With Chrome Google can conquer the world

If you were in any doubt as to where Google’s big new focus is, then the advert above in the Metro last week should give you an idea. Google has been relentless in its advertising of it’s Chrome browser across the UK and abroad. Google even suggests you give your loved ones the (gift-wrapped of course) browser for Christmas.

Following my post last week about the new Chrome advert, it seems Google is determined to really push the browser out to a mainstream audience.

Is this final frontier for Google before world domination?

Despite having control of most of what we do in the browser, Google knows that for full technological control over our lives, it needs to own the one thing we need to link the offline and the online – the browser.

And with Google Chrome OS set to launch next year, the rewards for getting this right could be huge.

I’ve been using Chrome on my work PC and it is prett fast, I like the new extensions too (the only aspect that until now was forcing me to cling onto Firefox).

If cloud computing really is going to be a major trend for 2010, then it looks as though Google – and Chrome – is well placed to take advantage. How will Microsoft et al respond?

Google takes a leaf from Apple’s book: Chrome advert

This is a great little advert from Google to publicise it’s Chrome web browser (which I love btw and have been using for a while now).

The ad, which was made by the company’s UK team and conincide’s with the launch of the brower’s Mac version, has a wonderful slick and creative feel, reminiscent of something from Apple themselves. It’s also achieved an impressive 200,000 YouTube views in a few days…

Facebook wants users to help it take on Twitter

Facebook’s new privacy policy has been met with a fair degree of hostility, and rightly so. The changes are clearly designed to encourage users to open up more of their updates to the wider world.

So why the change?

Simple. Facebook is worried. It’s worried about the rise of Twitter and, in particular, it is worried about the impact that the recent addition of real-time results to Google searches.

As I’ve said already, the Google changes have the potential to have a big impact on the popularity of Twitter as Twitter updates are put front of mind for the general internet public in millions of searches.

This is a problem for Facebook, because by default, activity by their users is private and shielded from the search engines.

The dangers for Facebook

But the one thing that is worrying for Facebook is the thing that it’s users like and enjoy about the service. It’s the reason why so many of them prefer Facebook to Twitter, or at least use it in very different ways.

I use both services, but I wouldn’t share or reveal the sorts of things I reveal on Facebook on Twitter. I like that and it allows me to use the services in specific ways for certain audiences.

Facebook’s move potentially changes this and I wonder if it is in danger of diluting the key foundations of what it stands for and what it’s users want.

picture credit

More thoughts on Google real-time (Twitter, media and the future)

I’ve already discussed what Google’s new real-time search means for PRs over on the Wildfire blog. But I make no excuse about covering the subject again here as I think it is such a major development.

I’ve been mulling over some other possible permutations that might be triggered by this move:

Putting Twitter firmly front of mind

This move could bring yet another surge in the popularity of Twitter. Think about it; Google deals with around 300 million searches every day and a big proportion of these will soon see real-time results (the majority of which seem to be Twitter at the moment) towards the top of the listings. This will really propel services like Twitter into the every day online world of a large proportion of the internet population.

Google encroaching on newspapers (again)

Traditionally, if something big happens, consumers flock to traditional news outlets (formerly TV and then the web) to get the low-down. This year, Twitter has started to take on the role of a source of breaking news. But Google’s move here gives consumers another choice and another way to bypass the breaking news service provided by traditional media.

What’s next? Social search

At the moment, the real-time results in Google are a bit messy. Search for something like Le Web and you end up with a very busy stream of content, most of which is fairly meaningless. But these are early days and I think the functionality will develop in two interesting ways. Firstly, Google will offer the ability to rank real-time results by ‘influence’ to try and reduce the amount of noise this way. The other option that I fully expect to see is the ability to view only real-time results from your ‘friends’ or social circle (e.g. Twitter followers or Facebook friends). This again will reduce the amount of noise and make results more relevant.

Reduced importance of SEO?

I’m not certain about this one, but the introduction of additional real estate on search pages, in some instances, further pushes traditional rankings down below the fold. SEO will survive, but in many ways, this reduces it’s influence. Ciaran and others have some interesting thoughts relating to this over at Econsultancy…

Feedly

Like every good tech geek, I’m a bit of a magpie when it comes to shiny new things, especially online. So you can imagine my glee when (via Drew) I came across Feedly today.

I love it!

I’m pretty addicted to my feedreader. And my weapon of choice has been Google Reader ever since I started reading blogs. I’ve tried and tested every pretender to the reader-throne, but I haven’t ever been really tempted to migrate my RSS feeds. This is partly due to the inconvenience of moving; the new features would have to be very convincing.

And this is part why Feedly is so great. Its not really a feed reader itself – it’s a Firefox plugin. It simply sits on top of Google Reader and acts as an alternative skin or dashboard. You can still share or star items, add or remove feeds and even change categories. But, in addition, it makes it easier to add posts to social networks and email or tweet interesting snippets.

And it plugs into your existing networks to recommend and suggest content.

You can also use Feedly mini – a little pop-up overlay that appears at the bottom right of every webpage you visit to inform you about how socially-connected the page is and it also allows you to tweet or email content quickly and easily.

All-in-all, a great little tool.

About

This is my story. I've always been fascinated by the internet. My first passion was music and I studied a music degree at Birmingham University. But once graduated I quickly went back to the web working as a digital marketer. I also ran a web startup for a few years. In the need of a new challenge, I turned to the world of PR and now work as an Account Director at EML Wildfire. My interest is primarily looking at how PR professionals can make the most of the web and digital marketing. This blog contains my thoughts and things I find inspirational.

© 2012 Danny Whatmough - Made by me