Google Google Everywhere

Whenever you are in front of computer and you are looking for some information, What do you do? Google is the solution. Everything we need to know, Google is the place. It has some kind of monopoly in the search engine market. Every engineer wants to be a part of this great company. There are other Google services as well like Gmail, Google+, Gtalk and now Google Drive.

But one thing which came to my mind after the launch of Google Drive that they always lag behind in introducing such services.

Gmail - 1st April 2004
Gtalk - 24th August 2005
Google + - 28th June 2011
Google Drive - 24th April 2012

If you see these launch dates and their competitors, you will find that these services are started later than their competitors. For e.g. Gmail was launched when hotmail and yahoo mail were already there. Gtalk was launched when MSN and yahoo messenger were there. Google+ was launched when facebook was there and now Google Drive is launched when Dropbox was here. There are other examples as well (Android, etc.)

What does this mean? Are they late in recognizing the potential of any service? From these examples, it seems like that only. No doubt their services are very advanced and user friendly but if they would have started these services earlier, their market presence would have been more. The recent example is Google + which is failed to take off as it was planned.

Waiting for Google +

Google + has not been launched officially to all the people but still it has gathered huge response from the social networking crowd. I am looking forward to use this social network platform. Facebook has been a game changer for me till now but now it will have tough competition from Google.

Features like hangouts in Google + in which you can group chat is new in social networking but facebook has announced that it will also bring this feature. Till now facebook does not have video chat but it has introduced it now with collabration with Skype. I won't move from facebook as the picture suggested but surely would like to get my hands dirty with Google + as soon as possible.

Even Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook has joined Google + to know the features. Google is not inviting other users to join as of now so as to increase the anticipation of the product. I would say it is teasing us.

Google and Skype - Internet Telephony Competition

I am writing this post from the user experience point of view. Currently Skype is used worldwide to talk to people on their phones through internet. Now few days back Google announced its entry into the internet telephony market by integrating this feature on its google mail. Though this is a big step but I am unsure whether they will provide good service or not. I have not tested it as I am sitting in India and it is not possible from here. But I am positive that it will be a good service. However, there are some doubts in my mind about google service as compared to skype.

1. Skype has its team fully working on only this product and always trying to make it better whereas google by integrating this feature in google mail has always have to keep in mind that the mail service do not get affected by this. So there lies a focus problem.

2. I am using both skype and google mail and chat. I have noticed that skype keeps me login even in very low bandwidth whereas I see google chat disabled due to low bandwidth. In India, this problem arises very frequently.

The only feature where google is ahead of skype is that by integrating this feature in google mail, people does not need to go anywhere other than google. They will be having access to their mails, chats and now internet telephony in only one window.

A new search engine competing google

Few days back, I received a mail from one of my colleague about a new search engine which is going to hit the market in May. So I bookmarked its address. Today I checked it, and I found it very interesting. It searches not for pages but the result itself. In other words it does not show the pages like google does but it shows the actual result of that search. I know you guys must be curious about this website. Here is the link:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

The one thing that I found very interesting is comparing two or more companies. It gives us some very useful information and I think it will help the portfolio managers and financial analysts who are interested in financial health of the companies. There are many other interesting features like search for a particular date and you will find all the details of that day. For eg. sunset time, sunrise time, etc. I think that is really some cool stuff.

Still there is time to beat google yet, but I think such innovations will really make google something to think about.

I think everybody should once check and explore this link.

Remembering IDs and Passwords

It seems like every time I want to do something online it requires a password. Is there a good way to keep track of all the passwords I use when on the Internet?

I am amazed at the amount of websites that need user IDs and passwords. It just getting difficult and difficult to remember all these IDs and passwords. I try to use similar IDs and passwords for various websites to recall them easily. But still somehow they are different as all sites have different criteria for selecting IDs and Passwords.

One thing that come out of this, that the websites should have a common/unique way of selecting IDs and passwords. Or there should be some kind of program or software which can help us recalling IDs and passwords for different websites. If you guys know any program like that do inform me or if engineers are working on such software.

I just hate to click on forget my password and then getting another password which is very long and without any sense. The problem is why we use so many websites. Everybody has 2-3 email Ids. Why use so many when we can check mails on one ID. Giving only one ID to people we know. Google has done remarkably good job as it use only one single Gmail ID to use all its applications.

Well, Engineers! I have a task for you.