Abhishek Tiwari

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The past few days have been amazing for all the Google fans. The blogodome (yeah I am using Stephen Colbert lingo here) is on fire with news about Google’s phone. Bear in mind that this is still a rumor and nothing has been confirmed yet. However, this time Google is neither denying nor accepting any of this.

Yes, the rumors have been aplenty for past year or so (I have contributed to them as well) and countless number of mockups have been floating around, like the one shown right here (courtesy Gizmodo). This time around the news is coming in from credible sources. You know the ones who check, recheck and then check again. Here is a list of some of the news I stumbled upon:

• News from Rediff
• Techcrunch
• Mashable
• Crunchgear
• and the list goes on…

Read more »

Share This

Orkut (Google’s Social Network) announced a new look yesterday. They haven’t had much success in North America or Europe (Bebo is hottest in Europe) but are pretty hot down in Latin America and Asia. Most of the invites I receive on Orkut are from my buddies in India. So after few years of service they are moving (according to their blog) towards cooler Web 2.0 like style. Here is a screenshot for your pleasure.

Well, quite frankly, that don’t impress me much. I am glad that they are bringing new features in like feeds and video. However smoother look, curvy edges and bluish coloring scheme ain’t cutting it anymore.

Although they have had a lot of success in Latin America and India, they are trailing behind likes of MySpace and Facebook. Based on a recent analysis from ComScore Orkut hasn’t really grown over the past year.

Read more »

Share This

Over the past month I have closely covered the story around Google’s efforts with the FCC. Google had ponied up a sum of $4.6 Billion for the auction if its conditions were met. Again the conditions were (from Google’s press release):

Open applications

Open devices

Open services

Open networks

This had surely irked most of the big boys. FCC eventually agreed to including 2 out of 4 requests and factored in “Open Applications and Open Devices”. Google was definitely not disappointed with this reaction and they welcomed the change and positive thinking at the FCC. However it was unknown that if Google will still continue to participate in the auction scheduled for early 2008.

Yesterday Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at a conference said that Google will “probably” participate in the auction next year for the wireless spectrum, which becomes available in 2009. This is great as Google is doing a much better job in representing user’s interests and championing free speech.

Here is the video of Eric Schmidt’s presentation:

Share This

This past week Google made a very abrupt move and shut down its download / rent service over at Google Video. They sent emails to their users and simply offered them a refund of $2 at Google checkout. Not only they had disabled the purchase and rent service, they also prevented the playback of previously purchased / downloaded videos.

DRM related issues and post YouTube acquisition strategy were being blamed for this move. Since this was very abrupt and non Google like, it received a lot of negative feedback from the blogosphere. Om Malik even openly referred to this as “bunch of bologna” on his weekly Web TV show.

Reacting to these negative sentiments Google officially apologized on its blog today. Bindu Reddy, Product Manager for Google Video posted an entry on Google blog about this and positioned it as an oversight on their part. They acknowledged the mistake and accepted that their initial approach was far away from common sense. Google is not reinstating the service in any case, however its planning to make the shutdown somewhat smoother. Here are some of the steps they are planning to take (via Google Blog):

• We’re giving a full refund — as a credit card refund — to everyone who ever bought a video. We’ll need you to make sure we have your most recent credit card information, but once we know where to send the money, you’ll get it.

• You can still keep the Google Checkout credit that you’ve received already. Think of it as an additional ‘we’re sorry we goofed’ credit.

• We’re going to continue to support playing your videos for another six months. We won’t be offering the ability to buy additional videos, but what you’ve already downloaded will remain playable on your computer.

Read more »

Share This

In its mission to organize the the world’s information and make it universally accessible / useful, Google has certainly pushed the envelope further than anyone else. In its overall strategy the Health sector has clearly remained at the forefront. Late last year Google (on their blog) clearly announced its focus in this area. Speaking from personal experiences Adam Bosworth (VP Product Management, Google) said:

People need the medical information that is out there and available to be organized and made accessible to all. Which happens to be our mission. Health information should be easier to access and organize, especially in ways that make it as simple as possible to find the information that is most relevant to a specific patient’s needs.

Google initiated an internal project codenamed “Weaver” as a planned health information storage and management program. Currently in prototype stage, its being shown to health professionals and advisers to gather their opinion and feedback.

Read more »

Share This