Google Chrome, Bundled with RealPlayer

If you try to install RealPlayer, a media player available at real.com, you'll notice that the setup downloads Google Chrome. The option to install Google's browser is enabled by default and I assume that most people will not bother to disable it.


RealPlayer seems to be first third-party application used to promote Google Chrome. The browser has replaced Firefox in Google Pack and it's installed along with Google Earth if you're not paying attention.


Despite being the most aggressively promoted Google product, Chrome's market share is still low: according to Net Applications, the global market share for Chrome was 1.15% in February, compared to 0.78% in September 2008. "The biggest challenge all [browsers] face is that most people don't even know what a browser is or that there's choice," told Wired.com Brian Rakowski, director of product management at Google.

{ Thanks, Jason. }

Offline Google Calendar, Available for Everyone

After being tested in Google Apps, the offline version of Google Calendar is now available for all Google accounts. To enable it, you should click on "Offline (beta)" in Google Calendar's header, install Gears if you don't already have it, allow Google Gears to store information on your computer and then wait until the data is downloaded.


In the Offline Settings page, you can select the calendars that are available offline (by default, only the main calendar is enabled). "You'll be able to view events scheduled on these calendars the next time you access Calendar offline. Please note that calendars containing web-content events will not display correctly while offline," explains the help page.

Unlike the offline version for Gmail, the offline Google Calendar has many limitations: you need to manually go offline/online, you can't add events, edit the existing events, search your events or change the settings. Another limitation is that Google doesn't download all the events - I noticed a warning: "Your offline calendar only contains events from Feb 4, 2009 to Jun 4, 2009".





The read-only offline version of Google Calendar is only useful to quickly check your agenda when you don't have an Internet connection. For more features, you should check Mozilla Sunbird, a cross-platform tool that can synchronize with Google Calendar using CalDav. Make sure to enable caching if you want to view the events from Google Calendar when you are offline (you still can't edit the events or create new ones).

Earthquake OneBox in Google Search

If you're in the US and you search for "earthquake" using Google, you'll notice an OneBox that shows a list of recent earthquakes. The data is provided by the US Geological Survey.


Ask.com has a similar direct answer that links to a very nice mashup. There's also a Google Maps mashup that highlights the most recent earthquakes.

{ Thanks, Adam. }

Google Spreadsheets to Add Macros, Drawings

Google Spreadsheets, probably the most impressive application from Google Docs, tests some interesting features that are currently experimental and limited to trusted testers.

One of the features lets you record macros for common tasks. Instead of repeatedly selecting the formatting for a cell or a group of cells, you can record the sequence of commands that perform the formatting and click on a button to use the macro.

Another feature, code-named "Sketchy", allows you to insert different drawings. Tony Ruscoe spotted some of the images that will be available in a library that resembles Microsoft Office's Clip Art.

Google Spreadsheets' code also references an option titled "Solver", which could be a tool for solving optimization problems, and an option to protect sheets and cell ranges.


Update: Tony points to a post from 2008 with more details about macros in Google Spreadsheets.

Gmail Brings Back the Web Search Button

Gmail's search lacks many useful features that are available in Google Web Search: the popular "did you mean" query suggestions, using synonyms to expand the query, searching inside PDF files or other documents, sorting the results by relevance.


It's one of the few areas that didn't evolve since Gmail's launch and I think it's embarrassing to place the "search mail" and "search the Web" buttons next to the same search box.

As you probably noticed, the web search button is now back in Gmail after a brief disappearance. A small number of vocal users complained and Google restored the button.

Here's how Gmail describes its search feature:

"You can use Gmail search the same way you'd use Google Search, by entering a word (or multiple words) that appears anywhere within the message you want to locate. If you're looking for a message that contains the word shopping, simply type shopping in the search field and press Search Mail. Your results will be displayed with your search terms highlighted in yellow. Gmail doesn't recognize special search characters like square brackets, parentheses, currency symbols, the ampersand, the pound sign, and asterisks. It also doesn't recognize partial or similar matches, so a search for travel will find travel, but not travels, traveler, or travle."

How would you improve Gmail search?

Get Faster Gmail, Google Toolbar and a New Homepage

Google seems to be concerned with improving the user experience in Gmail and sometimes upgrading your browser can really speed up web applications like Gmail, especially when you are using Internet Explorer.

I happened to open Gmail in Internet Explorer 6 and I noticed a message that invited me to "get faster Gmail".


Google didn't recommend to install Firefox or Chrome, like it did in other cases, but it suggested to install IE7. "We noticed that your current browser, Internet Explorer 6, is out of date. In order to improve your Gmail experience, we suggest that you upgrade your browser to a faster Gmail supported browser that works on Windows."


Upgrading to Internet Explorer 7 is a good tip, but I was surprised to see that Google sends users to a customized version of IE7 that includes Google Toolbar and changes your homepage to google.com. Downloading additional toolbars should be optional and it has nothing to do with Gmail's performance. What's more, the customized package includes outdated versions of IE7 and Google Toolbar from 2006.

A similar page from Gmail's help center explains that you can "make Gmail run an average of twice as fast" by installing IE7, Firefox 3 or Chrome. Google links to the official homepage of Mozilla Firefox, instead of recommending a customized version.

Standalone Offline Installer for Google Chrome

When you download the setup for Google Chrome's site, you're only downloading the installer for Google Updater. The updater downloads Google Chrome's full setup and then installs the software. Here's an excerpt from a Squid report:

12/29/2008-13:42:29 http://dl.google.com/update2/1.2.131.27/GoogleUpdateSetup.exe
12/29/2008-13:42:29 http://dl.google.com/update2/1.2.131.27/clickonce_bootstrap.exe
12/29/2008-13:42:35 http://cache.pack.google.com/chrome/install/154.36/chrome_installer.exe

But sometimes you can't install the auto-updating software or you need to perform an offline install of the software. To solve these issues, Google Chrome started to offer a standalone installer.

Google notes that "the version of Google Chrome available from the link below may not auto-update to future browser releases, meaning you could miss important security fixes and feature improvements. If you install Google Chrome using the link below, bookmark this page and check back periodically to manually download newer releases." When I installed Chrome using the offline setup, Google added the auto-updating service.