No Google aren't branching out into Dutch football, and I don't want to
seem obsessed, but they are pushing the development of Ajax – a new
approach to web applications. In an article from February this year, Adaptive Path founder Jesse James Garrett talks about Ajax and covers a lot of the very issues I was speculating about in my GoogleNet post last weekend. Jesse writes:-
….. All the cool, innovative new projects are online.
Despite this, Web interaction designers can't help but feel a little
envious of our colleagues who create desktop software. Desktop
applications have a richness and responsiveness that has seemed out of
reach on the Web. The same simplicity that enabled the Web's rapid
proliferation also creates a gap between the experiences we can provide
and the experiences users can get from a desktop application.That gap is closing.
Take a look at Google Suggest. Watch the way the suggested terms update as you type, almost instantly. Now look at Google Maps.
Zoom in. Use your cursor to grab the map and scroll around a bit.
Again, everything happens almost instantly, with no waiting for pages
to reload.
Google Suggest and Google Maps are two examples of a new approach to
web applications that we at Adaptive Path have been calling Ajax. The
name is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, and it represents
a fundamental shift in what's possible on the Web.
He goes on to define Ajax and give a set of examples (lots of
Google!) of people using this new approach to web technologies. As well
as improving the user experience by avoiding screen refreshes and
increasing the speed of interaction, other key advantages mean that
others can take the services your application is built on and build new
ones in a consistent way.
In other Google News this week, for the first time since they began to scan books into their search engine index last year, they have sought submissions from non-English publishers for Google Print,. Of course there are still various copyright problems to be sorted out with the publishing industry:-
Google also has worked out deals with libraries at Harvard, Michigan
and Stanford Universities to scan millions of books protected by
copyrights.
Publishers have argued that Google needs their
explicit permission to do so. The industry outrage prompted Google to
stop pulling copyrighted books from library shelves until Nov. 1 — the
deadline that the company has set for publishers to opt out of the
program.
Google intends to renew its scanning after that, setting the stage for
a possible legal showdown over what constitutes “fair use” under U.S.
copyright law.
Finally, Google has for the first time ventured outside the online world and bought advertising in a handful of technology-industry magazines. Now what will they do next with this extra revenue? 
