satine.org

by Charles Ying

On Google Chrome Lite

February 19th, 2009

Elaborating on what I wrote (originally for a blog post) in ReadWriteWeb’s Google I/O contest:

In 2009, Google should embed Google Chrome into Google Toolbar, which has a HUGE install base. This would be a huge driver to accelerate Google’s web platform, convert more folks over to a modern browser experience. Imagine a Chrome “Lite” running inside Toolbar inside IE, billed as a “web accelerator”.

I should be clear: Only Google knows how many people have installed Google Toolbar. Even so, I suspect it’s a large number, placing Toolbar on Google’s homepage and paying to 3rd parties like Adobe to bundle Google Toolbar. Google is also very secretive about this number, so it’s got to be either really large, or really small.

Can you imagine what the world would be like if one day most IE users turned into Google Chrome users? Web standards, fast WebKit goodness everywhere.

A web developer can only dream.

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Google will be Real Time in 2010

February 17th, 2009

A few days after Thanksgiving 2010 actually, with 4 months margin of error.

I just read Greg Linden’s notes on Google Fellow Jeff Dean‘s keynote at WSDM 2009.

Follow my wonderfully flawless math here:

  • Google took 10 years to drop their index update latency by a factor of x10000 – from several months to “minutes”.
  • Google’s current update latency is “in minutes”. We’ll assume the worst case of 30 minutes (otherwise Jeff might’ve said “under an hour”)
  • Assuming linear trends, Google reaches the next speed factor every 8.7 hours.
  • If you define “real-time web” as updating once per second, Google will achieve real-time search in 657 days, a little less than 2 years.
  • 657 days from Feb 10, 2009 (when Jeff gave his talk) is:
  • November 29, 2010.

Google does not fear the Real-Time Web.

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Google App Engine Adding XMPP and Background Tasks

February 6th, 2009

Google updated the App Engine roadmap this evening with huge news! XMPP, inbound / outbound email, and background tasks are coming to Google App Engine this year!

With these additions, a ton of new application possibilities open up! For example:

Instant Messaging, Real-Time Applications

XMPP opens the door to IM applications, and any applications that benefit from real-time updates (more so than just simple polling)

Micro-blogging, Email automatons

Inbound and outbound email opens the door to complete micro-blogging applications like Twitter and Jaiku as well as all sorts of email based automaton systems.

Game Simulation and Calendaring

Scheduled tasks and background processing open the door to persistent game state simulation, alerts, and calendaring. (for example… or maybe you just want to send reminders to pick up the milk)

Pretty cool stuff! Things are definitely going to heat up in 2009!

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