Microsoft's Loss, Google's Gain. Don Dodge Gets A New Job

It was just 11 days ago that Microsoft’s “ambassador to startups” Don Dodge waslaid off as part of a broader workforce reduction. Last week he showed up in Silicon Valley to “see friends” as he put it. But it was clear that he was also interviewing for jobs.

We sat down with him to do a proper exit interview while he was in town.

I got a few tips from Googlers that he was seen roaming their Mountain View headquarters, and I confirmed tonight that he has been offered a job at the company. He has accepted, and will shortly begin working for the company that he only recently considered the enemy.

It’s unheard of for Google to go from a first interview to an offer in such a short period of time. For Dodge, the process from first interview to first day on the job was less than a week.

He’ll be working for another ex-Microsofter, Vic Gundotra. Gundotra worked 15 years at Microsoft as General Manager of Microsoft’s developer outreach efforts. He joined Google in 2007 as VP Engineering, responsible for mobile applications and developer evangelism.

Dodge will have a similar job at Google as he did at Microsoft – developer evangelism. He’ll be focusing on Google Apps.

 

 

by Michael Arrington - techcrunch

Google to replace HTTP and make web twice as fast

Bangalore: Google's Chromium group has announced an effort to replace the traditional Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) web browser language with a new protocol that supposedly boosts Internet browsing by up to 55 percent. HTTP currently is the protocol used by all web servers and browsers, hence the "http" in front of web addresses. But, as noted by Ars Technica, HTTP becomes inefficient when transferring many small files on many modern websites.

 

By contrast, Google's cleverly named SPDY protocol can compress and handle the individual requests via one connection that's SSL-encrypted. That allows higher-priority files to slip through immediately without becoming backed up behind large files. 

SPDY has shown up to 55 percent web page loading when tested under lab conditions, and the Google team has released their source code for public feedback.

But Ars Technica raises some points of caution about the mandatory SSL encryption requiring more processing power from small devices and computers alike. Requiring SSL could also worsen the problem where server operators neglect SSL encryption and unintentionally encourage people to ignore warnings about unsecured websites.

Still Google's team recognizes these problems and has already proposed workaround solutions. An open approach has already proven a smashing success on Google's Android operating system, but redesigning the Internet's architecture will undoubtedly prove trickier in the days to come.

 

Courtesy - siliconindia

Go: Google's new open source programming language

Google never seems to just be satisfied with the status quo, and when they run out of fields to compete in they create their own! Google’s new “Go” programming language is one of their newest ventures, a language which is an amalgamation of Python and C++.

 

The Go language, in development since September 2007, has been unveiled by Google along with the release of a free and open source compiler. In fact, Google has released both a stand-along compiler implementation with cryptic names such as 6g (amd64 compiler), 8g (x86 compiler), and 5g (ARM compiler) and one which is a front-end for GCC (gccgo).

Born out of frustration with existing system languages, Go attempts to bring something new to the table, and mix the ease of dynamically typed and interpreted languages with the efficiency of compiled languages.

 

So why make a new programming language?

 

Google believes that the current languages have run their course. The prominent languages in use today (C/C++, Java, C#) are all based around a similar syntax, and updating and adding new features in these language consists of piling on libraries, with little or no upgrade to the core of the language itself. What Google intends to do requires more than just the addition of a new library.

Hello World in Go

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {

  fmt.Printf("Hello, ??n")

}

 

The landscape of computing has changed a lot since C, and as Google notes “Computers are enormously quicker but software development is not faster.” Languages have had to morph quite a bit to take on support concepts such as parallel processing, and garbage collection.

 

Go, on the other hand has been designed by Google from the ground up as “a concurrent, garbage-collected language with fast compilation”.

 

In order to not alienate the majority of developers though, its syntax is quite similar to C, and would not take much time for a developer to catch on to.

 

Go has accomplished some impressive feats. The language is designed to compile fast and Go can compile a “large" program in a few seconds on a single computer. It is designed to simplify the creation of application which can better utilize today’s multi-core processors. The language supports concurrent execution and communication between concurrent processes natively, and is fully-garbage collected.

 

Goroutines allowed are Google’s answer to threading in Go, and any function call which is preceded by the go statement runs in a different goroutine concurrently. A feature called channels allows for easy communication and synchronization between such routines.

 

Unlike other object oriented languages, Go has a much “simplified” type structure, which disallows sub-classing! Go offers a different flavour of object oriented programming using interfaces, which Google believes will simplify use.

 

By using interfaces, explicit type hierarchies need not be defined, instead, a type will satisfy all interfaces which are subsets of its methods. The relationships between types and interfaces need not be defined explicity! This can have some interesting implications as people can add interfaces to connect unrelated types even later in the development of an application.

 

Go seems inspired by Python as well. Python has been one of Google’s favoured languages and was the sole language supported on Google’s AppEngine when it launched. Like Python, Go supports “slices”, which allow you to refer to parts of arrays using a simple syntax. Thus for an array “a” with 100 elements, a[23,42] will result in an array with elements 23 through 42 of a. Go also tracks the length of arrays internally, further simplifying array usage. Additionally, Maps in Go allow you to create “arrays” with custom index types, and are a native feature of the language.

 

One consistent point in the features of Go is that it is better to have one excellent implementation of commonly used features such as garbage collection, strings, maps etc. rather than have them rethought and re-implemented in each program.

 

As nearly all Google products, Go is “beta” and not yet suitable for production use. By releasing it early Google hopes to garner a community around it and hopes that enough people will be interested in it to justify continued development.

 

Get out there and grab Go now! Like any Google product it has the capacity to become standard for the next generation.

 

Google Acquires Gizmo5

Google confirms the acquisition of Gizmo5, a proprietary SIP soft phone. "The Gizmo5 network uses open standards for call management, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). However, the Gizmo5 client application is proprietary software and uses several proprietary codecs, including GIPS, iSAC, the wideband adaptive codec made popular by Skype," explains Wikipedia. Gizmo5 is "the only SIP service without PSTN-based US phone numbers that may be used with Google Voice."

"While we don't have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5's engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience. Current Gizmo5 users will still be able to use the service, though we will be suspending new signups for the time being, and existing users will no longer be able to sign up for a call-in number," mentions Google.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Gizmo5 morphing into a new version of Google Talk, with built-in support for Google Voice.

Google plans to restructure programming with Go

Bangalore: Google software luminaries such as Unix Co-creator Ken Thompson believe that they can help boost both computing power and programmers' abilities with an experimental programming language project called Go. 

The language has been tested internally at Google, but is still at an experimental stage, so the search giant is releasing it as open-source code in the hope that it will get help with its future development. "We developed Go because we had become a bit frustrated with how difficult software development has become in the last 10 years or so," said Rob Pike, Principal Software Engineer at Google. 

So far, Google's Go project consists of the programming language, compilers to convert what programmers write into software that computers can run and a runtime package that endows Go programs with a number of built-in features. It's most similar to C and C++, but, Pike said, it employs modern features and has enough versatility that it could even be used within web browsers, reports CNET News.

Go aims to improve on the way existing programming languages manage dependencies, which are the software components that applications re-use, such as libraries, Pike said. The language is also designed to handle multiprocessor work particularly well, thanks to its concurrent programming model.

Google started working on Go about two years ago and devoted a team to work on it full time about a year ago. It was conceived as a language for systems programming, such as web servers, storage systems and databases. However, Google is open to seeing it branch out into other areas.

At this point, Go is not used in any user-facing Google service or application, since it still has to mature, which is where external programmers come into the picture. "We need better libraries and tools, and the open-source community is great at helping you with things like that," Pike said.

By creating a new programming language, Google continues making inroads into the realm of computing building blocks, prompted by a sense of urgency at making them better. This motivation has also led Google to embark on developing the Android mobile operating system, the Chrome PC browser and the still-unreleased Chrome operating system. 

 

By    siliconindia news bureau

Google Buys AdMob

Google acquired AdMob, a mobile ad company well-known for its innovative solutions to monetize iPhone apps and iPhone-optimized web sites. "AdMob is the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace, offering solutions for discovery, branding and monetization on the mobile web."
"Publishers and developers are increasingly searching for ways to make more money from their content in the rapidly evolving online mobile space. Google is working hard to provide those means of monetization so that mobile content can grow as quickly as we'd all like it to. AdMob accelerates this process for us with their talent and technology," explains Google. "Google currently makes a very small amount from mobile ads relative to our overall revenue, but the prospects for this space are excellent."

In the past year, Google has launched many feature that improved mobile ads: a new search ad format for iPhone and Android phones, ads for mobile apps, better AdSense ads for smartphones.

"Despite the tremendous growth in mobile usage and the substantial investment by many businesses in the space, the mobile web is still in its early stages. We believe that great mobile advertising products can encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem. That's what has us excited about this deal," mentions a Google blog post.

Google paid $750 million for AdMob, the third biggest Google acquisition after DoubleClick ($3.1 billion) and YouTube ($1.65 billion).

 

 

Courtesy – Google news

Google Dashboard to Control User Data

Several Google obsessed people don't know the amount of Google they use for different services. Probably, one won't realize the statistics of data stored in multiple Google services at that same time. Google has introduced the all new Google Dashboard feature that displays a consolidated summary of information related to a particular Google Account.

Access your dashboard at www.google.com/dashboard and log in with Google Account credentials if required. Otherwise, head to Manage Accounts page and check Dashboard under "Personal Settings".




Google Dashboard is a service console that shows all personal data stored across all Google Products of a Google Account user. Users can change the privacy settings, delete data from a particular Google service and read their privacy policies. Basically, Google has given the key to control user's data in the user's hands to observe better transparency with Google.





Dashboard shows concise display of data from Google services like Search, which gets two thirds of search queries passing, number of conversations and mails in Gmail, Contacts, Docs, YouTube, Picasa, and so on. Each Google service will list the data/information stored with it. Apparently, no information from Blogger was available at the Dashboard.

While competitors accused Google for hoarding user data and controlling it, Dashboard is just a step towards handing over the control.

Check the introduction video of Dashboard below:

Google Fixes Marked as read Issue in Gmail

A few percentage of Gmail users experienced a weird Gmail bug yesterday wherein their unread e-mails were marked as read when the checked their accounts. Google later blamed the alarming bug, which initially made people think their accounts were compromised, on a "code change" issue.

As soon as word spread regarding this "issue", it took no time for the users to hit the panic button - thanks to Twitter and the likes. Many users who were intimated about the issue by their friends immediately logged in to Gmail, only to find almost all of their unread e-mails read. Google has, since then, confirmed that no one has read individual inboxes and that such issues will not be repeated.

Gmail, of late, has been facing reliability and stability issues with the service going kaput quite a few times earlier this year as well. This, however, was not really an outage -- but just an annoying bug that could have affected the credibility of the service. Were you affected by this issue?

Orkut Gets New Version

Google seems to have had enough of Facebook's meteoric rise and has now sprung into action with a host of new design changes to its social networking website, Orkut.




The website, which has been in the decline for the past few months, will see a lot of new features and a drastic change in the looks. The "refreshing new look" of Orkut is based on the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) infrastructure and will include the ability to discover friends automatically, video chat integrated with Google Talk, ability to upload photos in bulk very quickly, add/view photos and videos in-line, and a more interactive activity stream, says Google.

The activity stream looks like a status message update functionality on the lines of Twitter and Facebook. Other new additions include video testimonials and of course applications, which seems to have not taken off much -- especially when compared with Facebook. The aforementioned activity stream has the option for comments as well - quite similar to the Facebook update feature - even visually!




Orkut, in its previous avatar, was notorious for its insecurity. The new version claims to be a lot safer and there will be customized mobile versions too for the iPhone, S60 and J2ME platforms. Orkut also sees a neater integration with other Google services with the typical "Google bar" at the top of the site. This allows quick access to other Google services. Until now, Orkut looked like a Google outcast with no links to other Google services on the homepage - with the only Google indication being the integrated Gtalk and the occasional Chrome advertisements.

The new Orkut is being rolled out to a select few users initially. These selected few can invite others to experience the new Orkut. Orkut has a community for those who wish to take a preview of the new version and where you can list yourselves to be invited. Click here for more on that.


The new version of Orkut with the new features certainly looks promising. However, will this be enough to stop the Facebook juggernaut that is taking over India? We will soon find out!

Source - Techtree

Google Now Lets You Target Ads At Yourself

Google is wading into behavioral ad targeting in a big way today. It will start placing cookies on consumer’s browsers to collect information about their interests whenever they visit sites that show AdSense contextual ads. Then it will show ads targeted to those interests to the same person as he or she browses the Web on other sites that also serve AdSense ads (which is a large portion of all commercial sites).

Since Google already knows what each site or page is about, it will use this information to place each user in one of 600 subcategories of interest. If you visit tech blogs often, you are probably interested in technology. If you visit Trulia, you are probably in the market for real estate. Through AdSense, Google can now target ads not only based on the context of the page you are on, but also based on the context of the pages you have visited in the past, even if you are on a site that is completely unrelated. For instance, as a completely hypothetical example, it might show you a real estate ad targeted to the towns you were searching on Trulia when you visit a gadget blog.

Not only will Google now target ads at you based on your interest, but it will also let you target yourself. Anyone can go to Google’s Ad Preferences Manager and see exactly how Google is categorizing their interests. (Most people will probably see nothing right now, since this program is only being rolled out on a test basis and will gradually expand). Now, here’s the really smart part: Google lets you add or remove any interest. In effect, it is inviting you to declare what kind of ads you wan to see. You can also opt out of the program completely.

While most people will probably never bother to tweak their ad preferences or even be aware that they can, this represents an important new precedent in online advertising. Why should the ad networks be the only ones who can determine how to target ads at consumers? Why not let the consumers self-target if they care to do so?

Google knows that its interest-based targeting algorithms need a lot of work. Even if it can get just a small percentage of people to correct the algorithm, that data theoretically could be applied to other people with similar browsing patterns. Google gets to say that it is giving users more privacy and control, while collecting really valuable data that will help make its targeting more effective. In the online ad game, whoever can target the best can charge the most.

Source - techcrunch

Is Google’s Behavioral Targeting A Bust? Only 25 Percent Of AdSense Publishers Use It

For advertisers on the Web, behavioral targeting is held out as the nirvana they’ve been waiting for: the ability to show ads only to those people most likely to be interested in them based on their past behavior. The growth of this type of ad targeting also raises a host of privacy concerns, but setting those aside for a second, do these ads even work? Do they perform better than regular ads? If they did, you’d expect advertisers to pay more for them and for Website publishers to be flocking to them.


Brock comes to this figure by counting the links to Google’s privacy policy, which is a requirement of the program. Google counts 277,000 links, and Yahoo counts 224,000 links, so he splits the difference and divides it by the one million AdSense publishers Google recently disclosed in its latest earnings call to come up with 25 percent. Google actually said there are more than one million AdSense publishers, so the percentage using interest-based advertising is probably lower.

Google started behavioral targeting last March. It tries to determine your interests by placing cookies in your browser and tracking what types of sites you visit. You can see what interest Google has assigned to you and even change your interests by visiting Google’s Ad Preference Manager. You can also opt out of the program entirely.

So why isn’t there a higher adoption of this type of advertising among publishers? One answer could be that they don’t want to wade into controversial waters. But that’s never stopped Websites or advertisers before. If these ads were performing significantly better than regular AdSense ads, there would be a stampede to adopt them more broadly.

Brock suspects Google’s interest-based ads aren’t working so great because Google doesn’t actually know most people’s interests. He’s trying to get some more data on this. You can help him by using this survey tool which lets him count how many people have their interests mapped by Google. So far, based on a very small sample, only one in four do. And of those who can be targeted, the average number of interests is only five, which isn’t a lot.

I guess I’m the exception, because Google has my interests down pat. It shows ten different interests, including technology news, business news, mobile phones, blogging services, advertising, and air travel. Am I really so transparent?