Google, Open Source and the Cloud - Mars Attack

Little drops of water,

Little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean

And the pleasant land.

Julia F. Carney, Little Things

Firstly, it is well known that Google just simply cannot engineer a Social Network, as friendships are nurtured, not engineered, would be my prosaic take on their current failures with Google Wave as stated in article “Google pulls plug on Google Wave”, published August 4, 2010 2:35 PM PDT by Ina Fried and Josh Lowensohn, CNET News - Beyond Binary. Google Buzz launched in February of 2010, failed, due to Google’s misjudgment of linking everyone in Gmail.

This may have been an accelerant in Google Buzz’ initial success – and later demise as opined by CNET News Editor Stephen Shankland in the article “Buzz backfire: How Google pushed me to FaceBook”, published March 5, 2010 4:00 AM PST by Stephen Shankland, CNET News - Deep Tech.

Software bugs were not helping either, exposing programming deficiencies in Google’s check and balance system of thorough testing of products before release to the public as stated in the article “Google Buzz bug spotlights tepid usage”, published August 23, 2010 1:10 PM PDT by Tom Krazit, CNET News - Relevant Results.

Google’s blitzkrieg connection of everyone in your Gmail Address book was the correct procedures to jump start a Social Network, except they should have used their discretion and initially just linked a minimum of three (3) persons from out of your address book.

More specifically persons with whom you have a statistically frequent correspondence, as the linking of everyone in your Address Book would have shocked and overwhelmed many a person, despite its good intentions.

The class action suit was nasty and public and has been resolved as per the article as reported in the article “Google alerts users of Google Buzz Settlement”, published Tuesday November 2 2010 by PC Magazine, Yahoo! News.

Many would, however, speculate that Google’s brash move of interlinking everyone to jump start Google Buzz was later copied by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in April 2010 by removing privacy settings and hyper-linking everyone’s likes.

A problem Facebook addressed by simplifying how people controlled their Privacy settings as stated in the article “Facebook to simplify privacy controls amid unrest”, published Wednesday May 26^th 2010, Yahoo! News.

Facebook’s brand recovered as stated in the article “Study: Facebook's tarnished brand has bounced back”, published July 2, 2010 1:33 PM PDT by Caroline McCarthy, CNET News - The Social and Google Buzz will also recover as well.

Especially since its integration of thus far successful integration of Google Voice into Gmail as per the article “Google: 1 million Gmail calls during first day”, published August 26, 2010 12:38 PM PDT by Stephen Shankland, CNET News - Deep Tech as well as my blog article entitled “Google and Google Voice - The World is Not Enough”.  

So any good news for Google? Yes there is!

Breaking News: Google Voice has now been accepted by Apple as stated in the article “After tussle, Google Voice application comes to iPhone”, published Tuesday November 16 2010 by AFP, Yahoo! News and stated in the article “Apple relents and approves Google Voice app for iPhone”, published Wednesday November 17 2010 by NewsFactor, Yahoo! News.

Score one for Google!

So now that they have integrated Google Voice (now approved on the Apple iPhone!) into Google Mail or Gmail for short, and with tablets now prowling out and about at CES (Computer Electronics Show) 2011 as stated in the article “It's tablet time at CES 2011”, published December 24, 2010, 3:49am PST By John Morris, Laptops and Desktops, ZDNet in the form of the Motorola Xoom running on Google Android OS 2.4 aka Honeycomb – and Microsoft is nowhere in sight.

Guess the stories of the much rumoured tablet having no physical buttons and running Android OS 2.4 aka Honeycomb were indeed true as per my blog article entitled “Motorola, RIM and the Tablet - Indiana Jones and the Palace of Doom”.

More breaking news! Google Voice has been made free for all of 2011 as stated in the article “Google makes Gmail calling free for all of 2011”, published Tuesday December 21, 2010 12:45 pm ET by Lex Friedman, Yahoo! News.

Apparently coinciding with the Skype failure as stated in the article “Skype CEO: 21 million Skype users back online”, published Thursday December 23, 2010 6:57 pm ET By Jessica Mintz, AP Technology Writer, Yahoo! News – at least that is what I was speculating in my blog article entitled “Digicel, Samsung Galaxy Tablets and Newspapers - Tomorrow Never Dies and the Paper Man”

Getting a contract with the Government to provider Cloud based services using Google Voice, Google Docs and Gmail after losing out on the prized group shopping database prize that is Groupon, ironically within the same US$6 billion ballpark as elucidated in my blog article entitled “Google Chrome Press Event - Naked Gun 33 and a Third The Final Insult” is merely a signpost of a future that is increasingly up in the Clouds and embracing the Linux Penguin.

Google launched Google Chrome OS, a Cloud-based Operating system based on their infamous Chrome Browser as excitedly pointed out in my blog article entitled “Google Chrome OS and Open Source - Star Wars A New Hope” – sans the Caps Lock key and the Function Keys as per the article “The caps-lock Key: WOULD YOU MISS IT?”, published Wednesday December 8, 2010 4:35 pm ET by Ben Patterson, Yahoo! News.

It landed with an Apple-like news conference on Tuesday December 7, 2010 with much fanfare, with tailor-made smartbooks or NC (Network Computers) that appeared to be a follow-on to the recently secured US Government contract.

The smartbooks are beta test Macbook Pro look-alikes, being tested by eager techies who could get their grimy hands on one, will soon be the next big thing by Summer of 2011, once all the hardware and software bugs are ironed out. More news on that as it develops.

On the smartphone front, their latest foray with another iteration of Android OS, this time version 2.4 aka Gingerbread and a spanking new phone called the Google Nexus S, a standard bearer for other smart phone makers building around the new SDK (Software Development Kit) as stated in my blog article entitled “Apple and the iPad 2 - Honeycomb Chrome and the DragonSlayer”.

Gingerbread is stellar as per the article “Android 2.3's 'Gingerbread' OS: What's inside”, published December 6, 2010 10:13 AM PST by Jessica Dolcourt, CNET News - Android Atlas.

More reason why Android was a good purchase by Google, its dominance set to surge over the next four (4) to about 25% of global marketshare according to analyst IDC's new “Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker” Report as stated in the article “Android market share to surge over next four years”, published September 8, 2010 9:16 AM PDT by Lance Whitney, CNET News - Wireless.

Last year was the Year of the Apple iPad. This year, which is the Chinese Year of the Rabbit, may be actually the Year of not only Tablets, but of Android and Chrome OS, plus other promising projects in development. Or just simply call it the Year of Google…….. Mars Attack! (1996) style.