We’ve just bought Google

Graphic from Sportsayer. Via Problogger.

We’ve known for a while the Google doesn’t like sites with paid links. Along with many other attempts to game the Google algorithm and obtain unfair advantage in search results, it’s thought that text links are a bad thing, period.

I’ve written a post on this subject over on Syntagma, which has been hit twice by the PR penalty.

Read the piece here.

According to the Cringely Pulpit – a weekly column on the website of public-service broadcaster PBS — Google is in bed with Apple while both companies are keeping a close eye on each other’s every move.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says, “Google’s architectural model around broadband and services and so forth plays very well to the powerful devices and services Apple is doing. We’re a perfect back end to the problems that they’re trying to solve. And they have very good judgment on user interface and people. They don’t have this supercomputer I’m talking about, which is the data centers.”

Cringely comments, “Google handles the back end and Apple the front end. Google runs the macrocomputer while Apple supplies the microcomputer.”

But is it as simple as that? “Apple isn’t going to be satisfied making clever little interfaces to a world of information provided — and owned — by Google. … [Steve Jobs, Apple CEO] can rent a supercomputer anytime he wants one, so there.”

Moreover, “Google needs Apple on that team for its financial power, its sense of the market, and to keep Steve Jobs in a known position so he doesn’t make any trouble. But I’m also sure Steve is questioning the strategy on a daily basis and twice a month threatening to pull out of the consortium of bidders Google has assembled.”

A dance of the toreadors perhaps?

That Gmail storage counter seems to have been stuck around 2,800MB for quite a while. Many users have exceeded that some time ago, so it was appropriate that storage-rich Google announced new target numbers going forward.

The Official Google Blog says :

In April 2005, we started increasing Gmail storage as part of our “Infinity+1″ storage plan. At that time, we realized we’d never reach infinity, but we promised to keep giving Gmail users more space as we were able. That said, a few of you are using Gmail so much that you’re running out of space, so to make good on our promise, today we’re announcing we are speeding up our counter and giving out more free storage.

Thr new storage targets are given as :

2912MB by October 11, 2007 midnight Google time
4.2GB by the 23rd this month
6GB by January 4th next year
42GB by the year of 2038

Hmm, don’t know about 2038 but it’s good to see the company looking so far ahead.