Google has always held a strong reputation among tech enthusiasts and the geek  community for some time now. Part of the reason being it’s high standard of morality and buisness ethics when it comes to promoting it’s own products.

In fact, Google has always pledged to compete with all buisnesses in a fair manner. Its easy for a company holding the majority share of all online search to self-promote products of it’s own interest, but google has strieved to play it fair. Google fans often to refer to this type of buisness practice as being the “Anti-Evil” Policy.

However, some recent actions by Google point to a violation of their self-claimed “Anti-Evil” policy.

A few months ago, Google displayed small notes called Google Tips on top of organic search results, which promoted their own products like Blogger, Picasa, Google Calender, and several others. That decision produced an outrage in the tech world resulting in Google actually putting an end to Google Tips. 

Google is currently displaying Google Checkout icons next to their own products which is simply a tactic to promote their own software. In addition to icons/logos, Google is also adding other graphical components such as wide badges and text descriptions to ads displayed on Google Search results pages to “help shoppers identify Google Checkout merchants” more easily.

An icon, which can be classified as an image next to the given advertisement would naturally result in better exposure and a much higher rate of click through. This action can certainly be seen as a unfair method of self-promotion and has the potential to gain a large press coverage in the coming days as this topic gains heat.

[via:Digital Inspiration]

Let’s be honest now, we all make a mistake from time to time. But, would you      expect a large corporation like Google to ever make a mistake, especially when it comes to their own logo.

You may be aware of Google’s habbit of changing their logo design upon certain cultural celebrations like Christmas, Presidents Day, Lincoln’s Day, and ofcourse Valentines Day.

Well, Google decided to display a logo containing a rather confusing design to celebrate this year’s Valentines Day. The logo consisted of a strawberry with a large green stem, most likely representing the [L] in Google. There is no doubt in my mind that this logo can definitely be confusing at a first glance.

Many have gone to the extent of claiming Google has misspelled it’s own name as being “Googe”. The Google Blog did however react to the claims by clearing up the whole situation with a post stating that there was no mistake, but only a misinterpretation by the users.

Hopefully, Google will stick to designs that are not so vague in the future. Atleast that way they can avoid a whole lot of undeserved embarassment.

Many were speculating about the true release date of Google’s popular web  based email client known as Gmail for some time now. Rumors were fueled with an additional boost, when Google (by accidently or not) released a page allowing anyone to sign up to use Gmail.

Then to everyones suprise, the page was pulled down for reasons unknown to anyone. It could’ve of been a mistake, like the many made by google blogger team last year.

Since the release date of 2004, Gmail was limited to those lucky few invited by email or registered through mobile phone. These were methods ensuring the quality of Gmail remains stardard and to prevent spam accounts from being created.

The long beta period does seem unusual for a google product as popular as Gmail. Google has become extremetly efficient at providing users with quality products and so this waiting period does seem legitimate.

Google being the generous company it is today decided to gift you this valentines day with a completely free registation process. By free, I mean without those hassles I’ve mentioned. Anyone can now sign up for a free Gmail account offering 2.8GB of storage space.

Some of the features you will find useful with gmail include advanced spam protection, integration with other google services, and ofcourse the much loved search feature. Additionally, you can even access your email on the go with complete mobile access.

Sign Up For GMail

[Source: Google Blog]

Lets say, you come across a interesting quote or information that may be  beneficial to a friend of yours. In order to send it via email, you have to open up your favorite email client, copy the given text, and then you have to paste the text. All this can take some time if your computer isn’t exactly what you may call a Power PC.

Sometimes it can be a pain just to open up your email client and paste text that you have selected. This all depends on your mood ofcourse.

Snip IT is a simple add-on for Microsoft Internet Explorer that can assist you in this situation. While making the whole process simple, it can also save you a good amount of time.

Using the add-on is a breeze. While Internet Explorer is open, just simply highlight text that you want to send by email. Then upon right click, You will be given choices at the bottom of the menu to send the highlighted text by means of various email services. You can click any of the clients provided in the menu, which will open up a new window enabling you to send it to anyone of your choice.

The add-on currently supports Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and default installed MailTo client in Internet Explorer as e-mail client options. Yahoo Mail Beta is not currently supported.

[Download Add-On]      

[Thanks, Neowin]

Transfering text based documents can be a difficult task to say the least,  especially with the addition of rival companies favoring their own type of formating, instead of one truly universal format.

Microsoft has been working towards helping users achieve the task of transfering text documents between various office programs. Specifically, Microsoft seems to focus on the ODF format established by Open Office application that is becoming a rival to it’s own standard. 

Infact, they have released a translation program that converts Word documents into more open formats to ease the diffulty and fustration involved in this process.

Users can already save word documents in several different formats, but this process does not seem to preserve all of the layout and styling. This new program is supposed to allow Word users to save, open, and edit text documents that have been previously saved in the ODF format, which is favored by the ever popular Open Office application.

Microsoft Word users can already download the translation program at the sourceforge site but official release at the microsoft download section will follow in the coming days. Add-ons for PowerPoint and Excel will also be ready by the end of 2007.

[Download Add-on]    [More about Add-on]