GTS Blog

I downloaded Google’s new Mac Chrome Beta to my MacBook Pro. Downloading and installing the application was very easy and only took a few minutes. The browser works well. It also has a girl next door appeal that will make Safari users feel right at home. But should you ditch your old reliable Safari for it? Here are some points to consider:

Chrome is a search-engine wrapped in a browser, with several built-in search functions. For example: as you enter a URL on the address bar it uses an autofill function and suggests search keywords. By default, this is done using Google’s search engine but you can change the search preference to Bing or Yahoo. Or you can disable this feature altogether. But you can not escape Google search altogether should you decide to use Chrome on your Mac. 

On the other hand, Safari is a just a plain old browser. You can decide how to search by yourself with no specific guidance and with no specific websites shoved down your throat.

Chrome may have some privacy issues which should be considered. Google wants to monitor your usage statistics (see Preferences option below). Many potential users may ask themselves if Google is playing the Big Brother and collecting usage data for its own reasons, and whether it is such a good idea to put so much more power into Google’s hands (as if they need any more power). 

Chrome offers some development tools which can be helpful for web developers that want to test their website or web applications in runtime. Safari does not have such tools in place.

In summary: Mac Chrome is a good browser and can replace Safari quickly, easily and seamlessly. But Safari is also an excellent browser. Which one will you use?

In Answers.com Q3 2009 earnings call on 11/4/09, Answers.com CEO stated that  ”We’ve been informed by Google that we will no longer be receiving their definition link traffic starting sometime in Q4.” The definition link (shown below) appears when someone searches Google searches for terms and phrases that have a dictionary or encyclopedia definition.

For the last five years, clicking the definition link has led the user to the Answers.com website which offers a wide range of information on the requested topic. That link accounts for about 5% of Answers.com $20Million a year revenues, or about $1Million a year.

So who is Google going to give the definition link to next? The answer may be to Google itself. Google Dictionary is a very powerful tool that can be used to look up millions of words, terms, information on famous people, geography, landmarks and just about anything. If the term appears in Google’s own dictionary, it will display that information. For other terms, Google will offer a variety of Internet sources and images that provide information. See example below:

Google Dictionary already provides multilingual support and will tell you if the searched term has relevance in other languages. So although the definition link feature is  not available on the non-English versions of Google, it is logical to predict that the feature will be available in the future.

Google has added a new mobile voice search feature for Chinese language speakers. Recognizing the difficulty of entering Chinese characters on cellphone keypads, Google wanted to make search easier for mobile users. So now users can just ask their cell phone a question and get the search results on their cellphone display. Information on weather, stock quotes, restaurants and more can now be obtained using a simple voice command.

The software, which can be downloaded from Google, currently supports over 40 Nokia phone models. Support for Android and iPhone will be added in the near future.

You can find more information on http://googlechinablog.com/.

In a widely publicized move, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has decided  to allow website URL addresses to be written in non-Latin characters. Starting in November of this year, countries and territories will be able to apply for ccTLDs (Country Code Top Level Domain) that are written in non-Latin characters. For example, China will be able to apply for the .测试 ccTLD in additional to the Latin character .cn ccTLD it currently uses. This will set the path to registration of TLDs in foreign languages such as Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Farsi, Hebrew and more.

Most of the over 1,000 news articles that have been written on this topic since the final decision was made by ICANN on October 30, 2009 have focused on what this means to the Internet user. The sentiment is that this will make it easier for non-English speakers to use the Internet and will ultimately deepen Internet penetration in many countries worldwide. But this is at best a theory, and probably not even a good one. The fact is that most Internet users look for and find information on the Internet in their native language using search engines. Very few Internet users look for information by typing a website address in their browser. The big search engine companies Google, Yahoo and Bing support all but the most obscure languages, not to mention the thousands of regional search engines that are dedicated to a specific language (for example Baidu, the Chinese search engine which is one of the top 10 ranked websites in the world). So should Internet squatters (remember them?) rush out to register 水稻.测试 (the Chinese equivalent of www.rice.com)? I’m not so sure. Maybe having rice.com will give you a boost in search engine rankings for keyword searches for ‘rice,’ but it will definitely not guarantee a number 1 spot on Google. Nor will it by itself guarantee a huge amount of website traffic.

The most immediate beneficiary of this move is not the Internet user in China, Egypt or Teheran. It is first and foremost a move that benefits ICANN itself as well as the United States of America. Why? I can think of a few reasons:

1. Money. This move is a gold mine for ICANN, which will charge US$26,000 and up to 3% of the future IDN ccTLD registration revenues (ICANN payment guidelines can be found here). There are currently almost 300 ccTLDs (check IANA page for entire list). Projecting that the number of IDN ccTLDs will be equal or more than this number, the ICANN stands to make tens of millions of dollars in the next two years.
2. Continued control. Everyone is saying that the number of Internet users that speak Chinese will eventually exceed the number of Internet users that speak English. So what’s to stop China from forming its own version of ICANN? By using a ‘don’t beat ‘em join ‘em’ approach, ICANN may be able to gain time and stave off such efforts by other government-/country-backed organizations.
3. World politics. The United Nations (UN) is a worldwide organization but its headquarters is based in New York. The US is the true power broker behind the UN, everyone knows that. Similarly, the non-profit organization called ICANN is basically an extension of the US government DOC (Department of Commerce).  And it is based in California. So you don’t have to be an expert in Political Science to realize that an Internet controlled by ICANN is an Internet controlled by the USA. Whoever controls the Internet controls the world, or at least has a serious advantage in monitoring and controlling the flow of information in the world.
4. Business. The US economy is highly dependent on the Internet. While many of the old-economy companies (like the automotives and banks) are faltering, the tech sector has been the locomotive which is providing new jobs and hope for economic recovery. ICANN, through its control of the Internet, provides Internet-related companies in the USA with a definite edge.

Now it is easier than ever to get translations quickly without having to navigate through multiple web pages. Just go to  www.bing.com and type ‘translate + translation_phrase’ or ‘translation +   translation_phrase.’ The phrase is translated into several languages immediately as shown below:

Bing Direct Translation