Google

Google Desktop 5 offers more gadgets

Google released Google Desktop 5 on Tuesday, an update to its application for searching and indexing files on a personal computer or shared networked computers.

Google Desktop 5, available immediately for free download, offers a new sidebar interface for gadgets, new gadgets, a tool for searching available gadgets, a preview tool for browsing Google Desktop Search results, and new security features.

Google gadgets, similar to Apple's widgets, offer mini-applications for scouring the Internet for e-mail, news, weather and photos, as well as offer tools like clocks, calendars and notes.

Google Desktop 5 includes a sidebar for managing these gadgets … Read more

Report: India, Russia and China see biggest leaps in Internet users

India, Russia and China were the countries with the biggest increases in Internet users over the past year, according to a study released on Tuesday by comScore Networks.

The number of unique Internet users 15 years or older rose 33 percent in India to 21.1 million, 21 percent in Russia to 12.7 million and 20 percent in China to 86.8 million, according to the study. China has the second largest Internet population in the world, after the United States. The number of Internet users 15 years or older in the U.S. was 153.4 million users, … Read more

Bavarian library joins Google book search project

Google plans to digitize more than a million public-domain books in the Bavarian State Library, according to a Tuesday blog posting of Jens Redmer, head of Google Book Search in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The effort, which is set to include works by The Brothers Grimm, Goethe and Schiller, is part of Google's Library Project of scanning, indexing and making available for viewing over the Internet entire libraries of books. In addition to the German-language books, the Bavarian State Library has out-of-copyright works in French, Spanish, Latin, Italian and English.

Other libraries participating in Google's book-scanning … Read more

Start-up to launch free wireless network in S.F.

A Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up is planning to build a free wireless Internet network in central San Francisco, and all residents have to do put a small wireless router supplied by the company in their window or rooftop. Meraki Networks plans, within months, to bring free wireless Internet access to about 15,000 residents who live in parts of the Mission, Castro, Duboce Park, Lower Haight and Alamo Square neighborhoods.

Residents and businesses in those areas can sign up to receive a free Meraki wireless router that will serve as relay points for data transmissions across the mesh network. … Read more

More Google Phone talk

A venture capitalist says he has details on the rumored Google Phone. Simeon Simeonov of Polaris Venture Partners writes in his High Contrast blog that an inside source has told him that it will be a Blackberry-like device running C++ at the core with an operating system bootstrap and optimized Java and that it offer voice over Internet Protocol.

"Apparently, Google is planning to build distribution relationships with multiple carriers by allowing them to minimize subscription and marketing costs," Simeonov writes. "In other words, Google will market the phone online and carriers will fulfill. How fast can … Read more

Court says search engines have First Amendment right to reject ads

A federal court has ruled that search engines have a First Amendment right to reject ads as part of their protected right to speak or not speak. The U.S. District Court in Delaware (PDF) has effectively shut down a lawsuit filed by Christopher Langdon, who had attempted unsuccessfully to sell ads on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's search Web sites.

Langdon has several Web sites that purport to expose fraud among North Carolina state officials and to discuss atrocities committed by the Chinese government, according to the court filings. Allegedly, Google rejected Langdon's ads because they attacked individuals, … Read more

Chip expert says Google threatened to blacklist his sites

A top semiconductor industry analyst says Google threatened to blacklist his Web sites when he complained about a new site of his not showing up in search results. Dan Hutcheson, chief executive of VLSI Research tells the story like this in his "The Chip Insider" newsletter:

"In the past, when you launched a website, or Google wasn't picking up your stuff, you could call the friendly people over there and they'd look at your website to see if you were legit, look at their search results, and adjust their code appropriately. It used to be … Read more

Google Premium: Don't get too excited

As reported on News.com last night and widely on the Web, Google has announced the business-class version of its application suite, Google Apps. It's widely seen as a serious threat to Microsoft's office suite, primarily since it costs $50 a year per user, which deeply undercuts the price of Office.

The free version is still available, but if you pay for the service you get 24/7 phone support, a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee for e-mail, more online storage space, and other business-friendly features. You also can make it appear that Google's services (like your … Read more

Google Maps adds subway stops, building outlines to cities

Google Maps has made things a little spicier for users who are looking up information on cities like New York, London, and San Francisco: outlines to show the footprints of buildings, and subway stops. Public transportation map mashups have been around for a while--take subway stop site Hopstop, which uses Yahoo Maps, for example--but this is the first time that Google has incorporated that data into its standard map search.

It doesn't look like this has spread to mobile platforms yet: I have Google Maps on my Helio Drift phone (oops, I called it a phone), and it does … Read more