After acquiring Writely, everyone knew that google is rolling out its own Web Office. Then came Google Spreadsheets which is really a great tool so far but still needs improvements if comparing to Microsoft Office or Open Office.
Now, Google has combined both, writely and spreadsheets into one application named Google Docs. The google version of writely has following features according to ajaxian:

• Use our online editor to format documents, spell-check and more.
• Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text.
• Download documents to your desktop as Word, PDF and more.
• View your documents’ revision history and roll back to any version.
• Invite others to share your documents by e-mail address.
• Edit documents online with whomever you choose.
• Publish documents online to the world, or to just who you choose.
• Post your documents to your blog.

Here we see the Google suite slowly getting together.

But wait, there is one more highly noticeable something on the internet. Yes, I'm talking about ZOHO Virtual Office. It sure will be a challange to Google in future. You can access it at Zohox.com or ZohoVO.com. Zoho has a big range of web solutions along with the office suite. It already has its Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet and Zoho Show(an online presentation tool). Sure deserves attention.

As reported by me on my previous post, Google and YouTube were talking about an acquisition deal for about $1.6 - $2 billion.
The deal has been done and confirmed a few moments ago. Google has acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion. Very few of us know that YouTube just started in 2005 with two guys as a core team. This is the largest deal google has made yet for an acquisition.

Both companies have approved the deal, which should officially close in the fourth quarter. YouTube’s 65 employees will remain with the company at YouTube’s San Bruno headquarters.

Details are also emerging that Yahoo was in the bidding war until very close to the end.

Google is hosting a conference call and webcast to discuss the deal. It is just starting now. You can hear it live at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html. If you miss it live, a replay of the call will be available until midnight Monday, October 16 at 888-203-1112 domestically and 719-457-0820 internationally. Confirmation code for the replay is 2260624.

What Google may be planning to do with YouTube?

• To integrate its AdSense for video in YouTube as its user exposer would be perfect for google.
• To earn lots of benefit from YouTube's largest Video database for search and all.
• To benefit from YouTube's great new technology to auto recognise video wheather its copyrighted or not.
• To Enjoy its popularity as Google video has made its biggest rival a part of history now.

The way to go Google... keep going

Rumors are, Google is talking to YouTube(the most popular video sharing site) for a buyout, according to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. The price? $1.6 to $2 billion according to his sources. And, if rumors are not just rumors, it will be a huge deal. However, the deal is not final yet.


Let's talk about some aspects of it.
Definitely google video is lagging behind YouTube in number of customers and the video database size.
The cost is not too much for something like Google Inc. and alone the number of customers YouTube has, is worth its cost.
Google can earn more bucks by its video ads program alone on this huge database and number of users.
Now, some negative aspects.
Google folks have to be aware of the fact that the minute they buy YouTube, they are going to have to deal with lawsuits by truckloads, which could cost them money, but more importantly distract them from their core business. Anti youtube lobby is waiting for youtube to be bought and than file a suit against that big pcoket company. The company breaks lots of copyrights.

you can read detailed story on a wall street journal article by Kevin J. Delaney.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks about a service which can give the probability of the accuracy of statements made by politicians, among other things. From the Reuters article, Schmidt says: "We (at Google) are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability." Can Google's 'truth predictor' bring an end to sound bites and one-liners? I'm not holding my breath...

will Google be doing this? Sure it can.

According to Om Malik,

The Internets are all chattering about Powerset, a new natural language search start-up, that plans to out-Google, Google. There are a bunch of varied opinions about this company, some good, and most not so good. Danny Sullivan calls it overhyped.

What do you think?

For developers, Google releases a Code Search like Krugle or Koders. It was expected from a long time as google has the biggest database of code directories. For now, it looks like it is following things what Krugle or Koders have been doing. The source codes it searches in are definitely the huge open source collections available on the internet like SourceForge, Freshmeat and many others.
To search, you need to use Regular Expressions which are better described here.

Google has just added a "/movies?" to its robots.txt file which means they might be cooking something next like a movies search. Following this fact, I tried looking up google.com/movies which returned a movie search page, a location based movie search. You can enter your zip code and search for local showtimes for your movie.

Gadgets which google provided for its personalised homepage, now are open for your web pages. All you need to do is simply find a gadget in the Gadgets directory and copy a small snippet of code onto your website.
Also, Google has extended its Ajax Search API and now, its easier to put a google ajax search on your page with lots of features like Video Bar , Map Search, Search for Blogger etc.

eBay has barred its users from employing Google Checkout on its site.
eBay’s new Acceptable Payments Policy states “sellers may not request payment through online payment methods not specifically permitted in this policy,” and the document does not specify that Google Checkout is an acceptable payment method.
The reason behind this? as it looks obvious to me, the reason is Ebay's own PayPal. Google Checkout was rumored as a "PayPal Killer". And, it is the one greatest ever competitor to PayPal.

There are over held a dozen requirements that Ebay requires of payment methods in order to get Ebay approval, including a track record of providing safe and reliable financial banking.

So, no Google Checkout on Ebay now, or maybe ever....