Google Archive

Google has invented a new programming language designed to reduce the complexity of coding without compromising the performance of applications. Called Go, the language has been tested internally at Google but is still at an experimental stage, so the company is releasing it as open-source code in the hope that it will get help with its future development.

TechCrunch broke the news today that Google has bought Gizmo5, the popular VoIP SIP provider, for $30 mil cash (not confirmed officially yet). The company was led by Michael Robertson, known for his times on mp3.com and Lindows. What does this mean for Google Voice? Read on.

"Google makes its Google Wave Federation Protocol available to let would-be Wave providers build their own Wave servers and get them communicating with other Wave servers, similar to the way e-mail servers talk to one another. This federation would ideally pave the way to making Wave ubiquitous, making it more available for future users. But given the learning curve stumping early users of Wave, how many programmers will want to build their own Wave servers? That remains to be seen."

Today, Google has released the software development kit for Android 2.0, the company's mobile operating system. The SDK gives away all the new features, and there's indeed quite a lot in this one. The biggest new feature is multitouch support, but there's a whole lot more.

"Today's Google-Verizon marriage means feature-rich phones will now be available on the top wireless network - and spells the end, writes Douglas Rushkoff, of Apple's dominance."

"If the last two months should be interpreted as Microsoft suggests, with Bing's gradual ascent in usage share against Google as a sign of Bing's inevitably catching up, then a similar interpretation of September's numbers from live analytics firm StatCounter should be taken as a sign of Bing's ultimate demise. A sampling of five billion or more US page views from Web sites accessed by StatCounter in September reveals that, of the world's top three search services, Google's usage share has climbed back just above 80%, and is flirting with last November's peak of 81.14% -- meaning Google is back to serving four out of five US-based general queries. Bing's usage share in the US descended by 1.13% to 8.51% for the month of September, while Yahoo's dove 1.1% to 9.4%. Google's share among the top three has now climbed above where it stood in May (78.72%), when Microsoft changed the name of Windows Live Search."

Google Chrome Frame is an open-source plugin that adds HTML5, Canvas, a fast JavaScript engine and more to Internet Explorer; in fact it just swaps out Trident with Webkit! Developers can opt-in to the feature on their sites via a meta-tag / HTTP-header and prompt users to install Google Chrome Frame if they don't have it. Update: Correction, they don't support the HTTP Header.

Only a year after Google's Chrome entered the browser market, we're already hitting version 3. While Chrome 3 had been available in the developer and beta channels for a while now, the company has now released the first stable Chrome 3 version. Technically, this means Chrome 3 has been released.

Getting data into (and then out of) Web-based services can be tricky or even impossible. Google today publicly committed to liberating user data in all of the company's products, making it easy to switch services.

Probably the most often requested feature for Google's Chrome web browser was an extensions framework so that users can expand the functionality of Chrome in the same way people currently do for Firefox. Chrome has had an extensions framework for a while now, but it was turned off by default. They've now turned it on by default on the dev channel.

This morning a USA Today article discussed the FCC's investigation into why the Google Voice App was banned from the iPhone. The article goes on to say that Google could "soon find itself in the hot seat" because Android cannot use Skype, proposing that Google itself blocks VoIP to force users into traditional voice calls. Andy Rubin, Google's Vice President of Mobile Platforms, had to step forward and call USA Today out. Rubin said, "Here are the facts, clear and simple: While the first generation of our Android software did not support full-featured VoIP applications due to technology limitations, we have worked through those limitations in subsequent versions of Android, and developers are now able to build and upload VoIP services." Rubin says it's up to the operators to decide if certain applications violate their terms of service.

"As it invites the world to play in a mysterious sandbox it likes to call 'Caffeine', Google is testing more than just a 'next-generation' search infrastructure. It's testing at least a portion of a revamped software architecture that will likely underpin all of its online applications for years to come. Speaking with The Reg, ueber-Googler Matt Cutts confirms that the company's new Caffeine search infrastructure is built atop a complete overhaul of the company's custom-built Google File System, a project two years in the making. At least informally, Google refers to this file system redux as GFS2."

"Google confirmed today that it plans to buy digital video compression outfit On2 Technologies in an all-stock agreement, valued at $106.5m. Mountain View said On2 shareholders will be handed 60 cents worth of Google class A common shares for each outstanding share they hold in the company. Clifton Park, New Jersey-based On2 employs around 60 staff. It started life as the Duck Corporation in 1992. On2's VP6 codec is licensed by Adobe, for its Flash Player and Flash Lite 3 for mobile phones. Other major customers include AOL, Freescale, Nokia and Sun Microsystems."

"Google has opened the source code of several key components of Wave, the company's new collaborative messaging platform. The code, which is available under the Apache Software License, will allow third-party developers to start experimentally bringing Wave-compatible federated messaging to their own software."