fidzu : Google

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label "Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Over the last couple of weeks, we introduced several new capabilities in Google Docs for documents and drawings, and added the ability for organizations to tailor Google Apps to meet the needs of different groups within their organizations. We also launched a new version of Google Apps to meet the security and policy needs of government agencies in the U.S.

Document translation and undo smartquotes in Google Docs
On Tuesday we introduced automatic document translation to the new document editor in Google Docs. This allows you to instantly convert your document into any one of the 53 languages, powered by the technology behind Google Translate. And while we were at it, we added the ability for you to change smartquotes-angled quotation marks-back to straight quotation marks by pressing Ctrl-Z (Cmd-Z on a Mac).


Zoom and more in drawings
Last Monday, we also made improvements to the drawing editor in Google Docs, too. You can zoom in several different ways now: with the toolbar zoom icon, by drawing a rectangle around the area to zoom, zoom options in the "View" menu and with zoom keyboard shortcuts. We also introduced several changes to the shape-drawing tools, including pie and arc drawing improvements, the ability to duplicate shapes while resizing and rotating, new line ending decoration controls and new style options for the corners of shapes.




User policy management
One of the top requests from businesses, organizations and schools using Google Apps has been the ability to enable different applications for different groups within the organization. For example, a K-12 school may choose not to give Chat to students, but still allow faculty and staff to instant message with each other. Last Tuesday we launched user policy management, which lets administrators divide their users in to organizational units, and give each group access to different sets of services.


Google Apps for Government now available
On Monday we announced Google Apps for Government, a new version of Google Apps specifically tailored to the policy and security needs of federal, state and local governments in the United States. In addition to the applications and administrative controls available in the business edition of Google Apps, the service for government agencies has received Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. General Services Administration, the first such certification for any cloud computing messaging and collaboration suite.

Who's gone Google?
To go along with the launch of Google Apps for Government, we're excited to share stories from two government organizations who are now using Google Apps. The U.S. Navy InRelief program is using Google Apps to improve coordination in disaster relief efforts, and the Berkeley Lab, a member of the National Laboratory system supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, is using Google Docs and Sites to support better collaboration among scientists and researchers.



We're also thrilled to welcome another new crop of schools to Google Apps. Haverford College, Wayne County Community College District and Westwood College are all going Google!

I hope you're making the most of these new features, whether you're using Google Apps with friends, family, coworkers or classmates. For more details and updates from the Apps team, head on over to the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

30 Jul 2010 11:39pm GMT

How many changes can you spot in this screenshot of an internal version of Gmail from the Chromium OS bug tracker?



Here's what I noticed: there are three links for "mail", "contacts" and "tasks" below Gmail's logo, there's a new button for composing messages, a "call phone" option in Gmail Chat, a drop-down for switching between Google accounts and the options that let you select unread or starred messages use less space.

{ Thanks, Mateo. }

30 Jul 2010 4:50pm GMT

YouTube decided to increase the video length limit from 10 minutes to 15 minutes. It may seem like a small change, but YouTube is testing the waters before dropping this limitation.

"Without question, the number one requested feature by our creators is to upload videos longer than 10 minutes. We've heard you, and today we're pleased to announce that we've increased the upload limit to 15 minutes," informs YouTube's blog.


The main reason why YouTube added a 10 minutes limitation back in 2006 was that a lot of users uploaded full-length movies and TV shows. Now that YouTube uses a content identification software and Viacom lost the case against YouTube, Google's video site can safely remove this arbitrary limitation. YouTube is cautious, so it will release incremental improvements.

"We've spent significant resources on creating and improving our state-of-the-art Content ID system and many other powerful tools for copyright owners. Now, all of the major U.S. movie studios, music labels and over 1,000 other global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube. Because of the success of these ongoing technological efforts, we are able to increase the upload limit today," explains YouTube.

29 Jul 2010 5:41pm GMT

I remember that someone asked Matt Cutts if Google could restrict search results to homepages. He answered that it's a good suggestion, but adding [-inurl:html -inurl:htm] to your query works pretty well.

Now you can restrict Google results to homepages, but only if you're looking for blogs. Google Blog Search has always highlighted a small number of blogs related to your query and now you can find even more blogs by clicking on the "homepages" filter from Google's sidebar. Google's definitions of blogs is vague and it's likely that any site that offers feeds is included in Google Blog Search's index.

"We've updated Google Blogsearch to make it easier to find blogs that match your query, instead of just finding blog posts. The blogs tool on Google search results filters your results so you see only blog posts. We've added a homepages option that shows a full set of blogs related to your query," informs Jeremy Hylton in a Buzz post. Here are some examples: [tesla car], [google], [android].


{ spotted by François Beaufort. }

29 Jul 2010 2:54pm GMT

YouTube started to show a persistent bar at the bottom of the page that shows the videos from the active playlist. For example, if you click on a video from your subscriptions, the bar lists other recent videos uploaded by your favorite users. Click on one of your favorite videos and the bar is populated with the rest of the videos. The bar is also useful if you add videos to the queue, a temporary playlist built dynamically.


Sterling, a reader of this blog who noticed the new bar, found an annoyance: "Even if the cursor isn't over the bar, it still pops up, so if you go rate a video, favorite or share it, as soon as you move near the bar, it pops up, blocking those settings, so you have to either scroll down or click on the bar to collapse it. It looks like the spot where the bar is triggered is just above where the video player ends when it's in shrink mode."

Once you collapse the bar, it no longer auto-expands, at least until you watch a new video. I couldn't find a setting that disables the bar or moves it to its original position.

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

29 Jul 2010 1:17pm GMT

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog)

What do Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers have in common? Last week, these individuals and groups all came together at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA to celebrate exploration and learning.

Google hosted its first Geo Teachers Institute, an intensive two-day workshop in which 150 educators received hands-on training and experience with Google Maps, Google SketchUp and Google Earth, including features like Mars, Moon and SkyMaps. Attendees from around the globe not only learned how these products work, but also discovered tips and resources for introducing these tools to students and using them to conceptualize, visualize, share and communicate about the world around them. Through this event, teachers were hopefully inspired to bring the world's geographic information to students in compelling, fresh and fun ways.

As part of our continued effort to collaborate with teachers and help students get a better sense of places across the globe, we also announced that Google Earth Pro is now available to educators for free through the Google Earth for Educators site. Educators from higher educational and academic institutions who demonstrate a need for the Pro features in their classrooms can now apply for single licenses for themselves or site licenses for their computer labs. A similar program exists for SketchUp Pro through the Google SketchUp Pro Statewide License Grant, which is currently being provided via grants to 11 states, and available to all others at the K-12 level at no cost.

In conjunction with these exciting Geo-related events and announcements, the Geo Education team also thought it'd be timely and fun to test Googlers' geographic knowledge by hosting the company's first ever Google Geo Bee. With help from National Geographic, 68 teams relived their school years and took a written geography exam, competing for a spot on stage with Alex Trebek, who hosted the main event. The competition was based on the group version of the National Geographic Bee for students, which Google has sponsored for the past two years. Questions included those like "Which country contains most of the Balkan Mountains, which mark the boundary between the historical regions of Thrace and Moesia?" and "Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the United Kingdom, is located in which mountain chain?"

The final three Google teams (the Tea-Drinking Imperialists, the Geoids and the Titans) all showed off their geographic literacy and answered a plethora of diverse and complex questions. In the end, it was the Tea-Drinkers who emerged the winners when they figured out that Mecca was the answer to the clue, "Due to this city's location on a desert trading route, many residents were merchants, the most famous of whom was born around A.D. 570." And they didn't just walk away with bragging rights; thanks to Sven Linblad from Linblad Expeditions, they also won an amazing adventure trip to either the Arctic, the Galapagos or Antarctica.

Through all of these education efforts - for teachers, students and grown-up Googlers alike - we hope people of all ages never stop exploring.

Posted by Tina Ornduff, Geo Education Team

28 Jul 2010 8:45pm GMT

This is part of our summer series of new Search Stories. Look for the label Search Stories and subscribe to the series. -Ed.

Having been a new dad for six months now, I've quickly come to learn two valuable parenting lessons. First, being a father is truly a full-time job-and second, sleep is completely overrated. Whether buying the latest bottles, binkies, blankets and bibs, or just blogging about the whole magical journey, becoming a father has been the most invigorating and moving experience of my lifetime.

This week, I'm excited to help introduce our latest search story, New Baby. The video really captures the joys (and costs!) of becoming a new parent. I'd like to share my heart-felt compassion with new dads everywhere (and of course, my wife and the other mothers out there who are the true heroes.) We will all rest when they head off to college-in the meantime, enjoy!



Posted by Murali Viswanathan, Product Manager

28 Jul 2010 7:54pm GMT

A new Google paper gives more information about Google's experiments. Google tests many new features on a subset of users and that's the reason why you may see a different Google search interface, a new background color for Google ads or more Google search results.

At Google, experimentation is practically a mantra; we evaluate almost every change that potentially affects what our users experience. Such changes include not only obvious user-visible changes such as modifications to a user interface, but also more subtle changes such as different machine learning algorithms that might affect ranking or content selection. (...)

An experiment in web search diverts some subset of the incoming queries to an alternate processing path and potentially changes what is served to the user. (...) In addition to specifying how serving is changed via alternate parameter values, experiments must also specify what subset of traffic is diverted. One easy way to do experiment diversion is random traffic, which is effectively flipping a coin on every incoming query. One issue with random traffic experiment diversion is that if the experiment is a user-visible change (e.g., changing the background color), the queries from a single user may pop in and pop out of the experiment (e.g., toggle between yellow and pink), which can be disorienting. Thus, a common mechanism used in web experimentation is to use the cookie as the basis of diversion; cookies are used by web sites to track unique users. In reality, cookies are machine/browser specific and easily cleared; thus, while a cookie does not correspond to a user, it can be used to provide a consistent user experience over successive queries. For experiment diversion, we do not divert on individual cookies, but rather a cookie mod: given a numeric representation of a cookie, take that number modulo 1000, and all cookies whose mod equals 42, for example, would be grouped together for experiment diversion. Assuming cookie assignment is random, any cookie mod should be equivalent to any other cookie mod.

That's probably the reason why you can "opt-out" from an experiment by clearing Google cookies.

{ via SEO by the Sea }

28 Jul 2010 5:32pm GMT

There's a lot of speculation about a new Google service called "Google Me" that is supposed to compete with Facebook. Most likely, the service will expand the already existing profiles and activity streams, while adding support for social apps.

Wall Street Journal reports that Google has been in discussion with companies that develop social games for Facebook. "Google is in talks with several makers of popular online games as it seeks to develop a broader social-networking service that could compete with Facebook, according to people familiar with the matter."

Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, said that "the world doesn't need a copy of the same thing", suggesting that Google won't try to imitate Facebook. It's clear that Google hasn't anticipated Facebook's success, placed losing bets and efforts like OpenSocial couldn't save Facebook's competitors from extinction.

Now that people spend a lot of time online using Facebook and find information filtered by their friends, even Google's search engine can become less useful. A lot of information is trapped inside Facebook: social connections, status messages, discussions and Google can't use most of the data to improve the relevance of search results.

Google has been more concerned with creating open standards for building social apps, for delivering real-time notifications, for public preferences, aggregating social graph data, but it didn't manage to build a coherent user experience that links all these pieces.

28 Jul 2010 3:36pm GMT

Humans have always been fascinated by the night sky. And Googlers are no exception. Over the years, Google engineers have used their 20 percent time to create Google Sky, Moon, Mars and most recently Google Sky Map for Android. This handy app, built by engineers in our Pittsburgh office, turns your Android-powered phone into a live map of the night sky. You just point your phone to the sky and it gives you information about the stars and planets that you're looking at. Since we introduced the app a year ago, Sky Map has been downloaded more than 5 million times.

On Sunday night we had a wonderful opportunity to share our passion for astronomy with our community in Pittsburgh at the Deep Sky Urban Star Party, held in the abandoned swimming pool at Leslie Park in Lawrenceville. We loaded up a bunch of Android phones with Sky Map and joined the Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh-who brought along their telescopes-and several hundred local residents for a night of stargazing.

As a Sky Map engineer the biggest thrill I get is when we get emails from people who have used our app to show a planet to their children for the first time. At the Star Party we were delighted to have the chance to show people around the night sky in person. It was great to meet so many people who were both excited by astronomy and interested in Google's technology. Thanks for all of your ideas for new features, and a big thank you to the Leslie Park Pool Collective and all involved for organizing such a fun event.


Photos by Jason Parker-Burlingham

Posted by John Taylor, Software Engineer

27 Jul 2010 5:53pm GMT

Last November, we added legal opinions to Google Scholar. Legal opinions consider serious issues and help refine the laws that govern our country-but they can also be surprisingly entertaining. We've shared some of these for your summer reading pleasure on the Google Scholar blog.

LeAnn Rimes
A very rich and famous star
Wasn't so rich in times afar
But what a talent she had!

Read the rest on the Google Scholar blog.

Posted by Anurag Acharya, Distinguished Engineer

26 Jul 2010 11:33pm GMT

A video posted by Google shows the name of a new Google Docs feature: Google Punch. A "punch" is a Google Docs filetype, just like a document, a spreadsheet or a presentation.


Here's the video:



One of the definitions of the word "punch" is "an iced mixed drink usually containing alcohol and prepared for multiple servings; normally served in a punch bowl". Maybe Google Punch is a free-form document that lets you combine data from other documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms. What do you think?

{ Thanks, Jeremy and Mark. }

26 Jul 2010 8:57pm GMT

Today we're excited to announce a new edition of Google Apps. Designed with guidance from customers like the federal government, the City of Los Angeles and the City of Orlando, Google Apps for Government includes the same great Google applications that people know and love, with specific measures to address the policy and security needs of the public sector.

We're also pleased to announce that Google Apps is the first suite of cloud computing messaging and collaboration applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. General Services Administration. The FISMA law applies to all information systems in use by U.S. federal government agencies to help ensure they're secure. The federal government's General Services Administration has reviewed the documentation of our security controls and issued an authorization to operate, the official confirmation of our FISMA certification and accreditation. This review makes it easier for federal agencies to compare our security features to those of their existing systems; most agencies we have worked with have found that Google Apps provides at least equivalent, if not better, security than they have today. This means government customers can move to the cloud with confidence.

Take Berkeley Lab, a member of the national laboratory system supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. It's managed by the University of California and conducts unclassified research across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Berkeley researchers collaborate with scientists around the world, so emailing version upon version of documents among collaborators and trying to juggle disparate files is difficult. Berkeley Lab researchers have been using Google Apps to share documents that live in the cloud, and can view and edit documents and spreadsheets simultaneously knowing they are always working from the latest information. (Read more from Berkeley Lab's Chief Information Officer on the Enterprise blog.)

And we're not stopping with FISMA certification. Google Apps for Government will continue to evolve to meet unique government requirements. Google Apps for Government stores Gmail and Calendar data in a segregated system located in the continental United States, exclusively for our government customers. Other applications will follow in the near future. The suite is a "community cloud"-as defined by the National Institute for Science and Technology-to support the needs of our government customers. Google Apps for Government is available now to any federal, state or local government in the United States.

With reviews of our security controls in place, government agencies can more easily take advantage of all the benefits of one of the world's best cloud computing systems. Google's cloud offers higher reliability, best-in-class disaster recovery and access to a steady stream of innovation-all of which can provide substantial improvements over existing systems in addition to significant cost savings. And with no hardware or software to install and maintain, Google Apps for Government allows agencies to redeploy resources to technology projects core to their mission of serving the public. This new edition should give governments an even stronger case for making the move to the cloud.

Update July 27: Clarified details regarding the source of our certification and accreditation.

Posted by Kripa Krishnan, Technical Program Manager, Google Apps for Government

26 Jul 2010 6:00pm GMT

[Cross-posted on Google Public Policy Blog]

Bending, walking, breathing, hearing, seeing and sleeping are simple things that are often taken for granted, as are thinking, learning, and communicating.

Twenty years ago today, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law. This milestone legislation bans persons or companies from discriminating against anyone with limited abilities. It's hard to imagine a world in which the right to participate in activities commonly enjoyed by the bulk of the population are denied or inadequately accommodated, but that was the case before ADA.

The efforts of the advocates who came to Washington two decades ago to rally for their civil rights has transformed so much of the modern world around us. As someone who's worn hearing aids since I was 13, for example, I very much appreciate that most television programs and DVDs or Blu-Ray disks are captioned. On my way home, I might pass through a door that I know is wide enough for a wheelchair -- because the ADA set the building codes that require it. I see service animals on the DC Metro, accessible checkout aisles at my grocery store, ramps on sidewalks, and designated parking in movie theater lots: all there because of the important provisions included in the ADA.

Whereas the ADA set legal standards for ensuring equal rights for Americans with disabilities, Google is keenly aware that technology can help all users better enjoy the world around them. From opening millions of titles of printed content to persons with visual impairments through Google Book Search, to providing ready and easy-to-use captions on YouTube, to including a built-in screenreader and text-to-speech engine in Android, to introducing new extensions on Chrome to make online text easier to read, we're serious about honoring our mission to make the world's information universally accessible and useful. You can keep up with our progress at google.com/accessibility.

Congratulations to all those who work to make the ADA a living, breathing reality. For all the years I've been working on policy in Washington, it's still rare to see a law that has had as positive and fundamental an influence on our lives as this Act. There still is work to be done to meet the goals of ADA, and we are committed to doing our part.

Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist

26 Jul 2010 4:06pm GMT

Google added a new OneBox result for definitions. The OneBox uses data from Google Dictionary, shows pronunciation information, short definitions and links to other reference sites like Dictionary.com and Answers.com. Google shows the definition of an English word only if it's likely to be useful, so you'll usually see the OneBox when you search for obscure words or technical terms.


"We added implicit triggering, which means you can simply search for [flummox] and find the definition, you don't have to search for [define flummox] or [what is flummox]. We've also improved the definition result snippet to show more details such as parts of speech and pronunciation," explains Google.

Unfortunately, Google's new OneBox is redundant and inconsistent. If you type [salient] in Google's search box, Google Suggest already shows a definition of the word from Princeton's WordNet.


Search for [define salient] and Google shows a definition from WordNet, not from Google Dictionary.


Tip: to trigger the new OneBox when it's not displayed by default, add en:en to your query. For example, search for [en:en emulsion].

26 Jul 2010 12:46pm GMT

This is one of a regular series of posts on search experience updates. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

As we seek to expand the most comprehensive search experience on the web, we've made a number of recent enhancements to your search results. Ultimately, what you're looking for isn't limited to text websites; you may be looking for a tweet, a video or a place-and we want to make sure you can find all of it. This week, we've made it easier to find definitions and images.

Dictionary search feature enhancements
When it comes to dictionary-related searches, both content and precision are vital. Recently, we expanded our dictionary search feature to all global English users, giving you quick and easy access to even more useful dictionary information. We added implicit triggering, which means you can simply search for [flummox] and find the definition, you don't have to search for [define flummox] or [what is flummox]. We've also improved the definition result snippet to show more details such as parts of speech and pronunciation. Stay tuned for more enhancements here, including an expanded mobile experience.

Example search: [stupendous]


Our biggest redesign yet for Google Images
Our focus on comprehensiveness extends itself to our other search properties, including Google Images. Over time, Google Images has become a very popular source of visual information. For many of you, Google Images has become a great tool for inspiration, learning, and even shopping. And, today, we've indexed more than 10 billion images -- so you can imagine the depth.

With this in mind, we have introduced a new design for Google Images. You'll now see a dense, tiled layout that makes it easy to view many images-up to 1,000-on a single scrollable page. In addition, we made the thumbnail previews on the results page larger, so all you have to do is hover over an image to get an even larger view. You'll also find more information about the image, and other image-specific features in the thumbnail preview. Once you click an image, you'll be taken to a new landing page that displays a large image directly over the website that hosts the image-so you can instantly learn more about the source and context.

Example search: [sunflowers] or [new york]

We hope you enjoyed this week's changes making your web experience even more comprehensive. Stay tuned for more search enhancements next week.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

26 Jul 2010 4:26am GMT

Steven Schofield noticed a strange Gmail bug: attachments use more storage than they should.

For example, one of my Gmail accounts used 1567 MB of storage. I composed a new message, attached a file that had about 8.42 MB and saved it as a draft. Gmail's footer message was: "You are currently using 1590 MB (21%) of your 7479 MB." Gmail used 3 times more storage for my message and MIME encoding couldn't add so much overhead. I discarded the message and Gmail informed me I was using 1579 MB. After composing a message and deleting it, I lost about 12 MB.

I composed another message, attached the same file and sent it to an email address. Gmail used 23 MB to send a file that only had 8.42 MB. After deleting the message, I lost once again 12 MB of storage.

The most likely explanation is that Gmail's Flash uploader creates hidden messages for each file you upload. When Gmail launched the Flash uploader, these temporary messages were sent to the trash. Now they're probably no longer displayed.

Update (a day later): it's fixed. Google now shows the temporary messages from the trash.

25 Jul 2010 1:46pm GMT

On behalf of Ridley Scott, Kevin Macdonald, LG, the Sundance Film Festival and all of us at YouTube, thank you to everyone who took part in "Life in a Day." Using the footage you shot, Kevin will now begin to build the world's largest user-generated documentary, capturing what it was like to be alive on July 24, 2010.



Remember that even though filming day is over, you have until July 31 at 11:59 p.m. PST to upload your video to the Life in a Day channel. Be sure to subscribe as well, so you can receive directorial updates from the cutting room floor. If your video is selected for inclusion in the final film, you'll be hearing from Life in a Day Films, so be on the lookout for an email.

We'll be in touch again in early January with more details on the film's premiere at Sundance.

Congratulations to everyone.

Posted by Nate Weinstein, Entertainment Marketing Associate

25 Jul 2010 6:59am GMT

YouTube's player has a clever Easter egg: make sure the player has focus, press the left arrow on your keyboard for about 2 seconds and you can play Snake while watching the video.



This trick only works in YouTube's new player, which is only available for videos that don't include annotations or ads. It's limited to the videos played on YouTube's site and it doesn't work for embedded videos. Here's an example of video you can use to play Snake.

YouTube is not the only Google product that lets you play games. Gmail has a Labs feature called "old Snakey" that adds a Snake game inside Gmail.

{ via TheNextWeb. Thanks, Kevin. }

24 Jul 2010 9:08pm GMT

Google Chrome's team added a new releases channel for early adopters and developers: Canary builds. Unlike the beta channel and the dev channel, Canary builds can be installed without overwriting a regular Chrome build. That means you can install both a Canary build and a regular build that could be on the stable, beta or dev channel.

The Canary build is only available for Windows, it's "installed to a different path, gets updated separately, and runs side by side with an existing stable/beta/dev installation". Google says that the Canary build will usually be the same as the dev build. "Sometimes if necessary, we may push additional updates on Canary build so its version is higher than dev."


"The canary usually updates more frequently than the Dev channel (higher risk
of bustage), and we're working on making it update as often as we have
successful nightly builds. When something doesn't work on the canary, I can
just fall back to my Beta Google Chrome," says Mark Larson, from the Chrome team.

Now that Google Chrome synchronizes bookmarks, settings and it will also synchronize extensions, passwords, browser history, it doesn't even matter that the two builds use separate profiles. Unfortunately, you can't make Chrome Canary your default browser. Google's explanation that it's "a secondary installation of Google Chrome" doesn't make any sense.

Lee Mathews from DownloadSquad thinks that having four flavors of Chrome is "Vista-esque". Google probably noticed that there are many people who install random Chromium builds and decided to offer a channel that updates even faster than once a week, while allowing users to install a stable version of Chrome, just in case the "bleeding edge" builds have major bugs or they're unstable.

Google Chrome Canary builds - Windows-only, for now.

{ Thanks, Tim. }

24 Jul 2010 9:55am GMT

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

24 Jul 2010 7:00am GMT

Chromium Blog informs us that Google will release stable Chrome versions more often. "Running under ideal conditions, we will be looking to release a new stable version about once every six weeks, roughly twice as often as we do today. (...) Since we are going to continue to increment our major versions with every new release (i.e. 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0) those numbers will start to move a little faster than before. Please don't read too much into the pace of version number changes - they just mean we are moving through release cycles and we are geared up to get fresher releases into your hands!"

Anthony Laforge says that it takes too long to release new features and users have to wait for months to use them. Google Chrome 4.1 was an interesting experiment: the first Chrome release that added a very small number of features. Instead of waiting until May, when Chrome 5 was released, users could try inline translation and content filtering in March.

Here's a list of the major Chrome releases:

Chrome 1 - December 11, 2008 (first stable release)
.. 161 days ..
Chrome 2 - May 21, 2009 (full-page zoom, autofill)
.. 117 days ..
Chrome 3 - September 15, 2009 (HTML5 video, themes)
.. 132 days ..
Chrome 4 - January 25, 2010 (extensions, bookmark sync)
.. 57 days ..
Chrome 4.1 - March 23, 2010 (translation, content filtering)
.. 63 days ..
Chrome 5 - May 25, 2010 (better HTML5 support, tabbed bookmark manager, built-in Flash)

It's clear that Google wants to decrease the interval between two releases from about 100 days to about 50 days. That means each release will include less new features and will be less important.

23 Jul 2010 10:08pm GMT

Google repackaged some of the code from the Feedback extension as a screen capturing Chrome extension. Google's tool lets you save the content of a tab as a PNG image, annotate the screenshot and highlight interesting parts of the image. The extension is able to capture the visible content of a tab, a region or the whole page, but it needs to scroll the page to capture the content that's not visible.


Google's extension has a better interface than Webpage Screenshot, but it has less annotation options than Awesome Screenshot. Another advantage of Google's extension is that it scrolls the page horizontally if it's necessary.

{ Thanks, Arpit. }

23 Jul 2010 9:41pm GMT

Ever since YouTube started testing an HTML5 interface I wondered why YouTube's embedding code is not future proof. YouTube's code creates a Flash object and can't take advantage of the native support for videos in modern browsers. YouTube will always have to support the existing Flash player, but it's strange to see that the embedding code isn't more flexible.

YouTube API Blog announces that YouTube will switch to a new embedding code that uses an iframe. "If you use the new embed code style, your viewers will be able to view your embedded video in one of our Flash or HTML5 players, depending on their viewing environment and preferences. In instances where HTML5 isn't supported (e.g. our HTML5 player can't play videos with ads), we use Flash."

Here's an example of embed code:

<iframe class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="385" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID" frameborder="0">
</iframe>

YouTube says that "an additional benefit of the new embed style is that it will eventually allow embeds to work on mobile devices, which typically use a built-in player instead of Flash or HTML5." iPhone, Android phones and other mobile devices use a special application for YouTube, while mobile browsers use plug-ins that detect YouTube's embedding code and replace it with some code that can be handled by the built-in YouTube app. The new embedding code will allow YouTube to use the HTML5 video tag in browsers that support this feature.

In a previous post, YouTube's Kuan Yong said that "Flash Player's ability to combine application code and resources into a secure, efficient package has been instrumental in allowing YouTube videos to be embedded in other web sites. Web site owners need to ensure that embedded content is not able to access private user information on the containing page, and we need to ensure that our video player logic travels with the video (for features like captions, annotations, and advertising). While HTML5 adds sandboxing and message-passing functionality, Flash is the only mechanism most web sites allow for embedded content from other sites."

23 Jul 2010 5:12pm GMT

This year we held the third edition of the Google Online Marketing Challenge - a global university competition that gives students hands-on exposure to online marketing. Each team receives the equivalent of $200 to work with a local company and create an online marketing campaign. Teams have three weeks to mastermind a strategy before submitting a campaign report to an international judging panel of professors.

We're delighted that 3,034 teams from 60 countries participated in the 2010 Challenge, representing an increase of 39 percent from last year and making the Challenge one of the world's largest university competitions.

The global winners of the Challenge are Lauren Williams, Ganesh Chaudhari, Jeeana Atmarow, Allison Miller, Mohammed Assiri and Hui Min Chua from the University of Western Australia, who promoted the kids' novel The Adventures of Charlie & Moon. Over the three week campaign, the novel's website saw a huge jump in visits-nearly 800 percent. The team will visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, California and each of the members will receive a laptop for their great performance in the Challenge.

We also had three regional winners: for the Americas, the winning team comes from Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. and a team from the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland won in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). In the Asia Pacific region, the winners come from the Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. Find more details about our winners here.

Since we first held it in 2008, the Google Online Marketing Challenge has grown each year, allowing thousands of students globally to learn about online advertising and help small businesses to improve their online presence. The education they've already received becomes real in the Challenge: real money, real campaigns, real businesses and real results. And the hands-on experience with online marketing gives them real skills they can use in their careers.

If you're interested in competing in the 2011 Challenge, register now. We'll open the sign-up period in the fall.

Posted by Alex Gibelalde, Product Marketing Manager

23 Jul 2010 4:00pm GMT

For artists, YouTube is a 21st century canvas. Since the YouTube Play project was announced last month, more than 6,000 videos ranging in genres, topics and budget have been submitted from 69 countries, and the YouTube Play channel has received over 2 million views.

Today, we're unveiling the jury for YouTube Play, which includes some of the world's leading artists, from international film festival winners and renowned photographers to performance and video artists on the cutting edge of art.

YouTube Play jurors include musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson; musical group Animal Collective; visual artists Douglas Gordon, Ryan McGinley, Marilyn Minter and Takashi Murakami; artists and filmmakers Shirin Neshat, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Darren Aronofsky; and graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, with Guggenheim Chief Curator and Deputy Director Nancy Spector serving as jury chairperson.

Over the course of the next few months, these jurors will watch countless hours of videos submitted by the international YouTube community and select the most creative and inspiring work to showcase at the Guggenheim museums in October.

Already, this campaign has drawn some remarkable talent, and we're looking forward to seeing more of your submissions in our quest to find the most creative video art in the world and showcase it alongside van Gogh and Picasso. The deadline for getting your videos in is July 31. For more information about the jurors and to learn more about how to participate, check out youtube.com/play.

Posted by Ed Sanders, Senior Marketing Manager

23 Jul 2010 9:00am GMT

Back in June, our Zurich engineering headquarters welcomed 100 of EMEA's brightest computer science students to our annual Europe, Middle East and Africa Scholars' Retreat. Recipients of the Google Europe Scholarship for Students with Disabilities joined Anita Borg Memorial Scholars and Finalists for three days of workshops, technical talks, poster sessions, networking events and, of course, lots of fun! Check out our video below to hear from scholars and speakers in their own words:



Our academic scholarships are designed to support a new generation of talented, diverse computer scientists from all backgrounds. If you want to learn more, visit www.google.com/university/emea for a complete list of scholarships, grants and other opportunities available to students and academics.

Posted by Caitlin Pantos, University Programs Specialist

22 Jul 2010 4:09pm GMT

This is part of our summer series of new Search Stories. Look for the label Search Stories and subscribe to the series. -Ed.

My sister is my best friend in the world. But that wasn't always the case. When we were young, my sister and I always had our sibling rivalries. Quarrels over who got more (or fewer) birthday presents, ongoing debates around whose week it was to walk the dog and your average diary lock-picking weren't uncommon. But now that we've grown older, it's become clear that those moments have brought us closer together, and today my sister is my best friend.

Our search story this week really struck a chord with me, and I'm excited to help introduce our latest video, "Brother and Sister." It's a fun, playful snapshot of an evolving sibling friendship. I hope you enjoy this week's video as much as I did.




Posted by Bernardo Hernandez, Head of Consumer Marketing

21 Jul 2010 7:22pm GMT

The most significant Google Image Search redesign comes with many useful features and a lot of bugs.

If you type a query in Google Image Search, click on the search button, scroll the page, click on the Google logo, type another query and select the "images" option, Google scrolls to a random part of the page. For example, it could scroll to the page 57.


Another issue is that Google's large thumbnails for PNG files are sometimes pixelated JPEGs.


Clicking on the "more" link in Google's sidebar refreshes the page and doesn't show additional Google services. When you go back to the results page after clicking on the results, you need to wait until Google scrolls to the right position and some of the images are loaded again. Scroll the results page, resize the browser's window and you'll notice that Google readjusts the images and jumps to the top of the page.

The new interface has too many bugs and should have been tested more thoroughly before being released. Google offers an option to switch to the previous version at the bottom of the page, but it's not persistent.

{ Thanks, François Beaufort. }

21 Jul 2010 1:06pm GMT

Google launched a new interface for Google Image Search which replaces pagination with infinite scrolling, hides the information about the results until you mouse over an image, shows bigger images and uses space more efficiently. When you click on a results, Google shows a larger thumbnail on top of the web page that included the image.



Google says that the new layout is more dense, you can get up to 1,000 images when you scroll and you can scroll using keyboard shortcuts like Page Down and Page Up. Google still shows page numbers "so you don't lose track of where you are".

Another new feature is image search ads that will replace the text ads that are displayed at the moment in Google Image Search. "This ad format combines an image with text, offering richer, more relevant advertising on Google Images search results pages."

It's interesting to see that Google reintroduces two features previously tested without success: image ads and a simplified interface that hides useful information about images. Infinite scrolling was one of the distinctive features of Bing Image Search and Windows Live Image Search.

Google Image Search's new interface makes it easier to scroll through results, but I don't think a regular user will look at hundreds of images. Google's goal is to find relevant results, so showing too many images is overwhelming and a lot of the images aren't useful. Hiding information about the image's size, the domain that includes the image and no longer showing a snippet from the page is a purely aesthetic decision. Sometimes it's useful to know if an image is large, if it's included by a site you trust and even the filename could offer relevant information. Google offers a "show sizes" option in the sidebar, but it's not enough.

Old interface:


New interface:


Bing:


If you don't see the new interface yet, try a different browser. Google says that only 10% of the users can see the new UI and it will be available for everyone in the coming days.

20 Jul 2010 5:39pm GMT

When you think about "information," what probably comes to mind are streams of words and numbers. Google's pretty good at organizing these types of information, but consider all the things you can't express with words: what does it look like in the middle of a sandstorm? What are some great examples of Art Nouveau architecture? Should I consider wedding cupcakes instead of a traditional cake?

This is why we built Google Images in 2001. We realized that for many searches, the best answer wasn't text-it was an image or a set of images. The service has grown quite a bit since then. In 2001, we indexed around 250 million images. By 2005, we had indexed over 1 billion. And today, we have an index of over 10 billion images.

It's not just about quantity, though. Over the past decade we've been baking deep computer science into Google Images to make it even faster and easier for you to find precisely the right images. We not only find images for pretty much anything you type in; we can also instantly pull out images of clip art, line drawings, faces and even colors.

There's even more sophisticated computer vision technology powering our "Similar images" tool. For example, did you know there are nine subspecies of leopards, each with a distinct pattern of spots? Google Images can recognize the difference, returning just leopards of a particular subspecies. It can tell you the name of the subspecies in a particular image-even if that image isn't labeled-because other similar leopard images on the web are labeled with that subspecies's name.

And our "Similar colors" refinement doesn't just return images based on the overall color of an image. If it did, lots of images would simply be classified as "white." If you're looking for [tulips] and you refine results to "white," you really want images in which the tulips themselves are white-not the surrounding image. It takes some heavy-duty algorithmic wizardry and processing power for a search engine to understand what the items of interest are in all the images out there.

Those are just a few of the technologies we've built to make Google Images more useful. Meanwhile, the quantity and variety of images on the web has ballooned since 2001, and images have become one of the most popular types of content people search for. So over the next few days we're rolling out an update to Google Images to match the scope and beauty of this fast-growing visual web, and to bring to the surface some of the powerful technology behind Images.

Here's what's new in this refreshed design of Google Images:

• Dense tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you're really looking for.
• Instant scrolling between pages, without letting you get lost in the images. You can now get up to 1,000 images, all in one scrolling page. And we'll show small, unobtrusive page numbers so you don't lose track of where you are.
• Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.
• A hover pane that appears when you mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as "Similar images."
• Once you click on an image, you're taken to a new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it's hosted on visible right behind it. Click anywhere outside the image, and you're right in the original page where you can learn more about the source and context.
• Optimized keyboard navigation for faster scrolling through many pages, taking advantage of standard web keyboard shortcuts such as Page Up / Page Down. It's all about getting you to the info you need quickly, so you can get on with actually building that treehouse or buying those flowers.

20 Jul 2010 5:30pm GMT

When we decided in 2007 to voluntarily become carbon neutral, our intent was to take responsibility for our carbon emissions and promote sustainable environmental solutions. We approach this goal in three ways. First, we minimize our energy consumption; in fact, we've built some of the world's most energy efficient data centers. Second, we seek to power our facilities with renewable energy, like we did in Mountain View, CA with one of the largest corporate solar installations. Finally, we purchase carbon offsets for the emissions we cannot directly eliminate.

We just completed a substantial 20-year green Power Purchase Agreement that allows us to take responsibility for our footprint and foster true growth in the renewable energy sector. On July 30 we will begin purchasing the clean energy from 114 megawatts of wind generation at the NextEra Energy Resources Story County II facility in Iowa at a predetermined rate for 20 years. Incorporating such a large amount of wind power into our portfolio is tricky (read more about how the deal is structured), but this power is enough to supply several data centers.

The wind farm, which began operation in December 2009, consists of 100 GE 1.5MW XLE turbines.

By contracting to purchase so much energy for so long, we're giving the developer of the wind farm financial certainty to build additional clean energy projects. The inability of renewable energy developers to obtain financing has been a significant inhibitor to the expansion of renewable energy. We've been excited about this deal because taking 114 megawatts of wind power off the market for so long means producers have the incentive and means to build more renewable energy capacity for other customers.

We depend upon large quantities of electricity to power Google services and want to make large actions to support renewable energy. As we continue operating with the most energy efficient data centers and working to be carbon neutral, we're happy to also be directly purchasing energy from renewable resources.

Posted by Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President, Operations

20 Jul 2010 2:12pm GMT

Chris Dixon had an interesting post a while ago about how to find start-up ideas. The advice boiled down to keeping a spreadsheet of ideas and talking to lots of smart people (entrepreneurs, potential customers, VCs, people at big companies). It's good advice. Paul Graham also wrote in 2008 about startup ideas he'd like to [...]

19 Jul 2010 3:46pm GMT

About a year and a half ago, I asked for suggestions for webspam projects for 2009. The feedback that we got was extremely helpful. It's almost exactly the middle of 2010, so it seemed like a good time to ask again: what projects do you think webspam should work on in 2010 and beyond? Here's the [...]

30 Jun 2010 3:17pm GMT

This month I made my 30 day challenge be "Don't respond to email after 10 p.m." I've done very well overall on this challenge, and I like the results a lot. I'll probably try to keep up this behavior. Now I need to pick my next challenge. I read through the 350+ suggestions and comments that [...]

24 Jun 2010 4:08pm GMT

Have you given Buzz a try recently? Robert Scoble just asked if it was time to reconsider Buzz. Coincidentally I said almost the same thing in a question and answer session with Danny Sullivan last week at the SMX Advanced search conference. I'll repeat what I said last week. Do you remember when you first started [...]

14 Jun 2010 2:01am GMT

A couple weeks or so ago, we did an SEO site review session at Google I/O 2010. The video from that session is now live: The video is about an hour long, but I hope it's a pretty good use of your time if you're interested in search engine optimization. Enjoy!

04 Jun 2010 9:02pm GMT

If your company has a bunch of store locations, please don't hide that information behind a search form or a POST. If you want your store pages to be found, it's best to have a unique, easily crawlable url for each store. Ideally, you would also create an HTML sitemap that points to the web [...]

03 Jun 2010 6:30pm GMT

Okay, I've finished roughly a year of 30 day challenges, and now I'd like your help picking new ideas. So far, I've done: - 30 days with no TV (May) - 30 days of 10,000 steps each day (June) - 30 days biking into work (July) - reading 15 books in 30 days (I only made it to 12) [...]

01 Jun 2010 5:56pm GMT

I'm incredibly happy that Google has added the option to search over SSL by going to https://www.google.com/ - note the "s" in "https." I'm writing this blog post in a hotel right now because I'm in Europe for a week doing a series of tech talks, but I could just as easily be working down [...]

24 May 2010 12:26am GMT

Okay, today I'm going to try something different again. I'm going to try live-buzzing the keynote of Day 2 of Google I/O. You can follow the live-buzz right here. I'm going to update the buzz as news comes out; if you're following on the web instead of on Buzz, you might need to hit reload to [...]

20 May 2010 3:33pm GMT

Okay, I'm going to try live-blogging the keynote of Google I/O, but I'm doing it with a twist. I'm going to try live-blogging in Google Wave with some other folks. Watch the live-stream video at http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleDevelopers by the way. Lots of folks will be live-blogging or waving. Here is a different live wave with Gina Trapani, [...]

19 May 2010 3:29pm GMT

Sterling Udell is a freelance web developer who started programming with Google Maps since before the API was released. He's the author of the book Beginning Google Maps Mashups. In the last couple of days I've been actively exploring the creation of gadgets for GMail, and wanted to share some of my findings, both for GMail users and other gadget developers. First, a bit of background... Google announced support for gadgets on GMail about a month ago, at which time they released their own Calendar and Docs gadgets. Since I have quite a few gadgets these days, I thought I'd try my hand at it myself. ...

27 Nov 2008 2:34pm GMT

The Google Maps navigation interface has received an update. The zoom bar is slightly redesigned, and Street View can now be accessed by clicking the person icon above the zoom slider. Street View is a bit more immersive now as it's not wrapped in a box layer on top of the map anymore, but fills the whole width instead (with a small map appearing in the bottom right). Rotating a panorama photo is possible by moving the "N" symbol of the top compass. For comparison, here's an older Maps design: [Thanks Trent Olson!]

25 Nov 2008 10:52pm GMT

Google says that recent reports on a Gmail vulnerability aren't true (Google might mean this one at GeekCondition.com, as blogged here earlier; my emphasis in the quote): We've seen some speculation recently about a purported security vulnerability in Gmail and the theft of several website owners' domains by unauthorized third parties. At Google we're committed to providing secure products, and we mounted an immediate investigation. Our results indicate no evidence of a Gmail vulnerability. With help from affected ...

25 Nov 2008 10:33pm GMT

Feedback Army is an incredibly useful little website where you pay $7 for feedback to a given website of yours, and then get back 10 comments. Feedback Army uses Amazon's Mechanical Turk in the background. You enter the domain in question, say "example.com", and then ask a bunch of question. Questions could be, "What do you find confusing about the site? What did you stumble over at first? What did you like about the site?" Then very quickly, feedback -- which you can RSS-subscribe to -- comes in. (Note the feedback is public for others to see, if they know the URL you are requesting feedback for.) If you want to see examples of what kind of feedback may be given, you can enter http://captionx.com, http://watchtolear ...

25 Nov 2008 2:46pm GMT

The YouTube.com player has become a bit wider. Ionut says, "YouTube's Google Video-ization continues by using more space for the player and less space for the sidebar. YouTube changed the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9, generally used for high-definition TV." Videos using the older proportions show black pillars to the left and right. [Hat tip to Haochi and Ionut!]

25 Nov 2008 12:59pm GMT

Reto Meier is a software engineer in London. He blogs about technology, programming & Google, and is author of the book Professional Android Application Development. The next generation of games promises to take gaming out of the lounge room and back into the open. Consoles and gaming devices won't just be a combination of key strokes and button presses, they'll be tool used in the real-world as part of the game. It's the difference between playing baseball on the PSP or with a bat and ball. The difference between Counter Strike and Laser Tag. While the iPhone looks like a solid portable gaming console, technologies like Androi ...

24 Nov 2008 12:00pm GMT

Brandon at GeekCondition reports of a Gmail security vulnerability which lets an attacker set up automated filters in your Gmail account, provided the attacker manages to lure you onto a page of theirs first. Brandon does not post the full exploit (obtaining a certain variable for this exploit "is tricky but possible", Brandon says, adding that he's "not going to tell you how to do it, if you search hard enough online you'll find out how"), and I'm not sure if this works on just any browser. As automated filters can trigger mail addressed to you to be forwarded to someone else (and trashed in your account), some already had their domain name kidnapped due to this issue. To Gmail users, Brandon sugges ...

23 Nov 2008 1:20pm GMT

Mogulus reports that YouTube had roughly 700,000 concurrent viewers during yesterday's first YouTube live stream event, which featured people like Will.I.Am and Katy Perry (the San Francisco-based event featured music performances, comedy, and memes and popular people of YouTube). These stats aren't precise, but based on public Akamai before/ after numbers during the time. Mogulus also reports that Google partnered with content delivery network Akamai to support all the users. (Note Mogulus is a competitor in the space of content delivery/ streaming help.) Michael Arrington at

23 Nov 2008 11:39am GMT

Google added a new opt-in experiment for search results: SearchWiki with sound. By now you might have noticed you can click the "x" next to a specific result, resulting in an animation of an explosion as part of the SearchWiki feature (this is the image file). After hitting the Join button on the new experiment, you'll additionally hear a sound during that explosion (recorded by Google co-founder "Sergey Brin himself", as Google says). Organizing the world's information one gimmick a time... [Thanks WebSonic.nl!] Update: If on the other han ...

22 Nov 2008 2:21pm GMT

Google has released a template to create collaborative pixel art in Google Spreadsheets. Just change the background color of cells in this copy of the spreadsheet I made, and we'll see where it goes! (Also see Google's template, video and more.) [Via Andy!] On that note, have a look at the older Pixel Group page here. You can invert any pixel in the black and white image by clicking it. Update: There's a snapshot now. [Thanks all!]

22 Nov 2008 1:39pm GMT

"Colorful soup" -- BunteSuppe.de -- is the name of a German collaborative art tool. Just drag & drop any tile on the screen to create a larger picture.

21 Nov 2008 11:35pm GMT

Google has gone live with a big change to their result pages, at least for those of you who are logged in (if you're not seeing it yet, it may still be rolled out for your Google Account). It's called SearchWiki, and lets you edit the position of the results you're getting, and add comments to them. SearchWiki was in experimental stage for some time now. Specifically, you'll be seeing three icons accompanying results, and further options below the listing: Up vote: An up arrow, similar in functionality to what you may know from social sites like Reddit or Digg. Clicking it will turn the icon green and move this specific result up ...

21 Nov 2008 11:23am GMT

EtherPad is a collaborative, real-time text editor created by, among others, two ex-Google employees*. An EtherPad document is quickly set up without any need for registration. You can then share the URL of the document, and others who will visit that page will then be able to see, in real-time, whatever you're typing**. This has an interesting feel to it because there's no "security buffer" as in typical chat programs: every letter you write will be shown as you write it, including occasional errors before you fix them. [Edit: I removed the link to the document now, but you can start your own EtherPad of course...] Please join this EtherPad to give it a try (n ...

20 Nov 2008 3:15pm GMT

Google announced that on December 31st they will shut down Lively, which was their 3D chat world, and somewhat of a potential competitor to Second Life. Room widgets embedded in other sites are then supposed to show an image but no more interaction, which would add Lively to the list of Google's canceled products. Google's post on this decision does not really give a detailed reasoning for this shut-down of a product which was just released this year, except that they're saying "we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business." In particular, this leaves some questions ...

20 Nov 2008 2:03pm GMT

The Shanghaiist reports: With political arrows still being shot back and forth between Beijing and Dharamsala [home of the exiled current Dalai Lama], China has been panning out its efforts to win the propaganda battle over Tibet (...) Lately we've been observing lots of Google ads pointing to the China Tibet Information Center appearing in places like Youtube ... and even our Google Reader. Given the massive reach of Google's self-serve contextual ads, this means anytime you're viewing something related to China or more specifically Tibet anywhere on the web, that ad may appear, pointing you to http://eng.tibet.cn/ where China's version of the Tibet story is presented. You'd think these state behemoths ar ...

20 Nov 2008 12:44pm GMT