We’reÂ? sure everyone has either seen or heard about Google’s Press Day.Â? We actually took the time to watch a fair bit of the webcast, and the presentation is fairly impressive, but for a company like Google,Â? we’re still a little suprised. At the beginning of the presentation, Google does a brief rundown of some of the releases from the past year, and it is an impressive list, but despite the release of several great products, there are just as many products that I found lacking.
Google TrendsÂ? was one of the big releases made yesterday, and it is an interesting service. Users can track how often an item is searched for on Google, and this search can be refined temporally - choose a specific range of dates for a specific search term - and the results can be filtered based on geographic location. Several different search terms can be entered, 
and the data produced could, theoretically, be used to extract a great deal of important trends and information. ButÂ? we find a major flaw. The graph produced is basically useless. Without a scale on the Y-axis of the graph, it is impossible to compare the data. There may seem to be a significant difference between the search frequency of Flash and Ajax/Ruby on Rails, but this could simply be a difference of one. There is no way to tell. And since there is no way to tell the magnitude of the difference, it is impossible to tell if the difference in the search terms is actually significantly difference, statistically speaking.
Another ofÂ? our major disappointments is the rumours surrounding the release of Google Health. From everything we read, Google Health was supposed to be one of the major releases from the company. This is a service based on something that is integral to Google - searching. How difficult is it to create a viable search focussing on health? For a company like Google, it should be simple. AndÂ? we don’t have a problem with them not releasing the product, whichÂ? is probablyÂ? a “when” rather than an “if” project at this time.Â? But how could so many rumours about Google Health be floating around without any sort of release being made?
WeÂ? don’t want to say thatÂ? we’reÂ? anti-Google (if nothing else, they’re probably reading this as I type, and I don’t want to stir the new big brother). But I have to admit, the last few Google products/applications that I’ve personally tested/used have been less than what I’ve come to expect from Google. Elise Ackerman of the Mercury NewsÂ? reports that although disorganization has always been a part of Google, Larry Page himself admits that recently, it has increased. With the head-to-head battle between Google and Microsoft getting more intense, this lack of organization could prove to be the difference. Like it or not, Microsoft has been though these types of battles before, and even if this one appears to be the software giants toughest battle yet, after watching Bill Gates on Donny Deutsch the other night, Microsoft is more than ready and able to put up a fight. And it’s not thatÂ? we don’t think Google will show up, but ifÂ? we were Google, we’d make sureÂ? we didn’t show up in Beta.