A dozen years ago, the web started to reshape itself around major companies like Google. We can understand the genesis of today’s algorithmic arms race against the tech titans just by looking at a single character. This is all ancient tech history...

Noticing a pattern here? Paul Kedrosky, Dishwashers, and How Google Eats Its Own Tail: Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail. Identify some words that show up in profitable searches — from appliances, to...

I’m not sure Google’s new Chrome OS announcement is that big a deal, or that the eventual product that gets released will actually have that much impact, but it’s a useful milestone in marking Google’s evolution towards becoming an older company with...

Today, in a surprisingly botched announcement, Google announced Chrome, their upcoming open source web browser. The subject of a Google browser is something I’ve opined on a few times over the years, but Jason Kottke’s compiled an even more...

Theory of mind is that thing that a two-year-old lacks, which makes her think that covering her eyes means you can’t see her. It’s the thing a chimpanzee has, which makes him hide a banana behind his back, only taking bites when the other chimps...

Google’s changed a lot in the past few years, going from underselling their efforts to shamelessly promoting themselves as leaders, even when it’s leadership over initiatives that are still very tenuous or nascent. The best example to me was looking...

From eWeek’s “Upcoming” section, which I’d praised a few weeks ago, comes this interview with Java creator James Gosling. The key quote, for me: Of Google, Gosling said: “I guess part of me has almost a moral problem with, ‘What do you mean the...

I found some really interesting responses to the launch of Google Web History that are all well worth visiting. CNET’s Margaret Kane has a roundup of news on their news blog. Mark Blair’s SMOblog (which stands for “Social Media Optimization”, a term...

Many years ago, when the web was a simpler place, one of the scariest monsters conjured up to describe the privacy threats that lurked on the Internet was the DoubleClick cookie, used for tying your ad-viewing behavior on the web to your real-world...

A little while ago, my friend Michael Sippey, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing the other day, sent me a link to the new Google Voice Local Search. Now, this new services seems like a good product, and I know I’m supposed to say “Wow, cool!...

A few years ago, I wrote a post called Portalization which showed a Yahoo homepage screenshot with certain services grayed-out, as an indicator of which corresponding tools Google offered. It was a look at how Google’s feature set had expanded with...

Summary: In 2002, Google launched one of their few pay services, Google Answers. The service attracted only 800 responders in the past 4 years, and was shut down a few weeks ago. Three years ago, Matt Haughey created Ask MetaFilter, pays no money to...

The first version of Google Apps for Your Domain has been released, offering hosted applications that provide free, ad-supported services including email, chat, calendar, and simple web page creation. Each of the services is integrated with Google’s...

Now that Netscape’s more or less officially dead, it occurs to me that it might be worthwhile for Google to bankroll the Mozilla Foundation, either by donating a substantial sum or by hiring several of the browser engineers. Google’s shown a penchant...