Google Acquires Picasa, Improves Blogging Tools 369
clandestine writes "It appears that our lovable search engine has again expanded its horizons - the internet wasn't enough; now you can search and organize your own pictures. I don't know about you, but I use Google for nearly everything; heck, I found links about their acquisition of Picasa through Google News! Any slashdotters going to benefit from this tech, or already do? And yes, the addition of Picasa to their arsenal is a couple of days old, but they just started linking them on the homepage today."
Re:Monopoly (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well...I'm still waiting (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I'll get excited...
Then I'll get scared.
Re:Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: When will they start being evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many of you (probably would have to be not-so-wet behind the ears) have joined a truly excellent company, gotten your hopes up that "This is the company to last the rest of my career!" -- it's that good -- only to watch it go psycho when the board decides to take it public?
No, the madness doesn't happen overnight. You slowly begin hearing about the symptoms as the pressure begins... "But it's the end of the month! This (shit) has to ship!", etc.
Sad, but true and (by my experience) inevitable. I wish there were no rules which forced a company to commit what is essentially "fiscal lobotomy".
Re:Funny thing.. (Score:5, Insightful)
When microsoft "expands" we all bitch and whine, but then google goes out and devours companies and services, and its suddenly "cute".
It is because:
There was other point - you don't trust your data to Google. But since introduction of GMail this is no more true
Re:Funny thing.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
looks just like locking the consumers in. For example in Yahoo you can buy yourself out by paying $ 20 and upload your 2G anywhere. You can't do this in Gmail.
AskJeeves? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the person who wrote this really understands Google's business. Google for the most part has been buying up innovative technologies which require relativley low overhead to run or integrate. I don't view AskJeeves as innovative, and don't view AOL as low overhead by any means.
I know this is nitpicking a small relativly not important part of the article, but it lept out at me as a "huh?" section.
-Pete
One more thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. People get used to the web services and have trouble leaving them. Same with applications. Its not exactly that hard to switch from IE to Firefox and doesn't cost a dime, yet MS still has 90-something% of the market there.
Re:Funny thing.. (Score:3, Insightful)
1. google is relatively new, and is still expanding.
2. There isn't any new upcoming companies that google has tried to smother (or at least hasn't been know to)
3. Because google still isn't so big as to be deemed a giant monothlith. I think its too early right now for google to have any antagonists. I think for any company to be regarded "evil", it first has to permeate enough businesses/industry segments, and attain that critical mass that overpowers people.
4. And finally, I think google has tried hard to not antagonize the geeks and the first line users. All new features are well thought out, and it tries (and usually succeeds) in doing to the best of its capability, whatever they choose to do
However, with the rate google is expanding, it may not be long that they are thought of as "evil". Say when they come up with an auction-like website as well. After all they have the technology for it, don't they?
Re:Monopoly (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice Rant, NOT (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Privacy on the net (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially on the internet.
Not to mention through a third party product that doesn't come with some reasonable expectation of privacy such as e-mail (in which case you would still have to trust that the recipient doesn't forward the information to others).
I think rather than getting 'scared' of Google, perhaps getting scared of your own actions would be the proper recourse. If you realize that you made some pretty stupid posts in the past, then in the future you may think twice before posting, and post anonymously if in doubt.
In the end, that information is out there. Google is just making it easier to find.
Re:So let's see... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not insightful - it's a total troll. How is it Google's fault that things you've said show up in searches for your name? That's the point of a search engine. If you say stupid things on the Internet, they're going to be visible whether Google is there or not. The only solution is not being stupid.
- Google has indexed 20 years worth of newsgroups. Again, I can't say I'm too pleased with some of the stuff I posted once (think "alt.binary."). But okay... So did Deja. And if you have Usenet access you could do this yourself.
- Google now "offers" 1G worth of email storage, and warns that they "may" use their searching technology on it. Now they don't even make the effort of ferreting info about you anymore, they plain and simply lure you into giving it to them
- And now the personal information releasing trap widens with this new photo storage thing. hmmm...
What next? in 5 years maybe I'll be able to google my name and see a private mail of mine saying "hey look at that d!rty picture of the secretary on my picasa account! (don't tell anyone about this, hey...)" with a nice link to my private picasa pic? Thanks but no thanks.
Whoa, what a total non sequitur. Google uses their search engine to let you search through your mail and lets you store pictures, so the obvious next step is that Gogole will index your e-mail for public searching?
Give it a rest.
The Yahooization of Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in 1997, Yahoo was the cool kid on the block, and was both buying and building every feature under the sun. People lapped it up, and thought it was wonderful to have all their internet needs under one umbrella. Then, reality set it. Yahoo stopped enhancing and in some cases (Yahoo Groups) even maintaining the services. Quality has deteriorated, and the once proud Yahoo brand had withered and crumbled into what is now the K-Mart of the internet.
I guess Google wants to be the Wal-Mart.
Re:Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
They have publicly admitted that their 'alpha' versions are what are commonly referred to as 'beta' software, and their 'beta' software is released, official versions.
Now, Google News I can make no apologies for. I've wondered why it's still in beta. I can't think of any reasons. I can think of plenty of features I'd like for them to add, but the basic functionality seems rock solid. Dunno why they list it as beta.
A change in the tone of the company? (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember Netscape? When that company started up, it's employees described it as a cool place to work, at the forefront of Browser development, fighting goliath (and winning). It didn't take long for it to become corporatized, lose it's luster, and get bought/sold out to AOL, where it became an aging, neglected, and evetually abandoned stepchild, with real development from Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird/Camino.
Regardless of how useful Google becomes or remains in the future, with Google aquiring other companies and steaming towards an IPO, I wonder if it will lose the responsiveness, humor (www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html) and uniqueness (www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/) that typcally comes from a privately held controlled by a small number of individual entrepneurs or a family.
In short, I think people feel a kind of affinity/warmth towards Google which may evaporate if it becomes too "corporate." Maybe this is inevitable, but hopefully not.
.
So they started to put ads on the Frontpage... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Who says they won't make it crossplatform? They can do anything they want with it now.
Re:So let's see... (Score:4, Insightful)
Your comment is 100% FUD. Suddenly it's bad that Google is archiving newsgroups? It's not only Google's fault that you posted binaries in the first place, and that you were too dumb to use X-no-archive, but that you can't figure out how to follow their procedure [google.com] for removing old posts?
And why do you put the word "offer" in scare quotes? Are you implying it's not really an offer, it's something else of unknown malevolence? Look. Google is, above all, a business, not a public service. Yes, they may do unknown, evil twisted things with your email. Poring through it with their grubby little computers, applying their sick, patented algorithms to search for phrases, using your most private thoughts for nefarious adword-enabling purposes. Those bastards!!11!! But hey, here's a clue. Don't sign up for GMail if that's your concern. End of story. There's no reason why their behavior should start to "really disquiet and annoy" you unless you have one of those psychological compulsions that prevents you from turning down free shit.
Maybe you shouldn't post here either. You might say something you regret in 20 years. Oh, too late [slashdot.org]!
Re:Improved blogging tools? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly (Score:2, Insightful)
Still, who knows-- perhaps on of the google labs folks will use this project for their "10% time" to keep their company unix-friendly.
Re:Monopoly (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly (Score:1, Insightful)
IE only is not a crime. Developing for 90% of the world's browsers only makes sense.