San José City College is said to be testing a new Gmail feature that allows the hosting of Gmail accounts with a third party domain address.

The service will provide companies and individuals with tools for efficient account management, massive storage, powerful mail search, messaging, and a fast interface.

The trial involves 10,000 students from the college. Others who want to participate can apply for the closed beta.

[Source: Geekzone]

It wasn’t long ago that speculators were predicting a $600 price for Google shares. Now they’re off 24% from the peak of $475, and naysayers are talking of a further 50 percent decline.

Reuters says: “Shares of Web search leader Google Inc., off 24 percent from highs set last month — could face a further 50 percent decline, Barron’s said in the financial weekly’s February 13 edition. Barron’s scenario for a fall in Google’s stock is based on speculating about what may happen if mounting competition or fraud by users of its Google’s ad-buying system led to a 20 percent shortfall in bullish analysts’ 2006 revenue estimates.”

We doubt it will be as bad as that, but the Google guys are going to have to find a new source of resilience to add to their undoubted innovatory strengths.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is warning users not to install Google’s new version 3 of its Desktop search function. The application, which will store the contents of a hard drive on Google’s computers, making it available to other computers specified by the content owner.

EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google password.

EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston said: “Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google’s search logs, it’s shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers. Unless you configure Google Desktop very carefully, and few people will, Google will have copies of your tax returns, love letters, business records, financial and medical files, and whatever other text-based documents the Desktop software can index. The government could then demand these personal files with only a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to seize the same things from your home or business, and in many cases you wouldn’t even be notified in time to challenge it. Other litigants — your spouse, your business partners or rivals, whoever — could also try to cut out the middleman (you) and subpoena Google for your files.”

Google does seem to be chancing its arm on the privacy issue. Creating a virtual operating system on the Web is a great idea in theory, but more thought needs to be put into security of data and copyright issues.

When the London Times and the Financial Times run major stories about Google over the weekend, you know something’s brewing. The Times, in particular, has a piece on the Google plans for the Internet.

Readers of Google Future will know we’ve speculated in the past on Google’s intentions for their “dark fiber” network and over the moves to create shipping container datacenters. The idea of person-specific advertising on IP-TV (Internet television) is now being widely canvassed.

The Times begins its article: “Google is working on a project to create its own global internet protocol (IP) network, a private alternative to the internet controlled by the search giant, according to sources who are in commercial negotiation with the company.”

Moreover, the company has placed advertisements in the American and British press for “Strategic Negotiator candidates with experience in … identification, selection, and negotiation of dark fiber contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network”. (Dark fiber is a legacy of the internet boom in the 90s when American companies laid down fiber optic cables for new broadband services. Following the dot-com crash, much of the work was abandoned. What Google is buying up is a usable network of cables spread across the United States that has never been activated.)

Read the rest of this entry »