Google are taking over – not the world (yet), but the entire Tech industry at the moment is likely preparing for a market takeover. If it’s not enough to release a phone, plan a tablet, create a mobile operating system, and prepare an operating system for computers, launch every web app even plausible, including email, word-processing and spreadsheets, search engine, photo editing, apps for domains, the largest chunk of the web advertising industry, and so much more, Google have some more things to take a nice bite out of.

Over the past two days we’ve seen some pretty important releases for the industry – namely the launch of Google Buzz, which is essentially an ugly Twitter integrated into GMail, and the launch of a 1GBp/s Fiber-to-home network.

As Google writes on its Blog:

We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

While yeah, that’s fantastic and all, it’s a move by Google again, and 1Gbps is blooming fast (it’s about 125 megabytes every second). That means you can download a song in 2 seconds, a video clip in 20, and a movie in 2 minutes. Fast, much! But it puts pressure on the competitors. Google claims it fuels innovation, as it forces the other companies to upgrade and become better, cheaper and faster.

However, what I’m really seeing is perhaps a mass profit raise for Google – a market takeover of the entire tech industry could be in order. If Google start selling their own laptops, and then their own tablet computers, to go along with the other products their making, it seems highly logical that they’re aiming for something – Google Buzz is nothing more than Twitter. It’s less, even.

But why release products that are exactly the same as your competitors? It even calls your friends ‘followers’. If Google are so into fueling innovation, they would be releasing innovative products, not take the competitors product and merge it into their own. That’s not innovation – it’s simply copying.

Anyway, to not distract from the point, here is the point that I”m going to target at – Google are gonna do something big. I bet. And hell, it may just be market takeover.

I can’t wait for Google supermarkets.

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Google's Chrome Tablet

It’s only been a week since the iPad, and only a few days since the statement by Steve Jobs, with a few choice words for Google.

But now, this is Google’s tablet, as announced on their Chromium blog. Yeah, so Apple release a multitouch phone controlled around Apps and featuring an App store, and next – Google do. Then Apple release a multi-touch tablet… and so do Google.

I mean yeah, perhaps its inevitable for a computer company or a phone company to challenge the iPad or the iPhone, but a company who does not produce any physical product to start making phones after the competitors, and tablets after the competitors, is just kinda silly.

The tablet will run a multitouch version of Chrome OS, something I find peculiar if the OS is going to be ‘as lightweight as possible’.

I can imagine Jobs has some stronger words for Google.

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Steve Jobs, in the Apple Conference earlier, had something to say. He had something to say about his competition, and those who crumbled in his wake.

“It’s Bullshit.” were the only words that popped into the Apple leader as he thought about Google’s mantra, “Don’t Be Evil”. He also noted on Google’s Nexus One, stating that ‘[Apple] did not enter the search business. Google entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We will not let them.’

He gets ahead of himself, though. He goes on to call Adobe “lazy” on the principle that “they have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it.” (Perhaps on the absolute shoddyness of Mac Flash). “When a Mac crashes, it’s usually because of Flash”, he alledgedly told everyone. He also states that “the world is moving… to HTML5.” However Jobs is also ‘nostalgic about the kick-ass Adobe of old’.

Oh, and one more thing…

Heh. Take that, Google.

I just had to.

[Daring Fireball]

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Google wants rid of IE6 - who doesn't?

Frankly, IE6 is awful. It’s a poor attempt at a Web Browser that doesn’t support any of the new standards – poor CSS2, no CSS3, Poor HTML4, No HTML5, and awful rendering and stupid rules. Internet Explorer is bad enough, but IE6 is the worst of the lot – and tons of people still use it.

However, stuff like this may be about to change. Google have made a decision that from March 1st, most of their applications will drop IE6 support and stop working for it – in an effort to literally force the web to evolve. Along the list of applications to kill in March are Google Docs and Google Sites, as well as some search engine features.

Later this year support will also be phased out for GMail and Google Calendar, a move which could really twist the knife in Internet Explorer’s back.

It’s a smart move for the web supergiant, as they begin to attempt to modernize their efforts and push away from the ‘old web’ onto new standards, such as the much-desired HTML5, which they’ve added support for on YouTube, another one of their services.

But really, if you’re viewing my site with IE6, stop immediately. This is not a joke.

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Google China: Could end US/China Relations

Things appear to be heating up surrounding the whole [blippr]Google[/blippr] China controversy. China has now condemned the USA’s criticism over its internet controls, calling them ‘groundless’ and stating it could harm the relations between the two countries.

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton called on Thursday for China to lift its internet restrictions and heavy laws against the spreading of content on the internet. She’s also urged Beijing to investigate Google’s complaints, that the hacking of GMail accounts had originated in China.

Ma Zhaoxu, Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the US government should “respect the facts” and stop “making groundless accusations against China”, ironically.

In fact, funnily enough, he went on to say “the US has criticised China’s policies to administer the internet, and “this runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations.” If China don’t restrict freedom on the internet, why do they arrest bloggers? Just a thought.

Arguments such as these, caused over things even as simple as Google, could create a disastrous relationship between US and China.

Google China has been around since 2006 – at which point the internet giant agreed to censor searches for banned topics in China, for example the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, or Falun Gong.

Recently, Google got sick of all this censoring – and apparently, because of several attacks against their service, want to offer a completely uncensored search engine to the Chinese public.

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[blippr]YouTube[/blippr] have begun to roll out a new type of its video player, one that supports the new HTML5 standard. Currently at TestTube, the video service is offering users the advantage of the upcoming standard for HTML. YouTube have also implemented a new general layout.

HTML5 is a new standard for the internet. Among other things, it’s supporting drag-and-drop, video, audio, canvas drawing, APIs and so many more features. Youtube claim that an HTML5 compatible player was the number-one request from all of its users. HTML5 supports simple video embeds, YouTube has released a version of its player that runs on just HTML5. No flash, no javascript – just video (something that could largely boost YouTube’s spread over the internet.

As for the new layout, it’s been made more simplistic and easy to use – cutting out a lot of the crap from the old UI and improving it to something new.

It’s probably a swift move for [blippr]Google [/blippr]to switch. Not at the moment, as few people are currently able to run the HTML5 engine as their browser doesn’t support it (die IE6) – but I mean, it only works on [blippr]Safari[/blippr], [blippr]Chrome[/blippr], [blippr]Firefox[/blippr] 3.6+ or Chrome Frame for [blippr]Internet Explorer[/blippr].

Naturally there’s things it can’t do. Videos with advertising, videos with captions or annotations don’t work. It can’t support hover-over commands and there’s likely many problems that it’ll encounter. However, like I said – this’ll probably be a good way to speed up the website, and optimize – and probably make it easier to download videos.

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Google China may disappear completely.

In a decision that should have been made a long time ago, [blippr]Google[/blippr] have gotten sick of China’s censorship and ‘repetitive attacks on Gmail users.’ Google now refuse to censor their search results to China, and face a wave of criticism and anger from the Chinese government, following their harsh restrictions on the search engine.

In a way, this is Google, a company recently titled for world domination, or atleast Market Takeover in the tech world, living up to their popularly ridiculed mantra ‘Don’t be evil.’ which they’ve used for quite some time. The actual response from Google is caused by repetitive attacks from China on the [blippr]Gmail[/blippr] accounts of Human Rights Activists for China based in the US, Europe and China itself.

From Google’s Blog Post:

We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

But a decision such as this that will likely cause great discontent, and perhaps the forced removal of Google’s prescence in China, highlights the growing problem of lack of freedom, and could be a major boost to Chinese-prescent competitors, such as [blippr]Baidu[/blippr], or even [blippr]Bing[/blippr].

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T

Google have recently appeared to have claimed their phone just isn’t a smartphone – it’s a ’superphone’ (how arrogant). But really, what? Can they honestly be trying to tell us that their phone is suddenly superior to every other phone on the market? Google’s claim has been something that hasn’t sat well in the blogosphere well so far.

Google claim that the statistics for today’s phones are no longer impressive, and something new and innovative is needed (they claim that smartphones today have ‘gigabyte storage’ – iPhone 3GS = 16GB, Motorola Droid = 4GB – hardly only a gigabyte?)

To be frank, their claim sucks. I don’t even understand their claim, but there it is. Superphone is little more than a marketing term.

The definition of a superphone…the difference between superphone & smartphone…the evolution of the platform is such that the openness, coupled with these marketplaces and these app stores, that makes it really easy for people to download 3rd party content; an ecosystem by which 3rd party developers can participate in the ecosystem; the Ghz processors; the more memory; the gigabyte storage…. these are all things that didn’t exist 2 years ago. So we thought that the industry needed another term to refer to these innovations. And again, this is as powerful as your laptop was 4 years go. If anything, you’re carrying these around in your pocket, they’re with you all the time they’re always on… these are all new. So we wanted to refer to it by something and we think that “superphone” is the right way to refer to it.

The bar is raising…These superphones are getting more and more sophisticated…everybody knows about Moore’s law…today’s superphone is tomorrow’s smartphone…

[Google's Super Phone via TechCrunch]

For Added LOL, http://super-duper-phone.com

Have fun.

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Google's Nexus One - Isn't too different, though.

The legendary object of fiction, the ‘game-changing’ phone that will ‘redefine’ smartphones is here… and it doesn’t quite live up to expectations. Modestly priced at $180 on contract, and $580 unlocked, it’s a pricey object that compares to the iPhone 3GS – with less battery, and less hard-disk space (in google’s case, flash memory). Coming with 512mb of RAM and 4GB of disk space, it’s not too bad – it has a 5 megapixel camera that also records video… but to a limit of 20 minutes.

The Phone itself is a gorgeous blend of what the perfect Android phone is destined to be. Brushed industrial metal with a solid glass screen reminiscent of the Macbook Pros or HP Envy coats the device. There’s 4 buttons, much like the Droid, with an additional button that the placement, according to Engadget, “feels a bit awkward here, and there’s literally nothing in the OS that requires it”.

Similar to the iPhone, it lacks a physical keyboard, which is a rather controversial change, unlike their other Android phones which have a physical keyboard. The phone, unlike most other smartphones, has a flash camera with a 5 megapixel resolution.

There’s few issues with the phone, although Engadget describe that “we actually had some real trouble with those four dedicated buttons. Hopefully it was just our review unit, but the target areas seemed to be too high on the row, and we found ourselves consistently accidentally tapping them while composing an email or text message, or missing them when we tapped a little too low.”

The phone is currently only available on contract with T-Mobile, with other carriers like Verizon coming in the spring. It’s $180 on contract, or $530 otherwise.

This is a phone to watch out for, however.

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Google’s Chrome browser has slipped past Apple’s Safari, recent statistics show.

Even if it’s by a minor percentage, this still goes to show the demand Google had from Mac OS and Linux users on their Chrome operating system. Apple, seemingly are not too happy about this – I mean, I’m typing this article outside the Apple store, and they’re heavily whoring their Safari browser at the moment.

Chrome had heavy advertising most notably just after the release of the Mac and Linux versions, including large billboards in towns and sponsorships on magazines and newspapers, even taking the entire front page of the Metro on Monday. Frankly I’m not surprised.

Neither of the two browsers change in market percentage goes to show anything slight of Internet Explorer’s whopping market percentage of over 60%, or Mozilla’s market percentage of nearly 25%. Each Safari and Chrome have around 4.5% of the market.

Image below of statistics:

It’s funny though – we may start to see a Google powered world soon, what with all the hype over Google’s Nexus One, the proposed Google Phone that everyone’s hyping about (and other people are nonsensically rambling about plots to take down Google from Apple…).

Still, It’s fitting. Google, releasing a browser to take on Safari for Mac. Google, releasing a phone to take on the iPhone. Google, releasing an OS, to take on Mac and Windows. Google have announced war. Oh, and I don’t think Apple are taking it well.

[Source: Gizmodo]

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Alright. I’m a blogger. And I travel a lot. These aren’t great mixes, partially because when you travel, you can’t usually type or blog. I use my iPhone to blog when I’m AFK – this is a trend to do with smartphones. They’re increasingly useful as temporary computers, for when you’re in another country and can’t use your laptop, or on a train, walking down the street (imagine how much of a douche you’d look walking down a street trying to type on a laptop) and various other applications.

There’s no denying that the iPhone, let alone smartphones, are incredibly powerful and useful phones. And even so, as Apple say, most smartphone companies are just playing catch-up. Blackberry aren’t – but Blackberry are business phones. Apple’s iPhone has been a real game-changer – it was the most noticeable touchscreen phone and arguably one of the best smartphones – and it brought smartphones to a younger generation. No one in my school had a smartphone. Some geeks had blackberries, but that was in the lesser 2% of the school. Then Apple came along and maybe around a twelfth of the school have one. It’s strange, isn’t it?

What’s really eating me at the moment is the chaotic fuss over the Nexus One – Google’s Smartphone – and why everyone is hyping over it. To put it short, the Google Phone is just a phone with the Google logo. It has nothing special and it is not different from any other smartphone. There’s no exclusive features and it is not game-changing. I dread to see the day where Google is the next Apple – anything with a Google logo is apparently amazing?

Yeah, I’d admit this is a bit of an opinionated post, but at the moment the Nexus One is nothing. It’s not game changing, and it’s using technologies I saw a year ago. I want something new and refreshing with a new feature, not just the same phones on the market with a Google logo. I know Google are probably trying to do something interesting with this phone, but it’s not magical and amazing – yet. I don’t understand why people are up in arms about this revolutionary phone when it’s frankly nothing more than an iPhone catchup in an HTC Passion shell. Yeah, Android OS is something cool. But a phone running the same Android as the HTC phones and the Droid?

Guys, the Google Phone aint anything amazing. Stop acting like it’s the next super phone.

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Google today released their Google Chrome web browser to the Macintosh and Linux platforms. Each are missing some features, but it’s better than nothing.

Google have released their famous Web browser, Google Chrome, to the Macintosh and Linux platforms. While they’ve released it, it’s only in beta stage and still lacks some critical features -

but we’re sure these features will be slammed in at a later time.

So what’s it like? It rivals Safari Mac in graphical capability, and it rivals Firefox in speed (and soon maybe extensions). The Linux version is also impressive.

Find out more at http://www.google.com/chrome

Screenshot

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