Google Archive

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."

The news has been abuzz about Google's upcoming OS. Many people have been arguing reasons for and against the system, its viability in such a market, and, if the OS is successful, even the morality of the company who may be trusted with even more private information than it already has. Well, here's another reason for Chrome OS: it could bring more jobs in the area of Linux IT.

One of the more controversial features of Google's Chrome/Chromium web browser is the way it handles updates. Contrary to other browsers, updates on Chrome are installed silently and automatically, without asking for the user's consent. While convenient and effective, it was also a security risk and sometimes it slowed people's machines down. Google now proposes a fix called Courgette.

Even though everyone's talking about it, fact of the matter is that Google's Chrome OS is currently nothing more than an internet announcement, with a supposed release date of somewhere in 2010. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has now stated that netbooks running Chrome OS could appear as early as this year. In addition, Schmidt also talked about his position at Apple's board of directors.

We're having a very slow newsday today, since basically everyone and their cow is compulsively pushing out articles on a product that doesn't even exist beyond an announcement Google's Chrome OS, with none of them being particularly interesting. What is interesting is the news that Intel has been aware of Chrome OS for a while now - in fact, Intel is working with Google on this new operating system.

Google's recent move of revealing the Chrome OS to a suspecting public has put a great many people on alert. Some say it's a major privacy issue, some say Google oughtn't to become more and more monopolistic, while others think that the wide array of popular Linux distributions shouldn't become even more fragmented than it already is. "Google's decision to create its own Linux distribution and splinter the Linux community decisively once again can only be seen as foolhardy and self-obsessive. Instead of treading its own path, Google should have sought to leverage the stellar work already carried out by Mark Shuttleworth and his band of merry coders and tied its horse to the Ubuntu cart."

From NYTimes: "In a post on its company blog, Google said the operating system would initially be aimed at netbooks, the compact, low-cost computers that have turned the PC world on its head. It said the open-source software, called Chrome OS, would be available in the second half of next year. Read more for a quick observation on the announcement.