New WordPress theme & logo refresh!

I’ve changed my WordPress theme to P2 — P2 is a WordPress theme with Gmail-like keyboard shortcuts. I’ve also refreshed the logos that I use on various online services. Have a look!

Ask.com: What is Google?

I read the BBC article about the new Ask.com and thought I’d give it a try.

I thought I’d like to know a bit more about The Google and ‘asked’ Ask to tell me what Google is:

The top result says “They are bad. Dogpile. com is better. ihategoogle”. Would have even been funnier if it had said “They are bad. Ask.com is better.”!

But let’s see how Google itself answers that question:

“Google, a popular search engine, is a tool for finding resources on the World Wide Web. Google scans web pages to find instances of the keywords …”

Hmmm… that’s better!

But seriously, Ask.com is pretty cool. Great search results, pretty good search suggestions. I might even use it occasionally for general purpose search! Give it a try — you just might like it!

Google at 10: The real Google search page in 2001

Google is celebrating, well, 10 years of Google! In keeping with Google’s goofy ways of doing things, Google is allowing people to search its index from January 2001.

Go back in time and search the web as-it-was in January 2001!: http://www.google.com/search2001.html

But how did Google’s search page actually look in January 2001? Thanks to Internet Archive,one can easily find out! The earliest working archive from January 2001 is from 19th January.

Google search page in January 2001

Google.com in January 2001 -- the search box.

As you can see, Google was already ‘Feeling lucky’. The logo is missing from the Internet Archive page, but you can see Google’s 2001 logo in the ‘Google at 10′ Search 2001 page:

Google at 10, Search 2001 page.

Google has come a long way from indexing just 1.3 billion pages in January 2001. In fact, by December 2001, Google had indexed over 3 billion pages and added ‘Images‘, ‘Groups‘, and ‘Directory‘ search options. Google continues to be the leader in Internet search in the US and in many other search markets.

Google on CrunchBase.

Is Google planning to install software without your permission on your computer?

Is Google planning to do an Apple?

May be!

When you install Google Chrome, Google slips in another application called the Google Update and Google sets up this application to automatically start up. Again, Google never asks for permission to install this piece of software and Google never asks if you want to allow this application to run at start up. Now, tell me why this is not spyware?

Even more interesting is the description of the GoogleUpdate.exe application. Have a look at this:

The ‘File description’ field says ‘Google Installer’. Is Google planning to install even more software without your explicit permission? Just like Apple did with Safari using Apple Update?

Google is Evil. Much more evil than Microsoft ever was and ever will be.

Why I uninstalled Google Chrome (and Google Chrome is spyware).

I uninstalled Chrome because Google Chrome is spyware. After uninstalling it, Google opened a feedback page, requesting for feedback. This is what I wrote:

1. You spy on me. Why do you have to associate each Chrome installation with a unique ID?
2. You spy on me. You indicate that you collect data, but not anonymously. So it is personally identifiable data.
3. You spy on me. So Google Chrome is spyware.
4. You spy on me. You import data from other browsers, including passwords, without asking.
5. When I use Chrome, my computer slows down to a crawl. Are you spying on me again?
6. When I uninstalled Chrome, you opened this feedback page in Internet Explorer, while my default browser is set to Firefox.

Really disappointed with Google and its obsession with spying on people and not being open about it. So much for Google’s Open Source bullshit when it’s not even open with its communication.

Google Chrome’s window border too thick

With the Vista ‘Border Padding’ set to 1, Firefox’s border looks like this:

Google Chrome’s windows border looks like this:

Notice how Chrome’s window border doesn’t respect the set border size. Something for Google to fix. The problem is especially apparent when the Border Padding is set to zero — Chrome’s window border looks just odd then.

Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer memory usage comparison.

Google Chrome has a cool built-in feature that lists the memory usage of all currently running browsers. This can be accessed by bringing up the Chrome Task Manager using Shift+Esc and then clicking on ‘Stats for nerds’. Or just type ‘about:memory’ into the Chrome Omnibar.

So I thought I would do a simple memory usage comparison by opening my most frequently used web applications.

Tab 1: Google Gmail (https://gmail.google.com)

Tab 2: Google Reader (https://www.google.com/reader)

Tab 3: Google Calendar (https://www.google.com/calendar)

I opened the same 3 tabs in Google Chrome (beta), Mozilla Firefox 3.01 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 (Beta 2) and then opened the memory page in Chrome.  All three browser sessions were started afresh.

Looking at just the ‘Private’ memory column, IE8 is a memory hog while Chrome and Firefox use similar amounts of memory.

I am pretty impressed at how well the Chrome beta works compared to IE8 beta 2.

Download Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome

Download Firefox: http://www.firefox.com

Download IE8 beta2: http://www.microsoft.com/ie8

Chrome is currently available for Windows XP and Vista only. Mac and Linux versions are on the way.

IE8 is available for Windows XP and Vista only.

Request to Google: Improve the link strip and make it behave consistently

The Google link strip present in some of Google’s web applications, though useful, can be improved a bit to improve the general usability of the applications.

When using Gmail/Google Reader/Google Calendar, if the window is not maximized, the display of the link strip is inconsistent across these applications.

In Gmail, the link strip wraps to the next ‘line’, with the application specific links moving to the 2nd line.

When the window is maximized/restored, the page realigns, which is a bit irritating.

In Google Reader and Calendar, the links on the left side and the ones on the right side overlap when the window is not maximized. The result looks ugly!

Google can do better! Make the web application links on the left size auto adjust, with the ‘extra’ ones moving to the drop down menu under ‘more’. Like this:

In the above ‘paint-shopped’ image, the ‘Web’ link is now hidden under the ‘more’ drop down list.

Of course, this won’t work under all conditions. But for use under ‘normal conditions’, this looks and works much better than the existing (inconsistent) implementation.