Google IO 2008 Conference Videos

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The IBM-Google connection | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

The IBM-Google connection | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com: "LOS ANGELES--Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt gave a speech and chatted with IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano onstage Thursday at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference here. The two talked up their relationship, which primarily involves a joint research project. In October, Google and IBM announced a cloud computing initiative, based on Google's expertise in distributed, parallel computing and IBM's industrial enterprise management technologies, for public use by universities.

IBM is taking some of the learnings from the project and plans to operate a cloud that will allow partners to house their Web-based applications and sell them to customers, Palmisano said. 'It is the first time we have taken something from the consumer arena and applied it to the enterprise,' he said."

Zoho Blogs � IBM, Microsoft & Google Eras of Computing

Zoho Blogs � IBM, Microsoft & Google Eras of Computing: "By now it is conventional wisdom to say that there was an IBM Era of computing, then a Microsoft Era, and now we are in the Google Era. In this post, I will explain why Microsoft was not the “next IBM” and why Google is not the “next Microsoft” - there are significant qualitative differences among them, quite apart from their status as the dominant, era-defining players. Understanding that qualitative difference is crucial for third party vendors like Zoho to thrive. I was reminded of this because of the IBM/Google partnership unveiled today (via Dan Farber & see also Nick Carr). As an aside, I have coined a kind of Moore’s Law on these computing eras:"

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Is Office the new Netscape?

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Is Office the new Netscape?: "As Microsoft and Yahoo continue with their interminable modern-dress staging of Hamlet - it's longer than Branagh's version! - the transformation of the software business goes on. We have new players with new strategies, or at least interesting new takes on old strategies.

One of the cornerstones of Microsoft's competitive strategy over the years has been to redefine competitors' products as features of its own products. Whenever some upstart PC software company started to get traction with a new application - the Netscape browser is the most famous example - Microsoft would incorporate a version of the application into its Office suite or Windows operating system, eroding the market for the application as a standalone product and starving its rival of economic oxygen (ie, cash). It was an effective strategy as well as a controversial one.

Now, though, the tables may be turning. Google is trying to pull a Microsoft on Microsoft by redefining core personal-productivity applications - calendars. word processing, spreadsheets, etc. - as features embedded in other products. There's a twist, though. Rather than just incorporating the applications as features in its own products, Google is offering them up to other companies, particularly big IT vendors, to incorporate as features in their products."

Share and Annotate Web Pages in Google Reader

Share and Annotate Web Pages in Google Reader: "Google Reader's sharing feature was barely noticed when it was added, then it got more exposure when the shared items started to be broadcasted to Google Talk contacts and some sites aggregated shared posts. As Google Reader became more social, people discovered that it has some important limitations. 'Have you ever wanted to share something that you were reading, but you didn't want to go through the hassle of subscribing to a whole feed for a single interesting article? And what about sharing content from sites with no feeds?, ' asks Google Reader Blog.

Google Reader finally added an option to share any web page and to add notes for each shared item. Next to each post, there's a new action: share with note that can be used to explain why you found the post interesting or to add your comments. You can also go to the new Notes section to add a note or drag a bookmarklet to your browser's link bar so you can share any web pages, even if it doesn't have feeds.

Another improvement is that Google Reader shows small avatars next to each shared item and you can customize your public page by selecting a theme. But don't get to excited as the three themes that are available (ice cream, ninjas, sea) fail to impress and look terrible in Internet Explorer 7."

Post to Google Reader

Post to Google Reader: "You can now add your messages to Google Reader to be seen by your Google friends. To post a note, log-in to Reader and click Your stuff -> Notes to the left. This will open a box where you can type in a note with any thought, Friendfeed/ Twitter-style. To find out who exactly your friends are, check the Friends tab at the Settings page for an overview (or click the Manage Friends links).

Next to the notes box, there’s also a new bookmarklet to share items you find on the web. Just drag and drop the link to your bookmarks and you can activate it when you stumble upon something; you can also add a custom note to items, Google explains in a blog post.

Another new feature is that the layout of your Shared Items page can now be customized to *drumroll* display one of three graphics on top (titled ice cream, ninjas and sea)."

Google and Dojo, sitting in a tree

Google and Dojo, sitting in a tree: "A bunch of new tools have been added to the Dojo Ajax Toolkit that make it amazingly simple to search all of Googles services from your own site, and display the results however you want. Examples show how to integrate Google with the Dojo Grid, and with the Django templating language. And all with zero server side dependancies!"

Typical Programmer - Relational Database Experts Jump The MapReduce Shark

Typical Programmer - Relational Database Experts Jump The MapReduce Shark: "In this article relational database experts David DeWitt and Michael Stonebraker compare MapReduce to traditional relational database systems (RDBMSs) and find MapReduce wanting. They make some strong points in favor or relational databases, but the comparison is not appropriate. When I finished reading the article I was thinking that the authors did not understand MapReduce or the idea of data in the cloud, or why programmers might be excited about non-RDBMS ways to manage data."

"MapReduce has the same relationship to RDBMSs as my motorcycle has to a snowplow — it’s a step backwards in snowplow technology if you look at it that way."

from the comments to this post:

"Other articles I’m inspired to write based on the referenced article: I tried using MapReduce to create a website, and it sucks compared to markup with CSS. It doesn’t have any concept of how to style a website. MapReduce is a serious step backward in terms of web design.

I also tried to have MapReduce babysit my kids, and I came back half an hour later to find that it was just sitting there crunching data, and wasn’t watching them at all. This thing can’t do anything at all.

Also, compared to a standard hammer, this MapReduce things is really crappy at pounding nails into things."

MapReduce: A major step backwards - The Database Column

MapReduce: A major step backwards - The Database Column: "As both educators and researchers, we are amazed at the hype that the MapReduce proponents have spread about how it represents a paradigm shift in the development of scalable, data-intensive applications. MapReduce may be a good idea for writing certain types of general-purpose computations, but to the database community, it is:

1. A giant step backward in the programming paradigm for large-scale data intensive applications

2. A sub-optimal implementation, in that it uses brute force instead of indexing

3. Not novel at all -- it represents a specific implementation of well known techniques developed nearly 25 years ago

4. Missing most of the features that are routinely included in current DBMS

5. Incompatible with all of the tools DBMS users have come to depend on

First, we will briefly discuss what MapReduce is; then we will go into more detail about our five reactions listed above."

As noted below, David DeWitt has recently been given a major gig heading up a new database research lab for Microsoft at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. -- MG

Google Code Blog: Google AJAX APIs available from outside of the browser

Google Code Blog: Google AJAX APIs available from outside of the browser: "The AJAX API team just posted about using Flash and the server side to access the AJAX APIs.

This is very exciting, as it now allows you the developer to access not only Google Web Search results, but also query video, images, news, local, and other search functions. Also, this covers the AJAX Feed API which means you can get access to feeds in a normalized manner, and the new AJAX Language API to do translations and language detection."

f you step back, you can see this as a Google REST API, and some of you have wondered how it compares to the SOAP API.

I got to go to the horses mouth, Mark Lucovsky (team lead for the AJAX APIs), to discuss what this new access point is all about, and you may be a little surprised with the content.

We discuss the fact that this has actually been running for quite some time, but we now have clarified it as an official end point for your usage. This also means that it has thorough documentation, which was important as Mark talks about how some people have been using the API incorrectly.

Mark clarifies the terms of use, and you come out of this in the knowledge that his team has been attacking very different problems to the original SOAP API team. He has been ruthlessly practical, as you will understand as he talks about the problems his team are solving, and the breadth of sites that are using these APIs, including some very big names.

Enough of me talking, let's listen to Mark:

Interesting Info on First Quarter Conference Call

Listen to conference call

Website Optimizer

Website Optimizer: "Increase your site’s conversion rate

Website Optimizer, Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase the value of your existing websites and traffic without spending a cent. Using Website Optimizer to test and optimize site content and design, you can quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert."

Google vs. Microsoft in Data Center Economics - Data Center Knowledge

Google vs. Microsoft in Data Center Economics - Data Center Knowledge: "Many state and local governments have passed tax incentives to attract a Google data center, hoping it will convert struggling regions into high-tech hubs. It's part of a trend in which more economic development agencies are pursuing data center projects. There's no question that favorable environments can create data center clusters, a trend seen in many technology corridors. But here's the secret: If you're focused on developing a data center cluster in your area, you should be chasing Microsoft, not Google."

Google App Engine Blog: Getting your data on, and off, of Google App Engine

Google App Engine Blog: Getting your data on, and off, of Google App Engine: "One upcoming feature of Google App Engine that's worth mentioning is large-scale data import and export. We know that many of you have large apps that already run on other platforms, and getting all of that data into the Datastore API is a challenge. And, conversely, we also know that a lot of you want to make sure it's easy to move off Google App Engine in the future, in case you need to switch to a different platform.

With Google App Engine, you own all the data in your app. As stated in our terms, you always have the right to get your data out of Google App Engine at any point. We wouldn't have it any other way."

Service Level Automation in the Datacenter: Google App Engine: How AppDrop Does and Does Not Affect Lock-in

Service Level Automation in the Datacenter: Google App Engine: How AppDrop Does and Does Not Affect Lock-in: "The cloud computing blogging world is abuzz with the news that Chris Anderson has created an interesting experiment in which he has created GAE-compliant hosting on Amazon EC2. This is an experiment that I've actually been looking at myself, but having a day job that is intensely busy right now, haven't had a chance to get to.

What did Chris do? In short, he got a working copy of the GAE SDK working on Amazon virtual machines with some modification. There are limitations:

* It will not scale (none of the Google 'secret sauce').
* It does not support email at this time (though the source code is available for anyone who wants to add it).
* It could go down at any time, either due to an EC2 outage (not very likely), or because whoever is paying for this doesn't want to foot the bill anymore (much more likely).

The implications of this are big, however. A couple of days ago, in an email exchange with Simon Wardley, I did a little analysis of what it would take to do a scalable version of this in open source. I don't have the depth of knowledge necessary to identify all of the relevant projects, but here's what I came up with:"

tecosystems � Clouds Rolling In: The Google App Engine Q&A

tecosystems � Clouds Rolling In: The Google App Engine Q&A: "“If Amazon/eBay/Google/Yahoo offer platforms - and they will, I believe.” - me

That was Saturday. By Monday, Google App Engine had launched with much fanfare. When I said cloudy days were ahead, I obviously believed that to be the case. I just didn’t know that meant Monday.

Some forecaster I am.

Anyway, you’re hearing it here last (seriously) as usual, but as the highest profile entrant into the cloud computing market since Salesforce.com, Google has earned itself a Q&A. Better late than never and all that."

What Exactly Is Google App Engine?

What Exactly Is Google App Engine?

Google hides infrastructure from AppEngine users. AE programmers never (and, in fact, aren't allowed to) think about database scaling and configuration, load balancing , fail-over, etc. In theory, the complexity of writing a highly scalable app completely disappears.

With EC2, you still have to set-up load balancers, configure multiple replicated database servers, implement scalability hacks if things grow too fast (such as distributed caching of data via memcached), keep distros and apps up-to-date, etc. Bottom Line: EC2-based companies still require sys admins, AppEngine companies don't. That will certainly change as more companies begin offering EC2 server management services.

Google provides a non-relational datastore and that's the only datastore available (no traditional file system, no relational databases). With EC2, people generally use MySQL or Postgresql. Amazon offers a non-relational datastore called SimpleDB, but it's a bit *too* simple. For example, it does not support sorting of results sets. Huh? That makes it non-workable in my opinion. There's also an issue with using EC2 virtual machines for your database servers -- Amazon says that when a virtual machine crashes, all the data managed by it disappears, so virtual machine crash = hard drive crash.

With EC2, programmers can use any (non-Microsoft) language to develop their apps. AppEngine users must code in Python. Also, Google does not support sockets at this time. All cross-app communication must be done via HTTP.

At *this* moment in time, it would be difficult to move apps off of AppEngine. Doing that in EC2 is trivial. This, to me, is the biggest issue, as I believe it could make startups less-interesting from an acquisition perspective by anyone other than Google. This will most likely change as people develop compatibility layers. However, Google has yet to provide any information about how to migrate data from their datastore the best I can tell. If you have a substantial amount of data, you can't just write code to dump it because they will only let any request run for a short period before they terminate it.

Some people are complaining about Google having access to their source code. I don't see this as an issue. I'd rather have it be stored at Google than at some small hosting company.

One final nice little thing in AppEngine's favor: Websites that store less than 500MB of data and get roughly 5MM pageviews per month or less can use AppEngine for free. The downside is that Google has yet to say what they'll charge if apps go over that quota, but I have to believe that it will be reasonable. Right now, you're prevented from going above the free-level quotas.

Scobleizer: Google’s “five year plan” to get into Enterprise continues

April 13, 2008
Google’s “five year plan” to get into Enterprise continues
http://scobleizer.com/2008/04/13/googles-five-year-plan-to-get-into-enterprise-continues/
Yet another example of Google’s five-year-plan for sticking its foot inside the Enterprise door. What Google is doing here is brilliant.

Google knows that Ray Ozzie is coming later this year with a string of initiatives to keep Microsoft relevant to the new enterprise. They also know that once Microsoft does buy Yahoo Microsoft will use the cuddly Yahoo brand to keep people on its services, too.

So, what is Google doing? Is it trying to build its enterprise strategy itself? No. Look at what it did over the last few weeks: it partnered with Cemaphore to get a Gmail/Outlook connector. It shipped App Engine, which doesn’t seem like it’s aimed at the Enterprise, but watch what developers do with that and you’ll see that’s an important part of the five-year-strategy, and tomorrow it’ll announce a deal with Salesforce (TechCrunch has the details).

Brilliant. They, like the open source movement, are leveraging partnerships to pry open the Enterprise door.

Now we will watch to see how Ray Ozzie defends the door to keep the competition away from its cash cows. I’m visiting Microsoft on June 10-12 to study just that. Oh, and keep June 11th open. Jeff Pulver and I are throwing a breakfast there (Jeff’s breakfasts have become famous around the world — yesterday he had 200 geeks in Tel Aviv — he’s developed a unique way to get people to talk with each other, which is ingenious, more on that later).

Anyway, the Google Five Year Plan is starting to take shape in public. What do you think about its moves?

YDN Theater: MapReduce vs. SQL Talk

YDN Theater: MapReduce vs. SQL Talk: "MapReduce vs. SQL Talk

As previously posted on our Y!DN blog, Bill Boebel, CTO of Mailtrust, gave a MapReduce vs. SQL Talk on Monday the 25th. (Mailtrust is the email division of Rackspace, a large hosting provider.)

Stu Hood, one of Mailtrust's software engineers wrote about MapReduce at Rackspace back in January, detailing how they use Hadoop for processing 'several hundred gigabytes of email log data' every day. We have his presentation here for your viewing:"

GQL - Google App Engine | Google Groups

GQL - Google App Engine | Google Groups:

> Denormalize X3? That strikes me as very bad. If a customer's name is
> corrected later, you would need to search down and change other
> entities, or lose the connection.

It's only bad if you can't write correct code.

You can maintain a core of relational entities that form your editable
database, and a published database that all the public read pages load
from. Yes, data redundancy. Denormalisation.

You can't scale without it.

The simple truth is that normalisation only makes sense when the
read:write ratio is close to 1:1. The web ain't nothing like that. Not
by a very long shot."