google

Google to buy Plaxo? $200 million worth of data

Valleywag is suggesting that Google is buying (or has bought) Plaxo, the online contact-sharing service. According to Valleywag, it may be a pure act of friendship.

I think it's much more likely a pure act of data gathering, as Tim O'Reilly might suggest.

Plaxo would be an incredibly smart acquisition by Google. As of October 2006, Plaxo had 15 million users. While Plaxo has not been as widely used (or, at least, not as widely discussed) in the past year, that's a heck of a lot of personal data sitting on its servers, data that Google can … Read more

Google buys Plaxo? File it under 'unlikely'

Wired's Epicenter blog reported Thursday that rumors point to contact-management-service-turned-social-network Plaxo as Google's latest shopping purchase. Well, maybe.

The report is extremely thin, and very little detail is given except that the buying price is under $200 million and the buyer is "most likely" Google. Representatives from Plaxo said that the company does not comment on matters related to mergers and acquisitions.

It would make sense: Plaxo has been a loyal and vocal member of Google's OpenSocial initiative, and contact management is one thing that Google Apps really hasn't nailed yet. But Plaxo, like … Read more

Interactive map of Springfield (the Simpsons one)

Here's an oldie but a goodie if you're a Simpsons fan. It's an interactive map of Springfield, the fictional home of The Simpsons that has been painstakingly recreated based on various appearances throughout the show's 19 seasons.

The map was drawn using locations that were featured on the show, as long as they appeared more than once. Some of the spacing was determined using recent aerial shots (there's a listing here).

The map was started in 2001 by Jerry Lema and Terry Hogan. The current version is about four years old (so there are no … Read more

Google's Schmidt named chair of think tank

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has been named as chairman of the board to the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., that focuses on issues like health care, education, and foreign policy.

Schmidt joined the board 10 years ago when the think tank, which aims to transcend conventional party lines, was founded and before he joined Google. He will assume his new role June 1 and succeeds James Fallows, author and national correspondent of the Atlantic.

"We are thrilled about (Schmidt becoming chairman) and delighted that he's willing to carve out time from … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 656: Rumor-palooza

EPISODE 655

OpenID Foundation scores top-shelf board members

If the OpenID Foundation were a liquor cabinet, it just got stocked with some Grey Goose, Rhum Clement, and Gran Patron.

The foundation, which is pushing for a universal Internet login standard, announced on Thursday that representatives from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM, and VeriSign have become its first corporate board members. They join existing board members Scott Kveton (Vidoop), David Recordon (Six Apart), Dick Hardt (Sxip Identity), Martin Atkins (independent), Artur Bergman (Wikia), Johannes Ernst (NetMesh), Drummond Reed (Parity Communications), and executive director Bill Washburn.

Several major technology companies, including Yahoo, had already voiced support for the standard.

OpenID started … Read more

Could Google win friends in China by giving away music?

Baidu, China's leading search engine, gets 7 percent of its traffic on a service that eases access to free music downloads. Google, determined to catch up after two years in what is now the second largest Internet user base on earth, may follow suit.

The Wall Street Journal describes Google's possible plans thusly: "Vivendi SA's Universal Music and about 100 other foreign and domestic record labels have been working with Top100.cn, a Beijing-based Web site that currently sells licensed music downloads for 1 yuan (about 14 cents) each, and Google. Together, Top100.cn and Google … Read more

Google's spreadsheet gets neat new input form

The spreadsheet in Google Docs now supports independent form entry. That means that if someone wants to use a Google spreadsheet as a database, they can ask others to fill in data by putting information into a nice, compact form, instead of into the spreadsheet itself.

As is typical in Google Docs, this feature is simple, easy to use, but somewhat underpowered. For example, the form cannot be easily embedded in a Web page, and there's no data validation on form entries. I still recommend WuFoo for online data collection, and there are other good online databases allow embed … Read more

Google Apps aims to move companies to the cloud

Just like rogue employees in the 1990s forced instant messaging into corporations, the new Google Apps Team Edition being launched on Thursday offers a way for workers to slip a hosted apps service into the enterprise.

This could help Google in its efforts to lure more people off desktop applications sold by Microsoft and onto the mostly free Web-based apps Google offers.

Google Apps Team Edition is a free service that lets people within the same e-mail domain collaborate easily with Google Apps, a package that includes Docs, Calendar, Talk, and Start Page.

Unlike IM applications, which open communication to … Read more

ARM plans Android demonstration at MWC

ARM plans to demonstrate prototype phones based on ARM processors and Google's Android operating system next week, possibly paving the way for the chip designer to join Google's Open Handset Alliance.

It won't be the first Android prototype to get a public airing, but this one will come on one of the biggest stages of the year for the mobile-phone industry. An ARM representative distributed invitations Wednesday to come see and play with the Android prototypes next week in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress.

ARM's technology is found at the heart of almost every mobile … Read more