Source: John Koetsier

The actual, real, live fire pole.

Like a full regulation fire pole that people can actually use to drop down a floor. Or an officially certified slide to get down to the lobby after a long day. Perhaps a cushioned and enclosed chill room.

Or even, believe it or not, a cattle walkway.

On a recent trip through Ontario, I toured Google’s first office in Canada — and talked to the engineer who leads Google Canada, a former startup guy in Silicon Valley and native Canuck, Steve Woods. If you use mobile Gmail, a Chromebook, Google Maps, Google Calendar, or Google Fiber, there’s a good chance you’ve touched something built at Google’s offices in Waterloo, Ontario.

And if you ever get the opportunity, those offices are definitely something to touch as well.

“Startups are great, because you start from scratch,” Woods says. “Startups are awful, because you start from scratch. At Google, you can literally launch a project that affects a billion people.”

That’s one reason he decided to accept Google’s offer to leave the Valley, return home, and “figure out what we should do in Canada and do it.”

In 2008, when Google opened the office, Waterloo and London were the company’s two centers of mobile excellence — likely due to Waterloo’s proximity to then-leading smartphone manufacturer BlackBerry. So Waterloo and London pioneered the mobile version of virtually every service Google offers: Maps, Gmail, Calendar, mobile search, and more. Waterloo, which now boasts about 200 engineers, also hosts the team that built Google Fiber’s user interface and critical software for the Chrome Pixel, Google’s answer to Apple’s retina display, with full touch integration.

The office is located in a formerly industrial building that once housed a tannery, believe it or not (hence the cattle walkway). Google shares it with a number of accelerators, startups, and coworking spaces that together make up Communitech, a startup mecca with strong connections to Waterloo University, angel investors, and venture capitalists.

Source: John Koetsier

The Googlers who work here. After a year, their drawing gets colored in.

Woods, whose recruiting strategy is to get ex-patriate Canadians to move back as well as to draw new talent from the nearby Waterloo University, says that it’s an attractive place for Googlers for a variety of reasons — not just the fire pole or massage room.

“There’s fewer bosses here, or at least they can’t find you,” he jokes. “At least a third of the people here have moved back from California.”

Source: John Koetsier

The actual cattle walkway

Woods says that Google’s most internally unpopular and controversial product ever was built in Waterloo as well: Conversion Optimizer. That’s a piece of software for advertising buyers that Google calls the “just trust us and push the button button,” which essentially hands your advertising campaign over to Google to optimize for the cheapest and most effective ads.

“It was extremely unpopular in Google,” Woods told me. “People were wondering: How much money will we lose? They were worried that advertisers would optimize their ad spend early in the month, hit their caps, and stop buying.”

Google’s known for taking risks, however, and the company ultimately decided to go ahead despite the chance it might actually lose money. Now, the product is one of Google’s most popular for advertisers, and it manages “many, many billions of dollars.”

“It took a Nobel prize-winning economist to prove that was untrue,” Woods said. “It’s great for Google, great for advertisers, and great for surfers.”

And another product Waterloo build that Woods is particularly proud of is what he calls “the largest project Google has ever done.”

It’s the first mobile search transcoder, which was an infrastructure that rendered web pages on Google’s own internal servers, decided which bits were most important for mobile phone web users, and sent only those bits. It sounds like something for the presmartphone days of historical antiquity, but not so.

“It’s still a very fast-growing project,” Woods told me. “The volume is staggering … billions of pages per day in countries in the third world, and even in the U.S., it’s still growing.”

So … why in Waterloo, Ontario?

Source: John Koetsier

Communitech, the community in the building that includes Google.

“Something interesting is happening here,” Woods says. “The university produces an amazing kind of talent … and people that come into Google from the University of Waterloo do disproportionately well.”

Worldwide, he says, Waterloo has been one of Google’ top three or four recruiting centers for some years now. And, he adds, not everyone who wants to work for Google wants to live in California.

“This area has a very high proportion of startups to population,” he adds. “Google loves startups, and we love to hire entrepreneurial people.”

Oh, and the slide?

The office has a plastic red slide down from the second-floor Google reception area to the first-floor entrance. It has a prominent sign, “For Googlers Only,” which a PR rep told me was placed there because Ontario’s provincial slide inspector (yes, they have one, apparently) raised some concerns about safety.

I was bad, however, as I frequently am, and went down the slide anyways. The PR rep forgave me, as you can see in the video below:

Image credits: John Koetsier

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No, it’s not an early April Fool’s joke. Google just announced the Chromebook Pixel, a high-end Chrome OS-powered laptop that starts at a whopping $1,299.

The Chromebook Pixel is no hardware slouch, but though it’s priced similarly to the MacBook Air and high-end PCs, it can only run web applications. Chrome OS is basically Google’s attempt to build an entire operating system out of its Chrome web browser.

The Pixel sports a 12.85-inch touchscreen, a sharp 2,560 by 1,700 resolution, 4GB of RAM, and it also comes with 32GB and 64GB SSD storage options. The Pixel’s screen harkens back to laptops of yore, with its 3:2 ratio display, which is taller than the more popular widescreen displays. It’s powered by a dual-core 1.8-gigahertz Core i5 processor, and it also comes with 1 terabyte of free cloud storage. There’s also an LTE-equipped model for $1,449.

Just like Google’s ill-fated Nexus Q, the Chromebook Pixel seems to be a beautiful piece of hardware built with nobody in mind. I can’t imagine any consumer would prefer an expensive laptop with limited capabilities over a shiny new MacBook Air, or buying a cheaper Windows 8 Ultrabook and having money left over for a tablet. There’s no value proposition with the Chromebook Pixel; it’s just a severely limited machine with a baffling price.

So far, Google and its hardware partners have focused on low-end Chrome OS laptops. Acer’s most recent model starts at $199, and Samsung’s starts at $249. HP’s recently announced Chromebook starts at $330, a price I called ridiculous at the time. I probably would have gone easier on HP’s model had I known that Google was seriously working on a crazy expensive Chromebook.

Design-wise, the Chromebook Pixel clearly seems inspired by the MacBook Air and similar Ultrabooks. Its metal case seems simple and attractive, though I’m only judging based on pictures. The Pixel is only .64-inches thick and weighs 3.3 pounds.

But beauty isn’t enough to overcome the fact that the Pixel is just too crazy for anyone but rich eccentrics. It’s nice to see that a high-end Chromebook is possible, but Google hasn’t given us any reason to justify why it needs to be this expensive.

Not content to let Asus and Samsung have all the fun, Lenovo this morning announced a Chromebook laptop of its own for education buyers.

The computer is a slightly tweaked version of Lenovo’s existing ThinkPad X13e running Google’s Chrome OS. It’s particularly well-suited for use by K-12 students with its rubber bumpers and strengthened hinges (which Lenovo claims are good for 50,000 open and close cycles).

Despite their inexpensive starting prices of around $199, Chromebooks have yet to take off with consumers. I found the previous generation of Chromebooks too heavy, underpowered, and simplistic to recommend. But since then we’ve seen new models from Samsung and Acer that ramp up the speed. They’re still not as light as your typical Ultrabook, but they’re a good value for anyone who wants a companion to their bigger laptop or desktop.

The ThinkPad X13e Chromebook will come with an Intel processor, 11.6-inch anti-glare screen, and three USB ports. Lenovo claims it will sport a battery life to last the whole school day and will weigh under four pounds.

Lenovo will only sell its Chromebook to K-12 schools and institutional buyers, which makes a certain amount of sense. By doing so, Lenovo will likely be able to offer it for less than $199 per unit. The standard X13e with Windows starts at $499. It’s also a good choice for school IT departments, since they’re inexpensive and easy to maintain. It also helps that students will be fairly limited in terms of what they can do on a Chromebook.

Via Engadget

ChromeOS, which runs mini laptops from Acer, Asus, and Samsung among other partners, may soon follow Windows 8 in making touch a core part of the laptop user experience. According to a report from Taiwan, Google is testing the waters with a small run of touch-compatible Chromebooks, to be released under Google’s own Nexus brand.

According to the report, Compal will be providing components for 20 million units, set to start shipping late this year. That’s a large number for a device with limited commercial success so far — Google has not released sales figures for any generation of Chromebook yet.

Chromebooks, which you can buy from Google directly as well as from partners such as Best Buy, feature an operating system based on the Chrome browser. With minimal local storage and intelligence, the laptops — netbooks, really — are essentially cloud devices, booting in seconds, needing little or no configuration, and plugging users directly into the Google ecosystem of search, docs, and other tools, plus anything else online. They’re cheap as well, priced at between $200 and $500, or leasable, starting at $30/month.

Adding touch may be a sign that Google plans to launch a convertible device similar to Lenovo’s Windows 8 devices where the screen flips, rotates, or even detaches from the keyboard. Or Google may simply be experimenting with the existing clamshell devices. Either way, price will go up as component costs for touchscreens get added into the mix.

Any device launch is not likely until sometime well into 2013.

Hat tip: PCmag

A year late, Google has finally solved one of the central problems with its Chromebooks: pricing.

Announced today, the latest Samsung-designed Chromebook will run for $249 — half the price of previous models.

That’s a big deal, as it makes it far easier to justify buying the Chromebook as a second computer (which is exactly what Google has wanted from the beginning).

Some of the reason for the device’s lower price is its mobile-focused ARM processor, which allowed Samsung to eliminate the need for internal fans.

Samsung was also able to cut costs by limiting the Chromebook’s storage to 16GB. While that won’t satisfy most users’ needs, Google is offering buyers 100GB of Google Drive storage to compensate. That’s a smart, if predictable, strategy for the company.

Sadly, that cost-cutting also means the latest Chromebook is still stuck with the same 6.5-hour battery life as its predecessor. It also means the device features the same unremarkable build quality as previous models. But for $249, you can only complain about it so much.

The Chromebook will be the latest device from Google to be sold via the Google Play store, which is already home to the Nexus 7 and Galaxy Nexus.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

No, it’s not the ’90s and no, Larry Ellison is not hawking network computers. Instead, it’s 2012, and Google is. Sorta.

Today, Google opened up the opportunity for individuals and companies to lease laptops or desktops via CIT Group, a financial and insurance services provider. Google is pitching the machines as temporary hardware for seasonal workers, or computers for companies looking to keep more of their cash in the bank.

For $30/month, decreasing to $25 and $20 in the second and third years of the lease term, you too can be the proud owner of a new Chromebook, or a Chromebox for slightly less cost.

The lease includes a three-year warranty, and for corporations, a web-based Chrome management interface to manage users, apps, and provide support. The terms are month-to-month, so you will not be locked into long-term commitments.

Samsung Chromebook

The device looks to be Samsung’s Chromebook, the series 5 550, which which pairs a full-size keyboard with 6-hour battery life and a 12″ screen — and the infamous Intel Celeron processor.

List price is $599, which means that if you bought one outright, you’d be financially ahead within two years. But many companies prefer to expense items monthly and pay as they go, moving costs from capital expenditure to operating expense budgets.

The Chromebox is an Apple Mini-style desktop computer that you attach to your own external screen or screens. It supports up to two 30″ displays.

Chrome OS was just recently updated, and Samsung’s hardware was last updated in May of 2012.

photo credit: Scott Beale via photo pin cc

Google has introduced an updated version of its Chrome operating system and two new hardware options from Samsung that run the web-based OS — but it all still looks relatively underwhelming.

The search giant announced Chromebook laptops running the Chrome OS last May and finally started shipping units in June. Chrome OS is based on the notion of an always-internet-connected operating system. Not many consumers seem exited about a computer that will only “work” when it’s connected to the Web. Many apps work best installed locally on a machine rather than running it from the web. As such, Chromebook and Chrome OS adoption has not been widespread.

Now, Google is trying to change the tide with the launch of a more powerful Chromebook laptop as well as a tiny Chromebox computer that resembles Apple’s Mac mini that requires you to add a monitor, mouse, and keyboard on your own. Both pieces of hardware are made by Samsung, and both run a new version of the Chrome OS that we first got a look at in April. The new Chromebook laptop starts at $449 while the Chromebox costs $329.

As you can see in the photo below, the latest version of the Chrome OS looks much more like a Windows desktop versus what it previously looked like. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, and consumers will no doubt respond better because they are more familiar with how to operate it.

That said, there is still an inherent weakness in the Chrome OS that makes buying the hardware a dicey proposition for many users. As The Verge notes in a review, you can buy a much more versatile Windows 7 laptop for the same amount that you would spend on a new Chromebook. Om Malik seems to like the new Chromebook, but he still considers it a secondary machine instead of a primary one.

And as for the Chromebox, it seems to be a decently priced machine that could replace a desktop — as long as you don’t need access to dedicated local applications. But I don’t seriously believe that number is very large. For instance, right now I’m running Spotify for streaming music, a multi-IM client, and Photoshop, and all of those are outside of the browser. Strangely enough, the Chromebox also has no VGA or HDMI port, which limits the displays on which you can set it up.

You can watch a video describing the latest Chromebook below:

Google’s Chrome OS has always been about the web — indeed, the first version of the operating system was literally just a Chrome web browser that filled the screen. But with the latest developer channel update, the OS has received a visual upgrade that makes it look more like a cross between Windows and OS X.

We don’t yet know how many Chromebooks Google has shipped, but it’s clear they haven’t taken off, so it’s no big surprise to see the company steer the OS into something more consumer friendly. Chrome OS is still centered on the web, but now consumers won’t have to change the computing lessons they’ve learned to use it.

The new Chrome OS window manager, dubbed Aura, adds a traditional desktop (along with support for wallpapers), stacked windows, a task manager, and an app launcher similar to Launchpad in OSX. Aura is hardware accelerated, meaning it takes advantage of the Chromebook’s graphics processing instead of the CPU for intensive tasks. Google says the framework will offer “large-scale animated transitions and effects.”

It’s also worth noting that this new interface is appearing about a year after Google announced the Chromebooks, so I expect the company to push the upgrade heavily and announce new Chromebook partners in the next few months.

The visual redesign is a rare bit of exciting news for Chromebook owners, though unfortunately it won’t be available on the original Cr-48 Chromebook prototype (blame that device’s lackluster hardware). The update is available now on the Chrome OS development channel for the Samsung Series 5 and Acer AC700 Chromebooks.

Via Google Operating System

As one of the foremost Google+ skeptics, I personally got called in not once but twice to have the company’s social vision patiently explained to me.

And I also got to talk with the company’s patent law and Android experts on how Google plans to survive the current mobile OS war, where it’s currently under fire from Apple and Microsoft and waiting for reinforcements in the form of a Motorola Mobility acquisition that may or may not happen.

These stories and many others weave together in the rich and detailed tapestry that is Google’s year in review.

Google and its partners are getting sued to heck and back over Android. “Why would anyone hate on a poor, defenseless, open-source operating system?” you might ask yourself.

Considering Android is soaring in market share far beyond what anyone could have anticipated, it’s no wonder that players such as Apple (which sued HTC) and Microsoft (which is suing Motorola) are threatened. So those companies and others have struck out against Android and its manufacturers in the ever-so-entertaining theater of patent law.

Most troubling, perhaps, is Oracle’s assertion that the Android operating system’s code base itself is infringing on its copyrights and patents. Oracle, through a series of corporate acquisitions, got its mitts on Java, the open-source programming language upon which Android is based, two years ago. It filed suit against Google last year, and after three mediation hearings, a trial is still scheduled to take place.

Google+ was launched in the summer of 2011, and we — like most — first assumed it was a Facebook competitor and fawned excessively over the infant social product.

However, as time wore on, we (ok, I, the only VentureBeat staffer who refused to get a Google+ account in the first place) began to gain a deeper understanding of Plus. It is not a social network, actually. According to the company’s words and actions, it’s a unifying set of tools that’s supposed to make using all Google’s web products a more cohesive experience.

So while Google+ continues to roll out new features, what we find most exciting is its integration into all of Google’s other web-based products, from Reader to Gmail to Blogger and beyond. Eventually, you’ll see that integration everywhere, on every part of the web that Google controls.

In May, Google announced it would be launching Google Music, a.k.a., the worst-kept secret on the Internet. After months of leaks, rumors and speculation (based on gossip-happy Hollywood types with whom Google had to work to get Music off the ground), we finally got to see it for the first time at Google I/O, the company’s developer conference.

While not everyone was thrilled with the early beta of the product, we’re optimistic that Google Music can win in the long term, especially since it recently launched a music store that supports peer-to-peer sharing features.

Of all the accusations leveled at the Android operating system, none has been flung out so often nor so vociferously as that of fragmentation. Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest Android variant, was created with that accusation in mind.

The previous 2.X and 3.X forks were intended to run either on tablets or on smartphones. But the new OS runs on all web-connected devices, from smartphones to tablets and far beyond. It was intended to make development for Android much easier and to make a diverse marketplace of devices more cohesive.

For consumers, it features an all-new, gorgeous design aesthetic, complete with a homebrewed new typeface, Roboto. Who knows, Android might even be as good-looking as the new Windows Phones one of these days.

Remember those complicated patent lawsuits we were telling you about earlier? When those bad boys started, Google held fewer than 1,000 patents. Total. For all its technologies and products.

With Android getting pummeled with patent lawsuits, Google found an expeditious way to beef up its patent portfolio: In August, it announced its intention to acquire Motorola Mobility, itself the holder of 17,500 mobile tech patents with an additional 7,500 patents pending.

While U.S. and EU regulators are still putting the deal through a gamut of investigations to determine whether it crosses certain antitrust lines, Google says Moto will continue to operate as a separate entity — the only way such an acquisition could allow the competitive Android ecosystem to survive. As unlikely as it sounds, a competition-friendly Moto acquisition actually makes sense to us.

Chrome, Google’s fast and simple web browser, was launched in late 2008, and its growth has been nothing short of phenomenal. Just this month, we learned that Chrome had eclipsed Firefox as the world’s second-most popular browser.

While being second-best might not seem brag-worthy to you type-A nutjobs out there, keep in mind who is (still) winning the browser wars: Internet Explorer. But IE’s market share is waning, falling from 26.6 percent at the end of 2009 to just 40 percent two years later. Currently, Chrome claims a 25.7 percent share of the global browser market. If Chrome’s growth keeps up, it may be sitting on top soon enough.

There are a lot of ways to measure popularity, and Android is killing it in almost every metric. Not only are Android smartphones the most desired gadgets in their class; they’re also dominating in terms of actual market share. One area where Android lags is in popularity with developers — and consequently, number of currently available Android applications, especially for tablets.

Another big announcement from Google I/O was the Chromebook, Google’s hardware project for Chrome OS. The company touts Chrome OS as an operating system, but (and this frustrates the heck out of purists of any stripe) the so-called “OS” is simply Chrome, the browser, running on top of a Linux distribution that the user can’t access without rooting the machine.

It seems that Google is trying to prove the irrelevance of the operating system as it exists — a layer between the user and the hardware and the Internet. And as it pushes the relevance of “the cloud” and beefs up its own range of web products, Google is particularly peddling Chrome, Chrome “OS” and Chromebooks to the enterprise and to educators.

Finally, Google nuked a few products, most notably Gears, its behind-the-scenes syncing and caching system; Buzz, the social product that preceded Google+; and Wave, the semi-social collaborative suite that preceded Buzz.

Wave was possibly one of the most ambitious and most disappointing projects in the company’s history. Wave lives on as an Apache project, which it’s been since late last year; however, Google finally axed it officially last month.

Buzz was looking semi-promising until it ran into a deal-breaking privacy snafu that added up to a multi-million dollar legal payout to angry users.

Finally, Google did a bit of corporate shopping, shall we say, this year. Notable acquisitions include:

• fflick, bought for $10 million: This Twitter movie recommendation engine team contributed to the new YouTube redesign and integrations with Google+.
• Dealmap: We called this startup “the missing link between Google Offers and Google Maps.”
• PostRank: The acquisition of this social ranking service came just days after Google announced its +1 buttons and before it launched Google+.
• Next New Networks, bought for less than $100 million: The NNN team is providing audience development, programming experience and partner guidance for YouTube.
• Zagat, bought for $151 million: The famous restaurant review company fit perfectly into Google’s overarching plan for Places, Offers and other local business plays.
• Admeld, bought for $400 million: This ad startup will help Google deliver its ad customers more data about how their ads are performing.
• Green Parrot Pictures: This Irish startup’s technology helps to improve YouTube video processing.
• Apture: This acquisition was a talent and technology grab to help make Chrome even faster.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google announced via Twitter on Thursday that its Chromebook laptops are now available for pre-order from Amazon and Best Buy. The half dozen models that can be ordered are manufactured by Samsung and Acer and are expected to ship on June 15.

The release of these netbooks will be a test to see if U.S. consumers are interested in a new kind of operating system that is focused on web applications. The promotional language on Amazon describes the laptops like this:

“Chromebooks are built and optimized for the web, where you already spend most of your computing time. So you get a faster, simpler and more secure experience without all the headaches of ordinary computers.”

Pricing for the models falls in line with many Windows-7-based netbooks. The computers range from $379.99 to $499.99.

Google’s foray into the netbook and laptop space has not been as smooth as its move into smartphones with Android, which has essentially spread like wildfire through the mobile world. The company announced it would create a Linux-based laptop OS back in July 2009, dubbed Chrome OS. But we’re just now seeing the implementation of the OS on these machines, meaning the project is likely less important to the company than pushing forward Android development on phones and tablets.

One interesting thing that Google is doing with the computers is offering a monthly subscription program for businesses and schools. Business users can lease the machine for $28 a month, while students can lease for $20 a month. That price includes support, updates, warranty, and replacements.

I think Google is headed for a disaster with the Chromebook. While it’s an interesting idea to build a laptop experience centered on web apps, it’s not what consumers are accustomed to. Customers want functionality outside of the Web, even if they mostly want to surf the Web. When you use a photo editor, for example, you’ll have to be online to use it. And most customers just won’t get that concept.

Are you interested in picking up a Chromebook? Do you think Google is moving in the right direction with these machines?

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google unveiled a program that will basically let a business or educational institute run the entire company with Chromebooks — notebooks that are lightweight and attached to a web-based operating system — that are managed through a centralized web administrator.

Chromebooks are powered by the Chrome operating system, which is basically a suped-up web browser masquerading as an OS that gives users access to some of Google’s most popular web applications like Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar.

The Chromebooks are available to businesses for $28 per user per month. They’re also available to educational institutes for $20 per user per month. Google also upgrades the Chromebooks for each business at the end of each hardware cycle — for free. So there are no additional overhead costs and it saves the time and money required to bring in consultants and IT professionals to ensure the changeover happens smoothly.

Google is going to introduce a whole new class of businesses to some of the benefits of having centralized network and being able to share information and files quickly across all devices. There are a lot of web applications out there that already do that — like cloud storage provider Box.net and enterprise social network Yammer. Any of those companies can bake their services right into the Chromebook thanks to its extensive application programming interface (API) library. And even the most classic businesses that rely on massive internal networks and huge IT staffs are going to find that price tag hard to resist.

The Chromebook program ensures that administrators have complete control over every computer within their network — with no exceptions. There isn’t a way that a user can accidentally download any files that might compromise the network because the whole system is based on a web interface. There’s also a smaller chance that they will accidentally leak sensitive information because it will all have to go through a centralized administrator.

Google has been in the enterprise game for a little while, but it hasn’t been in the same league as some of the giants in the space like Oracle and Salesforce.com. They have enterprise applications — such as high-powered versions of Gmail with more governance features and more storage and some customer relationship management software options. It’s mostly served as a mechanism for companies selling enterprise software to deliver their services to other companies.

Back at Oracle Open World, Oracle’s chief executive Larry Ellison rolled a gigantic server onto the stage for his first keynote. “This is the cloud,” he said — referring to the company’s latest line of servers that are used to run private networks. And it cost around $1 million, for some of the best hardware. Oracle is targeting a bit of a different audience — Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies that need that kind of high-powered infrastructure to handle their computing requirements.

Google’s approach is different, but it doesn’t mean it’s trying to solve a different problem. Enterprise hardware management is a gigantic headache. Managing the software and what goes on inside the network is an even bigger headache. It’s extremely expensive — both in terms of sheer capital and in terms of the time lost to manage it.

And Google just threw out a giant bottle of aspirin.