FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE
Google's been busy beyond just the music front today, as noted by Memeorandum.
I just installed two new Firefox extensions from Google today, that are noteworthy. I would especially focus on the second one, both in the context of the previous post on Memeorandum, AND in the context of every specialty search service offered by Google, including the music search service being discussed today.
1. The first extension is called "Google Safe Browsing", beta of course, that "use(s) Google's automated technology to warn you about web pages that may be unsafe".
I can't comment how well it works just yet, but it does offer an option for "Enhanced Protection" once you install and re-launch your Firefox browser.
Specifically it mentions front and center ("Read this...it's not the usual Yada-Yada"), that it will send information about the sites you visit back to Google in order to provide this service IF you select that option.
This is the usual bargain with the devil that users are going to increasingly confronted with on a whole range of services provided for free by internet companies large and small.
One rule of thumb is go with potentially is to trust only the biggest companies...if something goes wrong, there are better recourse than with smaller companies. But each person is going to have to find their own zone of comfort here.
I chose to go for the "enhanced protection"...and will report back on how well the extension works in a future post.
Of potentially greater import is the SECOND EXTENSION.
2. Titled "Blogger Web Comments" (again, Beta), the extension allows you to "see what bloggers are saying about the web page you're visiting, and add a post to your own blog".
At first glance, this seems to be another attempt at similar experiments in the Web 1.0 era to allow users to leave comments about web sites they visit, that then can be seen, IF you install special client software on your machine.
The Google extension doesn't need any other software installed besides the Firefox extension, and once installed, shows you small pop-ups on the bottom right of your screen with blog comments on the pages you visit. The source of these comments seems to be from Google's own Blog Search engine, which they introduced recently, again, in a beta version.
If you have a blog on Google's Blogger service, you can choose to comment on the page yourself via a blog post.
It's very nicely done and in some ways feels like a "Memeorandum distributed to the edges", atomized as it were, to appear where-ever the user happens to be.
In the previous post, I talked about how significant a breakthrough Memeorandum represents in the way blogs are read today, and the various user interface shortcomings that need to be addressed over time.
Well, this Google extension seems to be an "atomized" approach to the problem and an interesting one at that. If it's taken up by a significant number of users, it may potentially change the way users not only consume web content, but also how they rate it, comment on it, and share their thoughts about it in a "SITE-INDEPENDENT" way.
It could potentially leverage a whole range of Web 2.0 services, given it's quasi-P2P (peer to peer) approach.
It'd be Web 2.0 "Squared", (or "Cubed" as the fictional Larry Lazard says in Chapter 2/Episode 2 of Tom Evslin Internet murder mystery, "Hackoff.com").
If you think I might be overstating things a bit, think about what the extension does for a second.
It takes the site the user is on currently, and USES IT AS A SEARCH INPUT in Google's Blog search engine and serves up the result in the bottom right-hand window, WITHOUT THE USER HAVING TO LIFT A FINGER and even THINK ABOUT DOING A SEARCH.
Paul Kedrosky reminded everyone in a post yesterday that mainstream users ARE LAZY. And it's true.
You can just imagine how it'd affect every type of content out there, including the music related searches being discussed today. The user can be hovering over iTunes or Rhapsody, and Google's music search could automatically serve up more information on the artist, track, album etc., ALONG WITH BLOG COMMENTS BY OTHER USERS ABOUT THE MUSIC the user is looking at...pretty cool stuff. Talk about making Google the King Maker in music.
It'd be an even more "democratic" approach to comments about web sites, blog posts, and content of every time, than the technologies permit us to date. Of course there are a lot of execution related "if", "ands" and "buts" here, and issues like spam-proofing these types of services, but it's a great start.
Also, there's nothing to prevent the GYMAAAE and other companies from trying similar approaches, unless of course Google or somebody has patented this approach.
What's also impressive about this extension, is that it's the brainchild of Glen Murphy, a software engineer on Google's Firefox team, and a Google employee for all of FIVE WEEKS. That someone that new to the company can roll out a feature system side, that has such potentially game-changing implications for the search industry, says a LOT about Google, and it's potential ability to compete against all comers.
Recommend you try the extension out.
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