Thursday, May 6, 2010

Blogger App Is Coming To A Dashboard Near You

9 of the top 20 requests from Google Apps customers are for their accounts to work with more services from Google, not just for the core suite of messaging and collaboration applications. Later this year we’ll dramatically accelerate customer access to innovation, and give users the convenience of using any Google service allowed by their administrator from a single account affiliated with their organization.

For example, coworkers will be able to publish their organization’s blog on Blogger, share project images with Picasa Web Albums, track industry news in Google Reader, advertise online with AdWords and much more, all without switching back and forth between multiple accounts. While these additional applications won’t initially be covered by the core suite’s support and service level agreement, this change will open up the spectrum of Google’s functionality to businesses, schools and organizations using Google Apps and we’ll evaluate future support options.



We intend to have all Standard, Premier and Education Edition customers moved to the new infrastructure that enables this change in the fall, and customers who would like more control over the timing of this change will be able to make the switch voluntarily during the summer.

This will be a significant overhaul to our underlying systems and we want to make this transition as seamless as possible for customers. We’ll be sharing information in advance so Google Apps admins can plan ahead which additional Google services users can access with their accounts and other aspects of this roll-out. Stay tuned here for further updates in the coming weeks and months, and visit our Help Center for more details.

Posted by Dennis Troper, Product Management Director, Google Apps Source

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

WireFly Shuts Down Affiliate Program On LinkShare

Dear Wirefly Affiliate,

Wirefly would like to thank you for your participation in our affiliate program. Unfortunately, we have made a business decision to close our Affiliate Program with LinkShare.

Be assured that will pay for commissions earned on Shipped Phone Plans received through an affiliate link based on the terms of our Agreement, plus any earned outstanding payments currently owned to affiliates. Affiliates sales commissions will not accrue after March 31, 2010 at 5pm EST. If you have changed your contact information, please update your profile at LinkShare so you can receive your final commission check in a timely manner.

Pursuant to our Affiliate Agreement between Wirefly and you, this shall serve as our formal written notice to terminate our Wirefly Affiliate Agreement. Per our Agreement, you are required to remove any and all banners, buttons, text links, product images and store fronts that link to Wirefly by Close of Business today March 31, 2010 at 5pm EST. If you have any questions regarding this manner, please contact me.

Once again, we thank you for supporting the Wirefly Affiliate Program and appreciate your compliance with these termination provisions.

We hope these guys will open up somewhere else.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China: an update

3/22/2010 12:03:00 PM
On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger—had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn.

So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over.

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced—it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.

In terms of Google's wider business operations, we intend to continue R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk. Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal OfficerOfficial Google Blog: A new approach to China: an update