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6 January 2006

Google Pack

Everyone else is posting about it, so I figured I’d add my €0.03 worth... and for those of you who don’t know what Google Pack is, read some of these.

At the moment, the Google Pack install page is still redirecting to a login page with the service name “tester”. However, it looks like it could be released soon; Paul Prijs posted a link to the About Google Pack page. (Although, we all know how long it took to launch Google Base after it made its first appearance!) Anyway, I’ve taken a screenshot just in case it disappears like new Google product pages often do. (This page also contains a learn more link, but that also redirects at the moment.)

Although there are rumours about what software Google Pack will contain, this page confirms that the download will include at least:

From the screenshot of the Google Updater, it looks like the installer might be web-based, meaning that you’ll only download the items that you require.

Update: 6 January 2006 (20:43)

Eric Baillargeon has a complete list of the 14 software packages to be included. He discovered them in a .js file that he downloaded from the Google Pack site.

Also “live” is the Google Pack Knowledge Base. This is labelled as copyright Neotonic Software Corporation and powered by Trakken. It seems a little odd that Google is outsourcing things like support – unless that software is open-source or they just acquired another couple of companies. Whilst the Knowledge Base is currently empty, it does let you ask a question. (I just asked “When will Google Pack be released?”)

Update: 6 January 2006 (21:03)

Something I forgot to post about earlier was the blog I discovered that Philipp mentions in his post update. When I heard about Google Pack, I used Google Blog Search to find the earliest post containing the phrase [Google Pack]. The earliest one I could find was the Surf Nicaragua! blog by some guy called Micheal Lopez. (It was being hosted by Blogger but it’s now gone.) However, I just trawled my browser history and made these screenshots of his posts:

It seems that he’s the designer who created the Google Pack icon, the Google Video icon and also the Google Zeitgeist 2005 graphic. No wonder he’s taken his blog down – unless he was asked/told to by Google – if he really is the guy who created these icons, publishing them publically in the middle of December probably severely broke his contract with Google!

So, why is Google doing this? Continue the discussion over at the Google Blogoscoped Forum...

Update: 7 January 2006 (11:45)

Google Pack was made live last night. It seems the Google Pack Knowledge Base I mentioned above has now been rebranded as Google Pack Help and lost its links with Neotonic and Trekken (suggesting that all Google’s support is probably being powered by Trekken behind the scenes).

[Via Google Blogoscoped]

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