dailylicious!
Something about green and white with communication apps.
Screenshot by Yoga Nandiwardhana
It was almost exactly 19 months ago that I laid down the proverbial writer’s pen and picked up the less proverbial pen for writing checks. It has been an amazing experience getting a fund up and running, learning, and ultimately, making a lot of wonderful investments. I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’ve decided to dive deeper by joining Google Ventures as a general partner.
Just as I took my time in deciding to switch careers a year-and-a-half ago, I’ve been talking with the Google Ventures team for a few months now. After getting to know the partners and hearing the vision for the fund laid out by managing partner Bill Maris, it became clear that this would ultimately be a perfect fit.
Google Ventures sits in a truly unique space within the venture capital industry. They have the resources to make investments at any stage, but more importantly, they have the talent and knowledge required to do so. The partnership is brimming with experience when it comes to starting companies, building products, and scaling.
Gmail for iOS gets an update which links the app directly to other Google apps, keeping user navigations within the Google sandbox. There’s a reason why the iOS versions of Google’s apps are better on iOS than Android.
Google doesn’t need to get iOS users to switch to Android. Google needs to make its iOS apps really compelling, far better than competing apps to get iOS users to use them, and when that threshold has been crossed, link them all up to keep everything inside Google.
The embrace, extend, extinguish principle is well and truly in effect.
Google Now is finally available on iOS through Google app update, but it’s not yet available in Indonesia apparently.
Google says battery will power the Glass for one full day of typical use. So, six to eight hours of actual active use?
the Google – Facebook war is sure to be more vicious than the Google – Apple war because Google and Facebook have the same customers: advertisers. Users are their currency, and Facebook is about to rob the bank.
Apple’s not the only company having trouble depicting images of Earth in its map application. Google Earth has some pretty shocking photos of the surface of the planet as well, it’s as if Salvador Dali paid a visit to Mountain View and waved his magic brush around.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt yesterday said to ask Apple about the availability of Google Now on iOS, citing Apple’s policy to review apps prior to publication on the App Store. Schmidt’s statement implies that the app is indeed waiting in review, when in fact Google hasn’t even submitted the app for review. Either Schmidt didn’t know that his company hasn’t sent the app to Apple or he was deflecting the question for obvious reasons. Both Apple and Google gave statements to CNet saying that Google Now has yet to be submitted to the App Store.
While Google now is tied to Search, according to Rene Ritchie of iMore, a source from Google informed him that the Google Search app for iOS and Google Now will be two separate apps as Google Now will not come as an update to the existing mobile app.
Google officially announced Keep yesterday through a blog post. Keep is Google’s note-taking app that was briefly revealed earlier this week. The Android app lets you store text, links, audio notes, images, and check lists and have it synchronized with Google Drive. You can make entries on the web or on the app. Google plans to roll out this ability directly on Drive as well. No official word yet on whether this will be available for iOS although just about all of Google’s mobile apps can be found on the App Store
Interestingly, Google had previously released a similar tool called Google Notebook for desktop browsers but it was shut down in July 2012.
Chris Wetherell is one if the original team members at Google who created Google Reader. Yesterday the company announced that it will discontinue the highly popular app. Wetherell spoke with Om Malik about the project which was never meant to go ahead in the first place.
Since then it has become a favorite among news junkies and bloggers but Google is setting its sights elsewhere. Google+ to be precise. And to have Reader, Current, and G+ running concurrently, delivering similar service is perhaps seen as inefficient.
