Friday, January 15th, 2010
Google’s About Turn in China
My latest BBC column looks at what Google is up to in China – read it on the BBC News website as usual. Google has responded to what it terms “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure” aimed at getting access to the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists by announcing [...]
No Comments » - Posted in billblog by bill
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
Oiling the Digital Society
[As ever, you can also read this on the BBC News Website. And Bud Smith at Google Voice Daily mentions it in his round up of GV news.] The announcement that Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt is standing down from the Apple board hardly came as a surprise. Google’s Android is already powering smartphones that [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in billblog by bill
Monday, June 8th, 2009
Bing or Bust
I wrote this last week and forgot to post it here – it’s on the BBC News site and I’ll add it here when I get home: Will Bing boom or be a big bust? While sales of hardware may be suffering greatly it seems that the general economic gloom has not yet diminished the [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in billblog by bill
Monday, April 6th, 2009
Dreamers of the Network World
[As ever, this is also on the BBC News website] Last Saturday morning I woke up and reached for my phone so that I could spend five minutes catching up on email, Facebook and of course overnight updates on Twitter before I got up to make some coffee and start the day. Radio 4 is [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in billblog by bill
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
Don’t dream it… Google it.
I’m an easily distracted person, as anyone who’s ever had the misfortune to talk to me at a party will agree. It’s not that I’m not interested in what someone is saying, and I do pay attention, but I have a tendency to scan the room and tune in to other conversations from time to [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in billblog by bill
Friday, December 5th, 2008
Making the Market Work
[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website] Twitter, despite the attention it receives around the place with its high-profile users like Stephen Fry, is not the only micro-blogging service out there. I quite like Tumblr, and Stumbleupon does something useful, while BrightKite links notes and photos to your current location and [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in billblog by bill
Friday, November 21st, 2008
Ties that bind
[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website] One of the throwaway remarks I sometimes make at conferences is that “Google knows you’re pregnant before you do”. I can say this because the things you search for will change as your life changes, and search engine providers may well be able to [...]
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Thursday, October 30th, 2008
Who is responsible in our cloudy world?
[As ever, this is also on the BBC News website] In the next few days [in fact it is now published] a number of large technology companies, including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!, are going to announce that they have signed up to a voluntary code of conduct on how they do business in countries that [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in billblog by bill
Friday, September 26th, 2008
A link to eternity
[You can read this on the BBC News website - sorry it's late being posted here. But one day I'll be late too..] While Google is as secretive about its internal processes and systems as Apple is about product development, every now and then senior people post articles on the official Google blog and offer [...]
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Thursday, September 11th, 2008
The value of Chrome…
I’m writing a piece for Ariel, the BBC’s in-house newspaper, about Google Chrome, so I did some searching and was surprised just how many entries about the browser Google managed to find and how many of them were about the browser rather than the metal: if you search for ‘chrome’ on Google then the top [...]