... new China tools China may be the market getting the most attention from Google next to their US home zone. In 2008, we might see even more locally optimized releases from the Google Beijing and Shanghai offices. In 2007 and before, expansion and research & development already spawned 1) a Google Input Method Editor to transliterate Pinyin/ Chinese, 2) partnerships with Tianya.cn which power social network Lai Ba and questions & answer site Wen Da*, 3) an experimental Google homepage, not the default live homepage and not officially _link_ed yet, 4) more customized Google censorship than any other country is getting, to my knowledge, including “special” versions of Google Maps, Google Books, Google Image Search, Google News and Google web search. *The Chinese “Lai ba” means “come here,” and “wen da” means “answering a question.” 参考消息 通过 Google 阅读器发送给您的内容： Google in 2008 于 07-12-27 通过 Google Blogoscoped 作者：Philipp Lenssen There’s no all-knowing glass bowl in reach for our predictions for Google in 2008, but in the meantime, we have some official announcements from Google Inc, outstanding rumored products, and a couple of visible trends. To recap, there’s... ... Google Health Google Health was announced by Google’s Marissa Mayer for early 2008 (at least for the US, I suppose). Leaked screenshots of the program show the service aims to store information on your conditions, medications, allergies, surgeries, family health history and so on. With that extremely sensitive data in hand, Google’s computers may be able to help you and your doctor to put the puzzle pieces together. This way, via an automated health guide you may be informed about preventive measures, drug interactions or potential treatments, and your doctor may downsize their, to quote Marissa, “minutes per patient” to become more effective. Practically every Google service which stores your information is a trade-off between privacy risks and the value you can get out of the service. Google Health may be no different, though (if it will be connected to your real name, e.g. to your Google Account) it may stretch the limit of what people deem acceptable to offer to Google’s great server farm. ... Maka Maka On September 6, 2007, Google’s Ben Darnell gave an internal tutorial for new Google employees (the so-called “nooglers”). The video was filmed by another employee. So far, nothing unusual, except that later this confidential video surfaced on Google Video... perhaps uploaded there by accident. Among coming changes to Google’s RSS Reader service, the video was foreshadowing a service called “Maka Maka.” This was supposed to be the new social back-end across different Google services, part of it being the roll-out of so-called “activity streams” in Google Reader. Already, a Google Profile service was released recently, and Reader introduced a feature showing your Google Talk friends’ shared items. It may be possible that this is just the beginning of the social Google back-end we’ll be seeing more of in 2008. ... Google My World It’s hard to keep something in the vicinity of Google secret... even when you remove all Google brand features from the service. That was what Google did with their “MyWorld” program. All we know from the outside is that the sign-up screen to this program, which was tested at the Arizona State University, is showing some 2D and 3D avatars under the headline “Redefine Your World.” A globe is showing next to the headline. ... Niniane Wang’s “Project in Social Space” This is becoming one of the oldest rumors around (search for google _meta_verse to get an idea), even though little to none is known about this project, except that it’s supposed to be in “social space” and product-managed by Niniane Wang (the Google employee who, according to Google, “learned the Lisp programming language at 10, and started college math classes at 11”). Who knows, it may even be the “My World” project outlined above. What we do know though is that, at least according to Niniane Wang, this service or product can’t be completely boring, as Niniane presented the following mail from a colleague in 2006: <<i realized today during the meeting that... - if we’re working on the best project at google, and - we’re working at the best company on the planet, then we’re working on the Best Project in the World. Niniane (caricatured) added, “Can’t argue with that logic.” ... Gdrive If the Google _meta_verse rumor above is one of the oldest, then the Gdrive rumor is probably the oldest. To clarify the name, Gdrive aka Platypus is a) an existing internal client for Google to share files (I got hold of the program before, though it requires an existing Google employee log-in to be useful), and b) a rumored project that may bring a unified file sharing back-end to users, and perhaps to Google’s services. Right now, saving files and moving them from one Google (or other web app) to the next often still requires your “old-school” hard disk. Some of us however might prefer to have all their pictures, movies, music files and other data online... to be retrieved by clicking a special “browse” button from a web application. Maybe in 2008 this will become more mainstream? One of the most recent times this rumor reared its head was when during a Google song contest, an employee sang “At least around here 5 years ain’t so long overdue”... and that part of the song was overlaid with the Gdrive/ Platypus icon. This video, incidentally, has now been removed. An older mention of Gdrive was left inside “hidden” comments in a PowerPoint file reading: <<With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive ... ... relaunch of Jotspot Google acquired office web app and wiki software Jotspot in October 2006. Since then, Google has been working to integrate it into their offerings. It’s possible that in 2008, Jotspot’s wiki page editing software will become part of Google’s web apps, and perhaps replace Google Page Creator. ... Google Android Google Android, the Google-led open mobile platform (“open” as in OpenSocial, the Open Content Alliance and so on... can you see a trend?), has already been released in early form, but for the general public to see it in action you have to resort to a software emulator. Maybe in 2008, some of us may get to play around with actual phone hardware show-casing the Android operating system? It may become tough to beat the (high-usability) iPhone, except that the iPhone right now is too expensive for many of us. If some Android-driven phones will be only ~90% as good but a lot cheaper, they may find themselves a happy niche. (The kind the Windows Mobile OS might occupy if it wouldn’t suck.) ... Knol One of the most interesting recent Google announcements (“As a rule, we don’t preannounce new features.” -Eric Schmidt, 2002) was Google “Knol.” Currently in limited test mode, this mixture of About.com expert model and wiki functionality may become one of the failed Google attempts at growing communities, or a (smaller) competitor to Wikipedia. 2008 may not become the service’s success year, but – if the doors to this weirdly-named service are opened to the general public – it may become the defining year in terms of providing seed content for the site. A stable basis of articles may grow more good articles, whereas a site that seems to be abused by spammers from all sides may lead to more spam (“broken window phenomenon _style_). You may argue the basis for user-generated content is karma, not money (I help Wikipedia because they don’t suck/ rip me off), and while Google has money, their karma is sometimes flaky. ... new China tools China may be the market getting the most attention from Google next to their US home zone. In 2008, we might see even more locally optimized releases from the Google Beijing and Shanghai offices. In 2007 and before, expansion and research & development already spawned 1) a Google Input Method Editor to transliterate Pinyin/ Chinese, 2) partnerships with Tianya.cn which power social network Lai Ba and questions & answer site Wen Da*, 3) an experimental Google homepage, not the default live homepage and not officially _link_ed yet, 4) more customized Google censorship than any other country is getting, to my knowledge, including “special” versions of Google Maps, Google Books, Google Image Search, Google News and Google web search. *The Chinese “Lai ba” means “come here,” and “wen da” means “answering a question.” ... new Gmail design Screenshots of a slightly changed Gmail layout have been circulating over at the Google Operating System blog. More to come in 2008? ... Google event oneboxes and logos ... like a Google logo doodle series for the Beijing Olympic games in August 2008, or a special Olympics results onebox/ Google News segment/ event news page/ gadget. Another logo doodle for the US in November 2008 may be urging people to vote*. *Wonder if Google employees by and large are rooting for Barack Obama due to his tech-friendly message presented to them at their headquarters before? ... Google Gears Google Gears is an installation which extends the browser to allow web applications to provide offline functionality. Such as Google Reader letting you download some posts to then continue reading them even when you’re offline (I suppose some of the younger ones among us will have to look up that word in the dictionary!). Right now, Google Gears – an open source project which Google may be hoping will gain traction in the overall market as it may be neat Trojan horse to bring more power to web apps (last
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