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Gavin O'Malley, Yesterday, 5:15 PM
Chrome OS Gets Harsh Reviews
InfoWorld, et al
About Google's highly anticipated Chrome OS operating system? Right, it's destined to be a total failure. So says InfoWorld, which, along with a gaggle of other press, were given a sneak peek of Chrome OS at Google HQ on Thursday.
Why the severe review? "Spotty" hardware compatibility; a wholly unoriginal user interface; and too narrow a vision. "The bottom line is that while there is virtually nothing that you'll be able to do with the Chrome OS that you won't be able to do equally well with Windows, there are literally millions of things that you can do with Windows today that you'll likely never be able to do with the Chrome OS."
Wait, no, it actually appears as though Chrome OS will do just fine, or at least according to Jared Newman at PC World. "Google's Chrome OS doesn't signal the apocalypse for Apple and Microsoft, but that doesn't mean the operating system won't succeed when it arrives next year," he writes. "Just like the Chrome Web browser, Google's carving out a small slice of the market for people who want the company's buzzwords of speed, security and simplicity."
Sorry, no, back up, Newman's colleague at PC World, Tony Bradley, is absolutely convinced that Chrome OS is dead in the water largely because Google's "web-centric, cloud-computing perspective on the world" doesn't jibe with reality, as evidenced by the fact that Flickr will never be Adobe Photoshop. "If it didn't have the word 'Google' at the front, nobody would care and most people would simply dismiss the effort," he insists. "Chrome OS will be little more than a niche product and it begs the question 'why bother?'"
Without overtly taking a side, Gizmodo explains that Chrome OS is just the first step toward a larger vision, which Google has been hinting at for years, and which involves consumers virtually living, i.e., performing all of their computer-related tasks, online. "Chrome OS is an explicit step towards making this happen, but the version we saw today is just an early, broad step," it writes. "Despite early talk about how Chrome OS could be a full replacement OS one day, suitable for regular ol' laptops and desktops, today's pre-announcement of a version strictly for netbooks included an admission that it would only be intended as a secondary OS."
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Sony Prepping iTunes Rival
Businessweek
Sony just announced plans to launch an online store selling music, movies, and books as well as other downloadable applications for mobile products. Sony's top execs didn't specify when the Internet store, tentatively called Sony Online Service, would go live or what it would look like. But the storefront is likely to bear some similarities to Apple's iTunes store, according to BusinessWeek, and would be Sony's most ambitious attempt to link its products to its own library of digital content. Analysts say that creating software to sell an array of online services and content is Sony's best hope of improving its fortunes. "Sony has been too focused on hardware," Tokai Tokyo Research Center analyst Osamu Hirose tells BusinessWeek. "It has to focus on networked products [and] delivering digital entertainment to consumers."
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Twitter Bows Geo-Location API
ReadWriteWeb
Twitter has apparently turned on its Geo-location API so users can opt-in to having their messages annotated with their exact locations. The significance of this is made clear by comparing it with last week's release of 500 million time-stamped Twitter messages for analysis. "You take this data, mash it up with any other very large corpus of data with timestamps ... and you've got a web app," Flip Kromer of data marketplace Infochimps tells ReadWriteWeb. Today's announcement of the availability of location data means something similar, i.e., people can take this data, mash it up with any other data with location information and get an app. From Digg or StumbleUpon for one's favorite coffee shop to political and disease tracking, possibilities abound.
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Google Gets Into Real Estate
Search Engine Land
Google has just rolled out individual "place pages" for every property that's listed in Google Maps -- a move that ostensibly makes the National Association of Realtors forthcoming national property database somewhat less necessary. Google's real estate listing place pages include property information, photos, map placement, Street View imagery and functionality, nearby public transit details, and even AdWords ads. Google has added links for "Directions" and "Search nearby," as well as a "Send" link that opens an outgoing email with the place page link embedded inside. The property details in the example above are sourced from two separate Prudential Real Estate Web sites, and from NWSource.com, which is the Seattle Times' Web site. It's all presented like a standard MLS Web site, though it lacks some of the deep information such as square footage of individual rooms available in a typical MLS listing.
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Report: Mozilla Healthy, Too Close To Google
ZDNet
With all this talk of operating systems around the upcoming release of Google OS, ZDNet takes a look at Mozilla, which just reported its 2008 audited financials. The organization behind the Firefox browser delivered consolidated revenue of $78.6 million, up 5% from 2007, while its revenue picture looks even better if you exclude the $7.8 million loss in Mozilla's investment portfolio. The worry: Google, now a competitor, is still bankrolling Mozilla. Still, according to Mitchell Baker, chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, the company now funds 200 people working full or part-time; it has outposts across the globe and Firefox comes in 70 languages; it is launching messaging software; and Firefox has 110 million daily users as of November. A professed fan, ZDNet reporter Larry Dignan worries about the foundation's financial stability depends on Google. Baker noted that Mozilla is diversifying its revenue base somewhat, but not enough in Dignan's view.
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Google Going From CPMs To CPGs?
Huffington Post
A Vietnamese blog has posted a picture of a package of 'Google' brand "bathroom paper." According to the EnGadget blog's translation of the text printed on the wrapper using Google Translate, the product's description reads, "Very long, soft, smooth. Of high vacuum, because you always!" A HuffPost reader, meanwhile, says its actually translates to "Super elastic, soft, smooth. Highly absorbent, for you always!" Now, without jumping to conclusions, we wouldn't be at all surprised if Google were in fact exploring the broader consumer packaged goods market. Its ad business has seemed less durable of late, and its forthcoming Chrome OS operating system just received mixed reviews. The company is also notoriously ambitious, and has never been afraid to test unfamiliar waters. Google-brand air fresheners, hand sanitizers, hand-wipes, moisturizers, mouthwash... The possibilities are endless, and everyone obviously needs all that stuff. Really, we can't imagine why Google wouldn't have its sights set on CPG.
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