Google has announced the shutting down of several Google services from the Google Search Timeline to their knowledge site, Knol. Here is a list of services Google is closing in the near future or has already closed: Google Bookmarks Lists closing on December 19, 2011, which leaves searchers with no way to recoup their Google starred results. Google Friend Connect is shutting down March 1, 2012 and sending people to Google +. Google Gears will lose all support on December 1, 2011 but Chrome now has offline support. Google Search Timeline is currently not working anymore. Google Wave [...]

Related Topics: Google: Business Issues | Google: Gears | Google: Google+ | Google: Knol | Google: Search Customization

As we previously reported, starting tomorrow Google will widen access to its innovative communications platform Wave, offering 100,000 new invitations to use the service. Many of these people in turn will be allowed to invite others to join as well, reminiscent of how GMail propagated. (It's wise for Google to allow these new users to invite friends and family because you effectively can't use Wave without contacts on the system.) Those who will gain full access tomorrow will apparently be developers, early users who provided feedback and some Google Apps customers. My earlier blog post pro [...]

Related Topics: Google: Gears | Google: General | Google: Gmail | Google: iGoogle

Capgemini Backs Google's Software Push from the Associated Press covers how Paris-based tech and business consultancy CapGemini is going to start recommending and installing Google Apps on enterprise desktops, a move viewed as a big boost for Google's "office" application aspirations. CapGemini also works with Microsoft and IBM and "influences the type of software used on more than 1 million personal computers in companies worldwide" according to the article. The Google Apps Premier Edition suite costs $50 per user account per year and includes phone support, additional storage and other se [...]

Related Topics: Google: Business Issues | Google: Docs & Spreadsheets | Google: Gears

Microsoft has rolled out something similar to the Google Pack software bundle called "Windows Live Services." Google Operating System has a lengthy (favorable) overview. The package includes mail and instant messaging, search toolbar, online storage, photosharing and blogging software, all from Microsoft. It operates as something of an extension of Windows desktop software and is intended to create a kind of self-contained world of online applications. It's also intended to boost awareness and usage of Windows Live search, as well as counter the growing Google Apps/Gears and "cloud computing" [...]

Related Topics: Google: Docs & Spreadsheets | Google: Gears | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: General

Microsoft vows it won't let its core businesses be undermined by "the cloud." This article from the NY Times (and related discussion at Techmeme) quotes Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer saying that Microsoft will compete aggressively with Google and other online alternatives to Office and will offer Web-based versions of all its core software: “We’re not moving toward a world of thin computing,” said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, referring to systems in which simple processing takes place on a PC, but more complex processing is moved to a centralized computer through a ne [...]

Related Topics: Google: Business Issues | Google: Docs & Spreadsheets | Google: Gears | Microsoft: Business Issues