Today, Google announced a new pilot initiative called Google Gadget Ventures aimed at bootstrapping an economic ecosystem around gadgets. Google Gadget Ventures will offer third-party gadget development and gadget-related businesses two types of funding:
- Grants of $5,000 to developers who’ve built gadgets in our directory that already receive at least 250,000 weekly page views. To apply, qualified Gadget developers will be asked to submit a one-page proposal.
- Seed investments of $100,000 to previous Google Gadget Ventures grant recipients who’d like to build a business around the Google Gadgets platform. Qualified developers will be asked to submit a business plan.
For more information, please see http://www.google.com/gadgetventures.
June 28th, 2007
Google Desktop hit the operating system trifecta today with the release of a version of Google Desktopâ„¢ for Linux. Now available on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, the Google Desktop application allows users of every major operating system to search their desktop and the web as quickly, easily and comprehensively as they search the web with Google.
Major features of Google Desktop for Linux (beta) include:
- Comprehensive Indexing - Users can search the full text of virtually all their computer’s content, including text, PDF, PS, source code, HTML files, email from Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org documents, Man and Info pages, folders, images, and music. Google Desktop for Linux can even find previous versions of files or recover those that have been accidentally deleted.
- Quick Search Box - The Quick Search Box is the fastest way to do web and desktop searches. Hitting the command key twice calls it up, instantly displaying results as users type.
- Gmail and Web History Search - Not everything users are looking for resides on their computer. Google Desktop for Linux makes it easy for users to simultaneously search their Gmailâ„¢ webmail, web search history and the web at large. And because their index is stored locally on their own computer, users can even access their Gmail and web history while they’re offline.
With this release, Google Desktop joins the Picasaâ„¢, Google Earthâ„¢ and Google Toolbar for Firefoxâ„¢ applications among Google’s offerings for Linux. In addition to creating products that run on Linux, Google supports the Linux community in a variety of ways, such as releasing open source code, running the Summer of Codeâ„¢ and hosting tens of thousands of open source projects on Google Codeâ„¢ (http://code.google.com).
Google Desktop for Linux (beta) was developed by Google’s Beijing engineering team, and is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese. It runs on Debian 4.0, Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10, SUSE 10.1, and Red Flag 5, and can be downloaded for free at http://desktop.google.com.
June 28th, 2007
