It has been more than a decade when Gmail was launched as the Google’s primary e-mail platform. In 2014, Google introduced a new e-mail app Inbox, that was developed as an experimental platform for trying new features that could be added to Gmail.
On Wednesday, Google announced that it is going to say Goodbye to the Inbox app and will close it down for further use, in March 2019. The main reason for shutting it down is said to be that Google wants to focus on Gmail as its main e-mail platform. Many features like snoozing e-mails to later, Smart Reply, Nudges, high-priority notifications, were tested and implemented on Google’s Inbox. All of these features are already integrated into Gmail and are working successfully.
The Product Manager, Matthew Izatt said, “We want to take a more focused approach to help us bring the best e-mail experience to everyone. As a result, we’re planning to focus solely on Gmail and say goodbye to ‘Inbox’ at the end of March 2019.”
However, Google’s Inbox could not create much client base, the ones who have already used the Google’s Inbox, are entirely against the closing down of Google’s Inbox. Google has even created an information guide for the Inbox app users for their easy migration to Gmail. Many Inbox app users have tweeted against its shutting down, saying that moving from Google’s Inbox to Gmail would be like going back to the stone age.
Google has given a time period of almost six months for the Inbox users to get comfortable with Gmail. Izzat, through his blog, also said, “All your conversations are already waiting for you in Gmail,” that means the Inbox users do not have to manually shift their e-mails from Google’s Inbox to Gmail. With the new features added to Gmail in the April of this year, Google had already given a hint that there can be a change in its e-mail platforms.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
It is a bit difficult to imagine that a college research project can land you to own one of the biggest companies in the world. But, why not? If you are applying your knowledge and efforts in the right direction, unusual things can happen to you. Same goes for the success story of two college mates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who joined their hands for a college project and are now leading the most powerful company in the world together.
Early Life
Larry Page was born on March 26, 1973, to Carl Victor Page Sr., a computer science professor, and Gloria Page, a computer programming instructor. He lived with his parents and elder brother in East Lansing, Michigan. He grew among the people, who loved computers, and eventually, developed an interest in the same, at an early age. After graduating from East Lansing High School in 1991, he joined the University of Michigan, and did a degree in Computer Science, followed by a master’s degree in the same from Stanford University.
On the other hand, Sergey Brin was just 6 years old when his parents brought him to the US, from the Soviet Union, in 1978. At that time his family has faced a tough time. He joined the Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland for some time, but left the school to continued his education at home. Later, in 1993, Brin attended the University of Maryland and received a Bachelor’s degree in Science. In 1994, he went to the Stanford University to study Computer Science.
The BackRub Project
After his post-graduation, Larry enrolled in the PhD program, at the Stanford University. At the time he became interested in exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web. Larry met Brin during the orientation program for the new students and became close friends.
Image Source: vox-cdn.com
Brin was looking for a topic for his PhD thesis project and found Larry’s project the most convincing. He joined Larry for the research and both published a research paper, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”. Ultimately they developed BackRub a web crawler to crawl the backlinks on the web, along with the PageRank algorithm.
In the beginning, both turned their hostel rooms into their lab and office, to create a search engine, based on the PageRank algorithm. The search engine became very popular among the internet users at the university. In 1996, they released the initial version of Google for the users at the Stanford University.
Founding Google
Page admits that he understood the importance of the project only in mid-1998. The popularity of the search engine made him buy more servers to handle the searches. Brin and Larry received their first investment from Andy Bechtolsheim, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who wrote them a cheque in the name of Google, Inc., worth $100,000. At the time, they did not have a registered company with that name.
In 1998, they finally officially registered Google, Inc. as their company, Larry becoming the CEO of the company and Brin the President of the company. By June 2000, Google became the most comprehensive search engine, indexing one billion Internet URLs. It grabbed the attention of many angel capitalists and raised funding in millions.
New Ventures & Acquisition
In 2005, Google acquired Android for $50 million. This acquisition mainly aimed at the convenience for the user to use Google at any place at any time. In 2008, Larry and Brin with T-Mobile launched the first phone embedded with Android OS, named G1. By 2010, Android became the most popular OS for smartphones beating Apple’s iOS.
Following the lead of Facebook, the team launched a social media platform Google+. The most important products of Google includes the AdWords, YouTube and Gmail. It also owns the Google Chrome web browser and unveiled a Chromebook laptop in 2012. Google as a company has also launched a series of smartphones that are as popular as its rival companies Apple and Samsung.
Personal Life
Both Page and Brin, live in Palo Alto, California, U.S. Page is married to Lucinda Southworth since the year 2007 and have two children with her. Brin was married to Anne Wojcicki for 8 years (from 2007 to 2015). They also have two children together.
Currently, Page is serving as the chief executive officer and Brin is the President in the Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc, that they co-founded in 2015.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
Google launched its payment app Google Tez, last September, and after almost a year, it has earned as many as 22 million monthly active users, having done over 750 million transactions. On Tuesday, Google has announced the re-branding of Google Tez as Google Pay, at its annual event, Google for India.
Noticeably, the Google-created app operates on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and in a year, there have been the transactions of an annual average of 2 lakh crore. The rebranding of the app has also got many new features added to it. Google has announced its partnership with the private banks in India, including ICICI, Kotak Mahendra, HDFC, etc. that will offer an easy loan through Google Pay app. The users will be able to get their loan sanctioned in a few clicks, with a minimal paperwork. After all the verification work, the bank will transfer the money into the user’s account instantly and safely.
After the success of Google Pay in India, various other countries have also shown their interest in the Google’s payment app and contacted Google to work with them for their payment app development. Google has also announced that the app will be working globally soon, and will also be available for the online merchants like RedBus, BookMyShow, MakeMyTrip, GoIbibo, Freshmenu, etc.
Caesar Sengupta, the manager at Google Pay, said at the event that the app is created for India, so the features can be modified for other countries. Also, with the rebranding, some global features will be added to the Indian Google Pay app. He also stated that in future Google Pay is also going to help more than 1.2 million local businesses in India.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
Harman Kardon is a leading speaker producer company that is known for its unmatched audio quality. The company is about to launch its new range of speaker Citation 500 that is going to be a high-end Google Assistant speaker.
Unlike, the other Harmon Kardon speakers, the Citation 500 is higher in price, i.e. about $700. The company has rendered the speaker in two shades, grey and black, and is covered with the similar coloured woollen fabric. The speaker boasts 200W of stereo audio having high-resolution 24-bit/96kHz support and is smart enough to receive your commands, responding in the same way. But, with the LCD screen and the playback control buttons, available on the top of the speaker, you can adjust the volume, skip the songs or select a particular song manually without shouting at it.
The Citation 500 is a high-end Google Assistant speaker that you get at a mid-range price. It is like a smart-home hub that is feature-rich and goes with your decor.
Harmon Kardon is planning to unveil the smart speaker at the IFA 2018, in Berlin, later this week. And, will start taking preorders, by the end of the September, from its customers, in Europe only. The company has not commented on when the speakers will be available in other regions of the world.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
In May 2018, Google had announced its new cloud storage product Google One and had been working on it for past few months. Finally, it has launched Google One, on the 15 August of this year. The ones, who have already used Google Drive, might know that Google provides you with 15 GB of free storage on Google Drive and after 15 GB, you have to pay for more storage.
Google One is similar to Google Drive and is a paid cloud storage provided for the users all over the world. No! It is not replacing Google Drive, but, Google Drive will be upgraded to Google One after its 15 GB free plan with some added perks for its Consumer.
1) Increased Data Storage: Google has been working on its newly launched Google One for a quite some time now and, has already been updating the Google Drive’s paid user’s subscriptions for the last few months. Google has come with many subscription plans, according to the user’s requirements and, that too at a good price.
The monthly plan of Google One starts with 100 GB of storage for $1.99, followed by 200 GB tier for $2.99, a 2 TB option for $9.99 and the plan ends at 30 TB of storage that will cost $299.99. Interestingly, Google has reduced the price of 2 TB storage by $10, i.e. $9.99 that was the previous price of 1 TB storage. The consumers can subscribe to any of the plans according to their need. Also, the subscription can be shared with five of the family members without paying any extra money and equal storage for all of them.
2) Customer Support: This time Google has also come with a one-tap help button, that is for the live-customer support. Meaning that the Google users can connect with the real experts, for their queries related to any Google product, instead of any AI chatbots. The customer-support will be available 24/7 and, you can contact them via a phone call or through an e-mail.
Right now, Google One is only available in the US. But, it will soon be rolling out for the consumers across other countries too. Also, the G-Suite users with the business account will get no additional benefits and their plans will remain as it is.
Google has come with some other perks for its subscribers and, will offer credits on their purchase on Google Play and Google Express. Also, if the user will search and book the Hotels through Google maps, they can earn good deals on the bookings.
So, now you can share more data like high-resolution pictures, 4K videos, documents with your family and friends with any of the above-mentioned subscription plans. And, if you are not a US citizen, you have to wait for sometime. Google is also working on launching an app for the users, to help them choose for their easy subscription to the different plans. So, hopefully, the app and Google One will be launched together in the other countries soon.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
Young and enthusiastic minds always take their ideas to next level starting from scratch. Many of these revolutionary ideas have led to innovations that have changed the way our world is connected. Now you can be connected to any part of the world in just a few clicks. You are also able to see what’s happening in the world, on the largest video streaming network – YouTube. The idea for this video streaming service was born into one such young mind of Steve Chen.
Early Life
Born on August 18, 1978, in Taipei, Taiwan, Steve Chen and his family immigrated to the United States of America, in 1993 and, got settled in Prospect Heights, Illinois. Chen took his middle school education from River Trails Middle School, which is situated in Mount Prospect. Then for the first year of high school, he went to John Hersey in Arlington Heights. He spent the next three years of high school at Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois. Finally, Chen went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to pursue a degree in Computer Science. and graduated in 2002.
Initial Career Stages
Just after graduating, Chen landed his first job with industry financial company PayPal. It was this company, where he met his future co-founders Jawed Karim and Chad Hurley. He also spent some time as an early employee at Facebook, but, left the company in few months to focus on his own venture.
Image Source: wikimedia.org
He had a knack for innovative ideas and one such idea was lurking in his mind. It was to develop a video streaming platform, and Chen, along with Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, founded YouTube in 2005. Steve took the position of Chief Technical Officer in the company.
Just within few months, Chen announced that YouTube was receiving around 100 million views per day and around 65000 videos were being uploaded from different parts of the world each day. The popularity of YouTube skyrocketed and quickly came to the notice of Google. Next thing they knew was Google offering to acquire YouTube. The online video streaming site was ranked among the top 10 most popular websites.
Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for a mind-boggling $1.65 billion. From then on, YouTube has never looked back and is constantly achieving new heights of success. Chen received 625,366 shares in Google and extra 68,721 in trust as the part of the sale. These shares are valued at $729 million in 2018.
After YouTube
Steve Chen is an energetic person who does not prefer to stop at one success. The definition of success is to keep moving forward and achieve greater heights than the previous ones. The next venture Chen started was named AVOS Systems, Inc. He founded this venture along with Chad Hurley and Vijay Krishnamurthy. One of the services known as Mixbit, which is a video sharing service is quite well known. AVOS acquired Delicious from Yahoo! Inc. The founders sold AVOS Systems, Inc. to Science, Inc. in 2014.
Along with founding a couple of most successful companies, Chen is also well-known for his investments in promising start-ups and businesses. He has invested in HonestBee, Drama Fever, Spool, Wish, Road Hero and many more.
Personal Life
In 2009, Chen got married to the Google Korea product marketing manager, Park Ji-Hyun also known as Jamie Chen. The couple lives in San Francisco with their two sons. Chen is a huge art admirer and makes a humble contribution towards The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
In 2008, Chen along with his partner Chad Hurley was awarded Vanguard Award. The Magazine 2.0 nominated Chen as one of the ’50 people who matter now’ in business. The Asian Scientists Magazine listed Chen as one of the 15 Asian Scientists to Watch.
Harshal Pawar is an avid reader, a TV show addict, and a writer. He has a personal blog brainwork.wordpress.com where he jots down his articles and poetry about love and life.
He is currently pursuing film-making and wishes to bring the words written on a paper to the screen. More of all he is a scorpio.
