Consider then a very methodical development cycle where Google moves from search, search advertising, apps & code / cloud offerings to launching 1) a mobile phone OS based on open source Linux code base, “Android” 2) a netbook OS based on Linux & browser, “Chrome OS”, to…. 3) full desktop OS (based on Linux) that is integrated with Google products and a direct competitor to Apple / OSX & Microsoft / Windows, (unfinished, but reportedly also pending as a next phase extension of the Chrome OS). The long range significance is that the leading IT company in the world is launching, progressively the open source movement into mainstream computing, and at every level providing free, open source software alternatives for both business and personal users to the proprietary offerings by Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, & other old school software companies. Again, this is great news for independent developers of web based applications, as it levels the playing field and allows for direct entry into the marketplace on the open source foundation following Google.

It can be argued that this is no big deal, Linux has been around for years, and still has only 1% desktop market share. But Google has 80% market share in search. If, by the law of averages, they can pull a 40% market share away from Microsoft & Apple in the next 10 years they can totally transform the popular foundation of computing a second time. Given the momentum behind Open Source at this time, changing consumer habits, and worldwide consumer trust in Google, I think there is a strong possibility in this.

The following posts include the initial announcement from the Google blog and the media reaction to the announcement:

Introducing the Google Chrome OS

7/07/2009 09:37:00 PM

“It’s been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.”

“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.”

“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”

“When Google (GOOG) launched Android, the open-source operating system designed to power mobile Internet devices, industry analysts were surprised to discover that PC manufacturers had begun to use it to power netbooks, the cheap, low-power laptops that have become among the biggest sellers in a dismal market. Now, Google has thrown itself fully into the netbook market with the release of Chrome OS, a new operating system based on its Web browser and designed to directly challenge Microsoft (MSFT) for the future of the personal computer. The search giant had originally planned to announce the release today but bumped it up to yesterday after the New York Times got wind of it.”

“In the end, Google’s strike may not cut deep into enemy territory. Chrome, the web browser, is still stuck at a tiny market share of 1.2%. Android is available on just two or three phones, not enough to really make an impact. Google Apps – productivity software to handle spreadsheets and word documents – has just come out of its “beta” test phase, but look around you and you will find most people still using Microsoft Office. The one field where Chrome OS may make a difference is the market for the open source Linux operating system. Chrome OS will use bits of the Linux kernel, the link between the computer hardware and the Chrome browser running on it. Google is bound to make Chrome OS much more user-friendly than most “distros” or versions of Linux available right now. Instead of slaying Microsoft, Chrome OS might corner the segment of the consumer space that might have been Linux’s. No doubt, Google’s charge with Chrome OS will needle Microsoft. But we won’t know for years whether it will deliver a mere pinprick, or is the fine point of the dagger at the heart of Microsoft.”

“Fast forward to today. The Chrome browser now has 30 million active users, says Google, and tracking services say it has 6% or so market share. Not bad for a browser that’s less than a year old. And now, WOW. Google just bolted a big ol’ bag of drivers (also known as the Linux kernel) to Chrome and are calling it the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s going to be hard for people to continue to deny its operating systemness now. The new OS will focus entirely on the web: ‘The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform.’ Now, finally, even the tech purists can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Windows is hardware management plus an application platform, and we call that an OS. Chrome OS is hardware management plus an application platform (the browser), and we call that an OS, too.”

“Google really can challenge Microsoft, because the proliferation of Web-based applications makes the operating system much less important,” said Zeus Kerravala, analyst at Yankee Group. “As we pave the way towards real Web 2.0, there will be less of a real tie-in to Windows.”

“Google, which already offers a suite of e-mail, Web and other software products that compete with Microsoft, said on Tuesday it would launch a new operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks.”

“Called the Google Chrome Operating System, the new software will be in netbooks for consumers in the second half of 2010, Google said in a blog post, adding that it was working with multiple manufacturers.”

“The effort marks the latest attack by Google on Microsoft, which dominates the market for operating system software that powers computer applications. The Mountain View, Calif., company, which makes 97% of its revenue from online advertising, has been trying to compete with Microsoft and other software makers by offering more software that runs in a Web browser and isn’t downloaded directly to computers. Now it appears to be broadening its approach, in a move that could give it greater distribution of its own online software services, including word-processing and email software.”

“But whether it can chip away at Microsoft’s dominance in the market remains unclear. In the months since its launch, Chrome has done little to challenge Microsoft’s lead in the browser software. And some hardware companies have been slow to adopt Google software — like its Android operating system, which is targeted at running applications on mobile phones — arguing it isn’t robust enough to handle many tasks.”

“The announcement contained a thesis statement that is a bit more significant than it might appear at first: ‘It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.’ That statement has both strategic and practical implications, which we’ll consider in turn.”

“From a strategic perspective, ‘what operating systems should be’ clearly involves a heavy dose of Google-driven Web apps, from e-mail to spreadsheets. The entire OS will be focused on getting users into a Web browser as quickly as possible; any other applications will be secondary and probably not provided by Google. Instead, once the browser launches, users can do their computing via online applications, saving their data in the cloud (think of all those “gDrive” rumors from the last few years)…”

“From a technological perspective, there appear to be some interesting aspects to rethinking the operating system. For one, by having an extremely narrow focus—bringing up a networking stack and browser as quickly as possible—Chrome OS has the ability to cut down on the hassles related to restarting and hibernating computers. And, aside from the browser, all of the key applications will reside online, security and other software updates won’t happen on the computer itself, which should also improve the user experience.”

“But let’s be clear on what this really is. This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its post, ‘However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.’ Yeah, who do you think they mean by that?”

“And it’s a genius play. So many people are buying netbooks right now, but are running WIndows XP on them. Windows XP is 8 years old. It was built to run on Pentium IIIs and Pentium 4s. Google Chrome OS is built to run on both x86 architecture chips and ARM chips, like the ones increasingly found in netbooks. It is also working with multiple OEMs to get the new OS up and running next year.”

“Obviously, this Chrome OS will be lightweight and fast just like the browser itself. But also just like the browser, it will be open-sourced. Think Microsoft will be open-sourcing Windows anytime soon?”

“I also suspect that some at Google were not entirely happy with the the direction that its Android mobile OS project is taking. Numerous netbook makers have made plans to install Android on small laptops. But Android was designed for handsets and a move to bigger devices is problematic. At a minimum, porting Android to larger screens would require major modifications in the user interface and possible some deeper components, such as the file system. This would lead to what computer scientists call ‘forking,’ the splitting of an operating system into branches that have serious incompatibilities between them. The push for Android on netbooks was being driven by manufacturers’ dissatisfaction with both Microsoft and current Linux distributions. In some cases, the computer makers wanted to build netbooks based on the ARM processor, such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform, rather than an Intel or AMD x86 processor, and Android is designed for ARM. Done right, Chrome would satisfy those desires while helping Google protect the integrity of Android.”

TechMeme – List of Blogs Discussing Google Chrome OS:

“Discussion: Google Watch, MediaPost, Mark Evans, Fast Company, Between the Lines, TheNextWeb.com, ZDNET.com.au, Computerworld Blogs, TechCrunch, MediaMemo, Wall Street Journal, Open Gardens, Silicon Alley Insider, Mashable!, Google Operating System, CNET News, Computerworld, Bloomberg, Hardware 2.0, PC World, Network World, p2pnet, VentureBeat, Financial Times, blogs.chron.com, OStatic blogs, Tech Beat, pasmith’s blog, Ajaxian, Gadget Lab, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, 9 to 5 Mac, Lifehacker, ClickZ, Android Central, Electricpig, Search Engine Journal, GottaBeMobile.com, Liliputing, SEO and Tech Daily, the Econsultancy blog, Gadgetell, jkOnTheRun, Guardian, Search Engine Roundtable, MacRumors, Music Ally, eWeek, TechFlash, CloudAve, Churbuck.com, PSFK, Neowin.net, Irregular Enterprise, AnandTech, Mobile Opportunity, DailyTech, Softpedia News, All things Indian Startups …, The Mobile Gadgeteer, AppScout, DailyFinance, Netbook Choice, T3.com News, Electronic Pulp, Gizmodo, Deep Jive Interests, Text Technologies, TECH.BLORGE.com, ReadWriteWeb, I4U News, Techgeist, SlashGear, istartedsomething, Blogation, Epicenter, HackingCough, louisgray.com, ithinkdifferent, paidContent, OhGizmo!, bit-tech.net, InformationWeek, Tim Anderson’s ITWriting, Microsoft News Tracker, Zoho Blogs, CellPassion, Intuitive.com, TeleRead, Tech Trader Daily, MobileContentToday, Download Squad, Engadget, TUAW and Raph’s Website”

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Media Reaction – Google Announces “Chrome” Operating System based on Linux

Earth Class Mail:

“Earth Class Mail is changing how postal mail is delivered, for the betterment of individuals, businesses, national post offices, and the planet. Instead of making physical postal deliveries that are so dependent on fuel for planes and trucks, we deliver postal mail online, where people can manage it instantly, anywhere in the world. No matter where our customers are, they simply log in to their secure Earth Class Mail account to view scanned images of their mail envelopes. They then decide which items to have opened and securely scanned so they can read the contents online, and which items should be recycled, shredded, archived, or forward-shipped to them wherever they’re located – all with a few clicks of a mouse.”

Earth Class Mail has personal and small business accounts that look basically identical. The standard charge is going to be around $250 per year for a basic account, where you will have to pay extra (around $1.50) for every piece of mail scanned, and an additional charge for the mail forwarding or extra volume. For $500 per year, you get a bit higher of a limit on the details, around 50 included scans, etc. but still also have to pay for the mail forwarding based on location. This service is much more cost efficient for local delivery, and ECM gives you a choice of addresses to register for your inbox. Digging deeper into Earth Class Mail, I found they are doing some advanced research into automating all of this with robotics and have already inked a deal with the Swiss National Post to offer the service at a governmental level. With the rise of Googlers to the Obama cabinet, and the tech innovators working there from other sources, this may be a very visible and doable “IT upgrade” of the US infrastructure that gets implemented officially at the Post Office level soon.

The main worry I would have with this system is its stability, as they say the Post service is the bedrock of reliability as far as governmental utilities go, and an alliance with Earth Class Mail on this level takes most of that worry away. Nevertheless, I have heard that they are closing offices and selling operations during the downturn, and obviously that is the critical issue along with security for a business looking to commit to this system. From what I can gather, it is more of an interest of the start-up investors to “sell out” to a large company like Fed Ex or UPS who can take the service to the next level of popularity, rather than a dissolution issue, that is driving the sale. The service is fairly reasonably priced for entry level users, but there is really no other comparable communication package that can so completely transform the snail mail inbox as Earth Class Mail.

Google Voice:

“Google Voice is a service that gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail that is easy as email, and many enhanced calling features like call blocking and screening, voicemail transcripts, call conferencing, international calls, and more.”

One number for all your calls and SMS

• Call screening – Announce and screen callers
• Listen in – Listen before taking a call
• Block calls – Keep unwanted callers at bay
• SMS – Send, receive, and store SMS
• Place calls – Call US numbers for free
• Taking calls – Answer on any of your phones
• Phone routing – Phones ring based on who calls
• Forwarding phones – Add phones and decide which ring

Voicemail as easy as email, with transcripts

• Voicemail transcripts – Read what your voicemail says
• Listen to voicemail – Check online or from your phone
• Notifications – Receive voicemails via email or SMS
• Personalize greeting – Vary greetings by caller
• Share voicemail – Forward or download voicemails

More cool things you can do with Google Voice

• Conference calling – Join people into a single call
• Call record – Record calls and store them online
• Call switch – Switch phones during a call
• Mobile site – View your inbox from your mobile
• GOOG-411 – Check directory assistance
• Manage groups – Set preferences by group

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFVXAqFNgic

Google Voice looks to be about as good of a digital service for telephone use as Earth Class Mail is for snail mail, bringing it all into a web interface for easy management and extension. Both are perfect illustrations of the arguments put out by Marshall McLuhan in chapter one of “Understanding Media”. Snail mail and telephone management are still hold-outs from most people’s digital toolbox. I see these both as “game changers,” like the smart grid, because of the innovative way they remix the old content into cloud applications functioning remotely on the web (“sky-net“).

Along with Google Voice, I am also considering the upgrade to Google Apps Premium: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html

At only $50 per year for a single user, it is reasonably priced but doesn’t seem to include too much more than the already available and free tools like gmail, gchat, video chat, calendar, documents, etc. etc. from Google. The problem is that the free version of gmail limits the addition of external POP accounts to 5. If you are managing multiple domains, with multiple email accounts per domain, it is unlikely that gmail is going to be sufficient to manage all of the email accounts unless you upgrade to Premium. I currently use a combination of Outlook, Thunderbird, and gmail for POP mail, so an upgrade + Google Voice would be a powerful integrated solution that should cover most of the business communication needs of our outsourcing business.

Google Voice should be released publicly within a couple of weeks.

Earth Class Mail – homepage: http://www.earthclassmail.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/earthclassmail

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Game Changing Communication Tools: Earth Class Mail & Google Voice

My first work embedding a Wave in a Drupal blog page was fairly simple. I added the script to the header of page.tpl.php manually, along with the body init code. Set the “waveframe” width and height in the blog page and that is basically it for the embed. One problem, it is like pouring a huge amount of JavaScript into an iframe. The iframe is not a good theme option for a CMS site particularly. Reply, editing, etc. from two accounts & browsers (FF/Chrome) are working in the Drupal page in synch with the Wave inbox now, but the animated wave playback does not display on the embed page.

For those interested in Google Wave development, here are some screenshots and documentation of the Google Wave sandbox:

Getting Started with Wave

This wave should help you get started in using Wave.

NOTE: This wave is shared with all wave-users, so we only allow a limited set of admins to edit it. If you try to edit or respond to it, your Wave Client will crash. Don’t worry, we’re working on a better UI for that!

As you are currently seeing, Wave is laid out in Panels, let me go through each of them to give you a flavor for Wave:

Uploading Bar

You might periodically see a green bar at the top of the screen that says “Uploading Waves”. This bar indicates that there is data queued up to be sent to the server, so, if you see this, don’t close you browser until it goes away!

Navigation Panel

The Nav Panel is where you will find shortcuts to get to various lists of Wave. It is also where you can manage Folders (yes, there are Folders!) and Saved Searches. Try out some cool things like:

All links in the Nav Panel are actually Searches, look for what they populate in the Search box!

Contacts Panel

The Contact Panel shows all contacts that are currently stored in your account. Try out some cool things like:

Click on your own Avatar in the contact Panel, click on “Change Photo” and it will take you to a settings page allowing you to set up your Avatar picture. Make sure to make it available to everyone in the domain!

the Search box will allow you to find the specific contact you’re looking for.

Clicking on a user’s Avatar will show their information and allow you to create a Wave with them.

You can set your “cool line” by clicking on your own profile at the top of the panel. This won’t be the same as your Gmail IM status, so feel free to set a unique wavy status here.

Make sure any contacts you want to use in Wave are in your contacts (accessible from https://www.google.com/contacts/a/wavesandbox.com).

Search Panel

The Search Panel will allow you to find all of your various Waves. Try out some cool things like:

Cmd+Click (on Mac) or Ctrl+Click (on Windows) to open the Wave in a new Panel

Select a Wave, then click Folders to move a Wave to a Folder

Shift click on Multiple Waves to apply and then choose and Action

Wave Panel

This Panel is where your Waves will open. Try out some cool things like:

Playback!

shift+enter while editing will end your edit, shift+enter while not editing will create a new message!

Maximize the Wave to get more real estate for it

Private Reply from the Message Menu to talk to a smaller number of folks on the Wave

Wave InBox – Debug Settings:

Show objects created
Log wavelet shelf
Evict all shelved wavelets
Dump open remote calls
Extensions
Network
Exceptions
Get current Wave ID
Copy current wave
Show UDW of current wave
Show CC Info
Trigger Wavelet.removeParticipant
Trigger Blip.delete
Attachments
Digests
Participants and Profiles
Toggle fine-grained timing
Misc
Set Window Size

Firebug:

Viewing the page with Firefox Firebug gives all of the JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. that is loading from the remote site, and a lot of code. This is why the page load is slow initially. I hope the CMS solution for integrating Google Wave does not rely on the iframe for implementation in the future, but the embed does depend on it now. iFrames are really the last option in Drupal and are problematic at the theme layer. Until I figure out how to add dynamic wave IDs to the header code of every page individually, it looks like a limit of one Wave embed per site. That may make an easy option just to display a dedicated wave in a drupal block, but the iframe issue makes that a theme issue.

Summary:

Still just a few hours into the sandbox, but it is a nice model. Basically set your application up on google-apps and then widgetize it, add it to the wave through the extension API. Same with robots. Google has some templates and examples for Java and Python code extensions and robots online at: http://code.google.com/apis/wave/embed/guide.html

Related: Whitepaper – Using Attachments in Google Wave

http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/google-wave-attachments

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Google Wave Sandbox – Developer’s Preview

What is a wave?

“A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.”

Source: http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html

For those that did not attend the I/O conference, the essential resource is the launch video from that day that is viewable at:

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009

Developing For Google Wave:

Google plans to open source much of the code behind the Google Wave platform, and one of the points confirmed is that anyone- ISPs, private groups, individuals, companies, websites, domains, will be able to operate their own Wave server based on the Wave Federation Protocols. Developers who would like to build new applications for the Wave platform should review the draft specifications and white papers available at:
http://www.waveprotocol.org/

The Google Wave API is intended to enable developers to embed Wave documents in standard web pages as well as to “extend” the platform by embedding widgets within a Wave itself. The Wave extensions allow for the embedding of virtually the entire archive of iGoogle widgets, and allow programmers to develop Java, Python, ActionScript, and other applications to add new functionality to a Wave. For more information on the Wave API, visit: http://code.google.com/apis/wave/

Related: http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-google-wave-apis-what-can.html

“On May 28th, the second day of Google I/O, we unveiled Google Wave as a developer preview. But, we’d never actually had non-Google developers use it, and we were eager to see how it’d play out… So, on the Friday after I/O, about 60 developers assembled down at Google HQ for the very first Google Wave API hackathon. After five hours of hacking and ad-hoc discussions with members of the Wave APIs team, there were a whopping 17 demos to show off. We were awed by how enthusiastically developers dove in to the APIs that day, and excited to see what they created. Their accomplishments were especially amazing as no one had even used the product prior to the hackathon.”

Source: http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2009/06/1-wave-sandbox-5-hours-17-awesome-demos.html

Examples:

Embed API – Methods to communicate w/ server:

LoadWave
SetUIConfig
AddReply
Follow

Sample Google Wave Embed Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<title>Google Wave Embed API Example: Simple Wave</title>
<script src="http://wave-api.appspot.com/public/embed.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function initialize() {
var wavePanel = new WavePanel('http://wave.google.com/a/wavesandbox.com/');
wavePanel.loadWave('wavesandbox.com!w+waveID');
wavePanel.init(document.getElementById('waveframe'));
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="initialize()">
<div id="waveframe" style="width: 500px; height: 100%"></div>
</body>
</html>

Source:http://code.google.com/events/io/sessions/ProgrammingWithAndForGoogleWave.html

This is a post from Web Dev News, a site brought to you by Xavisys Web Development.

Understanding Google Wave Development – Part 1

“Time Warner Inc said on Thursday its bondholders had agreed to change the terms of their debt contracts, removing restrictions on a sale or spin-off of its beleaguered Internet unit AOL.”

“The media giant asked bondholders earlier this month to change terms on around $12.3 billion in outstanding debt, paving the way for a potential separation of the Internet unit. In exchange for the new agreement Time Warner will pay the bondholders around a total of $61.5 million.”

“Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes has said he is examining options for the future structure of AOL. Last month he lured former Google Inc executive Tim Armstrong to head AOL with the possibility of leading a spin-off.”

eBay recently announced plans to spin-off Skype in 2010 with an IPO, it is unclear at this point whether Time Warner will do similar with AOL. The fact that they recently split their cable holdings from media divisions, and that Time Warner CEO favors the idea suggests the announcement will come in the next couple of months. But is AOL even relevant enough anymore to stand alone as a company after an IPO?

“Time Warner’s chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes announced that the former Senior Vice President of Google would take the helm. AOL is owned by Time Warner, the parent company of CNNMoney.com.”

” ‘At Google, Armstrong helped build one of the most successful media teams in the history of the Internet – helping to make Google the most popular online search advertising platform in the world for direct and brand marketers,’ said Bewkes in a written statement. ‘He’s an advertising pioneer with a stellar reputation and proven track record.’ ”

“Armstrong worked at Google since 2000, and he opened the first Google branch outside of the Mountain View, Calif. headquarters. Armstrong was the president of Americas Operations and a member of Google’s Operating Committee.”

“One media analyst was very encouraged by the new CEO. ‘We are very surprised that they were able to attract someone of his pedigree,’ said Richard Greenfield, media analyst at Pali Research.”

“ ‘I think investors will be very excited by his potential to reinvigorate AOL,’ said Greenfield.”

I recently (last year) visited the Propeller web site that is related to AOL, otherwise I have never used their services. The company has never had a good reputation among web designers as an ISP, and as a media company it has never really harnessed the integration promised by the partnership with Time Warner. Google apparently invested in a 5% stake in AOL around 2005 valued at $1 billion – the investment is worth less than a quarter of its value today… neverland.

Will Time Warner sell AOL outright to Google? It is hard to see too many other companies willing and able to make the deal at this point. Even with all of its success, Google still lacks a “portal” style site like Yahoo or a gated community like AOL, but it integrates in a new way that surpasses the portal model in scale. Can AOL reinvent itself in the cloud, for example by providing libraries of apps, storage, integrated file management, etc. for cheap netbooks or scaled down desktops that use web servers for processing? Microsoft could conceivably benefit by mass-integration of its media platforms with AOL and using it as a content distribution channel like YouTube for network media.

AOL as an independent, publicly listed & traded company with majority ownership by Time Warner? The announcement could give AOL a bit of energy, followed by a steady stream of new products, innovations, and services from Google’s Armstrong… but is this enough to bring the company back? Based on Armstrong’s background, advertising would be expected to be the growth source for AOL’s income in addition to ISP services, but is unclear what he will do to build the traffic necessary to lead the company to a re-emergence. Nevertheless, these developments and the experience Armstrong brings to the board are significant, and it looks like things are just getting re-started there.

Background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Armstrong_(executive)

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Can AOL Re-emerge in Google’s Image?

As V. Balakrishnan, Infosys’ CFO states in an interview:

“The environment is challenging and we are seeing that clients are not finalizing their budgets. Last year, most of the clients had finalized their budgets by March. Though it impacted the first quarter earnings, at least we had some kind of a larger visibility on the spending. This year, only some 60 per cent of the clients have finalized their budgets by March. To an extent it is difficult. We have long-term relationship with our clients and to an extent have the visibility of their spending. That is what gave us some confidence on giving the guidance. No doubt, it is a difficult year but our guidance is much more realistic looking at the dynamic market conditions.”

Following the dismal report from Infosys, Indian IT companies listed on Wall St. lost a collective $500 million USD in market capital. In comparison, Google’s stock rose 5% after their earnings announcements, because the company was able to beat analyst’s expectations by aggressively cutting costs during the downturn and increasing profit margins. Google’s total first quarter earnings are still reported to be $5.51 billion USD. Reports that Google’s share in search may be dropping may be due to the rise of “live” search popularity on Twitter & Facebook.

According to the Washington Post:

“Google said paid clicks, by Web surfers on its text-based search ads, rose 17 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier. But the revenue that Google derives per click appears to have declined, as advertisers reduced the bids they make for keywords in Google’s auction-based advertising system.”

” ‘Consumers are clicking on more ads before they buy. And in response advertisers are only prepared to bid a lower amount for keywords,’ said Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeff Lindsay who estimated that Google’s revenue per click declined 11 percent in the first quarter.”

Google was founded in 1998, and its ten year expansion has been unprecedented. Infosys, at the same time, has gradually built an entire industry in global BPO, and both companies are widely regarded as the top in their respective fields. The IMF has said that this is the first time in 60 years that the entire global economy has contracted, yet even in such grim times companies like Infosys and Google are doing very well in comparison.

“The International Monetary Fund has joined the chorus of organizations and economic think tanks that have concluded that the Global Economic Crisis is unprecedented in its repercussions. In a report prepared in connection with the G20 Finance Ministers meeting held in London, the IMF offered an economic forecast saturated with gloom. For the first time in 60 years, the IMF report states, the entire global economy will experience a net contraction. The current IMF estimate is negative growth in 2009 of between .5 and 1 %, compared to a forecast of only two months ago still projecting net global growth, though at anemic levels.”

With China & India’s stock markets both re-entering bull territory last week, and both countries experiencing economic growth of over 5-7% higher than the US & Western Europe, analysts are talking about the decoupling of the global economy. In the IT industry, both Google and Infosys have decoupled from the pack of competition and look to be among the strongest companies to emerge from the global recession.

This is a post from Web Dev News, a site brought to you by Xavisys Web Development.

Google & Infosys Experience First Ever Quarterly Income Declines

Wired said:
Google confirmed to Wired.com Thursday that all of Universal Music Group’s video assets (music videos, interviews, concert footage and possibly Kyte-style backstage video) will live on Vevo, and that YouTube — and eventually, AOL, MTV and Yahoo — will embed Universal’s videos from Vevo rather than licensing the content directly from the labels. Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, Google’s licensing worries with Universal are over…

Unlike MySpace Music Vevo will not be a joint venture between Google and Universal, Google told Wired.com. The site will be wholly owned by Universal, the largest record label in the world, whose YouTube channel has more views than any other in the world (3.5 billion). Google will run all technology-related aspects of the service.

‘Universal owns the site, but Google/YouTube is providing the technology,’ said a Google spokeswoman by e-mail. ‘We will be sharing revenue with Universal on both Vevo and on YouTube. Other labels could join Vevo; they are in talks currently.’

Evolving video search technology is making it easier for Google and other sites to identify copyright content on the web and target it for suspension or removal. With announcements like the recent one from Time Warner Cable offering unlimited bandwidth at $150 a month, and wireless broadband networks growing around the world, the net is inching closer and closer to to supplanting television as the preferred means of distribution for video content. Realistically, the $150 unlimited bandwidth should be less than $15 within ten years.

Bandwidth is the main obstacle (before or after copyright) that online video has to overcome to be viable, but live broadcasting is the other. Microsoft’s Silverlight technology is definitely the powerhouse here. Even so, the most powerful websites such as YouTube or networks like CBS, NBC, etc. are said to struggle at the server level in streaming live video to more than 1-2 million simultaneous users. By contrast, TV and cable stations can scale to unlimited viewership with no additional strain on broadcast resources. This is where Cisco appears to be ahead of the game in developing new server infrastructure to facilitate online video broadcasting, but for the most part, the servers that will power video distribution are still being engineered.

Much of the hype and promise of web video has only begun to emerge recently, and there has been an increase in devices that provide integration between the internet and TV, NetFlix, Tivo, and the like. In fact, Tivo-Vevo sounds like a distribution model that the music video industry is betting on for the future (Hulu), and if they could just get those darn anti-internet piracy laws passed in every country and enforced by the ISPs, world domination would be complete again. The way traditional newspaper and TV stocks have lost value on Wall St. while Netflix and Google continue to soar and outperform is another example that the tide is seriously changing for online distribution of video.

Whether this is the best for users remains to be seen, by most accounts they were not part of the negotiations. Their vote will be whether or not to choose to use the Vevo service. Considering that copyright video will be actively targeted and pulled from accounts at YouTube, users won’t really have much choice. Yet, few will likely complain if they can still watch and embed their favorite music videos for free, even with targeted professional advertising. The bottom line for the corporates is that network distribution must support the business model and profit margins that the music industry has enjoyed since the 60′s and the web / mp3 era destroyed.

Remember Napster, Audio Galaxy Satellite, Mix-Tape, and so many other music sites in the past? It is difficult to get excited about the launch of Vevo because the music industry has been so actively involved in shutting down other popular music sites that didn’t pay them enough in royalties.

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Google & Universal Sign Agreement on New Music Site – Vevo

Facebook was reportedly in similar talks with Twitter last year, but it looks more likely that the two companies are squaring off and developing / evolving the market for real-time, streaming updates of personal & business information in competition. Recent changes to make Facebook’s “Wall” posts more public is seen as a step in Twitter’s direction. The other players in the field are essentially minor in comparison at this point. Some are suggesting Microsoft could step in and make a bid for Twitter as well – they have already been reported to have invested in a large advertising stake in the company.

So what will this mean for Twitter’s user community and future? That is what has the bloggers active and engaged in discussing the topic. For the most part, judging by the way Google has managed YouTube after its purchase from the original developers / venture capitalists who founded the company, this would be great for Twitter and the community. Google could solve problems that haunt the site – downtime, server problems, search integration, as well as improving and advancing the service in new ways or synching it with other parts of the Google network.

Google could also solve what many see as Twitter’s main weakness – the lack of a revenue producing income stream. The offset of this would be something like Adsense monetization of the site, which may turn off users somewhat, but is so proven and ubiquitous on the web it could probably be introduced with very little difference in the overall user experience. Since the development team behind Twitter also built and sold the site “Blogger” to Google at the height of the blog hype cycle, it is really easy to see the same thing happening again.

“The Stream” appears to be as powerful of an upcoming internet meme at this point as “The Cloud”. Few people really believe that search is solved, and the rise in popularity of Facebook and Twitter has many discussing “real-time search” as the next game changer. In countries so soaked in public opinion reports, polls, and marketing statistics for feedback on politics, media, ad campaigns, products, and so on, having a way to monitor the pulse of real-time internet communications is incredibly powerful. Twitter created the flow, circulation, or traffic of that communication from nothing, empty web space, and that is what makes it so valuable.

Google’s search tools would apparently order and organize Twitter in a way that it becomes much more of an effective means of social communication. Has “Delicious” changed much and become better and more efficient since Yahoo took it over (del.icio.us)? All things considered it is probably not a big issue and most people likely never noticed it. But is it possible for a site to become more popular, attain much higher / web-leading traffic statistics, but at the same time become more boring, and less popular among the community that was active in its early days? That is the story of many sites, and could easily happen to Twitter.

Discussing the issue from afar, it is easy to minimize the difference between $250 million and $1 billion USD, or to forget what a massive amount of money that is. According to Wikipedia, “About $57 million of Twitter is owned by venture capitalists. (Evan)Williams raised about $22 million in venture capital. Twitter is backed by Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos Expeditions (led by Jeff Bezos of Amazon). Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital backed Twitter in 2009, investing an additional USD 35 million.” If this is true, and venture capitalists typically target a 40:1 return on this type of start up, they may have reason to hold on to sell at closer to $2.4 billion USD.

On the other hand, Twitter is a Ruby on Rails site – a Eastern European group reported building a local language-specific clone of the site in a 48 hour code sprint. Until recently, the site was run on just a few servers held together with chicken wire and shoestrings. The concept is so simple, it could easily be integrated and offered on any other website. Will the host of competition ultimately dilute Twitter or will the other main web companies just develop their own equivalent, in-house solutions (like Orkut)? Right now the appreciating market price for Twitter is based on something other than these fundamentals – it is the Twitter brand, concept, and community, now part of global consciousness and interconnectedness (like Blogger) that is to be bought & sold.

In my opinion, the next stage of Twitter’s growth and development will be something quite different from its start up period, and is well managed globally by Google. If the founders cash out and use the capital to start up a new company like Tesla, SpaceX, 23andme, or the next, Web 3.0 version of Blogger and Twitter, it is a win-win for everybody.

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TechCrunch stirs Google-Twitter Rumor Mill

With Chrome, the biggest change is that the browser uses multiple processes rather than multiple threads, meaning that each tab is independent of the others and keeps its processes separate. This is said to assist in rendering JavaScript, and also with memory management. If one tab freezes or crashes, it is only that tab that will be closed, not the whole browser. Chrome also offers advanced information about the memory and CPU use of every part of a web page, including plug-ins individually, to help with debugging or sorting out problems. Google has already tested Chrome on millions of web pages, and the beta version of the browser is reported to display 99% accurately. Does this mean they display the same way as in Firefox or as in Safari? With web design requiring accuracy down to the pixel level, and already too many problems between the way pages display in IE vs. FF, this is not a small question. I generally test the pages I design in IE6, IE7, and FF3 currently, and ignore Safari as I work on a Windows platform and don’t need the extra worry. Even though Chrome will only be released for Windows machines initially, with Mac and Linux versions following next, it will certainly be necessary to add this browser to the test pattern.

Google has just released a FAQ for Chrome that includes this information on the features web designers will be able to use to test pages in the browser:

“There are several tools to help you test your website in Google Chrome:

• Web Inspector

Right-click on any component on a web page to launch the web inspector. You’ll be able to see the elements and resources associated with the component on which you clicked, including a hierarchy view of the DOM and a JavaScript console.

• Task Manager

Select the Page menu icon, then Developer > Task Manager (or press Shift+Esc). The task manager shows all running Google Chrome processes, and the resources that they’re using (memory, CPU, and network).

• JavaScript Debugger

Select the Page menu icon, then Developer > Debug JavaScript. This launches a JavaScript debugger that can be used to attach to existing processes.”

Though web developers are sure to lead the wave in being the first to download and test the new Chrome browser, it is clear that Google is looking for a much wider market share than just this niche community. The browser has a redesigned look that will immediately set it apart from the competition. In Chrome, the tabs are displayed at the very top of the browser (see screenshot ). Whether this is simply an aesthetic choice, an attempt to build brand identity, an optimization for use with the Android phone, or related to the mythical Google operating system, only time will tell. In all likelihood, the answer is all of the above. Get ready for the release of Chrome for download within hours, and check back for more reports on the beta of this new browser from Google.

Google Official Blog:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Google Chrome Download Page

http://www.google.com/chrome

Official Google Chrome Features Page

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features.html

This is a post from Web Dev News, a site brought to you by Xavisys Web Development.

Google Chrome Browser Set to Release