Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts

Google Nexus 7 Tablet Arrives in India


Few months after its roller coaster ride in the US and other parts of the world, Google's Tablet poster boy - Nexus 7 - arrives in India. The starting price of Rs. 15,999 is a killer deal.Give this guy a serious look if you are planning to buy a 7" tablet.Google Nexus 7 has some serious specs and design elements.
  • Quad Core Processor
  • 1280 x 800 HD Resolution. This is awesome for 7" size
  • Android Jelly Bean
  • Thin and light - 344 gms and 0.4 inches
  • Although it can't beat the form factor of iPad mini, it is still very convenient to hold and carry around
It has some limitations though
  • No expandable memory
  • No front camera

This is a Google branded Android tablet. This does not mean it is manufactured by Google. It is in fact manufactured by Asus. The Google Nexus branding implies that Google played an active role in its design and is expected to have perfected it.
The Nexus 7 is now available on Google Play market for Rs. 15,999. I think its a great value proposition for a table with these specs, given that other 7" tabs like Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 sell at around Rs. 19,000. You can order the Nexus 7 on Google Play store here.Posted By: Amol Mategaonkar29th March 2013Originally posted at http://digitalden.tumblr.com/

The Big Change at Google & the Microsoft Analogy

Yesterday Google announced that the current CEO, Eric Schmidt, who ran the company for more than 10 years will step down. The co-founder of Google, Larry Page will take over from him. It is interesting to see a giant like Google shaking it’s leadership even after consistent stellar performance on the balance sheet. At the face of it, it might look as if all this was uncalled for, especially when the company is doing so well on the stock market, on its revenues as well as net profits.
That’s where new age technology companies like Google differ. Balance sheets are the last thing to worry for them.
Google is at a stage where Microsoft was at one point in time. It had demonstrated phenomenal growth and leadership in technology innovation and a mass reach that seemed to be unparalleled in the history of computing. The king of Desktop software (Windows and Office) was on a dream run for almost decade with more than 90% share of whatever market it entered. However, things changed with the fast changing winds of early 2000s and it could not keep pace with the rapid innovation driven by the internet. In spite of an early advantage that it had with the acquisition of Hotmail, Microsoft has been by and large a laggard in bringing in internet based innovations. A small start-up from California like Google went on to become giant and has already started challenging Microsoft on its own turf of Operating Systems and Office Applications. While MS still continues to enjoy market leadership position in Desktop software, it is no more perceived as a Technology Innovation Leader.
Google has potentially similar problem in-front of it.
The way MS missed the internet innovation bus, Google is threatened by the Social Media trend. While the Social Media has reached billions across the world, Google has been rather unsuccessful in creating a space for itself here. Orkut was once popular in India and Brazil, but failed to have a global reach. Buzz was a disaster. Google Wave started with much fan fare but had to be shut down within 18 months for very low adoption. On the other hand, the world saw the rise and rise of Twitter and Facebook. Facebook, with an estimated revenue of 1 Billion USD last year, already has a valuation of 50 Billion USD. With a user base of more than 500 million and growing, it is the most popular internet app in the world. Two months back the overall time spent on Facebook surpassed the total time spent on all Google properties put together. It has already become a household name, just like Google.
Google can not just sit and watch this happen.
With the size and complexity of its business, Google has somewhere hit the Big Company Syndrome, making it slow and less friendly to innovation. The change at the top, is precisely to address this problem. Under Page’s leadership, Google hopes to bring back the pace, speed and nimbleness of the young companies like Facebook while still being a large financial giant.
The Adult Supervision that Eric Schmidt brought to the then young and budding Google, seems to have become a bottleneck, just 10 yrs down the line. Google has been proactive to fix this. Unlike Microsoft.

Google's Changing Personality

I am not sure if you have observed this, but recently Google added a small new feature to the legendary http://www.google.com/ page. The change might look very subtle, but it indicates a major shift from the very fundamental principle of UI Design that google is known for - minimalistic design. I have no clue why google has done this. Let me explain.
The Classical Way
Google is known for its simplicity in User Interface (UI) design. Its UIs are easy to use, intuitive and free of clutter. The best example of this is http://www.google.com/ The world's most visited website just had a google logo, a text box and two buttons - "Google Search" and "I am Feeling Lucky". Over a period of time Google added links to other google applications such as News, Image Search, YouTube, Orkut, Photos and so on in addition to some language options. It even added a feature last year where all these options and links are hidden by default and get enabled only when you move the mouse a little.

The story has it that when the google founders created google, they didn't know HTML coding and they created a very simple design which they could code. Over the period of time that became the signature design of google. Just a plain white background, google logo and a text box with two buttons. I loved it. Millions loved it the world over. However, Google just lost it... well almost.

The New Option
Recently google added a new link towards the left side bottom of google.com. It reads "Change Background Image". You need to sign-in with your google ID in order to use this feature. What this allows you to do is that you can either upload your own image or select from an existing set of publicly available images that you can set as background to your google.com home page. The image shows up in the background whenever you use google.com anywhere in the world.

Issues
The classical plain white simplistic design has been googl's signature. I am not sure about the motivation for this feature. Somehow I feel, this is a step away from its own legacy. There are some challenges with it as well. The user can really shoot herself in the feet. Try uploading an image that is too small or too big to fit your screen. It messes up the entire look. Second issue is with the logo. Since google can not predict the image color scheme, it has made the logo transparent white. This is again a big deviation from the signature multi-color design of google logo. Thirdly, if you upload a heavy image, it makes the loading of the page slow. Google is known for its speed. Its the most reliable and fast website in the world. A heavy background can make it slow.
Copy Cat???
Did google find motivation for this feature in Microsoft's bing? The way Plain background has been the signature design for Google, beautiful background images has been the key design principle of Microsoft's new search engine - http://www.bing.com/ I love that as well. It has a slightly different approach and does not have any of the issues relating to googl's approach that I mentioned above. Every day it has a new, rich quality background image, showing some famous place in the world. It also provides some useful info about it on mouse over. It does not allow user-uploaded images. The user can not shoot in her feet. When it was introduced last year, this looked new and fresh. Many who used it, loved it.. including me. However, was this the motivation for the new feature in google? I hope not.
I hope the biggest innovator on the Internet didn't have to copy it from Microsoft and had some other inspiration that I am not aware of.