Google News: Using Gmail Offline, Search Growth, Chrome's Speed, Measurement Labs, 10 Years of Google

You have to love Google and i have more from them today.

If you use Gmail, like me, you are in luck. Today, Gmail Labs gave Gmail a new feature. It allows you to use your Gmail even if you are not connected to the Internet, Offline Gmail. How this works is beyond my knowledge. Even after watching a video on it, i still never entirely understood. Anyways, you will be able to use almost all of Gmail's features even if you are not connected to the Internet, thanks to Google Gears. "Composing emails in offline mode puts them in your outbox, and those emails are automatically sent once you're back online." This will really be useful to those Blackberry users or people on-the-go. I think it will affect more American users than Canadian users, but it's still useful, nonetheless. I think that Americans have a faster-paced lifestyle than us, in Canada. For me, the ability to use Offline Gmail is still not an option in my Labs menu, so i still have to wait for that.

Just when you thought Google owned the search engine category, they still managed to increase in 2008. From all of the search queries in 2008, Google's market share increased from 58.5% to 63.5%. As you can see from the chart, Google is the purple line, which steadily increases. The other 3 lines are other 3 search engines and it looks like their lines just go straight through the graph, with no increase. "What's even more impressive is that nearly 90 percent of all the growth in search volume was also captured by Google." This is world domination at its finest.

Yet, another chart. This one also shows Google's dominance, but this time in the browser department. The smaller the bar, the faster it is, in this case. Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox were the 2 kings in this test. Internet Explorer, obviously, came in last place here. Opera 10 Alpha was oh-so-close to snagging that last place slot, but they just edged out Internet Explorer RC 1. Kudos to my 2 favourite browsers, Chrome and Firefox, for dusting those other 2 browsers.

Google is fighting for Net Neutrality and they are going to "give users the tools to figure out whether internet service providers are interfering with their broadband connections by blocking or 'throttling' certain applications." Google partnered up with the New America Foundation and Planet Labs to "further develop Measurement Labs, an open-source platform that researchers can use to find out information about broadband connections." Google looks like it is really backing up Net Neutrality and it is a good thing. "One of the tools Google plans to provide users on its M-Lab site is called DiffProbe. It will help users detect whether an internet service provider is giving some traffic a lower priority than other traffic." The more information the user has, the more control they have. This article on TechCrunch was very well-written, that's why i pulled so many quotes from it.

I'm about to show you a video of Google's highlights throughout the years. It goes through pretty much everything Google has done for the first 10 years and it really is amazing. It is also a well put-together video. Here it is, via YouTube.



Offline Gmail (and picture): http://lifehacker.com/5140668/gmail-goes-offline-with-google-gears
Google's Search Growth (and chart): http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/google-gobbled-up-90-percent-of-all-us-search-growth-in-2008/
Google Chrome's Speed (and chart): http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10151584-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Measurement Labs: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/google-introduces-a-new-weapon-in-the-fight-for-net-neutrality-measurement-labs/
10 Years of Google (and video): http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/01/ten-years-of-google-video.html