What Has Google Been Up To Lately

Busy launching products, as usual. Last week it unveiled a beta version of Google Page Creator (http://pages.google.com), which enables anyone to create good old-fashioned web pages. However, you must have a Gmail address that you are willing to expose to the world, and to get in you had to sign up at the launch. Within hours, Google was unable to handle the demand and stopped accepting users. How odd that Google didn't figure out that people might want to try it. Before that, Google launched beta versions of Google Desktop 3 (http://desktop.google.com), with an enhanced Sidebar, and Toolbar 4 (www.google.com/tools/toolbar/T4). Desktop 3 created a small furore because of its "Search Across Computers" feature. This provides an option to search one of your computers from another of your computers, even if it's turned off. (The data is actually stored on Google's servers.) This is nice only if you don't mind Google storing your data. SAC could be particularly attractive to any hackers who can get hold of your Gmail account details. (A security flaw was found in Gmail in October 2004, though none has since surfaced.)

Source - Guardian Unlimited