New Google Books on the Way!

I'm currently writing several new books about various Google services. These include Using Google AdWords and AdSense, as well as Teach Yourself Google Analytics in 10 Minutes. There are even more books to come -- stay tuned to learn more!

Google Squared

Here's something really cool, currently in testing in Google Labs. Google Squared takes your search query and parses the key results in tabular format. It's great for comparing product features and other types of information. For example, when you enter "blu-ray dvd player" you get a comparison chart of different models, features, prices, and so forth. It's still a work in progress, but worth checking out.

Google Calendar Tasks

Here's a welcome addition to Google Calendar. You can now add to-do list tasks and track them over the web, from any PC, just as you do your calendar appointments. This brings Google Calendar up to the functionality you have with Microsoft Outlook and similar programs -- it's a one-stop site for all your time management needs!

Introduction to Google Apps

Just a quick note to let everyone know that my latest book -- and my first textbook -- is now available. Introduction to Google Apps is an introductory-level textbook that shows how to use Google's most important applications -- web search, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Presentations. Like all good textbooks, it's a four-color book with spiral binding, and comes complete with end-of-chapter exercises and the like. 

The book is 219 pp. long and sells for $70 or so, wherever textbooks are available. Click here to learn more about the book.

Google Checkout Price Increase

I love it when Google changes something big just after I send a new book about to the printer. The book in this instance is the upcoming Selling Online 2.0: Migrating from eBay to Amazon, craigslist, and Your Own Ecommerce Website. Much of the advice in the book is predicated on switching from PayPal to Google Checkout to handle online payments, and the fact that Google Checkout had considerably lower fees than PayPal (2.0% + $0.20/transaction vs. PayPal's 2.9% + $0.30/transaction). 

Until now.

Google just announced the end of their "introductory period" (which has lasted a few years) and the instatement of their new regular pricing. What are the new fees? How about 2.9% + $0.30/transaction -- identical to PayPal's fees. Plus, Google has eliminated the discount for those Google Checkout sellers also using Google AdWords. Way to go, Google.

Now, one might ask, why should a seller shift from using PayPal to using Google Checkout? Well, with the new fee structure, there is absolutely no reason at all to use Google Checkout. In fact, Google Checkout offers fewer features, accepts fewer payment options, and works in far fewer countries than does PayPal. Offering less than PayPal for the same price -- not a winning proposition.

And let's just forget the fact that this change negates much of the advice I offer in my book that hasn't even hit the shelves yet. Thank you very much, Google. 

Google Drops Applications

It's part of the overall economic slowdown, but the first time I can remember that Google has laid off workers, closed offices, and dropped some existing applications. Here's what is either immediately closed or no longer supported:

• Google Notebook
• Google Video uploads
• Google Catalogs
• Mashup Editor
• Dodgeball (a little-known social network)
• Jaiku (a little-known microblogging service)

The Death of Lively

Lively, Google's foray into virtual worlds, hasn't been a success. As such, Google just announced that it is shutting down Lively at the end of 2008. (Scratch that chapter from my Googlepedia book!) Sorry, Lively fans.

New Googlepedia Third Edition

Just released -- the new third edition of Googlepedia: The Ultimate Google Resource. Updated for all of Google's newest features, including Google Presentations, Google Gadgets, Google Gears, Android, and the Google Chrome web browser. Now available at bookstores everywhere for just $29.99 -- learn more on the Googlepedia page of my website.

New Google Docs Interfaces

Google has introduced new interfaces for the Google Spreadsheets and Google Presentations components of the Google Docs suite. The new interfaces use a standard pull-down menu system instead of the odd tabbed operation system previously in pace. Insead of selecting the Edit tab to edit your spreadsheet, for example, you simply use the pull-down Edit menu. This approach standardizes all three applications of the Google Docs suite and makes it much more like Microsoft Office in operation.

Google Chrome

Google just made one of its biggest announcements in some time. The big news is a Google web browser, dubbed Google Chrome. 

As a web browser, Chrome is similar to Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. That said, Chrome is actually more than a web browser; some have compared it to a web-based operating system, or at the very least an operating container for web-based applications. I'll explain why in a few paragraphs.

First, let's examine Chrome as a web browser. The Chrome interface resembles that of Internet Explorer and other modern web browsers, complete with tabs for different web pages. Chrome is a bit sleeker than the other browsers, however, with no menu bar, search bar, status bar, or other extraneous bits and pieces. This makes the web page bigger in the window, which isn't a bad thing. In essence, it moves the business of the browser out of the way so that you can pay more attention to the web page itself.

Where Chrome really shines, however, becomes apparent when you use it to run a web-based application, such as Google Calendar or Google Docs. Select the right options, and your application appears in a window that resembles a traditional desktop application window rather than a browser; the tabs and the toolbars fade away so that all you see is the application itself. Even better, web-based applications run much faster in Chrome than they do in competing web browsers -- more than 50 times faster than with Internet Explorer, or at least that's what Google's engineers claim.

Chrome's speed is due partly to the stripped down interface, but more likely is a result of the modern JavaScript engine used to run the browser. Chrome's engine, dubbed "V8,"  is designed to improve the performance of complex applications -- just like the cloud computing applications that Google serves up to its millions of users.

Why is Google launching its own web browser? Isn't Microsoft Explorer (or Firefox or Safari or Opera) good enough? Apparently not -- at least when it comes to working from within the browser. The folks at Google, like many users, spend much of their computing time not working with traditional applications, but rather working inside the web browser. Whether it's reading email via Gmail, checking appointments in Google Calendar, or working on documents and presentations with Google Docs, there's a lot of work that gets done inside the browser. Unfortunately, today's major browsers are based on technology originally developed more than a dozen years ago -- and that technology was designed for the process of loading traditional HTML web pages, not for running dynamic web-based applications.

Thus Google's interest in developing a new type of web browser optimized for running cloud applications. As I stated previously, Chrome is more of a application container or web-based operating system than it is a browser. To this point, Chrome doesn't compete with Internet Explorer; it competes, instead, with Microsoft Windows itself. And that is something that Microsoft ought to be worried about.