Google | Technology Blog

Gmail Sign In

January 3rd, 2009

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One of the main questions for privacy and security interested Gmail users is whether they should stay signed in or log out whenever they leave the Gmail website. A Gmail Sign In works for quite some time until the user signs out when leaving the website.

The main problem that privacy interested users have is that Google will recognize them when they use other Google services especially Google Search which can be used to create extensive user profiles. This becomes more difficulty if the user is not signed into a Google service as Google can only rely on cookies or IPs to identify users.

The sign in link is shown in the upper right corner if the user is not signed in a Google service and the mail of the user if the user is still signed in.

GoogleUpdate.exe

December 30th, 2008

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Observant computer users might discover the process googleupdate.exe running on their computer system after installing a software product by Google. This can be the new Google Chrome web browser, Google Picasa or many other Google products that are installed locally. The process googleupdate.exe will run automatically in the background and check Google servers frequently for software updates.

Googleupdate.exe uses about 1.6 Megabytes of computer memory while running. This might not be much on computer systems that have Gigabytes of computer memory but can make a difference on low end systems. There is however another aspect that requires some attention. Googleupdate.exe will send data to the Google server whenever it checks for updates.

This data includes a unique ID number, languages, operating systems, version numbers and other install or update related details. Disabling the googleupdate.exe process is thankfully not complicated. The process can easily be killed at any time and will not appear again in the process list during that session.

The reason people love (and should love) Google so much

December 19th, 2008

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I’ve been thinking a bit about the history of the internet, and one important point I deduced was how important Google was to this all. Many-many people love Google, which usually means a lot hate it or dislike it too, but everyone should be thankful for what they have done.

You’re probably thinking that I’m a Gmail maniac, or I use Google Maps too much, but this isn’t the case. The reason Google should be thought of highly is that it made (and makes) everyone question the quality of everything, and taught everyone that even the strongest product can be beaten with the right attitude/tools. It first challenged Altavista and other search engines and won. It then built the best Email app ever, made it completely free and gave people masses of storage.

During this period it “Googleized” all its rivals, meaning Yahoo, Microsoft and smaller companies started to act the same way, thinking more community-oriented thoughts and developing their own stuff to the same standard.

I think most of the Twitter phenomenon is because of Google too. Not that they have anything in common, but the same thing is happening here. First there was Twitter, a great idea. Then others came and created Pownce, Plurk, and loads of other, basically identical services. This is great since it guves us variety, and they push each other to do better and better.

Desktop RSS Reader Newzie

November 25th, 2008

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Switching from Google Reader to another RSS reader was no easy task. Google Reader provides a very good feed reading experience that is hard to top. The major problem I was facing with Google Reader was not truly related to that RSS reader alone but more to the way the account data was handled by Google.

I usually fired up Google Reader and kept it open all the time to read new RSS feeds. The problem with that approach was that this meant that I was always logged into my Google account. The Google account was used for other Google services as well. Having read about Gmail and Google vulnerabilities before I decided that it would be best to move from Google Reader to another client to prevent that the account data would fall into the wrong hands. Yes, the likelihood was not very high but the chance existed.

Newzie was one of the first RSS readers that I evaluated and I immediately liked it. It was easy to import the opml file from Google Reader into Newzie so that all of the subscribed feeds would be available in the new RSS reader as well.

Google Multi-Column View

November 14th, 2008

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Google Multi-Column View is a Greasemonkey script that can display Google search results in two or three different columns instead of the default display. Doing that can be extremely useful for users with widescreen monitors who want to use all of the screen estate when working with Google. A test on a 1920×1200 LCD monitor revealed that about 30 search engine entries can be displayed on the screen at once in three column mode which is three times as much as the ten results that are displayed by default.

The Greasemonkey script requires the Greasemonkey extension when using Firefox. Google Chrome users can read the Google Chrome Greasemonkey article for pointers on how to add the script to their browser while Opera users can head over to the Greasemonkey in Opera article to do the same.

The installation of the Greasemonkey script should not pose any problems. Firefox users do not have to restart the browser, the new script will automatically work in new tabs and after reloading existing ones.

Google Reader Automatically Translates Feeds

November 11th, 2008

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Automatic RSS news feed translation is a feature that might come in handy for numerous users of Google Reader. It is not uncommon to stumble upon a truly great website in another language that you might understand a bit or even not all at all. It is still possible to understand what is being said by using a translation service like Google Translate or using a direct approach and use menus, images or links to understand what it is all about.

But when it comes to feeds no such thing existed. You could visit the website whenever a new feed would be published, copy the url and paste it into some translation service but that was not very practicable especially for large websites with lots of news updates.

The Google Reader team implemented Google Translate into Google Reader which is now available for anyone to use. That should get rid of most of the hassle. It’s actually pretty easy and straightforward to use. Lets take the Genbeta feed for instance. Genbeta is a Spanish news site that covers Internet news. They sometimes have great news stories which anyone who does not speak Spanish or a related language does not understand. So it was all about the links and titles that they posted until now.