July 2, 2009

Biznology Blog by Mike Moran

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No really? More free tools from Google?

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Don't look now, but Google has just released some more free tools. Every time you look up, something else is dribbling out of Google and it's not that easy to make sense of it all. But we can try.

I know my recent contributions to the Biznology blog have been solely focused on Google and the great tools that Google has brought to market, but I have to say that they never stop impressing me. I'm impressed by the way I can look at their current products and trace their evolution back to their start. Take for instance (800) GOOG-411. On the surface, it's free directory assistance. That would be enough for any other company, but looking back, it seems like they were perfecting voice recognition for the new voice search, available on all Blackberrys and iPhones.

It also looks like Google's acquisitions of both Grand Central and Dodgeball are coming together as well. Grand Central has evolved into Google Voice. Though I personally don't have much use for this, (as I'm less a phone person and more of an e-mail person) the Google Voice interface is clean, intuitive and I'm sure will provide incredible value to sales people and business travelers. I'd bet that this is going to be wrapped in the next evolution of Android and targeted at the iPhone's message center.

Dodgeball has morphed into Latitude, which is available as part of the Google Mobile App, and is another indication that Google is driving hard towards social. What I find most interesting about this project is that it's starting to blend online social networking into the physical world. As in my previous post, I'm giving Google two more years before they completely dominate social.

Finally, I'm not certain why this hasn't made a bigger splash, but it looks like the rumored "GDrive" is here. Maybe it's not exactly what everyone was talking about and hoping for, but as part of any "Google Sites" site, you're given the option to create a File Cabinet. In it, you can house any and all files that you and others upload and share. It makes creating a company or group intranet very easy and accessible.

It seems like you can make a part-time job just following Google around and checking out all the free stuff. Anyone else have any favorites that I haven't mentioned?

Posted by JoshGreenfield at July 2, 2009 12:54 AM

Comments

The reason "GDrive" has not made a big splash is because it's not here yet. The functionality you refer to is extremely limited. There is a file size limit, so I would have to split my files if I want to upload them. And if I want to upload a folder, I have to do it manually. It's pretty useless as something to store files, unless you are just wanting to store a handful of files. That's why it hasn't made a big splash.

Once they implement something where I can drag my local music folder into the cloud, and it takes care of the rest, then that will make a big splash (that already exists on multiple websites. Just not google yet). But selecting one file at a time with file size limits and no folder upload. That's pretty 1990's.

Posted by: Pat at July 3, 2009 7:13 AM

Posted by: ssdmym at July 5, 2009 3:45 PM

That's not the g-drive. Those specifically for web pages and has all sorts of limits, like 10MB size limit. I think we've got a while yet before google decides to release their gdrive product, perhaps in combination to their google wave release. Anyhow, Sugarsync makes an excellent product that is available now, which is what I imagined what google drive would be.

Posted by: Philip at July 7, 2009 5:34 AM