Google Hoping 'Buzz' Not Another Social Media Fizzle

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--Google Inc. (GOOG) calls its new social media product "Buzz." If the service goes the way of the search giant's earlier forays into social networks, it may fizzle. On Tuesday, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google unveiled Buzz, which incorporates updates, photos and links into its already popular Gmail service. By adding the features, Google is hoping it can essentially transform Gmail into a social platform with enough clout to challenge leader Facebook Inc. "There has always been a giant social network beneath Gmail," said Google product manager Todd Jackson, when he formally unveiled Buzz at the company's campus. Google's interest in social media is understandable. Though it's unclear how much money companies like Facebook and micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter Inc. will make, they are attracting a huge following among Internet users. Those users potentially can be transformed into audiences for advertising, Google's core business. Google wants to capitalize on Gmail's 176 million users, a population that instantly gives Buzz a powerful installed base. Google hopes Buzz's new bells and whistles will give those users more reasons to use Google to communicate with friends--and potentially give Google more opportunities to sell ads. Google hopes Buzz will come integral to users' lives, like Facebook and Twitter have. To that end, the search company is making it possible to post and view updates from Google's mobile Web site or Buzz mobile software application. Google also plans to "wire" Buzz into other Google Web sites, such as Google Wave, a collaboration service Google began testing publicly last year.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100209-717524.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

Google (Voice) solves universal translation soonish

Google has managed to get some decent press by announcing that, in a few years, it might be able to translate speech - something iPhone owners can already do. The Times picked up the story, and breathlessly reports that such a development could "transform communications among speakers of the world's 6,000-plus languages" - nice to know that those sticking to the medium of mime will be unaffected. Anyone unwilling to wait the "couple of years" for Google's solution will just have to download the Jibbigo iPhone application, or join the US army. Comparisons to Douglas Adams' creation the Babel Fish are inevitable, though The Times credits Google with creating a text translation tool while neglecting to mention the rather-earlier version from AltaVista named after the unfortunate fish ("unfortunate" as it was forced to live in the user's ear). Also ignored in the popular press coverage is the fact that DARPA, our favourite mad-scientists-for-a-better-tomorrow funding body, has been pouring money into machine translation for years in the hope of enabling US soldiers to ask questions before shooting. The DARPA money has been going into TransTac (Spoken Language Communications and Translation Systems for Tactical Use), and largely the International Centre for Advanced Communication Technologies (interACT) - specialists who've been working in the field for a while and whose spin-off product is an iPhone app that translates spoken English into Japanese or Spanish.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/08/google_translation/