Google Buys Videoconferencing Tech

On the heels of its stellar first-quarter results , Google announced
Friday that it would add video conferencing software from Swedish
company Marratech to its acquisition arsenal.

The search engine giant will not acquire the entire company, just the
video conferencing software. It will also take on Marratech's
technical team, according to a spokesman.

The deal "will enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in
videoconference meetings wherever there's an Internet connection,"
Douglas Merrill, vice president of engineering, wrote in a Google blog
posting. "It will be used in combination with our current
video-conferencing equipment."

"We look forward to learning from the extraordinary ingenuity of
Marratech's engineers as they focus on desktop conferencing research
and development in Sweden, where they will continue to be located,"
Merrill wrote.

Google could provide no further details on additional functionality,
when it will debut or whether or not it will be a free service.

If it is offered free of cost, the offering could be a hit to Cisco,
which last month shelled out $3.2 billion to acquire WebEx, another
provider of video conferencing capabilities. It would also serve as
competition to Microsoft's LiveMeeting and Adobe Connect.

A Google spokesman had no comment on whether the Marratech acquisition
was an effort to go after those rivals.

Marratech technology is based on research that started in 1995 at the
Centre for Distance-Spanning Technology (CDT) at Luleå university of
Technology in Sweden. It was initially conceived as distance learning
technology but later morphed into e-meeting and web collaboration
software, according to Marratech.

The company's technology runs on Windows, Mac or Linux environments
utilizing a broadband connection, though it does not yet support
Microsoft Vista or Mac OS X v.10.5, according to the company's Web
site.

MySpace takes on Digg and Google News

MySpace is to take on Google and Digg with a news aggregator service
that combs the web for stories and allows users to rank their
favourites.

MySpace News combines elements of Digg, which is based on stories
submitted and ranked by readers, and Google News, which organises news
according to subject matter.

The service, now in beta testing, collates stories from across the web
and divides them into 300 sub-sections in 25 topics such as politics,
sport and entertainment. Stories are then ranked according to MySpace
member votes.

MySpace owner News Corp claimed that the service will scan more news
sources than Google News, but said that organisations can opt out of
having their news feed shown if they wish.

Google recently settled a copyright suit with Agence France-Presse,
which complained about alleged unauthorised use of its content on
Google News.

The news service is likely to drive more traffic to MySpace and
attract further ad revenue for News Corp's Fox Interactive Media,
which bought the site in 2005 for $580m.

Google delivers AJAX API

Google has launched an AJAX API aimed to simplify the creation of application mashups using JavaScript.

The new Google AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Feed API eliminates the need for developers to write server-side proxies to access public data feeds using JavaScript, Google announced in an official blog posting.

Instead, with the API, feeds can accessed by writing "a few lines" of JavaScript. "The API automatically handles the proxying and offers a clean, straightforward interface for accessing syndicated data," said a Google spokesman.

Sample tasks the API simplifies include displaying a dynamic blogroll on a Web page or photos from a feed from the Google Picasa photo management service on a site.

The new API supports the Atom and RSS syndicated feed formats.

Bret Taylor, group product manager for Google developer products, demonstrated the Google AJAX Feed API at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

More information about the new API can be found at the Google site.

PowerPoint and Google

Google Inc. plans to launch software similar to Microsoft Corp.'s popular PowerPoint program as the two companies vie to dominate the online experience.

Google announced Friday it would pay $3.1 billion to acquire ad-management technology company DoubleClick Inc. Almost as soon as Google announced the cash acquisition, Microsoft and AT&T executives said the deal could violate antitrust legislation and result in a dangerous concentration of Internet users' personal data at Mountain View-based Google.

But Schmidt, noting that Microsoft and AT&T have had their share of antitrust skirmishes, retorted, "Give me a break."

"They're wrong," Schmidt said. "It's false."

The two companies already offer e-mail, word processing and spreadsheet programs, and other tools. Google's new presentation software will compete against Microsoft's ubiquitous PowerPoint software that's part of its popular Office suite.

"This completes what most users of PCs consider the Office suite," said John Battelle, who leads Federated Media Publishing and grilled Schmidt about the product at the conference.

Google will give away two versions of the presentation software starting this summer, and it will sell a "Premier" version with extra storage for $50 per year. The presentation program is part of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, which the company has been unveiling piecemeal for nearly a year.