Gmail Catches Cold

Yesterday a close friend was having a lot of trouble logging into their Gmail account. But it wasn't the normal screen that you get when you're asked if you want to open the page in basic html because of a slow connection. In fact, she couldn't get Gmail to open at all. No error messages, just a blank screen. Until she switched over to Internet Explorer.

But she was not alone. When I looked at Google Hot Trends, I noticed quite a few keywords that people had been searching for this morning had something to do with Gmail or a Google server problem.

Googlestalking a New Hobby? Google Latitude Allows You to Track Your Friends

Google's new tool known as Latitude allows you to find out where your friends are. This looks really interesting, but I honestly think they're going too far. Yes, I know you have to give them permission, etc.. but man, I don't really want other people being able to stalk me quite this easily.

Tracking people’s movements is sure to raise concerns about privacy, but “everything about Latitude is opt-in,” according to Vic Gundotra, vice-president of engineering with Google’s mobile team, writing on the company’s official blog.

(source)

While the tool is interesting and may be useful to some people and have various applications, I don't really like the idea very much. But maybe my concerns are completely unfounded.

To be continued...

What's Up With the "Dissappearing Google"?

From CNET:

Without warning, Google has quietly removed the iGoogle Web site formatted for the iPhone. The iPhone formatted version of iGoogle now redirects users to the generic Google Web site formatted for mobile devices. The version of the page that was unique to the iPhone, optimized for Mobile Safari and offered sections that were expandable or collapsible used to display custom gadgets.

This is not the only Google thing that has disappeared. I also saw something somewhere about Google trimming back on it's notebook application, etc. It seems that Google is trimming some resources and as a previous blog post has mentioned, maybe they're scaling back on personnel too. Are things so bad in the economy that even Google is taking a hit? This is quite possible, since they're stock price is less than half of what it was a year ago.