Google News gets a big update

Google News got a big layout update today
here is the new Google News page.
It looks really odd nice!
Dont know if people will like it!.


Update

It seems Google pulled down the update as soon as it came!
I found it at around 9.55pm PST. Now after 30 mins it disappeared.

Also click on the image to see the new favicon Google is planning for Google News.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Update 2
In depth review
There is a new section called "developing stories"
In the stories section, now youtube news videos appear directly no need to click the "+" sign
Another change is that now images now appear in medium sizes instead of the previous small stamp size, almost the same size of youtube videos
Local section now has weather information prominently displayed

Last but not the least now "quotes" are appearing more prominently as here.




I have a full page image here

Google Docs and Spreadsheets now enters Desktop- open war on MS Office!

Today Google has launched its newest front on its fight against Microsoft's domination of PC world.
With the release of Google Toolbar 3 beta for Firefox, Google has quietly launched a direct attack on MS Office. Users who install new Google Toolbar 'can' now 'double-click' any compatible document (.doc, .xls, .odt, .rtf, .csv) on their computer and it will open straight in a browser in Google Docs and Spreadsheet. It doesn't end there, when users click on links to any such file online, it will open straight in Google Docs, no more need to download files first and then upload them to your online word processor. Users can also 'drag' files to their browser to open it in Google docs.
This is yet another signal on Google's intention to use its huge market cap in Internet to gain access to Microsoft honeyspot. Google never misses an opportunity to attack Microsoft where it hurts the most, the toolbar for IE doesnt have this cool feature yet, so in a way, if people want latest toolbar, they have to get firefox. The latest toolbar update includes the much awaited bookmarks button and many new features.

Search for Yahoo in Google and it takes you to a phishing site..

I was trying to sign up for Yahoo! alert service and a quick check on Yahoo News page didn't show up the link to Yahoo Alerts. So I typed 'Yahoo alert' in Google and hit "I am feeling lucky".

Many people use this "I am feeling lucky" feature and have reported upto 80-90% accuracy. I often found it be a great defense against phishing especially since you can search right from Firefox address bar. But I was in for a shock when I hit the button this time, this is the page that came up.

The site that came up was a phishing site. See the url that ends with "shyou.org." I dont know what has gotten into Google algorithm to rank a phishing site the top most for such a simple query. You can try the query here.

Both firefox 2 and IE 7 showed only website certificate errors but passed the site as not a phishing site.

Update 1: Searching for 'yahoo alerts' also gives the same phishing site as the first result.

Update 2: Elderberry has commented that it could most probably a proxy site, here is my response,
A little google search has found some suspicious records of this site.
This site is talking about how .shyou.org is faking Googlebot, read here
Also I couldnt find any official page from shyou.org saying that they are indeed a proxy site.
The only page I could find was this, http://flouri.shyou.org/wikihome
and it was japanese site for flouri fans.
The ssl certificate they have is from CAcert.org, both Mozilla and Microsoft have so far refused to acknowledge them as valid. read here
Last but not the least this is the first time I am seeing a proxy site high up in the search ranking for such a popular site like Yahoo. But I have to agree the issue is open..

Adsense Referral gets Firefox v2 but loses Google Toolbar!

Ever since Firefox version 2 was officially released, I was wondering why Google Adsense referral program is still carrying the older version 1.5. Today Google Adsense team has updated the installation file to include version 2 but mysteriously the Google toolbar is missing. Even after installing the package, the toolbar is missing, see the screenshot.


I don't know if its an error or a deliberate decision. Anyway this is good for bloggers, now you don't need to 'convince' people that not just Firefox is great, but Google Toolbar is also great.
If this is a deliberate move then the possible reasons could be either Google decided to update the Firefox version of Google Toolbar which is currently lacking in features vis-a-vis the IE version, or it could mean that Google is thinking that even without the toolbar it can make money from Firefox
For those doubting Thomas' you can try the adsense referral in this page. But let me warn you, I am definitely not soliciting you, dont want to get bounced by Google adsense.

Google pulls plug on "Click to Call"

Update: Google has brought back the service as of 22 Nov 2006. No news from Google about why the service was unavailable for almost a day.
Google atleast for the time being seems to have pulled the plug on "click to call" feature from both Google Local and Google Maps. Check this out, these links had click to call feature for every business when it was launched a week back, now they are missing, here and here
I think the wide spread abuse of the feature was the main reason as explained here
check out the snapshot.
Even the example shown in google blog, the hardware link is not showing up the Click to Call link..
As of 1.15 CST 21 Nov 2006 there is no posting in google blog about this change..