Google Desktop widgets can now be embedded in your iGoogle personal start page. This new functionality adds OS-level functionality such as CPU utilization, currently playing tracks in iTunes, or a battery indicator inside a Web interface. Google Desktop 5.5 is now available in a widget-only version to bridge these two worlds.
Google introduced a new advertising unit tonight: Google Gadgets. This new form of rich content is available everywhere AdWords image ads are currently served, and includes a completely new widget analytics system.
In this post I'll outline different ways you can take advantage of Google's architecture to serve your widget content to the world. I'll cover various depths of integration and their branding and licensing issues.
Google is directly investing in small companies to expand the popularity of its iGoogle product. Google Gadget Ventures grants popular Google gadgets $5,000 for further development. Popular widget businesses are eligible for $100,000 in seed capital with Google taking an equity stake in each company. Google expects to invest $700,000 or more in third-party widget development over the next year. About 9% of Google's gadget directory would be eligible for the grant consideration based on the Google Gadget pageview analysis I last conducted in April. How it works A gadget must have at least 250,000 gadget views per week to...
Google's search result ranking algorithm received a major upgrade yesterday, incorporating its vertical search properties directly in the main search result page. The new design, Universal Search, integrates results from specialized Google verticals such as blogs, images, news, maps, and video. Results we've previously expected to find inside of a OneBox now appear anywhere in the users' result listings thanks to rewritten ranking and content examination algorithms. Examining vertical search Google and other large search engines crawl the worldwide web for new information every minute of every day. The modern web consists of billions of documents expressed in multiple formats...
Webmasters will soon be able to auction off widget space on their sites and blogs managed and marketed by advertising powerhouse Google. Advertisers will produce a Google Gadget in standard IAB unit sizes for distribution across the Google network at CPC or CPM billing rates. Google will bolster its current Google Analytics package to support better tracking paid and free widget campaigns in this sub-page and asynchronous pageload environment. The Google Gadget advertising beta program was publicly announced during a marketing summit for the automotive industry according to Online Media Daily. By the end of 2007 Google will offer its...
Google Reader finally has its first official API. Any developer in the world can request the entire history of a web feed from Google's geo-distributed server cloud in a normalized response for inclusion in their websites or products. I've been hoping for such an API since I first deconstructed the Google Reader backend in December 2005. Most users will likely interact with the Google AJAX Feed API through a JavaScript library included on their site or a pre-configured badge generated on the Google site. The Feed API wrapper is part of a larger effort by Google to extend its search...
Gadget platforms have many levels of integration and customization beyond a metadata wrapper and some markup. Beginners and tinkerers might stick to the basics, but some gadget authors go beyond the plain essentials and add support for multiple languages, tabbed views, and specify any requirements a gadget may expect. In yesterday's post I provided an overview of the Google Gadgets ecosystem, detailing the types of content and authors producing Google universal gadgets. Today I'll dive into developer features and observed implementations. Language support Content types Gadget height Top built-in libraries Gadgets produced by Google Extra requirements Summary Language support Google...
Last week the Google Gadgets team released page view numbers for gadgets in its directory, giving outsiders their glimpse of gadget activity across Google Personalized Homepage, Google Desktop, and syndicated throughout the web through Google Gadgets For Your Page. Over the weekend I crawled the entire Google Gadget directory, collecting information about every listed gadget to create a better and more complete understanding of a widget/gadget ecosystem including its level of health, geographic diversity of authors and supported users, popular categories, and some of the most popular gadget programming methods (just to name a few). In this post I'll share...
Google will host a conference this summer focused on building scalable websites. The one-day conference takes place on Saturday, June 23, at the Google offices in Seattle, home to Google Webmaster Tools, Google Talk, and a few other teams. The conference organizers are currently accepting applications for 45-minute talks, and hopefully we'll be able to learn a little more about concepts behind MapReduce, Bigtable and some large-scale data management issues from the Google staff. Registration is not yet open, and it's unclear whether the conference will be held in the downtown sales office or the engineering office in Kirkland, so...
Niall Kennedy is a web technologist in San Francisco, California in the United States. I am very interested in the world of... MORE »