Google Archive

A significant instant messaging project between Google and America Online is now underway. Google and AOL plan to let their respective instant messaging features communicate. This way, someone using Google Talk could chat with an AIM user, and vice versa.

Google has apparently won the battle to retain AOL's affections, edging out a bid from Microsoft. But the cost is high, and establishes several precedents for the Mountain View company that might have been unthinkable a couple of years ago. While AOL's parent Time Warner has yet to make a public statement, published reports claim that Google has paid $1 billion to take a 5 per cent stake in the media giant. AOL's sales team gets access to the Google Network, and Google will also give Time Warner's media properties preferential treatment.

"Google Base is a place where you can add all types of information that we'll host and make searchable online. You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local."

"In a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid."

Alan Ritter, Western Washington Univ. senior and computer science major, received recognition on Oct. 16 for his successful participation in Google's Summer of Code. He spent the summer working on a code which makes Windows network drivers adaptable to the NetBSD operating system.

"I was thinking about all the cool stuff Google has done when I realized that none of it was original. The folks at Microsoft, long known for being copycats, must be furious, since nobody has ever accused Google of the same thing. Everything Google has done has been derivative. The search engine was taken from the AltaVista idea of huge computer farms. Gmail is a clone of Hotmail. The Google Chat is nothing special. Orkut is a copy of Friendster. Even the invention of ads targeted to search requests is derivative of the old GoTo.com search engine.

Google may not be releasing an open-source operating system or a desktop suite, but the company is promoting, supporting and using open-source software. In a Ziff Davis Internet interview, Chris DiBona, Google's open source program manager, said that while he can't "talk about any future products," he also added that, to the best of his knowledge "Google has no plans to release an operating system or an office suite."

"I couldn't help but make a joke with the title, because it's seemingly right on the money. You see, Google is getting ready to take the wraps off of a new service called Google Base. If it can be posted online, it would appear that they would, in fact, prefer it belong to them. At least, they'll store it for you and make it searchable."

It seems like all hell has broken loose in the internet services and instant messaging arena. Just yesterday, Microsoft and Yahoo announced that they will make their IM technology work together, and now Google and ComCast have shown interest in AOL. All this just shortly after Google and Sun teamed up.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has quashed speculation that the giant ad broker is to introduce a web-based Office suite. "We don't have any plans," he told Web 2.0 conference organizer John Battelle. However Brin left the door open a little. Documents would be easier to work with in the future, he promised, but he didn't think a fat client was the way to go.

San Francisco's plan to blanket the city with wireless Internet access at little or no cost to users might bring a smile to the face of residents who would like to save money. But an array of entrenched telecommunications interests, including Internet service providers and telephone and cable television companies, are far from beaming.

Sun and Google today announced an agreement to promote and distribute their software technologies to millions of users around the world. The agreement aims to make it easier for users to freely obtain Sun's Java Runtime Environment, the Google Toolbar and the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite, helping millions of users worldwide to participate in the next wave of Internet growth. More here.

Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt will sit down with Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy on Tuesday morning to outline a collaborative effort between the two companies. It's not clear what the partnership will entail, but Sun has already begun to hype the event. More about this here.

Google's Summer of Code, a program that matched computer science students with free and open source software projects and paid for results, is over. Despite some organizational problems, the SOC attracted an overwhelming response from both students and projects, and early indications are that the program has produced a wide range of projects and attracted a number of promising students to the FOSS communities. Whether the program will be repeated, however, remains undetermined.