Wednesday, August 31, 2005

GOOGLER

"Googler" is my shot for a name of a Google Web browser. As per now, this neologism is used mainly as a self-description of the Google Inc. employees.
Linguistically, it's a misalignment. A prior neologism "to google (out)" for "to browse Internet resources in search of something" indicates that a better meaning for "googler" would be more of a something than somebody that "googles", or simply a "browser Google-style".

Whatever the rumors of Google developing, or not developing a Web browser of its own, I guess it's almost here, and should show up in the next major version of Google Earth. All it needs now is a layer of VisualRoute-style hosts map, and some UI cleanup. Hiding options are needed for Googler's bottom tools, instruments, and command/ticker line which might constitute more convenient dashboard now. Extensive joystick support (instead of a mouse) might be needed, too, for a really good browsing flights. The whole new set of icons for destination servers/routers should be put up as sort of traffic signs.

Mosaic/Netscape-style navigation mode could be turned on by the click on the destination server icon, when Googler would use MSIE/Mozilla/Opera as a helper app/plugin. As a first step to overcome Microsoft's deadly grip on the browsers' market, I'd personally exclude MSIE as a compatible plugin though. Next step would be naturally the development of a GoogleOS: to do that Google could buy Mandriva (Lycoris/Bitstream's btX2 included), and this would be much cheaper and more productive than, say, a purchase of Baidu.

Why Mandriva, and, say, not some Debian, or even some *BSD? Because Mandriva now has btX2 stroke-based font engine, unlike free/True/Open/ClearType
pieces of junk maxxed out at 96dpi in the previous century. But in essence, it may have just VPN-capable, or GoogleEarth's client-server capable 64-bit Linux kernel in the heart of it, only with a powerful support of that monstrous starship of the Googler browser. Compared to regular desktop-centric distributions, this one should be Googler-centric one.

To browse in HTML plane, Microsoft's Web core fonts must be abandoned at last, as too bland. Google's (actually, Berthold's if I remember it right) Catull must be rendered Unicode and put up to overcome Times New Roman, together with Cheltenham, Gentium, some Goudys. Maybe even Apple Garamond BT, but just maybe. Part of sans serifs and monospace faces must be diminished to the levels of their occurrence in print materials due to intrinsically worse readability. Kerning should be introduced into layouts, if not into direct HTML renderers, then into HTML-to-PDF on-the-fly converters. Summing up, big Acrobat and font design chunks of Adobe, if not all of Adobe, must be bought out. Hey, Ballmer, Google-killer, eat this!

Such a good GoogleOS needs to be based on some nice hardware. To use some Steven-Jobsesque approach, I can envisage pretty good popularity of this $5K assembly:

-- 64-bit multicore processor. Or two;
-- 512 MB of fast GRAM for two or four ATi or nVidia chips needed to drive these:
-- 200 dpi 10-12 or better bit/color widescreen 16:8, or even 16:6 (who invented those half-assed 16:9 things, in the first place?) displays, 60 Hz and 16" to 18" for notebooks, and 80 Hz and 26" or more for desktops;
-- Saitek-class joystick or its folding mini-version for a Googler laptop;
-- GPS receiver, multisystem cell phone, HDTV tuner, Foveon chip based good camera as internal options, not like silly dongles, for a laptop.

Googler could be also a name for such a good laptop. The Dell is IMHO closest to produce something of a prototype for this machine, so instead of Baidu, Google needs to buy Dell.

Googler as browser, or better, Web space traveller, might need some extensions of HTTP protocol. Say, something like when used does like this: 'goog://somewebsite.stats.google' in parallel and in background with regular http://somewebsite request processing. Consequently, the icon of a website while being zoomed in, may acquire some color (like pink for porn, and non-pink for non-porn sites, with the latter category divided into further colors and hues. Running ticker line and/or zooming target page may provide additional alphabetical and numerical information like name, description, whois, etc. Sometimes you may want to abandon a particular target by this sniff of it, sometimes you may want to just levitate and suck content from down below, like in instant messaging, VoIP calls, media/news/RSS watching.

Email servers and relays must be mapped to be visible targets in Googler, this time to enable the back trace of spam. You could be able to fly to the point of origin of a particular message and use some blocking countermeasures. Visually it might even look like some war game mission, so what? Unlike that war on terrorism, or war on drugs, spam war is a reality where good guys are outgunned so far.

Color labeling of the Web sites could be accompanied by sound signalling, or alarming, together with whatever voice messaging/flight control commands might be appropriate. In general, silent flights should not be a default option.

Google hired Vint Cerf recently. Nice. How about hiring Sir Tim Berners-Lee, or the whole W3C gang, to do the goog:// job?

I forgot the price tag for this development. Excluding billions needed to buy Adobe, Dell parts, I could start with $100M seed and 20 to 50 choicest, hand-picked developers. It's a pity there's no Google grants any more, and I'm afraid there were never been for projects of this scope. Now is the time. My title for this project will be "Kill Ballmer", quite a Tarantino style.
GOOLOCALIZATIONS

Google UI language localizations are one big mess, evidently for all languages claimed, except maybe Bork-bork-bork, Klingon, Pig Latin, and Elmer Fudd. I can be certain about Russian Google localizations where Google search page puts incredible juvenile slang "Картинки" instead of correct "Изображения" for Images, plus THREE more mistakes in barely half dozen words. There's virtually hundreds more translational mistakes in Russian Google beyond its main page.
I can be certain about Japanese Google UI where very bad rendition of the trademarked term "Google アドワーズ広告" is used in parallel with correct "Google AdSense". "Google アドワーズ広告" is one very ugly "fake gairaijin accent", or "Engrish" as Wikipedia puts it, and it's completely out of place.
I'm not so certain about Chinese Google though, but my preliminary analysis shows that simplified Chinese follows traditional Chinese way too close, and in essence is probably just a careless transliteration. This and Taiwanese-accented indexing of Continental Chinese resources might be the main reason why Google lost search engine battle to Baidu there.
Inviting non-paid volunteer translators of unknown qualifications to clean after horrible machine translations is a very bad practice and now amounts to a costly mistake. Arbitrarily closing some languages for translations so all the mistakes will stick out is even a bigger mistake. I'd call this headless, QA-less, and sloppy process with a new gairaigo: GOOLOCALIZATIONS.

(Any commercial use of translations and corrections made here and in the following postings without the author's consent is prohibited.)

GOOGLESE

In the Soviet era the world biggest carrier Aeroflot was planning a non-stop route to San Francisco. Mineta International Airport as an emergency landing strip was ruled out by Aeroflot authorities at once, as another obscene imperialist joke. The problem was that Mineta International Airport in a careless Russian translation sounded like International Airport of Blowjob.

Nowadays sloppy translations for Google produce numerous linguistic bastardizations. Google's Russian, for example, bears all the signs of what I'd call punk Russian. As a linguistic occurrence, punk Russian is heavily accented, intrinsically illiterate, marginal jargon, a street product (where the majority of Russian volunteer translators came from.)

No wonder that a serious Russian researcher prefers local Yandex.ru, Rambler.ru, and whatnot, to do searches in Russian resources. Besides, the Google's results are usually ten times shallower when phrases, or Russian flectivities are being searched.

Punk Russian in Google's localizations must not be tolerated any more, or the Baidu incident will happen again. To give an idea of what Russians read in Russian Google main page, here's precise back translation from Russian:


['Schmoogle' in colored Catull face here; Schlogger blocks it]
on American



Web Pitchers Groups News Froogle Local more



Google search I'm Feeling Lucky



Advertising Codes Business Solutions About Google



Copyright 2005 Goolocalizations


OK, 'Schmoogle' might be an overkill as an equivalent for punk Russian "Гугло" or "Гугель", but the rest in red are exact translations. For this class of localization, there is a good punk Russian term через жопу. Mildly put, it means "awkward". Literal meaning of it is not so mild, as it's a shortened form of через жопу гланды дёргать, which is "pull one's tonsils via one's asshole": topologically feasible but yes, awkward.