{mosimage}If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.



Yesterday a select group of fifteen or so industry luminaries attended a highly confidential meeting at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to discuss the company’s upcoming plans to address the “Facebook issue.”



The meeting was so secret that all attendees had to sign confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements strictly forbidding them from discussing what was shown to them at the meeting. Notwithstanding that NDA, I’ve now spoken with three of the attendees off record to get an understanding of what Google is planning. Google’s goal - to fight Facebook by being even more open than the Facebook Platform.



Click here for more on this interesting story.

{mosimage}"Google has pushed out another under-the-radar product, this time a sharing service aptly named Google Shared Stuff. The new service offers a means to share links via a browser bookmarklet that you can drag into your toolbar.



The concept is the same as that behind del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia and the various other bookmark sharing sites. Visit a page, click the bookmarklet and a pop-up window allows you to share the link with others."



For more information, check out this Wired article. Google is just one step closer to taking over the web in terms of the web's finest offerings.

{mosimage}We're now on the map -- Google Maps, that is.



Yes, that's right, we've finally got our own domain name maps.google.com.au, ending the need of having to put "Australia" in every search.



Also, according to Slashdot, Google has added more satellite imagery for a lot of other countries such as Egypt, Iraq, mainland Europe and the UK.



Nice one Google.

I know they say the grass is always greener on the other side, but *this* is a different story. Yes, I'm jealous ...

{mosimage}"Google has said it intends to crack down on the use of its name as a generic verb, in phrases such as "to google someone."



The Internet search giant said such phrases were potentially damaging to its brand.



"We think it's important to make the distinction between using the word 'Google' to describe using Google to search the Internet and using the word 'google' to generally describe searching the Internet. It has some serious trademark issues," a representative for the search company said."


Personally, I think they should pull their head in. People using the word google as a verb / term, is a compliment and goes to show how far reaching their search technology has been. Quite frankly, behaviour like this from Google, could be signs that they aren't the "cool" company we were lead to believe.