Tag: Google

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News

Google Social Search now shows Google+ posts

Google search engine is dropping a new bomb over Bing’s social search project. Bing and Facebook came together almost a year ago to leverage social search. This is a way of showing links or updates made my your socially connected network on search engines.

This makes sense to an extent when you are searching for movie reviews or the news.

Google Plus lacked search, and it was conspicuous considering it was a Google product.

Google has now integrated Google Plus into social search. This makes sense, as I wrote in an earlier post about how Google uses Gmail contacts via Google Profiles to power social search results from various other social networks.

What does this signal?

It means there are two things about to happen. Firstly, we might see Bing and Facebook getting a little nervous. Considering both Bing and Facebook might have different agendas even as they co-operate. Google+ and Google Search could never have differing agendas.

Secondly we can soon expect that Google+ will see a search facility (probably Google real-time results) to give users a neat interface to actually look up trending search results.

What are you views? Will social search help Google+ or it will have no impact on Facebook? Do drop in your comments.

Related: Search for public posts and profiles on Google+, Buzz and Reader

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News

[$12.5 Billion] Google Buys Motorola to Power Android!

Google has recently announced that it has acquired the mobile maker Motorola. This acquisition is valued at $12.5 billion. Google has bought Motorola with an eye towards powering Android. I guess they feel having a mobile manufacturer in their portfolio would make them less reliant on other manufacturers.

Here is a quote from Google’s blog post about the acquisition.

Motorola’s total commitment to Android in mobile devices is one of many reasons that there is a natural fit between our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers everywhere.

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What will this mean for competitors?

The problem with Android has been, that it has not managed to get manufacturers with really very successful smart-phones with the exception of Samsung. Also making the phone and the OS, does seem to have obvious profitability. iPhones actually make Apple a lot of money for this reason, that they are not reliant on other manufactures or OS. Owning the complete chain makes sense.

What are your views? Will this be a new chapter in the Android vs iPhone saga? Do drop in your comments.

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News

How Google uses YOUR Gmail for Social Search

Google’s social search allows you to look up which of your friends are sharing something online. Here if you search and look up social search on Google, it will show you the name of your friends who shared something.

Ever wondered how Google manages to know who your friends on other networks, even if they are not part of your Google contacts? The answer lies with Google profiles.

If you are signed into your Google account, look up this link and you will come across a complete list of your Gmail contacts and their social connections along with related shared content through these connections. Clicking on ‘Show paths’ allows you further information on social connections made through Google Profile.

Below is an screen-shot of my friend’s connections via Google Profile.

With Google+, more and more people will end up having Google profiles which are active. Most people end up sharing links to blogs, social networking accounts. As more people end up using Google+, our Gmail contact list will become a tremendous source of social information for Google.

Can we do anything about it? Not really, all this information is shared voluntarily and Google is only putting it together.

Do drop in your comments.

Link: Google Social Connections

Categories
Tips

[Tip] Find Your Twitter Followers on Google+

Finding people on Google+ is quite easy. With the recent mass invite URL feature, getting even strangers in your network has become easy. 🙂

If we want to get all the people we follow on Twitter and Google+ to be common, a great way to do that is use Twitter2Plus.

Just type in the twitter handle in the search bar, and get all your Twitter contacts who also have a profile on Google+. Now simply start adding them to a Google+ Circle.

What the website does, is match one twitter account to another with the corresponding Google+ profile in which the twitter URL might be included.

Considering Twitter and Google+ have the same structure of not needing to mutually follow each other, this tool could be very useful to follow your Twitter friends on Google+.

Try out Twitter2Plus and drop in your comments.

Link: Twitter2Plus

Related: Find people on Google+ Directory

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News

Google Promotes Chromebooks on its Most Visited Page!

Promoting a product is very easy for large companies with a lot of money. But this money has to be well spent and well-directed. Sometimes not spending money but simply adding a few links to the web-page most visited by people could also work. Chromebook, the laptop introduced by Google, is being promoted on the Google’s homepage. A page apparently visited over a billion times a day.

What is the impact on Chromeboook?

The impact is an immediate rise in search queries for Chromebook. It has been in the top 10 search trends on Google for the past few hours. Here is a snapshot of Chromebook being ranked 9, for hot searches in USA.

I guess, this could give a nice boost to Chromebooks.

This sort of promotion on Google is not new. If you have visited Google’s homepage on Internet Explorer, you are often shown a link to download Chrome.

What are your views on such strategies to market new products? Do you think it is better and more effective than making advertisements and showing them on TV, which does cost a small fortune? Do drop in your comments.

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News

Mass Invite Friends on Google+ by Sharing a Link

Google+ has stopped the clamouring for invitation by throwing the doors wide open with 150 invitations for every user. This will surely see a rise in number of users on Google+.

It also has introduced a way to invite people via sharing a link. This means I can mass invite my friends on Google+ by only sharing a link with them.

Google+ Invite via Link

  • Log into your Google+ account and look up the invitations link on the right hand bottom corner.
  • It will allow you to invite users via email or by sharing a link.

  • Copy and paste this link to your friends on a social networks or chat messengers.
  • Your friends can then sign up to Google+ and are also notified who has invited them (see image below).

Is this a sign that testing phase is over for Google+?

I believe that Google is now satisfied with their new social network and its ability to handle traffic. I also think they might have finished testing other features like having business accounts which could compete against Facebook Pages. There are many features soon to be expected on Google+ which will truly make it a great product.

What are your views? Does more invitations mean more features are going to be rolled out soon? Do drop in your comments.

Categories
Reviews

Search for Public Posts and Profiles on Google+, Google Reader and Buzz

Users cannot search for posts shared on Google+, based on queries because Google+ does not have a search feature. It is quite ironic considering it is a Google product. Just like other features still not available with Google+, we have a third-party developer who has come to the rescue.

Google Plus Search is a search engine for looking up content and profiles on Google+. Note this works only with public content.

I could also use it to search for Google+ profiles and most search queries for even posts do show the profile name of the person who shared the content.

All the posts shared public on Google Reader and Google Buzz are also available which makes it quite useful for bloggers like me to look up social interaction of my blog across Google’s social products.

Google Plus Search also has a Chrome extension and an add-on for Firefox. So until Google brings out a search feature on Google+, use Google Plus Search.

Thanks to Andrew Shen for the tip. Do drop in your comments.

Link: Google Plus Search
Related: 10 Great tools to light up Google+ addicts

Categories
News

Preview an Email Before Opening it on Gmail!

If you use a tablet, the Gmail interface is a lot different from the browser version. An advantage of the tablet like interface is that, we can preview an email before we open it.

When time is in short supply, it is helpful to get a quick preview of an email to check if the mail should be read or left unread.

Enable Preview Pane on Gmail

  • In Gmail Labs, look search for Preview Pane and enable the lab experiment for your Gmail account.

  • This will enable your Preview Pane on your Gmail layout. Now look up your Inbox and check the right-hand corner at the top, we get an option to toggle split-screen. Clicking on it once, will allow you to preview emails without opening them.

  • Finally you can preview your email. Under General Settings you can set the time for a email to be marked ‘Read’ to ‘Never‘ if you do not intend to use this layout as default. 😉

So what do you think about this new innovation from Gmail. There was a trick to use to get the tablet view on Gmail with your browser, but option with toggle makes it a simpler.

Source: Gmail Blog

Categories
Analysis

5 Reasons Google+ Party Continues Even as Traffic Drops!

Google+ might have received a lot of rave reviews and fantastic response in its early days. So many people joined up immediately, that it raced to 10 million users in 2 weeks. It’s user-interface and features like hangouts made me even wonder about the 5 top companies which Google+ might put out of business.

Latest numbers from Hitwise, suggest that visits to Google+ are dropping. They are dropping fast while overall growth is still continuing.

So does this mean the Google+ party is over? Not by a long shot and here are five reasons.

Why the party continues!

  1. It could be a temporary slump. Google Plus is only a few weeks old and there is no historical data to really compare or predict a lack of growth or downfall of Google Plus.
  2. Google Plus is new and it saw a huge early interest from people. This interest drops and usually visits plateau out. Once this happens, Google will have to keep putting out new features and options to see a steady growth.
  3. Google Plus had the ‘by invitation’ strategy to get people interested in look at the new service. Once Google Plus goes open for all, a lot more people will obviously join in and start using it.
  4. Also once it is open for sign-up for everyone we might see numbers go up.  Also new features like games and easy share buttons once introduced will automatically make it more interactive and shoot up traffic.
  5. Finally, this data does not take into account all the visits from mobile applications and recently Google+ has released apps for both Windows7 and iOS platforms. This might mean a lot more people are now using Google Plus via mobile phones and not a browser.

What are your views? Should Google+ be worried with this drop in visits? Do drop in your comments.

Categories
News

Gmail Hints That Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo Are Outdated!

The latest public relations push by Gmail is called ‘Email Intervention’. If you visit your Gmail login page, it will show up a new feature asking users to ‘Save their friends from outdated email’. 🙂

Google is looking to tap into peer pressure from it’s happy users, to get their friends using other email services that it is time to move over to Gmail.

Check out the video below, where the presenter suggests that Gmail users should get their friends who use ‘embarrassingly out of data address’ to move over to Gmail. The video also adds that these email services were around when people still used Floppy Disks, Portable Disc Player, VHS Cassettes. This is a reference to Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL which were around since the late 90’s.

Gmail’s Email Intervention Video

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Why is Gmail pushing so hard to get new users?

Gmail is a great way for Google to get new members using its various other services. It also might indirectly give a push to Google+.

It might be poking fun at Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo as old and outdated, but honestly as a regular Gmail user, I cannot imagine moving back to the older email services and still wonder why some friends still do not use Gmail.

What are your views on Gmail? Do you have friends who still have not discovered Gmail? Do drop in your comments.

Link: Email Intervention