Google browser displacing desktop software

Google sees new browser displacing desktop software

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept 2 (Reuters) - Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is challenging Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) with its own Web browser that lets users run many applications that once worked only when installed on local PCs, executives said on Tuesday.

Google introduced a public trial version of its new browser software, Chrome, which is designed to handle not just text and graphics, but more complex computer programs.

Chrome, available in 43 languages in 100 countries at www.google.com/chrome, has been designed to download software and Web pages faster than existing browsers. It even allows users to keep working when one of its windows crashes.

This represents Google's long-anticipated head-on attack on Microsoft and its Internet Explorer, which has three-quarters of the Web-browsing market. Google has backed Mozilla Corp's Firefox browser, which holds about 18 percent of the market.

Google engineers and executives call Chrome a "fresh take on the browser," a 15-year-old technology that is supplanting 25-year-old desktop software as the basic way users interact with computers.

"You actually spend more time in your browser than you do in your car," said Brian Rakowski, group product manager for Google's browser project.

Chrome was seen by analysts as partly a defensive move due to Google's fear that the recently upgraded Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) could be used to lock out Google. Google's core business of Web search and related advertising depends on browsers.

A Microsoft executive said IE 8 gives users control over how and where they navigate, improves their day-to-day browsing experience, and keeps people safe from new security threats.

"Microsoft understands that Web browsing is crucially important for hundreds of millions of people, which is why we invest in Internet Explorer so heavily," Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer, said in a statement.

CHALLENGE TO MICROSOFT WINDOWS?

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Chrome was designed to address the shift to using software from within a Web browser rather than as locally installed computer applications running inside Microsoft Windows or some other operating system.

"I think operating systems are kind of an old way to think of the world," Brin told a group of reporters after the news conference at Google's Mountain View, California headquarters. "They have become kind of bulky, they have to do lots and lots of different (legacy) things."

Google believes any task done in a standalone desktop computer application can be delivered via the Web and Chrome is its bet that software applications can be run via a browser.

"We (Web users) want a very lightweight, fast engine for running applications," Brin said.

"The kind of things you want to have running standalone (on a computer) are shrinking," he said, adding that he still edits photos on his computer rather than using a Web program.

GOOGLE BORROWS FROM APPLE, FIREFOX

Chrome borrows liberally from other browsers running open-source software code, including Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Firefox, and company officials said they planned to fully share Chrome code with other developers.

"We have borrowed good ideas from others," Google Vice President of Product Management Sindar Pichai said. "Our goal here was to bring our point of view, but do it in a very open way."

Because Chrome relies on Apple's open-source WebKit software for rendering Web pages, it can run any application that runs on Apple's Safari Web browser, Pichai said.

"If you are a webmaster, and your site works in Apple Safari then it will work very well in Google Chrome," he said.

Greg Sterling, a Web analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence, said Google's entry into the browser market has echoes of the bruising "browser wars" of the late 1990s, when Microsoft crushed Web pioneer Netscape Communications.

But while the competition between Microsoft and Google is likely to produce many improvements for consumers, the likely fallout from the battle will be other browser makers that have only recently begun to pry market share away from Microsoft.

Sterling said Firefox could become a victim of "friendly fire" from Google as many of its users are the same early adopters who are most likely to switch and try a new browser.

"Firefox has softened up and paved the way for Google. Without Firefox, Chrome would not be possible," Sterling said.

Brin said Google planned to continue to work closely with Mozilla, whose primary financial backing has come from Google in recent years. He said he hoped to see future versions of Chrome and Firefox become more unified over time.

Chrome organizes information into tabbed pages. Web programs can be launched in their own dedicated windows.

Among Chrome's features is a special privacy mode that lets users create an "incognito" window where "nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer," according to a Google promotional guide. (Editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Braden Reddall)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0243444120080903?sp=true

Ajax Technology

Web Applications Building Got More Fun through Ajax Technology


Web applications are fun to build. They are like the fancy sportscar of Web sites. Web applications allow the designer and developer to get together and solve a problem for their customers that the customers might not have even know they had. That’s how the blogging tools like MovableType and Blogger came about after all. I mean, before Blogger, did you know you needed an online tool to build your Web site blog?

But most Web applications are slow and tedious. Even the fastest of them has lots of free time for your customers to go get a coffee, work on their dog training, or (worst of all) head off to a faster Web site. It’s that dreaded hourglass! You click a link and the hourglass appears as the Web application consults the server and the server thinks about what it’s going to send back to you.

Ajax is Here to Change That

Ajax (sometimes called Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a way of programming for the Web that gets rid of the hourglass. Data, content, and design are merged together into a seamless whole. When your customer clicks on something on an Ajax driven application, there is very little lag time. The page simply displays what they’re asking for. If you don’t believe me, try out Google Maps for a few seconds. Scroll around and watch as the map updates almost before your eyes. There is very little lag and you don’t have to wait for pages to refresh or reload.

What is Ajax?

Ajax is a way of developing Web applications that combines:

• XHTML and CSS standards based presentation
  
  
• Interaction with the page through the DOM
  
  
• Data interchange with XML and XSLT
  
  
• Asynchronous data retrieval with XMLHttpRequest
  
  
• JavaScript to tie it all together

Yahoo SearchMonkey Apps

Yahoo SearchMonkey Apps – Accept Challenge

Yahoo started a SearchMonkey Developer Challenge last week (Last on June 14, 08 Saturday). It was really a great challenging competition for developers to prove themselves and to earn an existing price by Yahoo. Yahoo accepted applications code from applicants on four different categories which are:

1. Best Enhanced Result
2. Best Infobar
3. Most Innovative Use of Structured Data
4. Best Data Service

Yahoo declared a $2,500 prize for each category which describes all enteries had a chance to win a grand prize of $10,000 by taking participates in all categories. After completion of the challenge Yahoo leaked out few interesting enteries which deserve to get prizes like Wikipedia Infobar and IMDB Enhanced Results all these applications had been added in Yahoo! Search Gallery.

Still, results are pending due to review on other applications as well but we hope for a better future of winning participant of each category.

Good Luck and happy continued developing!

Use power of WEB 2.0

How to Use power of WEB 2.0

The 2008 edition of Web 2.0 Expo has now ended. Check out all the highlights:

• Speaker Presentation Files
• Photos
• News and Coverage
• Video of Keynote Presentations
• Blog
• Live Twittering

Attending Web 2.0 Expo? Use some of the networking tools to connect with other attendees while you are here.

Web 2.0 technologies are empowering us in ways we could only have imagined even just a few years ago. We're able to build more, connect more, have more fun, sell more stuff, share more than ever before—and do it all faster. But as the pace of change and innovation accelerates, separating signal from noise, useful from annoying, genuine from fluff becomes increasingly challenging.

What tools and applications are right for a given project? How can we provide a more meaningful experience for users and customers? How can we have a positive impact on the world we live in? What are the ways we can create more value for our businesses? How do we gather and focus datapoints to deliver relevant information? How can we increase conversation and collaboration?

The second Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco takes the pulse of the Web ecosystem and looks to its future, training a spotlight across the Web 2.0 universe to illuminate how the Internet Revolution is being created and delivered. Web 2.0 Expo is for the builders of the next generation web: designers, developers, entrepreneurs, marketers, business strategists, and venture capitalists, people who have experiences to share and a passion for learning--the hot new thing, lessons from failures, innovations and inspirations, and the practical applications of all of the above.

What will you do with the power of Web 2.0?

Experience Web 2.0 Expo

A companion event to the Web 2.0 Summit, Web 2.0 Expo is an expanded, inclusive gathering for the technology and business communities through a combined conference and tradeshow. Read more about Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco

Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco happens April 22-25, 2008 at Moscone West. Whether you're new to the Web 2.0 world or an expert or in Ajax, Ruby, tagging, the social graph, user experience, meta-programming, search engine marketing, community building, web operations, user-generated content, building startups from scratch, or "Web2.0-ifying" the enterprise, come to Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco and immerse yourself in the Web 2.0 experience.

Tracks at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2008:

• Strategy and Business Models
• Marketing and Community
• Design and User Experience
• Fundamentals
• Development
• Focus on Mobile Web
• Focus on Web Operations
• Focus on Social Platforms
• Sponsored Sessions

In addition to on-stage sessions, keynote presentations, workshops, panel discussions, and demos, Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco will provide ample opportunity for all participants to engage face-to-face:

• A vibrant Expo Hall bustling with essential products, tools, services, and projects at the cutting edge of technology
• Launch Pad, an opportunity to publicly unveil new companies and products
• Web2Open, a space where any participant can lead a conversation with other attendees
• Expo Booth Crawl, parties, and other fun networking events

The inaugural Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco attracted 8,500 attendees from companies and organizations like:

Adobe Systems, America Online, American Greetings Interactive, Apple, BA Venture Partners, BP, Centers for Disease Control, Discovery Health Media, Dow Jones, EMC, Experian Interactive, First Round Capital, Hitachi, Ltd., Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, IEEE, Intel, Intuit, Jet Propultion Laboratory, Labrador Ventures, MTV Networks, Magazine Publishers of America, McGill University,, Merrill Lynch, Monster, Motion Picture Association of America, Nokia, North Bridge Venture Partners, Northrop Grumman, RealNetworks, Simon & Schuster, Standard & Poor's, Sun Microsystems, The Heritage Foundation, The Wall Street Journal Online, Turner Broadcastings Systems Inc., University of Richmond, University of Southern California, Walt Disney, WhitePages.com, and many, many more.

yahoo bid microsoft Deal collapse

Yahoo bid Microsoft Deal's collapse good news for Google

Microsoft needs to rethink its strategy now that it has backed away from its $47.5 billion proposal to acquire Yahoo. Yahoo needs to show Wall Street that it is better off on its own.

Google, on the other hand, appears to have come out on top of the tussle.

The Internet giant has beaten back the biggest threat to its online advertising business, a combination of its No. 2 and No. 3 competitors. It remains No. 1 in online search and search advertising. And it may even emerge with a new advertising partnership with Yahoo.

"There was no outcome that would hurt Google," said Shar VanBoskirk, principal analyst with Forrester Research. "This outcome is good news for them. Now they have a deflated Microsoft and a repositioning Yahoo, and they're still as strong as they were before."

On Monday, Google shares climbed more than 2 percent, or $13.61 per share, to $594.90 per share.

A spokesman for Google declined to comment. But early on, Google made clear its perspective on Microsoft's unsolicited bid: "Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo raises troubling questions," said David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer in a blog.

And, in the end, Google came through as the spoiler of Microsoft's ambitious unsolicited bid. Last month, Google tested a potential advertising partnership with Yahoo, with Yahoo outsourcing its search advertising business to Google. That, in turn, became one of the key reasons for Microsoft's retreat.

In Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's letter to Yahoo announcing the dropping of the bid, Ballmer said that the possibility of Yahoo and Google going ahead with such a partnership was a particular concern.

Among the issues, Ballmer said he felt Yahoo's agreement with Google could undermine Yahoo's advertising business, raise regulatory concerns, spur Yahoo engineers to leave the company and give Google too much control over prices.

"Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft," Ballmer said.

The future of the Yahoo and Google partnership isn't clear, now that Microsoft has withdrawn its bid. But in the end, experts said, Microsoft became a catalyst for Yahoo even to consider such a deal.

Google has been striking similar advertising agreements with other sites, such as MySpace and - though some also believe such a deal was just as helpful to Yahoo to fend off Microsoft - stood to benefit from making similar arrangements with Yahoo. "They've probably been lobbying for this for years," said David Liu, co-head of the Internet and digital media group at Jefferies & Co.

The only downside for Google? That the Microsoft-Yahoo battle didn't draw out longer.

If Microsoft had proceeded with a hostile takeover bid, as many had expected, the move would have distracted Google's top two rivals for some time, allowing Google to pull ahead even more. It would also give Google time to digest its recent acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick.

Instead, now Yahoo and Microsoft have something to prove, and will likely soon start trying to demonstrate that they're capable of competing against Google.

"That's going to be more of an acute challenge to Google," said Andrew Frank, a research vice president with Gartner.

Google dominates the online advertising business with more than 57 percent of the market, according to eMarketer, followed by Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL. EMarketer estimates that marketers will spend some $25.9 billion this year in online advertising.

"It's great news for Google," said Randy Skoglund, executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership, a Washington, D.C., group of technology professionals. "A Yahoo-Microsoft combination could have emerged as real competition for Google. This ensures they don't have a real competitor in the market."

Lintas Pinstorm tieup digital advertising

Lintas and Pinstorm tie up for digital advertising

Lintas Media Group and Pinstorm announce a Rs100 crore Performance Alliance that will boost their offline and online offerings

Mumbai: Pinstorm and Lintas Media Group have announced a significant non-equity partnership. Designed to push clients to performance-driven media choices, the alliance between the two leading firms in the offline and online worlds will put further pressure on traditional agencies and media houses. This move is being seen in media circles as a positive step towards a more evolved phase in digital advertising.

Lynn de Souza of the Rs1,800 crore Lintas Media Group said, “We don’t think that just buying a digital agency will contribute to our client’s success. What attracted us to Pinstorm was their pure adherence to pay-for-performance – a vastly different model to the commission and retainer structures that Indian clients are used to. We think this model can go a long way in bringing accountability and transparency to investments in advertising.”

The pay-for-performance model was pioneered by Google and Yahoo, and has been pushed further by Pinstorm, India’s only MNC digital ad firm, where the agency pays for the media and the creative – and the advertisers just pays for results.

Mahesh Murthy, founder of Pinstorm said, “around the world, media costs are going up and clients are cutting commissions and retainers because they are unable to see how advertising is performing. At Pinstorm, we simply ask the client to pay for the prospects or results we deliver. Our alliance with Lintas comes from our joint belief that the Rs16,000 crore Indian advertising industry needs a new model. By working together, pay-for-performance advertising can be brought into the mainstream of advertiser choices.”

The alliance estimates that they will be able to drive an incremental Rs100 crore of advertising to move over from traditional models to a performance-driven model in the next 12 months. “Digital advertising accounted for just 4% of spend in India last year. With this alliance and other efforts, investments in digital advertising will cross the Rs1,000 crore mark, almost 100% growth over last year” said Murthy.

“An industry only grows when there is pay-for-performance. For too long have clients worried that their agencies and publishers are simply recommending higher media spends because that’s how they earn more. That era will soon end. Our work with Pinstorm is to collaborate on clients to give performance-driven options initially across digital media - but we hope over time to grow the same basis to traditional media like broadcast, print and outdoor too” added de Souza.

The Lintas-Pinstorm alliance will first come into effect on Lintas’ roster of clients and soon expand to other businesses. Lintas Media Group is among the largest media agencies in India, managing a spend of over Rs1,300 crore on broadcast, print, outdoor and other media for clients like Idea, Bajaj Auto, Maruti Suzuki, ITC, Sony, UTI and Naukri.

Pinstorm is the largest independent digital advertising firm in South East Asia, with offices in Bombay, Delhi, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing and Santa Clara in Silicon Valley. It uses proprietary technologies across search engine marketing (SEM) search optimization (SEO), email, SMS advertising, online display advertising, online community creation and blog management to handle the performance advertising needs of Yatra, Jet Airways, Taj Hotels, Share khan and HSBC in India.

The alliance is effective immediately and in place across all advertisers in India.

Google Code Blog: Introducing the Google Visualization API

We spend a fair amount of time on data display and visualization projects at Google, and we have found that the "last mile" of these projects tend to become full projects in and of themselves.

Thus when we acquired Gapminder last year, we were excited by the opportunity to use Gapminder's powerful visualization techniques to bring new life and usefulness to Google datasets. And we were not alone -- the web is home to a vibrant community of developers who build amazing visualization applications.

With the community in mind, we're please to introduce the Google Visualization API, which is designed to make it easier for a wide audience to make use of advanced visualization technology, and do so in a way that makes it quick and easy to integrate with new visualizations.

There are a two key elements here: simplicity and ubiquity. We hope we nailed the first, but of course we want to hear your feedback on that. The second will take more time, but we hope we're on the right path. We're releasing this API at an early stage so we can get continuous feedback and be sure we're building it the right way.

This launch is in tandem and in cooperation with the Google Docs team, who just announced support for gadgets and the Visualization API in spreadsheets. This includes a set of gadgets created by Google and several other companies, including some that add pivoting, grouping, and other new functionality to your spreadsheets. You can see all of those in our 'featured' list within the visualization gallery, which includes the Gapminder Motion Chart that has proven especially popular among within Google.

We hope you're as excited about the Google Visualization API as we are -- please be sure to tell us what you think. We'll also be at Google I/O on May 28-29 for deeper discussions about the API or visualization techniques in general.