Alliance Blog Reviews

Ow, brain freeze! Brain freeze! You know that sensation. It usually accompanies the consumption of too much of a good thing, such as ice cream, milkshakes, or…Google updates?!? Yeah, apparently we’re at that time of the year when Google initiates its own “brain” freeze–effectively shutting down innovation until the New Year. Writes TechCrunch … …people at Google are still working, but apparently Google has a “code freeze” policy that goes in place sometime in December. If you don’t get your product/service out the door by then, it gets pushed til when the freeze is lifted, likely sometime in the new year. A few Googlers confirmed this policy off-the-record, but all seemed concerned about publicly acknowledging it. It certainly makes sense–based on the recent flurry of new Google updates–but I’m not entirely convinced that we won’t see any updates over the next 4 weeks. All it would take is some big announcement from Microsoft, and Google will be just a matter of hours behind it–with its own announcement. You can take that to the bank!

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Ow! Ow! Google Brain Freeze!

One of my favorite uses of Google is as a dictionary. Seriously! I don’t need it so much as spell-checker–it fulfills that role too–but if I want to look up the definition of a word, or make sure I’m using it in context, I turn to Google. Well actually, I turned to Answers.com–which used to supply the definitions if I clicked on the top right link in the search results: It’s no coincidence that I used the word “screwed” in the above screen capture. That’s what Answers.com will likely be, now that Google has decided that those links should go to its own dictionary : Not that Google’s dictionary is new–you were always able to search “define:” and get to it–but now Answers.com is out the door. How much will that hurt Answers? Well, the first glimpse of the effects will be seen when the stock market opens today. Answers is publicly traded and I suspect that its stock may not fare so well today. What do you think of Answers.com’s chances of continued success now that the Google lifeline has been cut? UPDATE: Answers CEO Bob Rosenschein tell us that Google wasn’t that big of a chunk of its traffic: “ While I’m sorry to see it go, it is not material — under 5% of our traffic.” Wow! I’m shocked that more people weren’t clicking on that link.

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Google Ditches Answers.com, Raising Questions About the Dictionary’s Future

When Google’s Matt Cutts makes this statement on Twitter: “This is important. Google provides webmaster tool to see how fast your site is…” You can pretty much take to the bank that Google is getting ready to add site load speed to its complex search algorithm. In fact, Cutts points us to this Google announcement : On Site Performance, you’ll find how fast your pages load, how they’ve fared over time, how your site’s load time compares to that of other sites, examples of specific pages and their actual page load times, and Page Speed suggestions that can help reduce user-perceived latency. Our goal is to bring you specific and actionable speed information backed by data, so stay tuned for more of this in the future. So, why is Google adding “speed” to its algorithm? The clue is given by Google: Studies have repeatedly shown that speeding up your site leads to increased user retention and activity , higher revenue and lower costs . Oh, you thought Google was talking about your revenues and costs? No, silly, it’s Google’s. PS. Want to check your site’s performance? You’ll need a Google Webmaster’s account , then follow this navigation path: yoursite> labs> site performance (thanks NC_SEO )

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Google REALLY Wants You to Speed Up Your Web Site

It seems that it’s not just search that we see such disparity between Yahoo and Google–there’s a huge chasm between them in the mobile space too! Google, emboldened by the early success of Droid, is moving forward with plans to build its own phone. While its Android platform is powering new cell phones–such as the Droid–Google doesn’t design the actual hardware. That’s going to change early next year. TechCrunch doesn’t have any more details that what we reported a month back , but there’s plenty of speculation and rumor to share: We have some fairly good information that suggests Google is working with a Korean phone manufacturer on the Google phone – LG or Samsung. Samsung has multiple parts in the iPhone and could be pressured by Apple not to work with Google, which says LG is the more likely partner for Google…We’ve also heard from a good source that Google is planning a big advertising push around the device early next year – like January. Man, there are going to be a lot of deflated Droid owners come January, if this all comes true. Which makes me wonder if Android is so new, that users will hold back from buying a phone, until they see what new hardware is on the horizon–effectively creating a catch 22 situation. Meanwhile, back at the Yahoo batcave, Yahoo Go is being shuttered : Dear Yahoo! Go user, Yahoo! Go will be discontinued on January 12, 2010, at 12:00 a.m. PST, so that we may focus on simplifying and enhancing your future mobile Web experiences. After this date, you will no longer be able to use Yahoo! Go 2.0 or 3.0 from your mobile phone. We encourage you to visit the new mobile homepage from your mobile browser to access an even richer, more personalized Yahoo! experience. We appreciate your support and thank you for using Yahoo! Mobile services. For more information and customer support, please visit the help center from your PC. The Yahoo! Mobile team I wonder how much of a role the iPhone played in its failure. With thousands of iPhone apps available, mobile users simply don’t want a "one size fits all" approach to mobile applications. The recently launched Yahoo Mobile for Web will apparently live on.

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Google Phone is a “Go” for Launch; Yahoo Go Isn’t

Google first announced is Chrome operating system in July . Open source and targeted at netbooks, the OS could launch within a week , according to TechCrunch. Although TechCrunch reports that Chrome will probably only be available for certain targeted netbooks in the coming launch, it may not be ready for even that. In its original, official announcement , Google said it would open source its code later in 2009, with devices coming to market in the second half of 2010. Despite TechCrunch’s reliable anonymous source, this rumor may be more speculation and confusion than drastically moving up the launch timeline. Launching the OS to the open source community—part of the planned development process anyway—has always been part of the plan. And recently, some netbooks (such as one from Acer) have already come to market with a Google operating system — Android , the Google mobile OS that’s slowly taking on the smartphone arena. Google Chrome will be better suited to a full-sized computer than Android is, however. Google wants their lightweight OS to be able to start quickly with a minimal user interface. If you’re really that eager for Chrome, PC World reminds us that a developer build is already ready. But remember, even if Google launches the source code next week, can we say compiler ? Meanwhile, Google is also premiering a new programming language this week. “Go” is touted as dynamic as Python and safe as C++. Any coincidence that it comes out this week? What do you think? Will Chrome be ready to ship in the next week? Or will we see open source files launched?

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Google Chrome OS Coming Next Week