Google: ‘We are not a threat’

Google is feeling really uncomfortable, because of the increasing attention of the American authorities. The company tries to convince journalists, politicians and publishers of its innocence. American supervisors started various studies at Google.

Painful things are point of discussion, for example the role of manager Eric Schmidt in the administration of Apple, supposed appointments about personnel management and a proposed agreement with book publishers concerning Google Books. The problems are all about the monopolistic side of the search engine. But.. Google says it does not form a threat to the world. Instead of a dominant search engine is Google an usual part of a large internet ecosystem, it claims.

Although the name ‘Google’ became a verb to descrive searching on the internet, Google claims it has competition of businesses as Amazon and Ebay. At the internet advertisement market, the business has the grand piece of that cake. 30% is for Google, and that’s far to much.

Watch Out, Oracle: Google Tests Cloud-based Database

Google has released an early version of a new type of database whose approach to data management will be revolutionary, according to an analyst who has studied the technology behind it.

On Tuesday, Google quietly announced in its research team blog a new online database called Fusion Tables designed to sidestep the limitations of conventional relational databases.

Specifically, Fusion Tables has been built to simplify a number of operations that are notoriously difficult in relational databases, including the integration of data from multiple, heterogenous sources and the ability to collaborate on large data sets, according to Google.

“Without an easy way to offer all the collaborators access to the same server, data sets get copied, emailed and ftp’d — resulting in multiple versions that get out of sync very quickly,” reads the Google announcement, which has been largely overlooked, probably because it was made on the same day the company held a high-profile press event to launch its Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.

Under the hood of Fusion Tables is data-spaces technology, which will make conventional databases go the way of the rotary phone, according to Stephen E. Arnold, a technology and financial analyst who is president of Arnold Information Technology.

Data spaces as a concept has been around since the early 1990s, and Google, realizing its potential, has been developing it since it acquired Transformic, a pioneer of the technology, in 2005, Arnold said.

Data-spaces technology seeks to solve the problem of the multiple data types and data formats that reside in organizations, which have to scrub the data and make it uniform, often at great cost and effort, in order to store and analyze it in conventional databases.

Data spaces envisions a system that creates an index that provides access to data in its disparate formats and types, solving what Arnold calls the “Tower of Babel” problem.

In the case of Fusion Tables, the technology should allow Google to add to the conventional two-dimensional database tables a third coordinate with elements like product reviews, blog posts, Twitter messages and the like, as well as a fourth dimension of real-time updates, he said.
“So now we have an n-cube, a four-dimensional space, and in that space we can now do new kinds of queries which create new kinds of products and new market opportunities,” said Arnold, whose research about this topic includes a study done for IDC last August.

“If you’re IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, your worst nightmare is now visible. Google is going to automatically construct data spaces and implement new types of queries,” he said. “Those guys are going to be blindsided.”

Fusion Tables is an early version of the product, as evidenced by its “Labs” label, which means Google considers it an experimental product. “As usual with first releases, we realize there is much missing, and we look forward to hearing your feedback,” Google’s blog post reads.

Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service

Finally. A Google search alternative: Bing!

Microsoft has a bad history of blowing millions of dollars on product launches for new online services and Web sites. Usually they were bad, and with Windows Vista in our mind.. well, you know. We’re not really a fan of Microsoft since then. But now they have something new: Bing. The search engine is a solid improvement over the previous search product, and it beats Google in important areas. It’s surprisingly competitive with Google, some reporters say. The image search from Bing is in our opinion much better than the old fashioned Google Images and has a lot more option. For example, you can search only for images with faces on it, or sort them by color. Rumours say Microsoft spent as much as $80 to $100 million on an ad campaign promoting Bing as an alternative to Google Search. You should give Bing a try. Just because Google sucks big time, and Microsoft is doing well with this new alternative.

Google is working on some spooky things

Today, several news websites reported that Google is working together with a couple of other ‘great’ companies. Google and Microsoft working together? Yes, they can. It is called the ‘Google Commission’ for now, since Google took the initiative. The project, which will take several years of development, is about ‘re-arranging’ the web in it’s final form. These monopolistic companies think that they can improve web languages such as HTML6 and CSS4 into super languages, that can work via the ‘Clarify you search’ principle that iStockphoto has. With a new ‘algorithm’, Google will give every piece of information meaning, by tagging it. You can read the article on the Dutch geek-website ‘Tweakers’ by clicking the picture below (in Dutch).

In the next web, they claim, you can search for a bank and the browser can specifically tell what kind of bank you meant, by looking at your browser history, the use of programs on your PC and the files currently opened. In other words: Google is trying to get all the information from your computer to their databases, not even thinking to help you with something you simply don’t want. Do we let that happen?

Everyone Wants to Buy Yahoo, Nobody Wants to Buy AOL

And is there any wonder? Time Warner has been in talks with both Microsoft and Yahoo about selling off its AOL unit through out this year, but both companies have been much more interested in each other than the crumbled remains of AOL. Time Warner has showed a renewed interest in a deal and Microsoft and Yahoo continue to listen, but neither company appeared to be especially interested.

The NYTimes.com quotes Richard Greenfield, an analyst who covers Time Warner for Pali Capital, “I don’t see why anyone would make a move now with all the pieces on the chess board where they are,” he said. He adds that Time Warner was in a bad spot because the value of AOL was declining. (Doesn’t everyone want dialup?) Its main business is now selling graphical display ads and that is under pricing pressure. Greenfield also says its brand has a “toxic” connotation with consumers. The company does not even use the AOL name when it starts new web sites.

From its days as the evil empire of dialup companies, they earned the nickname ‘AOHell’. The company seemed to lack firm direction, buying various companies with no obvious connection to their business and often ruining them in the process. Perhaps the most famous of these is ICQ. The most popular IM program of the time was turned into bloatware, which quickly sank out of sight. Don’t even get me started on Netscape. AOL entered the portal ring way late and had already bled dialup users seeking the freedom of the internet compared to AOL’s own internal version of it. The company has been aimless and with its almost necrotic touch, is it any wonder consumers find the brand toxic?