Google Opens U.K. Cybercafe and Testing Lab

sebFlyte writes "Google has launched a new venture in England to go with its London offices. They've set up a free Web cafe style affair at London's Heathrow airport to help travelers claw back some of the many hours they spend aimlessly wandering round airport lounges. They're not doing it entirely selflessly though: they admit the main reason they're doing it is to get as wide and as large a cross section of people through the centre as they can so that they can then watch them interact with Google's Web applications. ZDNet has photos, too."

Re:Hmm... Noticed something...

[nukem996]

But I also noticed there using XP. I wonder why google dosnt use a non-MS OS. I would think google would want to show they dont need MS at all.

free marketing?

[Deitheres]

Not complaining about slashdot, per se, but did anyone else notice the marketing in those pics?

Must be nice to be a company as big as google, you don't even have to pay to advertise any more. Just do something cool and people eat it up.

9 hours a year... Yeesh.

Makes me glad I don't fly.

Google Employees

[Jazzer_Techie]

From TFA, 3rd Picture [zdnet.co.uk] Caption
The 10 Samsung laptops in the temporary installation will be manned from 0700 to 1900 by Google employees from across the organisation, with some flown in especially to help out.
--
It would appear that Google has been flying in their more attractive employees. (Or maybe if I worked for Google I'd look like that too.)

Re:Hmm... Noticed something...

[Air-conditioned cowh]

If encouraging people to use non MS operating systems was a priority for them then their desktop apps would at least be cross-platform.

It clearly isn't for them because they aren't.

Critical Feedback

[mcrbids]

As a freelance software engineer, I routinely run into the same problem: I write software to address a niche need - but have no idea what the needs of the users actually are.

Towards this end, it's typical for me to spend 25% of my time on the phone to various people, asking loads of questions, just so I can understand what the expectations are of the end users. What do they think when they see a button titled "Expand"?

I never cease to be amazed at how much difference it can make to end users to change a button or link from "Reports" to "Export", or from "Course" to "Class". Putting a "Save" button at the right location can make the difference between happy customer and pissed off, irate enemy. .

Getting UI stuff rght is much tougher than you'd think. I remember reading about the intense amount of time and money spent making the iPod nano "perfect".

PS: I LOVE the iPod nano - why can't they get the software right? I hvae a rather large MP3 collection on a network drive, and trying to get the iPod to work with the MP3 collection has been very, very, very frustrating... I have a song on a network drive. I can play said song. I double-click, and I hear the song I like. It's in a playlist, and when I double-click the playlist, I still hear said song.

I synchronize the iPod, and I don't get the song. No message explaining why, no errors noted anywhere, I can't drag/drop the file, even though I get a flash when I drag said file over the iPod icon. WTF?!?!

I love the nano - but the software for it SUCKS REAL BAD.

What next

[earthshake]

"Google makes earth-wide, free, wi-fi internet access entitled: Google Net" In 10 years... "The US Government has switched to holding all of it's data on a remote server down in Google's mountain view home, it has proven a big success, allowing people to tour the setup entitled "Google Worldplex". You can check out all of Google's new services in one nice page at Xtra Google [xtragoogle.com]

Re:Terminal blues

[Chris Bradshaw]

"Sooner or later, the Google boys and girls are going to have to come out with some aggressive killer moves or folks might just conclude that the story is a soap opera about California cool with, alas, little more substance than a completely crazy stock price."

Perhaps you have been vacationing on the new Forward Moon base...?

Have you seen what Google has done/is doing with Google Earth? If this isn't a "Killer Move" then I don't know what is. Think about it, say you wanted to organize the Earths data, then wouldn't you do so by first modeling the world around you at the most generic level? Perhaps starting with physical dimensions, makeup, etc...? :You Create objects and define the relationships between those objects...? And so on, and so on...

Who know's...pretty soon you could perform calculations on and with those objects (Google Maps), maybe even release an API for Google, Google Maps, Google Earth... See where this is going?

Hey, then they could start binding data types by location.... Hmmm, how do we find where are users are located? Tah Daah, Gmail and the "Personalized Home Page (complete with weather for your Zip Code, or region..., News, Your Stock Prefs, interests, etc..) Couple that with a few strategically placed cookies... You do the math.

If you take what Google has accomplished in managing raw data on the internet, and couple it with their having successfully captured the physical world as well (demographically, etc...) Not to mention "Google Base" and Gmail which give them unbridled access to even more Data. Throw in an API... Good Lord

Let's face it, Google's IT, and they litteraly got "The Whole World in their Hands". I wouldn't expect them to be going anywhere but up anytime soon (barring Government intervention of course).

To be honest, It's pretty damn scary - the potential of Google...