If this image, posted bySearch Engine Land‘s Greg Stirling today, is anything to go by, we could be seeing display ads appearing in Gmail. Gmail has always carried text adds, relevant to the contents of users emails, but this is the first time that we’ve seen an actual display ad. Google is, of course, first and foremost and advertising company, and it’s been pushing into the display market for some time, with a number of acquisitions in the area over the past two years....

Google is testing a new way of displaying information about flights, according to one UK-based blogger. Google already offers basic information about US flights, simply by searching for the flight number. However, Richard Baxter atSEO Gadgetstumbled upon a new tool when searching for “Flights to Barcelona”. The display lists departure airports, journey durations and available airlines. Initially showing three results, the list can be expanded to show all available direct routes....

It looks like Google is planning to launch a new web-based social service called ‘Photovine’, according to a recent trademark filing. As spotted byFusible, the filing (which can be searched for fromhere) was made on 7 June 2011 and six days later the domain name Photovine.com wasacquiredfrom its previous owner by brand protection firmMark Monitor, possibly acting as an intermediary for Google. So, what is Photovine? While Google hasn’t officially announced any such product, the trademark application covers the fields of ‘Computer software’, ‘Communication services, namely, transmission of visual images and data by telecommunications networks, wireless communication networks, the Internet, information services networks and data networks‘, ‘Non-downloadable computer software‘ and, most interestingly, ‘On-line social networking services‘....

We are big fans of backing up our data here at The Next Web, which is whywe’ve reported onthe Cambridge-based company,Backupifyfrom the start. The startup, which made ourBest of Boston list, backs up cloud-based data, offering an all-in-one archiving, search and restore for popular online services including Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and Flickr. Today, Backupify released a research brief entitled Google Apps Data Loss: Common Causes & Simple Solutions. The report is based on research of one hundred data loss and availability incidents reported by Google Apps users within theGoogle Apps Help Forums....

Google hasannouncedthat it would be dropping support for older browsers such as Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari 3 from August 1. Citing the need for advanced browsers to handle its new HTML5 features such asGmail Desktop NotificationsandGoogle Docs drag and drop file uploads, Google said it will only support the current and the previous major releases of all popular browsers i.e. Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis beginning next month....