Skip to main content

Adobe Deal Hints at Google's Long-Term Strategy

Bill Gates started Microsoft with a dream of placing a personal computer in every home, and on every desk. But Larry and Sergey have even more ambitious dreams - they want Google software installed on every computer that's running Microsoft Windows.

First, Google agreed to pay Dell a billion dollars who in return will install Google software on all new machines that leave the Dell Building. Now Google has signed a similar multi year agreement with Adobe to distribute Google Toolbar with Macromedia Shockwave player and other Adobe product installations in the future.

What's In The Fine Print? Windows Vista, which is nearing launch, has MSN set as the default web search engine. Google realizes the emerging Vista threat and therefore is willing to pay billions of dollars to Dell and Adobe to distributes it's web search software in the form of Toolbar.

Google win is a huge setback for Yahoo - Adobe is not likely to continue software-distribution relationships with two rivals at the same time. Adobe has replaced Yahoo Toolbar with Google Toolbar in their Macromedia Shockwave Player and we could expect the same treatment very soon in Adobe Reader where Yahoo software is distributed by default.

While Macromedia Shockwave is installed on just 55% of the computers, Macromedia Flash player and Acrobat Reader are installed on almost every PC. So once Adobe starts to bundle Google Toolbar with these ubiquitous software, Larry/Sergey's dream will be very very close to reality. It's also possible that Google Toolbar will be bundled with Adobe Apollo, a Flash like runtime coming next year.

Do you want fries with that ? Long term, we can expect to Google to create more alliances with other software and hardware vendors. Google already distributes software from Symantec, Adobe and Real in Google Pack. We may see a situation soon when every software vendor (in return of Google Dollars) begin to push customers to download and install the Google Toolbar just like McDonalds promotes French Fries with all ther products.

Quick Note: Difference between Shockwave and Macromedia Flash
The Shockwave file format is .DCR, and it is created by Macromedia Director while the Flash file format is .SWF, and is created by Macromedia Flash. Use Flash for interfaces to sites, for quick impact. Use Shockwave for more complex multimedia work, or for web applications that are beyond the browsers' abilities.

Popular posts from this blog

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed. There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry. Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use. How to Download Contacts from Facebook There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include

PhishTank Detects Phishing Websites by Digg Style Voting

OpenDNS, a free service that helps anyone surf the Internet faster with a simple DNS tweak , will announce PhishTank today. PhishTank is a free public database of phishing URLs where anyone can submit their phishes via email or through the website. The submissions are verified by the other community members who then vote for the suspected site. This is such a neat idea as sites can be categorized just based on user feedback without even having to manually verify each and every submission. PhishTank employs the "feedback loop" mechanism where users will be kept updated with the status' of the phish they submit either via email alerts or a personal RSS feed . Naturally, once the PhishTank databases grows, other sites can harness the data using open APIs which will remain free. OpenDNS would also use this data to improve their existing phishing detection algorithms which are already very impressive and efficient. PhishTank | PhishTank Blog [Thanks Allison] Related: Google

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a popular tech blog by  Amit Agarwal . Our popular Google Scripts include  Gmail Mail Merge  (send personalized emails with Gmail ),  Document Studio (generate PDFs from Google Forms ) and   File Upload Forms ( receive files  in Google Drive). Also see  Reverse Image Mobile Search , Online Speech Recognition and Website Screenshots , the most useful websites on the Internet.