Google Code Search

Google has a new search product focused on source code. It peeks inside tarballs and other recognized formats, allowing you to search the index by regex, license, or language. It’s pretty easy to see how many projects are using a given library (such as feedparser or magpie) and keep inventing new ways to explore software. You can access the code search engine through a GData Atom feed for easy integration wherever you choose. I find Google Code Search is easier to use than Koders, and may come in handy when looking for different ways of approaching a particular programming…

Google Gadgets on your webpage

Google “Universal” Gadgets are now available for blogs and pages around the web. A single Google gadget can now be deployed on Google Personalized Homepage, Google Desktop, Google Page Creator, or via a JavaScript embed on any editable webpage. You can add PacMan to your blog sidebar or display photos uploaded to Picassa on your MySpace page, or add a Google Reader viewer anywhere. Google’s support for webpage embeds brings the Google Reader story full circle. The team originally envisioned an RSS widget available on a blog sidebar and the project grew into much more. You can now access the…

Google personalized recommendations widget

iGoogle users can now add a Google Gadget to their homepage showing recommended searches, pages, and gadgets based on behavior across Google search properties. The new service builds on top of Google’s search history trends data by adding recommended destination pages and new homepage gadgets. The widget was written by “Beverly Y.” in Google’s New York office. I found the recommendations useful with some expected content and a few surprises thrown in as well. “Burning Man” might be geo-targetted since I live in San Francisco, but three RSS recommendations in the top 5 is right on. I was researching…

Eric Schmidt joins Apple’s board

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is now an Apple Computer board member. He joins Fred Anderson of Elevation Partners, Bill Campbell of Intuit, Millard Drexler of J. Crew, Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson, politician Al Gore, and Jerry York of Harwinton Capital. The group was already interconnected outside of the Apple boardroom. Al Gore is a Google advisor and Google invested in Current TV, Gore’s television station. Bill Campbell was an early management advisor to Larry Page and Sergey Brin and helped hire Eric Schmidt. Arthur Levinson is on Google’s Board of Directors. Are closer times ahead for these two powerful brands?…

Jason Goldman leaving Google

Jason Goldman, product manager of Google Blog Search and Blogger, is leaving Google at the end of this week. No more commutes from San Francisco, but he’ll instead be on a jet plane traveling the world for a bit before starting somewhere a bit smaller. I could have taken time off or switched to a different project, but I feel that after I’m finished doing the nothing I’ve got planned, I’m going to want to do something somewhere small. And, to be honest, I can’t really imagine being at Google but not being involved in Blogger. Jason’s departure comes shortly…

Google WiFi is live, local coupons for everyone

Google switched on its public WiFi network in Mountain View less than an hour ago, its first experiment in location-based services covering 11-miles of tech-saavy real estate in the heart of Silicon Valley. Each WiFi user must have a Google Account and Google can pinpoint your location on the network based on your current access point. Every Google account is GTalk enabled, including the just announced new GTalk client with free file transfer and voicemail. Every resident of Mountain View can now have free Internet access, email, voicemail, and much more. Google also announced its first killer app for location-based…

Google will power Fox Interactive search and advertising through 2010

Google will power search and advertising across Fox Interactive’s online properties for the next three years. The deal includes guaranteed minimum revenue share payments from Google of $900 million based on Fox Interactive Media meeting its traffic numbers and “other commitments.” Fox Interactive Media includes social network MySpace, news sites Fox News and Fox Sports, gaming network IGN as well as content distribution and advertising on local TV stations owned by Fox Broadcasting. The agreement calls for Google to power web, vertical and site specific search for MySpace.com and the majority of Fox Interactive Media properties. Google will be the…

Google launches open source project hosting

Google has just launched project hosting inside of its Google Code effort. The Google Code Project Hosting center allows any developer to create and host a new project powered by Google management and hosting tools. The new service features a reworked backend for Subversion built on top of Google’s Big Table file system. The robustness of Google’s backend will power the code repository. The site features a new issue-tracking system utilizing AJAX techniques for quick and responsive feedback for its users. The issue-tracking interface is similar to Gmail’s table layout, and allows customization through open tag fields. Developers on…

NY Times on Google’s lack of focus

Saul Hansell of The New York Times examines Google’s current product offerings and feature gaps and comes away a bit puzzled. According to quotes in the article Google goes for the wow factor with stand-alone products that do not integrate well with the work of others. Marissa Mayer says it’s a lot easier to get engineers to spend time developing new features than fill in a feature gap. Sergey Brin says he is now encouraging engineers to develop their ideas as add-ons for existing Google products instead of as stand-alone products. Former Yahoo! executive Toni Schneider is quoted saying Yahoo!…

Technorati comScore stats for May

According to comScore Media Metrix numbers cited by the San Francisco Chronicle Google Blog Search had 94,000 unique visitors in May versus 3.3 million unique visitors for Technorati in the same period. Google Blog Search has less than 3% of the number of users as Technorati under those metrics. Either that’s a typo or Google is not very competitive in both blog search or shopping comparison verticals….