Serendipity35

Google Labs is that part of the company that tries out new things and releases beta versions for the public to use.

Google Romance is there now. It has some sophisticated personal search algorithms that are supposed to help you find that mate of your soul. It also sets up your first "Contextual Date" with that person. And it's free. Well, "free" in the look-at-our-highly-relevant-advertising-that-is-on-the-page version of free. The ads are also selected by some fancy algorithms.

Have I beta-tested it? Nope. And I probably won't. I'll poke around to see how it works. If you didn't want to get wet, why did you get into the pool?

However, you give it a try and then leave some comments here.

And then we need to try out Google Finance. This one started out as a "small project led by a few engineers in Bangalore and later joined by more engineers and finance enthusiasts in Mountain View and New York," according to the Google's own blog.

I've been using Yahoo! Finance for a few years and find it very good. I'm not sure what more I would ask for from Google. They mention that you don't need to remember the ticker or mutual fund symbol because you can just search for a company or mutual fund by name. The other features: interactive charts by time periods, headlines mapped into the charts (via Google News), "insightful comments" from bloggers (don't get me started on stock tipsters and "pump & dump" scams), and discussion groups moderated by "enthusiastic community advocates" - these all all available out there already.

It's a Google mashup. Ways to reuse materials they already have in new ways. I'm all for mashups and recycling, but when companies start to do that (Microsoft comes to mind) and try to initiate projects that are already being done pretty well by others, I start to wonder if their creative juices are getting low.

Still, I will try Google Finance out in this beta version and hope it will expand and improve. Let Google know what you think about it.

I've always though Google would be a great, creative place to work. When they purchased Writely, there were rumors about them trying to put together an online MS Office kind of suite of applications. That certainly sounds interesting. Still, that's another "do what someone else is already doing" development direction, but we are a country that loves to see people build the better mousetrap - especially if it's cheaper or free.

My own personal vision of software, formed 20 years ago, (which I'm still wrong about for now) is that we won't have software on our "computer" (I'm also doubtful that the device we are using in 10 years will be called that). The software and applications will be online and probably so will be my data and files. Kind of a dumb terminal/thin client idea. Yes, I know all the security issues that will occur. Yes, I realize that when my Internet connection goes down (or doesn't exist), I am stuck. That needs a lot of work and consideration. And that's what I want Google and others to do.