Day: April 14, 2010

Google, Cloud Computing & Web Apps

Afif TabshLeave a comment
———– Michael Liedtke – Associated Press———–

SAN FRANCISCO: Google Inc. will sell the online services of other business software makers in an effort to fill its own product gaps and persuade more companies to rely on applications piped over the internet.

The online store that was announced late Tuesday marks another step in Google’s crusade to convert the world to “cloud computing,” the idea of running applications in web browsers instead of installing them on individual hard drives. The information entered in the programs also is stored in data centers run by third parties such as Google.

More than 50 software makers have agreed to sell their Internet programs through Google, which will keep 20 percent of the sales. The prices are expected to range from $50 annually to several hundred dollars annually per user.

All the applications sold in Google’s store can be melded with Google’s own cloud-computing services, said Vic Gundotra, the firm’s vice president of engineering.

Google views cloud computing as a way to deepen people’s dependence on its services and generate more revenue beyond the internet search advertising that provides virtually all its income.

Cloud computing also provides Google with a weapon that could weaken one of its biggest rivals, Microsoft Corp.

Although it’s introducing more online alternatives, Microsoft still makes most of its money from individual computer licenses of its Windows system and software programs.

The applications store could also provide fodder for the low-cost computers that will run on a Google system called Chrome. The first computers using Chrome OS won’t have a hard drive, meaning they will need Internet access and cloud-computing services to perform the tasks routinely done on Windows-powered machines.

Google began offering a free online suite of e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications in 2006.
It has been selling a more sophisticated package of online services for $50 per user for the past three years.

Cloud computing can be a tough sell to corporate-decision makers worried about security and uninterrupted access.
Google has invested billions of dollars during the past five years to keep its systems up and running.

Nevertheless, Google’s applications users occasionally have been cut off from their e-mail accounts and other services.
According to the firm, some 25 million people working for over 2 million businesses, state agencies and schools use Google’s online applications.

The firm’s revenue from software licensing and other non-advertising sources totaled $762 million last year.

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Amazing What They Get Away With

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Question:        Which country alone in the Middle East has nuclear weapons?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections? ?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East seized the sovereign territory of other nations by military force and continues to occupy it in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East routinely violates the international borders of another sovereign state with warplanes and artillery and naval gunfire?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        What American ally in the Middle East has for years sent assassins into other countries to kill its political enemies (a practice sometimes called exporting terrorism)?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        In which country in the Middle East have high-ranking military officers admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were executed?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        What country in the Middle East refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing prisoners of war?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        What country in the Middle East created 762,000 refugees and refuses to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:       What country in the Middle East refuses to pay compensation to people whose land, bank accounts and businesses it confiscated?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        In what country in the Middle East was a high-ranking United Nations diplomat assassinated?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        In what country in the Middle East did the man who ordered the assassination of a high-ranking U.N. diplomat become prime minister?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        What country in the Middle East blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a U.S. ship, the USS Liberty, in international waters, killing 34 and wounding 171 American sailors?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        What country in the Middle East employed a spy, Jonathan Pollard, to steal classified documents and then gave some of them to the Soviet Union ?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        What country at first denied any official connection to Pollard, then voted to make him a citizen and has continuously demanded that the American president grant Pollard a full pardon?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        What Middle East country allows American Jewish murderers to flee to its country to escape punishment in the United States and refuses to extradite them once in their custody?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        What Middle East country preaches against hate yet builds a shrine and a memorial for a murderer who killed 29 Palestinians while they prayed in their Mosque.?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        What country on Planet Earth has the second most powerful lobby in the United States , according to a recent Fortune magazine survey of Washington insiders?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East deliberately targeted a U.N. Refugee Camp in Qana , Lebanon and killed 103 innocent men, women, and especially children?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East is in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions and has been protected from 29 more by U.S. vetoes?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East receives more than one-third of all U.S. aid yet is the 16th richest country in the world?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East receives U.S. weapons for free and then sells the technology to the Republic of China even at the objections of the U.S. ?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East routinely insults the American people by having its Prime Minister address the United States Congress and lecturing them like children on why they have no right to reduce foreign aid?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East had its Prime Minister announce to his staff not to worry about what the United States says because “We control America ?”
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        What country in the Middle East was cited by Amnesty International for demolishing more than 4000 innocent Palestinian homes as a means of ethnic cleansing.
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East has just recently used a weapon of mass destruction, a one-ton smart bomb, dropping it in the center of a highly populated area killing 15 civilians including 9 children?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East routinely kills young Palestinian children for no reason other than throwing stones at armored vehicles, bulldozers, or tanks?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East signed the Oslo Accords promising to halt any new Jewish Settlement construction, but instead, has built more than 270 new settlements since the signing?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East has assassinated more than 100 political officials of its opponent in the last 2 years while killing hundreds of civilians in the process, including dozens of children?
Answer:         Israel .

Question:        Which country in the Middle East regularly violates the Geneva Convention by imposing collective punishment on entire towns, villages, and camps, for the acts of a few, and even goes as far as demolishing entire villages while people are still in their homes?
Answer:         Israel .