Ångströ represents the ability to hone in on highly focused, relevant news across professional networks. Where search engines such as Google and other news aggregator services have immense infrastructures that return a huge array of random results, Ångströ analyses a wide breadth of information from multiple data sources to deliver very few, yet very intelligent results.

The pundit consensus is that this is about Google’s yet-to-emerge new social networking effort — and I’m sure it is — but there are probably some search-specific applications of this technology that we’ll see in the future.

Mainly the Angstro buy made me wonder what the supposed “Google Me” (as a metaphor for Google’s broader social strategy) will turn out to be. Google now has numerous properties that have explicit or implicit social dimensions: Orkut, Buzz, Latitude, GMail, Maps, Contacts, Calendar, iGoogle, YouTube, Vevo, Google Talk, Google Reader, Picasa, Profile, Docs, (the now abandoned Wave) and more. There’s also a coming Google Music service and, reportedly, a Zynga investment and a gaming site to arrive later.

Google has also reportedly put former mobile chief Vic Gundotra in charge of social. Gundotra is highly capable but it will take intense work, creative inspiration and even luck to figure out how to bring all these disparate pieces together into a coherent and compelling whole.

Yet maybe there isn’t a single “social network” or product per se (Orkut 2.0) that Google has in mind. Perhaps the company is going to embed a social layer into each of its properties, more deliberately and explicitly than it has done to date. However that probably wouldn’t be enough by itself to capture the public’s imagination.

An earlier and very thoughtful presentation by Google Senior User Experience Researcher Paul Adams criticizes Facebook privacy and hints that groups might be the center of a new Google network. Though provocative, groups doesn’t seem splashy enough by itself either.  However Google “Social Circles” (contacts + social media content), which is not quite a product but is the basis of social search, does seem to be ripe for further development. The term “circles” even suggests a product name focused on groups.

Gaming and mobile are additional, fruitful areas for Google to attack from a social standpoint, so might shopping be as well. But other than building a kind of “me too” offering, there’s no obvious social media strategy for Google. Orkut, Wave, Buzz and several other weak or shuttered products (e.g., Lively) argue that Google can miscalculate, in some cases badly, when it comes to social and product development.

However with the recent spending and acquisitions Google has signaled that it’s very serious about building a product — or products plural — that will help it compete with Facebook and/or provide a kind of social infrastructure to keep it relevant as the Internet continues to evolve. This is a very public and high stakes effort for the company.

I’m eager to see what it produces.

Postscript: Google just bought social-mobile game development company SocialDeck. So add that into the mix. Gaming definitely is emerging as a primary entry point for Google in its effort to build a social network or more social experience.

In a blog post today, Google announced anyone can upload a picture that will be shown on the Google home page. You’ll only see your own picture, of course — everyone else will see pictures they’ve selected, if they’re using this option. You can also use pictures you’ve uploaded to Google’s Picasa photo sharing site or those within a public gallery at Picasa.

Don’t see how to add a photo yet? Then you’re like me, someone the feature hasn’t rolled out to yet. Google says this will appear for users throughout the world in the coming days. There should be a link to use it in the lower left-hand corner of the Google home page, when it has been enabled for you. It says “Change background image.”

Google Copies Bing

Back to Bing. Microsoft’s search engine launched a year ago this week, and one of the most striking things about it was that each day, Bing’s home page features a different photo. Over the past year, I’ve seen people praise this and ponder why Google doesn’t offer the same.

Of course, Google is loathe to ever do anything that seems like it is copying someone else. So, to me, today’s move allows Google to let people personalize with pictures yet claim they’re not playing “me too” against Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Bing Copied Microsoft’s Live Search

Microsoft actually offered a photo on its home page before Bing launched. The predecessor to Bing was called Live Search, and it offered a home page with a changing picture back in July 2008. It’s just that few people used Live Search. When Bing launched with great fanfare last year, many people discovered that Microsoft had a search engine for the first time and assumed that showing a picture on the home page was something new.

Microsoft Copied Ask.com

Before Bing feels too smug about Google copying it, keep in mind that among the major search engines, Ask.com was the first to offer the ability to “skin” a search engine’s home page, back in June 2007. That’s also when Ask rolled out its “3D” design, which was also copied by Microsoft and Google (see Meet The New Google Look & Its Colorful, Useful “Search Options” Column).

At the time Ask rolled out skins, it promised users could upload their own pictures. I’m not sure if they ever ultimately delivered on that promise. While they currently offer a gallery of themes, including a “My Themes” area, there seems to be no way to upload your own pictures.

And, before Ask feels too smug, Google offered its own version of skins, three months before Ask. But those themes only worked for Google’s “personalized home page” service — also known as iGoogle — rather than its regular home page.

Hey, doesn’t today’s move by Google letting people add pictures to their “regular” home page make that a personalized home page? Yes and no. The Google personalized home page remains a way to add widgets, gadgets and other features in addition to the Google search box. The regular home page, even when personalized with a picture, has no such widgets.

It’ll be interesting to see if:

• Bing eventually offers an “upload your own picture” feature, copying Google
• Google eventually offers a “rotate your picture” feature, effectively copying Bing

I’m betting on both to happen.

For related news, see Techmeme.

Postscript: I’ve now talked with Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, about the new feature. She tells me that it should be rolled out to 100% of the people in the US by tomorrow and across all languages and countries by next week.

Is this just Google copying Bing?

“The real motivation for this had to do with iGoogle,” Mayer said. “Some users really prefer the classic look but want a small amount of personalization, so this is a happy medium in between.” She added, “We think it has the same type of appeal that wallpaper does on your desktop or your phone.”

Will there be the ability to rotate photos automatically, in the future?

Mayer said that this might happen, that people will be able to make a Picasa Album — a collection of photos — that will be used to rotate on their Google home page.

Postscript: See Google Home Page Automatically Changing Background Image On June 10th & Official: Google Removes Auto-Background Feature.

My earlier blog post provided some initial “hands on” reactions to the service. It’s a powerful and flexible tool that defies easy categorization. As I said earlier this month:

[Wave] looks a lot like an email client. But Wave permits multiple people to interact in real-time with each other. It’s a mix of email and IM with some Twitter and iGoogle thrown in. Speaking of the latter, Wave will spawn a developer ecosystem and permits existing Google Gadgets and the new social gadgets to work within it. In other words, developers can build apps and users can access or import them within the platform and individual waves (conversations).

There’s also drag and drop photo sharing. One cool related feature allows full-screen slideshows of images added by any user participating in a wave. (Yahoo has been taking incremental steps toward something more like this with its series of Yahoo Mail upgrades.)

Wave can also act as a Twitter client or embed Twitter clients (and one would assume eventually Facebook too). One could also imagine it as a feed reader for news. Indeed, third party developer efforts will enable Wave to grow and change, built around basic functionality of real-time communication and collaboration. One could easily imagine Google Voice and Google Talk integration into Wave, and so on.

Accordingly Wave has huge potential, but people will definitely need to use and experiment with it before they understand and see its benefits. There’s a clear learning curve and some complexity surrounding the product; it’s not entirely intuitive. Wave probably also needs to incorporate email in order to go mainstream.

Google still considers Wave to be in “preview” as it works out kinks and bugs of one sort or another. As it releases Wave more broadly Google will gain considerable feedback, which should help it add features and refinements. Here’s the video demo of Google Wave in action from the I/O Developer event in May.

Google has more in its blog post this morning.

Postscript: There’s an already emerging developer ecosystem around Wave. These “extensions” (widgets, plug-ins) will make Wave’s value and use cases more obvious to new users and will speed adoption. For example, see the Ribbit extension for conference calls or 6 Rounds for video chat.

By way of background, Danny and I wrote about Wave when it was first announced earlier this year and then offered some third-party developer observations.

Without doing a full “review,” I’ll offer some initial thoughts from my 50 or so minutes with the Wave team and hands-on experience with Wave:

It’s an exciting — possibly breakthrough — product that eludes simple categorization. Wave does lots of things and has the potential to do many more. However, there’s almost a “cultural” adaptation necessitated by it. People have to get used to communicating in a kind of “layered” way that Wave both allows and almost requires.

The screenshot above, from our Wave demo, looks a lot like an email client. But Wave permits multiple people to interact in real-time with each other. It’s a mix of email and IM with some Twitter and iGoogle thrown in. Speaking of the latter, Wave will spawn a developer ecosystem and permits existing Google Gadgets and the new social gadgets to work within it. In other words, developers can build apps and users can access or import them within the platform and individual waves (conversations).

There’s also drag and drop photo sharing. One cool related feature allows full-screen slideshows of images added by any user participating in a wave. (Yahoo has been taking incremental steps toward something more like this with its series of Yahoo Mail upgrades.)

Wave can also act as a Twitter client or embed Twitter clients (and one would assume eventually Facebook too). One could also imagine it as a feed reader for news. Indeed, third party developer efforts will enable Wave to grow and change, built around basic functionality of real-time communication and collaboration. One could easily imagine Google Voice and Google Talk integration into Wave, and so on.

It may be premature to discuss this, but a key to the mainstream appeal and adoption of Wave will be its ability to incorporate existing email accounts and to function as a client for traditional email.

During the demo most of the emphasis had been on enterprise or B2B collaboration. It struck me that teens would recognize this as a social tool and potential successor to IM — and would take to it accordingly. I made a comment along those lines and Google’s Rasmussen conveyed an anecdote about a test with Sydney (Australia) 3rd graders who used Wave and apparently had a great deal of fun with it.

That’s saying something if both developers and 3rd graders can equally use it. However, as Wave rolls out and more people are exposed, more of its potential and an expanding list of scenarios and use cases will likely emerge.

Your friends are able to see what you share or do in your social gadgets either by having the same gadgets on their homepages, or through a new feed called Updates. Updates can include your recently shared photo albums, your favorite comics strips, your travel plans for the weekend and more. To help you manage who you are sharing with, we’ve created a Friends group. You can add and edit friends in this group at any time. If you already have a Friends group within your Google Contacts, you’ll be able to easily share with those friends on iGoogle as well.

There are 19 currently available:

As I said previously, this effectively turns iGoogle into something of a social network (although that’s too strong a statement):

We don’t yet know how successful social gadgets will be. However, in a best-case scenario, it could potentially become the missing “social center” that has not taken root through other Google services including Orkut, Google’s actual social network.

In addition, if one steps back and imagines a rich ecosystem of gadget developers and engaged users, down the line, one can see iGoogle evolving into a Facebook-like experience featuring community, apps, status updates and so on.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At the outset there are apparently 12 social gadgets, eight of which were created by third party developers. For example, there’s a chess gadget and other casual game gadgets — casual games have become huge on Facebook — that allow iGoogle users to play with one another. There’s photo sharing, featuring Picasa and Flickr, and a to-dos gadget, which allows you to share your list or created a combined list with others. In some cases, there will be Twitter-like activity streams (see “Timeline” below) that display updates to all participating users in real-time.

Here are some screenshots provided by Google:

These social gadgets would seem to owe something to both Facebook and Twitter but they also represent a logical evolution of the iGoogle product and gadgets platform more broadly. The personalized homepage has “tens of millions of users,” according to Mayer. It was until recently also the fastest growing product at Google. Making it “social” will likely generate further growth.

I asked whether social gadgets would make an appearance on Google Maps. I was told no but the Maps API permits developers to build social gadgets for iGoogle using Maps. Google is also thinking about extending this into mobile but that will take longer because of technical challenges and constraints in the mobile browser.

I also asked about Google Wave and whether there would be any crossover. Mayer said that she thought there would be some collaboration between the teams.

What’s fascinating to me is that Google has gone from a company that a few of years ago failed to fully appreciate how big social networking would become to one that done “a 180″ and fully embraced community. Google offers a social layer — as with the introduction of social gadgets — across many of its services. Latitude in Google Maps in another obvious example, but there are numerous others.

We don’t yet know how successful social gadgets will be. However, in a best-case scenario, it could potentially become the missing “social center” that has not taken root through other Google services including Orkut, Google’s actual social network.

In addition, if one steps back and imagines a rich ecosystem of gadget developers and engaged users, down the line, one can see iGoogle evolving into a Facebook-like experience featuring community, apps, status updates and so on.

I don’t mean to suggest that iGoogle will challenge Facebook (it won’t) or that anyone else is thinking along these lines exactly. But there’s an interesting, potential parallel if social gadgets really take off and iGoogle evolves into a new social media platform.

After living without an iPhone/Android version of iGoogle for about six months, Google came out with a nice look for the new iGoogle mobile. Here is a look at it:

To try this out on your iPhone or Android device, go to to igoogle.com in your mobile browser and tap “Try the new Mobile iGoogle!”

Further coverage of this story at Techmeme.

Google said the reason they dropped the iPhone version was because they “want to ensure you’ll all see the same version” of the iGoogle mobile page. But Google made no official announcement on this change. I found this by viewing a thread where it seems like hundreds of iPhone users are upset with this change.

It seems like the change started on Thursday, and, as soon as it happened, many iPhone users began complaining. The large thread I pointed to above has 140 or so comments, but there are dozens of other threads about this change.

So, what is the big deal? Well, Google made a huge deal about having iPhone optimized sites for many of their services, including iGoogle. They have many Google optimized iPhone sites and have promoted them time and time again. So why drop iGoogle without an announcement?

Let me illustrate below:

Here is a before screen capture:

Here is an after screen capture (I don’t personally see the new iGoogle, so thank you Keri for sending this my way):

As you can see, it opens up the page more. You can really see the impact by looking at how this works with the Google Reader Gadget. The Google Reader blog has screen captures illustrating this.

For a full list of canvas view enabled gadgets, see this list. This should be rolled out to all U.S. users any time now and then worldwide in the near future.

• Left-hand navigation with expandable tabs
• A canvas view for Google Gadgets, kind of looks like a Google Reader view (screen cap here)
• Google Chat added to iGoogle

Those are the major changes. To read about them in more detail, see this Google document.