale Oshineye

Ionut posted a link

Gears for Safari (Beta)

August 26 at 1:28 am - Link

John Mueller and Reto Meier liked this

Safari 3.1.1 under Mac OS X Tiger, version 10.4.11 or Leopard, version 10.5.3. Via http://www.golem.de/0808/61967... . - Ionut

Ionut shared an item on Google Reader

Using the W3C Geolocation API Specification today; Extending WhereAreYou

August 25 at 10:38 am - Link

Cool, but it didn't find my location. "Crap, I don't know. Good hiding!" - Ionut

Ionut posted a link

Google Desktop APIs: Tip: Detect gadgets running in Linux

August 21 at 3:17 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

Michael J Cohen liked this

"If you want to detect a Linux user, look for telltale signs such as stacks of O'Reilly books, an anti-MS worldview, and a stuffed penguin collection." - Ionut via Bookmarklet

Carl shared an item on Google Reader

Geography Fail

August 19 at 8:01 am - Link

Ionut and immaterial liked this

http://answers.yahoo.com/quest... - Ionut

Adewale Oshineye shared an item on Google Reader

The dumbing down of search…

August 18 at 11:36 am - Link

Nicole Simon and Patricia Hanrahan liked this

I don't think that's true. I searched for [paris -hilton] and Yahoo filtered the pages that include "Hilton": http://search.yahoo.com/search... - Ionut

From the Pandia article: "Yahoo! has also dropped support for the AND operator. This is not equally serious, as Yahoo! will do an AND search by default." So they dropped support for an option which has always been used by default ?! - Ionut

Ionut shared an item on Google Reader

Why GMail Went Down

August 16 at 2:17 pm - Link

The video is hilarious. - Ionut

Kevin Fox posted a link

Gmail on Day One

August 14 at 1:14 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link

Ross Hill, Diana Valerini, Dan Liebke, Svetlana Gladkova and 63 other people liked this

It's really interesting how the current UI, not having undergone any "Wow it's all different" iterations, is so similar yet different from where we started. - Kevin Fox via Bookmarklet

It reminds me how much I dislike JPG for screenshots :) - Paul Buchheit

Show 12 more comments

It took me a while to figure out what was going on here, until I realized you'd Bookmarket-ed a blog post from *2004*! That's ancient history, man! - Paul Wilcox

Great to see you had a Prius label in 2004 :) - Roshan Vyas

I am so glad it hasn't changed. - Steve Rubel

There's something to be said for good clean design. Tweaks are fine but not major overhauls all the time. I've always liked this layout. - Al Stevens

it would be fun to see one of the early caribou screenshots for additional historic context :) - Natala Menezes

Natala, http://friendfeed.com/e/eeb5ed... - Paul Buchheit

Archive is nice :D it is very interesting to see the evolution. Thanks Paul :) - Harun Baris Bulut

I love the fact the delete button wasn't introduced yet. I tell people about this and they don't believe me - Derek Coatney

not being able to delete was a bit strange, I remember. - Josh Haley

Delete was there from day one -- it was just in the "more actions..." menu. - Paul Buchheit

Is there any important feature in today's Gmail that hasn't been envisioned from the beginning? - Ionut

That's an interesting question. I guess it depends on your definition of "important" and "beginning". In the very beginning, the only definite vision was to make something "better". However, pretty much everything in there today had been prototyped or at least talked about well before launch (see the chat integration in http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-c... for example). As usual, coming up with the ideas is easy, but fitting them cleanly into the product is hard. - Paul Buchheit

The funny part about this is I was being sort of snarky but didn't really mean for Kevin to post the thing about the bandwidth. I had a legacy server in the Google datacenter from the Blogger acquisition that I was using to host shellen.com and evhead.com. Kevin went ahead and made screenshots of that thread anyway. :) I got a few angry comments from people on my blog that I was 'stealing from Google'. This is why the internet needs a sarcasm mark. - Jason Shellen

Yeah, I actually recalled that faux pas when I reblogged this now. 'Oops!' Psst, you don't still have that server in a Google datacenter, do you? FriendFeed could always use some free bandwidth... - Kevin Fox

I just assumed FriendFeed was being hosted from servers in a Google datacenter anyway. They wouldn't really miss the bandwidth anyway, would they? ;-) - Tony Ruscoe

Philipp Lenssen posted a link

Public Punishment Postcards

August 15 at 6:44 am - via Bookmarklet - Link

"Comic book covers presented at Cover Browser are republished within a fair use context." Why it's fair use? - Ionut

'Cause I don't show the inside, but just the cover of the book, comic etc., and then if you want to see the full thing you would need to buy it (like web shops show product covers). This specific postcard cover series is probably in the public domain though due to old age, so that's a bit different. - Philipp Lenssen

Ionut shared an item on Google Reader

A Designer's Guide to HTML Email

August 15 at 5:58 am - Link

"If you ever harbored a secret desire to rebuild your tattered relationship with IE6—to rekindle that flame—it’s easily done. Simply spend a little quality time working with HTML email and I guarantee you’ll have the words “I HEART IE6” tattooed on your left buttock by the second week... The Legion of Doom is an insidious crew of desperadoes led by the Evil Outlook 2007 and also including Gmail, Hotmail, and Lotus Notes. Each uses their own unique but evil super-powers to subvert and destroy your HTML rendering... Gmail actively strips all background images and will remove background-color information too if you’re not careful in how you declare it. It rewrites your email with a tangled web of random CSS classes that make it almost impossible to track which rule is doing what." - Ionut

Paul Buchheit posted a link

Microsoft Enviroment video reveals datacenter server numbers and power consumption? - istartedsomething

August 15 at 3:40 am - via Bookmarklet - Link

Sumit Chachra, Alex Power, xero, AlexScoble(Robert'sBro) and 13 other people liked this

Apparently Microsoft only has about 200,000 servers. (and Hotmail only 20,000) - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet

Apparently Gmail had more, didn't it? - Alex Kapranoff

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Who let them to take those screenshots :D ? - Harun Baris Bulut

How old is this? Who knows hows Chicago doing!?? - Jigar Mehta

It should be from Jan 2008. - Ionut

Didn't Google Calendar have just 113? http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/... - Tony Ruscoe

How many does Google have? - Ian

is it really 113 ? then google receives a big WOW from me :D - Harun Baris Bulut

Even Google Reader had around 200 servers one year ago. - Ionut

@Harun: I said *had* 113. That was almost two years ago and it's wasn't confirmed. - Tony Ruscoe

If this is accurate, each server consumes ~490W on average. Also 8 machines / rack. So these are pretty conventional data centers (~30A / rack) , holding pretty big machines. - Sanjeev Singh

Ionut shared an item on Google Reader

Smartphone Is Expected via Google

August 15 at 4:12 am - Link

Rohit Srivastwa liked this

"T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google's Android software, according to people briefed on the company's plans. The phone will be made by HTC, one of the largest makers of mobile phones in the world, and is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, perhaps as early as October." - Ionut

Philipp Lenssen posted an entry on Google Blogoscoped

The Google Acquisitions Black Hole

August 14 at 2:49 pm - Link

Voyagerfan5761, Karl, d e f c o n, John Lam and 32 other people liked this

Another one of those 'Like for linking' not 'Like for content'. I really want Grand Central to be open for all, and Jaiku - we barely knew ye! - Kevin Fox

People don't seem to understand that the smaller Google acquisitions (not YouTube, DoubleClick, etc) are generally for the people, not the product (or at least not the product as it is). - Paul Buchheit

Show 22 more comments

@Paul, totally. I work with great people everyday and a lot of them came as part of an acquisition and I couldn't imagine some of my projects without them. - Jonathan Terleski

@Paul People often don't understand that because it's not made clear when the acquisition is announced. - Kevin D. White

+1 Kevin. If a service has users pre-acquisition and the intention is that the service will be mothballed and the engineers re-distributed then that intention should be made clear to the users. I believe that Grand Central will eventually open up again, but Jaiku? And what's FeedBurner done lately? - Kevin Fox

@Kevin Given that all 3 services you've mentioned are working just fine and serving their existing users I'm not sure what more could be expected of them. Given that Google doesn't pre-announce stuff all you can know is that these things are still working. I think we all know better than to believe that because there are no user-facing changes or dramatic announcements that a service is dead. Sadly many of the pundits don't build software and so think that if you go more than a few months without feeding - Adewale Oshineye

the hype machine then you must be dead. There's no real way to refute these sorts of allegations without making thing worse. It's like being asked "when did you stop beating your wife?" - Adewale Oshineye

@Adewale: Sorry for any confusion. I wasn't making an allegation, I was raising a question. I honestly don't know what's going on at Jaiku, but I do know there are products that have been bought and augmented, products that have been bought, torn apart, and re-worked into other services, and products that have been bought for talent, where the service was mothballed and I'm openly wondering which category Jaiku and FeedBurner will end up in. Also, I would suggest that a social network service that has closed signups isn't "working just fine and serving their existing users" but that's not the point I was trying to make. Sorry if I ruffled any feathers. - Kevin Fox

As long as people understand that there is a difference between when they see on the outside and what is really happening on the inside. Obviously I can't comment on some stuff simply because it isn't public. But I appreciate that perception matters, of course. And vice versa, the public should appreciate that they're only seeing one part of what is going on. - DeWitt Clinton

@Kevin I can't speak for FeedBurner or even Jaiku. However the best way to learn what's going on with Jaiku is to join the site and follow jyri/teemu/termie. Drop me an email on adewale at gmail and I'll send you an invite if you don't already have an account. - Adewale Oshineye

@adewale, in your comment to Kevin, you said that these services were "working just fine." Maybe you don't use any of those services, or you have a very loose definition of what "just fine" is. These services are slowly being mothballed and deconstructed bit by bit. That is NOT fine. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

Google used to define innovation now they simply stifle it. Their motto: If you can't beat em, buy em and bury them in the backyard. - Matt Shaulis

Matt, I'll play Devil's advocate: What did Google ever innovate? They weren't the first search engine. They weren't the first company to sell CPC ads by auction. They weren't the first to do web mail, online documents, web video, IM, blogging, wikis, or any number of other things. Google's strengths are making incremental, yet essential, improvements and doing it on an unheard of scale. Immunity to Not Invented Here syndrome is a positive. - Steve Weis

Everything is incremental. Products don't have to be entirely new in order to be innovative, and in fact an entirely new product would probably be completely incomprehensible. - Paul Buchheit

Call me biased, but I still think Google Maps was a damned awesome launch. If you want to talk about acquisition success stories, you can't get much better than that. Not every acquisition works, but I think Google has got a way better track record than most, including some total home runs. - ⓞnor

Yeah, Google Maps was great, though the acquired product was actually a windows client, so it's also a good example of changing the product direction post-acquisition (for the better). - Paul Buchheit

Google Maps was a game changer. It really changed how we thought about what could be done with the web. - Jason Carreira

Yes, part of why I call it a success story is that it wasn't just Google buying something and slapping the brand on it. Where 2 had this crazy idea that you could pre-render maps for the entire world and use that to drive a totally different user experience, and they had a serious passion for high quality map rendering. Google knew a lot about Web design and large scale services, and a combined team brought it all together to launch something neither company would ever have pulled off by itself. - ⓞnor

@Mark You state that "hese services are slowly being mothballed and deconstructed bit by bit." I'm on the internal Google mailing lists for 2 out 3 of these services. I see them writing and checking in code on a daily basis. That's what I base my belief upon. What basis do you have for your claim? - Adewale Oshineye

@Paul exactly, talented people are a great reason for acquisition. Precisely why Google took over jaiku. Not because of the service, but because they got their hands on some really talented mobile guys - Alexander van Elsas

Adewale: I base them on the fact that I've been users far before acquisition on two of the three, and the fact that I'm really observant. GrandCentral is rotting away and getting less usable by the day, and FeedBurner continues to be robbed of major features that make it in any way an attractive solution. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

"Why not build new services and integrate at the same time? There are lots of opinions about the best way to go through integrations. Our perspective is that the time you lose trying to continuously merge an updated legacy codebase with a new rewrite causes you be in a world of never actually getting the integration done because you're constantly working on merge problems, which gives you less time to add new features OR get the new backend integration done, and eventually you kind of grind to a halt." ( http://blogs.feedburner.com/fe... ) - Ionut

@Mark You're still not getting it. Ade just told you he see's code being checked in for 2 of 3 of the services you mention. How does this equate to "rotting away?" WRT FeedBurner, exactly what major features was it robbed of that makes it unattractive? I've been a huge FB user since long before the acquisition so I'm curious about the functionality I should be missing. Everything still works like it did before for me. - Erica Baker

No, I think it's you guys who aren't getting it. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of Google stuff, but you folks are killing some of my favorite features. Replacing FAN with AdSense? Completely dumb move. GrandCentral used to work reliably. Now, half the time I can't download or listen to voicemail. You guys may be doing stuff to the code, but I'm here to say it isn't improving the service. These aren't temporary problems or issues - these are shifts in service levels. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

This is the kind of awesome targeting we've seen from AdSense for Feeds since Mashable switched over from FAN: (http://mashable.com/2008/08/15...). Gay pr0n and ponzi schemes. As I said earlier in the week, robbing FeedBurner of the one key advantage for publishers (i.e. sophisticated monetization) will kill FeedBurner. It's trivially simple to set up RSS redirection, which is the only other major benefit to FB. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

As for GrandCentral, I and the Mashable Staff use it to record our phone interviews. Or I should say *used* it. Reliability on recording retrieval has gotten so shoddy that we now turn to *TalkShoe* for something that's more reliable. As Cyndy and Alexander will likely tell you, when TalkShoe is more reliable than your product, you've got a problem. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

"Given that Google doesn't pre-announce stuff" Not true. - Philipp Lenssen