Google

Google takes on Microsoft and Mozilla with new Chrome browser - launching today!

By Loz Blain

03:50 September 2, 2008 PDT

September 2, 2008 Google-philes will be delighted to find out that the company has officially confirmed it's working on a completely new Web browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Firefox. Because Google Chrome is a completely new product, and not an incremental update of an existing piece of software, it is able to completely re-conceive the web browsing experience - and as a result, we can expect some very cool new features out of it. Oh, and Chrome will be completely open-source. Read More

Pedal power delivers clean water to the developing world

By Emily Clark

00:00 April 9, 2008 PDT

April 9, 2008 A staggering 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water, with an estimated 5,000 children per day dying from water-related diseases. In response to this global crisis, a group of inventors from the US developed the innovative and highly commendable Aquaduct Mobile Filtration Vehicle - a tricycle which uses pedal power to both transport and filter clean drinking water. Read More

Google Lunar X PRIZE announces first ten teams

By Emily Clark

22:35 March 4, 2008 PST

March 5, 2008 In September 2007 the X PRIZE Foundation announced a $30million prize purse for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the moon. Now the Foundation has released details of the first ten teams to register for this amazing space race. Read More

Odyssey Moon completes Lunar X PRIZE registration

By Emily Clark

17:56 December 11, 2007 PST

December 12, 2007 Odyssey Moon has become the first team to complete registration for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, unveiling its plans for a history making private robotic mission to reach the surface of the Moon with a small robotic lander designed to deliver scientific, exploration and commercial payloads. Read More

Multi-national alliance announces open platform for mobile devices

By Darren Quick

23:53 November 5, 2007 PST

November 6, 2007 Some of the technology world’s biggest names have joined forces to announce the development of Android, the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. Android holds the promise of unprecedented benefits for consumers, developers and manufacturers of mobile services and devices by providing developers with a new level of openness that enables them to work more collaboratively and accelerate the pace at which new and compelling mobile services are made available to consumers. Read More

$30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE

By Emily Clark

06:55 September 17, 2007 PDT

September 17, 2007 The prize that saw the world's first private spaceship reach beyond the Earth's atmosphere in 2004 is headed for the moon. The X PRIZE Foundation and internet giant Google are offering a US$30 million prize purse in the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a competition to land a privately funded robotic rover on the Moon by 2012. Read More

Google Local Search now available in BMW navigation systems

By Loz Blain

07:44 September 4, 2007 PDT

September 4, 2007 BMW has announced it’s enriching its ConnectedDrive in-car navigation system with a direct hookup to Google's Local Search. The console on your Beemer will soon be a virtual Yellow Pages that lets you search for businesses, restaurants and places of interest, then select one and have it automatically entered into your GPS nav system as a destination. Read More

Google Earth moves to become Google Universe

By Loz Blain

20:38 August 23, 2007 PDT

August 24, 2007 The world is not enough for Google Earth. The groundbreaking free application already provides satellite photos, maps, street-level photos and a vast range of data overlays for most of the planet, and its latest incarnation looks to the heavens as well. A fantastic resource for backyard astronomers, the new Sky module lets users explore the planets, stars, constellations and galaxies of the night sky, including high resolution highlights from the Hubble Space Telescope and useful information overlays. Read More

The largest commercial photovoltaic system in the United States?

By Mike Hanlon

June 28, 2007 This aerial image of Google’s corporate headquarters in Mountain View turned up in a press release this morning, pointing out that the 1.6 MW Google Solar "Campus" is now the largest commercial photovoltaic system in the United States. Take a look at the image in higher res and see if you had the same reaction we did. Google doesn’t smelt aluminum, cast large metal objects or refine petroleum – it’s activities are confined to a bunch of people quietly working away at computers. Recognising that Planet Earth is drowning in its own excrement no longer needs a PhD or an election and this is the largest photovoltaic system in the whole U.S.A.? It’s just not that big! Read More

Your desktop on any PC: the web application revolution

By Loz Blain

June 21, 2007 Why do we still store all our applications and data on our local PCs? It ties us to our machines, leaves our files vulnerable, and frankly it's such a last-millennium way to do things. Thankfully, since the advent of broadband, companies are starting to take real steps toward a world where accessing anything on your hard-drive will be as versatile as checking your webmail. Disk storage, applications, processing - everything could eventually be moved off your local PC, which would become merely a display terminal - and the model holds a lot of advantages. Gizmag takes a look at where we're at with the Web Application revolution. Read More

Google becomes the world’s most valuable brand

By Mike Hanlon

June 4, 2007 We are all familiar with brands and we have all developed long term relationships with these consistent names. Every day we all make choices about which brands we interact with and each of us has our own relationship with the brands we choose – creating a consistent and ultimately worthwhile relationship with the client/customer is an incredibly complex process. Every interaction with the brand helps to define our view - is it reliable, is it the best, does it reflect who I am? Put all those thoughts together and you vaguely define the incredibly complex brand organism. The second annual BRANDZ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands ranking was announced recently and the world has a new heavyweight champion. As a commercial entity, the number one spot is the holy grail, and the new champion is, astoundingly, Google. Millward Brown’s unofficial world championship ranking for brands ascribes Google a brand value of US$66 billion, 50% more than Coca Cola and double that of Toyota, McDonald’s, Nokia or American Express. The rise to the top of the heap took less than a decade with the final ascent seeing Google rocket past General Electric (founded 1878 - US$62 billion), Microsoft (1975 - US$55 billion) and Coca-Cola (1885 - US$44 billion). A free summary of the report is available for download ... Read More

Google street view: 360 degree views from any point on the map.

By Loz Blain

May 30, 2007 You've got to hand it to Google, they keep coming out with big ideas and amazing us with great execution. Our jaws dropped this morning with the release of Street View, an immersive addition to Google Earth and Google Maps that lets you virtually walk around a number of major U.S. cities with a 360 degree view every ten metres or so down each street. Thanks Google, you just saved me a fortune in travel. Read More

Google to build largest US Corporate Solar Installation

By Mike Hanlon

October 18, 2006 In a move sure to win it some brownie points on the corporate responsibility scale, Google is constructing a solar electricity system which will become the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the United States. The 1.6 megawatt

project will provide enough green energy to supply 1,000 average California homes using rooftop and parking-lot panels. The project will involve 9,212 solar panels provided by Sharp Electronics. A majority will be placed on the rooftops of some of the buildings in the Googleplex (pictured) and others will provide shaded parking as part of newly constructed solar panel support structures on existing Google parking lots. The solar energy will be used to power several of Google's Mountain View office facilities. Read More

VW and Google team to explore future vehicle navigation systems

By Mike Hanlon

February 4, 2006 The next battleground in the ongoing war for humanity’s digital future emerged this week – first it was business, then the home, and now the attention of the giants has focussed clearly on the automobile. Earlier this week Fiat and Microsoft announced their jointly-developed automotive telematics system Blue&Me would launch at the 2006 Geneva Motorshow later this month. Now VW and Google have announced their collaboration in building an in-car communication and entertainment system and have released significantly more detail. Volkswagen, Google, and graphics chipmaker, nVidia, are working on an in-car navigation map system and display that is 3-dimensional and more realistic than anything currently available. Users will instinctively recognize their location in relation to the surrounding topography, especially in urban areas that are depicted with depth and accurate size relationships between buildings and roads. The group is also working with the likes of Sun Microsystems and Splashpower on other advancements, including automatic personalized content updates for its vehicle navigation systems, and a wireless in-car charging system for handhelds. Read More

Google’s billion dollar brand in peril?

By Mike Hanlon

January 6, 2006 What do the words heroin, aspirin, windsurfer, trampoline, nylon, escalator, biro, gramophone, thermos, kerosene, laser, linoleum and frisbee all have in common? They all began life as proprietary brand names but lost their registered trademark protection because they became so successful that they drifted into common usage and became generic. Dr Max Sutherland discusses the problems of generitization and the implications for Google – a brand that inside a decade has become so hyper-successful that it is now used as a verb in every language. Read More