everywhere you turn, it seems Google has a new offering. but how serious are these attempts to own your computer?

Google is rich, with a market cap of $183 billion — that’s billion with a “b” — already 71 percent the value of its much more established archrival Microsoft. With those resources, Google has created more and more software products in an attempt to build a sustainable business outside of the search-based ads that account for most of its revenue — and be the center of your computing universe.

For several years, Google seemed to be focused on Web-based collaboration tools, with its Blogger.com service and acqusition of JotSpot (now called Google Wave) as prime examples. but more recently, Google has moved into the cloud business, producing one product after another in a pattern that shows clearly a desire to replace the desktop paradigm — which has Microsoft’s Windows and Microsoft Office at its core. Google has designs to replace the desktop with the cloud, and Microsoft with itself.

The forthcoming Google Chrome OS is the baldest statement of that mission, redefining a laptop into a Net appliance that relies almost entirely on the cloud for the apps people would use routinely. but that’s just the latest salvo. Google has already launched its Google Apps set of services, which are starting to be taken seriously even by large companies and government agencies to handle e-mail, word processing, and more. Microsoft has responded to this direct strike at its business with its cloud/desktop hybrid version of Office, the forthcoming Office 2010 Web Apps. but Google keeps pushing: Its still-in-beta Google Wave promises to attack one of Microsoft’s most beloved products, its SharePoint collaboration software.

InfoWorld has put together a package of articles that explores Google’s attempt to become the center of everyone’s technology universe:

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is Google going to change the Internet? well, that seems to be the idea. Isn’t the fact that the term ‘google’ is now a commonplace verb enough indication? Here’s a quick look at some of the bright ideas that they have spawned in the recent past.

Chrome OS: we all know about Chrome, the lightweight, lightening-fast browser. but is it smart enough to form the basis of an entire operating system? the answer is—you guessed it—of course. the open source Google Chrome OS (not to be confused with the Android operating system for mobile phones) is expected to see a first stable release in the second half of 2010, and is specifically aimed at netbooks to begin with. ‘Speed, simplicity and security’ are the key features of Chrome OS, and in their own words, it’s an attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Based on Linux, the Chrome OS turns the basic concept of an operating system on its head. the main interface of the system will the browser, with applications incorporated like web pages in a tab strip. of course, Google will retain the Chrome browser’s minimalist interface, and are said to be working towards security nuts and bolts in such a way as to make viruses and other malware history.

Aimed at users who primarily spend most of their time online, Chrome OS is rumoured to favour solid state drives—as seen in a wide selection of Netbooks—over regular hard drives. as to whether it can muscle out Windows as a preferred operating system is something only time will tell.

Google Wave: the latest wave to have crashed upon the Google shore is a real-time communication and collaboration tool called Google Wave. It is still in ‘preview’ status, and one has to sign up for an invite.

Wave merges email, instant messaging and social networking to form the ultimate Web-based collaborative service. A ‘wave’ is equal parts document and conversation, where people can communicate and work together, using not just text, but photos, videos, maps and so on. Wave users share and collaborate equally, and one can turn back to see who said what and when. Also, a wave is live, that is, the working, sharing, discussing, editing all happens in real time. whether it is working on collaborative projects, exchanging post-holiday photos, playing games, or conducting an official meeting, Google Wave helps us integrate the Web a little bit more in our everyday lives.

In keeping with their open source policy, the code of Google Wave will be released to allow developers as well as users to build extensions that will support additional features, including the possibility of embedding the service on Websites.

Google Go: the company is also developing a brand new, open source programming language—Google Go—whose USP is performance and speed. Despite leaps and bounds in hardware, the software that runs this technology is a dinosaur from the past. Go is Google’s attempt to help programming language catch up with hardware and web developments in an efficient manner. at present Go compilers are available for Linux and Mac OS platforms, but a Windows implementation is on the horizon. unlike what the Merry Melodies toons tell us, with Google, ‘that’s certainly not all, folks.’ Watch this space.

Payal Dhar is a freelance technology writer

Google has accepted that there are lots of positive responses to Google wave by the people who have tried this voluntarily. Google wave has hosted several unique areas like personal, business, government, education and even not-for-profit. Google is still in a limited preview and not able to grant permission to everyone who have requested for Google wave invitation for trying the beta version.

Google cannot communicate with all the users personally so in order to collect the feedback Google has taken help of an online Survey and collected feedback on the users experience on Google wave. The Survey was distributed via email and a link in a help center and a tweet.
It’s just an overview in which people have given their view point

The Wavers like to ‘Wave’ as wave is a central place from where the people can communicate and collaborate easily. This is a single platform from where people can work together and also discuss with each other with the help of messages, documents sharing but number of users indicates that existing tools are not fulfilling their needs and wants more improvement with more tools for this new concept.
What Wavers like most

Many users like the collaboration and ability to extend Google wave’s capability to function through gadgets and robots.

The Wavers don’t like is the limited invitation acceptance by Google. The users feel that it is really tough to communicate and collaborate if you have no contacts. So the earnest request to Google is to offer Google Wave to large number of users instead of limited invitations.

Google wave should be integrated with Email and other existing tools and also speed enhancement is demanded. The Google is busy in organizing a team which will handle the core issues collected through the feedback and the team will put hard efforts to improve the Google Waving.

Google wave is introduced for communicating and collaborating and really this has lot of potential to make you more productive. The beta version is under testing and lot of people are actively using Google wave and Google is busy in collecting Feedback from its ongoing Survey. Everyone has accepted that Google Wave has potential to make you more productive.

People who have tried Google Wave have given the feedback that they have easily managed their project on it, some has accepted that it store brilliance but not yet at use many users like the simply love Google and use all the apps of it and given the feedback that Google wave is very nicely integrated service.

Google has indicated that users love the Google Wave concept and everyone has well applauded the collaboration feature. People like the extension, robots and gadgets but most confusing part of Google wave is that the user’s who are trying the Google Wave beta version their friends, colleges or other business contacts don’t have access to Wave.
The beta testers also experiencing slow speed and want to get email integrated with it.

Many users are feeling that Google is not offering contacts to add and if no contacts than this is of no use at all.

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Search engine giant Google is testing out a new look for its search page.
Designers have removed the 3D shading and shadowing from behind the Google logo, while blue boxes with white text have been used for the search options “Google Search” and “I´m Feeling Lucky”.

The new design also includes a left-hand sidebar on the search results page which allows the user to quickly select between images, videos, news, maps, and other options.

A “see also” section, which suggests related search terms, search queries and an option to filter the results based on the date Google sniffed out the website, has also been added.

According to a Softpedia news editor, the new interface is a step in the right direction.

“It´s still the same minimalist Google design that we all know and love, but it´s gotten a bit livelier,” he added.

The new design has been compared to Google Wave, the search engine´s online tool for real-time communication.

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Google Voice just keeps getting better and better, and sometimes it does so without the help of Google.

Developer Chad Smith today released a new version of his Google Voice dialer, which takes the service that’s so handy on the Google Voice page, and basically puts it on every web page. now there’s no need to migrate to a different page to make a call, and a number that’s on a page can now be dialed with a click.

It’s a feature that those who use iPhones have come to enjoy. when looking at a web page with a phone number, the iPhone software automatically makes that a link and when you touch that number you can dial it.

Now you can do that same thing from home.

I first learned about Smith because he wrote the very first Add-on to Google Wave, which I still find very useful. like Wave, Google Voice is still somewhat limited in release, but just like with Wave, if you don’t have an invite, the best idea is to just ask around among your friends; they may have an invite and not even know it. There’s no add-on for this, your pals will have to go to the Google Voice page, and at the bottom of the left column it will show how many invites they have left to give.

Co-founder of Twitter Biz Stone is in Israel for the first time to speak at a conference being held on Tuesday night by the College of Management Academic Studies. The networking conference, intended for the college’s alumni, will focus on the topic of social networking sites.

Twitter co-founder comes to Israel to speak about social networking and business

Despite being a leader among social sites with over 40 million registered users, Twitter does not charge a membership fee and remains free of advertising.

“2010 I think will be the year we start focusing a little more on revenue,” Stone said at a press conference in Tel Aviv the morning before the conference. “We still have a lot of product work to do.”

Unlike other major Web sites like Wikipedia and Facebook, Twitter does not have a Hebrew option for Israeli users. They launched a Japanese version of Twitter early on, and are now working on French, Italian, German, and Spanish versions of the Web site. if those Web sites come out well, then they will start working on a Hebrew Twitter.

One of the advantages of Twitter is the ease of login from other Web sites and applications. it is possible to Tweet, meaning update a Twitter status, from an application on iPhone or within a message page on the beta version of Google Wave.

“We want to partner with as many other companies, websites, and applications as we possibly can,” said Stone. “We see it (Twitter) as water finding its way through different tributaries.”

Just a month ago, Israeli audiences also heard from the heads of Wikipedia and Skype at the Presidential Conference in a panel about new media. at the networking conference on Tuesday, Stone was slated to speak about the relationship between new social media and business.

“Twitter is about finding out what’s happening with the things, the people, the events that you care about right now,” said Stone about the main purpose of the website. “It’s proven to be many things to many people which is excellent.”

What is common among Twitter, IM, Skype, Facebook, Google Docs, and Email? These are conversation tools. how will a conversation on today’s web look like? Email used to house the bulk of the conversations that took place on the internet, but that’s no longer the case today. Google, Mozilla, Salesforce.com, and some others are trying to carve a niche for them in the global conversation platforms.

Google Wave, a personal communication and collaboration tool, was announced by Google (GOOG) at the Google I/O conference on may 27, 2009. A beta version was released on September 30, 2009, with the initial 100,000 users each allowed to invite from twenty to thirty additional users. Mozilla’s announcement of raindrop project in October has made Google team to hasten Google Wave launch for the general public. Now the cloud-computing player Salesforce.com (CRM) has announced the launch a platform that will act as a “Facebook for the Enterprise.” Salesforce.com claims that it will revolutionize the workplace by leveraging the social-networking revolution. Can Salesforce.com challenge Google Wave? before answering that question, let’s examine Google Wave.

About 100,000 general users are currently testing Google’s new Collaboration 2.0 platform, Google Wave. Wave is still in development, and it is too early to definitively judge its capabilities. At this stage, Wave seems unlikely to emerge as the best-available Collaboration 2.0 platform on the market. It will also most likely appeal to consumers, at least initially, based on its current features. Yet Wave should be considered a potential first step in the ubiquitous adoption of Collaboration 2.0 in general, with consumer adoption acting as the impetus for enterprise usage.

Wave has many of the standard components of a Collaboration 2.0 platform. It combines social networking and document and file sharing with email and instant messaging, within a browser-based wiki environment. Users can edit and share various types of rich data and files, as well as communicate with email and instant messaging, within a single, real-time online platform.

However, unlike other 2.0 platforms that have been developed specifically for enterprise use (which I refer to as Enterprise Collaboration 2.0), Wave is currently not suited to project management because it has a many-to-many communication format. This means that it lacks linearity and leads to a chaotic experience for users. furthermore, it is currently difficult to manage its social networking features adequately, making it unwieldy, and early testers have complained that it is overly complicated to use.

LONDON (SHARECAST) – News Corp. has held discussions with Microsoft about a partnership that could result in News Corp. removing its newspaper content from Google’s search engine while continuing to feature it on Microsoft’s online properties, according to people familiar with the matter, says the Wall Street Journal.

The contest for Cadbury could become a little more crowded. while Kraft Foods $16.7bn offer for Cadbury is the only official bid on the table, other snack companies are weighing their next steps. Hershey is considering making an offer of at least $17bn, while both Nestl of Switzerland and Ferrero of Italy are pondering their options, according to people briefed on the discussions at the companies, writes the NY Times.

The FT adds that the British chocolate maker is more amenable to being owned by Hershey than Kraft if a bid comes at the right price.

Reliance Industries, the largest private company in India, said that it had made an offer to acquire a controlling interest in the worlds third-largest chemical company, LyondellBasell. Reliance did not disclose late Saturday how much it was willing to pay for LyondellBasell, but a person briefed on the offer said the final price could range from $6 billion to $12bn in cash, reports the NY Times.

US unemployment is likely to peak at about 10.5 per cent and may not start to come down until the summer of 2010, according to Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Evans told the FT he had been a little surprised by the latest employment report, which showed unemployment at 10.2 per cent, and had edged up his forecast for the peak jobless rate accordingly.

Chieftain Capital Management, an iconoclastic investment firm with a strong two-decade track record, is splitting up following personality conflicts among its leaders, according to people familiar with the matter, says the Wall Street Journal.

Foreign companies could be sued more easily in US courts under legislation working through Congress that has led to concerns in the European Commission. The Investor Protection Act (IPA), approved by the House financial services committee this month, contains a provision to make it easier for investors to sue public companies in the US even if they are based abroad and listed on overseas exchanges, according to the FT.

A new wave of foreclosures stands to hurt people who may have never taken out a mortgage: renters. in cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, where many investors are carrying upside-down mortgages on large rental buildings, some tenants are watching their homes fall apart along with the financing, writes the Washington Post.

For the third time in 16 years the federal government is forming a blue-ribbon panel to try to save the USA’s troubled airline industry, which has racked up $58.5bn in losses and shed 158,000 jobs this decade. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who has ordered up the panel, vows it won’t be “just another advisory committee,” reports USA Today.

A new brand identity to be adopted by AOL next month, when it is spun off from Time Warner, ditches the odd-looking triangle that has long served as the brand symbol and replaces the letters AOL with Aol. complete with a period, according to the NY Times.

With fears brewing that the US housing market is in for another dive, the automakers remain optimistic that the market and their pickup sales will continue to rebound. Pickup sales are closely tied to the housing market, says Mike DiGiovanni, GM’s US sales analyst. so as housing rebounds, so will sales of pickups, reports USA Today.

Recession be damned, Hollywood is on its way to what could be its merriest holiday season ever, thanks to a group of undead teenagers. “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” posted the third-largest opening in domestic box-office history, not accounting for ticket price inflation, having sold an estimated $140.7 million worth of tickets in the US and Canada from Friday through Sunday, writes the LA Times.

While Google Apps will always have a soft spot in my heart for freeing me from Outlook I’d be the first to admit its UI is getting rather tired. so it appears would Google…

Leaked to Engadget today are some seemingly legit screenshots of new interfaces for Gmail, Google News and Google Docs all integrating Google Wave-style layouts. The site’s tipster said “the goal is to provide a consistent experience throughout all Google Apps and blur the line between the browser and the website (e.g. drag and drop, right-click, etc.).”

Certainly makes sense to us, and – as Engadget itself postulates – suggests that Google Wave (despite a somewhat mixed initial reaction) is fundamental to the search giant’s future plans. could it also be combined with the newly launched Google Dashboard to provide a unified experience in the impending Chrome OS? Well it wouldn’t hurt.

Donning my sceptical hat for a minute, let’s not get too carried away before an official Google confirmation/denial. Still given my own personal view is Google Wave isn’t a replacement for email, but blending its key functionality into email would be very welcome indeed..

Rest of the screenshots below.

In related news Google News could come under threat from a charged up News Corp after chairman and overlord Rupert Murdock said he will block aggregator sites from listing its content. Speaking to Sky Australia he said: “The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories – they just take them. That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s ask.com, a whole lot of people … they shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep”

As for those publications who cite stories originated from News Corp publications (which include The Times and The Sun): “if you look at them [referencing the BBC], most of their stuff is stolen from the newspapers now, and we’ll be suing them for copyright”.

Better? we beg to differ, but a brave new world awaits journalism and one everyone will be monitoring with interest.

Link:
via Engadget