Google already has a social network, called Orkut, since October 2006, which is pretty big in Brazil but not so much elsewhere. This article is about Google Profiles, an entirely different service,  that duplicates some of the functionality of Orkut.

Turns out, that it’s indeed similar to LinkedIn. It allows you to add current and past work positions, skills, a short introduction, education information, links to your other profiles, as well as photos from Google Picasa or Flickr.

It also allows you to add detailed contact information and control privacy settings.

Its too early too tell at the moment, but if Google decides to go forward with creating a social network, it’s going to be huge.

Google is the start page for the whole world at the moment, and they have millions of registered users – not to mention the people they could bring in through a campaign on the Google.com .

Google is also known to create extremely simple, easy to use interfaces; this could allow more mainstream users to sign up for social networking which could mean that this service could gain the largest user base  – effectively becoming the phone book of the world.

The introduction on Google Profiles says:

The more information you provide, the easier it will be for friends to find you.

While the help web page omits such references:

A Google profile is simply how you present yourself on Google products to other Google users. It allows you to control how you appear on Google and tell others a bit more about who you are. With a Google profile, you can easily share your web content on one central location. You can include, for example, links to your blog, online photos, and other profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. You have control over what others see. Your profile won’t display any private information unless you’ve explicitly added it. –Google Help

If you think about it, Google Profiles is the obvious development, as it would integrate with other Google services like Chat, Reader, Gmail, Sites, etc. to provide a common base.

Although there’s no beta logo, Google Profiles is far from complete if it wants to compete with the likes of Facebook or LinkedIn. At the moment, it doesn’t have a way of adding friends. This can’t be very hard to add since this functionality already exists in Google Reader.

This is a consistent upgrade to the previous version of Google Profiles that was very limited and was covered by Google Operating System. This was also observed by Labnol, but without any implications toward social networking. Techcrunch said:

Google looks to be essentially creating a de-facto social network profile page, without having an actual social network around it. Apparently, Google, and all its services, are the social network.

Do you think Google will finish Google Profiles and create a full-fledged  social network? What do you think are the implications of this happening?

A little history

On June 6th, 2008, Google Gadgets Team:

The Windows and Mac versions of Google Desktop has provided gadget hosting functionality on Windows and Mac for a while now and the Linux version of Google Gadgets will extend this platform to Linux users. By enabling cross-platform gadgets, a large library of existing gadgets are immediately available to Linux users. In addition, gadget developers will benefit from a much larger potential user base without having to learn a new API.

Google Gadgets for Linux is an open source project available under the Apache license. The Google Open Source blog invites everyone to contribute with bug reports and fixes on Google Code.

Installation

Binaries

Depending on your linux distribution, you can either opt to install via the binary packages, which are available for Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 8/9, openSUSE 10.3/11, Slackware and FreeBSD on this page.

For Ubuntu, the Google Code page points to a SuSE repository; Installing using these binaries is a bit disappointing – with no more than 8 packages to download and manually install. A better solution is via GetDeb.

Build from source code

If you want to get your hands dirty and compile Google Gadgets yourself, here’s the step by step process. You can read through the whole (very long) How-to Build Guide here.

• wget http://google-gadgets-for-linux.googlecode.com/files/google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3.tar.bz2
• tar zxvf google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3.tar.bz2
• cd google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3/
• sudo apt-get install build-essential zip flex desktop-file-utils shared-mime-info zlib1g-dev libxml2-dev libdbus-1-dev libx11-dev libxt-dev libltdl3-dev (for Ubuntu 8.04) or libltdl7-dev (for Ubuntu 8.10) libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev network-manager-dev libstartup-notification0-dev xulrunner-1.9-dev libgtk2.0-dev librsvg2-dev ibcurl4-gnutls-dev or libcurl4-openssl-dev libqt4-dev
• sudo ldconfig
• ../../configure –enable-debug
• sudo make install
• export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib
• ggl-gtk

Interface & Usability

They UI remains pretty much unchanged from the Windows version, and requires a compositioning engine like Compiz for the effects. There’s nothing really ground-breaking here – the same black transparent sidebar we all know.

• You can run “ggl-gtk –ns” to run the widget engine without the sidebar.
• You can load the widgets at start-up automatically by adding them to the ‘Sessions’. See above screenshot.
• The gtk version did not slow down my start-up time, and the app didn’t crash. Some of the widgets specifically designed for windows may not work properly but do not hang the program.
• For every widget not created by Google a pop-up appears notifying you.
• Installation of new widgets doesn’t take more than 3-5 seconds.

Conclusion

While some may argue that screenlets, widgets and gadgets are a waste of workspace and resources I have some good uses for them:

• I keep 3 clocks with the West Coast/Central and East Coast time + London. This is extremely useful when publishing and calling overseas relatives.
• Google Calendar tells me what classes I have to attend during the day; when are the articles due.
• The battery meter gives a more clear look at the status so I don’t have to squint at the monitor.
• Ah, and the plant is really cute.

Why is everyone obsessed with having the weather on their desktop? If I want to know today’s weather, I look out of the window.             -oobuntu

• The weather widget helps me pick the right clothes for the day – by giving me the high and the low.

Different people have different uses – so I want to hear from you. Are widgets useful?