Google Archive

Google Releasing Package for the Office

Submitted by twickline 2006-08-28 Google 12 Comments

Starting Monday, Google will offer Google Apps for Your Domain, a free package of programs for businesses, universities and other organizations. Workers will be able to send e-mail with Gmail, Google's two-year-old Web-based mail service, but messages will carry their company's domain name. The package also includes Google's online calendar, instant-messaging service, and Page Creator, a Web page builder.

Andrew Morton Moves to Google

Submitted by diegocg 2006-08-07 Google 35 Comments

In a surprising move, Andrew Morton, the Linux kernel co-maintainer, announced that he is moving to Google and that he will continue being a Linux maintainer. A detailed article can be found here: "It is beneficial to me (and to Linux) that I be in day-to-day contact with people who use Linux for real things. Hence Google is a good all-round fit."

Interview with Google’s Chris DiBona and Greg Stein

Submitted by SilentBob4 2006-08-04 Google 3 Comments

Mad Penguin interviewed Google's Chris DiBona and Greg Stein at OSCON 2006 last week regarding their new Google Code offering.

Google Announces Code Repository

Submitted by ma_d 2006-07-27 Google 26 Comments

Google has created a repository system for software development much like SourceForge. The system even checks new project names against SourceForge's database to ensure no one sets up conflicting names. Greg Stein, an open source engineer within Google and chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, said: "We really like SourceForge, and we don't want to hurt SourceForge or take away projects." Instead, Stein says that the goal is to see what Google can do with the Google infrastructure, to provide an alternative for open source projects.

Where’s My Google PC?

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-06 Google 33 Comments

"Check out YouOS for 10 minutes, then imagine the same project on a billion-dollar budget. Now do you think the mythical Google PC that's allegedly being secretly developed in Silicon Valley - or in China or on a Ukrainian IRC channel - will become reality? It makes sense for Google to develop a Web-based PC. To be clear, a Google PC needn't involve a new gadget like the 'thin client' gear of the 1990s. Every computer in the world is capable of running a Web browser. We might not realize it, but we all already have Google PCs."

Google to Congress: ‘We Will Not Tolerate Net Abuse’

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-04 Google 45 Comments

Google has strong words for legislators who are currently mulling over net neutrality issues: the company will take any perceived abuse to the US Department of Justice. Speaking at a news conference in Bulgaria, Internet pioneer and now Google VP Vint Cerf said that the company will be 'happy' if legislators ultimately opt to support net neutrality principles, but in the absence of such support, the company will take a wait-and-see approach. "If we are not successful in our arguments... Then we will simply have to wait until something bad happens and then we will make known our case to the Department of Justice's anti-trust division," he said.

Exploring the Google Web Toolkit

Submitted by anonymous 2006-06-27 Google 4 Comments

The recently released Google Web Toolkit is a comprehensive set of APIs and tools that lets you create dynamic Web applications almost entirely in Java code. However, GWT is something of an all-or-nothing approach, targeted at a relatively small niche in Web application development market. This article shows you what GWT can do and will help you decide if its the best tool to use for your web development.

Why Google OS Already Exists

Submitted by Satish Shah 2006-06-21 Google 35 Comments

"Let's face it. Google pretty much owns the Internet landscape. Unless something truly unexpected happens within the web community, I see no real indicator that they'll lose their market share anytime soon. This also opens them up to other online opportunities should they decide to pursue them. One such opportunity is believed to be the much famed idea of a Google OS. The rumors have been floating around back and forth for awhile now and many people believe that it's simply a matter of time. Well I'm here to tell you that this is never going to happen; at least not in a form that we might expect to see, that is."

Review: Google Spreadsheets

Submitted by Jane Walker 2006-06-19 Google 12 Comments

"Google Spreadsheets are in the 'sneak peek' phase. The two big questions seem to be a) why would anyone want to use a potentially non-secure spreadsheet with limited capabilities, and b) how will we refer to the primitive era before online spreadsheets, which revolutionized life as we know it (which, of course, leads to a related question: what kind of silver jumpsuit is most comfortable when you're crunching numbers?)?"

Google Earth 4 Beta for Windows, Linux, MacOS

Submitted by fish 2006-06-13 Google 53 Comments

Google has released a beta version of Google Earth 4, which runs on all the three major platforms. "We got so excited around here about the first anniversary of Google Earth that we decided to celebrate a bit early. Beginning today, you can download a brand new version, Google Earth 4. Running on OS X? Feel the love. Prefer Linux? Ditto. Yes, we're releasing simultaneously for PC, Mac (universal binary for full performance on both Intel and PowerPC based Macs) and for the first time ever, native support for popular Linux distributions." They have also seriously increased the amount of high-res images, so that now about 20% of the world's landmass is in high-res. Including my hometown, Warmenhuizen .

Google Releases Browser Sync Tool for Firefox

Submitted by rm6990 2006-06-10 Google 19 Comments

Google has released a new tool which allows users to synchronize their Cookies, Saved Passwords, Bookmarks, History and tabs from their last session for the Firefox web browser. All of this data is uploaded to Google's servers continuously (and has the option to be encrypted), and then downloaded every time you launch Firefox on any computer with the extension installed.

Google Offers Spreadsheet Beta

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-06 Google 46 Comments

Google is launching an online spreadsheet that will let you load Excel files and share documents online. Up to 10 people can work on the spreadsheet at the same time - the names of people editing and reading it will appear in a chat window. Users can save the documents to their Google account or export them as .csv, .xls or html files. Like the launch of Gmail, Google is limiting the number of new users for software - still in beta - to avoid overloading its systems. Cnet wonders, should Microsoft be worried?

Google File System Exposed

Submitted by Slassher 2006-05-29 Google 25 Comments

"I had a course on distributed system in my Engineering curriculum, and I was really fascinated with the way people use this technology for work. As my interest grew in this field, I started to read a lot on this. As a result, while browsing a few pages, I found a link to Google File System. Honestly, it didn’t make any sense to me. Where would Google deploy this proprietary file system? Or is Google planning to have an operating system? I decided to have a look at it nonetheless and here’s a quick overview of my findings."

Dell, Google Team Up

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-26 Google 21 Comments

Dell and Google have struck a deal, Google's CEO confirmed on May 25. Speaking at an investor conference in Las Vegas, Google CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledged that Dell and Google have reached an agreement. Schmidt provided few details of the agreement that earlier speculation had placed in the $1 billion range. So far a co-branded Web site is the most visible aspect of the collaboration, but the cracks that occurred in the Microsoft/Dell/Intel troika when Dell allowed AMD to come to its party, have now reached the earthquake stage.

Google’s Picasa Ported to Linux Using Wine

Submitted by mike_m 2006-05-26 Google 111 Comments

Google Labs has released Picasa for Linux, ported using Wine by CodeWeavers. The free Picasa download is available now. My Take: The software requirements are fairly hefty in that some features require cutting edge programs like HAL and a 2.6+ kernel, but this is fantastic news for Linux users. Picasa is an excellent program that rivals iPhoto. Update by AS : Google ported Picasa using Wine, but it was still a LOT of work and the result was completely effective. Please read more on the WineHQ mailing list. Update 2: You do not need Wine installed to run this - it's a self-contained Wine lib. Also, the Picasa download apparently doesn't work from all countries. Update by TH: Here's a review.

Google Downplays Microsoft Battle

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-11 Google 16 Comments

At its annual Press Day Wednesday, Google introduced three new services while attempting to kill the popular story in the media that it is involved in a fierce winner-take-all battle with Microsoft. Instead, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that there would never be a single victor. Schmidt said that having a single search engine would stagnate innovation. Competition, on the other hand, would support growth as well as advertising prices, and he added that there was room in the industry for more than one strategy.

Interview: Google’s Chris DiBona

Submitted by SilentBob4 2006-05-11 Google 14 Comments

Mad Penguin has published a short review of the Penguicon 4.0 convention and has an interview with Chris DiBona of Google. When asked what percentage of people at Google use Linux, he replied: "Probably way more than half. I don't know the exact ratios though. All the developers use it and most of the engineers and sysadmins."

Google Accuses Microsoft on IE7 Search

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-02 Google 82 Comments

Google has made informal complaints to competition authorities in Europe and the US about default settings in Microsoft's IE7. The latest Microsoft browser includes a small window so users can search without opening up a specific page. The default setting sends users to MSN for searches - just as equivalent features in Opera and Firefox send browsers to Google. A spokesman for the search giant told the New York Times it was concerned Microsoft was limiting choice. My take: ...

Review: Google SketchUp Beta

Submitted by DigitalDame 2006-04-28 Google 23 Comments

PCMag reviews Google's SketchUp beta. "Google SketchUp Beta, the brand new, free 3D drawing tool isn't an obvious fit for the Google desktop application canon. However, this blend of vector-based 3D drawing and CAD-like control lets you rapidly build 3D models that can be exported to numerous bitmap and compressed file formats and, more importantly, geo-coded and shared on the company's Google Earth satellite imagery program, which is also free. So, it's a undeniably cool, oddball app that has the potential to turn one of Google's most popular services, Google Earth, into an even more powerful and personal tool."

Google Summer of Code 2006

Thom Holwerda 2006-04-15 Google 12 Comments

"A number of you have emailed us with one question on your minds: Will there be a Summer of Code this year? The answer, as you might have guessed, is yes! The SoC is our program to introduce students to the world of Open Source software development. Last year of the 8744 applicants, 419 students were accepted into the program and more than 80% of them succeeded, which means they received the full stipend of $4500. As of today, we're taking in applications from mentoring organizations, so watch that list of mentoring organizations grow!"