Google Spreadsheet for Small Business

Google is the poor man’s software. In the latest fact, Google has started free online spreadsheet feature.

Targetted users of this spreadsheet include:

1. Soccer moms
2. Little league baseball coaches
3. Church bazaar organizers
4. College students
5. Small businesses of less than 10 employees

This spreadsheet is not fortune for big companies, so is this spreadsheet making competition with Microsoft. Now Google is continuing to prove itself in 7-kind of office desktop software, which is likely to make immediate impact on source of income of Microsoft.
Analysts say that it will not work for big corporate sector and it will not be able to take over the customers of Microsoft but certainly, it will find its own audience.

Peter O’Kelly, an analyst for the Burton Group said,

I don’t think a Web-centric spreadsheet offering from Google will be a successful direct competitor to Excel or other traditional spreadsheet tools.

An analyst say that the real benefit of Google Spreadsheet is that reaches to all advertisers and generate almost Google’s revenues.

Joe Wilcox, a Jupiter analyst said,

Google may enjoy playing with Microsoft’s mind.

We can only expect that small companies will adopt the spreadsheets. This would be good to have occasional need of Web-based product.

Google to expand operations in Hyderabad

Andhra Pradesh government has decided to allot 20 acres of land on the city outskirts to Google for expanding its operations.

The land will be allotted in Kokapet village.
A Memorandum of Understanding was signed at Santa Clara in US by Andhra Pradesh officials and senior executives of Google in the presence of visiting Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.
A statement from the chief minister's office said the MoU was signed by Shailendra Kumar Joshi, secretary to the government, Information Technology and communications department, and Roy Gilbert, director online sales and operations, Google.
In Hyderabad, Google has the second largest operations in India, and is home to engineering, online sales and service, information systems, human resources and other support functions.
Google has about 1,088 employees operating from a leased facility.
The company is keen to expand its operations here by ramping up the employee strength to over 4,000 and constructing a fully owned techno complex.
Google is a public and profit-making company focused on search services. Founded in 1998, the company employs more than 10,000 people worldwide.
At the end of 2006, Google had global revenues of over $10,604.92 million, with market capitalization of about 1$50 billion.
The Googleplex in Mountain View, California, is the world headquarters for the Google organisation. Goole has more than 20 offices around the globe and is present across four locations in India - Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai.

US intelligence wants ability to censor satellite images

The head of a US intelligence agency told the Associated Press that commercial satellite services like Google Earth may need to be censored in the future in order to protect American interests.

Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, who heads the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, spends his days helping the government map the planet and studying imagery. Once the exclusive domain of the government, commercial satellite imagery has attained high-enough resolutions that the government is thinking about ways to restrict its use in times of war or other emergency situations.

"If there was a situation where any imagery products were being used by adversaries to kill Americans, I think we should act," he said in the interview. "I think we may need to have some control over things that are disseminated. I don't know if that means buying up all the imagery or not. I think there are probably some other ways you can do it."

The reference to "buying up all the imagery" refers to the government's practice of purchasing all commercially-available satellite data on Afghanistan during the early days of the conflict there. While buying up all available images may be one solution to the problem, the government may also be able to exert a different kind of pressure, as it provides nearly $1 billion in grants to major US imagery firms.

As the imagery market becomes international, though, the competing demands of local governments may be more difficult to sort out. The issue is already becoming tricky for companies like Google that offer popular products using satellite imagery. Google has already faced requests from Vice President Chaney to remove images of his residence and from the Indian government to blur sensitive military sites. Headlines in the UK have already claimed that Iraqi insurgents arousing Google Earth to attack British troops.

Certain disruptive technologies (peer-to-peer file sharing comes to mind) are difficult to stuff back inside the bag once they've been unleashed on the world, and and satellite mapping may someday be one of them. For now, though, the number of commercial satellites is still quite limited, and the companies that do the mapping well are few in number. As that changes, the US government—and all other governments—will find it harder and harder to control the information that is produced.

Google Earth Scares The Spooks

The director of a U.S. intelligence agency has cautioned that the government may have to censor satellite images that could be a potential security threat to the country and its armed forces.

The warning came from Vice Admiral Robert Murret, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which provides security information using satellite imagery.

In an interview with the AP he said," If there was a situation where any imagery products were being used by adversaries to kill Americans, I think we should act."

"I could certainly foresee circumstances in which we would not want imagery to be openly disseminated of a sensitive site of any type, whether it is here or overseas".

Satellite images are widely available because of private companies like Digital Globe and Geoeye who have launched their own satellites and through services such as Google Earth and Google Maps.

Restricting satellite images also has other obstacles. If the area that is censored is too big it has the potential to become a freedom of the press issue, but if it is too narrow the government risks revealing strategic locations.

In addition Steven Aftergood, a secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists, points out that with the number of commercial satellites growing it could be impossible to restrict satellite imagery.

"I can foresee circumstances where they might wish they could. There can be cases where imagery could jeopardize the security of U.S. military operations.

"But this cat may be out of the bag for good. It's just not clear that the legal or other tools needed to restrict disclosure are available".

Google Earth Satellite Images

Media Companies Viewing Google as the Enemy

Media companies have started sending a message that they view Google as the enemy. Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons described Google and its ilk as Custer in his last stand.

“The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation,” Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons said, referring to the Civil War American general George Custer who was defeated by Native Americans in a battle dubbed “Custer’s Last Stand”.

Custer fell in a massacre, overwhelmed by a better-equiped army. No doubt Google wants to avoid his fate.

“They will lose this war if they go to war,” Parsons added, “The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.”

It’s funny, all this over user copyright violations. The RIAA mismanaged their war, attacking the consumer directly and causing a lot of bad blood, but before that they attacked the networks, destroying company after company until all that was left was a weak, decentralized, trackable system.

The TV industry is going after the money, after Google, in a battle even the RIAA saw as a pointless game of whack-a-mole. The RIAA first destroyed the networks, although none of them were owned by a $146 billion company. In theory, a network could have had a chance, but none had the resources to defend themselves. Google does, and if it can beat back this charge, the TV industry will have managed to screw themselves worse than the recording industry did.

Still, the real news is: The media companies are pissed, and are hungry for this fight

Thailand to Sue Google Over Offensive YouTube Video

BANGKOK (mathaba) -- The Thai government is to sue Google in a criminal court over internet video clips which were insulting to the His Majesty the King and the Thai People and Nation. Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, the Minister for Information, Communications and Technology, said on Tuesday that the law suit will charge that YouTube, the video sharing website owned by Google, hosted video clips offensive to King Bhumibol Adulyadej. He said he would file the suit at the Bangkok criminal court on Friday. It was not clear whether the US-based internet giant would be charged with lese majeste (injuring the monarchy), defamation or a violation of laws governing internet use. "Those clips are very harsh to the feelings of Thai people and our culture, and foreigners will never understand," Sitthichai said. Neither YouTube nor Google has offices in Thailand, although the parent company does business with many Thai-based websites and businesses. Google does offer a Thai language portal to its popular search engine. It set up an office in Singapore last week to expand its advertising profile in South-East Asia. 'Playing a game' Commenting on the government's decision to proceed with a legal case against Google, Sitthichai said officials were examining whether a suit could be filed in an international court. He said a YouTube email request for the Thai government to "send it the controversial clips as evidence so it will remove them" showed that the company was "playing a game". YouTube never removed the video, it was the individual who posted the video who had removed it himself, whilst leaving behind a still image that was still offensive. Mathaba News Network has called for solidarity with Thailand in boycotting YouTube, due to the xenophobic arrogance displayed by the company throughout the incident, that showed near total ignorance of foreign cultures and sensitivities. The minister has argued that Google ignored Thailand's petition because it is a small country, while it had bowed to Chinese requests to block certain topics by deemed by Beijing to be politically sensitive, such as references to democracy. The ministry has blocked all access to YouTube from Thailand since April 4, shortly after the first offensive clip appeared on the popular website which relies on contributions from the public. But the publicity and lack of control by YouTube has led to more than a dozen further offensive video clips against the Thai People, Nation and King being uploaded to YouTube.

Privacy fears hit Google search

Google is increasingly in the spotlight over the issue of privacy A leading US digital rights campaign group has warned against using Google software which lets people organise and find information on their computers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said the latest version of Google Desktop posed a risk to privacy. This is because a feature in the software lets Google keep personal data on its servers for up to 30 days. Google says it plans to encrypt all data transferred from users' hard drives and restrict access. Government snooping The new version of its desktop search software comes as Google is battling efforts by the US Department of Justice to force it to hand over data about what people are looking for. We think this will be a very useful tool, but you will have to give up some of your privacy Marissa Mayer, Google Google data request fears Some of Google's main competitors have already complied with the request for details about people's search habits. The case has focused attention on the issue of personal information held by internet companies. "Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google's search logs, it's shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers," said EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston. "Unless you configure Google Desktop very carefully, and few people will, Google will have copies of your tax returns, love letters, business records, financial and medical files, and whatever other text-based documents the desktop software can index. "The government could then demand these personal files with only a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to seize the same things from your home or business," he said. 'Useful tool' The EFF is concerned about a feature in Google Desktop 3 that lets users search their content on multiple computers. To do this, people have to let Google transfer the files to its own servers. The feature is optional and only works with certain types of files, such as Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and PDF files. The search giant has sought to reassure privacy advocates, saying it will not keep the information for more than 30 days and strictly limit who has access to the data. "We think this will be a very useful tool, but you will have to give up some of your privacy," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience. "For many of us, that trade off will make a lot of sense." The software package is widely seen as posing a challenge to Microsoft's dominance of the way people interact with computers. It is not known how many users there are of Google Desktop but it is thought to be a fraction of the hundreds of millions that use the search engine every day. As well as making data on a hard drive accessible on any computer, the software also lets people set up mini programs to keep track of information such as weather or news stories. Google Desktop 3 is currently only available for Windows XP or Windows 2000.