Om Malik

Six 'Om Malik' stories March 2012 - August 2013

Google rolling out 720p HD Google+ Hangouts in the coming weeks

Jordan Kahn Aug 28 2013 - 10:48 am PT

According to a new report from GigaOm, Google is in the process of rolling out an update to higher quality 720p HD video for Google+ Hangouts and Google’s Vic Gundotra later confirmed the roll out will continue over the coming weeks. The report explains that the move is part of Google’s transition to new plug-in free standards including the switch from the H.264 video codec to VP8:

One of the key advantages of VP8 is that it will enable Hangouts in HD, something that Chew said simply wasn’t possible with H.264, because handling HD streams from 10 participants would have required too much processing power. The new video format also makes it possible for Google to serve up better-looking streams at low bit rates, which is especially important when it comes to mobile video chats.

Google’s Vice President of Engineering Chee Chew told GigaOm that the company plans to move Hangouts to the open standard WebRTC standard, which it just implemented support for in Chrome, to provide a plug-in free experience for users and other improvements:

“We will eventually move over to WebRTC,” said Chew, but this process may take several more months. However, eventually, WebRTC could actually provide an even more immersive video chat experience, explained Chew. That’s because when the video becomes a native HTML element, it will be even easier to add overlays and other, more subtle improvements.

More details available in the full report here.

Startups in Kansas City buying homes for Google Fiber access

Jordan Kahn Nov 9 2012 - 9:12 am PT

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Google officially started rolling out its new gigabit fiber Internet and TV service in Kansas City in July. Google asked households in the various “Fiberhoods”, which are made up of 800 or so residents each, to sign-up, but the service has not yet rolled out to businesses. Now, as reported by GigaOm, businesses are going as far as purchasing residential homes in the city to take advantage of the $70 per month Internet plans:

the startup community wasn’t willing to settle — and since most of them worked from their homes, coffee shops or communal space anyhow, it wasn’t a big leap to decide to find a house in an area slated for fiber and move in.

Tyler Vanwinkle of Leap2, a mobile search company, said his company was already based near a neighborhood slated to get fiber and a friend of his owned a house there. So he talked to his friend about renting space for the company in the house, now dubbed the Hacker House. “Google fiber the speed is phenomenal but it’s only residential,” he said. “Since we were interested in renting the house as office space and so were some of our friends, this has evolved into this common bond of entrepreneurship.”

GigaOm also noted many other startups and businesses in the city are considering making the switch to residential to gain access to Google’s new Internet service. The company originally said it would provide more information on offering the service to businesses at a later date, but has yet to do so.

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First porn app to hit GoogleTV, probably not the last

Élyse Betters Oct 8 2012 - 12:57 pm PT

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Google TV is all grown up: Adult video-subscription service FyreTV announced the launch of its first porn app for Google TV today.

As first reported by GigaOm, the app is not available through Google Play. Google does not permit adult content on its store, but it is allowed as a native third-party app. FyreTV’s website has a direct download for Google TV devices.

A Fryer representative told GigaOm:

“We saw how Android went from last to first in terms of mobile market share and we are expecting a similar result here. Plus with their international rollout it allows our users from a wider range of countries to experience FyreTV the way it was meant to be experienced, on the TV.”

FyreTV’s app offers subscription packages of adult content. It is not the first porn company to launch on Google’s TV platform, though, as adult studio Vivid released an HTML 5-optimized website just last year. FyreTV is working on an HTML 5 version, too.

“We do see HTML5 as an important factor in providing FyreTV access to a wider user base, particularly on TV devices that would never allow us to go native,” the representative confirmed to GigaOm.

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Chrome OS users might receive 100GB of Google Drive storage for free

Jake Smith Jul 31 2012 - 10:31 am PT

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As first reported by Chrome Story, owners of newer Chromebooks and Chromeboxes might soon get their hands on more cloud storage…for free. According to references discovered in Chromium OS code, the storage increase will most likely come soon in the way of Google Drive Google currently makes 5 GB available free to users for storing files and documents.

According to the code reference “553 GDATA_WELCOME_TITLE_ALTERNATIVE: ‘Get 100 GB free with Google Drive’,” it sounds very likely that users will be able to receive 100 GB of cloud storage for free. That is definitely useful, especially considering most Chrome OS devices only have 16 GB of local storage. We will let you know when the 100 GB goes official.

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CamUp sues Google, says Google+ and YouTube stole Hangouts feature

Élyse Betters Jul 2 2012 - 10:54 am PT

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CamUp filed a lawsuit late last week that claimed Google ripped its video-chat feature for Google+ and YouTube.

The lawsuit filing revealed Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president, along with a few Mountain View engineers, approached the New York-based startup at the South by Southwest Festival in March 2011. They later met in London to negotiate adding a Hangout-like button, called “Watch with your friends on CamUp,” to Google’s popular video-sharing platform, YouTube. Despite receiving accolades on its product, CamUp did not hear from the Googlers after the meeting.

By May 2011, CamUp detected an alarming amount of visits from Google’s headquarters in California. The startup suggested that the traffic is evidence of Google beginning to examine its product for copying purposes. Google launched Hangouts with a “Watch your friends” button just one month later, which were allegedly indistinguishable from CamUp’s offerings.

CamUp is seeking damages, an injunction to remove Hangouts on YouTube and Google+, and it is suing Google UK’s Director of Business and Markets Richard Robinson.

The filing (via GigaOM) is embedded below.

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Report: ‘Impressive’ Google Drive coming in a week or two

Seth Weintraub Mar 27 2012 - 11:19 am PT

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The Cloud storage Google Drive has been an on-again, off-again rumor for years.

Today, GigaOm’s Om Malik says Google Drive will release to the public in the first week in April.

I am told the big day is sometime during the first week of April 2012…Google is going to offer 1 Gb of storage space for free, but will charge for more storage. The market leader Dropbox currently offers 2 Gb for free. Google’s product will come with a local client and the web interface will look much like the Google Docs interface. Interestingly, it will launch for Google Apps customers and will be domain specific as well. Google has also built an API for third party apps with this service so folks can store content from other apps in the Google drive. My sources are impressed, so far with what they have seen.

This could be the last piece of the Cloud puzzle.
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