Internet search giant Google Inc is known for hosting the most extravagant holiday parties in Silicon Valley, often drawing crowds of over 10,000 and prompting some employees to post ads for party dates on classifieds Website Craigslist.
Online virtual worlds were dealt a heavy helping of reality this week. First off, Google announced that its Lively experiment will shut down at the end of the year. The Web-based portal to all things virtual only started in July, making this one of Google?s shorter experiments.
The search giant’s Google Gadgets platform is adopting the open authentication standard for controlling privacy. Move follows June move to use OAuth for the Google Data API.
Google Inc said it would shut down its three-dimensional virtual experience website by year end to focus more on its core search, advertisements and applications business.
The question on the table is ?Google violates its ?don?t be evil? motto.? You can vote ?yes? or ?no? yourself in the comments below. But first read some of the arguments put forward in an Oxford-style debate on the question held this week in Manhattan by Intelligence Squared US , a project of the Rozenkranz Foundation that runs a series of such discussions.
T-Mobile USA, which is currently rolling out its 3G wireless network across the country, is turning to Yahoo to power its search and mobile Web portal in an effort to boost data usage.
Yahoo Inc announced an expansion of its mobile Web portals to T-mobile, so its smart phone users who get data will have Yahoo search by default.
Microsoft says it is still interested in some sort of Web search deal with Yahoo.
Microsoft Corp. is no longer interested in buying all of Yahoo Inc., CEO Steve Ballmer said Wednesday, though he told shareholders that the company would still be “very open” to a collaboration on Internet search. His comments sent Yahoo shares diving more than 20 percent.
What happens when a business throws out its scheduling and collaboration tools and replaces them with Google’s low-cost, online business software? To find out, we at Blumsday migrated our entire shop of roughly a dozen employees and contractors to test out Google Apps.
