SAN JOSE, Calif. — With the passing of each fiscal quarter, it’s increasingly clear Google’s got a good thing going connecting the world to the fruits of Web developer labor. And it’s not about to let up.
Today at its Google Developer Day event here, Google vice president Jeff Huber emphasized the search giant’s plans to help developers “integrate, reach and build.” In his keynote address, Huber brought out a series of company engineers to talk about the latest tools, Google Mashup Editor, Mapplets and Gears.
Starting with “integrate,” Google product manager Paul McDonald took the
stage to help Huber explain Google Mashup Editor. McDonald said the tool is
designed to help developers build mashups
that tap into Google’s various APIs–by providing server, hosting, data
bases, and authentication and other Web services, all brought together in a
single AJAX interface and coupled with an editing screen and easy access to
Google-supported sandbox testing.
Turning to how Google can help developers with “reach,” Huber touted the
over 500 million unique visits to Google’s site each month.
“The good news is we like to share,” Huber said. He pointed to the room
Google makes for third party Gadgets all over its network. For an example
of the kind of impact this sharing can have, Huber pointed to a pair of
small, seemingly simple applications–a PacMan gadget and To-Do list
gadget–and drew an audible reaction from the audience after telling them
those application developers combined to draw over 11 million unique
visitors last week alone.
The idea behind Google Mapplets is that it will make these sorts of gadgets
easier for developers to combine with Google Maps, thus making them even
more appealing to the millions of visitors to Google’s network. Examples
Product manager Tai Tran demonstrated WalkJogRun.com, which makes a gadget available
for those who want to use a Google Map in planning their exercise routes.
The last product manager to join Huber on stage was Othman Laraki, who detailed the new Google Gears, a Web browser plug-in that allows Web developers to add offline access to Web applications such as Google’s own Gmail.. Google announced it’s already used Gears to adapt its Google Reader application for use offline.
Huber stressed that Google hopes Gears will become an industry standard. Adobe chief software architect Kevin Lynch, joined Huber on stage and gave Gears a strong endorsement.
