Results tagged “google” from 60 Second Science

File this under "Very big news in technology that's just not as exciting as gadget-laden power suits."

Early this morning Microsoft made an offer of $44.6 billion in stock and cash to acquire Yahoo! That's a 62% premium over where Yahoo's stock closed last night. That's a nice way of saying, "Hi!" Less nice is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's open letter that went out across the newswire: " A year has gone by, and [your] competitive situation has not improved." Ouch.

Continue reading 'Microsoft issues $44.6 billion "Screw You!" to Google' >

It's kind of kooky that it's come to this, but here you have the Chief of Research at Yahoo, Prabhakar Raghavan, pointing out what science fiction writers have dreamed of for decades -- that computing, long the province of the boutique provider (the home PC) is becoming a commodity, just like the electricity that produces it.

"In a sense," says Raghavan told Businessweek, "there are only five computers on Earth."

Those five computers would be the sums of the respective server farms owned by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon and IBM.

Just as virtually no one, not even rural farmers, depends on their own generators for energy, but takes their electricity from the grid, so too will universities, businesses, and even individuals come to rely more and more on the grid -- or the "cloud" of computers out there in nowhere land -- for their processing needs.

Anyone who relies on web-based services -- e.g. Google or Yahoo mail -- is already plugged into the grid/cloud. And if "Google Office" has anything to say about it, this dependency will only intensify.

Combine cloud computing with ever faster and more ubiquitous internet access and what you've got is supercomputing for the masses -- even if it's only being used for the mundane: on-demand television, sharing our lives through Youtube and Flickr, and storing all that data we need to get our jobs done.

Kottke has more (...and he only scooped everyone else on this story by about three years.)

26 years in the making, worldwide mobile subscriptions have reached 3.3 billion according to research firm Informa Telecoms and Media. As of, oh, right now, the US Census Bureau puts the global population at 6,634,545,153. This doesn't mean that half the world has a cell phone, since 59 countries have mobile penetration of over 100 percent, meaning at least some people have more than one subscription. I--gadget yuppie that I am--have 17.

Continue reading 'Mobile subscriptions reach halfway point for global population:Google takes over world, Koreans die' >

Google announced today its participation in the Open Handset Alliance, a group of 34 mobile and tech organizations dedicated to bringing an open platform to mobile phones. The awesomely named platform, Android, was also announced. Right now there's nothing--absolutely bubkiss--in the way of pragmatic effects. The software will be in the hands of developers next week, and we shouldn't expect to see phones until the second half of 2008, which is leading some spectators to call this a PR move. I prefer to see it as just one more step towards Google running my entire life.

Continue reading 'Google launches open platform for mobile phones; everything else' >