Google Buys Video Conferencing Software

Google has bought the conferencing software developed by Marratech, giving it a powerful desktop-based collaboration tool with video, text, VoIP and whiteboard features. Google’s blog post indicates they will be using the software internally, for employee communications, but it is certainly reasonable that Google may eventually fold it into a more powerful version of Google Talk, or use technology in Gmail or the Google Apps suite.

Wouldn’t it be funny if Google just bought a copy of some software at Staples, and issued a blog post that read like they had bought the company? I mean, the Marratech press release/blog post almost read like they did exactly that. I can picture it now…
Collaborating with Microsoft
Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 8:10:00 PM
Posted by Douglas Merrill, VP Engineering

As a company, we thrive on fun interactions and spontaneous video gaming. So we’re excited about acquiring Microsoft’s video gaming console, the Xbox 360, which will enable from-the-couch gaming for Googlers in videogaming meetings wherever there’s a TV.

We look forward to learning from the extraordinary ingenuity of Microsoft’s engineers as they focus on video gaming research and development in Seattle, where they will continue to be located.

Update: To clarify some confusion, we bought an Xbox at Best Buy, not the company itself.

Google Launching New Recommendations Features For Toolbar, Homepage

Google is launching right now two new Search History-based features which look really cool. I had the opportunity to talk to Sepandar Kamvar, Google’s personalization lead, about the new stuff on Monday, and here’s what I learned.

The first new feature is for the personalized homepage. Create a new “magic tab” called Recommendations (create new tab, name it exactly that, and leave checked the “I’m Feeling Lucky” box), and you’ll get a page filled with Gadgets that offer various categories of recommendations, based on other people who searched for the same things you did. Take a look:
The Gadgets on the page are:

* Searches - recommends Google News and Google Web searches, based on your search history, and showing some pages from those searches it things you might be interested in.
* Groups - recommends Google Groups. This may not be ready by the time the feature is announced, I am told.
* Gadgets - recommends Google Personalized Homepage Gadgets you might want to install.
* Videos - recommends Google Video and YouTube videos you might want to watch. You can watch them right in the Gadget.
* Pages - recommends web pages you might be interested in based on your Search History.
* News - recommends news stories you might be interested in based on your Search History.

This is a well-designed homepage tab that you can grab very easilly, thanks to the magic tab feature. You can load it up, decide which tabs you like most, and get rid of any that aren’t for you. If you want more, the Pages and News Gadgets can replace the Searches Gadget and give similar info, and if you want less, get rid of those two and just use the Searches Gadget.

The other new feature is a really cool new Custom Button for the Google Toolbar. The button, based on your Search History and requiring you to be logged in, gives you every day fifty websites it has picked that it thinks you might like. Fifty new sites, every day, and you just click the button, get a new one, then click it again, and again, and again. Such a great way to browse when bored or curious.

They call it “search without actually searching”, presenting you information Google believes you to be interested in without you issuing a query. To use it, you’ll need the Google Toolbar installed, and it needs to be a recent edition that supports the wonderful Custom Buttoms feature. Currently, both the Internet Explorer and Firefox toolbars (and the Enterprise Toolbar for IE) support Custom Buttons, so you just need a recent version and you can use it on Windows, the Mac, or Linux.

The Customer Buttons feature works based on XML files, so I asked if this feature could possibly be used as a browser bookmarklet, URL, or just as a custom web page feature. As I was told, the “functionality of the button does not work without the toolbar”, but hopefully someone will be able to look into the XML and figure out what is possible. I use Opera, which has no Google Toolbar, but I’d love to be able to use this feature, maybe find some really amazing new websites. A real killer ability would be if the 50 pages list could be output as an RSS feed.

Anyway, that’s the whole story. I love what Google’s personalization guys are doing, creating some really useful features and making opting into Search History incredibly useful. Especially with my favorite Findory on its last legs, I’m really hoping Google is stepping into the void with these great personalization features. They’d better not let up, because the more, the better for everybody

Video Demo Of Google PowerPoint Tool

Tonic Systems has a demo of their TonicPoint presentations software, the software Google has just purchased to become its presentations software. Enjoy! Found via a post on Ajaxian from December. If you can extract and download the movie, and send it to me, please do. I’m concerned Google overlooked this and left it online, and it will be yanked soon. Also, turns out Google unveiled this at the Web 2.0 Expo. Elinor Mills has more. A selection: .Schmidt gave a short presentation made using the new feature, which he said would be launched soon. He offered no specific timeframe. “It’s a way of doing presentations,” he said in a keynote address. “Collaboration is a killer app for how communities work.” Asked by author and blogger John Battelle if Google’s enhanced Docs & Spreadsheets would compete with Microsoft Office, Schmidt said, “We don’t think so. It doesn’t have all the functionality, nor is it intended to have the functionality of products like Microsoft Office.” “Come on! It’s a competitor to Microsoft Office,” Battelle said, prompting a round of applause from a concurring audience. “This provides (people) with a free alternative, which has got to be considered a threat” to Microsoft. Go John! Someone’s sick of Google’s PR doublespeak bullshit. To pretend you aren’t a competitor is just stupid.