Google Removes Tips

Google has apparently removed the tips they where showing below the search box. For example: if a search had the word “blog” in it users would see a tip telling people that Blogger was a good place to start a blog. They still advertise their products in the blue Sponsored Link section above search results.

This saves me from creating a Greasemonkey script to remove the tips. I tried briefly but ran into issues when I needed to find which table contained the tip so I could hide it. The tips were bad because they weren’t tied to the actual search context, but rather individual words found within the search keywords. This meant you saw the tips whether people were looking for the Google product or not. Also, in many instances the Google product wasn’t the leader of its category. This gave Google unearned traffic.

Source: Google Blogoscoped (Via Ionut)

Where Have All the Google Desktop Gadget Christmas Trees Gone?

The Google Desktop blog brings word of three christmas-themed Google Desktop Gadgets for download. Unfortunately they no longer seem to be accessible. Has Google removed the Holiday section? It looks like it has.

They only had Christmas tree gadgets that were user-made. Sure it would have been nice to see a Hanukkah gadget, but it’s a lot less fun to light a candle than it is to decorate a Christmas tree.

(Word of the gadgets via Ionut Alex. Chitu)

Bloglines Searching for Director

I ran across a job posting for the Director of Bloglines while I was looking for a job for after I graduate in May. The position was posted on November 21st and I wonder if it’s still open. I also wonder what this will mean for the future of my beloved feed reader.

From the posting:

As the GM of Bloglines you will be responsible for overall management of Bloglines including driving and overseeing the product, partner, marketing, customer acquisition and PR strategy and operations of the business. You will be the primary public spokesperson for Bloglines and will be expected to be a leading voice in the industry by conveying enthusiasm and passion for both Bloglines and the blogging/online syndicated content industry.

Some interesting requirements that fit with the product and culture:

• “Avid Blog reader required, active blogger preferred”
• “Passionate and enthusiastic with contagious energy and motivation, with a drive for success.”

Source: Bloglines Director job posting

Google Finance Data Now Goes Back to 1970

Google Finance data only went back to 2001 until recently. You can now find historical data going back to 1970. I think they also recently added dividends, unless they have been there a while and I missed it. Combine that with after hours quotes and being able to import portfolios and you have a winning combination.

Original heads up: Google Operating System

Google Buys Youtube

It appears that Google has acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. I find that this follows along with their new mission for engineers to stop launching so many new services and instead make existing ones work together better. It is a sign that they are leaning away from a purely engineer driven approach, and leaning toward acquiring services that have done a better job than they have been able to do at reinventing the wheel.

YouTube will “remain an independent brand, in order to preserve its community” (Nathan). Google Video will still remain, but YouTube will get Google’s infrastructure and expertise. They’ll have smarter people helping them improve algorithms and features. Nathan has some great coverage of the conference call, and a summary of coverage around the web.

Along with the recent Google deals with Warner and Sony BMG, this means that Google and YouTube will have the means to monetize and legitimize their content.

Sources: spread throughout this post

Google Launches Pinging Service

Google Blog Search has just launched a pinging service that will hopefully keep their search freshly updated. They plan to continue monitoring other pinging services, and contributing the notifications they receive to the community through an XML feed.

You need to use the Google Blog Search Pinging Service API. They have an XML-RPC client and a REST client. The XML-RPC client should work with most blog software.

Google Groups Beta Crosses The Line

This is less objective and more of an observation, but check it out for yourself and see if you agree with me.

The new Google Groups beta has crossed the line. They are taking an informative resource and ruining it with a cartoon-ish design that makes it harder to find what you are looking for and adds useless features. If someone wants a group to have pages and a welcome message they should just create their own website. This is not Yahoo Groups or The Facebook. They are turning it from a usenet archive that is a great place to find valuable information, into another social networking website.

Google, please do not mess this up. Or at least always give us the option of the current Google Groups layout. Google Groups (formerly Deja News) has always been a great place to find solutions to problems. Keep it that way.

Introducing Google Related News Voting

A while back I created google.crispynews.com which is run by CrispyNews. CrispyNews is “a network of community news sites where visitors choose the news stories.” It is reminiscent of digg.com, letting visitors vote for stories.

I have begun posting stories to google.crispynews.com and invite everyone to vote and submit new stories. I’m hoping to make it an active place to find Google news from all around the web. At least it will be an interesting test to see if the voting can provide a better experience when reading up on Google.

Writely Moving to a Google Account Login

Writely just sent me an email saying that in a few days they will be updating my account to use my Google Account registration settings. From one of their blog postings a month ago it seems that everyone will soon need a Google Account, and this could be a boon for Google usage. Does anyone have any idea how many people use Writely? And how many of those people don’t use Gmail? It would be interesting to find out.

Google Calendar Gadget Updated

The official Google Calendar gadget has been updated for Google Desktop. You can now view events from multiple calendars, which is something that has been bugging me. They also color-coded scheduled events using the colors you set in Google Calendar. And it fixes a bug.

I’m glad to see them update this gadget so that it is now actually useful. Seeing events from your main calendar was never useful when it ignored many events until they were close to occurring.

Source: Inside Google Desktop