New Google Notebook

Google launched a new improved version of Google Notebook with new features such a much slicker drag-and-drop UI to let you organize better, a trash bin for all your deleted items, and the ability to undo your last action. And now you can see your notebooks on your personalized homepage.

Google explain Google News case in Belgium

Google explain in official googleblog they did nothing wrong inof newspapers case in Belgium;
"Google News is no different than Google web search in this regard: We only ever show the headlines and a bit of text. If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the newspaper’s website."
"And after all, it’s not just users that benefit from these links but publishers do too -- because we drive huge amounts of web traffic to their sites."
"if publishers don’t want their websites to appear in search results (most do) the robots.txt standard enables them to prevent automatically the indexing of their content"

New release of Google Search Appliance

A new version of "Google Search Appliance" is available today with increased document capacity to handle(up to 30 million document) and some new features such as date and number range search. The interface is now available in 16 languages.

New version of Picasa

Google announce a new version of Picasa, Google's photo organizer; It has new features like Picasa Web Albums that lets upload and share photos online. Google say also they've fixed a whole bunch of things so Picasa can work better.

Historian Google

Google News added a new feature: Google News Archives provides copies of articles, journals and news stories from international news sources dating back to 200 years.

"In addition to finding the most relevant articles for your query, you can get an historical overview of the results by browsing an automatically created timeline. The archive search results include articles about an incredibly wide variety of topics, people and events over the last 200 years or so" History as it unfolds on Googleblog.

happy photoblogging!

that what's end a bloggerblog post that announce they're fixing some image uploading problems, they’ve just released an additional change on the Blogger beta site to show thumbnails of photos after the upload
In my opinion the best way is to use firefox, it's possible with it to copy/past photos directly on the post without any upload
By the way, while reading the notes of the new bloggerblog "Known Issues for Blogger in Beta";
it seems that beta blogger have a lot of problems with Internet Explorer so they say: "The best workaround is to simply use Firefox".

New blog for Blogger in Beta

The Blogger blog announce today a new blog as response for users' interrogations about the beta blogger:
"We’re addressing these questions with today’s launch of Known Issues for Blogger in Beta, a new blog that will contain fresh information about the status of issues and bugs that affect you."
The post explain also the various other communication channels that exist between the users and the Blogger Team:
Support form
Blogger Status
Blogger Buzz the blog
Blogger Help Group

Google's rivals

Google's rivals
Search under 'Google, competitor.' The list of prospective rivals grows longer every day. How these various clashes play out will have major consequences for small businesses.

Microsoft
Google's free productivity applications (Gmail, Writely, and Google Spreadsheets) will offer ad-supported alternatives to Outlook, Word, and Excel. Can a free Google version of PowerPoint be far behind? Compelling scenario: Small businesses get free software. Google gets a fresh source of revenues. Microsoft's Live programs are reduced to also-rans in the brave new world of software as a service.

Yahoo
This is a Coke-Pepsi rivalry. Google currently dominates the $9.5 billion search-term ad market, with a 60% share to Yahoo's 30%. But the two giants are duking it out in the ad-supported free software market, with competing e-mail, instant-messaging, blogging, and mapping services. Good news for small business: The rivalry should keep service quality up and prices down.

Craigslist and EBAY
Many small Internet vendors would welcome a viable alternative to eBay. Hence the buzz over Google's new online payment program called Checkout. Meanwhile, Google's new Base service is user friendly and appears well suited for posting classified ads. Look out, Craigslist!

Everyone else
Google's experiments in Internet telephony threaten Vonage, Verizon, and Skype. Its acquisition of dMark Broadcasting, an online broker of advertising airtime, threatens traditional ad agencies. Last year Google's hometown of Mountain View, Calif., accepted the company's offer to wire the entire town for Wi-Fi, an obvious boon for local businesses. Expect communities nationwide to follow suit. Main Street will be the clear winner as these various skirmishes result in better and cheaper services.

(from: money.cnn.com)

Site optimization by Google Analytics

A post on Google analytics blog give advices on site optimization in four steps using the data available in Google Analytics.

Have fun with Google !

Philipp Lenssen author of the blog "Google Blogoscoped ", wrote a post in googleblog about his book "55 Ways to Have Fun With Google".
In the book, he present "Google-related games, cartoons, oddities, tips, stories and everything else that’s fun".
The book is available here in PDF.