Yahoo Postpones Board Meeting, Director Resigns

Facing a battle for its board, Yahoo on Thursday pushed back its annual meeting until the end of July and announced the resignation of a board member.

The annual meeting, during which the entire board is up for re-election, had been scheduled for July 3. Yahoo did not yet set a particular date for the annual meeting but said that it will be around the end of July.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has been scooping up Yahoo shares and has told the company he is nominating 10 candidates to replace the entire board. He has said that in doing so he hopes to reignite talks with Microsoft, which recently pulled its acquisition bid for Yahoo.

The postponement of the board meeting probably means Yahoo needs more time to work out a deal with Microsoft, said Karsten Weide, an analyst at IDC. He believes Microsoft ultimately will buy Yahoo, even though the software giant removed its offer and has said it is working on another type of transaction with the company.

In addition to the change in the annual meeting, Yahoo said Edward Kozel resigned from the board. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo said Kozel had planned to leave the board in February but decided to stay on following the acquisition proposal from Microsoft.

As a result of his resignation, Yahoo has reduced the size of its board to nine directors, it said.

While Kozel said he is resigning in order to spend more time with his family, he probably has another reason, Weide said. "What it means is there is dissent," he said. Kozel may not have agreed with the board's refusal to make a deal with Microsoft and he may be worried about lawsuits charging the board with failing to do its duty, Weide said.

Yahoo appointed Kozel to the board in 2000. He had spent 11 years at Cisco, including as chief technology officer, and also served on Cisco's board. Kozel also previously worked at Boeing and McDonnell Douglas and as managing partner at Open Range Ventures, a private venture capital company.

Microsoft announced its US$44.6 billion cash-and-stock bid for Yahoo on Feb. 1 but abandoned it three months later, after Yahoo initially spurned the offer. Microsoft was interested in a deal with Yahoo as a way to boost its lagging search business, although since it pulled its offer, the company has said that it can gain more market share through internal innovations.

China Shows off Olympic Tech...sort of

An exhibition of technology being used in the Beijing Olympics opened here Wednesday, with mixed results in demonstrating one of the Games' themes of "Hi-tech Olympics."

Although presented in English as "Hi-tech Olympics" (the Games' other two themes are "Green Olympics" and "People's Olympics"), in Chinese it appears literally as "Technology Olympics." As such, its translation may be raising expectations for the use of IT at the Beijing Games, even though few if any new technologies or innovations will be implemented.

"Green Olympics" has come to the forefront among the three themes, and even the technology being used seems to be aimed at addressing environmental concerns such as "zero emissions in the immediate Olympic Park area" and holding a "basically carbon-neutral Olympic Games," as stated by Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang at a news conference two weeks ago.

The Science and Technology Olympics Exhibition is as much a propaganda exercise as it is vendor showcase. Some vendors -- all of whom are official Olympic sponsors -- had representatives on hand to answer questions about their products, but branding was downplayed.

On display were Samsung TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) mobile phones, making use of China's limited, domestic 3G (third generation telephony) service that will be available to 15,000 users during the Olympics. In three tries, the handset failed to connect with China Mobile's mINFO2008 3G content system. "Well, it's a little slow," said the booth representative. When asked if 3G wasn't supposed to be faster than GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), which is widely available in China, she said, "yes." "Where's the Samsung guy?" she asked her two colleagues. However, the handset maker's representative was not located.

One service not previously mentioned in relation to the Olympics is PTT (Push-To-Talk), which allows mobile handsets to function like walkie-talkies. A China Mobile representative said that PTT-enabled handsets would be available in China shortly. He declined to identify brands that would be available, although he said that as an official Olympic sponsor, Samsung handsets would likely be used during the Games. He also said the service could be available in China later this year, but that it would be aimed at groups such as conference organizers. "There's no need for the service on a person-to-person basis," he said, despite significant uptake of the service for just that purpose in the U.S. and other markets.

Also on display were traffic control systems, including a taxi tracking system to provide real-time road conditions to monitors. Although it did not confirm earlier figures of 15,000 vehicles, a chart showed that a taxi's tracker will use GPS to send the car's location and speed to a central traffic control room. Other systems can then be used to try to improve flow, such as automatically switching or holding traffic lights.

The exhibition runs through May 25 at the Beijing International Exhibition Center.

HyLighter Helps Groups Collaborate on Documents

Collaborating with other members of your team to create and modify documents is a common business need. But what's the best way to handle this task? A new online document collaboration service called HyLighter lets you use color coding to highlight annotations, which the service tracks separately from the original document.

Products designed to address the needs of people who collaborate on documents have been around for awhile. One familiar example is Microsoft Word's Track Changes capability; introduced several years ago, this feature lets users mark up a Word document with comments and suggested changes that other collaborators can accept or reject.

Many well-known Web services provide highly flexible document collaboration options, including access to shared documents. Microsoft Office Live and WebEx WebOffice, for example, let you upload documents to a private online site for sharing, reviewing, and modifying. Basecamp provides an online Writeboard for document collaboration, as well as simple project management services.

HyLighter, currently in beta testing, specializes exclusively in document collaboration. It delivers benefits unavailable in more-generic online sharing services--most notably an intuitive color-coding scheme that highlights areas of concern to the business team.

HyLighter tracks comments and suggested changes separately so they don't obscure the original document. In fact, you can't change the document itself within HyLighter, which might make it unsuitable for some users. But in situations where tracking collaborators' concerns is important, it can be quite handy.

HyLighter is a work in progress, so I wouldn't recommend relying on it exclusively when you're working with important documents; be prepared to use something else if you run into diificulties with it. For example, the service says that it supports documents in Word, PDF, and HTML formats, but some PDFs that I uploaded to the service did not render completely faithfully. (HyLighter acknowledges that some multicolumn PDFs with embedded graphics, such as the one in the screen shot shown above left, may not display properly.)

On the other hand, Word documents displayed flawlessly. HyLighter says that it plans to support annotation on graphics, audio, and video files eventually.

How HyLighter Works

HyLighter recognizes two types of users: the originator of the document, and the invitee--the person whom the originator asks to participate in the collaboration. Short animated tutorials on HyLighter's site explain both user roles in greater detail.

The originator starts the process by signing up for the service and uploading a document. I ran into a minor problem the first time I tried to sign up: I didn't receive an acknowledgement via e-mail. But on a second attempt the following day, I was successful.

Once logged in, you'll see a spare interface. Across the top are menu options for accessing documents you originate and documents you have been invited to collaborate on. A right-side pane contains links for changing your profile and for importing documents that you want to work on in HyLighter.

Importing documents is straightforward. You provide a document title, locate the file on your PC, assign it a copyright status (secure, pending, or not applicable) selected from a drop-down menu, enter a description if you wish, and list the e-mail addresses of the people you want to invite as collaborators.

Each invitee receives an e-mail message requesting input on the document. Before working on a document, the invitee must set up a HyLighter account.

Comments, Not Changes

After uploading a document from your PC to the online service (which takes a few seconds), you can start annotating it.

HyLighter's color bars resemble real-world highlights applied with colored marker pens: They don't obscure the text. Yellow bars highlight passages where you've made a comment, blue ones indicate comments from others, and green ones signal areas of common concern. Darker shades of blue or green appear when collaborators show especially strong interest in a segment--for example, when several participants leave comments about the same text.

Comments appear in a pane to the right of the document. Each comment appears under its author's name, and clicking a small box-shaped icon to the right of the author's name turns the relevant highlighting red. Other small icons let you replace, add to, or remove comments.

When you add or replace comments, a simple text-editing box appears, offering some common formatting options such as for boldface and italics. You can insert links to Web sites or data on an external server--videos from YouTube, for example--but you can't upload the external data into HyLighter itself.

Buttons located above the comments column make additional document-wide functions available. One lets you create a G-note--a general comment that isn't linked to any particular area of the document. A Compare button lets you designate whose comments you view--your own, say, or only those of colleagues.

Once the collaboration is complete, you can press an Export button to export the document and comments into an HTML file, seemingly limiting the service's usefulness. (HyLighter plans to include support for export to RTF, PDF, and possibly Word formats in the future.)

In the mean time, HyLighter's help file suggests a workaround that uses the Easy View button: Click it to generate a narrower window in which the highlighted document appears in the upper pane and the comments in the lower pane. Unless you have a very small display, you'll have enough room to open your document creation app (Word, for example) in a second narrow window alongside the Easy View window; then you can make the changes manually. Obviously, this isn't an efficient way to work.

Is HyLighter Worth It?

I like the way that HyLighter separates the comments from the document. Most Web-based collaboration tools modify the document itself, and as a result, when many users are involved, the intention and tone of the original text can get lost.

If only one or two people are reviewing your document, however, the danger of drowning in comments may be very small. Meanwhile, the extra work of transferring comments and changes to the original document may loom as a major drawback.

HyLighter is free to use during its beta period, and the service shows real promise. If you need to collaborate on documents, I recommend that you try it out to see whether it suits your style.

Once the final version of HyLighter appears, it will be available as an application that users can install on their server, as well as being a hosted service. Pricing has not been set.

Secure Your Network

Key UTM Features Explained

Unlike standard firewall routers, UTM appliances vary widely in their features and capabilities--and for the most part, you get what you pay for. Here are the major features to look for when choosing a network security package for your small business.

Antivirus, Antispyware, and Antiphishing Tools

By stopping viruses and malware at the Internet gateway, you can reduce the burden on individual computers and prevent most threats from reaching your network. Antivirus tools also provide a second layer of protection beyond your individual PCs' virus checkers, which frustrated users may disable and negligent users may update too infrequently. Gateway checkers can't find every piece of malware, however, because they lack the horsepower needed to emulate the programs on each computer. Thus you should retain the virus and spyware tools on each PC.

It's also worth finding out the brand of virus or malware checker that the UTM appliances you are considering use. Some devices work with their own software, but most rely on third-party tools from companies such as McAfee, Kaspersky, or even ClamAV (the open-source option). You should make sure that ongoing support will be available.

Content and Keyword Filtering

With content and keyword filtering, you can block access to specific IP addresses, domains, and URLs by invoking the vendor's database of inappropriate Web sites and keywords in various categories, as well as by adding or subtracting your own. Content filtering isn't just for porn. You could block Web mail sites, for example, or video-streaming services. You can use filtering on outgoing data as well as incoming data, so you could prevent people within your network from sending explicit e-mail or instant messages. Check to confirm that the UTM appliances you're considering have the content-filtering capabilities you need.

Spam Filtering

A few UTM appliances have antispam filters, but most offer it only as an extra-cost option (if at all). Because spam filtering can have a major effect on firewall throughput, many IT experts prefer to use a separate spam filter at the mail server. Your ISP probably can perform this task at little or no extra charge if you use its e-mail services. If you run your own e-mail server behind your firewall, UTM appliance-based spam filtering may be appropriate.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention

Intrusion detection goes beyond the simple packet header inspection that all firewalls perform, actually examining the packets' contents as well. Together with deep-packet inspection, intrusion detection and prevention systems use ever-evolving rules and behavioral algorithms to block suspected attacks, much as antivirus software does.

Data-Leakage Prevention

Less commonly available--but important to some small businesses--is data-leakage prevention. "Data leakage" refers to the loss of proprietary information and documents from the network via e-mail, e-mail attachments, instant messaging, Web site uploads, and so on. Law and medical offices especially need to prevent transmittal of client or patient data; they can be sued if such information leaks out.

DLP software uses content filtering or simply blocks e-mail attachments and file transfers. You may be able to simulate DLP by using regular content and port filtering tools, but you'll need to anticipate some of the ways data can leak, and some expertise in security configuration is extremely valuable. A security consultant can be a big help here.

Gateway Throughput

One of the first specs you'll see on any UTM appliance datasheet is firewall performance or throughput, expressed in mbps (megabits per second). These numbers can provide a rough guide to performance, but they may not factor in the impact of the UTM tools you use--from intrusion detection to antivirus to content filtering--which can reduce throughput by up to 50 percent, though some gateways handle the hit better than others due to speedier processors or more efficient software. Antispam filters usually have the heaviest impact on throughput.

Most vendors have try-before-you-buy programs, so take advantage of these arrangements to ensure that the UTM appliance you ultimately select has the features you need and doesn't bog down under your network's loads. When you count the number of users on your network, remember to include peripheral network devices such as NASs, printers, and PDAs, since they may count toward the "recommended" user load.

Access Control and Authentication

To prevent unauthorized users from accessing your LAN, most UTM appliances support one or more authentication schemes, such as Windows Active Directory, LDAP, RADIUS, or an internal user database. They also provide MAC address filtering to prevent unregistered devices from accessing your LAN; unfortunately, MAC addresses are easy to spoof.

WAN Failover/Redundancy

One very important difference between standard firewall routers and many UTM appliances is the presence on the latter of a second (and sometimes even a third) WAN port. In case of an outage, you could balance the network load between two regular connections--say, one DSL and one cable. You can set one up as the primary, with the second kicking in only during an outage, or you can divide loads on a round-robin or percentage basis. This is a great way to establish outage protection without investing in an expensive T1 line (and the accompanying service-level guarantees).

VPN Gateway

For secure connections between offices, during business travel, or in support of telecommuting, virtual private network support is a must-have feature. Most UTM appliances can serve as VPN gateways for incoming connections. Remote users can connect to the gateway and can access LAN resources securely over an encrypted tunnel.

Wireless Security

Most small businesses want Wi-Fi network access, so wireless security features in a UTM appliance are very important. Some appliances have a built-in wireless router, enabling them to run Wi-Fi traffic through the same strong filters that they use for Internet traffic. Others let you use third-party Wi-Fi access points to create special security zones for wireless networks.

Annual Subscription Fees

Normally to get the various UTM filtering capabilities above and beyond those of a basic firewall (including antivirus, antispyware, content filtering, intrusion detection, and spam checking) you must pay for an annual subscription. Though you can use the hardware without a subscription, you'll lose most of the appliance's security value if you adopt that approach. So before choosing a UTM appliance, investigate the annual subscription price for virus definitions and software/firmware updates, and find out whether costs go up as the number of users does. Some vendoes use a sliding scale of this type, while others don't.

Also, check to see whether the initial purchase price includes the cost of the first year's subscription. Since subscriptions may run to $500 or more, having to pay separately for the first year is a significant factor. You'll want to compare the total cost of ownership--for both equipment and annual maintenance--over the number of years you expect to own the appliance. Another variable is installation fees, if you'll be hiring a consultant.

That's a quick review of the key features of UTM appliances, but you may want to consider other features as well, such as support for VoIP services (which may be adversely affected by filtering tools), the ability to set up zones governed by different security levels (say, a public zone and a private zone), dynamic DNS support, printer sharing, and monitoring and reporting tools that proactively provide crucial information (such as WAN outages or peak load times) in a form that even a part-time IT person can understand and act on.

Sub-$1000 UTM Appliances

All of the UTM appliances listed below provide the basics--a business-class VPN firewall router with antivirus and antispyware protection, intrusion detection, content filtering, and monitoring tools--and many have additional areas of special strength or extra features. Most bundle an initial one-year subscription for antivirus and antispyware updates. Recommended network capacities range from 8 to 25 users, but all of these vendors offer higher-end models for larger businesses as well.

The entry level SonicWall TZ 180, Fortinet FortiGate-50B, and D-Link NetDefend DFL-CPG310 cost less than $500 and can be set up by a non-IT professional. Even so, it's a good idea to hire a security expert, if possible, to set things up properly. A network is only as secure as its weakest point, which usually isn't the router.

Moving up the UTM scale, the Check Point UTM-1 Edge Appliance, the Secure Computing SnapGear SG580, and the ZyXel ZyWall 5 UTM cost around $500 to $700; and the Calyptix AccessEnforcer AE500, the eSoft InstaGate 404e, and the Juniper Networks Secure Services Gateway 5 run all the way up to $1000. The extra money pays for enterprise-class features, more software options (for which you'll need to buy annual renewals), and the ability to scale up to more users without buying new hardware. The InstaGate 404e, for example, offers modular e-mail and Web "ThreatPaks" that cover far more than basic antivirus tools do, while the Juniper SSG5 amounts to a branch-office version of the company's enterprise security system.

In-House Spy Software Becomes Big Business

LONDON/BOSTON (Reuters) - If you work for a bank, a computer may be reading your e-mail, listening to your phone calls or analyzing chat conversations as you type.

Even banking workers used to the idea of surveillance might balk at the thought of a computer doing the job.

But there are strong prospects for the software niche, as banks try to keep a much closer eye on staff in the wake of scandals such as Jerome Kerviel's rogue trading at Societe Generale, or the aggressive rumor-mill that undermined banks including HBOS and Bear Stearns.

"With the credit crisis and so on, people started to be much more careful," said Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at information technology consultants Gartner.

Big Business

Known collectively as e-discovery, these technologies are booming despite a slowdown in other areas. Gartner forecasts the segment will generate $760.5 million in revenues this year, up from $524.5 million in 2007.

The systems to record and monitor employee activity can help companies collect huge amounts of internal information -- which they may increasingly need in the face of lawsuits spawned by the subprime crisis, or to meet rising regulatory demands.

U.S. politicians are demanding tougher rules in the wake of the collapse of the once red-hot housing market, while the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act on corporate accounting and investor protection has already spawned hefty legal requirements.

"The overall tech base is under pressure on the back of the credit crunch but there are a few niches, for example the e-discovery space, which may benefit from the regulation," said Josep Bori, technology sector analyst at Deutsche Bank.

Banks are cutting non-essential spending and laying off staff to make up for losses and a slump in business. But spending on e-discovery bucks the trend.

"The one and only area where delays or cancellations are not happening is the regulatory and compliance. There's no way to avoid compliance," said Stephane Gregoire, a product management director at Brussels-headquartered FRSGlobal, which supplies regulatory reporting tools to top banks.

Walls Have Eyes

An obvious potential winner identified by Deutsche among others is Anglo-American Autonomy Corp Plc, founded by Cambridge University researcher Mike Lynch. He said it was an Autonomy system that detected that mails created by Kerviel to support what he was saying had not been sent.

The company, with forecast revenue of more than $480 million this year according to analysts polled by Reuters Estimates, sells search technology that can understand e-mail, text, voice and video data. The stock has outperformed the FTSE index by more than 50 percent over the past year.

"The effect of the subprime crisis appears now to be a positive for our business," said Lynch. "This is all being driven by trading scandals and by the sharpening of requests from regulators."

Many companies maintain the right to monitor an employee's electronic correspondence using company property: in Britain, for instance, this is allowed if staff are informed and "the benefits outweigh the risks to individuals' privacy," according to the British Information Commissioner's Office.

The problems the software can help resolve can be costly.

Kerviel was blamed for a 4.9 billion euros ($7.7 billion) loss at Societe Generale. In March over 3 billion pounds ($6 billion) was wiped off the value of British bank HBOS in less than an hour after some traders spread false rumors it had problems. Bear Stearns ended up being taken over.

Credit Suisse blamed a handful of traders for a multi-billion dollar loss, saying they had deliberately mispriced complex credit products.

Such mishaps, including wrong-footed bets on high-risk home loans, have put internal security and data management high on banks' agendas.

"Subprime brought that to a head," said David Paris from the financial markets consulting unit of IBM. "Rather than saying 'strategically we need to go in that direction but don't want to invest now', (companies say) 'oh gosh, we need to do that'."

Message Monitors

Kailash Ambwani, CEO of FaceTime Communications, a privately held U.S. company whose software helps companies monitor instant messaging traffic and whose customers include many major banks, said SocGen had boosted interest in FaceTime's technology.

In February, he was recalled to New York from a ski holiday in Lake Tahoe to pitch to executives of two top banks which weren't yet customers: "We had been talking to them, and what this event did was to cause an acceleration in the process."

Another U.S.-based instant messaging specialist also reports fresh interest. Akonix technology archives and monitors instant messaging conversations in real time, sending alerts on certain key words or names or number combinations.

The company says it has in the past six months gained two new clients, which are among the top three or five U.S. brokerages.

"It's not new regulations that have caused an up-pick in interest, it really is incidents like Societe Generale ... where communications were used to do illegal activities," Akonix's head of marketing Don Montgomery said.

And the industry is also attracting some employees who have first-hand knowledge of how to beat the system. French software company LCA said in April it had hired none less than the former SocGen trader Kerviel.

Does Icahn Have a Backup Plan?

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn's proxy fight for Yahoo is aimed at reigniting merger talks between the Internet company and Microsoft, but he may have to prepare a backup plan in case Microsoft is unwilling to return to the bargaining table.

After Microsoft walked away from its US$44.6 billion bid to acquire Yahoo, the company has been clear, publicly at least, about moving on, and executives said they are not interested in purchasing Yahoo anymore.

"It's not clear that Microsoft is still at the [bargaining] table," said Ned May, an analyst with Outsell. "That's a bit of a problem."

If Icahn can't woo Microsoft back as a Yahoo suitor, he may end up in the position of being the director of a company that no one wants to buy. And as Icahn has never seemed very interested in actually running someone else's business, this would put him in a rather risky situation.

Having made his $14.5 billion fortune by taking calculated risks, however, it's likely Icahn is preparing himself for the worst-case scenario. A source close to the billionaire investor said he may be consulting with IAC/InteractiveCorp CEO Barry Diller as he mounts his proxy battle for Yahoo.

One possible topic of the talks could be a plan to sell off parts of Yahoo to IAC, which owns Ask.com, a competitor to Yahoo's search engine.

IAC has faced its own troubles of late as it prepares to split itself into five pieces, and could be bolstered by acquiring Yahoo's advertising network and users.

However, it's unlikely that IAC, with a market cap of $6.6 billion, could afford such a deal, although it's clear Diller is interested in expanding his company's media properties, however far-flung they may end up being. On Thursday, IAC's Ask.com announced plans to buy Lexico Publishing Group, the owner of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com.

It wouldn't be surprising if Icahn also was speaking with other executives to prepare himself for the event that Microsoft won't return to negotiate a deal. News Corp. has been rumored as a potential suitor now that Microsoft is out of the picture; however, on a May 8 conference call, executives said the company is not in talks to purchase Yahoo at this time.

News Corp. did not reply to a request for comment on Thursday.

One analyst noted that "cash is pretty tight these days," which might make it risky for any company to invest in Yahoo if Microsoft won't bite.

Moreover, "Yahoo worked pretty hard to find other suitors to counter Microsoft, and were apparently unsuccessful in lining those up," said the analyst, who asked not to be named. If no one besides Microsoft came forward during the two months it haggled with Yahoo over a price, it's unlikely anyone would be willing to buy the company now, he said.

A multimedia deal between Icahn and Diller is not unprecedented. Two years ago, the two billionaires were rumored to be interested in joining forces to link up pieces of IAC and Time Warner, in which Icahn is an investor. However, nothing concrete ever materialized.

Right now it seems Yahoo investors will be supportive of Icahn's proxy battle, even as Microsoft remains silent. IDC analyst Caroline Dangson pointed out that Yahoo shares rose 5 percent after his proxy fight was unveiled, indicating some support for the plan.

Indeed, Paulson and Co., an investment firm that holds 50 million shares of Yahoo, came out in favor of Icahn's proxy fight on Thursday in an e-mailed statement, but said it hopes the end result will be a deal with Microsoft, not Icahn taking over the company.

Other major shareholders that had expressed ire over Yahoo's not accepting Microsoft's offer and are likely to support Icahn's proxy fight are Capital Research, which owns 16 percent of Yahoo, and Legg Mason, which owns 7 percent.

Shareholders will get to officially weigh in on Icahn's proposed new board at an annual stockholder meeting July 3. Unless Microsoft and Yahoo iron out a deal by then, Icahn may walk out of the meeting the proud new leader of a $38 billion Internet company.

James Niccolai in San Francisco and Juan Carlos Perez in Miami contributed to this report.

Google's Mac Efforts Begin to Bear Fruit

Amit Singh thought something was missing from OS X. The Google engineer--and author of Mac OS X Internals--took a look at what the Mac operating system didn't have that Linux and Solaris did.

"One thing stood out," Singh said. "There was no easy way to do file systems." So Singh decided to create one, even though he worked for Google's search team at the time and wasn't part of the company's Mac development efforts.

The reaction of his bosses to this use of company time? Go for it.

Singh's project, which became the open-source file-system utility MacFUSE, is just one of the many employee-driven efforts that go on within the walls of the search-engine and text-advertising giant all the time. Google calls it "20-percent time," encouraging its engineers to pursue other Google-related interests for up to 20 percent of their work hours--even if that interest has little to do with their regular duties at the search and software company.

Efforts such as 20-percent projects by engineers like Singh are par for the course at Google, a company that sees encouraging employees to pursue subjects they find interesting as a critical part of its own development goals.

"A lot of things that happen at Google are based on empowering people to come up with ideas and pursue them if [those ideas are] good," said Sundar Pichai, Google's director of product management.

Many 20-percent projects have wound up becoming major Google products: both Google News and Gmail, for instance, started that way. Among the Mac-specific efforts that began as 20-percent projects are Notifier, which offers Gmail and Google Calendar notifications, and the Google Mac Developer Playground, an online collection of open-source Mac projects created at Google.

From sideline to mainstream

These days Google's offerings for Mac users include everything from a desktop search tool to a 3-D mapping tool to a suite of Web-based office productivity apps. In between, you'll also find a 3-D modeling program and add-ons for the Firefox Web browser.

But Google's Mac offerings weren't always so vast. The company has stepped up its Mac efforts in the past couple of years, as a result of a strategic push from executives as well as prodding from Mac-using Google employees.

Google Docs gives users access to online tools such as a word processor and spreadsheet app, though support for the Safari browser has been spotty.

Google's corporate philosophy is to make information as accessible and useful as possible. Still, "as a company, when you're starting out, you have to make hard tradeoffs," Pichai explains, and for Google, that meant initially building desktop products that worked on Microsoft Windows.

But Mac-using Google employees were working hard in the background to expand the company's products onto the platform they loved. When Karen Grunberg, now a product manager for Google's client software on the Mac, first joined Google, she found the limited portfolio of Mac products to be "very ungoogley"--a term you'll hear around the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif., to describe something that doesn't measure up to the company's way of doing things.

"In the beginning, Mac developers did a lot of ad hoc work," Grunberg said. And although there's been an official Mac development team in place since the fall of 2005, that spirit continues. "Across the company, a lot of people are doing some sort of Mac development."

That attitude has made it "easy to recruit" a Mac team for Google, Pichai said, since the company can draw on the talents of employees already working on Mac projects as part of their 20-percent time.

However, Google keeps the exact size of its Mac development team under wraps. Company executives declined to say just how many employees make up its Mac efforts, instead pointing to the frequency of Mac product launches--from zero to six in the past few years--as a sign of its commitment to the platform.

Talent, freedom, and perks

One of the recruits to the Mac team was Singh, the engineer who developed MacFUSE as an open-source project and now works as an engineering manager on the Mac team. His experiences on that project--"the easiest open-source release ever," he says--have been mirrored on the Mac team, largely because of the atmosphere created at Google. Engineers are not only given the time and freedom to pursue projects, they also have the assurance that good ideas will be embraced by the company's higher-ups.

"There's intellectual freedom here. That's the bottom line," Singh said. "They don't stifle you here."

And that may be the one of the biggest benefits Google offers, on a campus full of Silicon Valley-style perks. Amenities include an on-site doctor's office and gym, a place where employees can drop their cars off for an oil change, and wireless-Internet-equipped commute shuttles. The Mountain View campus boasts 18 cafés, each with their own culinary focus, and all free to Google employees.

But talking to employees, you get the impression that the real perk is the massive talent pool that Google has assembled. The inventor of Python works at Google, Singh notes, as do prime movers behind the creation of both UTF-8 and Unix. And at a company that stresses collaboration and accessibility, it's easy enough to schedule time on someone's calendar--using Google Calendar, of course--to drop in and chat, Grunberg said.

"We have some of the brightest people in the world here," Grunberg added. "Putting them in the same room is exciting to watch."

Embracing Mac OS X

That spirit of collaboration has been key to helping the Mac team establish itself at Google. Besides the challenge of bringing the Mac versions of applications in line with their Windows counterparts, the Mac team also had to consider issues that are particular to the Mac OS--or, taking "existing products and getting the same experience while maintaining the standard Mac users expect," as engineering director Marc Pawliger puts it.

Take Google Desktop, the company's desktop search application. Google programmers had to consider OS X's own built-in search technology, Spotlight, and how Google Desktop would work with it. In the end, Google positioned its desktop search utility as a companion to Spotlight, giving Mac users the ability to search content from Web pages they've visited and Gmail accounts in addition to desktop files.

Google programmers also worked on ways to preserve common actions for users on different platforms. On the Windows version of Google Desktop, users summon the Quick Search Box feature by press the Control button twice; for the Mac version, pressing the Command key twice does the trick.

Google built an uploader that allows Mac users to share photos online via its Picasa Web Album offering--an example of how the company tailored one of its products for the Mac platform.

"There really is a push here to say how do we balance the parity of experience across platforms with the need for users to get their work done," Pawliger said.

Or take the case of Google's Picasa, a Windows program that finds, organizes, and shares photos. Since that product mirrors much of the functionality of Apple's iPhoto, there would seem to be little incentive for Google to create a Mac version. Yet, rather than ignore the platform, Google built a photo uploader that works with iPhoto--another 20-percent project--to allow Mac users to connect iPhoto to the Picasa Web Album feature for sharing photos online.

Not that there isn't work to be done on the Mac platform. The online Google Docs productivity apps offer only spotty support for Safari, OS X's built-in Web browser. And Google Gears, an open-source effort to let Web apps work on the desktop isn't compatible with Safari at all.

A Google spokesperson responded to questions about the reason for the compatibility issues with Safari and how Google plans on addressing them by noting the company's commitment to making its applications available across different platforms. "We want to provide great products and services to the tens of millions of Mac users around the world, because it's the right thing to do, and because Mac users inside and outside of Google demand it," the spokesperson said. "As part of our ongoing commitment to innovation, Google constantly tests new tools, features and interfaces to improve our Mac feature offering and provide additional benefit to our users who use the Mac platform."

Moving toward cross-platform development

As Google's Mac offerings become broader, its Mac development team can put more emphasis on cross-platform collaboration. In many ways, Pichai says, the Mac team is "helping lead development" with the contributions it's making to Google products.

"There's been huge progress since I've been at the company," Grunberg agreed. "We've been working a lot harder at making sure products are developed in tandem" for both platforms.

As work continues on its Web-based apps, Google is turning an eye toward other areas where it can apply its information-management focus. Mobile platforms will certainly be a key part of Google's future, with the iPhone taking center stage. The company is also looking at ways to bridge the gap between Web-based applications and the desktop, largely through Google Gears. Google has announced plans to let users of its online word processor view and edit documents offline.

Whatever direction the company pursues, expect Google's Mac team to be in the thick of things. "Now comes the time to really experiment on the platform," Pawliger said. "Now is the time to find opportunities, whether they're on the Mac platform or elsewhere."