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Google Unveils New In-Store Product Search
Google has revamped its Product Search feature in the US to allow users to search for consumer items at local stores.In a blog post, Google said that it had partnered with 70 retailers, out of which 35 were offering their product inventories for search.When users search for a particular item on Google, they can also look for local availability of the product by clicking on the ‘nearby stores’ label.John Koryl, Senior Vice-President of eCommerce Marketing at Williams-Sonoma, one of the retailers partnering with Google, said in a statement: “Local availability provides exceptional, local-level product inventory data, store directions and phone numbers. The key is providing our customers with options and Google local availability does exactly that.”
At the moment the new product search is only available to US customers, with no word of when or if the new features will be expanded to other users around the world. -
Google Debuts Improved APIs
Google has rolled-out major updates for the APIs available to developers and has also launched a new APIs Console.According to the Google Code Blog, the newly launched tools include new Custom Search and Translate APIs. The company has also reorganised and rewritten the documentation of some of its most popular APIs.
The most significant update is the launch of an APIs Console that will allow developers to manage all the APIs currently in use. The company said that developers will be able to see the APIs they are working on, create and manage teams for a project related to an API, track its usage and see how a site or app is using the API.
The company said: “Initially, the console supports over a half dozen APIs – that number is expected to grow rapidly over time. Please take a look at the APIs console and get started using Google’s new APIs today.”
Google is also retiring the older Translate, Web Search and Local Search APIs, which will be phased out over the next three years.
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Google Donates $5 Million To Fund Online Journalism Innovation
Google is set to donate $5 million in grants to non-profit organisations that fuel innovation in digital journalism.The company, which has a strained relationship with a number of leading online news providers, said that it wanted to encourage innovation at the “grassroots level”.
The search giant said that $2 million will be donated to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that runs several non-profit programs related to journalism, training and innovation.
Google said that the remaining $3 million will be donated to similar organisations in other companies.
Nikesh Arora, president of Google’s global sales operations and business development, wrote on a blog post: “Journalism is fundamental to a functioning democracy. So as media organisations globally continue to broaden their presence online, we’re eager to play our part on the technology side.”
The search giant’s Google News service has been criticised by many online news providers for using their content to make money from advertising revenue without sharing it with the news providers. Google, however, maintains that it helps driving web traffics to the websites.
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Google Search Appliance Gains Cloud Capabilities
Google has updated its Google Search Appliance to version 6.8, adding new cloud capabilities to the service.The new upgrade to the Google Search Appliance will not only allow users to search for information from on-premise content within the organisation, but also from other cloud based online services like Google Apps and Google Sites.
According to Google, the new Cloud Connect feature on the Google Search Appliance will allow users to search for information from collaborative documents, spreadsheets, presentations and sites, including Twitter, blogs and industry web sites.
Another new addition to the Google Search Appliance is People Search, which is designed to allow people to search for co-workers relevant to their search query. Google said that users will be able to contact them directly from the search page.
Rajat Mukherjee, the group product manager for enterprise search at Google, wrote on the Google blog: “As you move your business to the cloud, the Google Search Appliance’s new features can be an important bridge between on-premise and cloud-based systems, while enhancing employee collaboration.”
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Apple Approves Google Voice Apps
Google Voice VoIP service has returned to Apple’s iTunes App Store in the form of two third party apps, GV Mobile + and GV Connect.Previously Apple had banned the official Google Voice app from the App Store, as it allow users to make cheap calls and send free text messages using an iPhone’s data plan.
This angered Apple and AT&T, the exclusive data services provider for the smartphone.
Google had responded by launching a web-based version of the service, making it impossible for Apple to block it.
There have also been a number of unofficial Google Voice apps available at the Cydia iPhone app store – but they only work on jailbroken iPhones.
This time, however, the two apps have been officially approved by Apple, and are available for download from the App Store.
Users can access their Google voicemail box and make VoIP calls directly from their iPhone phonebook. They will get a Google Voice number, which can be used to make and receive phone calls and send text messages.
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Google Announces Docs Editing For Mobiles
Google has announced that it will be bringing editing functions to its Google Docs service for mobile devices.The internet search giant has announced that the ability to edit files in its cloud-based Docs service will soon be offered on mobile phones, tech news site PCR reports.
Google revealed the news while hosting the yearly Google Atmosphere event in Paris, France, attended by more than 300 IT industry experts. The event is dedicated to cloud-based applications and computing.
The event also celebrated nearly 30 million people signing up for its Docs cloud services.
“Today we demonstrated new mobile editing capabilities for Google Docs on the Android platform and the iPad. In the next few weeks, co-workers will soon be able to co-edit files simultaneously from an even wider array of devices,” said the president of the enterprise division at Google in a company’s blogpost.
Google has added an interesting line of editing features to Docs for mobile devices, however, no release date or specific details have been revealed as of now.
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Google Publishes Map Of Countries Asking For Content Removal
Google has revealed a transparency report map that provides with a list of countries that have asked for the world’s biggest search engine to remove data from its servers.
David Drummond, Google’s general consel, said in a post on the company’s blog that “When Google’s services are blocked or filtered, we can’t serve our users effectively. That’s why we act every day to maximise free expression and access to information.”
He added that the company works hard to make sure that its services are not interrupted by mechanical outages or, government induced ones.
The report ranks the US and Brazil as having the highest number of requests with 4287 and 2435 data requests respectively.
Google provides with the exact number of removals as well as the number of removals that had already been performed plus which Google services were concerned.
Other quite interesting data pools are also available including one which shows where and for how long traffic has been up and running without interruptions.
The tool uses graphs similar to those in Google Trends and according to Google, the data is normalised and scaled in units of 0 to 100.
While the tools themselves were available before, it is the first time that Google brought them together on a single page and it is likely that it will add others as the project was part of the Googlers “20 per cent” personal time project scheme.
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Google Confirms Plans To Add Social Features
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has outlined plans to integrate popular social networking platforms with its upcoming Google Me platform.Speaking during the Zeitgeist conference in Arizona, the CEO said that Google was planning to add layers of social networking to its product line-up.
Google had been rumoured to be developing a rival to social networking giant Facebook after Digg founder Kevin Rose suggested it earlier in the year.
According to Schmidt, the search giant is working towards making its product line-up more social, rather than coming up with an altogether new platform, The Guardian reports.
“Everybody has convinced themselves that there’s some huge project about to get announced next week. And I can assure you that’s not the case,” he said.
Google is hoping to enter into some kind of partnership with Facebook, which will involve it having access to users’ Facebook contact information, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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Google Fires Engineer For Spying On Teens
Google has announced that it has fired an employee for violating the company’s internal privacy policies.According to news site Gawker, David Barksdale was caught spying on the Google accounts belonging to four teenagers.
He was fired from the job in July 2010, immediately after Google was made aware of the privacy violations.
Barksdale was a Google site reliability engineer and abused his position to access the Google accounts of teenagers he had befriended at a Seattle-based technology group.
He was reported to have spied on all Google Voice call records, as well as Gmail and Google Chat accounts belonging the children.
Google’s senior vice president of engineering Bill Coughran confirmed the dismissal in a statement: “We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google’s strict internal privacy policies.”
“We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls – for example, we are significantly increasing the amount of time we spend auditing our logs to ensure those controls are effective.”
“That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems if we are to operate them properly – which is why we take any breach so seriously.”
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Google Set To Buy Quicksee
Google is set to buy Israeli start-up company Quicksee in a bid to enhance its location-based services.First reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz the acquisition of Or Yehuda-based Quiksee would be Google’s second acquisition in the country. Google took over LabPixies, an Israel-based start up for an amount of $25 million in April this year.
According to CNN Fortune, Quiksee, also known as MentorWave Technologies allows users to develop ‘Virtual Reality’ areas in places where Google cannot run its image capture technology.
The videos developed can be turned into an interactive virtual tour to put on Google Maps.
Report suggests that the technology provided by Quicksee has been considered a missing link in development of Google Map’s Street View service, and therefore, appears to be a major acquisition for the search giant.
The deal has been estimated at $10 million, however, both the companies have refrained from confirming the report.
Quicksee was established by Gadi Royz, Assaf Harel, Pavel Yosifovich and Rony Amira in 2002.
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