The Google Android

Recently Google acquired Android, and consequently taking a huge stride in their endeavors into the Mobile space. Android is a great platform from what I can tell after reading the online documentation and viewing a few videos. It’s built squarely on top of Linux and Java technology and has a solid architecture around it. Google is also publishing an SDK for devs to take a hack at Android as well as boosting interest by launching a competition with $10 million in prizes for the best apps built on the platform.

While Steve Ballmer of Microsoft thinks that Google so far have a lot of talk on paper and no clearly definitive way ahead for the new technology platform, it is clear that the Android has created a buzz already especially with the well known talk of Google’s suspected GPhone plans.

Taking in Android also brought in some key technologists and engineers into the Google fold. As explained in this BusinessWeek article:

Rubin isn’t the only well-known Silicon Valley veteran joining Google via Android. Others coming over include Andy McFadden, who worked with Rubin at WebTV before helping develop the all-in-one set-top box for Moxi Digital; Richard Miner, former vice-president of technology and innovation at telecom outfit Orange before joining Android; and Chris White, who spearheaded the design and interface for WebTV in the late 1990s, before helping to found Android.

Clearly, Google, in my opinion has taken a very wise decision in partnering with Rubin and the Android team. My speculation is that this acquisition will reap benefits for them in a very significant way in the future. 2008 will have a lot of buzz in regards to this.

One such foreseeable benefit would be the chance to put Google in literally everyone’s palm, after all they did it with search and the internet. Now they have a chance to get Google technology on your mobile device without having to access it over the internet. Somewhat like Microsoft’s OS, it’s just already there and you use it naturally. Plu, there are foreseeably more chances to partner with mobile and mobile content delivery companies.

You can find a good collection of videos on this topic here.

Filed under: google, mobile, android, competition, development, google, GPhone, mobile, SDK, video

Google… Socially Yours

OpenSocial is a cool platform…

There’s no denying that the web enables communication. The killer apps of the web — email, instant messaging, blogging — have enabled us to communicate with our friends, family, and the rest of the world on a large scale. But there is a newer characteristic of the web that has been emerging: to become social. The first wave of killer apps allowed us to communicate with the world at scale. The next wave is about connecting us and our online activities with our friends… [The Web is Better when it's Social]

(And yes, I know, It’s been a loooong while!)

Filed under: google, Orkut

Google: The King of Scalability

Google is the King of scalability. Everyone knows Google for their large, sophisticated, and fast searching, but they don’t just shine in search. Their platform approach to building scalable applications allows them to roll out internet scale applications at an alarmingly high competition crushing rate. Their goal is always to build a higher performing higher scaling infrastructure to support their products. How do they do that?

Filed under: google

Gulp! MSFT to Buy part of Facebook?

When I saw this I just sat up straight in my chair (before that I was in a bit of a lull after some good lunch), especially since I just posted about Mark.

There’s a report out that MSFT might buy 5% of Facebook, according to Reuters:

Microsoft Corp is in talks to buy up to 5 percent of Facebook in a deal that could value the fast-growing online social network company at $10 billion or more, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.[Full article...]

Of course this would have some SERIOUS repercussions, it could help boost the Facebook coffers and in turn place MSFT in a better competitive position in regards to Google and Yahoo! But also it may be viewed as an ‘interesting’ move in the tech community. Of course, MSFT is mostly viewed as something of a ‘Big Brother’ in the industry and one could speculate what would happen if it went on to take over Facebook, an icon of the ‘free world’; at least those are speculations. According to reuters:

The move could give maturing Microsoft more access to young users and let Facebook get closer to a major software maker at a time when its growth is increasingly tied to a proliferation of small applications from independent developers on its site.

Of course Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, has been quoted saying that his company wants to stay independent, but there’s a twisted saying that if the price is high enough… Well, yeah.

In my opinion, I don’t think it would be a good idea for Facebook to sell out. Not to MSFT, or Google, or Yahoo! (and nothing against MSFT, if anything I have mad respect for them). That does not rule out having business relationships with them. Like imagine if instead of selling out, they looked for strategic ways in which they could have, say joint products/services with the companies or something. That way not selling out, but getting the advantage of the weight of these corporations in key areas.

Anyway, enough speculating. Let’s see how this turns out.

Filed under: Facebook, google, microsoft

Google Kenya Jobs

I just accessed the Google jobs site and found some job opennings at the local office, to all who are interested in following up and think its a wise move for them, go ahead and make hay while the sun shines.

This is good because I had accessed the site some weeks earlier and they had not yet posted any jobs.

The following jobs are up on offer. Please note that the site was accessed on the 22nd September 2007 and I have no guarantee of when these opennings will close. The jobs are as follows:

• Administrative Associate – Nairobi
• Associate Product Marketing – Nairobi
• Geographic Consultant – Nairobi
• Geographic Supervisor – Nairobi
• Strategic Partner Development (SPD), Local Markets – Nairobi
• Technical Lead (Technical Solutions Associates/Engineers) – Nairobi
• Technical Support Associate, Google Applications – Nairobi

Personally, much as I admire to be a Googler (and I know I can be and probably one day, will be!), I have a few hops to take before I can say with confidence that I can have all the requisite skills. So I have laid out a strategy that will lead me to places where I can learn what I need to learn by leveraging what I already know!

All the best to all who try out for these jobs. One caution though, from the perspective of someone who has interviewed with Google…, please make sure you know your stuff and not only know stuff but can think well beyond the box! From my experience I think for a Technical/Engeneering job you really need to revisit your Data Structures and Algorithms notes especially Algorithmic Problem Solving. I am taking a DSA class this semester and that’s really exciting!

Long live Google!

Filed under: google, google story, googler, interview, work

Social Google

Snippets of interesting pointers to what Google is rolling up it’s sleeves to…:

Google to take social networking to a new level by ZDNet‘s Garett Rogers — Google held a super secret meeting with a select few developers behind closed doors yesterday — I guess the NDA wasn’t enough to keep attendees from talking to Michael Arrington though. The meeting, according to Michael, outlined Googles plans to develop an open API that will eventually expose social graphs to any application that [...]

Michael Arrington: Yesterday a select group of fifteen or so industry luminaries attended a highly confidential meeting at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to discuss the company’s upcoming plans to address the “Facebook issue.” [...]

Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal, who recently left Six Apart for Google has published notes on what he’s going to be working on moving forward. It is an interesting read entitled Brad’s Thoughts on the Social Graph which contains the following excerpts [...]

Indeed, Social Google!

Filed under: google, google story, googler

Web 2.0

So what is this thing called ‘Web 2.0′? Well, glad you asked that question; it is an evolution in the way we experience the web, it is a tidal wave that’s taking the web by storm, it’s been around, being discussed in industry circles for a few years but I believe it’s fullness is only beginning to show. Web 2.0 is a concept that came to being from a brainstorming session between O’Reilly and MediaLive International; it goes back to about 2004 when the first Web 2.0 conference was held.

So what does it mean? Well, according to a paper by Tim O’Reilly (read it here or stream the audio here), Web 2.0 is characterized by a number of principles, that we will get into shortly. One way to learn something is by making clear what something IS NOT and then clarifying what it IS. In this case, what is Web 2.0 NOT and what IS Web 2.0, a simple way of knowing what Web 2.0 is NOT is by looking at it’s ‘predecessor’, ‘Web 1.0′; and this is what is proposed by O’Reilly:
Web 1.0 –>Web 2.0
DoubleClick –> Google AdSense
Ofoto –> Flickr
Akamai –> BitTorrent
mp3.com –> Napster
Britannica Online –> Wikipedia
personal websites –> blogging
evite –> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation –> search engine optimization
page views –> cost per click
screen scraping –> web services
publishing –> participation
content management systems –> wikis
directories (taxonomy) –> tagging (“folksonomy”)
stickiness –> syndication

Though the list is not exhaustive, it does show a significant difference in a sense of what is predominant on the Web as it is in comparison with what was (mostly) familiar, or what predominantly characterized the web in different ways in various areas from before!

According to Tim O’Reilly’s paper, the following are key distinguishing ‘principles’ that are emergent in Web 2.0:

1. The Web As Platform:

‘A Platform Beats an Application Every Time’

Here Tim makes use of 3 examples and some ‘Web 2.0 lessons’ that are evident in them:

Netscape vs. Google: The value of the software is proportional to the scale and dynamis of the data it helps to manage.
DoubleClick vs. Overture and AdSense: Leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.

Akamai vs. BitTorrent: The service automatically gets better the more people use it

2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence:

Web 2.0 shows an incredible enhancement in the leveraging of collective intelligence; collection, distribution and sharing as well as finding information and making sense of it. Here, Tim mentions the roles played by Wikipedia ad collective content creation and editing, del.icio.us and Flickr and the concept of folksonomy (a style of collaborative categorization of sites using freely chosen keywords, often referred to as tags.) and others, especially blogging, RSS and sites such as bloglines that aggregate RSS content and Permalink.

3. Data is the Next Intel Inside:

The race is on to own certain classes of core data: location, identity, calendaring of public events, product identifiers and namespaces. In many cases, where there is significant cost to create the data, there may be an opportunity for an Intel Inside style play, with a single source for the data. In others, the winner will be the company that first reaches critical mass via user aggregation, and turns that aggregated data into a system service.

4. End of the Software Release Cycle:

Here, Tim O’Reilly takes notice of some key aspects that Web 2.0 companies have to embrace in their business/software development models. He claims:

Operations must become a core competency. Google‘s or Yahoo!’s expertise in product development must be matched by an expertise in daily operations. So fundamental is the shift from software as artifact to software as service that the software will cease to perform unless it is maintained on a daily basis.

And

Users must be treated as co-developers, in a reflection of open source development practices (even if the software in question is unlikely to be released under an open source license.) The open source dictum, “release early and release often” in fact has morphed into an even more radical position, “the perpetual beta,” in which the product is developed in the open, with new features slipstreamed in on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. It’s no accident that services such as Gmail, Google Maps, Flickr, del.icio.us, and the like may be expected to bear a “Beta” logo for years at a time… Real time monitoring of user behavior to see just which new features are used, and how they are used, thus becomes another required core competency.

5. Lightweight Programming Models:

Simplicity is the name of the new game!

A case in point being RSS and REST (Representational State Transfer)! Tim O’Reilly clearly notes the following key aspects of the Web 2.0 era in this regard:

Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely coupled systems… The Web 2.0 mindset is very different from the traditional IT mindset!

Think syndication, not coordination. Simple web services, like RSS and REST-based web services, are about syndicating data outwards, not controlling what happens when it gets to the other end of the connection… the end-to-end principle

Design for “hackability” and remixability.

6. Software Above the Level of a Single Device:

According to Dave Stutz, “Useful software written above the level of the single device will command high margins for a long time to come.”

7. Rich User Experiences:

One word: Silverlight! and another word, Popfly

So, really, Web 2.0 is a paradigm shift in the way we look at the web, the way we get information from the web, the way we find information on the web, the way we develop the web, the way we build business models around the web!

Filed under: blog, content, cool, feed, google, information retrieval, microsoft, research, search, SOA, software, yahoo