Any one has any idea what is this? I logged in my Gmail account and this is what I saw in the chat section in the right column. It is totally weird and very confusing. I don’t know anyone by name of Dr. Arthur then who is this fellow?
Funny thing was I signed out and logged back and things were back to normal.
Anyone has any answers? I will love to know what passed by in my Gmail account?
Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of search products and user experience reveals some interesting facts about Google and its SERP. Mayer once asked Google co-founder Sergey Brin how Google had settled on the clean, white design of its home page. “We didn’t have a Webmaster and I don’t do HTML,” Brin replied. Funny ain’t it?
If you don’t know yet, than let me tell you that in early days of Google’s homepage testing, people used to wait for a minute or more as they expected the page to load. Surfers those days were accustomed to flashy pages and expected the same out of Google’s plain and simple home page. Same is the reason why Google’s home page has a copyright notice in its footer. It informs the viewer that the page has loaded and they may start surfing.
We also have a couple a nice collection of Google’s hidden pages.
Almost every website (or to be precise those websites which are a established company in itself) on Internet has its Terms Of Service (TOS) which as per the laws must be followed by its users or else the company holds the right to kick that user off its website or drag him/her to court!
Similarly Google has some surprising lines in its TOS:
“You may not use … Google’s products, software, services and web sites … and may not accept the Terms if … you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google.
Surprised? Unfortunately this is true. It means if your are under 18 (as that is the legal age in almost every country today) then you are NOT permitted to use Google search, YouTube, Orkut, Google News, Google Images etc. This fact was found out by Chris on Cnet and he goes on to reveal some more exciting (or funny) facts on Google’s part.
When contacted about the matter, a Google spokesperson initially told me that “users need to be at least 13 years old to use Gmail.”
However, when I pointed out that the language in the company’s terms of service contradicted her statement, she clarified her remarks, stating that: “We require users to be able to form a legally binding contract in order to use our services. The actual age required to form a legally binding contract may differ based on jurisdiction.”
When I asked what the company would do if it found out that someone under 18 were using search, or Gmail, the spokesperson told me:
“We’re not in a position to verify the age or legal status of any user, given the tremendous number of users accessing Google services. That said, when we become aware of a user who is violating our Terms of Service, including not being of proper age to accept the Terms of Service, we take appropriate action, which could include the termination of the user’s Google Account.”
After first seeing Google’s no-kids policy in the company’s terms of service, any rational person would assume that it’s just standard legalese that all companies are required to include. However, it turns out that Google’s dot-com competition is far more kid friendly.
What I want to ask is do you ever care to read what any TOS says and do you ever follow that? It is good on companies part to say that “You must be X years of age to use our service” but how is the company verifying specially when Google isn’t linking to its TOS from its homepage?
How about a male blogger writing a TOS saying “If you are female then you agree to come with me on a date once you have visited my site?” 
Looks like Google people need to take help from a drug treatment center to come out of their dreams.
Possibly my eyes saw this a little late but whatever be the case, the change in favicon (see image below) of GMail is something which I just didn’t expect from Google.
Google’s logo has been the example of simplicity over the Internet but designing a new ‘g’ for its favicon could well be a reason that they are planning to switch their logo. What say? I think these people need to take a break at the Hilton Head rentals to cool off their brains so that such silly stuffs don’t happen again.
More:
This isn’t the first time when Feedburner has provided wrong stats for my feeds. Last time many big bloggers were hit when Google acquired feedburner and the RSS feed stats for most of them changed to zero!
Later on again the problem came up when many bloggers complained that their Google Reader stats were not being counted and this resulted in their feed stats falling down but luckily I was on the safer side in that second glitch.
Now it looks like Google had remembered that they had spared me the last time and so this time my feed burner stats have gone down by over a 100 just because my email subscribers aren’t being counted. Irritating and true!
Any of you face the same problem or is it just me?
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