Outside the Lines

Google CEO Schmidt practices the art of stonewalling

It's been a busy week in the tech world, but the newsroom highlight of the week had more to do with what was not said. Our own Elinor Mills was dispatched on short notice from San Francisco to Orlando, Fla., to interview Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He was in the land of Mickey Mouse East to tout Google Health initiatives, which hold promise for advancing the cause of improved health care.

Elinor came ready to discuss Google Health with Schmidt, as well as other topics, such as what's up with the paid click ad business, the economy, YouTube, … Read more

The last word (for now) on Google Sites

The launch of Google Sites has spurred closer examination of the Google Apps suite and of some of the claims or innuendo from Google executives regarding the enterprise fitness of its cloud-based applications.

Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb compiles a dossier from recent posts on ZDNet and other sites that strip bare the Google Sites bride. Google plays the backdoor game--IT isn't giving you solutions you can use, so raise the software pirate flag, and use Google Sites for free to manage projects:

Google is actually going about marketing to the enterprise market in a pretty ingenious way--they're not. … Read more

Google Sites: What's all the fuss?

The launch of Google Sites is like the opening of a movie or play. The critics (including myself) feast on it, churning out copy and opinions as to whether Google Sites is a Microsoft SharePoint killer or merely the McDonald's of wikis, with more nutritional value than the venerable fast food burger and no cost.

Dennis Howlett wasn't impressed. On his ZDNet blog he wrote:

After 16 months at Google developer's hands, the outcome is substandard. This is such a pity. In its JotSpot incarnation, it was far from perfect but that didn't matter because JotSpot … Read more

JotSpot reincarnated as Google Sites

In October 2006, Google acquired JotSpot, a hosted wiki platform for building collaborative Web sites. Sixteen months later, which is like 10 years in Web time, Google is launching a revamped JotSpot as Google Sites.

Rafe Needleman at CNET Webware has a more in-depth post on how Google Sites works.

Google Sites is basically another element in the growing Google Apps suite. Like Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Sites is aimed at companies or individuals who need to collaborate, such as for managing projects or classroom activities.

"This is a key last hole in the Google Apps suite," … Read more

Returning to the blogosphere

After a brief hiatus while transitioning from ZDNet to CNET News, I have returned to the blogosphere. It was like going without my favorite tea (tie kuan yin) for nearly a week.

Google's precipitous share price fall seems to have abated this morning. The shares are on a rebound, after tanking more than 8 percent in the previous two days due to a decline in paid search. The decline can be explained away by the slowing economy or fewer ads on pages, but Fred Wilson exposes a nugget worth exploring in this blog post:

But the bigger story on … Read more

Radar Networks takes $13 million, readies Twine for the public

Radar Networks is prepping for a March public beta of Twine, a Web application that organizes information into a "semantic graph," connecting people, places, companies, products, Web pages, videos, and photos, and turning it into Semantic Web content.

In addition, the company raised $13 million in Series B funding from Velocity Interactive, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Vulcan Capital. The new capital will go toward building out the back-end infrastructure, which can be substantial as Semantic Web applications process and store large amounts of data, as well as adding staff as the business scales up, says Radar Networks founder … Read more

Is Yahoo the right mate for Microsoft? Yes...

With Microsoft's pursuit of Google...I mean Yahoo...going into the end game, some are questioning the wisdom of plunking down about $45 billion on such a prize. Last week, Robert Breza, an analyst with RBC Capital Market, made the case for Microsoft chipping away at Google's search/ad lead in a less desperate manner with its adCenter platform, and instead investing the billions in business applications and social networking. Michael A. Cusumano, professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, recommends that Microsoft stay closer to its business software roots and acquire SAP. This advice won'… Read more