New products from Google, as discussed at the Factory Tour…
- AdSense for Feeds – announced by Jason Shellen of Blogger fame; works with any RSS feed.
- Google Earth – announced by John Hanke, founder of Keyhole; unreleased software; new name for Keyhole product launching in a few weeks; new global database; Sergey: “I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, and now I don’t have to go”; new dataset, much better resolution; integrates 3D mapping data with Google search, so you can type in a search term and go to it; also integrates with driving directions; very impressive demo.
- fusion – announced by Marissa Mayer; “one more thing, so to speak”; one centralized place for all your data; announcing first of the “fusion” products; Google personalized home page; toggle between classic and personalized; benefits: easy to set up, clean, crisp, “Googley” (per Dorothy Parker,”Tonstant Radar fwowed up”); integrates across Google products; 1-2 months will accepts any rss feed into your home page, effectively a feed reader; nice ajax editing and drag and drop rearrangement; doesn’t yet seem like this is any more than my yahoo; q&a: Q-what do you think you’re doing that my yahoo isn’t doing? A-critical mass of push-style applications, different than MyY! by being easier to set up; Q-why not more than just the feeds listed there? A-we launched this today, pulled up from June 30th launch plan [hm, why?] to show now, universal RSS support will follow.