The new service, which adopts the name of one of Google’s most popular and beloved products, replaces Google Talk, Google+ Messenger, and the original Google+ Hangout video chat service — Hangouts will eventually replace all of Google’s communication properties. The new Hangouts is basically a messaging app, in the same realm as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, but with some of its own twists.

Miguel Guhlin is doing what many of us are doing after the last straw - Google pulling GoogleReader. He’s documenting how he’s going to pull his dependence upon Google.

For me, my biggest decision caused by Google is that I’ll be moving to Wordpress over the summer. I do think Google Sites is next although I’ve received several heated emails that this isn’t accurate - if you look at the market share of google sites, it is far less than that of Google reader. Yes, it is something educators depend upon but you get what you pay for. I think Google would be better served to have a freemium model — if advertising doesn’t pay for it, we’ll let you keep the service if you pay.

I don’t know how I”d move from gmail. I just don’t but if I had to, I guess I could. I don’t think gmail is going anywhere, but I do have my personal email boxes going into that inbox.

I agree wikispaces is far superior to Google sites. It started quite a few years a go with Google Lively and it has just continued every year.

Thank you Miguel for your transparency. I hope Google is listening, many of us are still HOT about Google reader going away.As great as Feedly is, it doesn’t have Diigo or ifttt.com integration yet which is a problem.

This is an important issue. Google will be the first to let you designate what happens to your data when you die. This is a great move and something important but can be misused if it isn’t handled properly

Mention gives you 3 alerts for free. Everyone should be following mention of their name and brand names (or school name) it is important. If you want more than 3, you’ll have to pay. I use Google Alerts to track flat classroom and cool cat teacher - sad Google Alerts is gone, but here’s an alternative.

Aurgghh! So Google alerts is dead too. I thought it was just misbehaving. It might have gone on spring break never to unbreak. Oh dear. Here are some alternatives from mashable.

Google image search is being redesigned. I hope that one of the big changes that the quote below means is that we’ll have more transparency with copyright. So many times, when I ask a source, students say “Google Images.” No. No. No. Google images isn’t a source, it is a search engine. You must quote the original source!! Hopefully this will make it easier.

From Google Webmaster central…
“We now display detailed information about the image (the metadata) right underneath the image in the search results, instead of redirecting users to a separate landing page.
We’re featuring some key information much more prominently next to the image: the title of the page hosting the image, the domain name it comes from, and the image size.”