Perspectives

The official orkut blog is in portuguese, the official language in Brazil. ( Well, they do have an english version at en.blog.orkut.com).

And now, they got that picture in my front page. Everyone knows that Orkut is most popular in India ( actually, the subcontinent) and Brazil, but I just love the fact that Google has not only accepted the fact, but also is actively pursuing it. Really actively that it is not about videos and features but about making it work on 800×600 resolutions on low bandwidth and on IE5.

Remember the friendster filipino screw up?
Happy Independance day, by the way.

Sometime last friday, I heard about Google’s new Local service for India. As expected, they just have two text boxes in there unlike a yahoo, where you would expect links all over the place that will get you to forget what you came to the site for.

Although I am a very critical guy, I would refrain from commenting much because I know the problems one encounters with Local and India. No, it is not technology at all. Local is a solved problem in many other countries. Data is, and there is no easy way out. Hard work and innovation is needed from the data guys if this or any other local portal is going to become useful to the layman.

I just came back from proto.in and clearly, Local is the where the buzz is. A lot of startups trying to get their piece of cake from this potentially large and untapped market opportunity.

Coming back to Google India Local, there are some disconnects. Data that works on Google maps doesnt work on India local. I am sure they are fixing it.

But, a larger thought problem these biggies need to understand is there is a thin line between what a business is and what is not. For instance, the keyword “icici atm” doesnt give me a result, but “icici bank” does. Not fair to expect the end user to know what is “local” enough to be a part of “local”. At the look of it, seems like they are sourcing their data from Indiacom (never heard of these guys before) and Infomedia (JustDial is still trying to be a Google/Yahoo all by themselves? ).

Anyways, Thanks Google for the service. Hoping you will get usable content quickly in there somehow.

Google has removed yahoo India maps from it’s index. Artifically, forcibly and manually. For a search query such as “yahoo india maps”, or “domain:yahoo.com india+maps”, I dont think there is any other site more relevant. Secondly, all the blogs that announced Yahoo maps’ arrival are very well in it’s index. And each one of these blogs have an inlink to in.maps.yahoo.com. Heck, even my pic on flickr is turning up. Googlebot knows how to reach the site then, right?. Not that I say technorati is right, but from what I see there, organically in.maps must atleast be third in the result list.

But that is not what is interesting. I saw in.maps.yahoo.com on google’s first search result page yesterday.

Dear Google, Do you know what you mean when you say “Dont be evil?”

Yours truly.

Only recently was I my manager asking me if I was using Picasa. I told him I dont put on my windows anymore. I dont, partly because my installation is screwed and I dont know better than to re-install the entire god damn thing, and partly because I really wanted to evaluate linux as a home desktop OS. Where I am on the the evaluation? well, I am fairly convinced I can do all my day to day activities without much pain. A situation happens once in a while when I hate myself for being on linux, but that happens when I am on windows too. So, that evens it out I guess.

Ok, getting past the crap, these situations I was talking about has been narrowed down a bit by Google’s amazing gesture to us, poor souls by releasing Picasa for Linux. Wow! I mean, seriously.. I love picasa because it has the simplicity and usability that photoshop does not have. Now, it is on linux. Baby! I cant ask for more, and I wont go back to Gimp unless I am shooting Aishwarya Rai.

Thanks Google! I love you.
PS: Video  Search on the new video.yahoo.com for Aishwarya rai sucks.

Google is probably going to tell you a much better answer about that.
But I could not resist putting thoughts about this on paper(blog, in
this case). Blogspot is full of illusion. It is like a “maya”. At the look of it,
it is fanciful and does all that you want it to do. But, you gotta get
out of it. It is not the real world.  As once mentioned, “nothing ever happens” TM . Sure, you can do a lot of things, but what happened to basics ? Blogging is the lifeline of web 2.0. And you dont have a notion of communities,
You can’t tag etc. But, my biggest problem with blogspot is the way
they have written their “Comments” module. It has to be better than
that.

 Like has already pointed out, we are talking about blog and not a website. Nobody really visits a blog ever.  Just as how
“Adsense” does not make sense, all those “Lotsa” things does not make sense either.

Just to say something original, I was talking to a first yearite in IIM
Bangalore about Business, startups ( I am damn interested in all of
these
things) and everything(Seems like my favorite hobby these days is to catch hold of an IIM MBA and talk to him about startups ).
He questioned Google’s ( How comical will it be to give an outgoing
link to “google” ? Will that increase my Page rank ? ) 
business  model.
Though not sure about the exact numbers, having close to 100% of revenues from Advertisement is not such a wise thing. Y! had a
similar stature six years ago and we all know what happened.

I told him “If newspaper(s) industry can survive close to 150 years
just on advertisement, I am sure Internet ( and hence G & Y ) can
too.”
Someone once told me, an issue of the “The Hindu” would cost Rs. 125 , but for the advts it carries.
Do you disagree ?  Leave a comment. I have a big theory behind this one and is probably material enough for another entry.