sign in sign up
<<
Home , Criticism of Google, Firebug (software), Gmail interface, Google Code Search, Google Desktop, Google Image Labeler

Google

A tech jargon Submitted By

Prasham Trivedi (6044)

As a partial fulfillment of the course of B.E.I.T.

2009

SHANTILAL SHAH ENGINEERING COLLEGE

CERTIFICATE This is to certify that below mentioned students

Mr. Prasham H Trivedi(Roll No. 6040)

of semester 8th , course B.E.I.T. , have successfully and satisfactorily completed his Seminar report on

͞Google- a tech Jargon͟

in subject Seminar report and produced this report of year 2009 and submitted to S.S.E.tag">C., BHAVNAGAR.

DATE OF SUBMISSION: ------

STAFF IN CHARGE: HEAD OF DEPARTMENT: PRINCIPAL:

Page 1 of 109

Contents Overview͙..͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙͙3 Browser: Chrome ...... 10 Browser extension: ...... 20 Desktop : ...... 22 Picture Organizer ...... 28 IM: ...... 33 ...... 37 Google packs ...... 45 Igoogle ...... 47 ...... 50 Developers͛ Mecca: Google code ...... 68 ...... 69 ...... 72 ...... 78 Mobile OS and developing platform: Android ...... 79 ...... 87 Google image search ...... 92 Game on Google: image labeler ...... 93 Google for researchers: Google search ...... 96 Code repository: ...... 97 Google͛s online library: Book Search ...... 98 Google for students: ...... 99 Google the real technology behind ...... 100 ...... 104 From where Google earns? ...... 106

Page 2 of 109

History and overview Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. The Google headquarters, the , is located in Mountain View, California. As of December 31, 2008, the company has 20,222 full-time employees.

Google was co-founded by and while they were students at Stanford University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. The initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004, raising US$1.67 billion, making it worth US$23 billion. Google has continued its growth through a series of new product developments, acquisitions, and partnerships. Environmentalism, philanthropy and positive employee relations have been important tenets during the growth of Google, the latter resulting in being identified multiple times as Fortune Magazine's #1 Best Place to Work. The unofficial company slogan is "Don't be evil", although includes concerns regarding the of personal information, , and discontinuation of services. According to Millward Brown, it is the most powerful brand in the world.

Google began in January 1996, as a research project by Larry Page, who was soon joined by Sergey Brin, when they were both Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California. They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better ranking of results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. Their search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. A small search engine called Rankdex was already exploring a similar strategy.

Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally, the search engine used the Stanford University website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on 15 September 1997, and the company was incorporated as Google Inc. on 4 September 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. The total initial investment raised for the new company amounted to almost US$1.1 million, including a US$100,000 check by , one of the founders of .

In March 1999, the company moved into offices in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 2003. The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex

Page 3 of 109

has since come to be known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for US$319 million.

The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design and useful results. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords. The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and clickthroughs, with bidding starting at US$.05 per click. This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture Services, before being acquired by Yahoo! and rebranded as Yahoo! Search Marketing). Goto.com was an Idealab spin off created by Bill Gross, and was the first company to successfully provide a pay- for-placement search service. Overture Services later sued Google over alleged infringements of Overture's pay-per-click and bidding by Google's AdWords service. The case was settled out of court, with Google agreeing to issue shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license. Thus, while many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.

The name "Google" originated from a common misspelling of the word "googol", which refers to 10100, the number represented by a 1 followed by one hundred zeros. Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb "google", was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."

A patent describing part of the Google ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on 4 September 2001. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.

Financing and initial public offering The first funding for Google as a company was secured in August 1998, in the form of a US$100,000 contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given to a corporation which did not yet exist.

On June 7th, 1999 a round of funding of $25 million was announced, with the major investors being rival venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.

The Google IPO took place on 19 August 2004. 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of US$85 per share. Of that, 14,142,135 (another mathematical reference as g2 [ 1.4142135) were floated by Google, and the remaining 5,462,917 were offered by existing stockholders. The sale of US$1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than US$23 billion. The vast majority of the 271 million shares remained under the control of Google. Many Google employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited

Page 4 of 109

from the IPO because it owned 8.4 million shares of Google as of 9 August 2004, ten days before the IPO.

The stock performance of Google after its first IPO launch has gone well, with shares hitting US$700 for the first time on 31 October 2007, due to strong sales and earnings in the advertising market, as well as the release of new features such as the function and its iGoogle personalized home page. The surge in stock price is fueled primarily by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds.

Growth While the primary business interest is in the web content arena, Google has begun experimenting with other markets, such as radio and print publications. On 17 January 2006, Google announced that its purchase of a radio advertising company "dMarc", which provides an automated system that, allows companies to advertise on the radio. This will allow Google to combine two niche advertising mediaͶthe Internet and radioͶwith Google's ability to laser- focus on the tastes of consumers. Google has also begun an experiment in selling advertisements from its advertisers in offline newspapers and magazines, with select advertisements in the Chicago Sun-Times. They have been filling unsold space in the newspaper that would have normally been used for in-house advertisements.

Acquisitions Since 2001, Google has acquired several small start-up companies. In 2004, Google acquired a company called Keyhole, Inc., which developed a product called Earth Viewer which was renamed in 2005 to Google Earth

In February 2006, software company Adaptive Path sold Measure Map, a weblog statistics application, to Google. Registration to the service has since been temporarily disabled. The last update regarding the future of Measure Map was made on 6 April 2006 and outlined many of the known issues of the service.

In late 2006, Google bought the online video site YouTube for US$1.65 billion in stock. Shortly after, on 31 October 2006, Google announced that it had also acquired JotSpot, a developer of wiki technology for collaborative Web sites.

On 13 April 2007, Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick. Google agreed to buy the company for US$3.1 billion.

On 2 July 2007, Google purchased GrandCentral. Google agreed to buy the company for US$50 million.

On 9 July 2007, Google announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire enterprise messaging security and compliance company Postini.

Page 5 of 109

Partnerships In 2005, Google entered into partnerships with other companies and government agencies to improve production and services. Google announced a partnership with NASA Ames Research Center to build up 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2) of offices and work on research projects involving large-scale data management, nanotechnology, distributed computing, and the entrepreneurial space industry. Google also entered into a partnership with Sun Microsystems in October to help share and distribute each other's technologies. The company entered into a partnership with AOL of Time Warner, to enhance each other's video search services. The same year, the company became a major financial investor of the new .mobi top- level domain for mobile devices, in conjunction with several other companies, including , Nokia, and Ericsson among others. In September 2007, Google launched, "Adsense for Mobile", a service for its publishing partners which provides the ability to monetize their mobile websites through the targeted placement of mobile text ads, and acquired the mobile social networking site, Zingku.mobi, to "provide people worldwide with direct access to Google applications, and ultimately the information they want and need, right from their mobile devices." In 2006, Google and Fox Interactive Media of News Corp. entered into a US$900 million agreement to provide search and advertising on the popular social networking site, MySpace. Google has developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providing Google with high-resolution (0.41m black and white, 1.65m color) imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 6 September 2008. In 2008, Google announced that it was hosting an archive of Life magazine's photographs, as part of a joint effort. Some of the images in the archive were never published in the magazine

Products and services

Google has created services and tools for the general public and business environment alike; including Web applications, advertising networks and solutions for businesses.

Advertising 99% of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs. For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported US$10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only US$112 million in licensing and other revenues. Google is able to precisely track users' interests across affiliated sites using DoubleClick technology and . Google's advertisements carry a lower price tag when their human ad-rating team working around the world believes the ads improve the company's user experience. Google AdWords allows Web advertisers to display advertisements in Google's search results and the Google Content Network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. Google Adsense website owners can also display adverts on their own site, and earn money every time ads are clicked.

Page 6 of 109

Google has also been criticized by advertisers regarding its inability to combat click fraud, when a person or automated script is used to generate a charge on an advertisement without really having an interest in the product. Industry reports in 2006 claim that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were in fact fraudulent or invalid.

In June 2008, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on their web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized due to antitrust concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November, 2008.

Software The Google web search engine is the company's most popular service. As of August 2007, Google is the most used search engine on the web with a 53.6% market share, ahead of Yahoo! (19.9%) and Live Search (12.9%). Google indexes billions of Web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators, although at any given time it will only return a maximum of 1,000 results for any specific search query. Google has also employed the Web Search technology into other search services, including Image Search, , the price comparison site Google Product Search, the interactive Usenet archive , Google Maps, and more.

In 2004, Google launched its own free web-based e-mail service, known as (or Google Mail in some jurisdictions). Gmail features conversation view, spam-filtering technology, and the capability to use Google technology to search e-mail. The service generates revenue by displaying advertisements and links from the AdWords service that are tailored to the choice of the user and/or content of the e-mail displayed on screen.

In early 2006, the company launched , which not only allows users to search and view freely available videos but also offers users and media publishers the ability to publish their content, including television shows on CBS, NBA basketball games, and music videos.

Google has also developed several desktop applications, including Google Desktop, Picasa, SketchUp and Google Earth, an interactive mapping program powered by satellite and aerial imagery that covers the vast majority of the . Many major cities have such detailed images that one can zoom in close enough to see vehicles and pedestrians clearly. Consequently, there have been some concerns about national security implications; contention is that the software can be used to pinpoint with near-precision accuracy the physical location of critical infrastructure, commercial and residential buildings, bases, government agencies, and so on. However, the satellite images are not necessarily frequently updated, and all of them are available at no charge through other products and even government sources; the software simply makes accessing the information easier. A number of Indian state governments have raised concerns about the security risks posed by geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging.

Page 7 of 109

Google has promoted their products in various ways. In London, Google Space was set- up in Heathrow Airport, showcasing several products, including Gmail, Google Earth and Picasa. Also, a similar page was launched for American college students, under the name College Life, Powered by Google.

In 2007, some reports surfaced that Google was planning the release of its own mobile phone, possibly a competitor to Apple's iPhone. The project, called Android, an provides a standard development kit that will allow any "Android" phone to run software developed for the Android SDK, no matter the phone manufacturer. In September 2008, T-Mobile released the first phone running the Android platform, the G1.

Google Translate (site) aka Google Language Tools (site) is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate 35 different languages to each other, forming 1190 language pairs. Browser extension tools (such as extensions) allow for easy access to from the browser. The software uses corpus linguistics techniques from translated documents, (such United Nations documents, which are professionally translated) to extract translations accurate up to 88 percent. A "suggest a better translation" feature appears with the original language text in a pop-up text field, allowing users to indicate where the current translation is incorrect or else inferior to another translation.

On 1 September 2008, Google pre-announced the upcoming availability of , an open-source , which was released on 2 September 2008.

Enterprise Products Google entered the Enterprise market in February, 2002 with the launch of its , targeted toward providing search technology to larger organizations. Providing search for a smaller document repository, Google launched the Mini in 2005.

Late in 2006, Google began to sell Custom Search Business Edition, providing customers with an advertising-free into Google.com's index. In 2008, Google re-branded its next version of Custom Search Business Edition as Google Site Search.

In 2007, Google launched Google Apps Premier Edition, a version of Google Apps targeted primarily at the business user. It includes such extras as more disk space for e-mail, API access, and premium support, for a price of US$50 per user per year. A large implementation of Google Apps with 38,000 users is at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.

Also in 2007, Google acquired Postini and continued to sell the acquired technology as Google Security Services

Page 8 of 109

Resent Developments at Google (As of 28th March 2009) Do you know why all applications and services of Google are called ͞Beta͟? As per company͛s views their development never stops and they͛ve proved it true. Their most used applications are being developed rapidly, the new services are introduced frequently and the services criticized by users are dropped eventually. Let͛s have a look. Google has a service called . This Google lab is the platform behind each and every development in Google. They have recently announced that Gmail (their mail service) can be accessed offline. By help of their browser extension called ͚͛Gears͛͛ you can set your Gmail account as it can be accessed offline in your private workstation. In Gmail they enabled multiple inboxes can be viewed on single page. As like you can also enable a background theme available. And these themes are far better than those in yahoos.

In iGoogle they have put pages and gadget links as sidebar links on left side on pages. And if you click on one gadget you can see it on whole page (once again far better than its counterpart my yahoo). In Google notebook you can put all the notes as rich text format. Yes notebook clipping is not rich texted before in Google notebook as you can see the images here. But eventually Google has announced that they are dropping all the plans to develop Notebook service.

Page 9 of 109

Googleǯs applications 1 desktop application

Browser: Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google and based on the WebKit layout engine and application framework. In December 2008, it had a share of 1.04% of the browser market. It was first released as a beta version for on September 2, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers. The public stable release was on December 11, 2008.

Chromium is the open source project behind Google Chrome. The Google-authored portion of it is released under the BSD license, with other parts being subject to a variety of different permissive open-source licenses, including the MIT License, the LGPL, the Microsoft Permissive License and a MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license. It implements the same feature set as Chrome, but has a slightly different logo.

History

Announcement The release announcement was originally scheduled for September 3, 2008, and a comic by Scott McCloud was to be sent to journalists and bloggers explaining the features of and motivations for the new browser. Copies intended for Europe were shipped early and German Philipp Lenssen of Google Blog scoped made a scanned copy of the 38-page comic available on his website after receiving it on September 1, 2008. Google subsequently made the comic available on and their site and mentioned it on its official blog along with an explanation for the early release.

Public release

The Test Shell on

Page 10 of 109

The browser was first publicly released for Microsoft Windows (XP and later only) on September 2, 2008 in 43 languages, officially a beta version. Chrome quickly gained about 1% market share. Mac OS X and Linux versions are under development. Recently, in the Chromium project's developer wikia message was placed that a "test shell" is available to build on Linux. Some have tried this shell, which apparently lacks many features, but appears to function quite well in rendering web sites (including JavaScript).

On September 2, a CNET news item drew attention to a passage in the terms of service for the initial beta release, which seemed to grant to Google a license to all content transferred via the Chrome browser. The passage in question was inherited from the general Google terms of service. On the same day, Google responded to this criticism by stating that the language used was borrowed from other products, and removed the passage in question from the Terms of Service. Google noted that this change would "apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome." There were subsequent concern and confusion about whether and what information the program communicates back to Google. The company stated that usage metrics are only sent when users opt in by checking the option "help make Google Chrome better by automatically sending usage statistics and crash reports to Google" when the browser is installed.

The first release of Google Chrome passed the Acid1 and (not fully, a small artifact appears tests. It also passed 79 out of the 100 subtests of the Acid3, higher than both 7 (14) and Firefox 3 (71), but lower than (83) When compared with development builds of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and , Chrome scored lower than Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 (85), Opera (100), and Safari 4 (Developer Preview) (100), but still higher than Internet Explorer (21) However, the current Dev channel build scores 100 out of 100 while still failing the link test.

On January 9, 2009, CNET reports that Google plans to release versions for Mac OS X and Linux by the first half of the year.

Unofficial Chromium releases

y On September 15, 2008, CodeWeavers released an unofficial bundle of a derivative and Chromium Developer Build 21 for Linux and Mac OS X, which they dubbed CrossOver Chromium. y SRWare Iron is a release of Chromium software that explicitly disables the collection and transmission of usage information to Google which is optional within Chrome.

Development

Primary design goals were improvements in security, speed, and stability compared to existing browsers. There also were extensive changes in the user interface. Chrome was assembled from 26 different code libraries from Google and others from third parties such as .

Page 11 of 109

Security

Chrome periodically downloads updates of two blacklists (one for and one for malware), and warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful site. This service is also made available for use by others via a free public API called " API". Google notifies the owners of listed sites who may not be aware of the presence of the harmful software.

Chrome will typically allocate each tab to fit into its own process to "prevent malware from installing itself" or "using what happens in one tab to affect what happens in another", however the actual process allocation model is more complex. Following the principle of least privilege, each process is stripped of its rights and can compute, but cannot write or read from sensitive areas (e.g. documents, desktop)Ͷthis is similar to the "Protected Mode" that is used by Internet Explorer 7 on . The Sandbox Team is said to have "taken this existing process boundary and made it into a jail"; for example, malicious software running in one tab is unable to sniff credit card numbers, interact with the mouse, or tell Windows to "run an executable on start-up" and it will be terminated when the tab is closed. This enforces a simple computer security model whereby there are two levels of multilevel security (user and sandbox) and the sandbox can only respond to communication requests initiated by the user.

Typically, plugins such as Player are not standardized and as such, cannot be sandboxed as tabs can be. These often need to run at, or above, the security level of the browser itself. To reduce exposure to attack, plugins are run in separate processes that communicate with the renderer, itself operating at "very low privileges" in dedicated per-tab processes. Plugins will need to be modified to operate within this software architecture while following the principle of least privilege. Chrome supports the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI), but does not support the embedding of ActiveX controls. Also, Chrome does not have an extension system such as 's XPInstall architecture. Java applets support is available in Chrome as part of Java 6 update 11, which currently is the latest stable version.

A private browsing feature called Incognito mode is provided that prevents the browser from storing any history information or cookies from the websites visited. This feature has been referred to as a porn mode similar to the private browsing feature available in Apple's Safari and the latest beta version of Internet Explorer 8.

A denial-of-service vulnerability was found that allowed a malicious web page to crash the whole web browser. However, Google Chrome developers confirmed the flaw, and it was fixed in the 0.2.149.29 release.

Page 12 of 109

Speed

The JavaScript was considered a sufficiently important project to be split off (as was Adobe/Mozilla's ) and handled by a separate team in Denmark. According to Google, existing implementations were designed "for small programs, where the performance and interactivity of the system weren't that important," but web applications such as Gmail "are using the web browser to the fullest when it comes to DOM manipulations and JavaScript." The resulting V8 JavaScript engine has features such as hidden class transitions, dynamic code generation, and precise garbage collection. Tests by Google showed that V8 was about twice as fast as Firefox 3.0 and the Safari 4 beta.

Several websites performed benchmark tests using the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark tool as well as Google's own set of computationally intense benchmarks, which includes ray tracing and constraint solving. They unanimously reported that Chrome performed much faster than all competitors against whom it had been tested, including Safari, Firefox 3.0, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8. While Opera had not been compared to Chrome in those comparisons, in previous tests, it had been shown to be slightly slower than Firefox 3.0, which in turn, was slower than Chrome. Another blog post by Mozilla developer compared Chrome's V8 engine to his own TraceMonkey JavaScript engine which was introduced in Firefox 3.1alpha, stating that some tests were faster in one engine and some were faster in the other, with Firefox 3.1a faster overall. , Mozilla's JavaScript evangelist, further commented on the performance of different browsers on Google's own suite, finding Chrome "decimating" other browsers, but he questions whether Google's suite is representative of real programs. He stated that Firefox 3.0 performed poorly on recursion intensive benchmarks, such as those of Google, because the Mozilla team had not implemented recursion-tracing yet.

Chrome also uses DNS perfecting to speed up website lookups.

Stability

The Gears team was considering a multithreaded browser (noting that a problem with existing web browser implementations was that they are inherently single-threaded) and Chrome implemented this concept with a multi-process architecture, similar to Loosely Coupled Internet Explorer (LCIE) recently implemented by Internet Explorer 8. By default, a separate process is allocated to each site instance and plug-in. This prevents tasks from interfering with each other, which is good for security and stability; an attacker successfully gaining access to one application does not gain access to all, and failure in one application results in a Sad Tab screen of death, similar to the well-known Sad Mac, except only one single tab crashes instead of the whole application. This strategy exacts a fixed per-process cost up front, but results in less memory bloat overall as fragmentation is confined to each process and no longer results in further memory allocations.

Page 13 of 109

Chrome features a process management utility called the Task Manager which allows the user to "see what sites are using the most memory, downloading the most bytes and abusing [their] CPU" (as well as the plug-ins which run in separate processes) and terminate them. Some users have reported a conflict with Internet Explorer, often resulting in the blue screen error on Windows.

User interface

When Chrome is maximized, the title bar becomes hidden and instead, the tab bar is displayed at the top. Also, when the mouse is moved over a link, the URL of the link is displayed in a status bar at the bottom left. Otherwise, the status bar is invisible

Page 14 of 109

When Chrome is not maximized, the title bar is shown on top of the tab bar.

The main user interface includes back, forward, refresh, bookmark, go, and cancel options. The options are similar to Safari, while the location of the settings is similar to versions of Internet Explorer starting with version 7. The design of the window is based on Windows Vista.

When the window is not maximized, the tab bar appears directly under the title bar. When maximized, the title bar disappears, and instead, the tab bar is shown at the very top of the window. Unlike other browsers such as Internet Explorer or Firefox which also have a full- screen mode that hides the operating system's interface completely, Chrome can only be maximized like a standard Windows application. Therefore, the Windows task bar, notification area, and start menu link still take space at all times unless they have been configured to hide at all times.

Chrome includes Gears, which adds features for web developers typically relating to the building of web applications (including offline support).

Chrome replaces the browser home page which is displayed when a new tab is created with a New Tab Page. This shows thumbnails of the nine most visited web sites along with the sites most often searched, recent bookmarks, and recently closed tabs.

Page 15 of 109

Chrome's Omnibox

The Omnibox is the URL box at the top of each tab, which combines the functionalities of both URL box and search box. It includes auto complete functionality, but only will auto complete URLs that were manually entered (rather than all links), search suggestions, top pages (previously visited), popular pages (unvisited), and text search over history. Search engines also can be captured by the browser when used via the native user interface by pressing Tab.

Popup windows "are scoped to the tab they came from" and will not appear outside the tab unless the user explicitly drags them out.

Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine to display web pages, on advice from the Android team. Like most browsers, Chrome was extensively tested internally before release with , "automated user interface testing of scripted user actions" and fuzz testing, as well as WebKit's layout tests (99% of which Chrome is claimed to have passed). New browser builds are automatically tested against tens of thousands of commonly accessed websites inside of the Google index within 20-30 minutes.

Tabs are the primary component of Chrome's user interface and as such, have been moved to the top of the window rather than below the controls. This subtle change contrasts with many existing tabbed browsers which are based on windows and contain tabs. Tabs (including their state) can be transferred seamlessly between window containers by dragging. Each tab has its own set of controls, including the Omnibox.

Chrome allows users to make local desktop shortcuts that open web applications in the browser. The browser, when opened in this way, contains none of the regular interface except for the title bar, so as not to "interrupt anything the user is trying to do." This allows web applications to run alongside local software (similar to and ).

By default, the status bar is hidden whenever it is not being used. However, it appears at the bottom left corner whenever a page is loading and when a hyperlink is hovered over.

For web developers, Chrome features an element inspector similar to the one in .

Usage tracking Usage tracking is an option presented to the user during the software's installation. Once accepted, it is possible to disable the transmission of this information by modifying Chrome's "Under the Hood" options. Freeware programs such as UnChrome can remove the unique ID without having to change the browser. Unofficial builds, such as SRWare Iron, seek to remove these features from the browser altogether.

Page 16 of 109

Incognito window

Chrome also has an "incognito" browsing option where an internal browser opens up that lets one surf where pages do not show up in one's browser history and deletes any tracking cookies when one exits the incognito browser.

Extensions

As of October 2008, Google Chrome does not support 3rd party extensions.

As of version 3499, Google Chrome has rudimentary Greasemonkey support. This feature is off by default, and may be turned on by launching the application with a specific command-line argument.

Google Chrome extensions: Not yet, but later. "We don't have that in the beta today, but we definitely plan an extension API," or application programming interface, , a Google vice president of product management, said at the Chrome launch event here Tuesday. "It is one of the things we will get to next."

ͶCNet News

Stable, Beta and Dev Releases

On January 08, 2009 Google introduced a new release channels system, whereby now there are three distinct release channels: Stable channel, Beta channel, and Developer preview

Page 17 of 109 channel. Before this change, there were only two channels: Beta channel and Developer preview channel. All previous Dev channel users were moved to Beta channel, the reason is that now the new Dev channel builds will be less stable and polished than what Dev channel users have been getting during Google Chrome's Beta period. Now the stable channel will be updated with features and fixes once they have been thoroughly tested in the Beta channel, and the Beta channel will be updated roughly monthly with stable and complete features from the Dev channel. The Dev channel is where ideas get tested (and sometimes fail), and it can be very unstable at times. See http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/ for more information on specific releases.

Reception

The Daily Telegraph's Matthew Moore summarizes the verdict of early reviewers: "Google Chrome is attractive, fast and has some impressive new features, but may notͶyetͶ be a threat to its Microsoft rival."

Microsoft reportedly "played down the threat from Chrome" and "predicted that most people will embrace Internet Explorer 8." Opera Software said that "Chrome will strengthen the Web as the biggest application platform in the world." Mozilla said that Chrome's introduction into the web browser market comes as "no real surprise", that "Chrome is not aimed at competing with Firefox", and furthermore that it should not affect Google's financing of Firefox.

Chrome͛s design bridges the gap between desktop and so-called ͞cloud computing.͟ At the touch of a button, Chrome lets you make a desktop, Start menu, or Quick Launch shortcut to any Web page or , blurring the line between what͛s online and what͛s inside your PC. For example, I created a desktop shortcut for Google Maps. When you create a shortcut for a Web application, Chrome strips away all of the toolbars and tabs from the window, leaving you with something that feels much more like a desktop application than like a Web application or page.

ͶPC World

On September 9, 2008, when Chrome still had been in beta, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) issued a statement about their first examination of Chrome, expressing a concern over the prominent download links on Google's German web page, because "beta versions should not be employed for general use applications" and browser manufacturers should provide appropriate instructions regarding the use of pre-released software. They did, however, praise the browser's technical contribution to improving security on the web.

Concern about Chrome͛s optional usage collection and tracking has been noted in several publications.

Page 18 of 109

Reverse-engineering issues with Windows

On September 11, 2008, a few days after the release of Chrome's , Scott Hanselman noticed some incriminating lines of comment in Chrome's code. This was further pushed into limelight by the article Chrome antics: did Google reverse-engineer Windows? Google later responded to this discovery, denying reverse-engineering by them and referring to previously documented, although not official, techniques.

Chrome in competition

This was all about Google chrome but where chrome stands in competition? Let͛s have a look.

Why should?

 Good GUI  Omnibox  Less tool bars and more space to page  Speed  Security  Desktop shortcuts  Good developer support

Why shouldn͛t?

X Crashes frequently on low memory. X No plug-in support. X Incognito window ʹ safari͛s private browsing is far better.

My verdict on chrome:

I found it using chrome in broadband is better experience. But it is not recommended to those who have less RAM surfing on dial-ups and though want to open many tabs at a time. No plug-in support is not a good thing. Though it͛s new and it͛s from Google I think it will have a good position in browser market soon

My rating to chrome: 2.5/5

Page 19 of 109

Browser extension: Gears

Gears, formerly Google Gears, is software offered by Google that "enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser." Released under the BSD license, Gears is free and open source software

What does Gears Have

There are several major API components to Gears:

y A Database module (powered by SQLite) that can store data locally. y A WorkerPool module that provides parallel execution of JavaScript code. y A LocalServer module that caches and serves application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc). y A Desktop module that lets web applications interact more naturally with the desktop. y Geolocation modules that lets web applications detect the geographical location of their users.

Version history

Version Date Description

0.1 2007-05-31 Initial release as Google Gears.

0.2 2008-02-22 Announcement

Project renamed to Gears to reflect the open source, collaborative nature of - 2008-05-28 the project.

0.3 2008-06-11 Introduced ability to add desktop icons, support for Firefox 3.

Geolocation API / Event handling for upload / download transfer progress, 0.4 2008-04-22 localization in 40 languages

Updated SQLite, Geolocation can now get data from WiFi antennas, 0.5 2008-11-24 Improved API to manage data blobs on LocalServer

Page 20 of 109

Support

There are a number of web applications that use Gears. These applications come from a variety of companies, including Google (Gmail, YouTube, Docs, Reader, Picasa for mobile, Calendar), MySpace (Mail Search), Zoho (Writer, Mail), Remember The Milk, and Buxfer. WordPress 2.6 added support for Gears, to speed up the administrative interface and reduce server hits.

Gears can be enabled on sites where it is otherwise unsupported, by using a Greasemonkey user script one of the Gears engineers has created.

Gears is supported on Google Chrome and IE 6+ on Windows XP and Vista, IE Mobile 4.01+ on Windows Mobile, Safari 3.1.1+ on Mac OS X 10.4+ and Firefox 1.5+ on multiple platforms.

On May 29, 2008, Opera ASA announced that the new Opera Mobile 9.5 will support Gears. The technology preview release of the browser was published on February 20, 2009. It is currently available for touch-screen devices on Windows Mobile 5/6 only. Gears is not built into the browser and must be downloaded separately.

Rails framework supports interfaces to Gears without needing to understand the Google Gears API.

My verdict on Gears

Gears are found useful for Google addicts like me. If you are relying to get information only from Google you must install gears for this. The only one difficulty I faced is to use gears properly for opera in OpenSUSE Linux 11.0. The thumbs up to Google because still it has no strong competitor.

My rating to Gears: 4/5

Page 21 of 109

Desktop Search Engine: Google Desktop

Google Desktop is desktop search software made by Google for Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows. The program allows text searches of a user's e-mails, computer files, music, photos, chats, Web pages viewed, and other "Google Gadgets."

Snapshot of Google Desktop with gadgets.

File indexing After initially installing Google Desktop, the software completes an indexing of all the files in the computer. And after the initial indexing is completed, the software continues to index files as needed. Users can start searching for files immediately after installing the program. After performing searches, results can also be returned in an Internet browser on the Google Desktop Home Page much like the results for Google Web searches.

Google Desktop can index several different types of data, including email, web browsing history from Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, office documents in the OpenDocument and Microsoft Office formats, instant messenger transcripts from AOL, Google, MSN, ,

Page 22 of 109

Tencent QQ, and several multimedia file types. Additional file types can be indexed through the use of plug-ins. Google Desktop allows the user to control which types of data are indexed by the program.

One unfortunate aspect for users with large hard drives: Google Desktop only indexes 100,000 files per drive during the initial indexing period. If you have more than 100,000 files in a particular drive, Google Desktop won't index all of them during this initial period. However, Google Desktop adds files to your index during real-time indexing when you move or open them.

Sidebar

Screenshot of gadgets

A prominent feature of Google Desktop is the Sidebar, which holds several common Gadgets and resides off to one side of the desktop. The Sidebar is available with the Microsoft Windows version of Google Desktop only. The Sidebar comes pre-installed with the following gadgets:

 Email - a panel which lets one view one's Gmail messages.

 Scratch Pad - here one can store random notes; they are saved automatically

 Photos - displays a slideshow of photos from the "My Pictures" folder (address can be changed)

Page 23 of 109

 News - shows the latest headlines from Google News, and how long ago they were written. The News panel is personalized depending on the type of news you read.

 Weather - shows the current weather for a location specified by the user.

 Web Clips - shows recent posts from RSS news feeds.

 Google Talk - If Google Talk is installed, double clicking the window title will dock it to one's sidebar.

Like the Windows Taskbar, the Google Desktop sidebar can be set to Auto-Hide mode, where it will only appear once the user moves the mouse cursor towards the side where it resides. If not on auto-hide, by default the sidebar will always take up about 1/6 - 1/9 of one's screen (depending on the screen resolution), and other windows are forced to resize. However, the sidebar can be resized to take less space, and you can disable the "always on top" feature in the options. With the auto-hide feature on, the sidebar temporarily overlaps maximized windows.

Another feature that comes with the Sidebar is alerts. When the Sidebar is minimized, new e-mail and news can be displayed on a pop-up window above the Windows Taskbar.

Quick Find When searching in the sidebar, deskbar or floating deskbar, Google Desktop displays a "Quick Find" window. This window is filled with 6 (by default) of the most relevant results from one's computer. These results update as one type so that one can get to what one wants on one's computer without having to open another browser window.

Google Deskbar

Google floating deskbar

Deskbars Deskbars are boxes which enable one to type in a search query directly from one's desktop. Web results will open in a browser window and selected computer results will be displayed in the "Quick Find" box (see above). A Deskbar can either be a fixed deskbar, which sits in one's Windows Taskbar, or a Floating Deskbar, which one may position anywhere one wants on one's desktop.

Page 24 of 109

Email indexing

Google Desktop includes plugins that allow one to index and search through the contents of local , IBM Lotus Notes, and email databases, outside of the applications' built-in search functions. For Lotus Notes, only local databases are indexed for searching. Google Desktop's email indexing feature is also integrated with Google's web-based email service, Gmail; it can index and search the email messages in one's Gmail account.

Gadgets & plug-ins

Desktop gadgets are interactive mini-applications that can be placed anywhere on the user's desktop ʹ or docked in the Sidebar ʹ to show new email, weather, photos, and personalized news. a gallery of pre-built gadgets for download on the official website. For developers, Google offers an SDK and an official blog for anyone who wants to write gadgets or plug-ins for Google Desktop. An automated system creates a developer hierarchy called the "Google Desktop Hall of Fame", where can advance based on their gadgets' number and popularity.

Snapshot of GD SDK

Page 25 of 109

The SDK also allows third-party applications to make use of the search facilities provided by Google Desktop Search. For example, the file manager offers integrated Google Desktop Search support.

Criticisms

Security In February 2007, Yair Amit from Watchfire found a series of vulnerabilities in Google Desktop that could allow a malicious individual to achieve not only remote, persistent access to sensitive data, but in some cases full system control as well. The significant impact and the ease of exploitation forced Google to change some of Google Desktop's logic in Google Desktop version 5.

Privacy

Google Desktop version 3 contains certain features that raise serious security and privacy concerns. Specifically, the share across computers feature that introduces the ability to search content from desktop to desktop greatly increases the risk to users' privacy. If Google Desktop V.3 is set to allow Search across Computers, files on an indexed computer are copied to Google's servers. The potential for information stored on their computers to be accessed by others if they enable this feature of Google Desktop v. 3 on their computers should be seriously considered. The EFF advises against using this feature. Also, those who have confidential data on their work or home computers should not enable this feature. There are privacy laws and company policies that could be violated through the installation of this feature, specifically, SB 1386, HIPAA, FERPA, GLBA and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Other more far reaching concerns arise around the packaging and end user license agreement - specifically the level of intrusion on the local machine and the disclaimers that users implicitly agree to future changes in the license agreement without actually being able to see them immediately

Resource use

Although there have been known problems with the GoogleDesktopCrawl.exe process, lately the presence of smart indexing has improved the use of resources so this is less of a problem now. As a default setting, after the user installs the application, files, emails and other data will be indexed at once, in a one-time process. It occurs only when the user's computer is idle for more than 30 seconds and it will usually be complete in several hours. After the one-time indexing, the index is kept up-to-date based on user actions and preferences.

Page 26 of 109

Internationalization/Keyboard

Besides the key combination advertised on the preferences page (hitting Ctrl twice) Google Desktop's Quick Search Box can be launched with a shortcut Alt Gr + g, Alt Gr, however, is the standard key to input diacriticized letters on a QWERTY keyboard, e.g. Ģ/ģ in the Latvian language. Even though it can't be disabled on the preferences page, it can be done through editing the Windows Registry.

Outlook indexing

There had been some issues with Microsoft Outlook indexing. Deleted email listings are not removed and require re-installing Google Desktop for any new archived mail to be listed. Several versions have been released to patch the Outlook indexing.

64-bit Incompatibility

Google Desktop won't install on Microsoft Windows 64-bit systems, stating it needs a 32-bit operating system. This is easily remedied by using the command 'googledesktopsetup.exe /force', however since it isn't compatible with 64-bit, some features may not work properly.

My verdict on Google desktop.

For searching your local files? Oh forget it. Because it works great when you have less files on your computer or your computer is isolated in network. But want to use the cool gadgets? So you must use Google desktop with sidebar enabled. The gadgets are downloaded freely and are of almost every type system, office, fun, web, Google almost every type. Thumbs up for sidebar and I use Google desktop for sidebar only. There are many desktop search applications but Google once again tops with probably initiating this type of applications.

My rating to Google desktop: 4/5

Page 27 of 109

Picture Organizer Picasa Picasa is a software application for organizing and editing digital photos, originally created by Idealab and owned by Google since 2004 "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my house" and "pic" for pictures (personalized art). Organization and editing

Snapshot of Picasa

For organizing photos, Picasa has file importing and tracking features, as well as tags and collections for further sorting. It also offers several basic photo editing functions, including color enhancement, red eye reduction and cropping. Other features include slide shows, printing and image timelines. Images can also be prepared for external use, such as for e-mailing or printing, by reducing file size and setting up page layouts. There is also integration with online photo printing services.

Keywords Picasa uses picasa.ini files to keep track of keywords for each image. In addition to this, Picasa attaches IPTC keyword data to JPEG files, but not to any other file format. Keywords attached to JPEG files in Picasa can be read by other image library software like Adobe (Photoshop, Album and Bridge), digiKam and iPhoto.

According to the Picasa Readme, Picasa can parse XMP data. However, it cannot search local files for existing XMP keywords.

Page 28 of 109

Searching Picasa has a search bar that is always visible when viewing the library. Searches are live in that displayed items are filtered as you type.

When a word is typed into the search bar, an image will be displayed if that word is all or part of a keyword, or part of the file name. If the search word is part of a folder name, all images in that folder are also displayed (but not necessarily images in subfolders, unless the word also exists in a keyword or filename.)

Picasa also supports boolean operators for searching in much the same way as Google's web search. All search terms are required by default (as with the operator "AND"), and images tagged with specified keywords can be excluded by using the hyphen (as in the boolean operator "NOT"). For example, searching for family children -friends will cause Picasa to display all images with the keywords family and children, but which do not include the keyword friends.

Viewing Picasa has no separate view window. There is only an "edit view" with a viewing area. Fullscreen view is available in slideshow mode, by holding down the ctrl+alt keys while in "edit view", or by pressing the Alt Gr key.

Backup In Picasa 2 and later versions, changes to pictures made in Picasa overwrite the original file, but a backup version of the original is saved in a hidden folder named "Originals" in the same folder as the original picture.

In previous versions all changes to a picture (but not the picture itself) were stored in a separate file, and the original image file was left untouched. When the image was opened in Picasa the software would reapply the modifications; opening the photo with any other program displayed the original version.

Face recognition On 15 August 2006, Google announced it had acquired Neven Vision whose technology can be used to search for features within photos such as people or buildings. Google applied this technology for face recognition and this functionality was launched on on 2 September 2008.

Neven Vision incorporates several patents specifically centered around face recognition from digital photo and video images. Neven Vision's technology was among the top finishers in both the FERET 1997 and FRVT 2002 independent tests comparing the world's best face recognition technologies.

Page 29 of 109

Other Picasa applications

Picasa Web Albums Picasa Web Albums (PWA) is a photo-sharing web application from Google, often compared to programs like .

It allows users with accounts at Google to store and share 1 GB of photos for free. Users can purchase more storage space, which can be shared between Google services.

Additional gigabytes Cost per year (US$) Cost per 1GB/year (US$)

10 20 2.00

40 75 1.875

150 250 1.667

400 500 1.25

Users may upload pictures through a variety of ways; via the PWA web interface on supported browsers, Picasa 2.5.0 or later on Microsoft Windows, using the Exporter for iPhoto, the Aperture to Picasa Web Albums plug-in, Uploader on Mac OS X, or F-Spot on Linux. In both paid and free accounts, the actual resolution of the photo is maintained (even though a smaller resolution photo may be displayed by the web interface), and the original photo can be downloaded.

PWA uses an "unlisted number" approach for URLs for private photo albums. This allows a user to email a private album's URL to anyone s/he wants; the recipient can view the album without having to create a user account - this is done via an "authentication key" that's needed to be appended to the URL for the album to be shown. The Picasa help files say that private albums are not searchable by anyone except the user.

On October 11, 2006, the "Test" name was removed, in favor of purely Picasa Web Albums.

No ads are shown on Picasa Web Albums, in either free or paid accounts. The Terms of Service permit Google to use the uploaded photos to display on the website or via RSS feeds, and also for promoting Google services royalty-free.

Picasa Web Albums was first leaked on June 6, 2006.When introduced, it came with 250 MB free space. On March 7, 2007, it was upgraded to 1 GB.

Page 30 of 109

Picasa Wordpress Widget Picasa Wordpress widget is a Wordpress plugin which allows users to publish random photos from Picasa albums on their blogs.

Version history

Windows There are no versions of Picasa for Windows 95 or NT. The latest version offered for Windows 98/ME is 2.0.0 (build 18.84).[12][13] The latest version offered for Windows 2000 is 2.7 (build 37.64).[12][14] Newer versions are for Windows XP and Vista only.

1.618 (build 5.35) July 2004 ʹ free download version offered since Google's acquisition of Picasa. 2.0.0 (build 18.77) January 18, 2005 ʹ many features including improved search functions, an automated photo collage maker, massively enhanced photo editing functions and further integration with Picasa's Hello and Google's Blogger services. 2.0.0 (Build 18.84) June 8, 2005 ʹ bug fix release, latest release for Windows 98/ME. This version does not suffer from the "picasa2\runtime\hlpsys.dll is not a valid windows image. Check installation disk." error, which some users have experienced. 2.1.0 (build 27.60) September 19, 2005 ʹ new features including international language support, one-click photo blogging, CD cover printing, improved RAW handling and improved support for external drives. 2.2.0 (build 28.20) January 30, 2006 ʹ 25 additional languages are supported, new network drive support, and bug fixes for IE7 support and CD Burning. 2.5.0 (Builds 32.01) June 12, 2006 onwards ʹ beta versions including Picasa Web Albums support ʹ last version (build 32.97) started rollout on November 14, 2006. 2.6 (build 35.94.0) December 7, 2006 ʹ new auto update behavior for Windows Vista support, new CD/DVD-burning engine, improved upload reliability to Picasa Web Albums, and added support for 18 new languages. 2.7 (build 36.37.0) April 24, 2007 ʹ new RAW processing engine, new color engine for "tuning" fixes, added support for Screensaver, and improved Blog This! Reliability. 2.7 Build 36.40 May 3, 2007 ʹ support for more cameras, updated version number for international installs. 2.7 Build 36.60 26 June 2007 ʹ added support for geotag, supposedly fixed problems with showing up some video files. 2.7 Build 37.23 21 August 2007 ʹ support for more languages, fixes several bugs. 2.7 Build 37.29 13 September 2007 ʹ Added support for RAW pictures from the Canon 40D, fixes several bugs.

Page 31 of 109

2.7 Build 37.32 02 October 2007 ʹ Fixed a case where corrupted AVI files could cause a crash. Fixed a case that would result in a "This account is not enabled for Picasa Web Albums" error. 2.7 Build 37.36 30 October 2007 ʹ Added support for 11 additional languages: Bulgarian, Catalan, Filipino, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Vietnamese. 2.7 Build 37.49 07 March 2008 - Improved performance for new Intel chips. Translation fixes for Hungarian and Chinese. Fixed a case that would result in an error when capturing images from webcams. 2.7 Build 37.64 21 August 2008 - See release notes for details. 3.0 3.0.0 Beta Build 57.19.0 2 September 2008 - Initial public beta release of Picasa 3.0 3.0.0 Beta Build 57.22.0 16 September 2008 o 3.0.0 Beta Build 57.24.0 23 September 2008 o 3.0.0 Build 57.41.0 25 October 2008 o 3.0.0 Build 57.44.0 28 October 2008 o 3.0.0 Build 57.52.0 11 November 2008 o 3.0.0 Build 57.53.0 20 November 2008 3.1 o 3.1.0 Build 70.71.0 16 December 2008 o 3.1.0 Build 70.73.0 09 January 2009

Linux As from about early June 2006, Linux versions (2.2.2820-5) became available as free downloads for most distributions of the Linux operating system. It is not a native Linux program but an adapted Windows version that uses the Wine libraries.

A Release Candidate of Picasa for Linux 2.7 (Build 37.3607,0) was released on 21 November 2007.Google added Picasa for Linux 2.7 (Build 37.3615, 0) to its Linux repository on 16 April 2008.

Google added Picasa for Linux 3.0 beta to its Linux repository in October 2008.

Mac OS X On January 5, 2009, Google released a beta version of Picasa for Mac (Intel-based Macs only). Also, a plugin is available for iPhoto to upload to the Picasa Web Albums hosting service. There is also a standalone Picasa Web Albums uploading tools for OS X 10.4 or later. Picasa IN COMPETITION

Page 32 of 109

Let͛s see where Picasa stands in competition

Why should?

 Good UI  Better organization (though adobe is good option)  Collage editing  More options provided to edit the image.  Good tuning with Flickr and Picasa on web.

Why shouldn͛t?

X Slow when uploading on internet

My verdict on Picasa

There are many picture organizers. I was using adobe from two years and using Picasa along with adobe. I have used IrfanView for a short time as it is given by ͞digit͟ with its issues frequently. But I was amazed by Picasa. I wander that Google is probably late in this market (only IrfanView was behind it) though it has many god things in it. First collage editing is done by Google. I wander why Picasa is not favorite but adobe still is?

My Ratings to Picasa: 5/5

IM: Google talk Google Talk (GTalk) is a free Windows and web-based application for and voice over internet protocol (VOIP), offered by Google Inc. The first beta version of the program was released on August 24, 2005.

Instant messaging between the Google Talk servers and its clients uses an open protocol, XMPP, allowing users of other XMPP clients to communicate with Google Talk users. VoIP in Google Talk is based around the Jingle protocol. The technology used within the Google server network however is not publicly known.

The Google Talk client is only available for Microsoft Windows (2000, XP, Server 2003, and Vista). Mobile clients are also available for the Blackberry, iPhone and T-Mobile G1. With the release of the Google Talk gadget, users of all platforms supported by can also use Google Talk Many other XMPP clients are compatible with Google Talk, and support a variety of other platforms.

Page 33 of 109

Features

Interoperability Google has announced that a major goal of the Google Talk service is interoperability. Google Talk uses XMPP to provide real-time extensible messaging and presence events, including offline messaging and voice mailing. On January 17, 2006, Google enabled server-to- server communications, federating itself with any Jabber server that supports the dialback protocol.

Product integration On February 7, 2006, Gmail received chat functionality, using for serverʹbrowser communication, and was integrated with Google Talk. Users can send instant messages to other Gmail users. As it works within a browser, Google Talk does not need to be downloaded to send instant messages to Gmail users.

Conversation logs are automatically saved to a Chats area in the user's Gmail account. This allows users to search their chat logs and have them centrally stored in their Gmail accounts. It does not, however, appear possible to download chat logs that are not attached to an e-mail conversation.

Since November 8, 2006, Google has also integrated Google Talk with Orkut. This enables Google Talk users to interact with registered Orkut users, by sending and receiving 'scraps' within Orkut.

It is also possible to display the song currently playing on the computer. This music data is collected, if the user agrees to this, and displayed on the Google Music Trends page.

Also, as of November 11, 2008, it is possible to voice and video chat between Gmail users and Google Talk users - on some systems, not all major OSs are supported.

The Gmail user requires a plugin download and installation, but is otherwise seamlessly integrated into the . As of February 2009, the plugin is only available for Windows (XP and Vista) and Mac OS X (only on Intel-based Macs)

Encryption The connection between the Google Talk client and the Google Talk server is encrypted, except when using Gmail's chat over HTTP, a federated network that doesn't support encryption, or when using a proxy like IMLogic. End-to-end messages are unencrypted. Google plans to add support for chat and call encryption in a future release. Some XMPP clients natively support encryption with Google Talk's servers. It is possible to have end-to-end encryption over the GTalk network using OTR (off-the-record) encryption.

Page 34 of 109

Voicemail and file-sharing On July 28, 2006, Google added voicemail and file sending capabilities to the Google Talk client. Voicemail messages can be 10 minutes long, and they're delivered to the contact's mailbox as an attached MP3 file (11 kHz mono 24kbit/s). Recipients who use Gmail are offered better integration. Gmail recognizes that it is a voicemail message, and users can choose to stream the file using the integrated MP3-playing applet, or to download the MP3 file.

Online Calling (VOIP) Google Inc. has also incorporated a VOIP calling feature (through gtalk2voip.com, gTalkPhone and Splinter.net etc.) which allows Google Talk users to call other Google Talk users while they're online. There is also a video chat feature. There are many rumors going around that this is to directly compete with Skype and will sooner or later allow outside calling

Offline messaging On October 31, 2006, Google introduced offline messaging to Google Talk. This allows users to send messages to their contacts, even if they are not signed in. They will receive the messages when they next go online even if the user who has sent it is offline.

Mobile device compatibility On June 30, 2006, Nokia released new software for their Nokia 770 Internet Tablet that included Google Talk as one of the compatible VoIP clients, due to the XMPP-based software. Another Google Talk-compatible device is Sony's mylo, released on September 15, 2006. A Google Talk client is also available for BlackBerry devices from the Blackberry site.

However, given that Google Talk provides XMPP protocol, most mobile phones for which a suitable XMPP client exists could also offer Google Talk service, at least theoretically (depending on the handset, the user may encounter security warnings due to unsigned J2ME midlets or limits put in place by the mobile service provider). Mobile clients specially designed for Google Talk exist as well.

Most phones support the IMPS protocol, and there are hybrid XMPP/IMPS networks (through Jabber transports, or specially designed hybrid servers), which can also contact Google Talk users. The Google Talk service itself is unusable from IMPS (that means, you cannot log with your Gmail account, but you can talk with your Gmail friends with your IMPS account from your mobile phone).

Complaints During Google Talk's ongoing beta period, users have voiced concerns about the service. There has been some discussion on the Google Talk Help group concerning the fact that certain personal information is made publicly available without any method to control it. This allows anyone who has a Google Talk member on their buddy list to see when the user is and is not

Page 35 of 109 active on their computer, for example, by observing the user's idle status as provided by the Google Talk client. Certain third-party software products have been developed to provide more control over the information made available.

gAlwaysIdle, for example, allows users to be 'always idle' or 'never idle', thus preventing personal presence information from being fed to the Google Talk service. Alternative client software, such as , , and also permit more privacy controls than the official Google Talk client. As of October 5, 2008, the official client allows blocking a user (thus also suspending status notifications to that user) but nothing more granular is apparent.

Labs edition Google has released a new version of Google Talk called Google Talk, Labs edition. It still currently lacks many features of Google Talk's 'stable' releases. The features it lacks include File Sharing and Voice Chat. It features rounded alerts for new email. It can have multiple tabs with group chat, private chat and the regular screen open at once. It is available for free download here: http://www.google.com/talk/labsedition/. Flash Player will be required to install, and upon first launch, a new flash-plugin will need to be downloaded. This edition is not meant for general use, hence why it is a labs edition. Google Talk in COMPETITION

Why should?

 Light weight IM  You can preview your unread mails through a pop up window. (not in yahoo)  Can integrate with online applications.

Why shouldn͛t?

X Limited file sharing. X Less privacy controls

My verdict on Google Talk

Use only if you are chat addict and don͛t want to open your mailbox for a long time. Though Google made the initiative to embed IM with their online application. I haven͛t used GTalk for a long time. I use to chat with my friend while I am checking with my friends. But many Orkut fans can attract to use it because Gtalk is not embedded to it.

My Rating to Google Talk: 3/5

Page 36 of 109

Google earth Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographic information program that was originally called Earth Viewer, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a company acquired by Google in 2004. It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe. It is available under three different licenses: Google Earth, a free version with limited functionality; Google Earth Plus (discontinued), which included additional features; and Google Earth Pro ($400 per year), which is intended for commercial use.

The product, re-released as Google Earth in 2005, is currently available for use on personal computers running Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Mac OS X 10.3.9 and above, Linux (released on June 12, 2006), and FreeBSD. Google Earth is also available as a browser plugin (released on June 2, 2008) for Firefox, Safari 3, IE6 and IE7. It was also made available on the iPhone OS on October 27, 2008, as a free download from the App Store. In addition to releasing an updated Keyhole based client, Google also added the imagery from the Earth database to their web based mapping software. The release of Google Earth in June 2005 to the public caused a more than tenfold increase in media coverage on virtual globes between 2005 and 2006

Google Earth displays satellite images of varying resolution of the Earth's surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and houses looking perpendicularly down or at an oblique angle, with perspective (see also bird's eye view). The degree of resolution available is based somewhat on the points of interest and popularity, but most land (except for some islands) is covered in at least 15 meters of resolution. Melbourne, Victoria, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Cambridge, Cambridgeshire include examples of the highest resolution, at 15 cm (6 inches). Google Earth allows users to search for addresses for some countries, enter coordinates, or simply use the mouse to browse to a location.

For large parts of the surface of the Earth only 2D images are available, from almost vertical photography. Viewing this from an oblique angle, there is perspective in the sense that objects which are horizontally far away are seen smaller, but of course it is like viewing a large photograph, not quite like a 3D view.

For other parts of the surface of the Earth 3D images of terrain and buildings are available. Google Earth uses digital elevation model (DEM) data collected by NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). This means one can view the Grand Canyon or Mount Everest in three dimensions, instead of 2D like other areas. Since November 2006, the 3D views of many mountains, including Mount Everest, have been improved by the use of supplementary DEM data to fill the gaps in SRTM coverage.

Page 37 of 109

Many people using the applications are adding their own data and making them available through various sources, such as the BBS or blogs mentioned in the link section below. Google Earth is able to show all kinds of images overlaid on the surface of the earth and is also a Web Map Service client. Google Earth supports managing three-dimensional Geospatial data through (KML).

Google Earth has the capability to show 3D buildings and structures (such as bridges), which consist of users' submissions using SketchUp, a 3D modeling program. In prior versions of Google Earth (before Version 4), 3D buildings were limited to a few cities, and had poorer rendering with no textures. Many buildings and structures from around the world now have detailed 3D structures; including (but not limited to) those in the United States, Canada, Ireland, India, Japan, , Germany, Pakistan and the cities, Amsterdam and Alexandria. In August 2007, Hamburg became the first city entirely shown in 3D, including textures such as façades. The Irish town of Westport was added to Google Earth in 3D on January 16, 2008. The 'Westport3D' model was created by 3D imaging firm AM3TD using long- distance laser scanning technology and digital photography and is the first such model of an Irish town to be created. As it was developed initially to aid Local Government in carrying out their town planning functions it includes the highest resolution photo-realistic textures to be found anywhere in Google Earth. Three-dimensional renderings are available for certain buildings and structures around the world via Google's 3D Warehouse and other websites.

Recently, Google added a feature that allows users to monitor traffic speeds at loops located every 200 yards in real-time. In version 4.3 released on April 15, 2008, was fully integrated into the program allowing the program to provide an on the street level view in many locations.

On January 17, 2009, the entirety of Google Earth's ocean floor imagery was updated to new images by SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, and GEBCO. The new images have caused smaller islands, such as some atolls in the Maldives, to be rendered invisible despite their shores being completely outlined.

Page 38 of 109

Flight simulator

Downtown Toronto, as seen from a F16 Fighting Falcon during a simulated flight.

Since Google Earth v4.2, a flight simulator has been included as a hidden feature. Depending on the system, it can be accessed by pressing Control+Alt+A, Control+A, or Command+Option+A. After this feature has been activated at least once it appears under the tools menu. Since v4.3 the option is no longer hidden by default. Currently the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the Cirrus SR-22 are the only aircraft that can be used, in addition to a few airports t is also possible to control the simulator with a mouse or joystick, although not all models are currently supported.

The Google Earth flight simulator features the ability to fly to any supported locations of the world. The pilot can choose any location to start a flight or attempt to land a flight in the world. Fly time is not much accelerated, as it takes the F-16 at highest speed at least 60 minutes to fly from coast-to-coast in the US. Aircraft can land on any level surface in the world (including the ocean) as long as the aircraft is below 250 MPH when touching ground.

Featured planes  F-16 Fighting Falcon - A much higher speed and maximum altitude than the Cirrus SR-22, it has the ability to fly at speeds of almost 1,100 MPH near ground level.

 SR-22 - Although slower and with a lower maximum altitude, the SR-22 is much easier to handle and is preferred for beginners.

On April 15, 2008 with version 4.3, Google fully integrated its Street View into Google Earth.

Page 39 of 109

Google Street View provides 360° panoramic street-level views and allows users to view parts of selected cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas at ground level. When it was launched on May 25, 2007 for Google Maps, only five cities were included. It has since expanded to more than 40 U.S. cities, and includes the suburbs of many, and in some cases, other nearby cities. A recent update has now implemented Street View in most of the major cities of Australia and New Zealand as well as parts of Japan, Spain, France, and Italy.

Google Street View, when operated, displays photos that were previously taken by a camera mounted on an automobile, and can be navigated by using the mouse to click on photograph icons displayed on the screen in your direction of travel. Using these devices, the photos can be viewed in different sizes, from any direction, and from a variety of angles.

Google Ocean Introduced in version 5.0 (February 2009), the Google Ocean feature allows users to zoom below the surface of the ocean and view the 3D bathymetry beneath the waves. Supporting over 20 content layers, it contains information from leading scientists and oceanographers.

Technical Specifications Detailed release notes/history/changelog are made available by Google.

Coordinate System and Projection The internal coordinate system of Google Earth is geographic coordinates (latitude/longitude) on the World Geodetic System of 1984 (WGS84) datum.

Google Earth shows the earth as it looks from an elevated platform such as an airplane or orbiting satellite. The projection used to achieve this effect is called the General Perspective. This is similar to the Orthographic projection, except that the point of perspective is a finite (near earth) distance rather than an infinite (deep space) distance.[21]

Baseline resolutions U.S.: 15 m (some states are completely in 1 m or better)

Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, U.K., Andorra, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Vatican City: 1 m or better

Czech Republic 0.2 m (Prague 0.1 m)

Slovakia, Hungary: 2.5 m (medium resolution)

Global: Generally 15 m (some areas, such as Antarctica, are in extremely low resolution), but this depends on the quality of the satellite/aerial photograph uploaded.

Page 40 of 109

Typical high resolutions U.S.: 1 m, 0.6 m, 0.3 m, 0.15 m (extremely rare; e.g. Cambridge and Google Campus, or Glendale)

Europe: 0.3 m, 0.15 m (e.g. Berlin, Zürich, Hamburg), 0.1 m Prague

Altitude resolution:

Surface: varies by country

Seabed: Not applicable (a colorscale approximating sea floor depth is "printed" on the spherical surface).

Age: Images dates vary. The image data can be seen from squares made when DigitalGlobe Coverage is enabled. The date next to the copyright information is not the correct image date. Zooming in or out could change the date of the pictures. Most of the international urban image dates are from 2004 and have not been updated. However, most US images are kept current. Google announces imagery updates on their LatLong Blog in form of a quiz, with hints of the updated locations. The answers are posted some days later in the same blog.

Google Earth is unlikely to operate on older hardware configurations. The most recent downloads available document these minimum configurations:

Pentium 3, 500 MHz 128 MB RAM 12.7 MB free disk space (400 MB for Linux) Network speed: 128 kbit/s 16MB 3D-capable graphics card Resolution of 1024x768, 16-bit High Color Windows XP or Windows 2000, Windows Vista(not Windows Me compatible), Linux and Mac OS X

The most likely mode of failure is insufficient video RAM: the software is designed to warn the user if their graphics card is not able to support Earth (this often occurs due to insufficient Video RAM or buggy graphics card drivers). The next most likely mode of failure is Internet access speed. Except for the very patient, broadband Internet (Cable, DSL, T1, etc.) is required.

Resolution and accuracy

Page 41 of 109

The Isles of Sicily, showing the very low resolution of some islands. The islands (green area) are about 10 km across. 49°56ƍ10.81ƎN 6°19ƍ22.88ƎW

The west side of Gibraltar, tilted view showing the sea rising up the Rock of Gibraltar - claimed altitude of the sea just off the beach at Elliot͛s Memorial, 252 m. This is now fixed. 36°6ƍ59.6ƎN 5°21ƍ5.2ƎW

Controversy/Criticism The software has been criticized by a number of special interest groups, including national officials, as being an invasion of privacy and even posing a threat to national security. The typical argument is that the software provides information about military or other critical installations that could be used by terrorists. The following is a selection of such concerns:

Former Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam has expressed concern over the availability of high-resolution pictures of sensitive locations in India. Google subsequently agreed to censor such sites

The Indian Space Research Organization has said Google Earth poses a security threat to India, and seeks dialogue with Google officials.

The South Korean government has expressed concern that the software offers images of the presidential palace and various military installations that could possibly be used by their hostile neighbor North Korea.

In 2006, one user spotted a large topographical replica in a remote region of China. The model is a small-scale (1/500) version of the Karakoram Mountain Range, currently under the control of China but claimed by India. When later confirmed as a replica of this region, spectators began entertaining military implications.

Most land areas are covered in satellite imagery with a resolution of at least about 15 m per . This base imagery is 30m multispectral Landsat which is pansharppened

Page 42 of 109 with the 15m [panchromatic] Landsat imagery. However, Google is actively replacing this base imagery with 2.5m SPOTImage imagery and several higher resolution datasets mentioned below. Some population centers are also covered by aircraft imagery (orthophotography) with several pixels per meter. Oceans are covered at a much lower resolution, as are a number of islands; notably, the Isles of Scilly off southwest England, are at a resolution of about 500 m or less. These pictures are provided by Terrametrics.

Google has resolved many inaccuracies in the vector mapping since the original public release of the software, without requiring an update to the program itself. An example of this was the absence from Google Earth's map boundaries of the Nunavut territory in Canada, a territory that had been created on April 1, 1999; this mistake was corrected by one of the data updates in early 2006. Recent updates have also increased the coverage of detailed aerial photography, particularly in certain areas of western and central Europe.

The images are not all taken at the same time, but are generally current to within three years. Image sets are sometimes not correctly stitched together. Updates to the photographic database can occasionally be noticed when drastic changes take place in the appearance of the landscape, for example Google Earth's incomplete updates of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, or when place marks appear to shift unexpectedly across the Earth's surface. Though the place marks have not in fact moved, the imagery is composed and stitched differently. Such an update to London's photography in early 2006 created shifts of 15- 20 meters in many areas, noticeable because the resolution is so high.

Place name and road detail vary greatly from place to place. They are most accurate in North America and Europe, but regular mapping updates are improving coverage elsewhere.

Errors sometimes occur due to the technology used to measure the height of terrain; for example, tall buildings in Adelaide cause one part of the city to be rendered as a small mountain, when it is in fact flat. The height of the Eiffel Tower creates a similar effect in the rendering of Paris. Also, prior to the release of version 5.0 in February 2009, elevations below sea level were presented as sea level, for example: Salton City, California; Death Valley; and the Dead Sea were all listed as 0 m when Salton City is V38 m; Death Valley is V86 m; and the Dead Sea is V420 m.

Where no 3 arc second digital elevation data was available, the three dimensional images covering some areas of high relief are not at all accurate, but most mountain areas are now well mapped. The underlying digital elevation model has been placed 3 arc seconds too far north and up to 3 arc seconds too far west. This means that some steep mountain ridges incorrectly appear to have shadows extending over onto their south facing sides. Some high

Page 43 of 109 resolution images have also been misplaced; an example is the image covering Annapurna, which is misplaced by about 12 arc seconds. Elevation data was recently updated to 10-meter (1/3-arc-second) resolution for much of the United States from the previous 30-meter (1-arc- second) resolution.

The "Measure" function shows that the length of equator is about 40,030.24 km, giving an error of V0.112% compared with the actual value of 40,075.02 km Earth; for the meridional circumference, it shows a length of about 39,963.13 km, also giving an error of V0.112% compared with the actual value of 40,007.86 km.

On December 16, 2007, most of Antarctica was updated to a 15 m resolution using imagery from the Landsat Image Mosaic of Australia; (1m resolution images of some parts of Antarctica were added in June 2007); however, the Arctic polar ice cap is completely absent from the current version of Google Earth, as are waves in the oceans. The geographic North Pole is found hovering over the Arctic Ocean and the tiling system produces artifacts near the poles as the tiles become 'infinitely' small and rounding errors accumulate.

Cloud cover and shadows can make it difficult or impossible to see details in some land areas, including the shadow side of mountains. Google Earth In competition

Google earth has no competitors but ISRO announced to develop its own Mapping application called ͞Bhuvan͟ or ͞Bhu-sampada͟. It͛s still in development phase. So no verdict now. But as both dial-up and broadband user I recommend to use Google earth to use only on broadband.

My Rating on Google earth: 3/5

Page 44 of 109

Google packs is a software package that allows users to discover, install, and maintain a number of application programs. It was announced at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, on January 6. Google Pack is currently only available for Windows XP and Vista.

Users can choose which of the following software applications to install. If the application is already installed, Google Updater checks to see if the user has the latest version and upgrades it, if necessary.

The software applications available vary based on which language and locale is selected, and operating system. The U.S. Windows XP version of Google Pack offers all of the current applications listed below.

Google-branded

Google Desktop Picasa, a photograph organizer and editor for Internet Explorer Google Photos Screensaver, which displays pictures from the user's computers Google Earth, an electronic globe Google Talk, an instant messaging and Voice over IP (VoIP) application Google Video Player, a multi-media player, now withdrawn Google Chrome, a free web browser developed by Google

Third-party Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar Spyware Doctor Starter Edition Norton Security Scan Adobe Reader 8, a document viewer RealPlayer, a multi-media player GalleryPlayer Skype, a VoIP application

On March 27, 2007, Google added two new applications to the Google Pack: Spyware Doctor Starter Edition and Norton Security Scan. These programs are free and do not require subscription, unlike Norton AntiVirus. However, Norton Security Scan does not offer continuous protection against viruses. Norton Security Scan scans the computer and identifies if there are

Page 45 of 109 existing viruses, worms, spyware, unwanted adware or Trojans residing on it. The program's functionality is similar to Microsoft's Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Google says that they have no monetary agreement with the makers of the above software, and that they offer the applications for the ease of Google's customers, and do not receive payment, although Miguel Helft in his New York Times blog reported that an unidentified source stated that Google may pay Sun for each copy of StarOffice. As of November 2008, StarOffice is no longer part of Google Pack.

Google has included the VoIP application Skype in the pack, even though it is a competitor of Google's own Google Talk.

Some industry observers claimed that the release was little more than a collection of software "that Google's wrapped a rubber band around".

Google Pack comes with Google Updater as a package management system to assist in downloading, installing, removing and automatically updating the Pack's applications. Updater can be uninstalled without removing the applications.

Google Updater may not reflect the most recent versions of all Google Pack programs. For example, as of January 2008, StarOffice 8 Update 9 was not provided through Google Updater, which displays no indication that previous versions are out of date. Sun Microsystems released Update 9, which includes six security related fixes, on December 10, 2007.

My Verdict to Google pack

Google really prove that they are making their motto ͞don͛t be evil͟ true here by including Skype because Skype is one of the leaders in VoIP and are definitely ahead of Gtalk. Apart from this all the softwares here are really useful ones for beginners. Though some are propriety but many are freebies. And for this it deserves hats off.

My Rating to Google Packs: 5/5

Page 46 of 109

From Desktop to Web

Igoogle iGoogle (formerly Google Personalized Homepage and Google IG), a service of Google, is a customizable AJAX-based start page or personal web portal much like , , My Yahoo!, MySurfPad and Personalized Experience. It was originally launched in May 2005. Its features include the capability to add web feeds and Google Gadgets (similar to those available on Google Desktop).

It was renamed and expanded on April 30, 2007, and is currently available in many localized versions of Globe, in 42 languages, and in over 70 country domain names, as of October 17, 2007.

Gadgets IGoogle gadgets interact with the user and utilize the Google Gadgets API. Some gadgets developed for Google Desktop can also be used within iGoogle. The Google Gadgets API is public and allows anyone to develop a gadget for any need.

Google also allows all users to create a special gadget that does not require the use of the Gadgets API. The gadgets are designed to be shared with friends and family. The special gadgets must be created using an online wizard and must be of one of the following types:

"Framed Photo" - displays a series of photos, "GoogleGram" - creation of special daily messages, "Daily Me" - displays user's current mood and feelings, "Free Form" - allows the user to input text and an image of their choice, "YouTube Channel" - displays videos from a YouTube channel, "Personal List" - allows the user to create a list of items, "Countdown" - countdown timer "1Club.FM Free Internet Radio Player" - allows users to play over 80 free internet radio channels

Page 47 of 109

Themes

My own IGoogle home page with "007" Theme. and gadgets like google tip of the day, Nat Geo pictures, News, Quotes and Gmail.

With iGoogle, users can select unique themes for their Google homepages. Some of the themes are animated depending on weather conditions, the time in your area (you provide your location when selecting a theme), and so on. There are also Easter eggs for the themesͶ for example, in the "Sweet Dreams" theme; a Pi sign made of stars appears at 3:14 a.m. In the "Beach" theme, the Loch Ness Monster appears at 3:14 a.m. These last for only one minute. Other features include skies that lighten or darken throughout the day and the ability to include color- changing lady bugs, butterflies, or bubbles that float across the screen. There are many other Easter eggs, which can be found here or by following the instructions here: Artist themes

Starting in April 2008, Google began offering a choice of themes by professional artists.

Page 48 of 109

Experimental iGoogle On July 8, 2008, Google announced the beginning of a testing period for a new version of iGoogle which alters some features, including replacing the tabs with left navigation, adding chat functionality, and a canvas-view gadget for RSS. Users were selected for this test and notified when they logged in by a link to a brief description and further links to forums. On the forums, it was explained that there was no opt-out, as a Control for the test. Further, there was no information on how long the test would continue. Unfortunately, many were unhappy with the new version and the inability to opt-out.

On October 16, 2008, Google announced the release of this new version of iGoogle and retired its older format. The release did not initially include the persistent chat widget. It does include the left navigation in place of tabs as well as a change to widget controls, however. The stated purpose is to prepare for OpenSocial, with the new canvas view stated as playing an important role in that. But this idea was dropped because it was not widely accepted by users.

Igoogle in Competition

Why should?

 Good artist themes.  Good gadgets.  All Google services except YouTube and Orkut are easy to access even in dial-ups.  Themes are changing according to local times. (My 007 theme͛s screenshot was taken at an evening.)  Enabling tabs.

Why shouldn͛t?

X Google͛s new approach of sidebar. X Lacks the technology of yahoo͛s glue search.

My Verdict on Igoogle.

It is great easy to customize and use. I͛ve find only one problem. I can͛t move a gadget from one tab to other page. More it doesn͛t have the Glue search technology used by yahoo (though yahoo not using it fully). But glue search is not part of yahoo͛s iGoogle counterpart my yahoo. Google is far better than any other personalized page services.

My Rating to iGoogle: 4.5/5

Page 49 of 109

Google gadgets This word is not new to you because you have read it twice here first in Google desktops section and then in iGoogle section. You may wonder what the gadget is. Here is the closer look to gadgets.

These are very small applications that integrate with the Google homepage, Google Desktop, or any page on the Web to enhance the user experience. Google Gadgets come in two variants: universal gadgets and desktop gadgets. The variants serve different purposes. While universal gadgets can be used on Web pages, desktop gadgets can be used within Google Desktop. These make integration with various other Google applications much easier, and can be customized to react to user defined actions.

Google Gadgets are interactive mini applications available in the Sidebar. These applications are created by both Google as well as independent developers, and can be related to anything and everything! From a globe, to a clock, to , to games, and so many other applications that the uses are only limited by the developer͛s imagination. Gadgets also need not be restricted to being rectangular in shape or of a size that will fit within the boundaries of the sidebar. In fact, gadgets can be ͞undocked from the sidebar and allowed to ͚float͛ on your desktop.͟ There is a huge directory of gadgets that can be added to GD.

Here is the way to add gadgets

To add a Gadget, click on the ͞Add+͟ button which appears when the mouse hovers over the Sidebar.

Page 50 of 109

Here is the result after clicking + button

Gadgets as the developers view Before a month I͛ve read a blog post of a gadget developer whom I follow. In this blog the author described Google gadgets as the launch pad for the developers who intend to develop in JavaScript. The Google gadgets are easy to develop. Both online and offline. Easy to test and deploy on not only Google products but also in your personal pages. Though I have only limited experience in developing gadgets online but I͛ve now my hands-on to Google͛s GD SDK for desktop. I no wonder the gadgets made here can be deployed on your page as Google͛s universal gadgets with some reasonable efforts.

Want to develop a gadget? Take a look here Google͛s own guideline to develop a gadget.

Here are a few rules of thumb for creating a good gadget. We've learned these from watching many gadgets come through the pipeline and seeing what kind of adoption they gain from users:

Rule 1: Use a standard height.

Gadgets have a uniform width but a variable height. Sometimes gadget creators with a lot of content make liberal use of the unlimited vertical real-estate to create a gadget that is much taller than it is wide. These gadgets don't perform well with users because they often create a feeling of inconsistency with the rest of the page. They also limit the amount of above- the-fold screen real-estate that the user can reserve for other things.

Page 51 of 109

Some users are so tidy that they line up their gadgets of the same vertical height in a row. These users will never adopt a gadget of non-standard height. See detailed section on style for exact pixel suggestions.

If you have a lot of content you want to fit into a gadget, the best thing is to limit the vertical real estate and break the gadget into tabs.

This gadget uses the tabs library.

Rule 2: Be engaging. Distinguish yourself from feeds.

A feed is a great way to syndicate content, but the downside of feeds is that they're uniform and unidirectional. Gadgets provide more flexibility and so they make it easier for you to make your content stand out. When creating a gadget, it's important to try to present content in a unique and interesting way. For example, if you are creating a gadget that announces the winners of the Emmy awards, you could create a quiz or a poll for the user leading up the awards, and then, after the awards are announced, notify the user about whether he or she was correct. Gadget users love participating with their content rather than simply digesting it.

Page 52 of 109

Developed by People.com, In-style and EW.com. Note : This is a mock-up and does not necessarily reflect the outcome of the 2006 Emmy Awards

Rule 3: Keep your content fresh. Update it at least once a day.

Some of the best-performing feeds and gadgets on the homepage have titles that end in "of the day": "Word of the day," "Quote of the day," and "Beer of the day," for example. All of these perform well and have lots of users. If you keep your content fresh, users will be much more likely to keep your gadget on their page. Gadgets that update in real-time (i.e. every time a user refreshes their page) are becoming more and more popular.

This gadget from tarot.com gives a daily update of horoscope.

Page 53 of 109

Rule 4: Be fun. Style counts.

It has become really clear to us that users care about fun. Our best performing feeds when we launched iGoogle were "Word of the day" and "Quote of the day." More recently, the feeds "How-to of the day" and "Oddly enough" were so popular that we placed them on the default homepage for new users. Our best-performing gadget right now is the "Date & Time" gadget, which renders a little JavaScript clock that the user can customize into different colors. People love the colors. They also love the attractiveness of the gadget. Style counts.

Rule 5: Be a good citizen.

When you create a gadget, you're entering into a contract with the user. While you're free to do anything with your own gadget, it's generally a good idea to keep the user experience consistent. Don't replace the gadget with a different gadget, suddenly start showing a banner ad, or "trick" the user into clicking through to your site. The content within the gadget is directly associated with your brand and you'll want that branding experience to be positively reinforced.

Page 54 of 109

Remember that you are a part of the user's whole page and your gadget is going to sit next to other gadgets and feeds. When adding a large logo or a background color to your gadget, think not just about the gadget itself but about how the gadget will look in the context of the entire page. (See below for tips on gadget UI Design and Style.)

Rule 6: Avoid asking for personal information.

Many users will delete gadgets that ask for personal information, especially if the gadget is unfamiliar to them. However, in the rare cases where you must do it, here are a few points to consider:

1. Make the gadget work with or without personal information being entered in by the user.

2. Make it clear what the benefits are when personal information is provided.

3. Build trust in your users by branding your gadget to make it look more reputable and by clearly indicating the company and possibly what the intentions are.

Rule 7: Conserve real-estate.

Vertical space on the homepage is limited, and your gadget must share it with a number of other gadgets. Nobody likes it when a single gadget hogs unnecessary space on the homepage. Conserve whitespace wherever possible by decreasing font sizes, paddings, and margins. If the height of your gadget changes due to dynamic content, use our dynamic height library to resize your gadget appropriately.

Creating gadgets that require login

They͛re tricky to build, but if you manage to do it, don͛t assume the user has an account. Make sure the gadget shows interesting content even when the user isn͛t logged in. Displaying a simple login form to the user is hardly interesting and most users won͛t go through the trouble of setting up an account just to see the gadget in action. Instead, add some content and functionality to the gadget to entice logged-out users to keep your gadget. Also, be sure to provide a link that redirects users to create an account if they don͛t have one. A good example to look at is the Google Calendar gadget. A basic calendar is displayed even when the user isn͛t logged in. It also provides a link that allows users to setup a calendar account.

Page 55 of 109

How are gadgets discovered, ranked and promoted?

Gadgets are available for webpage owners to add to their own WebPages or for users to add to their Google homepage or to Google Desktop. Webpage owners can find gadgets in our directory of Gadgets For Your Page, Google users can find gadgets to add to Google in our directory of Gadgets for iGoogle or in our directory of Gadgets for Google Desktop, and anyone can discover new gadgets they like on pages across the web.

Gadget directories: http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open http://www.google.com/ig/directory http://desktop.google.com/plugins/

Since the gadget ranking in our directories depends largely on the number of users for your gadget, and since the number of webpage owners who use your gadget directly influences the number of people who see your gadget, it's in your best interest to make your gadget as useful and interesting as possible so that lots of people will use it. Here are some things you can do to improve the adoption of your gadget:

y Create an attractive thumbnail. When you submit your gadget, you will submit a thumbnail to be shown in the directory. This is the user's first impression of the module. Note: If you don't submit a thumbnail or a screenshot along with your gadget, your gadget is automatically demoted. These images are important.

y Use a descriptive title. It's best to use a short title that effectively communicates what the gadget does ʹ for example, "Baseball scores," "World Cup," "Horoscopes," "Todo list," "Bible verse of the day."

y Submit your gadget to be included in our third-party directories. Google Modules is one example of such a directory.

y Promote your gadget on your own site. We provide an easy-to-use Add to Google button that will subscribe users to your gadget. You can use the button we provide or design your own. Encouraging your active users to subscribe to your content is a good way to keep them coming back to your site. Here's what the button looks like:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/add.html

Page 56 of 109

After guidelines here are the specifications

Width and different sized screens

Screens can vary a lot in width, from 800x600 to 1400x1050 and up. Therefore it's important that your gadget scale from (at least) 250px to 500px. You can test various widths using Firefox, with the extension (http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/, Resize menu).

y UI gadgets like input boxes and should not be fixed width. They should be width=100% so that they look good in different resolutions and window sizes.

y Centering elements often looks better on higher resolutions so there isn't excessive whitespace on the right.

y Using tables safely keeps things all on one line while allowing elements to resize when the browser resizes.

Images

Images are slow to load but may convey more information than text. Consider carefully whether they are really needed.

y Images may convey more information than text and reduce screen space.

y Set the width and height attributes of an image ahead of time so the gadget does not "pop" when an image is done loading.

y An "icon" on the left of a welcome mode of a gadget points out to the user that they must enter information into the gadget.

Look and Feel

Fonts

y If you're designing your gadget for iGoogle, use Arial font and a font size to match the iGoogle page.

y #008000 for green links to things like news sources, #7777cc for unimportant/deemphasized links, default link colors for anything else.

Other

Page 57 of 109

y On Google, links go places and buttons do things.

y Use a standard amount of white space between buttons and input boxes.

y Avoid intrusive ads and use the gadget title URL link to your page instead.

Presenting Information

Many times there͛s more information than there is space within a gadget that you want to display. There are typically two different UI models to achieve this. The first is to simply open up a new window that takes the user to a different page. The second is to dynamically generate and display the information within the gadget itself. Both have their pros and cons.

What is the right answer? Surprisingly, the answer is both. We͛ve observed that both UI models actually perform fairly well. For example, the Wikipedia gadget is very highly ranked in the content directory. It͛s a basic search gadget where users enter in any search query, click ͚Search͛, and a new window opens up with the results. On the other hand, Google is also a top- rated gadget. Instead of popping up a new window, it displays all the information directly within the gadget.

Try experimenting with both and you͛ll soon figure out which model makes the most sense for your gadgets.

Setting and Editing Preferences

If your gadget requires preferences, use a "Welcome mode" and include sample values for them. Using an icon on the left side really helps.

This "welcome mode" gives the user a friendly way to set up the gadget for the first time.

Customizable user preferences (other than the first-time setup) should be put into the blue edit mode, not on the gadget itself. Also, consider having options to hide or show certain information in the gadget so user can see exactly what they want and minimize screen space.

Page 58 of 109

Understanding the gadget

There are many types of gadgets in Google͛s gadget directory. All gadgets are freely downloadable and can be studied by extracting themselves and opening their .js files. Here I͛ve explained the steps how to start studying the gadget?

1. Download the gadget you want to study. 2. Select the gadget file having .gg extension 3. Open it with WinZip or WinRar (recommended). 4. Extract it to specific folder. 5. Open the main.js files and other required files to study it.

Let͛s check out some gadgets.

The gadgets

The MS office quickstart gadget This gadget starts ms office by just one click this gadget is developed by @edit team. This gadget uses shortcut logic by the line var prg= new ActiveXObject("Shell.Application"); and then using prg.ShellExecute(options.getValue(controlname)); to use the shortcut. var prg= new ActiveXObject("Shell.Application");//this line is to use shortcuts function view_onOpen() { //Here they defined the controls options.putDefaultValue('word_ut', ''); options.putDefaultValue('excel_ut', ''); options.putDefaultValue('access_ut', ''); options.putDefaultValue('power_ut', ''); options.putDefaultValue('outlook_ut', ''); }

function szinez(n) { switch(n) { case 1: excel.opacity=255; ido=setTimeOut("valtas(1)",250); break; case 2: word.opacity=255; ido=setTimeOut("valtas(2)",250); break;

Page 59 of 109

case 3: access.opacity=255; ido=setTimeOut("valtas(3)",250); break; case 4: powerpoint.opacity=255; ido=setTimeOut("valtas(4)",250); break; case 5: outlook.opacity=255; ido=setTimeOut("valtas(5)",250); break; } } function valtas(n) { switch(n) { case 1: if (excel.opacity<75){ excel.opacity=255; } else{ excel.opacity-=50; } break; case 2: if (word.opacity<75){ word.opacity=255; } else{ word.opacity-=50; } break; case 3: if (access.opacity<75){ access.opacity=255; } else{ access.opacity-=50; } break; case 4: if (powerpoint.opacity<75){ powerpoint.opacity=255; } else{ powerpoint.opacity-=50;

Page 60 of 109

} break; case 5: if (outlook.opacity<75){ outlook.opacity=255; } else{ outlook.opacity-=50; } break; }

} function allit() { clearTimeOut(ido); excel.opacity=200; word.opacity=200; powerpoint.opacity=200; access.opacity=200; outlook.opacity=200; } function indit_excel() { if (options.getValue('excel_ut').length!=''){ prg.ShellExecute(options.getValue('excel_ut')); } else { alert("Configure Excel path. Right click on the icon!"); } } function set_excel() { var ut = framework.BrowseForFile('Exe files(*.exe)|*.exe|All Files(*.*)|*.*'); if (ut.length!=0){ options.putValue('excel_ut',ut); } } function set_word() { var ut = framework.BrowseForFile('Exe files(*.exe)|*.exe|All Files(*.*)|*.*'); if (ut.length!=0){ options.putValue('word_ut',ut); } } function set_access() { var ut = framework.BrowseForFile('Exe files(*.exe)|*.exe|All Files(*.*)|*.*'); if (ut.length!=0){

Page 61 of 109

options.putValue('access_ut',ut); } }

function set_power() { var ut = framework.BrowseForFile('Exe files(*.exe)|*.exe|All Files(*.*)|*.*'); if (ut.length!=0){ options.putValue('power_ut',ut); } }

function set_outlook() { var ut = framework.BrowseForFile('Exe files(*.exe)|*.exe|All Files(*.*)|*.*'); if (ut.length!=0){ options.putValue('outlook_ut',ut); } } function indit_word() { if (options.getValue('word_ut').length!=''){ prg.ShellExecute(options.getValue('word_ut')); } else { alert("Configure Word path. Right click on the icon!"); }

}

function indit_access() { if (options.getValue('access_ut').length!=''){ prg.ShellExecute(options.getValue('access_ut')); } else { alert("Configure Access path. Right click on the icon!"); }

}

function indit_power() { if (options.getValue('power_ut').length!=''){ prg.ShellExecute(options.getValue('power_ut')); } else { alert("Configure PowerPoint path. Right click on the icon!"); }

}

function indit_outlook() { if (options.getValue('outlook_ut').length!=''){ prg.ShellExecute(options.getValue('outlook_ut'));//this line is to call shortcuts

Page 62 of 109

} else { alert("Configure Outlook path. Right click on the icon!"); }

}

The internet database application This type of gadgets are connected with internet requires login or access to database in their servers. This gadget is dictionary gadget. It returns the word͛s meaning from edictionary.com. It uses the XMLhttprequest class to access the internet and the database on server. The key method is .open ("GET", URL, true); here GET is the get method of http, URL is the URL site and true is for allowing access to database or not. Here is the code. var DURL = "http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/"; // this is the URL to be accessed var TURL = "http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/"; var logoRequest_ = null; var RENDEREDHTML = "

FAILED

"; function view_onOpen() { //onShowDictionary(); } function OnKeyDown() { if(event.keyCode == 13) { OnClickDictionary(); } } function onShowDetails() { var htmlDetailsView = new DetailsView(); htmlDetailsView.html_content = true; htmlDetailsView.setContent( "", undefined, RENDEREDHTML, false, 0); pluginHelper.showDetailsView(htmlDetailsView, "Results for : " + txtWord.value, gddDetailsViewFlagToolbarOpen, onDetailsViewFeedback); } function onDetailsViewFeedback(detailsViewFlags)

Page 63 of 109

{ if (detailsViewFlags == gddDetailsViewFlagNone) { // User closed the details view } else if (detailsViewFlags == gddDetailsViewFlagToolbarOpen) { // User clicked on the title of the details view } } function onLogoData() { if (logoRequest_.readyState != 4) return;

if (logoRequest_.status != 200) { RENDEREDHTML = "

FAILED

"; logoRequest_ = null; return; } try { RENDEREDHTML = logoRequest_.responseText.toLowerCase(); var PosEnd = -1; var Found = false; var Pos = RENDEREDHTML.indexOf("http://cache.lexico.com/g/d/speaker.gif"); if(Pos != -1) { RENDEREDHTML = RENDEREDHTML.substr(Pos); Pos = RENDEREDHTML.indexOf("1."); if(Pos != -1) { RENDEREDHTML = RENDEREDHTML.substr(Pos); Pos = RENDEREDHTML.indexOf("

Page 64 of 109

if(!Found) { RENDEREDHTML = "

No Results found for : " + txtWord.value + "

"; } } catch(e) { } lblMessage.visible = false; onShowDetails(); logoRequest_ = null; }

function onLogoDataT() { if (logoRequest_.readyState != 4) return;

if (logoRequest_.status != 200) { RENDEREDHTML = "

FAILED

"; logoRequest_ = null; return; } try { RENDEREDHTML = logoRequest_.responseText.toLowerCase(); var Pos = RENDEREDHTML.indexOf("http://cache.lexico.com/g/d/speaker.gif"); if(Pos != -1) { RENDEREDHTML = RENDEREDHTML.substr(Pos); Pos = RENDEREDHTML.indexOf("1."); if(Pos != -1) { RENDEREDHTML = RENDEREDHTML.substr(Pos); Pos = RENDEREDHTML.indexOf("

Page 65 of 109

//view.alert(RENDEREDHTML); } } catch(e) { } onShowDetails(); logoRequest_ = null; }

function OnClickDictionary()//this is button͛s event handeler { var Word = txtWord.value; //this is the word whose meaning is to be searched if(Word == "") return;

logoRequest_ = new XMLHttpRequest();//the connection is established here try { logoRequest_.open("GET", DURL + Word, true);// page is opened here } catch (e) { view.alert("FAILED"); logoRequest_ = null; return; } logoRequest_.onreadystatechange = onLogoData;

try { logoRequest_.send(); lblMessage.visible = true; } catch (e) { view.alert("FAILED"); logoRequest_ = null; return; } }

function OnClickThesaurus() { var Word = txtWord.value;

Page 66 of 109

if(Word == "") return;

logoRequest_ = new XMLHttpRequest(); try { logoRequest_.open("GET", TURL + Word, true); } catch (e) { logoRequest_ = null; return; } logoRequest_.onreadystatechange = onLogoDataT;

try { logoRequest_.send(); lblMessage.visible = true; } catch (e) { logoRequest_ = null; return; } }

Page 67 of 109

Developersǯ Mecca: Google code Google Code is Google's site for developers interested in Google-related/open-source development. The site contains open source code and a list of their services which support public APIs.

APIs Google offers a variety of APIs for web and desktop programmers alike. They are often based around current Google products, including AdSense, and Google Toolbar.

SOAP-based APIs

The AdSense and AdWords APIs, based on the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) data exchange standard, allow developers to integrate their own applications with these Google services. The AdSense API allows owners of web sites and blogs to manage AdSense sign-up, content and reporting, while the AdWords API gives AdWords customers programmatic access to their AdWords accounts and campaigns.

Google Data APIs The Google Data APIs allow programmers to create applications that read and write data from Google services. Currently, these include APIs for Google Apps, Blogger, , Google Book Search, Google Calendar, Google Code Search, Google Spreadsheets, Google Notebook, and Picasa Web Albums.

Open source projects Google Projects and Patches are Open Source software that Google has developed.

Gears Gears is beta software offered by Google to enable off-line access to services that normally only work on-line. It installs a database engine, based on SQLite, on the client system

Page 68 of 109 to cache the data locally. Gears-enabled pages use data from this local cache rather than from the online service. Using Gears, a web application may periodically synchronize the data in the local cache with the online service. If a network connection is not available, the synchronization is deferred until a network connection is established. Thus Gears enables web applications to work even though access to the network service is not present.

Google Web Toolkit The is an open source toolkit allowing developers to create Ajax applications in the Java programming language. GWT supports rapid client/server development and debugging in any Java IDE. In a subsequent deployment step, the GWT compiler translates a working Java application into equivalent JavaScript that programmatically manipulates a web browser's HTML DOM using DHTML techniques. GWT emphasizes reusable, efficient solutions to recurring Ajax challenges, namely asynchronous remote procedure calls, history management, bookmarking, and cross-browser portability. It is released under the Apache License version 2.0.

Summer of Code s a mentoring program to find students for Open Source projects. In 2007, the program received nearly 6,200 applications.

Project Hosting Google Code runs a project hosting service that provides revision control using Subversion (the repositories are implemented on top of Google's , but this is hidden to the user), an issue tracker, a wiki for documentation, and a file download feature. The service is available and free for all Open Source projects that are licensed to Google's liking.

Allowed licenses The site allows the projects to use only one of nine licenses (Apache, Artistic, BSD, GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPL, MIT, MPL and EPL).

Limitations The site limits the number of projects one person can have to 10, as well as only a certain amount of projects may be created within 1 day.

Google App Engine Google App Engine is a platform for building and hosting web applications on Google's infrastructure. It was first released as a beta version in April 2008.

Page 69 of 109

Based on technology, Google App Engine uses multiple servers to run an application and store data, and automatically adjusts the number of servers to handle requests reliably. Comparable cloud-based platforms include offerings such as Web Services and Microsoft's Azure Services Platform.

Google App Engine is free up to a certain level of used resources, after which fees are charged for additional storage, bandwidth, or CPU cycles required by the application.

Supported programming languages and frameworks Currently, the supported programming languages are Python and Java. A limited version of the Django web framework is available, as well as a custom Google-written web app framework similar to JSP or ASP.NET. Google has said that it plans to support more languages in the future, and that the Google App Engine has been written to be language independent. Any Python framework that supports the WSGI using the CGI adapter can be used to create an application; the framework can be uploaded with the developed application. Third-party libraries written in pure Python may also be uploaded.

Differences from other application hosting Compared to other scalable hosting services such as Amazon EC2, App Engine provides more infrastructures to make it easy to write scalable applications, but can only run a limited range of applications designed for that infrastructure.

App Engine's infrastructure removes many of the system administration and development challenges of building applications to scale to millions of hits. Google handles deploying code to a cluster, database sharding, monitoring, failover, and launching application instances as necessary.

While other services let users install and configure nearly any *NIX compatible software, AppEngine requires developers to use Python or Java as the programming language and a limited set of APIs. Current APIs allow storing and retrieving data from a BigTable non-relational database; making HTTP requests; sending e-mail; manipulating images; and caching. Most existing Web applications can't run on App Engine without modification, because they require a relational database.

Per-day and per-minute quotas restrict bandwidth and CPU use, number of requests served, number of concurrent requests, and calls to the various APIs, and individual requests are terminated if they take more than 30 seconds or return more than 10MB of data.

Differences between SQL and GQL Google App Engine's data store has a SQL-like syntax called "GQL". Select statements in GQL can be performed on one table only. GQL intentionally does not support the Join

Page 70 of 109 statement, because it is seen to be inefficient when queries span more than one machine. Instead, one-to-many and many-to-many relationships can be accomplished using ReferenceProperty().This shared-nothing approach allows disks to fail without the system failing. he where clause of select statements can perform >, >=, <, <= operations on one column only. Therefore, only simple where clauses can be constructed. Switching from a relational database to the Datastore requires a paradigm shift for developers when modeling their data.

App Engine limits the maximum rows returned from an entity get to 1000 rows per Datastore call. Most web database applications use paging and caching, and hence do not require this much data at once, so this is a non-issue in most scenarios If an application needs more than 1,000 records per operation, it can use its own client-side software or an Ajax page to perform an operation on an unlimited number of rows.

Unlike a relational database such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, or PostgreSQL, the Data store API is not relational in the SQL sense.

Restrictions Developers have read-only access to the filesystem on App Engine. App Engine can only execute code called from an HTTP request (except for scheduled background tasks). Users may upload arbitrary Python modules, but only if they are pure-Python; C and Pyrex modules are not supported.

My Verdict to app engine

Sorry but Google is lacking something here. There are many old players in the room like Amazon and Microsoft͛s azure. Though Google͛s cloud computing infrastructure helps a lot but many limitations are there to drive the developers away from this. Use it only if you are planning to host pure Google based application.

My Ratings to app engine: 1.5/5

Page 71 of 109

Google Maps Google Maps (for a time named Google Local) is a free web mapping (for non- commercial use) service application and technology provided by Google that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API. It offers street maps, a route planner for traveling by foot, bicycle, car, or public transport and an urban business locator for numerous countries around the world. It also can help find the location of businesses.

Google Maps uses the Mercator projection, so it cannot show areas around the poles. A related product is Google Earth, a stand-alone program for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, SymbianOS, and iPhone OS which offers more globe-viewing features, including showing polar areas.

Satellite view Google Maps provides high-resolution satellite images for most urban areas in Canada, and the United States (including Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) as well as parts of Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, , Chile, Dominican Republic, Egypt, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and many other countries. Google Maps also covers many cities, including Istanbul, Moscow, and most of India and Pakistan.

Various governments have complained about the potential for terrorists to use the satellite images in planning attacks as a result Google has blurred some areas for security.

With the introduction of an easily pannable and searchable mapping and satellite imagery tool, Google's mapping engine prompted a surge of interest in satellite imagery. Sites were established which feature satellite images of interesting natural and man-made landmarks, including such novelties as "large type" writing visible in the imagery, as well as

Page 72 of 109 famous stadia and unique geological formations. As of November 2008, the U.S. National Weather Service also now uses Google Maps within its local weather forecasts, showing the 5 times 5 km "point forecast" squares used in forecast models.

Although Google uses the word satellite, most of the high-resolution imagery is aerial photography taken from airplanes rather than from satellites.

Directions Google Maps directions work:

Contiguously in North America: Alaska*, Canada* and United States*. Contiguously in Europe: Albania, Andorra, Austria*, Belarus^, Belgium*, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic*, Denmark*, Estonia, France*, Finland*, Germany*, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy*, Latvia, Liechtenstein*, Lithuania, Luxembourg*, Macedonia, Moldova^, Montenegro, Monaco*, The Netherlands*, Norway*, Poland*, Portugal*, Romania^, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain*, Sweden*, Switzerland*, Ukraine^, United Kingdom*, Vatican City (i.e. all of Europe, excluding Russia, Iceland and Turkey). Contiguously in South East Asia: Singapore*, Malaysia and Thailand Single countries: Australia*, Brazil*, Chile, China^, Israel (and parts of the West Bank), Hawaii*, Hong Kong*, Japan*, New Zealand*, Russia* (Moscow area only) and Taiwan.

^ = not all roads are featured in this country, so directions are limited.

* = has directions and places of interest.

Implementation Like many other Google web applications, Google Maps uses JavaScript extensively. As the user drags the map, the grid squares are downloaded from the server and inserted into the page. When a user searches for a business, the results are downloaded in the background for insertion into the side panel and map; the page is not reloaded. Locations are drawn dynamically by positioning a red pin (composed of several partially-transparent PNGs) on top of the map images.

A hidden IFrame with form submission is used because it preserves browser history. The site also uses JSON for data transfer rather than XML, for performance reasons. These techniques both fall under the broad Ajax umbrella.

The geographic information system data used in Google Maps are provided by Tele Atlas.

Page 73 of 109

Satellites Small patches of high-resolution satellite imagery are provided mainly by DigitalGlobe and its QuickBird satellite, with some imagery also from government sources. The main global imagery base, called NaturalVue, was derived from Landsat 7 imagery by MDA Federal (formerly Earth Satellite Corporation). Landsat 7's maximum ground imagery was 15 m (49 ft) for black and white. QuickBird's designed maximum ground imagery is 60 cm (24 in). This global image base provides the essential foundation for the entire application.

On September 6, 2008, a Delta II rocket bearing the lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It carried the GeoEye-1 satellite, the most powerful commercial space image satellite yet launched. The satellite will provide 41-centimeter (16-inch) imagery to the United States government, and downsampled 50-centimeter (20-inch) imagery to Google, which has the exclusive rights to use the images for mapping. Press releases stated that Google's imagery would be able to display home plates in baseball parks. GeoEye's IKONOS satellite ʹ which has a maximum ground resolution of 82 cm (32 in) ʹ provides images to Microsoft and Yahoo.

Extensibility and customization As Google Maps is coded almost entirely JavaScript and XML, some end users have reverse-engineered the tool and produced client-side scripts and server-side hooks which allowed a user or website to introduce expanded or customized features into the Google Maps interface.

Using the core engine and the map/satellite images hosted by Google, such tools can introduce custom location icons, location coordinates and metadata, and even custom map image sources into the Google Maps interface. The script-insertion tool Greasemonkey provides a large number of client-side scripts to customize Google Maps data.

Combinations with photo sharing websites, such as Flickr, are used to create "memory maps". Using copies of the Keyhole satellite photos, users have taken advantage of image annotation features to provide personal histories and information regarding particular points of the area.

Google Maps API Google created the Google Maps API to allow developers to integrate Google Maps into their websites with their own data points. It is a free service, and currently does not contain

Page 74 of 109 ads, but Google states in their terms of use that they reserve the right to display ads in the future

By using the Google Maps API, it is possible to embed the full Google Maps site into an external website. Developers are required to request an API key, which is bound to the website and directory entered when creating the key. Creating a customized map interface requires adding the Google JavaScript code to a page, and then using Javascript functions to add points to the map.

When the API first launched, it lacked the ability to geocode addresses, requiring users to manually add points in (latitude, longitude) format. This feature has since been added.

At the same time as the release of the Google Maps API, Yahoo! released its own Maps APIThe releases coincided with the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Conference. Yahoo! Maps, which lacks international support, included a geocoder in the first release.

As of October 2006, the implementation of Google Gadgets' Google Maps is simpler, requiring only one line of script, but it is not as customizable as the full API.

In 2006, Yahoo began a campaign to upgrade their maps to compete better with Google and other online map companies. Several of the maps used in a survey were similar to Google maps.

Google Maps actively promotes the commercial use of its API. One of its first large-scale adopters was real estate mashup sites. Google performed a case study is about Nestoria, a property search engine in the UK and Spain.

Google Maps for Mobile In 2006, Google introduced a Java application called Google Maps for Mobile, which is intended to run on any Java-based phone or mobile device. Many of the web-based site's features are provided in the application.

On November 28, 2007, Google Maps for Mobile 2.0 was released. It introduced a GPS- like location service that does not require a GPS receiver. The "my location" feature works by utilizing the GPS location of the mobile device, if it is available. This information is supplemented by the software determining the nearest cell site. The software then looks up the location of the cell site using a database of known cell sites. The software plots the streets in blue that are available with a yellow icon and a green circle around the estimated range of the cell site based on the transmitter's rated power (among other variables). The estimate is refined using the strength of the cell phone signal to estimate how close to the cell site the mobile device is.

Page 75 of 109

As of December 15, 2008, this service is available for the following platforms:

Android (HTC Dream) iPhone OS (iPhone/iPod Touch) Windows Mobile Nokia/Symbian (S60 3rd edition only) Symbian OS (UIQ v3) BlackBerry Phones with Java-Platform (MIDP 2.0 and up), for example the Sony Ericsson K800i Palm OS (Centro and newer)

Google Maps parameters

In Google Maps, URL parameters may be tweaked to offer views and options not normally available through on-screen controls. For instance, the maximum zoom level offered is normally 18, but if higher-resolution images are available, changing the z parameter, which sets the zoom level, will allow the user to access them, as in this view of elephants or this view of people at a well deep in Chad, Africa using the parameter z=23.

Google's use of Google Maps Google Moon

In honor of the 36th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969, Google took public domain imagery of the Moon, integrated it into the Google Maps interface, and created a tool called Google Moon. By default this tool, with a reduced set of features, also displays the points of landing of all Apollo spacecraft to land on the Moon. It also included an Easter egg, displaying a Swiss cheese design at the highest zoom level, which Google has since removed. A recent collaborative project between NASA Ames Research Center and Google is integrating and improving the data that is used for Google Moon. This is the Planetary Content Project. Google Moon was linked from a special commemorative version of the Google logo displayed at the top of the main Google search page for July 20, 2005.

Google Mars

Google Mars provides a visible imagery view, like Google Moon, as well as infrared imagery and shaded relief (elevation) of the planet Mars. Users can toggle between the elevation, visible, and infrared data, in the same manner as switching between map, satellite, and hybrid modes of Google Maps. In collaboration with NASA scientists at the Mars Space

Page 76 of 109

Flight Facility located at Arizona State University, Google has provided the public with data collected from two NASA Mars missions, Mars Global Surveyor and 2001 Mars Odyssey.

NASA has made available a number of Google Earth desktop client maps for Mars at http://onmars.jpl.nasa.gov/.

More Mars data sets with more recent data are available at Google Maps based interface at http://jmars.asu.edu/maps provided by the Mars Space Flight Facility Arizona State University

Now, with Google Earth 5 it is possible to access new improved Google Mars͛s data at a much higher resolution, as well as being able to view the terrain in 3D, and viewing panoramas from various Mars Landers in a similar way to Google Street View.

Google Ride Finder Google launched an experimental Google Maps-based tool called Ride Finder, tapping into in-car GPS units for a selection of participating taxi and limousine services. The tool displays the current location of all supported vehicles of the participating services in major U.S. cities, including Chicago and San Francisco on a Google Maps street map.

Google My Maps In April 2007, My Maps was a new feature added to Google's local search maps. My Maps lets users and businesses create their own map by positioning markers, polylines and polygons onto a map. The interface is a straightforward overlay on the map. A set of eighty-four pre-designed markers is available, ranging from bars and restaurants to webcam and earthquake symbols. Polyline and Polygon color, width and opacity are selectable. Maps modified using My Maps can be saved for later viewing and made public (or marked as private), but cannot be printed. Note: this can easily be overcome by using the 'Print Screen' function key and simple image editing software such as Paint.

Each element added to a My Map has an editable tag. This tag can contain text, rich text or HTML. Embeddable video and other content can be included within the HTML tag.

Upon the launch of My Maps there was no facility to embed the created maps into a webpage or blog. A few independent websites have now produced tools to let users embed maps and add further functionality to their maps. This has been resolved with version 2.78.

Google Latitude is a feature from Google that lets users share their physical locations with other people. This service is based on Google Maps, specifically on mobile devices. There's an iGoogle widget for Desktops and Laptops as well. Some concerns have been expressed about the privacy issues raised by the use of the service.

Page 77 of 109

Google Maps in competition

Why should?

 Perfection in data.  Freely accessible worldwide.  Easy to create your own application from coding.  Can act as GPS if you have internet connected with your laptop, palmtop or mobile device. (PCworld .com in May 2006).

Why shouldn͛t?

X Privacy concerns. X Not much perfect in remote locations in India.

My Verdict on Google Maps

It͛s such a good application and is and will be popular because it͛s free to use. Somehow its counterpart yahoo maps are using better technologies. But they are not free to use. That will keep Google maps ͞ahead of curves͟. For developers it͛s easy to use and develop an application based on GMap API. I had created an application based on GMap API just in 2 days.

My Ratings to Google maps: 3.5/5

Google notebook Google Notebook is a free online application offered by Google that provides a simple way to save and organize clips of information when conducting research online. This personal browser tool permits a user to write notes, and to clip text, images, and links from pages during browsing. These are saved to an online "notebook" with sharing and collaboration features.

Google Notebook is an interactive scratch pad for any visited web pages, offering to collect web findings within the browser window.

Sharing functions permit a user to make public notebooks visible to others, or to collaborate with a list of users (with or without making collaborative notebooks public).

A mini version of the Google notebook is available through browser extensions (available for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer) that allows clipping information from the web without leaving the displayed page using a quick "note this" function available within the

Page 78 of 109 context right click menu from anywhere inside a webpage. The latest version of the Firefox extension is 1.0.0.20.

A few months after the Firefox extension was released, Google added a "Note this" link to each Google search result when users are logged in. Clicking on it opens up an AJAX user interface near the bottom right of the screen just like the extension, but without the need for installing a browser add-on.

Notebooks may contain headings and notes. New notes go at the bottom of a notebook, unless an insertion point (any specific note or section) has been pre-selected in the mini- notebook sub-window. Using the full-page notebook view, drag-and-drop features allow moving and reorganizing notes within a notebook, or between notebooks. It is also possible to export one's notebooks to Google Documents. As of November 1, 2007 labeling has now become available.

Google Notebook was announced on May 10, 2006 and made available May 15, 2006. In early 2009 Google announced that they were stopping development on the service it is no longer open to sign-ups by new users nor being improved/debugged, however current users can still access all notebooks and data.

Mobile OS and software developing platform: Android

A possible home screen of Android.

Android is a software platform and operating system for mobile devices, based on the Linux kernel, and developed by Google and later the Open Handset Alliance. It allows

Page 79 of 109 developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google- developed Java libraries. Applications written in C and other languages can be compiled to ARM native code and run, but this development path is not officially supported by Google.

The unveiling of the Android platform on 5 November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 48 hardware, software, and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. Google released most of the Android code under the Apache license, a free-software and open source license.

Features

The platform is adaptable to larger, VGA, 2D graphics library, 3D Handset layouts graphics library based onOpenGL ES 1.0 specifications, and traditional smartphone layouts.

Storage The Database Software SQLite is used for data storage purposes

Android supports connectivity technologies includingGSM/EDGE, CDMA, EV- Connectivity DO, UMTS, Bluetooth, andWi-Fi.

SMS and MMS are available forms of messaging including threaded text Messaging messaging.

The web browser available in Android is based on the open- Web browser source WebKit application framework.

Software written in Java can be compiled into Dalvik bytecodes and executed Dalvik virtual in the Dalvik virtual machine, which is a specialized VM implementation machine designed for mobile device use, although not technically a standard Java Virtual Machine.

Android supports the following audio/video/still media formats: MPEG- Media support 4, H.264, MP3, AAC, OGG,AMR, JPEG, PNG, GIF.

Additional Android can utilize video/still cameras,touchscreens, GPS, accelerometers, and hardware accelerated 3D graphics.

Page 80 of 109

support

Development Includes a device emulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance environment profiling, a plugin for theEclipse IDE.

Similar to the App Store on the iPhone, The Android Market is a catalog of applications that can be downloaded and installed to target hardware over- Market the-air, without the use of a PC. Originally only freeware applications were supported. Paid-for apps have been available on Android Market since 19 February 2009.[32]

Android has native support for multi-touch but the feature is disabled (possibly Multi-touch to avoid infringing Apple patents on touch-screen technology). An unofficial mod has been developed that enables multi-touch.

Android SDK The Android SDK includes a comprehensive set of development tools. These include a debugger, libraries, a handset emulator (based on QEMU), documentation, sample code, and tutorials. Currently supported development platforms include x86-based computers running Linux (any modern desktop Linux Distribution), Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later, Windows XP or Vista. Requirements also include Java Development Kit, Apache Ant, and Python 2.2 or later. The officially supported integrated development environment (IDE) is (3.2 or later) using the Android Development Tools (ADT) Plugin, though developers may use any text editor to edit Java and XML files then use command line tools to create, build and debug Android applications.

A preview release of the Android (SDK) was released on 12 November 2007. On 15 July 2008, the Android Developer Challenge Team accidentally sent an email to all entrants in the Android Developer Challenge announcing that a new release of the SDK was available in a "private" download area. The email was intended for winners of the first round of the Android Developer Challenge. The revelation that Google was supplying new SDK releases to some developers and not others (and keeping this arrangement private) has led to widely reported frustration within the Android developer community

Native code The ADB debugger gives a root shell under the Android Emulator which allows native ARM code to be uploaded and executed. ARM code can be compiled using GCC on a standard

Page 81 of 109

PC. Running native code is complicated by the fact that Android uses a non-standard C library (known as Bionic). The underlying graphics device is available as a framebuffer at /dev/graphics/fb0. The graphics library that Android uses to arbitrate and control access to this device is called the Skia Graphics Library (SGL), and it has been released under an open source license. Skia has backends for both win32 and Cairo, allowing the development of cross- platform applications, and it is the graphics engine underlying the Google Chrome web browser.

Native classes can be called from Java code running under the Dalvik VM using the System.loadLibrary call, which is part of the standard Android Java classes. Elements Interactive Mobile B.V. have ported their EdgeLib C++ library to Android, and native code executables of their S-Tris2 game (a Tetris clone) and Animate3D technology demo are available for download.

Restrictions Tethering (internet connectivity to a laptop or pc via the cell phone) is forbidden by T- Mobile USA and Google has banned such applications for T-Mobile USA users. This also means that the apps can be carrier specific as chosen by Google.

Android uses a Linux kernel, but, according to Google, it is not a Linux operating system (it neither has a native windowing system, nor supports the full set of standard Linux libraries, including GNU C Library). This specific nature makes it difficult to reuse existing Linux applications or libraries.

Android does not use established Java standards, i.e. Java SE and ME. This prevents compatibility among Java applications written for those platforms and those for the Android platform. Android only reuses the Java language syntax, but does not provide the full-class libraries and APIs bundled with Java SE or ME.

Page 82 of 109

Googleǯs own approach to mail: Gmail Gmail is a free POP3 and IMAP service provided by Google. Gmail launched on April 1, 2004 as an invitation-only beta release and became available to the general public on February 7, 2007. Although over 100 million users have taken advantage of stable releases for years, to this day the service remains in beta status.

With an initial storage capacity offer of 1 GB per user, Gmail significantly increased the webmail standard for free storage from the 2 to 4MB its competitors offered at that time. The service currently offers over 7300 MB of free storage with additional storage ranging from 10 GB to 400 GB available for $20 to $500 (US) per year.

Gmail has a search-oriented interface and a "conversation view" similar to an Internet forum. Software developers know Gmail for its use of the Ajax programming technique.

Gmail runs on Google Servlet Engine and Google GFE/1.3 which run on Linux.

Features The Gmail service currently provides more than 7300 MB of free storage .Users can rent additional storage (shared between Picasa Web Albums and Gmail) from 10 GB (US$20/year) to 400 GB (US$500/year). On April 1, 2005, the first anniversary of Gmail, Google announced the increase from 1 GB, stating that Google would "keep giving people more space forever."

In April 2005 Gmail engineer Rob Siemborski stated that Google would keep increasing storage by the second as long as it had enough space on its servers. On October 12, 2007, the rate of increase was 5.37 MB per hour.

Approximately a week later, the rate decreased to 1.12 MB per hour, on January 4, 2008 further down to about 3.35 MB per day, or 0.14 MB per hour, and in October 2008 further down to about 353.9 KB per day.

Page 83 of 109

Gmail Labs The Gmail Labs feature, introduced on June 5, 2008, allows users to test new or experimental features of Gmail, such as bookmarking of important e-mail messages, custom keyboard-shortcuts and games.

Users can enable or disable Labs features selectively and provide feedback about each of them. This allows Gmail engineers to obtain user input about new features to improve them and also to assess their popularity and whether they merit developing into regular Gmail features. All Labs features are experimental and are subject to termination at any time.

On December 10, 2008, Gmail added support for SMS Messaging through its integrated Chat. On January 28, 2009, Gmail added support for offline access through its integration with Gears.

Gmail hoaxes

Gmail Paper hoax

On April Fools' Day 2007, Google made fun of Gmail by introducing "Gmail Paper", where a user could click a button and Gmail would purportedly mail an ad-supported hard copy for free.

Gmail Custom Time hoax

On April Fools' Day 2008, Google introduced a fake service named Gmail Custom Time, which would allegedly allow a user to send up to ten e-mails per year with forged timestamps. The hoax stated that by bending space-time on the Google servers, the e-mails actually get routed through the fourth dimension of time itself before reaching their intended recipient.

Gmail Autopilot hoax

On April Fools' Day 2009, Google introduced a service called Gmail Autopilot by CADIE. According to Google, the service purported to automatically read and respond to emails for the user. It appeared to work by analyzing messages for the emotions involved in writing the message and either providing advice to the user, or automatically responding to the message.

Code changes Gmail's JavaScript front-end was rewritten in late summer and early fall of 2007 and was released to users starting on October 29, 2007. The new version had a redesigned contacts section; quick contacts box and chat popup, which were added to names in the message list as well as the contact list. The contacts application is integrated into other Google services, such

Page 84 of 109 as . Users granted access to the new version were given a link at the top-right corner which read "Newer Version". As of December 2007, most new registrations in English (US) along with most pre-existing accounts are given the new interface by default when supported. There remains the option to downgrade via a link labeled "Older Version".

These coding changes mean that only users of Internet Explorer 7, , Google Chrome and Safari 3.0 (or more recent versions) can fully use the new code. Internet Explorer 5.5+, Netscape 7.1+, Mozilla 1.4+, Firefox 0.8, Safari 1.3 and some other browsers will give limited functionality. Other browsers may be redirected to the basic-HTML-only version of Gmail.

During the week of January 18, 2008, Google released an update that changed the way Gmail loads JavaScript. This caused the failure of some third-party extensions. n December 12, 2008, Gmail added support for faster PDF viewing within the browser.

Criticisms Privacy

Google automatically scans e-mails to add context-sensitive advertisements to them. Privacy advocates raised concerns that the plan involved scanning their personal, assumed private, e-mails, and that this was a security problem. Allowing e-mail content to be read, even by a computer, raises the risk that the expectation of privacy in e-mail will be reduced. Furthermore, e-mail that non-subscribers choose to send to Gmail accounts is scanned by Gmail as well and these senders did not agree to Gmail's terms of service or privacy policy. Google can change its privacy policy unilaterally and Google is technically able to cross-reference cookies across its information-rich product line to make dossiers on individuals. However, most e-mail systems make use of server-side content scanning in order to check for spam.

Privacy-advocates also regard the lack of disclosed data retention and correlation policies as problematic. Google has the ability to combine information contained in a person's e-mails with information about their Internet searches. Google has not confirmed how long such information would be kept and how it could be used. One of the concerns is that it could be of interest to law enforcement agencies. More than 30 privacy and civil liberties organizations have urged Google to suspend Gmail service until these issues are resolved.

Technical issues

Gmail does not allow users to send or receive executable files or archives containing executable files if it recognizes the file extension as one used for executable files or archives.

Tech-savvy users who are not prone to casual errors report loss of random messages in random amounts.

Page 85 of 109

Gmail has been unavailable on several occasions. On February 24, 2009, the Gmail service was offline for 2.5 hours, preventing millions of users from accessing their accounts. People who rely entirely on Gmail for business purposes complained about these outages.

Gmail only sorts e-mail in conversations (or "threading"), which is a problem for large conversations. For example, if a user sends a query to a large group of people, all of the responses are stored in a single conversation that is impossible to break apart. There is no way to search for responses from one user without getting the entire conversation. Archiving, labeling and some other special operations on just one part of a conversation are not possible.

Auto save Gmail is unique in that a user's newly composed email or existing email which is being edited is automatically saved approximately every minute to the account's "Drafts" folder. Although this feature contributes to the reliability of the service, some users complain that the auto save feature causes visible and noticeable interruptions in the flow of typing and is not customizable in any way. Gmail in Competitions

Why should?

Technologies like offline support, multiple inbox etc. Initiators in many technologies that is now followed by others. Cool and easy to use themes. Indic languages support.

Why shouldn͛t?

Some technologic lacks featured here. Newer version of Gmail crashes easily.

My Verdict to Gmail

I used it, using it and will use it. I͛m happy that Google is rapidly developing Gmail, but still not serious. I love the way Google works here. Though I͛m using yahoo because its tabbed browsing, AOL because its access to Gmail and yahoo mail but I love Gmail because yahoo and AOL doesn͛t give me offline access nor give me multiple inboxes nor cool themes and probably every month they come with something new and really cool thing. They have fun, innovation and user friendliness. Hats off Gmail!

Page 86 of 109

My ratings to Gmail: 4/5

Googleǯs home ground: searches

Google search Search, of course, is what Google is mostly about. Evolved out of their original research paper, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hyper textual Web Search Engine (http://tinyurl.com/y98mbt), the Google search engine is a distributed network of hundreds of thousands of computers that take about half a second to process a search query. Yes, one half of one second! For an overview of the technology, go to www.google.com/corporate/tech.html.

Building on this breakthrough approach to searching the Web, Google search has grown into a plethora of specialized services that enables people to search the Web in so many different useful ways. In this chapter we look at the various ways you can Google the Web for information.

Functionality The Google search engine has many intuitive features making it more functional. This could have played a role in making it as popular as it is today. Google is one of the top ten most-visited websites today. Some of its features include a definition link for most searches including dictionary words, a list of how many results you got on your search, links to other searches (e.g. you misspelled something, it gives you a link to the search results had you typed in the correct search), and many more. It is unknown whether functionality, speed, or luck brought it its peak status.

"I'm Feeling Lucky" Google's homepage includes a button labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky". When a user clicks on the button the user will be taken directly to the first search result, bypassing the search engine results page. The thought is that, if a user is "feeling lucky", the search engine will return the perfect match the first time without having to page through the search results.

Page 87 of 109

According to a study by Tom Chavez of "Rapt", this feature costs Google $110 million a year as 1% of all searches use this feature and bypass all advertising

Basic search Searching is easyͶjust type in the search term(s) and hit [Enter] or click the Google Search button. However, choosing the right search term is important in getting the most relevant results. If the results are too broad you can use a number of basic and advanced search operators to refine your results. You may use up to 32 keywords in your search term, which in practice should be more than enough to handle even the most complex searches. The following list gives you examples of the basic search operators:

Vacation shimla

Lists all the sites with the words vacation and Shimla. Note that Google automatically searches for all the words in your search term. Also, searches are not case-sensitive.

vacation shimla OR ooty

Lists all sites with the words ͞vacation͟ and ͞Shimla͟, or ͞vacation͟ and ͞Ooty͟, or ͞vacation͟ and ͞Shimla͟ and ͞Ooty͟. Note that the OR operator should be in capitals, that is, if either ͞o͟ or ͞r͟ are in lowercase, Google will treat it like an ordinary word. Instead of using the word OR, you can also use the vertical bar symbol |. Thus, the above search term can also be entered as ͞vacation shimla | ooty͟.

͞freedom at midnight͟

A search term enclosed in quotes indicates that the search should be for the entire phrase. Thus, in the above example the result will show all the sites with the exact phrase ͞freedom at midnight͟. This can be particularly useful when you are searching for proper names, snippets of famous quotes, song lyrics, and such.

Caricatures where sketches +are not permitted

By default, Google ignores common words like ͞where͟, ͞how͟, ͞are͟, etc. If you want to include a specific common word, use the plus sign before the word. Also, Google, by default, will include spelling variations of the same keyword. Thus if your search keyword is ͞coloring book͟, the Google results will include both ͞coloring͟ and ͞colouring͟. To search only for ͞colouring͟, include the plus sign: ͞+colouring book͟. Make sure there is a space before the sign and no space between the plus sign and the word you want included in your search results.

Caricatures -sketches

Page 88 of 109

If you want to exclude a particular word from your search results, you can use the minus sign. Like the plus sign, make sure there is a space before the sign and no space between it and the word you want excluded. These basic search operators can also be combined in one or more ways to give you refined, highly focused results for your search. For example, consider the search term:

Job vacancy erp senior ͞project manager͟ -junior manufacturing OR Automotive

This search term will search for sites:

With the words job AND vacancy AND erp AND senior With the phrase ͞project manager͟ Without the word junior With the word manufacturing OR automotive OR both

To see the difference between this search and a simple keyword search, compare it with the undifferentiated search term ͞job vacancy erp senior project manager manufacturing automotive͟. One additional feature of Google search is automatic word stemming technology. That is, when searching for a keyword, not only is the exact word searched for, but also words with related meanings. For example a search for ͞cardiac arrest͟ will also includes results with ͞heart attack͟! In addition, Google is aware of plurals and such, so if you search for ͞flowers͟, pages with just ͞flower͟ in them will show up too.

The Anatomy of a Search Result A Google search result is a complex rendering of information from multiple data stores that is displayed in a quick and easy-to-understand format. Other than the complex formula applied to rank the results, the results displayed will also vary according to the type of search term. For example, if you search for ͞Windows Vista͟, you will not only be able to see the most relevant Web sites, you will also be shown the latest news clippings. This can become very useful especially when you are searching for information related to current affairs. In addition, Google displays advertisementsͶGoogle AdWords, which closely match your keywords.

However if you search for the term ͞streptomycin͟, Google recognizes that you are searching for information on medicine, and provides you with relevant additional filters to help you refine your results. This feature is part of the Google Co-op service.

Similarly, depending on the search terms, you may see relevant supplemental results based on additional information available, your personalized search settings, or subscription to other Google services. For example, searching for a book author may show up additional results from Google Books Search Google also stores copies of many Web pages in a temporary cache, which becomes useful when the main site is no longer available or has gone temporarily offline.

Page 89 of 109

These will appear beneath the main results as links. In addition to the cache, if possible, the result will also show a link to pages that are similar to the result. And if you are using Firefox and the Google Notebook extension, you will also see a link called ͞Note this͟. Clicking that link will create an entry in Google Notebook with a link to the site in the result.

Google Power Search The real power of searching with Google comes when you start using the advanced search operators. There are two ways you can use Google advanced search options. One is through the Google

Advanced Search page (click on the Advanced Search link next to the Google search box, go directly to www.google.com/ advanced_search, or by using the operators themselves. The decision to use to the advanced search page or the operators directly will depend on the complexity of your search. If your have a complex search query it is generally easier to use the Advanced Search page. However if you want to filter your searches on only one or two parameters, using the search operators directly may be easier.

Most of the options in this page are self-explanatory. A couple needs some clarification. One is the Usage Rights filter. This enables you to restrict your searches for content that have specific rights associated with them. For example, if you are looking for content that you can use, share and modify commercially, this filter will enable you to find sites that implicitly allow you to do so. The second is the SafeSearch filter. This will filter out any results with adult content. However, it is better to specify this setting through the Preferences page, as Web searches tend not to be filtered for adult content even with SafeSearch filtering turned on. To learn how to configure your Google search preferences, . Many of the options on the advanced search page are available as operators that can be used independently and are applicable to other search services like image search and product search (Froogle) too. These and other advanced search operators are explained here:

Advanced Topic Search The advanced search page also links you to various specialized topic specific searches. These can be very useful when you want to search for content within a single area of interest. The searches are optimized for the specific topic area and search queries on these pages will return results that are drawn exclusively from the sites that are considered part of this topic.

Special Operators Other than search-related operators, Google also provides you with a quick and easy way to find definitions and meanings of words, and do basic mathematical calculations and conversions, using the search box.

Page 90 of 109

This table shows you how to use power search. (Contains search tools for Google search and blog search)

Operator Meaning Example ~ Synonym and glossary search ~job ~vacancy "project manager" site: Search only within the site. tsunami site:timesofindia.com number..number Search within a range of numbers Mahatma Gandhi 1900..1950 filetype:ORext: Search for specified file types only Website security filetype:odt link: Searches for pages that point to the link: thinkdigit.com specified URL Books Search the full text of books books Atticus finch cache: Show the cached version of a Web Cache:thinkdigit.com site. info:orid: Show information related to a Website nfo:thinkdigit.com or page related: Show sites that are similar or related related:thinkdigit.com to the specified URL allinanchor: Show pages with text that appear in allinanchor:boot devices the link or anchor text inanchor: Show pages for the given search terms inanchor:dual-boot and the anchor text allintext: Show pages only with the specified allintext:camping equipment hire keywords himalayas Intext Show pages where the given search narayanamurthy intext:retirement term includes the specified keywords. allintitle: Show pages where all search keywords allintitle:free memory diagnostic appears in the title intitle: Show pages with both the search linux intitle:memory terms for pages and title text allinurl: Show pages where the URL contain all allinurl:linux installation the words inurl: Show Web pages where the search Red hat inurl:linux inurl:installation term and the URL text are both present define :ordefine Shows definitions of a word define: onomatopoeia + - * / Arithmetic operators 10+12*5/7-1 % of percentage of 45% of 250 ^ or ** To the power of 2^8 Old units in new Conversion from one unit to another 300 dollars in Indian rupees units stock: Show stock information for the given stock:infy ticker symbol movie: Show reviews and show times for movie: the last king of Scotland

Page 91 of 109

given movie` weather Weather information weather new York inblogtitle: Search in the title of the blog inblogtitle͟Ricky martin" inpostauthor: Search blogs where the author's name Linux inpostsauthor: Linus Torvalds is as given blogurl: Search blogs at this URL Beatles blogurl: wordpress.com inauthor: Show books with the specified author the last juror inauthor:Grisham and containing the search term inpublisher: Show books with the specified JSP 2.0 inpublisher: Mc grawhill publisher isbn: Show book with the ISBN number isbn:0802131255 specified date: Show books published within the date:1950-2000 given date range

Google image search If you want to search for images, a quick and efficient way is to use Google Image search. Click on the Images link above the search box on the google.com (or google.co.in) homepage to take you to the image search home page. Alternatively, type in your search term in the search box and click on the Images link from the homepage.

Searches are similar to Web search, where you specify the search keywords for the images you want to find. Image search will display all results where the search term is found in the name of the image file. For example, typing in ͞moto razr͟ (without the quotes) will display images of Motorola͛s RAZR cell phone.

Each search result will have a thumbnail of the image, the name of the image file, its size in pixels and kilobytes, and the Web address where the image was found. In some cases, where more than one image can be found on the same site, an addition al link that says ͞More results from (Website name)͟ will be displayed below the search result.

Page 92 of 109

Game on Google: image labeler is a feature, in the form of a game, of Google Image Search that allows the user to label random images to help improve the quality of Google's image search results.

History

On August 31, 2006 Google launched this service, as a beta. Luis von Ahn developed the ESP Game. a game in which two people are simultaneously given an image, with no way to communicate, other than knowing the matching label for each picture or the pass signal. The ESP Game has been licensed by Google in the form of the Google Image Labeler.

Players have noticed various subtle changes in the game over time. In the earliest months, through about November, 2006, you could see your partner's guesses during play by mousing over the image. When the "congenita abuse" started (see below) you could see if your partner was using those terms, while the game was underway. The game was changed so that only at the end of the game could you click "see partner's guesses" and learn what he or she had typed. "Congenita abuse" was finally stopped by changes in the structure of the game in Feb. 2007 (see below). During the first few months of 2007 regular players grew to recognize a group of images that signified a "robot" partner, always with the same labels in the same order. This appears to have changed as of about March 13, 2007. Suddenly most of the images seen are brand new, and the older images come with extensive off-limits lists.

As of May 4, 2007 there have been fundamental and substantial changes made to the game. Instead of 90 seconds, players now have 2 minutes. Instead of 100 points per image, the score is varied to reward higher specificity. "Man" might get 50 points whereas "Bill Gates" might get 140 points. On August 7, 2007 another change was made. Instead of simply showing the point values of each match as the match occurs, the value of each match is shown next to the matching word at the end of the game. This makes it much easier to see the exact value of specific versus general labeling. A further change was observed on October 15, 2007. The new version was put into place and then seems to have been withdrawn. In the new version you see

Page 93 of 109 only the image you are labeling, whereas in the old version the images are collected in the lower part of the screen as you play. Other changes are subtle, for example the score is in green letters in the new version and red in the old. The most significant change is that the clock freezes during the image change, and that time used to be essentially subtracted from the two minutes of play. The changes appear to have gone into full effect on October 18, 2007.

Rules The user will be randomly paired with a partner who is online and using the feature. Users can be registered players who accumulate a total score over all games played, or guests who just play for one game at a time. Note that players come from around the world, some practicing their English, and both American and British English will be encountered (soccer vs. football). When an uneven number of players are online, a player will play against a prerecorded set of words.

The current rules follow. For changes in the rules, see the history section. Over a 2 minute period, the user and his/her partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When the user's label matches the partner's label, both will earn points and move on to the next image until time runs out. It is possible to pass on an image but both users must agree to do this. The score is variable from 50 to 150 depending on the specificity of the answer. The 150 score is rare but 140 points will be awarded for a name or specific word, even if the word is spelled out in the image. Terms with low specificity like "trees" or "man" earn only 50 points. There has never been any screening for correctness, so that if both players type "Jupiter" for an image of Saturn, they would presumably both get 140 points.

Labels that have been agreed on by previous users may show on an "off limits" list and cannot be used in that round. Some players think that the game staggers appearance of the images, and that sometimes it takes the first words typed by one player to form an "off limits" list for the other player. In other words, the off limits words may be unilateral, asymmetrical. This would explain the rather frequent circumstance when it seems a partner can't think of words like "car," "bird," or "girl." Very rarely, at the end of the match it becomes obvious that one image was different for the two players. Perhaps this is simply an error, or perhaps it is a test to see how quickly people will pass when their descriptions do not match, but it may also be a mechanism implemented to view cheaters, if the words for the different images are similar. At times, one user's computer will fail to load a new image, or continue to display the previous image shown. Times likes these also call for a mutual "pass" on the part of both players.

End of game

Page 94 of 109

After the 120 second time expires, the game is over. The user can see the user name of the partner for the first time, their score for the game (with which both are credited) and their individual cumulative score to date. These are compared to the daily high scores for teams and the all-time individual high scores. Google is betting on users' competitiveness to rack up high scores to swell the number of images ranked.

The game's end screen also shows all the images presented during the game along with the list of labels guessed by the other player. The images themselves then link to the websites where those images were found and can be explored for more information and to satisfy curiosity.

Benefits to Google

The game is not designed simply for fun. Though the feature is enjoyable for the users, it is also a clever way for Google to ensure that its keywords are matched to correct images. Each matched word will help Google to build an accurate database used when using the Google Image Search.

Without human tagging of images, search has in the past relied on the context of the image. For example, a photo that is captioned "Portrait of Bill Gates" might have "Bill Gates" associated as a possible search term. The Google Image Labeler relies on humans that tag the meaning or content of the image, rather than its context looking on at where the image was used. By storing more information about the image, Google stores more possible avenues of discovering the image in response to a user's search.

Issues and Problems

Additional Rules Some users complain that the rules are difficult to decipher. Nowhere is it stated, for example, that a player should press Return after typing a label. Beginners often make the mistake of typing several terms into the first box, not realizing that those words are then all considered, together, as a phrase. The "pass" option is also not explained; although it means that the player does not want to rate a word, some players have thought that this button is to be pressed after making a guess. Either of these mistakes can easily result in a zero score. While these rules are not explained on the playing screen, some are in fact explained on the Help Page Some images may fail to load, or will load very slowly, using time off the clock

Page 95 of 109

Experienced users type the letter "x" to avoid simply passing (and scoring zero) when this happens. Note that "x" (nor any other word) will not work for two successive images so other terms ("blank" or "none") could also be utilized, since sometimes many images do not load. Only six labels appear on the screen during a round, if more are added some scroll off the top. Observation shows that all of these labels count, and with a fast partner you can see nine or ten words for one image. Also, after hitting "Pass" you will no longer see the count of your partner's labels. If you continue to type, you can get a match on words your partner had already typed when you passed. If your partner types a matching word after you pass, it will not count. Scores are typically low when several of the images presented have a number of "off limits" tags. In some cases, the "off limits" tags are quite extensive or exhaustive, making it difficult for both partners to create a novel tag that matches. This tends to use time and reduce the total score.

Google for researchers: Google patent search is a search engine from Google that indexes patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which are taken from the original USPTO database (which is in the public domain). All 7 million patents have been put in the database. Optical character recognition (OCR) has been performed on the pages to make them searchable. This searchability includes all US patents.

The service was launched on December 14, 2006. Google says it uses "the same technology as that underlying ͞Google Books". allowing scrolling through pages, and zooming in on areas. The images are saveable as PNG files but can be converted with a graphics program to TIFF files which can be OCRed.

Review and criticisms

The indexing is not perfect. Reportedly, as of 14 December, not all IBM patents were locatable, as searching for IBM patents retrieved only 1,197 results on Google Patents, but that IBM received nearly 3,000 patents in 2005 alone.

Unlike Google Patents, Espacenet includes US patent applications as well as granted patents. In terms of response time however, the performance of Google Patents is considered to be very good.

Page 96 of 109

Code repository: Google Code search Google Code Search is a free beta product from Google which debuted in Google Labs on October 5, 2006 allowing web users to search for open-source code on the Internet.

Features include the ability to search using operators. These are lang:, package:, license: and file:.

The code available for searching is in various formats including tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar, and .zip, CVS and Subversion repositories as well as snippets from HTML pages such as Wikipedia itself.

The service is designed to be intuitive in manner and conduct. The user can use regular expressions (search for patterns of words rather than keywords) to search for more precise results. Searches can be restricted by language, license, or filename, and the user can trace the link right back to its originating package and Web page. Google has also released the API for Code Search, which utilises Google͛s GDATA API format (http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/index.html).

One important thing to note is that Google Code Search is different from Google Search (the standard search engine), and therefore, the results of Code Search results are not integrated into the main Google index.

How To Search

The Code Search interface is similar to the standard Google search page. However, the first thing anyone would notice is the set of syntax instructions and examples given right under the search function.

1. RegexpͶa regular expression is meant to search for a pattern of words rather than a set of keywords. For example, ͞hello, \world͟. When this is used, the search engine opens up the result page that displays code corresponding to that requirement. 2. Exact stringͶto search for an exact string, enclose the search string within double quotes. For example, ͞hello world͟ 3. file:regexpͶthis searches only in files or directories matching the regular expression. 4. package:regexpͶthis searches for packages containing the specified expression. This presents a list of archives in the ZIP or TAR formats, for example. 5. lang:regexpͶthis crawls through the repositories for code written in the specified language. For example, you could use the search string ͞lang:c++ hello world͟. 6. license:regexpͶthis searches for code available under a particular license. To cite an example, the search string ͞license:bsd hello world͟ gets you all code licensed under the BSD license,containing the words ͞hello͟ and/or ͞world͟.

Page 97 of 109

Advanced Code Search

The Advanced Code Search page is for more specific search queries. For instance, it provides a list of the programming languages that correspond to your search requirement. Your results will turn up even if the language you͛re looking for is not listed just select ͞any language.͟

The Benefits of Code Search

Code Search allows coders to refer to a number of sources, compare their own code or to get ideas on how to tackle a particular issue. According to programmers, this removes roadblocks that existed earlier, since it provides different ways of approaching a particular programming problem. Code Search could also allow code auditors to warn people much sooner of vulnerabilities in a program. A central argument for open source software has been that security is enhanced by more people looking at the available code. Another probable and important use for Google Code Search is that it allows developers to do searches for their own code and see where it is being used. A positive implication is that it may also help to combat plagiarism and use violations.

Google has a mechanism to tackle illegal postings and plagiarism. The moment it is notified of fraud, it initiates an inquiry, and if proven true, the entry is removed from the index.

Googleǯs online library: Book Search Google Book Search is a tool from Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans, converts to text using optical character recognition, and stores in its digital database. The service was formerly known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. When relevant to a user's keyword search, up to three results from the Google Book Search index are displayed above search results in the Google Web Search service (google.com). A user may also search just for books at the dedicated Google Book Search service. Clicking a result from Google Book Search opens an interface in which the user may view pages from the book as well as content-related advertisements and links to the publisher's website and booksellers. Through a variety of access limitations and security measures, some based on user-tracking; Google limits the number of viewable pages and attempts to prevent page printing and text copying of material under copyright.

The Google Book Search service remains in a beta stage but the underlying database continues to grow. Google Book Search allows public-domain works and other out-of-copyright material to be downloaded in PDF format. For users outside the United States, though, Google must be sure that the work in question is indeed out of copyright under local laws. According to a member of the Google Book Search Support Team, "Since whether a book is in the public

Page 98 of 109 domain can often be a tricky legal question, we err on the side of caution and display at most a few snippets until we have determined that the book has entered the public domain.͟

Google for students: Google scholar Google Scholar is a freely-accessible Web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online journals of the world's largest scientific publishers. It is similar in function to the freely available Scirus from Elsevier, CiteSeer, and getCITED. It is also similar to the subscription-based tools, Elsevier's Scopus and Thomson ISI's Web of Science. Google Scholar nonetheless claims to cover more websites, journal sources and languages.

Its advertising slogan Ͷ "Stand on the shoulders of giants" Ͷ is a nod to the scholars who have contributed to their fields over the centuries, providing the foundation for new intellectual achievements.

Features

Google Scholar allows users to search for digital or physical copies of articles, whether they be online or in libraries.

Using its "group of" feature, it shows the various available links to the journal article. In the 2005 version, this feature provided a link both to subscription-access versions of the article and to free full text versions of articles; for most of 2006, it provided links to only the official versions. As of December 2006, it provides access to both published versions and on major open access repositories, but does still not cover individual university pages; access to such self- archived non-subscription versions is now provided by a link to Google, where one can find such open access articles.

Through its "cited by" feature, Google Scholar provides access to abstracts of articles that have cited the article being viewed. It is this feature in particular that provides the citation indexing previously only found in Scopus and Web of Knowledge. Through its "Related articles" feature, Google Scholar presents a list of closely related articles, ranked primarily by how similar these articles are to the original result, but also taking into account the relevance of each paper.

Page 99 of 109

Google the real technology behind

PageRank

Mathematical PageRanks (out of 100) for a simple network (PageRanks reported by Google are rescaled logarithmically). Page C has a higher PageRank than Page E, even though it has fewer links to it: the link it has is much higher valued. A web surfer who

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the , with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).

The name "PageRank" is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. patent 6,285,999 ). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The

Page 100 of 109

university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; the shares were sold in 2005 for $336 million.

How PageRank works?

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

In other words, a PageRank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it ("incoming links"). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page.

Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes a site͛s importance in the eyes of Google. The PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale like the Richter Scale. The PageRank of a particular page is roughly based upon the quantity of inbound links as well as the PageRank of the pages providing the links. It is known that other factors, e.g. relevance of search words on the page and actual visits to the page reported by the Google toolbar also influence the PageRank. In order to prevent manipulation, spoofing and Spamdexing, Google provides no specific details about how other factors influence PageRank

Numerous academic papers concerning PageRank have been published since Page and Brin's original paper. In practice, the PageRank concept has proven to be vulnerable to manipulation, and extensive research has been devoted to identifying falsely inflated PageRank and ways to ignore links from documents with falsely inflated PageRank.

Page 101 of 109

Other link-based ranking algorithms for Web pages include the HITS algorithm invented by Jon Kleinberg (used by Teoma and now Ask.com), the IBM CLEVER project, and the TrustRank algorithm.

Algorithm

Simplified algorithm

How PageRank Works

Assume a small universe of four web pages: A, B, C and D. The initial approximation of PageRank would be evenly divided between these four documents. Hence, each document would begin with an estimated PageRank of 0.25.

In the original form of PageRank initial values were simply 1. This meant that the sum of all pages was the total number of pages on the web. Later versions of PageRank (see the below formulas) would assume a probability distribution between 0 and 1. Here we're going to simply use a probability distribution hence the initial value of 0.25.

Page 102 of 109

If pages B, C, and D each only link toA, they would each confer 0.25 PageRank to A. All PageRank PR( )in this simplistic system would thus gather to A because all links would be pointing to A.

This is 0.75.

Again, suppose page B also has a link to page C, and page D has links to all three pages. The value of the link-votes is divided among all the outbound links on a page. Thus, page B gives a vote worth 0.125 to page A and a vote worth 0.125 to page C. Only one third of D's PageRank is counted for A's PageRank (approximately 0.083).

In other words, the PageRank conferred by an outbound link L( ) is equal to the document's own PageRank score divided by the normalized number of outbound links (it is assumed that links to specific URLs only count once per document).

In the general case, the PageRank value for any page u can be expressed as:

,

i.e. the PageRank value for a page u is dependent on the PageRank values for each page v out of the set Bu (this set contains all pages linking to page u), divided by the number L(v) of links from page v.

Page 103 of 109

Google File System Google File System (GFS) is a proprietary distributed file system developed by Google Inc. for its own use. It is designed to provide efficient, reliable access to data using large clusters of commodity hardware.

Design

GFS is optimized for Google's core data storage and usage needs (primarily the search engine), which can generate enormous amounts of data that needs to be retained;[2] Google File System grew out of an earlier Google effort, "BigFiles", developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the early days of Google, while it was still located in Stanford. Files are divided into chunks of 64 megabytes, which are only extremely rarely overwritten, or shrunk; files are usually appended to or read. It is also designed and optimized to run on Google's computing clusters, the nodes of which consist of cheap, "commodity" computers, which means precautions must be taken against the high failure rate of individual nodes and the subsequent data loss. Other design decisions select for high data throughputs, even when it comes at the cost of latency.

The nodes are divided into two types: one Master node and a large number of Chunkservers. Chunkservers store the data files, with each individual file broken up into fixed size chunks (hence the name) of about 64 megabytes. similar to clusters or sectors in regular file systems. Each chunk is assigned a unique 64-bit label, and logical mappings of files to constituent chunks are maintained. Each chunk is replicated several times throughout the network, with the minimum being three, but even more for files that have high demand or need more redundancy.

The Master server doesn't usually store the actual chunks, but rather all the metadata associated with the chunks, such as the tables mapping the 64-bit labels to chunk locations and the files they make up, the locations of the copies of the chunks, what processes are reading or writing to a particular chunk, or taking a "snapshot" of the chunk pursuant to replicating it (usually at the instigation of the Master server, when, due to node failures, the number of

Page 104 of 109

copies of a chunk has fallen beneath the set number). All this metadata is kept current by the Master server periodically receiving updates from each chunk server ("Heart-beat messages").

Permissions for modifications are handled by a system of time-limited, expiring "leases", where the Master server grants permission to a process for a finite period of time during which no other process will be granted permission by the Master server to modify the chunk. The modified chunkserver, which is always the primary chunk holder, then propagates the changes to the chunkservers with the backup copies. The changes are not saved until all chunkservers acknowledge, thus guaranteeing the completion and atomicity of the operation.

Programs access the chunks by first querying the Master server for the locations of the desired chunks; if the chunks are not being operated on (if there are no outstanding leases), the Master replies with the locations, and the program then contacts and receives the data from the chunkserver directly (similar to and its supernodes).

As opposed to many filesystems, GFS is not implemented in the kernel of an operating system, but is instead provided as a user space library.

Page 105 of 109

From where Google earns?

AdSense AdSense is an advertisement application run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and more recently, video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta tested a cost-per- action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering (also owned by Google).

Types

AdSense for Feeds In May 2005, Google announced a limited-participation beta version of AdSense for Feeds, a version of AdSense that runs on RSS and feeds that have more than 100 active subscribers. According to the Official Google Blog, "advertisers have their ads placed in the most appropriate feed articles; publishers are paid for their original content; readers see relevant advertisingͶand in the long run, more quality feeds to choose from."

AdSense for search A companion to the regular AdSense program, AdSense for search, allows website owners to place Google search boxes on their websites. When a user searches the Internet or the website with the search box, Google shares any advertising revenue it makes from those searches with the website owner. However the publisher is paid only if the advertisements on the page are clicked: AdSense does not pay publishers for mere searches.

How AdSense works The webmaster inserts the AdSense JavaScript code into a webpage. Each time this page is visited, the JavaScript code creates an IFrame with a src attribute set to the page's URL. For contextual advertisements, Google's servers use a cache of the page to determine a set of high-value keywords. If keywords have been cached already, advertisements are served for those keywords based on the AdWords bidding system. (More details are described in the AdSense patent.)

Page 106 of 109

For site-targeted advertisements, the advertiser chooses the page(s) on which to display advertisements, and pays based on cost per mille (CPM), or the price advertisers choose to pay for every thousand advertisements displayed. For referrals, Google adds money to the advertiser's account when visitors either download the referred software or subscribe to the referred service. The referral program was retired in August 2008. For referrals, Google adds money to the advertiser's account when visitors either download the referred software or subscribe to the referred service. The referral program was retired in August 2008. Because the JavaScript is sent to the Web browser when the page is requested, it is possible for other website owners to copy the JavaScript code into their own webpages. To protect against this type of fraud, AdSense customers can specify the pages on which advertisements should be shown. AdSense then ignores clicks from pages other than those specified.

AdWords AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue ($16.4 billion in 2007). AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.

Technology behind AdWords The AdWords system was initially implemented on top of the MySQL database engine. After the system had been launched, management decided to use a commercial database (Oracle) instead. As is typical of applications simultaneously written and tuned for one database, and ported to another, the system became much slower, so eventually it was returned to MySQL.

Conclusion Mails, various types of searches, maps, connectivity with friends with one of the sleek and beautiful technologies and a good thing is that everything is free-to use and to develop on your likes. What else does anyone want? This is the Google world where they say ͞don͛t be evil͟. And set example how not to be evil.

Bibliography M www.google.com/aboutus M Ankithtyagrajan-gdeveloper.blogspot.com M www.thinkdigit.com

Page 107 of 109

M www.pcworld.com/news/google M Fast track- the DIGIT supplement Dec-2006 and Jan-2007

Page 108 of 109