Google has launched its online Google Checkout payment system, which was developed under the codename Gbuy.

The Google Checkout service allows consumers to buy products online without having to reveal their credit card details or even their email address to the seller. The service will be integrated with existing Gmail or Google Accounts.

Sellers who sign up to the programme will get a discount on transaction fees for any money they spend on Google Adwords.

For every $1 spent on Adwords, sellers can process $10 in sales free from transaction charges.

In addition, any ads they place will be accompanied by a logo identifying them as a member of the Google Checkout scheme.

Read more: vnunet.com | Google Checkout 

Google Desktop gives you easy access to information on your computer and from the web. It's a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, computer files, music, photos, chats and web pages that you've viewed. By making your computer searchable, Google Desktop puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails and bookmarks. It makes searching your computer as easy as searching the web with Google.

Google Desktop doesn't just help you search your computer; it also helps you gather new information from the web with Sidebar, a new desktop feature that shows you your new email, weather and stock information, personalized news and RSS/Atom feeds, and more. Sidebar is personalized automatically, without any manual configuration required (though you can certainly make your own customizations if you want to).

We've also improved your desktop search experience. With Quick Find, you can now launch applications and see search results as you type without even opening a browser. We've also extended our Outlook integration, so you can search Google Desktop with the Outlook Toolbar and see results within Outlook itself. Finally, you can search even more stuff, including your Gmail, files on network drives, many Outlook data types (including Contacts, Tasks, Calendar, Notes and Journal) and MSN Messenger chats. And if you yearn for even stronger security, you can encrypt your entire index.

Add Google Gadgets to customize your desktop and Sidebar, Developers: Create and share your own gadgets.

Requires Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3+

Download: Google Desktop 4.2006.0623.2309 Beta | Gadgets | Screenshots  

And the winner is ...

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were ranked a collective second in a list of 50 People Who Matter compiled by Business 2.0 magazine.

Stealing the number one spot in the list was 'You - The consumer as creator'.

The compilers argued that the collective power of millions of networked consumers has the ability to "continually create and filter new forms of content, anointing the useful, the relevant and the amusing, and rejecting the rest".

Brin and Page earned their place at number two for creating a company that has become a "magnet for like-minded geniuses".

Full article: vnunet.com 

Google is offering Google Video users the ability to watch an ad instead of paying for some premium content, the company said Thursday.

Google is running a pilot program to test ad-supported videos for premium content on Google Video."

"By placing these user-initiated ads at the end of the videos...we are able to offer select premium content free of charge to all users," Google said. "This is currently a limited test only, with a small number of advertisers and publishers (video content providers) participating. User-generated video content will continue to be free of charge and ad-free."

Though the ad is shown only after the video is played, an ad banner is displayed above the video during the time the video is streaming.

Read more: CNET News.com 

The Internet search giant wants to concentrate on its own Chinese operations

Google has unloaded its stake in Chinese Internet search company Baidu.

The search giant has sold its 749,625 Baidu shares, which it purchased for $5m (£2.75m), to concentrate on expanding its own operations in China, including Google.cn, Google said in a statement.

"We have disposed of our modest investment in Baidu. It has always been our goal to grow our own successful business in China and we are very focused on that," said a Google spokeswoman.

Read more: ZDNet UK 

Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organised by date with folder names you will recognise. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organised.

Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures – you can email, print photos home, make gift CDs, and even post pictures on your own blog.

Download: Picasa 2.5.0 Build 32.01 

The old saying 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' seems to be a very familiar one to Adobe Systems and Google, Microsoft's two biggest rivals these days. The two firms have linked arms in a multi-year agreement that will see Google's Toolbar included with various Adobe products.

The first product to be bundled with Google Toolbar will be Adobe's digital media player, Macromedia Shockwave Player. It will be offered as part of the Shockwave installation process for Internet Explorer on Windows. Adobe says that Shockwave is installed on more than 55 percent of Internet-enabled desktop computers.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Google Toolbar will also be offered as part of other Adobe product installations in the future. The company declined to specify which ones.

Read more: internetnews.com 

Search giant trialling cost-per-action scheme

Google is launching a new advertising system that generates cash when browsers buy an item rather than just clicking on an advertisement.

The system is an extension to its current pay-per-click Adsense programme, which allows website publishers to display adverts from Google and receive revenue when visitors click on the ads.

The new offering is based on a 'cost-per-action' model. Website owners will only receive money when visitors complete a specific action determined by the advertiser, such as purchasing an item or signing up for a service.

More: vnunet.com 

Search for mobiles on the way

Google's next big push will be to develop mobile search technologies - and that effort will be based out of London, according to a report in The Times.

Google executives told the newspaper it expects products for mobile phones, laptops and PDAs to be its biggest area of growth in coming years. As part of this, Google is modifying its search results to work better on mobile phones and creating new search technologies just for mobiles and PDAs, according to Deep Nishar, Google's director of wireless products.

When the search giant opened its London GooglePlex last autumn, it made clear it had chosen the capital city because of its wireless know-how.

At the GooglePlex opening, Nikesh Arora, VP of European operations, said: "Europe is ahead of the US by light years when it comes to wireless technology."

Read more: silicon.com 

SAN FRANCISCO--Google does not plan to use ads to pay for the free wireless Internet service it's offering in its hometown of Mountain View, Calif., and there's no secret plan to monetize the service, a Google Wi-Fi product manager said Wednesday.

"The reason it is free is because...we want to get a lot of people on it," Larry Alder of Google said during a panel discussion on wireless projects in cities at the Supernova 2006 conference here.

The service, which is fully deployed but not yet available to all Mountain View residents, is a test bed that will help Google understand the technology, Alder said.

He downplayed privacy concerns, saying users only need to have a Google account. "We still don't know who you are. We're not asking for a name or address," Alder said.

Requiring users to have an account gives Google some control to monitor problems. For example, "if the account is abusive, we can turn it off," he said.

The service is limited to transmission speeds of 1 megabit per second, and the contract is not exclusive to Google, meaning other companies can make deals with the city to offer their own service, Alder said.

Google has hung about 350 nodes on city light poles, and they'll serve about 70,000 people in 12 square miles, he said. The data packets travel from node to node until they hit a gateway, which has a bidirectional antenna and sends the data on to one of three building tops at the Google campus. There, the data is aggregated and then sent onto the Internet.

Full article: c|net News.com 

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, believes that when he is listening to the radio in his car, radio ads should personally address him about his needs. For example, while driving past a clothing store, a radio ad should remind Eric that he needs a pair of pants and instruct him to turn left at the upcoming clothing store.

Schmidt shared his vision for GPS location-based delivery of highly targeted and personalized advertising via in-car radios at a luncheon with a group of publishing executives in New York City yesterday. While Schmidt predicted a realization of his vision within the next one to two years, he did not share his vision for how the Google owned dMarc Broadcasting, a "digital solutions provider for the radio broadcast industry," would enable such digital ad delivery via car radios. Google acquired dMarc in January to bring "radio advertising to Google AdWords advertisers."

Read more: blogs.zdnet.com 

Google Desktop gives you easy access to information on your computer and from the web. It's a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, computer files, music, photos, chats and web pages that you've viewed. By making your computer searchable, Google Desktop puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails and bookmarks. It makes searching your computer as easy as searching the web with Google.

Google Desktop doesn't just help you search your computer; it also helps you gather new information from the web with Sidebar, a new desktop feature that shows you your new email, weather and stock information, personalized news and RSS/Atom feeds, and more. Sidebar is personalized automatically, without any manual configuration required (though you can certainly make your own customizations if you want to).

We've also improved your desktop search experience. With Quick Find, you can now launch applications and see search results as you type without even opening a browser. We've also extended our Outlook integration, so you can search Google Desktop with the Outlook Toolbar and see results within Outlook itself. Finally, you can search even more stuff, including your Gmail, files on network drives, many Outlook data types (including Contacts, Tasks, Calendar, Notes and Journal) and MSN Messenger chats. And if you yearn for even stronger security, you can encrypt your entire index.

Add Google Gadgets to customize your desktop and Sidebar, Developers: Create and share your own gadgets.

Requires Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3+

Download: Google Desktop 4 Beta | Gadgets | Screenshots  

'GBuy is not like PayPal at all,' says Schmidt

Google has denied that its GBuy online payment system is designed to compete with PayPal.

The service, believed to launch on 28 June, has been given the codename GBuy but does not have an official name, according to Google.

Eric Schmidt, chief executive at the search giant, denied that the service was designed to compete directly with eBay-owned PayPal.

Read more: vnunet.com 

'My Picasa is your Picasa'

Google has launched a new feature in its Picasa photo management application that will let people organise and share photos over the web.

Picasa Web Album will initially be available only to a limited number of Gmail users at http://picasaweb.google.com, said Adrian Graham, a product manager at Picasa.

Picasa, technology Google acquired in 2004, is free downloadable software that lets people find and edit photos on a desktop computer and send them to others from a Gmail account or publish them on a blog.

Picasa Web Album is designed to let people easily upload and store their photos online. Uploaded albums can be public and available to anyone who knows the Gmail account under which they're listed, or private ("unlisted") and available only by way of a special link Picasa users can send to whomever they wish.

Graham said: "All users need to do is select the photos they want to share and click on a button and the photos are online."

Read more: silicon.com

Download: Picasa 

Information classification and management (ICM) startup Kazeon unveiled the fruits of its partnership with Google on Tuesday, an appliance aimed at extending enterprise search into the storage infrastructure.

The integration of Kazeon's Information Server IS1200 with Google OneBox for Enterprise gives users easier access to billions of files scattered across corporate servers, archives and disk-based backups, the companies say.

"Nobody in the marketplace today can support files of that magnitude," said Kazeon vice president of solution marketing Michael Marchi.

The integration of Kazeon's enterprise search and indexing product with the Google Search Appliance lets customers easily locate and retrieve sensitive data, comply with regulations and respond quickly to legal discovery requests, the companies say. Users can enter keywords and phrases into a familiar Google search interface and get the most relevant search results from data residing across globally distributed corporate network storage systems on the same screen with their Google results.

Sudhakar Muddu, CEO and co-founder of Kazeon, calls the product "very scalable, high-performance indexing and search uniquely designed for storage" that is "fully actionable."

Full article: internetnews.com 

Developed for the conceptual stages of design, Google SketchUp is powerful yet easy-to-learn 3D software. We think of it as the pencil of digital design. This award-winning software combines a simple, yet robust tool-set that streamlines and simplifies 3D design inside your computer. SketchUp is being used by anyone with the desire to...Dream, Design and Communicate in 3D

With just a few simple tools, you can create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects - even space ships.

Google SketchUp is free for personal use. No registration is required.

Download: Google SketchUp 5.0.295 Windows, Mac OS X 

Judge rejects Skyline's request...

A federal judge in Massachusetts has rejected a request for an injunction preventing Google from distributing its popular 3D Earth-mapping and visualisation program.

US District Judge Douglas Woodlock on Friday denied a preliminary injunction requested by a Virginia-based company called Skyline Software Systems, which alleges Google Earth violates its terrain-mapping patent.

A notice posted on the court's website says Woodlock announced his decision in a telephone conference with attorneys involved in the case without publishing a written opinion.

The legal spat began when Skyline sued Keyhole, a digital mapping company, for patent infringement in May 2004. Founded in 1997, Skyline makes a number of mapping products, including one called TerraExplorer, which - according to its website - "allows users to freely fly through 3D terrain and urban environments".

Google became part of the suit after it acquired Keyhole in October 2004. Keyhole made interactive, 3D mapping software based on terabytes of information and images taken from satellites and airplanes. That technology formed the basis for Google Earth, which was released last June.

Full story: silicon.com 

The idea is simple. It’s a globe that sits inside your PC. You point and zoom to anyplace on the planet that you want to explore. Satellite images and local facts zoom into view. Tap into Google search to show local points of interest and facts. Zoom to a specific address to check out an apartment or hotel. View driving directions and even fly along your route. We invite you to try it now.

Google Earth is free for personal use. No registration is required. You may (optionally) choose to upgrade to Google Earth Plus.

Features:

• Free for personal use.
• Sophisticated streaming technology delivers the data to you as you need it.
• Imagery and 3D data depict the entire earth - Terabytes of aerial and satellite imagery depict cities around the world in high-resolution detail.
• Local search lets you search for restaurants, hotels, and even driving directions. Results show in your 3D earth view. Easy to layer multiple searches, save results to folders, and share with others.
• Layers show parks, schools, hospitals, airports, shopping, and more.
• KML – data exchange format let your share useful annotations and view. thousands of data points created by Google Earth users.

Use it for:

-Planning a trip
-Getting driving directions
-Finding a house or apartment
-Finding a local business
-Exploring the world

Download: Google Earth Release 4 Beta Windows 2000/XP, Mac OS X, Linux
 

Google's online payment system, Gbuy, is expected to launch June 28, further pitting the Internet giant against industry titan and rival eBay, according to a research note released Friday by a Wall Street analyst.

Gbuy is expected to be free during the initial phase, but merchants may eventually be charged a 1.5 percent to 2 percent per-transaction fee, Jordan Rohan, an RBC Capital Markets analyst, said in his research note. A fee of that size would be slightly less than that charged by eBay's online payment system, PayPal.

Google was not immediately available to comment.

"The brilliance of Google's Gbuy merchant-to-consumer payment platform lies in what Google may do with the transactional data it captures from the thousands of merchants that may ultimately offer Gbuy," Rohan said.

Google is able to gather the data when users click on a merchant's Gbuy feature. Consumers are then transferred to Google's Gbuy site, where they complete the transaction.

Google's payment system, as a result, holds the potential to monitor which paid-search results users click on and of that group, which ones turn into actual sales. With that information, Google may find itself in the enviable position of being able to identify which categories bring in the highest return on investment for advertisers, Rohan stated.

Full article: ZDNet News 

SysSense is your personal desktop Google AdSense monitor. It keeps your current Google AdSense information in the Windows system tray. You can monitor an unlimited number of Google AdSense accounts. A sound and/or system tray icon balloon can be configured to alert you when your statistics have changed.

Main Features:

• View your current Google AdSense statistics at anytime by holding your mouse over the SysSense system tray icon. These statistics are sometimes even more up-to-date than what is showing up on the Google AdSense website.
• Receive a system tray icon balloon alert when any of the following is updated: page impressions, clicks, clickthrough rate, CPM, earnings.
• Monitor an unlimited number of Google AdSense accounts.
• Easily log into your Google AdSense account from the SysSense system tray icon menu. There is no need to log into the Google AdSense webpage -- Just a few clicks of the SysSense system tray icon menu and you're there.

Requirements: Windows 2000+, Google AdSense account

Download: SysSense 1.2.23
 

System automatically determines what is being watched from a small audio signature

Researchers at Google Labs are working on an interactive television application that provides contextually relevant web content for viewers.

The researchers have demonstrated how to sample the ambient sound emitted from a TV and automatically determine what is being watched from a small audio signature.

The system uses a microphone to analyse the sound and can then provide the user with related web content.

For example, during a time-out in a live sporting event some viewers may enjoy reviewing highlight footage, while others may prefer to view a parallel programme to watch player profiles and statistics before being automatically returned to the sporting action once the event is back underway.

Read more: vnunet.com 

 

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

This extension works with Firefox version 1.5 and later. Currently, it doesn't work in the Mozilla Suite, Internet Explorer, or Opera. Google Browser Sync is compatible with all operating systems supported by Firefox 1.5.

Download: Google Browser Sync for Firefox 1.0.0.0 

Google is committed to doing business in China despite criticism the company has faced for abiding by Chinese government censorship restrictions, co-founder Sergey Brin said this week.

On Tuesday, after a session with several U.S. senators to discuss telecommunications legislation, Brin made comments that prompted some journalists to speculate Google intended to change or eliminate its operations in China.

In fact, he reiterated Google's intention to move ahead with its google.cn site -- a version of the leading Internet search engine that censors thousands of sites according to Chinese standards -- as well as its global google.com site.

Brin told a small group of invited journalists: "I think it's perfectly reasonable to do something different. Say, OK, let's stand by the principle against censorship and we won't actually operate there."

But he then added: "That's an alternative path. It's not the one we've chosen to take right now."

Full story: ZDNet News 

Google will begin a phased rollout of a free wireless Net access service in its hometown of Mountain View, Calif., this summer and is still hammering out details with San Francisco officials for its citywide Wi-Fi service there.

Testers who volunteer to offer feedback for the Mountain View project will be able to sign up for Wi-Fi starting sometime this summer, and the service will be widely available to the public later this year, Chris Sacca, head of special initiatives at Google, said Wednesday.

"The Mountain View network rollout is on track to be completed by (the end of) June," Sacca said. Google will operate the network itself and has partnered with wireless technology providers, equipment vendors and integration providers to design, build and install the network, he said.

"We are going to be an ISP here in Mountain View," Sacca said, adding that there are no plans at this time to put ads on the service.

Meanwhile, Google's free Wi-Fi service in San Francisco may or may not have advertisements, he said. "If we get to the point that we decide that providing ads to end users is a benefit, then we might do it," he said. Ads are "not driving this...For us it is much more of an experiment and a lofty social benefit."

He could not say when deployment might begin.

Full article: CNET News.com