Google

Although Google is still the most visited site in the UK, last week Facebook overtook the search engine in terms of US hits.

Set up in 2005 by Mark Zuckerberg while he was at Harvard, Facebook has reached a point where it received a massive 7.07 per cent of all web visits in the States in the week up to the 13th March, according to Hitwise research.

Facebook has previously been the most visited site on particular days, notably on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but this is the first time it has achieved supremacy over a whole week. Google received 7.03 per cent of US web traffic during the same period.

Both sites have improved visitation over the same period last year, but Facebook’s expansion is far more rapid. Google’s improvement was 9 per cent, while Facebook’s was 185 per cent. The Google figures exclude YouTube, Google Maps and Gmail however.

The picture in the UK still sees Google at the top of the tree. 9.4 per cent of UK hits are to Google, while Facebook is in second place with 6 per cent. This is a substantial gap and Hitwise believe it will be quite some time before Facebook can overtake Google in the UK.

Two-thirds of people questioned in a recent survey said that they thought Google’s Street View project was ‘intrusive’. The major gripe seems to be the lack of permission required to publish these images.

Almost a quarter said that it was ‘a service for burglars’, but Thames Valley Police say that there is nothing to support the theory that Street View could lead to an increase in the burglary rate in an area.

However, the service has been recently expanded and a third of people polled said that this was a positive move. Furthermore, a spokesman speaking on behalf of the Information Commissioner’s Office, said that there hadn’t been any official complaints lodged with them since the expansion.

Google have defended the project, saying that they are always aware of privacy concerns. Every image features a link, allowing a person to request that it be blurred or even deleted.

A spokesman speaking on behalf of Google said:

“Street View has already proved immensely popular in UK in the last year, with clear tourist benefits for Britain and millions of people using it daily.”

“Anyone who has a privacy concern and wants to remove their house can do so quickly and easily but in fact we often find people get in touch asking us to come and put their street on the map.”

A deal has been signed between Google and the Italian government so that up to a million books could be included in the Google Books project.

The deal covers everything from two of Italy’s national libraries and would see them all accessible via the internet. This would include books by Dante, Machiavelli and Galileo and they would all be available for free.

All of these books were published prior to 1868, which means that there are no copyright issues and the scheme has been welcomed in Italy as budget considerations have limited what can be spent on trying to preserve the collections that are kept in Rome and Florence.

A 1966 flood in Florence damaged thousands of books and Mario Resca, speaking on behalf of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, pointed to this catastrophe, saying that having the books scanned for the internet would ensure that the content was never lost.

Other Google attempts to scan books have encountered difficulties. A French court found that the process was an infringement of copyright, while the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers brought a lawsuit against the search giant for the same reason.

Search engine giants Google have released yet another innovative product to help improve the web browsing experience. This latest feature is called Google Reader Play, and it is designed to display RSS news feeds in a more visually entertaining format.

Some have described the way the new interface displays the web as similar to ‘an interactive entertainment magazine’, and this sounds about right. It is an experimental feature that focuses heavily on the visual, as well as the fun, side of browsing RSS feeds.

How does it work?
Google Reader Play focuses on pictures and videos, and also displays statistics and information in the form of entertaining graphics and maps. It lets you browse one story at a time this way, making it easier and more entertaining to spend time reading news feeds.

One of Google’s software engineers, Garrett Wu, believes that:

“Reader Play is a fun way to browse interesting items online that you wouldn’t find otherwise,”

Unwittingly however, Wu has highlighted one of the main user complaints about the new interface; that it is great for time-wasting, but not for efficient and speedy searching. This is likely why the product is only an experimental feature, an entertaining distraction from serious searching. The fact that Google Reader Play has been introduced just a few weeks before the launch of the Apple iPad is also another probable reason behind its launch.

As of Thursday 11th March, Google’s Street View will include 360 degree, street-level imagery for every street in the UK. The coverage at the moment is patchy at best, but the hard work of Google’s Street View team means that Britain can finally catch up to other European countries such as France, Italy, Spain and the US, who all currently have full nationwide coverage.

Google has been using every tool and method at their disposal in order to capture images from every location on the 238,000 miles of public road now included in the service, mounting cameras on tricycles, bicycles and many other vehicles to complete this mammoth task. Both urban and rural areas and also significant landmarks are now included; a vast improvement from the few select cities previously covered.

A recent YouGov Poll has revealed the main usage of Google Street View, finding that:

• One third of people have used it to look at foreign locations
• Two thirds use it for its main purpose - to get directions
• One in five use it when house-hunting

A spokesperson from Google has said:

“People can check out a restaurant before arriving, make travel plans, arrange meeting points, get a helping hand with geography homework, or just get to know their town better”

And so the Google mission to capture the world continues…