The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘google-friend’

Google has made a change to Chrome OS to move the user login from the machine to the browser. Our guess is Google is, or will eventually use, Google Friend Connect to facilitate login.

The feature was first mentioned on October 13: “Using Chrome as our login manager has a number of potential benefits.
Explore these tradeoffs and decide what to do about the login manager.” The code was checked in on December 14: “An early version of this change is finally in. It’s not ready for daily use yet, and we haven’t gotten the network picker on there or anything yet, but at least we’ve got a baseline in there. I’m filing issues for the follow-on work.”

There are lots of potential benefits to having users log into machines via the browser. In particular it makes syncing easier and furthers the notion that you can log into any Chrome OS machine and have exactly the same experience as you would on any other machine. The fact that users can’t download any software to Chrome OS computers furthers this experience.

But it’s also clearly interesting from an identity standpoint. Facebook and Twitter are both making strong plays as the defacto online identity for hundreds of millions of Internet users. Facebook Connect in particular is becoming a very popular way for third party sites to easily add identity and login features to apps (it’s what we use on our own CrunchBase).

But people using Chrome OS devices will be logging into the Internet first and foremost with a Google account, or via Friend Connect (which currently allows signin via Google, Twitter, Yahoo, AIM, Netlog, OpenID, etc.). By centralizing authentication once, Google can then use the same Friend Connect credentials to automatically login to sites that support it.

If Chrome OS becomes popular, it will be a very powerful weapon for Google to compete with Facebook Connect.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

This past summer, Daniel Raffel was desired. Google was pushing hard to hire the product manager, we hear from a source. And there are whispers that Twitter and Facebook were also in pursuit of his services. Basically, it seems like he had his choice of the companies in Silicon Valley that everyone wants to work for. So where did he end up? Yahoo.

Yahoo hasn’t exactly seemed like the ideal place to work over the past couple of years. Besides just the Microsoft acquisition offer distraction (and subsequent search deal), and the CEO shuffle, the company has lost much of its sterling polish that it once had during the dot-com era. But what’s even more odd is that Raffel has worked at Yahoo before. It’s where he made a name for himself by helping to create Yahoo Pipes, the popular content mashup tool. But a few years ago, Raffel took off to work at Pioneers of the Inevitable, where he helped make Songbird, the open source desktop music player.

So why’d he come back to Yahoo at a time when others were pursuing him? It’s hard to say for sure, but one source believes Yahoo paid a significant amount of money to lure him back. Another source believes he was promised more resources and an easier time rising up the ladder than if he went to Google. Still, Yahoo over Google is not a choice that a lot of people seem to make these days. And one source is sure that Bradley Horowitz, a former Yahoo exec that is now at Google, would have obviously wanted to bring Raffel on board, and was likely pushing for it.

There’s another reason he may have went with Yahoo. Since returning in late August, Raffel has been serving as a senior product manager under Cody Simms, the senior director of product management for Yahoo Open Source (Y!OS), we hear. He’s apparently working on mainly off-network projects such as making the Yahoo authentication platform more seamless. That might not sound sexy, but the bigger picture may be involve Yahoo building out its own platform product to better connect Yahoo with the rest of the web. Yes, think Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, and the like. The chance to get into this hot space and play a critical role in building a “Yahoo Connect,” may have also enticed Raffel to come back, but that’s pure speculation at this point.

“He’s one of those rare product guys who is technical and can actually build stuff,” says one our sources. We’ll be watching what he’s building for Yahoo the second time around.

We’ve reached out to Raffel for comment, but have yet to hear back. We’ll update if we do.

[photo: flickr/sektordua]

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Facebook has long relied on its own users to help translate the site into more than 65 different languages. Now, Facebook wants to unleash its army of volunteer translators on other sites and apps across the Web. Any site or app that use Facebook Connect can now tap into the Facebook community to get help translating their site into any language that Facebook Translations supports.

As Facebook strives to cement itself as the social glue of the Web, offering free translation tools gives developers yet one more reason to choose Facebook Connect over Google Friend Connect or other competing platforms. It gives them access to new markets extremely quickly. Facebook thinks its crowdsourced translation tools are so good that it’s patented them.

The Internet is a global platform, which makes translation a must for sites both large and small. But the effort it takes to translate a site into many languages is expensive and time-consuming. Getting users to do the heavy lifting is appealing. Even if the translations aren’t top-notch off the bat, they will improve over time if enough people who speak a particular language care enough about a site to fix it.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

OnLive, the gaming company trying to reinvent the Games On Demand service, has announced a Series C round of venture financing from AT&T Media Holdings, Inc., Lauder Partners, Warner Bros., Autodesk, and Maverick Capital. Warner Bros., Autodesk and Maverick Capital have participated in previous rounds of financing as well. OnLive did not disclose the size of financing.

OnLive has been working on the launch of its cloud-based OnLive Game Service, which delivers the latest games instantly through the MicroConsole TV adapter. Unveiled in March at the 2009 Game Developers Conference, the OnLive Game Service recently went into beta testing and is speculated to officially launch this winter.

Palo Alto-based OnLive raised $16.5 million in previous funding.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

During today’s Google I/O keynote, the company unveiled a new set of widgets collectively called Web Elements that are sure to spread across the web like wildfire. The widgets allow users to quickly integrate some of Google’s most popular products, including Calendar, Search, and Maps, directly into their sites with a minimal amount of effort. Much of the same functionality has previously been available through Google APIs (in fact, some of these widgets were built on them), but most bloggers haven’t known how to use them before now. Google Web Elements makes the process much easier - just copy and paste an embed code, and you’re done.

Perhaps the most interesting widget is the ‘Conversation’ Element, which allows visitors to your site to post comments and videos, similar to the way they could using a FriendFeed embed. Site owners have the option of restricting these conversations to their sites, or to share them as global conversations through Google Friend Connect. You can check out a sample embed below.

Other widgets include ‘Presentations’, which allow you to embed presentations from Google Docs into your site, and ‘Spreadsheets’, which allow you to do the same with Google Docs spreadsheets. This is not going to be welcome news to sites like SlideShare, Scribd, and DocStoc, which let you do this with other documents.

The new Custom Search Element makes adding a Google search to your site very easy - just embed the provided snippet of code into your site, and Google will automatically index it.

The rest of the widgets are fairly self explanatory. Calendar lets you point out some important dates for you and your visitors, maps let you flag a location, and News shows the latest stories from Google News. Google also says that more widgets are on the way.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Google Friend Connect is now integrated with one of Europe’s fastest growing social networks, Netlog. Netlog, which has more than 45 million users worldwide, just implemented Google’s alternative to Facebook Connect, which allows users to sign in using any ID supported by Google Friend Connect (including Google, Yahoo, AIM, and OpenID) and share their activities with their existing contacts.

Google’s integration with Netlog lets users sign into sites and blogs using Friend Connect with their Netlog ID and password. Users can use their Netlog profiles on the site, invite other Netlog users to join Friend Connect, and also share their Friend Connect activity with friends on Netlog. On the back end, Google uses standards like OpenID, OAuth, and OpenSocial technologies to enable Netlog and other social networks and sites to plug into Friend Connect.

Netlog is growing fast, especially in Eastern Europe and the Middle-East, where it serves as the community portal of choice thanks to its viral nature and extensive language translation program. But even though Netlog is becoming increasingly popular in other parts of the world, this isn’t as big of a win for Google as the integration of a popular social network worldwide like Facebook, which officially has 200 million registered users around the globe (250 to 280 million unofficially). And Facebook just hit 307 million unique visitors worldwide in April, with MySpace trailing behind with 127 million unique visitors in April, according to comScore. By comparison, comScore’s worldwide unique visitor estimate for Netlog is 23.8 million.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Time Warner announced first quarter earnings today, giving us a peak at how AOL is doing. It’ seen better days. Revenues were down 23 percent to $867 million. Of that advertising revenues made up about half ($443 million), but were down a gut-wrenching 20 percent. Yahoo, in comparison, saw a 12 percent decline in advertising revenues during the quarter, and Google saw 6 percent growth in total revenues on an annual basis. Even Microsoft did better on the online advertising front, suffering a smaller 16 percent drop in the quarter.

Also revealed in the 10Q filing with the SEC is Time Warner’s intention to separate the old dial-up access business and spin off the rest of AOL:

Although the Company’s Board of Directors has not made any decision, the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner’s stockholders, in one or a series of transactions. Based on the results of the Company’s review, future market conditions or the availability of more favorable strategic opportunities that may arise before a transaction is completed, the Company may decide to pursue an alternative other than a spin-off with respect to either or both of AOL’s businesses.

New AOL CEO Tim Armstrong gets a pass this quarter because he was just hired away from Google in March. But he has to stop the bleeding before a spin-off or sale is possible. Meanwhile, on the product front, AOL is pushing forward with tweaks to its homepage that more fully integrate blogs, Twitter, and social networks. And AOL is positioning AIM and Socialthing as a single sign-on alternative to Facebook connect and Google Friend Connect.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors