This isn’t news, it’s inevitable. We all know that Google’s infamously never first to market, but it’s products tend to dominate either via superior technology (see text, image, blog…well: any search function) or by driving traffic and cash into the product from related products/services which dominate their own niche. Google Checkout is a classic ‘Forced entry’ to a market which was otherwise dominated by PayPal.

3 Reasons Checkout is Unstoppable

1. You get preferential treatment in Google SERP listings, with a larger clickable area and visual cues to encourage user clickthrough. Interestingly, Google changed the clickable areas in text ads recently, adding further weight to this benefit.

2. Google Base and Google Products both promote filtering out of non-Google Checkout products.

3. Google Checkout Gadgets. These are fantastically useful and Gadgets are another area of strong growth and promotion by Google.

I’m stopping at three simply because there’s an almost endless list of more trivial reasons why Google will succeed with Checkout where others have faltered at the feet of PayPal.

If you could add one more critical win for Google Checkout, what would it be? Also, if you think PayPal has a Checkout-killer, tell us more…

I’ve been waiting for the tide of comment following Google’s launch of the gOS - the Google Operating System - early last month (again). But it just seems to not have happened. Tie that in with the almost entirely unheralded launch of a syncing tool for OpenOffice and Google Docs and I can only assume that thanksgiving’s caused a lot of the high volume bloggers state side to rest on their laurels for the festive season.

Personally, I love OpenOffice - it strips out the unnecessary elements of Microsoft Office. In fact it forces me to think about the content I’m producing, and not how it’s formatted. However, I’m a multiple machine kind of guy. I need to get documents synched. Google Docs then, right? Well yes and no. I like the look of Google Docs, but the feel is way too laggy for me. If I’m entering data into a spreadsheet, I want that data going in and updating other cells instantly. When I save a doc, I want that to be done straight away.

Also: I bet I’m not the only one here who finds Google Spreadsheets to be frustratingly simplistic. I’m not talking about pivot tables, but at least a little flexibility in basic editing functions and some support for decent formulas is desperately needed.

So I just don’t get the speed I need from Google Docs and sometimes the product is a little limited. syncing up OpenOffice is a great step forwards. In fact it’s surely the greatest app for the gOS?

Google Operating System Vs Plain Vanilla Ubuntu

I was a big fan of Fiesty, and Gibbon is another great leap forwards, but still the pickup for Linux via it’s friendliest flavour is low. Google’s talent for making the mainstream love the geeky could be just the injection of glamour open source desktop environments need.

I blame it on being ill.

I spend most of my time online. I’m lucky enough to work in a company where I’m more or less obligated to spend all day everyday keeping in touch with the latest trends online. I’d do it anyway of course. In fact I’ve spent a substantially larger part of today fiddling with one such development that I couldn’t even strictly justify to myself. Why? It’s all about Flock & social media.

So sure, Flock’s nothing new. It’s not even unique, or first.

It’s damn pretty though.

GTD for Social Media?

OK, so it’s not in the spirit of GTD* to rely on a fancy tool, but if you are trying to Inbox Zero your social sphere and you’re more than a little active online, then anything you can use to make the complex simple should be welcomed.

Flock’s ‘People’ function allows me to share broadly in my multiple social spheres without having to wade through logins or get tangled up in MMFFT (Massively Multiplied FireFox Tabs). When I’m testing web code I run things through multiple user agent versions and types - and I piggybacked my social presence into these different browsers: Opera for a formal profile; IE for work; FF for play; and so on.

I’m still fiddling (and will be for hours), so I’m not going to bang on too much about some of the other cool features. I do recommend you take it for a whirl though, especially if you happen to be bed-bound by winter flu.

Yeah, yeah - very interesting. But did you…you know?

Did I blog with it? Well you’re reading this aren’t you?

*For those of you unfortunate enough not to have come across this mind-bendingly simple life hack: GTD = Getting Things Done.