FACEBOOK FALLOUT: Suddenly It Feels Like Google Is Actually Going To Buy Twitter. Going With the Flow: Google's Secret Switch to the Next Wave of Networking | Wired Enterprise. In early 1999, an associate computer science professor at UC Santa Barbara climbed the steps to the second floor headquarters of a small startup in Palo Alto, and wound up surprising himself by accepting a job offer. Even so, Urs Hölzle hedged his bet by not resigning from his university post, but taking a year-long leave.
He would never return. Hölzle became a fixture in the company — called Google. As its czar of infrastructure, Hölzle oversaw the growth of its network operations from a few cages in a San Jose co-location center to a massive internet power; a 2010 study by Arbor Networks concluded that if Google was an ISP it would be the second largest in the world (the largest is Level 3, which services over 2,700 major corporations in 450 markets over 100,000 fiber miles.) ‘You have all those multiple devices on a network but you’re not really interested in the devices — you’re interested in the fabric, and the functions the network performs for you,’ Hölzle says.
Urs Hölzle. Google+ Hits the Social Sweet Spot. Google+ lit up last week as comments and jokes bounced back and forth regarding the new user interface and the ‘mysterious’ white space to the right of the screen. Perhaps more poignant in the battle for most Monthly Active Users (MAU) – a key measure of engagement used by social networks - is how Google positioned its social offering.
Often tagged as ‘late-to-market’ Google+ has received both positive and negative reviews. Few, if any however, have taken into account Google’s positioning in the heavily desirable and untapped white space that exists between Social networks and Communities. It is this positioning along with the insatiable interest in all things social, which might just provide the key Google needs to unlock the powerful network effects of Facebook. To explain this better, take a pen and draw a line on a piece of paper. Social Networks are fundamentally different from Communities Think of social network operators as brokers Google+ a foot in both camps. Le patron de Google investit dans un mystérieux projet spatial. 01net le 19/04/12 à 16h19 Voilà de quoi exciter l’imaginaire des fanatiques de science-fiction. La semaine prochaine, une conférence de presse dévoilera Planetary Resources, une mystérieuse entreprise fondée par quatre fous de l’espace, dont deux anciens de la Nasa, Peter Diamandis et Eric Anderson, qui ont tous deux déjà fondé des firmes dédiées au tourisme spatial.
L’ambition de cette start-up est encore inconnue, mais le Technology Review du MIT croit savoir qu’il s’agira tout bonnement de... forage d’astéroïdes ! L’alerte média que reproduit la revue du MIT est – volontairement – mystérieuse et évoque, en toute modestie, « une nouvelle entreprise spatiale dont la mission est d’aider à garantir la prospérité de l’humanité ». Planetary Resources pourrait donc, en déduit le MIT, effectuer des missions d’extraction de minerai dans l’espace, notamment sur des astéroïdes, riches en métaux rares. Le lancement de la Google TV en France programmé pour septembre. L'arrivée en France de la Google TV se précise. La box du géant du net arrivera dans l'Hexagone au cours du troisième trimestre 2012, au mois de septembre. Ce lancement, qui surviendra pratiquement deux ans après la sortie aux USA, s'inscrira dans une offensive plus générale en Europe, puisque la firme de Mountain View compte mettre en vente sa Google TV en Allemagne, en Espagne et au Royaume-Uni.
C'est bien entendu Sony qui a été chargé de concevoir les deux modèles de box qui seront vendus aux consommateurs européens. La firme japonaise, qui est aux côtés de la société californienne depuis le début, proposera ainsi un premier boîtier autour de 200 euros tandis que le second, vendu environ 100 euros de plus, intégrera un lecteur Blu-Ray.
Sans surprise, la Google TV permettra d'accéder à la nouvelle boutique en ligne de Google. Ce qui est logique. Si Google compte naturellement donner accès à ses services depuis sa box, qu'en est-il de la télévision de rattrapage ? La stratégie de Google ? Les développeurs ! Google Adds Two New Google+ Blogger Gadgets. As Google continues to roll out new social features across its portfolio of websites, today the company has announced that it has launched two new widgets for Blogger account owners, allowing them to place a +1 button and a Google+ badge directly on their website. The widgets have been added to users’ Blogger dashboards, providing a one-click solution for blog owners, something that Google hopes will not only connect writers with their readers but help their posts spread across its networks.
The +1 button for blogs is the equivalent of a Facebook like, serving as a way to provide feedback to the writer without having to comment. Once embedded, readers can click the +1 button and will then be asked whether they wish to share the post with their friends or with the wider web. The clicking of the +1 button will also show a mark against articles Google’s Search results, serving as a form of recommendation for friends who are looking for content.
To add the gadgets, Google recommends: Sergey Brin takes Google's Project Glass into the wild [U] Google co-founder proves Prject Glass real (Update: new, better photos) Google co-founder Sergey Brin used a Dining in the Dark charity event to provide one of the first real instances of Project Glass in real life. He proved to Rackspace's Robert Scoble that they not only matched the design from the concept video but that they work, with images flashing on the tiny glass display. The glasses themselves appeared very lightweight. Brin was wearing a backpack, but the glasses appeared "self contained" and didn't look to require whatever was sitting inside. Google hasn't said for certain whether Project Glass would be fully independent or would have to pair with a smartphone, although the slim profile of the glasses has led some to suspect that it might best work when depending on a phone's Internet access and computing power.
Google has said very little about how soon the glasses might become a reality, and if so how much they would cost and what they would do in the long term.