* News * Technology * Google Google's new platform Chrome aims to show Microsoft's Windows the door

It is the technology industry's equivalent of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. Google, the web upstart founded 11 years ago, has announced it will go head-to-head with Microsoft with an operating system (OS) – the programs that make a computer work – for machines ranging from handhelds up to desktop computers.If Google can get enough people to buy computers running its new Chrome OS, it will cut into Microsoft's two biggest cash cows: Windows and its Office suite of programs, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Microsoft, which once spoke of "cutting off the air supply" of a web-based rival, Netscape, has woken up to find a new threat reaching for its throat.The confrontation has been expected for years – despite Google's insistence it had no such ambitions – but it still caught observers by surprise when a Google spokeswoman confirmed to IT news service IDG that it plans to announce this week the names of computer makers in Taiwan and China signed up to work with Chrome OS, and said that it will show off Chrome's user interface later this year.The challenge to Microsoft is implicit, yet also direct. In a blog post, Sundar Pichai, Google's vice-president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, explained that "the operating systems that browsers [used to access pages on the web] run on were designed in an era when there was no web". That is a swipe at Windows, which dates back to the 1990s. Pichai and Upson also promise that with Chrome OS, "we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS" to ensure that "users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates" – another swipe.

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Gmail, Google Apps Finally Out of Beta

It may be difficult to believe, but Gmail and Google Apps are finally out of beta, indicating Google is getting serious about marketing its products to large businesses."More than 1.75 million companies around the world run their business on Google Apps, including Google," the official Google blog states. "We've come to appreciate that the beta tag just doesn't fit for large enterprises that aren't keen to run their business on software that sounds like it's still in the trial phase. So we've focused our efforts on reaching our high bar for taking products out of beta, and all the applications in the Apps suite have now met that mark."Gmail users aren't going to notice a difference, but it's true that removing the beta tag may help Google convince companies to begin using paid versions of its software. Google hopes to get Gmail, Docs, Calendar and other software it develops into the corporate workplace, charging companies for additional perks and benefits unavailable in the free versions.Furthermore, removing the beta tag from some its services indicates their maturity and a stronger dedication towards the corporate workplace.Joining Gmail and Google Apps, the Mountain View-based company also removed the beta tag for Google Calendar and Google Talk (enterprise and consumer); with many computer users previously wondering if the popular services would always be in beta.Although Gmail and other services have continually had a beta tag since launch, they've been stable, reliable services for both home users and businesses for quite some time now. It's unsure why the services remained in beta so long, with Google lacking a true set of policies or rules as to when software can be removed from beta.Google continues to be well known for creating multiple services for its users, but then seemingly keeping all of its services in beta. The company still has dozens of other services and programs that are still in beta, and it's obviously highly unlikely they'll all lose their beta tags in the future.

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ANALYSIS-Google-Microsoft war may bring down PC prices

Report By Jano
Google Inc's (GOOG.O) bid to compete with Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) Windows operating system may help lower the cost of personal computers at a time when prices are already being pinched by inexpensive netbooks Google said it will offer its just-announced Chrome operating system for free when it is launched in the second half of 2010, a move that could force Microsoft into a price war.Although Windows is the dominant operating system -- installed on 90 percent of the world's PCs, Microsoft won't take Google's challenge lightly, analysts said. Its new Windows 7 operating system will be available in October."Microsoft's strategy is likely to be to compete on price," said Brent Williams, an analyst with the Benchmark Co. "Now there's a competitor with the muscle and the brand recognition. Google is that company."Google said Chrome OS, which is based on the open-source Linux code, is being designed for all PCs but will debut on netbooks. It makes sense for Google to initially target the stripped-down, Web-centric netbooks, one of the only segments showing any growth in a PC market that is contracting.Netbooks generally sell for $300 to $400, but prices are dropping as new offerings flood the market and wireless carriers offer subsidies with the purchase of a data plan.Kaufman Bros analyst Shaw Wu noted that while the prices on nearly all PC components have been falling, "the one thing that has not been coming down is the cost of the operating system. This is going to put some pressure on Microsoft."Microsoft doesn't say how much it charges PC brands for Windows, but analysts estimate it gets $20 to $40 for the older XP system used in the vast majority of netbooks, and at least $150 for the current Vista system.Wu said price competition could ultimately give a bump to PC makers' margins."I think overall it should improve the profitability for PC vendors. It's really a question of how much they pass on to the customers," he said. REWRITING THE RULES

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US judge prunes damages from YouTube copyright suit

YouTube won a small victory this week in the website's everlasting campaign not to have its pants sued off by copyright owners.A US federal judge has dismissed some damages brought by a lengthy roster of sports and music copyright holders, led by the UK-based Football Association Premier League.US District Judge Luis Stanton said in a court order issued July 3 that the plaintiffs cannot request damages for videos posted on YouTube that don't have US copyrights attached to them. Stanton wrote that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 "bars statutory damages for all foreign and domestic works not timely registered."The judge, however, agreed that the plaintiffs could seek damages for claims over live broadcast footage. Getting live coverage OK'd for statutory damages was obviously a major issue given the case is being helmed by a soccer league.Stanton's order does not touch on the key issue of the lawsuit, which is whether YouTube is responsible for allowing copyright infringing videos to be posted in the first place. Because of similarities of their complaints, the case has become tied with a looming showstopper: Viacom's $1bn copyright lawsuit against Google, YouTube's parent company. The media conglom argues YouTube is liable for copyright infringement when its users publish clips and episodes from Viacom library of television shows.

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Help Us Test Google’s Hearing

I gave the voice-mail transcription feature in Google Voice a spin this week. How well does it work? Read on, and then help us give it a few more spins.Google Voice Google Voice, an elaborate tool for managing phone calls and such, is finally opening up to new users. Voice-mail transcription is one of its most intriguing features. When someone leaves you a message in your Google Voice mailbox, Google’s systems attempt to work out what it says and then send you an e-mail transcript. There are other services that do this, but Google Voice has the advantage of being free.My colleague Brian Stelter agreed to help test the feature the other day. His message started out like this:It’s Brian Stelter, and the air conditioning’s on in the background, so maybe that makes it harder to hear, and I’m going to use big words like duchess and fashionable and moustache and unlicensed and Buenos Aires.The transcript I got a few moments later read:it’s brian doctor in the air condition is on the background my database in order to here the number use baker were it’s like a duchess and fashionable and about stocks and unlicensed and when i was there…The result was wrong enough to be kind of entertaining. So I decided it might be a fun Friday exercise to see what other nonsensical poetry the service might be coaxed into producing. This is where you come in. Pick up the phone and call my Google Voice number, [removed -- I got enough calls, thanks]. Your call will go straight to voice mail. Leave me a message. I’ll monitor the results and then post a selection of what comes in on Gadgetwise. Creativity is encouraged. Please be aware that I might post the actual audio of your message, so don’t call if you’re not comfortable with that.

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China accuses Google of spreading pornography

China's government on Thursday accused Google Incorporated of spreading pornography after Chinese internet users were temporarily unable to gain access to the US search giant's main website or China-based service."We have found that the English version of google.com has spread lots of pornographic, lewd and vulgar content, which is in serious violation of Chinese laws and regulations," said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang.He said authorities "summoned representatives of Google.com in China and urged them to remove the content immediately."Qin, speaking at a regular briefing, did not respond to questions about whether China's government was blocking web users from seeing Google's site. However, he said he hoped the problem can be "resolved immediately".Google said it was investigating the reason for the outage. Chinese users were blocked from seeing Google's US site, its China-based site google.cn and its Gmail e-mail service.A Chinese watchdog agency accused Google last week of providing links to vulgar and obscene sites. Google, based in Mountainview, California, said it would do more to stop users in China from accessing pornography."I would like to stress that Google.com, as an internet enterprise providing services in China, should earnestly abide by all Chinese laws," Qin said."All the punitive measures adopted by the relevant authorities are conducted strictly according to law."The Chinese agency that oversees the internet, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.China has the world's largest population of internet users at more than 298 million. It also has the world's most extensive web monitoring and filtering system, and it regularly blocks access to foreign websites.Authorities launched a crackdown this year that closed more than 1,900 porn-related websites.Google has struggled to expand in China, where it says it has about 30 per cent of the search market. The company launched Google.cn with a Chinese partner after seeing its market share erode as government filters slowed access to its US service.

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Google to step up anti-porn efforts in China

Google Inc. said Friday that it was working to block pornography reaching users of its Chinese service after a mainland watchdog found the search engine turned up large numbers of links to obscene and vulgar sites.Google said in a statement that company officials had met government representatives "to discuss problems with the Google.cn service and its serving of pornographic images and content based on foreign language searches."We have been continually working to deal with pornographic content - and material that is harmful to children - on the Web in China," the statement said.The statement followed accusations from the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center that Google had failed to "filter pornographic contents from its search engine results according to China's relevant laws and regulations."The watchdog said tests found that the search engine provided links to a large number of lewd and vulgar pictures, videos and articles, though it gave no specific examples.China, with the world's largest population of Internet users at more than 298 million, has the world's most extensive system of Web monitoring and censorship and has issued numerous regulations in response to the rise of blogging and other trends.While the government claims the main targets are pornography, online gambling, and other sites deemed harmful to society, critics say that often acts as cover for detecting and blocking sensitive political content.State media reported Friday that the government had stopped some of Google.cn's search functions. Details weren't given, and it wasn't exactly clear what had been closed off.In its statement, Google said the company was working to fix any problems with improper searches. "This has been a substantial engineering effort, and we believe we have addressed the large majority of the problem results," it said.Google, headquartered in Mountain View, California, has struggled to expand in China, where it says it has about 30 percent of the search market. China's homegrown Baidu search engine remains the most popular, with about 60 percent of the market.The company launched Google.cn with a Chinese partner after seeing its market share erode as government filters slowed access for Chinese users to its U.S. service.While sites on topics such as the banned Falun Gong sect or Tibetan independence are perennially blocked in China, readers could still gain some access to such information through Google's cache function.Google.cn returns search results on sensitive political topics only for sites not offensive to the government. Human rights activists have criticized the new service, which excludes search results on human rights, the Dalai Lama and other topics banned by the communist government.

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Google Transit Expands to New York

A number of public officials and the founders of Google assembled at Grand Central Terminal this morning to announce the start of New York’s version of Google Transit, an online feature that they said would transform the experience of navigating New York City’s transit system, the nation’s busiest.“It is a very complicated transit system, and it just got less complicated today with the advent of Google Maps for transit,” Gov. David A. Paterson said, noting that the subway system opened with 9.1 miles of lines in 1904, and that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority now serves a territory of 5,000 square miles.The array of public officials present reflected Google’s economic might, particularly at a time when Wall Street’s convulsions have left the city and state economy reeling. Not only did the governor and leaders of the M.T.A. attend the Grand Central news conference, but so did Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler, representing the Bloomberg administration, and officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and of New Jersey Transit.“It just gives me great personal pleasure to be able to help even in a tiny way this fantastic public transportation system,” Sergey Brin, one of Google’s founders, said at the news conference. The company’s other founder, Larry Page, said he even hoped the tool would “help congestion, help the economy over all.”
Google has already presented online maps for several transit systems around the world, and several New York companies have provided similar services, like Hopstop.com, but the new Google tool has support from public officials. (The M.T.A. even posted a link to Google Transit on its Web site, along with a Google training video. And the M.T.A. allowed Google to install 10 demonstration kiosks where users can try out the new tool, until 5 p.m. today.)The tool — which encompasses the M.T.A.’s subways, buses and two commuter railroads, along with the PATH and New Jersey Transit commuter lines — appears far more sophisticated than existing online trip planners like Trips123, a site that was built with public financing.
It also seems to offer a key distinction from other, prior services: Users do not need to search specifically for transit information. Instead, they are shown transit routes, stations and stops even if are merely searching for, say, a bagel store.H. Dale Hemmerdinger, chairman of the M.T.A., said that Google Transit Maps will “reflect online what is clear on the ground: the M.T.A. is critical to the region’s mobility, economy and environment.”Elliot G. Sander, chief executive and executive director of the M.T.A., said the partnership with Google “builds upon” other customer-oriented initiatives, including real-time text alerts informing riders of “planned and unplanned service disruptions” and cellphone service in the subways.Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president for search products and user experience, said that Google and the M.T.A. had some unexpected similarities.Both organizations are committed to “getting people where they need to be as efficiently as possible,” she said, even noting that Google has a free shuttle system that transports more than 1,000 employees on about 30 routes within 50 miles of its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area.John Hanke, the founder of Google Earth, said the New York project started with a small group of employees who wanted to “promote the use of public transit as an alternative to people driving cars.” Google employees are allowed to spend 20 percent of their time on self-directed projects, and these employees used that time to pursue their passion for public transit, he said.Mr. Hanke said that Google had already introduced the tool for transit systems in cities like Austin, Portland, and Los Angeles, but that the truer test of the feature was whether it could also serve the world’s largest transit systems, like London, Paris, Tokyo and New York. (Google Transit covers Tokyo, but not yet London or Paris.)Tom Sly, a Google business development manager who demonstrated the new tool using a mobile devices, showed how the transit feature worked with Google’s street view tool. Google Transit plans itineraries, using transit schedules supplied by the M.T.A. to provide estimates for how long a given subway or bus ride would take.Christopher P. Boylan, the M.T.A.’s vice president for external affairs, said that the authority had made its extensive data on route schedules available to Google — but that it was available to other software developers as well. .

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Google phone to cost $179, will go on sale Oct. 22

Google likes to talk about organizing the world's information and making it accessible everywhere. On Tuesday, the Internet giant took a step toward fulfilling that mission with the long-awaited debut of the first mobile phone to use its software known as Android.The phone, which will go on sale at T-Mobile on Oct. 22 for $179 — $20 less than the iPhone — closely resembles a T-Mobile Sidekick, with a big screen and a keyboard that slides out from underneath and contains an extra key dedicated to Internet search. The device also has WiFi capability and GPS built in.
But what is special about the device is that it is designed to function as a full-fledged personal computer running any kind of application a developer can dream up."It's just very exciting for me as a computer geek to be able to have a phone that I can play with and modify and innovate upon just like I have with computers in the past," Google co-founder Sergey Brin said at a news conference Tuesday in New York. Brin joked that the first application he wrote took advantage of the phone's accelerometer and measured how long it took for him to catch the phone, or for it to hit the ground, after it was thrown up in the air.Andy Rubin, Google's senior director of mobile platforms, said the source code for the phone would be released on the Internet as soon as the phone goes on sale. Though the software is basically complete, Rubin said Google will continue Advertisement to add features and functionality and that third-party developers would also be able to contribute changes. "It is future-proof because it has openness built in," Rubin said.The G1 comes with maps, e-mail and instant messaging, a music player and a camera. Users can also download applications that measure their carbon footprint or scan barcodes in a store so they can comparison-shop on the Internet.
Ten years from now the end result will be powerful devices that are tailored to the personal preferences of their owners. "Your phone will be smart about your situation and alert you when something needs your attention," Rubin wrote in a blog post last week as he prepared for the launch."I think people will be happier with the G1 than they are with the iPhone," said John Bruggeman, chief marketing officer of Wind River, which is working with manufacturers to adapt Google's code to new phones and other devices."Plain and simple, I will be able to get more applications more easily from a broader set of options.''Apple has shown that ordinary people are eager to experiment with games and productivity applications that run on a mobile device. Since it launched its App Store in July, users have downloaded more than 100 million applications for the iPhone and the iPod touch.
There are more than 3,000 iPhone applications available — but that is a fraction of the 200,000 submitted to Apple. The Android Market will theoretically be more open to developers."If it can truly be that anyone can publish whatever they want, that's a paradigm change in itself," said Gerry Purdy, chief analyst for Frost & Sullivan. Purdy acknowledged that the new phone's security will be a major issue.
Tim Westergren, chief strategy officer of Pandora, a popular music discovery service, said he is "most definitely" considering developing an application for Android. Pandora is one of the top apps offered in the iPhone store.Cole Brodman, T-Mobile's chief technology officer, said the G1 will be advertised through "the biggest marketing campaign we've ever launched for a mobile device."Brodman said T-Mobile also announced two new plans: It will cost $25 a month for unlimited Web searching and $35 a month for unlimited Web searching and messaging. Using the phone to talk will cost extra. Similar to the iPhone, the G1 will not be able to be used as a modem for a personal computer.The phone will be able to run on T-Mobile's new 3G network, which is in the process of being installed throughout the country. Brodman said the new network, which is much faster, will be available in 22 markets by October.T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, Google and HTC, which manufactured the phone, are hoping the G1 will have the same mass appeal as the iPhone, but at a lower cost.Google intends for this to be the first of many so-called "gPhones," making its Android software as ubiquitous as Microsoft's operating system. The next gPhone is expected from Sprint Nextel.Still, it's not clear that Google will be successful. Jake Seid, managing director of Lightspeed Venture Partners, noted that the idea of a standard technology platform has been tried multiple times in the past. In 1998, mobile industry leaders tried to come together around the Symbian operating system, partly out of concern that Microsoft would come to dominate mobile devices the same way it dominated personal computers.Seid said such efforts face a common challenge in keeping a uniform code base."Being open doesn't matter," he said. "If you look at what has been successful, it has been end-to-end control."
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Microsoft, this is how you can deal with Google

Google has again gained a whole percentage point this month, at the expense of Microsoft (losing 0.9%). It seems that Microsoft is consistently losing ground — the ship is sinking, and it doesn’t appear they can do anything about it. So much for that $1 billion per year they are putting towards gaining market share over Google. What can they do to get on the right track?

Let me explain something to you, Microsoft. What you are doing isn’t working — it’s as simple as that. It’s easy for someone to say that you aren’t doing a good job, so that’s why I’m going to give you a solution. Take it for what it’s worth, but this suggestion will instantly start making your search division profitable — somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 to $500 million per year (without spending a dime). Not only will you start making money, but you will also hopefully start seeing your market share begin rising rather than declining.

What is the plan? It’s going to be a tough pill for you to swallow, but it has to do with letting Google serve up search results and ads on your Microsoft Live search engine. Of course, I don’t know if Google will want to help you out, but it’s worth a shot if you serious about the future.

But wasn’t doing this what caused Yahoo to fall out of the lead? Using Google’s search technology was a mistake back then, because Yahoo already had the lead. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain — Microsoft is so far away from first place that using Google, in my opinion, will do nothing but help.

After signing a multi-year exclusive deal with Google, you can spend those hundreds of millions of dollars per year that Google is giving you on extremely talented engineers and creative marketing geniuses. These folks can take their time to rebuild your search engine behind closed doors (one that can hopefully be competitive). Why not leech off Google for once?

The likelihood of Microsoft going down this road is basically zero, and it may actually be looked at by Yahoo and Ask as a textbook case of antitrust, but it sure would be interesting, wouldn’t it?

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Google Co-Founder Has Genetic Code Linked to Parkinson’s

Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, said Thursday that he has a gene mutation that increases his likelihood of contracting Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that can impair speech, movement and other functions.Sergey Brin wrote that he was vulnerable to Parkinson’s.Mr. Brin, who made the announcement on a blog, says he does not have the disease and that the exact implications of the discovery are not clear. Studies show that his likelihood of contracting Parkinson’s disease in his lifetime may be 20 percent to 80 percent, Mr. Brin said.Mr. Brin, whose personal fortune was recently pegged at $15.9 billion by Forbes, ranking him as the 13th richest American, said that he may help provide more money for research into the disease.Through a Google spokesman, Mr. Brin declined to be interviewed for this article.Mr. Brin said he learned that he carries a mutation of the LRRK2 gene, known as G2019S. His mother, Eugenia Brin, also carries the gene mutation and has Parkinson’s.Medical experts said that those who carry that gene mutation are more likely than not to live disease-free.“Many people with this mutation never develop the disease,” said Dr. Susan B. Bressman, chairwoman of the neurology department at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. “He is more likely to have a normal life than a Parkinson’s disease life.”

Dr. Bressman, who specializes in movement disorders and genetics, said that about 30 percent of people with the gene mutation develop the disease.Mr. Brin said he discovered that he carried the gene mutation using a service from 23andMe, a biotechnology start-up co-founded by his wife, Anne Wojcicki. The company can map customers’ DNA and help them find information about their ancestry and their risk of getting certain diseases. Google, where Mr. Brin is president of technology, invested $3.9 million in 23andMe in May 2007.Parkinson’s disease is typically a late-onset disorder, in which people often first exhibit symptoms in their 50s or 60s. Mr. Brin is 35. Symptoms, which can include tremors, stiffness, slowness of movement and speech impairment, can sometimes be managed through medication and surgery. While many people with the disease continue to function at a high level for many years, the disease is not curable and highly variable. Symptoms tend to become progressively worse over time.“This leaves me in a rather unique position,” Mr. Brin wrote in his blog post. “I know early in my life something I am substantially predisposed to. I now have the opportunity to adjust my life to reduce those odds (e.g. there is evidence that exercise may be protective against Parkinson’s). I also have the opportunity to perform and support research into this disease long before it may affect me.”

Mr. Brin and his family have already endowed the Eugenia Brin Professorship in Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where his mother is being treated.Analysts said they did not believe that the news about Mr. Brin would have a negative impact on Google’s shares.

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