Early adopters everywhere were quick to download Google Chrome -- an open source browser, based on the WebKit rendering engine. After some initial good-natured pranks about the quirks of the new browser, people are suddenly acting cautious. A number of personal blogs and media outlets are expressing concern about Chrome's end-user license agreement (EULA).
Google announced that its URL index has reached one trillion entries, eight years after passing the one billion mark. Each of the entries represents a unique URL, and there are 150 of those in Google's index for every living person on the planet.
Google released its own version of a free online encyclopedia. Currently, Wikipedia is the undisputed leader in collaboratively edited content, with 2,400,000 articles in the largest English edition, and scoring tens of millions unique visitors every month. Google's Knol will rely on experts in specific fields to edit articles, rather than open the process to the anonymous wide public.
Advertising from Google will be displayed alongside Yahoo! search results, after the two companies reached an agreement for shared use of AdSense technology. The non-exclusive advertising agreement was announced shortly after Yahoo! ended talks with Microsoft over possible investment and acquisitions by the software giant.
Dreamhost, an established web hosting provider, recommended to their clients to consider using Google's webmail interface over their own email offerings. The reason cited was that support requests for email problems constituted the majority of all support calls and messages. The web hosting company will continue to run its own email servers and offer their own service to clients.
Google will allow web developers to load popular JavaScript libraries for their web apps from the company's global server network. Currently the following frameworks are supported: jQuery, Prototype, script.aculo.us, MooTools, and dojo; this selection covers the most popular JavaScript libraries.
Google overtook Yahoo as the most popular online destination in the USA, according to the latest statistics by comScore. 141 million Americans visited Google online properties in April, compared to 140.6 million visitors for Yahoo. The search engine giants are followed by Microsoft's network of websites, with 121.2 million visitors, and AOL, which attracted 111.2 million people.
If you are in the market for a solid state drive (SSD), you might as well hurry up, because Google has started buying. Unnamed sources are reporting that the search engine giant has ordered from Intel the first batches of SSDs for use in the company's HQ.
Today is Earth Day, and the occasion is perfect to remind everyone that you can do your part to keep the planet nice and clean by choosing the right "green" hosting provider.
A web server, like any electrical appliance, is an indirect source of pollution. Rising eco-awareness is making many web hosting companies to go green and offer environment-friendly services to their customers. Some providers are completely powered by renewable energy sources that they own and operate, like solar and wind. Others buy electricity that is generated by utilities that offer a “green” option of electricity, generated through solar, wind, bio mass, or hydroelectric. Still others do not use electricity from alternative sources directly, but instead purchase credits that offset their carbon footprint through things like investment in renewable resource research or the planting of acres of trees.
According to a post in Google's Webmaster Central Blog, the company is experimenting with ways to start crawling content that is accessible via HTML forms. This will add to Google's index some of the content that was previously located in the "Deep Web," beyond the crawling capabilities of current spiders. According to estimates, tens of thousands terabytes of data are located in the Deep Web.
