Google Archive

"Google's hackles are raised over Microsoft's claim that Google Docs doesn't work well with Office files, and in fact, has a tendency to butcher Office's page design elements. Alex Payne, Director, Online Product Management, Microsoft, said Office and Google Docs don't play well together because Google Docs converts Office files into a different file format for viewing and editing, which strips out fonts, styles, charts, and other page elements. On Wednesday, Google said it has made a lot of progress in maintaining document fidelity when importing Microsoft Office documents into Google Docs. But Google apparently also sees some irony in Microsoft's reasoning."

"Today, we're happy to make available a developer preview of the Native Client SDK - an important first step in making Native Client more accessible as a tool for developing real web applications. When we released the research version of Native Client a year ago, we offered a snapshot of our source tree that developers could download and tinker with, but the download was big and cumbersome to use. The Native Client SDK preview, in contrast, includes just the basics you need to get started writing an app in minutes."

Andy Rubin is a vice president for engineering at Google, and he is responsible for the Android mobile operating system project. He recently had an hour long chat with The New York Times' Brad Stone, sharing his insights into things like openness, the lack of secret APIs in Android, and several other things. Of course, the jabs at Apple were prevalent.

"The Internet is one of the world's most important means of free expression. Yet censorship of the Web is growing; more than 40 governments censor information today, up from about four in 2002. And some governments are blocking - or proposing to block - content even before it reaches their citizens. Authoritarian countries are building firewalls and cracking down on dissent, dealing harshly with anyone who breaks the rules. We at Google believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship online. That's why we are launching a tool that will give people information about the government requests for content removal and user data that Google receives from around the world." Biggest problem I've seen: figures are absolute, not relative (i.e., they are not comparable per country).

Okay, this news hit my inbox and the OSNews queue this morning (and another ten million times during the day) but since I was doing more important things than OSNews today, I only now have the time to dive into this. A site I've never heard before claims that Google will open source the VP8 video codec next month, providing the world with a high-quality, royalty and patent-free codec, which will most likely cause the internet to spontaneously start farting unicorns.

Two months ago, Google announced its intention to stop censoring search results in China, while also stating it may even leave the country altogether. The announcement followed the news that Chinese crackers had attempted to crack the accounts of human rights activists. The search giant has stayed true to its word: starting today, search results are no longer censored in China. Google employed a clever trick to get there: they reroute Chinese users to the uncensored Hong Kong version of Google. Instant update: China has already responded: "Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks."