Slashdot Mirror
Google Acquires Picasa, Improves Blogging Tools
clandestine writes "It appears that our lovable search engine has again expanded its horizons - the internet wasn't enough; now you can search and organize your own pictures. I don't know about you, but I use Google for nearly everything; heck, I found links about their acquisition of Picasa through Google News! Any slashdotters going to benefit from this tech, or already do? And yes, the addition of Picasa to their arsenal is a couple of days old, but they just started linking them on the homepage today."
Seems like Google is expanding to more areas of our internet lives... Would this be another Microsoft coming?
Yet a faster way to find pr0n... thanks google!
'Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes, aaarrrrrrrr!' -- Minsc
This might be awesome, or it might not. I'm not overly impressed with Google's web picture search, so I'm not gonna hold my breath on this one. Their forte is search of text, and sure, you can put a million keywords or a clever description on each picture, but that doesn't really help me. I want to be able to sketch a rough version of the picture and have the system find all images which match it. Or how about identification of individual people? So that I can outline a section of a given picture and it'll find all other pictures which contain a similar section (AKA a given person).
Then I'll get excited...
~i = an imaginary being~
A: When they go public. :-/
How many of you (probably would have to be not-so-wet behind the ears) have joined a truly excellent company, gotten your hopes up that "This is the company to last the rest of my career!" -- it's that good -- only to watch it go psycho when the board decides to take it public?
No, the madness doesn't happen overnight. You slowly begin hearing about the symptoms as the pressure begins... "But it's the end of the month! This (shit) has to ship!", etc.
Sad, but true and (by my experience) inevitable. I wish there were no rules which forced a company to commit what is essentially "fiscal lobotomy".
When microsoft "expands" we all bitch and whine, but then google goes out and devours companies and services, and its suddenly "cute".
It is because:
There was other point - you don't trust your data to Google. But since introduction of GMail this is no more true
I think its a classic example of building your business around your strength - the searching capability.
It shouldnt come across as a surprise that google wants to build components/lines of business around their core strength - be it news, images, blogs or whatever else.
Though what they do need to watch out for is the acceptance, usability and and value provided by these tools in the long run (~5 years). We have all seen numerous examples of companies that had a killer product, but failed to replicate that success elsewhere.
Like someone else mentioned, their image searching capabilities aren't as desirable currently. I haven't been so impressed with google groups yet (though I've heard that's going to be revamped as well). And then there's news and email in beta... so yes, they do have a lot on their plate, and given the poor run of tech industry at the stock market, all eyes will be on them!
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Has anyone downloaded and installed Picasa? As part of the install I get a ZoneAlarm alert saying sp7zFh5.exe is trying to use Picasa to access the internet.
I think it is questionable coding practice to have obscurely named subprocesses running around wanting to get to the net.
(This sig intentionally left blank)
"With the IPO, Google will have huge pockets. This could put Google in the market to buy a much larger player, such as AskJeeves or even AOL," he said.
I don't think the person who wrote this really understands Google's business. Google for the most part has been buying up innovative technologies which require relativley low overhead to run or integrate. I don't view AskJeeves as innovative, and don't view AOL as low overhead by any means.
I know this is nitpicking a small relativly not important part of the article, but it lept out at me as a "huh?" section.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Am I the only one who uses Google as a quick spellchecker?
--- Ban humanity.
Google's usefulness is also being expanded by third party developers using their APIs to develop kitschy hits such as Google Fight and Googlism. But there are useful apps too... A recent release is Copyscape which uses Google to find people who have plagiarized your web content. It's from the same guys as Google Alert and works like magic. I reckon it won't be long (after the IPO?) before Google expand their APIs a lot further, to make image, news and group searching available to third party apps. Then things will get really interesting.
Does it concern anyone else that Google is going the way of Yahoo? Trying to become the end-all-be-all of web services seems a sure way to make all your offerings mediocre at best.
Back in 1997, Yahoo was the cool kid on the block, and was both buying and building every feature under the sun. People lapped it up, and thought it was wonderful to have all their internet needs under one umbrella. Then, reality set it. Yahoo stopped enhancing and in some cases (Yahoo Groups) even maintaining the services. Quality has deteriorated, and the once proud Yahoo brand had withered and crumbled into what is now the K-Mart of the internet.
I guess Google wants to be the Wal-Mart.
Please bid on this Karmann Ghia! Please pleas
---------------
---------------
-Adam