Google opens video chat directly from iGoogle homepage
To try and make its personalized homepage, iGoogle, a little stickier, Google is allowing video chat directly from site.
To use it, you have to download a free plug-in. Then you can go on and video chat with anyone like you might with Gtalk. Your friends don’t have to have Gmail accounts to participate. All they need is a generic Google account.
The video chat is part of a push to make iGoogle more social, moving it… Continue Reading
Instant messaging: feature or product?
Web-based instant messaging services, such as Meebo and eBuddy have had high growth rates over many months. They’ve raked in a lot of funding from hungry VCs. But we see IM becoming a commodity.
So far, these non-aligned startups have offered an advantage. They’ve let everyone communicate with everyone. They’ve aggregated the various IM clients in a single web site, so that someone with GTalk can IM with someone from Yahoo Messenger.
Some, such as EQO, combine… Continue Reading
The Google Myth goes “pop”
[Editor's note: We asked Kevin Laws, a former blogger at VentureBlog, to comment on the Google-YouTube merger. Here are his thoughts. Keep in mind that his company, Vast, can be seen as a competitor to Google Base]
Google purchased YouTube for more than a billion dollars. That “pop” you hear is not the end of the Web 2.0 bubble, but the end of the Google Myth.
The Google Myth is simple: to produce good businesses, hire the… Continue Reading