Free Office (pt 2)
As I mentioned in a post a couple weeks ago, MS Office is getting a lot of worthy challengers. Enter one of the Word-like competitors "Writely" that was mentioned. Google announced this week they bought the company (like many other projects they do), and are now updating it and will have it freely available soon. Online document writer easily integrated with Word or OpenOffice documents, available anywhere you are online along with your documents.
They are also testing out a calendar program (CL2) which should be interesting. There are currently many out there now, including Yahoo!'s, but you just know Google will do it better and have it seemlessly integrated. Though, as should be, people are concerned about privacy.
Not that it realistically couldn't be gotten other ways, but if they put it all together they could easily have a pretty good profile on you. Don your tin foil hats now. They now know
What you search for
When and where by the logs
What location you are looking at (Google Earth/Maps, personalize search page, Google Local)
What images you are looking at (Picasa, Hello, Google Video)
What you're writing about (Blogger, new Office writer)
What your schedule is (calendar)
Who you talk to (Gmail, Gtalk)
What you shop for (Froogle)
What files you are storing (Google Desktop Search, online storage)
And a plethora of other services they provide where they could find out other things about you.
Not bad for an advertising firm to know which ads to direct at you. Lets just hope they can keep the privacy concerns satisfied and the "Do No Evil" motto, cause I sure like their stuff (and it would likley be a death knell if they didn't).
Google: "We Know You."
They are also testing out a calendar program (CL2) which should be interesting. There are currently many out there now, including Yahoo!'s, but you just know Google will do it better and have it seemlessly integrated. Though, as should be, people are concerned about privacy.
Not that it realistically couldn't be gotten other ways, but if they put it all together they could easily have a pretty good profile on you. Don your tin foil hats now. They now know
What you search for
When and where by the logs
What location you are looking at (Google Earth/Maps, personalize search page, Google Local)
What images you are looking at (Picasa, Hello, Google Video)
What you're writing about (Blogger, new Office writer)
What your schedule is (calendar)
Who you talk to (Gmail, Gtalk)
What you shop for (Froogle)
What files you are storing (Google Desktop Search, online storage)
And a plethora of other services they provide where they could find out other things about you.
Not bad for an advertising firm to know which ads to direct at you. Lets just hope they can keep the privacy concerns satisfied and the "Do No Evil" motto, cause I sure like their stuff (and it would likley be a death knell if they didn't).
Google: "We Know You."
