Tag Archives: Google Gears
Future Versions of Chrome Will Not Include Google Gears
Posted on 12. Mar, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey. 
0 Comments
Google Gears is an API that allows for more powerful web applications and the ability for offline content to be loaded when it was introduced in 2007. This was during a time when there was uncertainty about the future of webapps, so in the usual Google method, the company decide to develop its own open standard.
It’s clear at this point, however, that the definitive standard is going to be HTML5 on the web. For this reason, Google is taking Gears out of Chrome in future releases starting at version 12 and it will not be available of other next-gen browsers such as Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4.
This development has been a long time coming, and suggests that the long-awaiting HTML5 offline functions for Gmail and Google Docs are coming soon. That’s one of the reasons why Gears has survived for so long: an alternative to offline caching had yet to be finished and ready for users.
So whenever Chrome 12 goes stable, perhaps there we will see the new feature for HTML5 offline storage in Google’s services, but that is just speculation. Judging by the six week cycles for stable releases, Chrome 12 could hit sometime in May. The Canary builds have already hit version 12 in the past couple of days.
Has Gears’ time come to an end? The platform is open source so it could continue to get use if developers want to use it. Nevertheless, it’s still a plugin, and the significance of having to install extra software into the browser is a big hindrance. These types of things need to be updated over time and sandboxed for security purposes, all of which requires technical babysitting that HTML5 can instead achieve directly over the web.
Should all, or at least most, plugins disappear with the emergence of HTML5? Managing plugins in an operating system such as Chrome OS might be problematic.
What It’s Like to be a Successful Google Apps Software Company
Posted on 08. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments
MindMeister is a company that provides a special tool for organizations called “mind mapping”. Being a software as a service company, it was logical for them to be included when the Google enterprise Apps Marketplace when it was launched last March. In this interview, I talk with MindMeister COO Michael Hollauf and CTO Till Vollmer about their software, the recent changes Google has made to Apps as well as what it’s like working with the search engine giant.
Can you tell me a little bit about MindMeister?
Michael: We’ve been online for about 3 years now. About a month ago, finally, we launched on Google Apps Marketplace. This came out of a relationship with Google. It started pretty early on, almost three years ago now. We realized the product we have fits nicely with what Google has.
It’s a nice add-on for their Apps. I’m explaining more our relationship with Google. Since our integration, we are doing more things integrated with the Docs. We have a regular relationship with them. It seems they’re really pushing Apps now with the introduction of the Marketplace and the enhancements to Google Docs.
Would you say your product is similar to something you would do in Visio or is it something out on its own?
Michael: Yes, it’s certainly something that’s on its own. Visio is something that can draw everything. You can draw pictures, flow charts. I think we’re a subset. We focus on a subset of what Visio does. We are very good at that. Our software basically gives it all, focuses very quickly and doesn’t worry about the drawings, it just brings in all of your structures.
So, I think someone that uses our mind mapping product wouldn’t be very happy with Visio. More similar to drawing in a PowerPoint presentation, something like that. It’s a similar space though. We often get requests for things like flow charts and so on. It’s all graphical, visual presentation. They have something in Docs which is now called Google Drawings with a separate bar.
Is this just something that is part of the Apps marketplace? I assume that your pricing model is set up so it’s a monthly user fee or something? Anything of that nature?
Michael: Yes, it’s a monthly user fee. It’s a monthly fee per user or teams of users so you can have two people up to however many you want. You can pay by the month or can pay by the year. The way it works in Google Apps is they don’t have a billing infrastructure. So the way we do it, we let users sign up for free without even entering their credit cards. They just go to MindMeister in Apps and get a 30 day free trial.
If you want to upgrade, you can pay and purchase. That’s going to be the way it works until we launch billing. According to Google, it should be in a couple of months when the users will only use their credit card once – when they sign up to Google Apps. Then they will be able to do everything at the Apps Marketplace: just add the app.
Better for us and better for users. They don’t want to enter their credit cards more than they have to.
I think that’s a fantastic idea. What are they getting out of setting up all of this entire infrastructure? Is it just that they’re getting the value of added features to Apps?
Michael: Yes, now that’s the only thing they are getting, but with the billing, they are going to take twenty percent I think it is.
Twenty percent of everything then?
Michael: Yes.
I ask these things because Eric Schmidt keeps talking about how a lot of revenue is going to start to come from this. There really hasn’t been an explanation, but that right there, when you’re dealing with percentage of fees per month that really adds up. What they’re trying to do is get away from just advertising because you really have to diversify when you’re a company that large.
Michael: They still do 97% (something like that) or 95% just with advertising. So, they are searching for other ways for (revenue).
A few weeks ago there was an announcement that went out relating to some changes they’re doing (which included no longer supporting Gears).Is it just Docs? Maybe you guys could talk a little about that.
Michael: It was just Docs with their announcement. We’ve had to find all sorts of explanations and guidelines for our users (about Gears). It works fine for older ones; it’s just not supporting the new ones. Now I think of all of the programs and suppliers will have to do the same thing. A lot of people use it and I think if everyone is persistent, it will send out messages that it (will not be) working anymore.
It seems a little strange to me because you’d think they’d have a solution ready to go.
Michael: Our users I think, it used to work better (same with all browsers, even Firefox). It doesn’t support it anymore and you can’t even install it anymore. There are other features as well.
Till: Obviously the drawing is one of the things that are new. There are a couple of changes to things, and the API as well. The big thing was the drawing actually.
Michael: I think there is one thing talked about that real time is not being liberated enough. With this EtherPad, a document could be worked on (with others) at the same time. You could do things in real time. Like when you typed in the character, it would show up on the other person’s screen like in the same second. The real time collaboration, I think that’s what’s built into Docs now.
Well, that’s great. Could you tell me the name of that company again? I’ve never heard of this before.
Michael: Etherpad. I think it was two or three Google employees a year ago when they started that company.
It sounds like they’re trying to make collaboration better but at the same time, the offline access (via Gears) thing is a little distressing especially when you’re thinking about moving everything to the cloud, it seems there’s going to be some sort of solution through HTML5, right?
Michael: There’s an issue, yeah. I mean real time, I didn’t see anything about that in HTML5. Is it http or something? Or some offline mode supported in HTML5?
So, they’re going to use HTML5 for that? I don’t think they have a choice, if you lose that functionality it just seems like a really bad idea. I think the cloud is a great thing but, what happens when you make these kind of changes? And I just don’t know what kind of solution it’s going to be that all these companies now have to make all of these changes?
Michael: That’s because all of us use these, really out of necessity. This is something that could happen with Flash, I don’t know. Now we have to wait. It’s not a great situation but the market shows it’s a young market and technology is new. Otherwise, this is “growing pains”, I would say.
It’s just to be so disruptive in so many areas that they’re starting to do these types of things, to be honest with you. It’s just I hear a lot about all of the benefits but I think what most people are concerned about where this is going. The idea I think, when they started this was to compete with Microsoft but now it doesn’t seem like that what they want to do. Instead, it’s to be a compliment to that. Although I do think their solution is better.
Michael: I think in our discussions they never admit Microsoft is an issue for them. They’re more like “we’re trying to offer the best experiences and solutions to our users and if that hurts our competition, so be it”. I think it’s more not having to really talk about their competitors and so on. At least I think with Google Apps, that they’re trying to be the “next generation Office Suite”.
I think they’ll have a lot more to offer than Microsoft because of what they’re doing with you guys and all the other developers out there, that they have good ideas to make products better.
Michael: Great people are on it and (there is) a lot of enthusiasm. I haven’t really looked into Microsoft recently and what the rumors are about an online version of this. And because, sooner or later, they’ll have to go this way. All I’ve seen so far is some online office thing that allows you to share some uploaded documents with others but that’s all there is, right?
What about the people who are concerned about making the jump to the cloud?
Till: There are certain levels of security of course in (our) product. One thing is the channel hosting of the solutions in the computer to the data center and everything has access controls, cameras, access cards and all these kinds of things. Everything is redundant, their internet access of course, and the server part and all these kinds of things. So that’s the secure environment.
On the other hand of course, we offer for our premium customers encryption, so that the communication that is between the server and client is encrypted because a lot of people are working are just going there and connecting to their services and are often transmitting their plain passwords and this is not clear to all of them. That’s why we use SSL for the premium customers to not show their passwords somewhere or their passwords don’t get sniffed.
And on the application level, we have certain guard mechanisms where we protect certain actions people can do like password resetting, map access and personal data access. Just two hours ago a customer called me up and said, “I want to use your product, I was thinking about an in-house destination.” I said, “we have a service solution, there is no in-house solution”. They asked, “what about security?”
I think that it’s a good point that they ask this question. The answer is very simple. I say, “Do you have a laptop?” They usually say, ” Yes I have a laptop.” I ask, “Do you have all of your personal data and all that stuff on your laptop?” They say, “Yes.” So I ask, “What happens if someone just grabs it and runs?” They say, “Yes you’re right.” This isn’t going to happen with software as a solution because it’s much harder to hack into a T3 data center or get physical access into a data center than just grabbing your laptop.
Could give me an idea of who are your demographics when you’re talking about customers and who are the people that come to talk to you about these types of things? If you could just give me an idea of what type of people we’re talking about – who are becoming your customers?
Till: When we started off, we were a European company and we had just implemented the English language and we always wanted to address the whole world market. It was always our goal when we started. We had about 30% US customers and, actually it’s the same number I think today and maybe even more.
Actually, now we support nine languages, including Japanese and Russian and with customers from about 140 countries working on MindMiester now, about a half million or so of them. We have five hundred thousand users and we have individuals and freelancers as well as a very large base of real business customers like SAP for example or Symantec. We even have Microsoft as a customer. Microsoft China, actually at an innovation center there.
It’s basically around the world from individuals to businesses. We have a lot of universities and schools. This is in a lot of countries in terms of schools and universities in Shanghai or in Hong Kong or (even) in the US. So, that’s also the interesting thing. If you’re starting a business on the Internet there really is no real border anymore. It’s all about localizing the content and the user interface.
MindMeister is a software as a service. So we’re talking about something that runs in the browser. What tools have you used to create this, what technology are you running this on?
Till: So, basically we are using Ruby on Rails. We are using MySQL right now. We are using Apache for example, Linux as our platform. I think that’s it from the technology web we are using.
So do you recommend that your users have Chrome or Firefox? Or what is it about the browser that’s changing that? That’s going to help you guys? We touched on HTML5 and how you guys are working on it. Could talk a little bit about that?
Till: We made recommendations, we put out these for our users only. If they have to, we’ll continue to support IE6 for a little longer. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, these are all great and open really fast.
How many people are you in total?
Michael: Ten to twelve right now, with a couple of freelancers, not a huge company.
Is the plan then to just focus on this is another thing. Other companies I’ve talked with are working on several different apps. Are you just going to focus on this?
Michael: For the time being, yes. We have discussions all the time. To the extent that they could go further? No concrete plans as of yet. The market is good for that. We’re in a really good position. I have so many ideas for this. I do want to start something else with that small group of people.
I have just one more question. Since the Marketplace has gone live, has it been a good tool in getting new customers? Has it been a marketing vehicle for you guys? Have you seen a good influx of customers who’ve come through Google to connect with you guys?
Michael: Definitely, yes. So, I think it’s worth the effort to integrate to get a lot of exposure. Of course, you get new customers out of it, for us I think it’s a good thing. And, so, Google hasn’t really started to promote the whole thing. I had a call yesterday with them and they told us they would start promoting apps more aggressively.
Even so, they haven’t really started marketing. We already see the results. We’ll see what happens if they really start pushing (Apps) through their distribution channels and through the marketing, etc.
Thanks to Michael and Till for taking the time to talk to me. You can sign up for a free basic membership of MindMeister to check out their mind mapping product.
Partnership Between Chrome and Adobe’s Flash May Be in the Works
Posted on 29. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
Larry Dignan of ZDNet is publishing a rumor that we may hear an announcement in the coming days of a supposed partnership between Google and Adobe for its Flash technology to be bundled within future versions of Chrome browser. When I first read this report, I was a bit surprised. After all, Google has slowly decided to kill Gears and has set up a HTML5 beta on YouTube, probably the most Flash intensive site on the planet since all videos on the site require the plugin in order to play.
But what does Google have to lose? It feels like this is being said a lot lately, but there is still a lot of the web that uses Flash and if Apple is not going to support it on their mobile platforms now they aren’t going to in the future, either. That creates competitive advantage for Google in its own push to have a platform for users with Android and Chrome OS. Apple has its own benefits, and while many have been calling out that the death of Flash is here that will surely not be true if Google partners up with Adobe.
Perhaps there will be some sort of agreement to help make Flash run faster and secure. After all, those are the two biggest pitfalls of Flash. Many experts would agree that having Flash installed on a browser creates vulnerabilities, and the fact that Adobe has a miniscule security team to try to thwart potential attacks would make Google and its expertise seem like a good match.
But we’ll see. While we’re waiting, take a look at this comparison of Flash vs. HTML5 performance.
HTML5 Will Replace Google Gears – But Not Without On2
Posted on 22. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 3 Comments
It certainly was a big deal a few years ago when Google first announced their Gears platform for web browsing. But the truth is that it was only a stopgap for what is to be the future: HTML5. Well, finally the time has come for HTML5 to shine, as recent developments have pushed it into the forefront for a more interactive web experience.
Basically Gears is a bridge between the browser and the native computing system. With HTML5, this type of flexibility is coded right in with web development. That benefits users because it provides for simplicity along with more flexibility in terms of development. Some things that you may use Gears for today, such as offline storage to all for a faster experience or just to have files when you’re not connected, can be done even easier with HTML5. Plus, the majority of browsers now support HTML5 unlike when Gears was announced back in 2007.
The official Gears blog had an update last week, explaining why there has been a lack of posts lately. No more updates to Gears, however until everything is completely moved over to HTML5 (which could be a while) support will continue. It’s also no coincidence that on the same day of that post it was announced that Google was finalizing its purchase of On2 Media for $124.6 million.
That’s because the video technology that On2 has developed fits well within what Google is trying to do with YouTube. Although some people like to complain about the lack of innovation sine Google purchased YouTube, they just recently have started a HTML5 beta on the site, and I’m sure that you can expect to see more interesting developments now that On2 is in the fold. That is unless Google bought On2 just to kill it, which seems doubtful.
One of the big things to watch for: video compression standards. On2 has a variety of these proprietary formats, and so it is not a stretch to expect HTML5 paired with one of them, namely called V8 VP8, to become the standard for Chrome and especially on YouTube, which currently uses a licensed technology called H.264 that works with Adobe’s Flash Player. There has been a call for On2 to make VP8 open source by some developers, and we’ll see what happens with that.
So what is the underlying problem with H.264 and Flash? Well, both of them have been around for a while with little relative progress in their technology. That’s not going to work too well in the near future with devices becoming ever smaller and portable running ARM processors.
You can check out a video comparison between H264 and VP8 from On2′s website right here if you’re interested.
Google Pushing HTML5 for the Future
Posted on 04. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 3 Comments
A post on the the Chromium blog today touts the array of developer tools that are available from Google for the many open source projects that the company is working on. One campaign in particular is a touring developer conference called Google Developer Day in which some of the largest projects are presented – namely Android and Chrome, which ultimately benefits the operating system project in getting developers on board early.
A important standard that Google is working on is HTML5. Previously, complex web applications and offline storage capabilities were fueled in Chrome by Google Gears (Firefox and IE add-ins available here), but this will soon be no more. Now, Google wants to push HTML5 to the forefront, most noteably in its testing of YouTube for the eventual site- wide adoption of HTML5 instead of the current video playing technology, Adobe Flash.
Why the desire to move away from proprietary formats and use an open standard such as HTML5? Consider this web-based image uploader tool developed by Mozilla Hacks, which is developed in HTML5 and offers image editing and offline functionality within the browser:
In addition to this, HTML5 will offer the ability to directly embed video and audio onto a webpage, offer more interactivity using the canvas tag and svg files as well as simply creating a richer environment for users. To learn more about HTML5 and some code examples, I would recommend checking out this video with Brad Neuberg, who is a developer and is part of the Open Web Advocacy group with Google:
Chrome 5 Beta Released
Posted on 31. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 11 Comments
Now that Chrome version 4 has been officially released as a stable browser version, Google has now given users a chance to check out the Chrome 5 beta (Mac users must follow this link). Javascript performance has improved in this version, as I ran a SunSpider test for my previous Chrome 4.0.249.78 version and overall benchmark speed has increased when compared to this new 5.0.307.1 version. For those of you interested, I advise you to try this benchmarking test yourself to check out the speed with which this browser as well as any others you may use can render pages.
According to the developer changelog, there are a few new features (more sure to come):
- Use of the default downloads directories in Windows 7 and Vista
- Better plugin stability for Mac
- A fix for tab dragging in Mac that used to cause Chrome to crash
Also, in the Under the Hood tab for Chrome Options, there is a new Content section for fonts, language and Google Gears settings:
Both Windows and Mac is supported for this developmental build. For those of you interested in making some money finding flaws in Chrome browser, you probably want to have the latest and greatest version. Just keep in mind this is a beta, and therefore it is a version that Google deems unstable. If you experience issues you can report them here.
UPDATE: For Mac users, there’s a different download link – thanks to the commenter who pointed this out!
Know a Chrome Flaw? Google Will Pay You…
Posted on 29. Jan, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments
Interested in Chrome security? You might be if there’s some money involved.
The Chromium project from Google, which is the name for the open source group that develops the Chrome browser, is relatively new when compared to other browsers that have been around the block such as IE and Firefox. Because of this Google has decided to offer bounties for those who know of or are able to find vulnerabilities that exist in Chrome browser. This also includes Google released plugins that come with the browser such as Google Gears. Those who wish to report a bug for a reward and want to remain anonymous can do so and still collect their reward.
According to w3schools, Chrome already has about ten percent of the browser market since being released in September 2008. As this grows, there are potential security and privacy flaws that could be exposed, much like the heavily publicized problems that has plagued Internet Explorer over the years. By throwing more eyes onto Chrome and possible bugs it may have, Google will be able to have their browser, as well as future operating system, evolve much more quickly.
Finding a flaw will get you $500. Discovering a security issue that has critical significance will net $1337. I think you might know what that number stands for. But for now, this is only for browser-based flaws. It’s possible that this will be expanded to the OS project in the future, but right now the focus is the browser.
There is a FAQ at the Chromium blog. Plus, the first reward will be posted on the Chrome releases blog.
Happy hunting.
