(sub. req.) Google is releasing a new piece of software that could challenge both Microsoft and Yahoo, on various levels.
The free program, known as Sidebar, presents consumers with a pane of customized information — such as weather forecasts, stock quotes, news headlines, text feeds from favorite Web sites, photo slideshows and email alerts — that sits alongside whatever else the user is viewing. It provides some functions similar to Yahoo’s popular MyYahoo customized Web-page service.
It also includes a text-editor function, which allows consumers to type and save text notes, which WSJ says could be a starting point for an attack on Microsoft’s Office software franchise, including Word.
AP: Another module pulls RSS feeds from Web sites that have been visited and offer that service. Unlike other feed aggregators, the user need not take any action for a feed to be added..Some features, including personalized news, involve sending details of its users surfing habits back to Google.
Reuters: Yahoo offers its own “sidebar” within a user’s browser, which manages music, photos and instant messenger conversations alongside whatever Web page Yahoo users are viewing. Yahoo recently acquired Konfabultator, which first popularised the modular programs it calls Widgets among Apple Macintosh computer users. Google’s sidebar is similar.
NYTimes: [It is] likely to be seen as further competitive threats by Microsoft, which is focusing on similar information retrieval and organization advances in its long-delayed next-generation operating system, Windows Vista. “We’re really trying to make this into a platform,” said Nikhil Bhatla, product manager for Google Desktop.
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