September 30th, 2009

BestBuy partners with Google in mobile

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:19 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Best Buy Co. Inc., Mobile, Business Structures, Retail, Advertising & Promotion, Mobile Applications, Wireless And Mobility, Finance, Marketing

Google and BestBuy are working together in plans to entice users to purchase cellphones from their store store rather than from other wireless retailers.

Google is developing applications that will be pre-installed on devices purchased at BestBuy. The first mobile application that Google will be releasing lets customers to search for products and see which locations have them in stock. Google is also working on Android-only apps, but word on exactly what those will be.

On the other end of this partnership, the exposure Google is going to get for Android devices in BestBuy stores will be well worth their efforts. It’s almost unfair that all Google has to do to tap into the BestBuy selling machine is build a simple app for them.

Will these apps Google is making really help BestBuy sell more phones? Let’s hear what you think.

September 28th, 2009

Google Base no longer for products

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 8:28 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Google Base, Merchant Center, Blogging, Internet, Garett Rogers

Google just released “Google Merchant Center” — a service that they want users to use instead of Google Base for products. If you have product data in your Google Base account, you should automatically find all your stuff available in the new service.

Previously, you may have used Google Base to upload and manage Product listings. Google Base is still available for other types of structured content, but the Google Merchant Center provides a better, optimized experience specifically for merchants. The Merchant Center is where we’ll continue adding features and improving the tools for uploading and managing product listings.

It’s hard to tell if Google is actually thinking of pulling the plug on Google Base or not — I’m thinking they are going to let it die a slow death. The reason I think that is because they are actually replacing their Google Base Blog with the Google Merchant Blog.

As part of the launch of Google Merchant Center, this blog will be replacing the Google Base Blog. Please update your bookmarks and subscriptions, and visit us often!

September 26th, 2009

AT&T complains about Google Voice to FCC

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:11 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: FCC, Google Inc., Voice, AT&T Corp., Google Voice, Telecom & Utilities, Garett Rogers

According to AT&T, Google isn’t playing by the rules with Google Voice — they are rejecting outbound calls to some rural areas to reduce their access expenses. Google says that these numbers are typically used for things like sex chat lines.

Why would it be against the rules if Google decides to block numbers like this? Well, carriers are required to put through calls to anywhere (regardless of cost), and AT&T thinks Google Voice should have to follow the same rules.

Google argues that they aren’t a carrier, and don’t have to abide by the same laws. Here’s how Google differentiates themselves:

• Unlike traditional carriers, Google Voice is a free, Web-based software application, and so not subject to common carrier laws.
• Google Voice is not intended to be a replacement for traditional phone service — in fact, you need an existing land or wireless line in order to use it. Importantly, users are still able to make outbound calls on any other phone device.
• Google Voice is currently invitation-only, serving a limited number of users.

This battle between Google, AT&T and Apple (over the Google Voice app) is definitely heating up, and will be fun to watch.

September 24th, 2009

Project 10^100 opens up for voting

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:38 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Idea, Web Site Development, Web Technology, Internet, Garett Rogers

It’s been a while since Google launched project 10^100 — created to harvest great ideas from people around the world that could change the world.

Google will invest millions of dollars in the winning ideas — and that’s where you come in. Tonight, Google launched a website that lets you vote on ideas that have been aggregated into several different categories.

Your votes will help an advisory group decide which projects to give funding to over the next couple weeks.

September 22nd, 2009

Google hijacks Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:03 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Web Browsers, Internet, Garett Rogers

If Microsoft won’t keep their browser up-to-speed with the rest of the field, Google’s going to do it for them. A new project from Google called Google Chrome Frame is a plugin for Internet Explorer that allows developers to override Microsoft’s rendering engine with Google’s — giving users HTML5 compatibility and faster javascript.

To make use of Google Chrome Frame, developers simply put a meta tag in their source code. If the user is use Internet Explorer, and the plugin is installed, pages with this special tag will automatically make use of Google Chrome.

Watch the video here.

I wonder how excited Microsoft would get if Google made the Google Chrome rendering engine the default one in Internet Explorer?

September 20th, 2009

Google celebrates birthday of H.G. Wells

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:40 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Logo, Birthday, Garett Rogers

It sounds like people were reading too much into the logos leading up to today — the birthday of H.G. Wells. For the past couple weeks, Google had been showing off some unidentified Google logos that raised much speculation.

Lots of people, including myself, were hoping that these logos somehow would lead up to a product launch of some kind — but instead, it was a case of Occam’s razor. The simplest answer was the correct one.

Today is the birthday of H.G. Wells, and to celebrate, Google gives us the final doodle in the series.

September 18th, 2009

Google calls Apple on their lies

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:17 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Apple Inc., Federal Government, Government, Garett Rogers

In repsonse to Apple’s response of the FCC inquiry regarding the rejection of the Google Voice application, Google sent the FCC another letter. The full response was made available today — in which Google basically called Apple on their lies.

Google says that Apple in fact denied the Google Voice application for iPhone — as opposed to it still being under review as Apple put it. Google made mention of meetings between Google’s Alan Eustace ( Senior VP of Engineering & Research), and Apple’s Phil Schiller (Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing), in which Apple said that it was rejecting the Google Voice application.

Who is telling the truth? To me, it sounds like Google seems to be the most truthful here — as they mention that some of these discussions happened over email. What do you think?

September 15th, 2009

Crop circles: What's Google trying to tell us?

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 7:17 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Garett Rogers

This is the second Google doodle in the last ten days that has featured space ships — this latest one shows a UFO making crop circles.

Along with the doodle came a clue on twitter — coordinates (51.327629, -0.5616088) that seem to point to a town called Horsell in England. This happens to be the location where aliens landed in “The War of the Worlds”.

Google says that it will uncover the mystery this week — September 21’s would have been Welles’ 143 birthday, so it may be about that.

But do you think it’s that easy? I’m hoping it’s a sign that Google is about to release something — and this is their way of generating some buzz around it.

Let’s take bets — post what you think:

1) The Google logo’s are leading up to the would-be birthday of H.G. Welles.
2) Generating buzz around a product launch coming up this week
3) Something else — tell us what you think

September 12th, 2009

Micropayments in Google Checkout soon

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 3:02 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Payment, Micropayment, Google Checkout, Garett Rogers

It sounds like Google is going to start allowing merchants to accept micropayments soon — that menas accepting payments anywhere from a penny to a several dollars.

This information was released in a document submitted to the Newspaper Association of America.

Micropayments - While currently in the early planning stages, micropayments will be a payment
vehicle available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year. The idea is to
allow viable payments of a penny to several dollars by aggregating purchases across merchants
and over time. Google will mitigate the risk of non-payment by assigning credit limits based on
past purchasing behavior and having credit card instruments on file for those with higher credit
limits and using our proprietary risk engines to track abuse or fraud. Merchant integration will be
extremely simple.

Micropayments are essential for the future of monetizing content online. It’s easy to see how content owners could make more money if they were able to charge a nickel for something instead of being forced to ask for $5.00 due to limitations imposed by their payment service.

I’m hoping they begin allowing Canadian merchants to sell with Google Checkout around the same time the micropayments feature comes online — but that might be too wishful of thinking.

September 9th, 2009

Google experimenting with ads between messages in Gmail

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 9:01 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Google Gmail, Advertisement, E-mail Providers, Internet, Garett Rogers

A user in the Blogoscoped forums reports that in his email, he’s now seeing ads between messages — a more in your face approach to ads in Gmail.

This promotion for a flight France-Iceland appeared just above an email confirming my booking of a France-UK train ticket (Eurostar). Contrary to the classic side ads, I did take a look at this discreet and smart ad.

I guess I won’t skip those new ads any time soon, since they’re directly inserted in my thread. I hope Gmail will never try to include banners here!

[image from Google Blogoscoped]

They look just like the ones that appear at the top of your inbox — but instead, between messages and likely cannot be disabled.