Google Archive

Interesting, if not inherently flawed, article by Farhad Manjoo. "Honan might be right that Google has violated its own definition of evil, but doesn't it matter that every one of its rivals also routinely violates Google's definition of evil?" I say flawed, because I value promises more than anything. Google has done things recently that break their initial promise. That sucks - there's no way around it. I do love Gruber's take, though: "It's not that Google is evil. It's that they're hypocrites. That's the difference between Google and its competitors." In other words, it's perfectly fine to be an evil scumbag company, as long as you're not claiming you're not. That's a rather... Warped view on morality.

Larry Page on Steve Jobs' comments on Android being a stolen product: "I think the Android differences were actually for show. I think that served their interests. For a lot of companies, it's useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that." We'll never know for sure, but considering Tim Cook is reportedly looking to start settling all these lawsuits, Page might be right. Let's hope the lawsuits - settled or no - at least lead to patent reform.

The WSJ/The Verge headline drew me away from Skyrim: Google to sell tablets? What, are they going to build their own? That's huge! "The Internet search company is planning to market and sell tablets directly to consumers through an online store, similar to rivals Apple and Amazon, according to people familiar with the matter. The move is an effort to turn around sluggish sales of tablet computers powered by Google's Android software. Some of the online store's future tablets are expected to be co-branded with Google's name, said people familiar with the matter. Google won't make the devices and its existing partners such as Samsung and ASUS will be responsible for the hardware." Wait, I emerged from Skyrim for an online store? Lame.

"The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus. Technically I suppose Google has always been an advertising company, but for the better part of the last three years, it didn't feel like one. Google was an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts advertisers." Note we're looking at a Microsoft employee. His points still carry some validity, though.

"Each and every day, we are humbled by the trajectory of Android and our partners. With a year-on-year growth rate of more than 250%, 850000 new Android devices are activated each day, jetting the total number of Android devices around the world past 300 million. These numbers are a testament to the break-neck speed of innovation that defines the Android ecosystem." Andy Rubin clarified the numbers - activations are only counted once per device ID, and devices without Google services, such as the Kindle Fire, are not counted. Of these 300 million devices, 12 million are tablets - in other words, Apple has very little to fear at this point. Then again, Android on smartphones started out that way as well.

So, the EFF has an article up on how to clear your search history at Google before the changes to the company's privacy policy takes effect. Most importantly, the hitherto sealed search hisory will now be shared with other Google services to provide better products advertising. Interestingly enough, when I got to the search history page, I saw this. Was this feature opt-in or something? Also, just to be safe, where do I go to delete or even just see the information associated with my Apple ID or my Live ID?

So, how long have we been waiting for this to happen? Google has finally unveiled the future if the Android browser: it has no future. Google unveiled Chrome for Android Ice Cream Sandwich, and has designated it as the future default browser for the Android platform.

"Google's just pulled the curtains off of its 'Solve for X' website, and it appears that Google is nearing the creation of a TED-like think tank that will focus on talks about radical technological ideas. The site describes the effort as 'a place where the curious can go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems'."

"Google has added an automated scanning process that is designed to keep malicious apps out of the Android Market , the company announced today. The new service, code-named 'Bouncer', scans apps for known malware, spyware, and Trojans, and looks for suspicious behaviors and compares them against previously analyzed apps. Every app is then run on Google's cloud infrastructure to simulate how the software would operate on an Android device, he said. Existing apps are continuously analyzed, too."

Google has updated its privacy policy - in fact, it has consolidated a mess of over 70 different privacy policies each covering an individual service into one, simpler policy. You'll now be treated as a single account, and data will be shared between Google services to make search results and ads more personalised (I assumed they already did that - makes sense).

"The fragmentation of Android is very real and very problematic for end users, developers, mobile operators, device manufacturers, and Google. However fragmentation does not mean Android is going to 'die' or 'fail' as some seem to think. On the contrary I think we can count on Android playing a significant role in our world for a long, long time. I also am confident that Google has already lost control of Android and has zero chance of regaining control. This post explains why I'm so confident about this."

It really hasn't been Google's week. First the entire internet exploded because of some uninteresting nonsense regarding social networking (really internet?), but today something happened that's actually a bad thing and worth talking about: in Kenya, Google has been caught accessing the databases of a competing business, and offering Google's own product to the people in the database. Google has already apologised, and is currently investigating the matter.

Last year, Google implemented one of its more ambitious changes to its core consumer products (that would be search, in case you lost track) with Panda, an effort to reduce the amount of pointless and low-quality review sites and the like from the top of Google's search results. Interesting, then, that there's hints Google is actually generating garbage content to promote Chrome, as SearchEngineLand and SEO Book. Or is there a more reasonable explanation? Update: And this is why - rightfully so or no - Google tends to get more love than, say, Apple or Microsoft. The company has announced that even though the sponsored posts were not the company's fault, Google will still penalise the Chrome browser's homepage, lowering its pagerank for at least 60 days.

Once upon a time, in a land, far, far away, there were two mobile operating systems. One of them was designed for mobile from the ground up; the other was trying really hard to copy its older, desktop brother. One was limited in functionality, inflexible and lacked multitasking, but was very efficient, fast, and easy to use. The other had everything and the kitchen sink, was very flexible and could multitask, but had a steep learning curve, was inconsistent, and not particularly pretty.