Google Everywhere

It is hard to go online today without touching one or more Google products or services. If it is not search, it may be email, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, Docs, or Calendar. Google has truly blanketed us with their web-based app offerings. Heck, even the Google Doodle is a conversation topic!

In this editorial, I shall discuss how you can kick the Google habit, what I am using now as alternatives and why you probably won’t be able to replace certain Google products today. Ready to move away from Google? First, some background.

Why un-Google?

Some of the reasons I personally decided to look for alternatives:

• Google became a part of virtually everything I did online. I used GMail, Google Reader, Google Finance, Blogger, Picasa, Picasa Web, Google Docs, Google Search, Google Calendar and Google Maps. I felt uncomfortable putting such a large portion of my online life in Google’s hands.
• Google morphed from the cool little startup building fun stuff for consumers, to a dominant public company whose revenues essentially came from just one product. That’s the key most (96%) of its revenues (and profits) came from search advertising. In other words, it needed other ways to make money. The most obvious way to do so would be to extend the arm of advertising, their main revenue-generating product, into other products. I realized I was the merchandise.
• Google seemed to get Apple and Facebook envy. Apple was growing rapidly across all their product lines and at very high profit margins, and Facebook was taking eyeballs and key talent away from Google. This led to some bad attempts to mock Apple and Facebook publicly, which of course delighted the Google developer and enthusiast community but came off as being negative to me. If you make a great product, you don’t need a negative campaign.
• Aside from philosophy, some of the competing products started becoming better, and Google’s products started getting worse (more on that within my descriptions) prompting me to start Project Un-Google which was an effort to use fewer and fewer Google products, hopefully reaching a point where I did not depend on any Google product at all.

Whether it is for philosophy, or hedging your web app bets, it is good to know there is life outside Google when it comes to products and services online and offline. There is usually a strong resistance to change, especially if you have a long history with a product. There is a high cost for transferring the old stuff, and learning your way around a new product/service. However, these challenges are not insurmountable, and I hope you take a look at some or all of the products I list here as an alternative to Google. If you have ideas of other products I may not have mentioned, please let me know!

Popular Google products

Here are some of the Google products/services I will be comparing to competition:

• Search
• Picasa
• GMail
• Calendar
• Documents
• Groups
• Finance
• Blogger
• Chrome
• Maps/Directions
• Talk/Chat/Voice

I realize Google has many more products, appsand services, but I did not look at products like Book Search which are very niche. My attempt here is to look at the commonly used products and services only.

According to a new report from Net Applications’s NetMarketShare data, Safari has exceeded 8 percent of web browser use across all devices due to the strong growth in iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad sales. Also, Apple’s WebKit, the second most widely used rendering engine, combined with Google Chrome makes it second to Internet Explorer and slightly ahead of Firefox.

In addition, the data shows that in the last two years, Internet Explorer’s marketshare has dropped from nearly 67 percent to 52.8 percent. Firefox has also seen a decrease in marketshare from almost 23 percent to 21.48 percent. However, Google’s Chrome has seen massive increase in marketshare. Chrome’s marketshare increased from 2.84 percent to 13.45 percent, while Safari’s nearly doubled from 4.07 percent to 8.05 percent.

Safari and Chrome’s marketshare combined now represent over 21.5 percent of web users, making it slightly ahead of Firefox even before counting the small number of WebKit browsers.

Clearly Safari’s growth isn’t going to stop here. Apple’s development of not just a desktop browser but also converting the desktop version of their browser to the first “fully usable” mobile version browser has not only tremendously changed the web browser market but also has affected the web-related development market as well.

Aptiquant, a Vancouver based Psychometric Consulting company, which specializes in helping organizations objectively assess applicants and employees, has released the results of its study in which it correlated the IQ (Intelligent Quotients) of users with the browser they were using. The results aren’t all that surprising.

On an average, Internet Explorer users were found to have the least IQ, while Opera users had the highest. Camino users and Internet Explorer users with Chrome Frame plugin were also found to have higher than average IQ. The results are pretty much what you would expect. The dominance of Internet Explorer has long been attributed to its bundling with Windows. A sizeable portion of users tend to just use what Windows ships with instead of looking for alternatives. Heck, many people don’t even know what is a web browser. On the other hand Opera, which has remained the niche browser, is often dubbed as the browser for geeks and power users.

In order to collect the data Aptiquant relied on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (IV) test, which is available on its website. The gender, geographic location, and browser of netizens taking the test were recorded along with their test results. The scores of more than 101,326 individuals were analyzed.

Aptiquant also compared their recent dataset with the data they had collected in 2006. The older dataset paints a significantly different picture. The mean IQ of Opera users drops significantly, and Internet Explorer (6 and 7) gets a significant boost. Clearly, over the last five years, Internet Explorer has lost its share of intelligent users, as power users have migrated elsewhere.

Aptiquant also divided the users into IQ groups based on their percentile ranks. Once again, Internet Explorer users dominated the lower percentile groups, while Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari users dominated the higher percentile groups.

Aptiquant’s study reinforces that stereotype that Internet Explorer is a dumb user’s browser. It also demonstrates that Microsoft has simply not been able to stay abreast with its competitors. Even though Internet Explorer 7 and 8 users have a higher IQ score than Internet Explorer 6 users, Microsoft has failed to stop the flow of power users to third-party alternatives. Internet Explorer still has a healthy market share. However, masses often follow the early adopters and power users. Microsoft will need to come up with something pretty brilliant if it hopes to reverse Internet Explorer’s fortunes.

Hat tip: @Opera

If you are a developer on the Mac, then you are aware of what Xcode is. If you aren’t a Mac/iOS/Safari Dev, then you may not have even heard of Xcode. That’s to be expected, as it used to be only  available  to those with developer  licenses.

However, when the Mac App Store launched, Apple released Xcode for a mere 5 dollars. I, like many others, picked it up for personal reasons. I wanted it to enable the beta versions of the multi-touch gestures for my iPad.

Now, Apple has decided to give Xcode away for free, given that you have purchased a copy of OS X Lion. This is huge news, because it will save casual developers a hundred bucks a year. If you need an application to write the  occasional  piece  of code, or even just a simple script now and then, you should check out Xcode.

Xcode is constantly rated as one of the best sets of tools for development on the Mac. It sports some of the best formatting and color coding I have ever come across. While I don’t write code for a living, I have done some basic web development, and Xcode makes my life easier when I do.

If you are interested in Xcode, and you have already upgraded to Lion, then I suggest you pick it up. While the price may stick, it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple changed the price with an update in the future. Jump on this deal while its  available.

TweetDeck is one of my favorite desktop clients for accessing Twitter and Facebook feeds among other social networking platforms. They also have clients for the Android, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. However, the one that impressed me the most was their Chrome App for Google Chrome.

The TweetDeck Chrome App brought all the goodies from the desktop app to the browser. Today, TweetDeck has announced that they will now be allowing users to access TweetDeck on any web browser using a HTML5 web app.

As we said at the time, Chrome TweetDeck marks the start of a new era for TweetDeck, with all efforts now focused on building our next-generation products as HTML5 and mobile apps. Since then we have been working hard, not only on improving the existing ChromeDeck experience, but also on bringing the same TweetDeck app to other web platforms.

TweetDeck Web will be available in a limited web beta for users which will be available as a standalone web site and does not require any downloads. However, TweetDeck Web beta will be subject to hourly limits because it will not be using the streaming API from Twitter.

TweetDeck Web will initially be opened up as private beta and users can sign up to get early access at http://www.tweetdeck.com/webbeta. The initial focus group would be users of browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox 3.6, Firefox 4 and Safari, with support for Opera and Internet Explorer 9 being added soon

Though TweetDeck is taking a great step forward by taking their platform online, they are not the first one’s to provide a web-based format and several other services like Seesmic, Dabr and HootSuite already provide web based Twitter clients.

However, TweetDeck chrome already notched up an impressive 400,000 users in a short spam of time. It would be interesting to see how much dent they make into the market share of other services by launching the web interface for different browsers.

Earlier in the week, we reported that Internet Explorer (running on Windows 7) and Safari (running on Snow Leopard) had been hacked almost instantaneously on the first day of pwn2own, an annual hackfest. Google’s Chrome browser made it through as the sole participant who had registered to take a crack at Chrome failed to turn up.

The following days of the competition witnessed Firefox web browser, and Android and Windows Phone 7 mobile operating systems survive pwn2own 2011 in a similar manner as contestants either failed to turn up or withdrew.

On the other hand, Apple’s poor show in the competition continued with the legendary Charlie Miller succeeding in bypassing iPhone’s defense by exploiting a bug present in Mobile Safari.

RIM’s Blackberry OS, which was tested next, also fell quite easily. Once again, a flaw in its Webkit based browser was the culprit. The team made up of Vincenzo Iozzo, Willem Pinckaers, and Ralf Philipp Weinmann targeted the browser as unlike RIM’s operating system, WebKit is well documented and well known.

Meanwhile, after examining the vulnerabilities exploited by Stephen Fewer to hack Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft has stated that they have already fixed the concerned vulnerability in Internet Explorer 9. It didn’t however explain why older versions of internet explorer were yet to be patched, and when, if at all, they will be patched. All the exploits used in the competition are properties of TippingPoint ZDI, which passes them on to the concerned vendors, and provides them six months to fix the issue.

History repeated itself, once again, on the first day of pwn2own, an annual hacking competition where hackers try to break through the defense of modern browsers and operating systems. Safari and Internet Explorer were once again successfully exploited by hackers, while Chrome remained unchallenged and undefeated.

Safari, which was the first browser to be challenged, fell within five seconds. The French security firm VUPEN managed to both execute arbitrary code (launch the Calculator), and bypass sandbox protection (write file on the hard disk). The technique used by VUPEN required development of tools from the scratch and took about three weeks to put together. VUPEN’s success is notable because shortly before the contest began, Apple patched as many as 62 vulnerabilities in a massive security update.

Next up was Internet Explorer, which met a similar fate at the hands of Stephen Fewer. Fewer exploited three separate vulnerabilities to execute Calculator and write a file to the disk. Unlike Apple, Microsoft hadn’t even bothered to issue any security updates last week.

The final browser that was supposed to be tested today was Chrome. However, the single contestant who had signed up to take a crack at Chrome didn’t turn up. So Chrome finished the day unchallenged and undefeated. Like Apple, Google had also released a major security update to Chrome in which at least 24 vulnerabilities were patched. It’s likely that the contestant dropped out because the zero-day vulnerability he planned on using was fixed by Google.

Firefox is slated to be challenged tomorrow. Should it fall, Google Chrome will be the last browser standing for the third consecutive year. Opera is not included in the competition as the organisers are of the opinion that its current user base of 53 million is not large enough.

Based on the 2010 reports from Netmarketshare.com, the web browsers from Google and Apple have slowly been stealing users from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. In the chart below, we can see the trends over the last year. (chart by CNET)

This may be partly due to the new browser ballot in Windows 7 that is required in Europe. However, even if that’s true, Microsoft still has no excuse for it’s falling browser marketshare. When the beta version of IE9 was released in February, no affect was seen on the marketshare. We’ll have to wait to see what happens when the finished version is released.

The gains by Chrome and Safari came at the expense of Internet Explorer‘s dropping percentage, which ended the year at 57%, after starting above 60%. Google’s Chrome browser gained almost 5 points in 2010 and ended with 10% of the market. Safari gained about 1.5 points and ended at about 6%. Firefox and Opera remained about the same at 23% and 2%.

The question that we think most interesting is What browsers do Techie Buzz readers use?. Here’s a chart from Keith showing our data.

The Techie Buzz chart shows more readers using Firefox than Internet Explorer. Chrome users are in third place, followed by Safari and Opera. If we can assume that most technology sites have similar stats, this doesn’t look good for Microsoft.

It appears that the more people know, the less they use Internet Explorer. Many people feel that the crucial advantage to using Firefox and Chrome is that they are more easily customized by using Addons and Extensions. Do you think Opera’s adoption of extensions will help them steal share from Microsoft?

The name of this web browser addon tells you who it helps. If you are addicted to sharing cool links or awesome images in Twitter, Facebook or any other social web service, Shareaholic could help.

I tried it out, and it’s helped my sharing output already. Shareaholic supports sending content to over 100 different services.

It’s easy to install and use. Just point your web browser to the Shareaholic home page, and install the plugin. They support Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, Opera, Flock and Songbird.

Once installed, you’ll be prompted to customize it, so that it shows only the services that you use. Clicking on he Shareaholic icon in your browser will bring up the sharing menu.

You might have noticed from the image above, that you can assign keyboard shortcut keys for each service. You can also use it to shorten long URLs. That’s really handy. I also like the simple posts it creates.

If you need more details, watch this video about Shareaholic.

If you have a sharing habit, Shareaholic is an addon you need to try. It’s a lot easier than going through a twelve step program to cure your addiction.

Install the Shareaholic Addon/Extension

Note: We previously wrote about Shareaholic almost a year ago. You may also want to check out a similar addon called AddToAny.

Facebook and Twitter are both great social networks to find friends and communicate with them. However, both these networks do not notify users when someone unfollows or unfriends them.

Twitter does have several options to know when users unfollow you, however, what about Facebook? How do you figure out when someone unfriends you on Facebook? Turns out there is a way to do that too.

Unfriend Finder for Facebook is a Greasemonkey script which tracks your Facebook friends and then notifies you whenever someone decides to unfriend you on Facebook.

The script tightly integrates within Facebook and sends you notifications whenever someone removes you from your list. It also alerts you when someone ignores your friend request.

The only problem of the script is that it is browser specific and only works on Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera right now. There is no support for Internet Explorer yet, but you can read up some tips on running Greasemonkey scripts in IE.

You can download the script or add-on for your browser from here.

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