Stars in mobile search

Earlier this month on the Official Google Blog, we announced how stars make search more personal by allowing you to mark and rediscover your favorite content. Today, we are extending this feature so that you can get to your favorite content on your phone, anytime, anywhere. For example, if you previously searched for "car reviews" and starred a few sites that were useful while researching cars on your computer, searching for "car reviews" on your phone will allow you to rediscover your starred items. If there are additional results that you want to star while on mobile, simply click the star marker beside the result, and you will be able to see it later when searching from your computer or phone.

To try this yourself, go to google.com on your phone's browser, sign in to your Google Account and do a search. Star a few results and then do the search again to see your starred items appear at the top of your results. To see the same starred items between computer and phone, make sure you are signed in to the same account. The stars in search functionality is currently supported on Android phones, iPhones/iPods, and Palm WebOS devices in the US.

Posted by Zhen Wang, Google Mobile Engineering Team

Google April Fools' Day 2010

It's not a surprise for anyone that Google celebrates April Fools' Day. Since 2008, Google's offices outside of US have their own pranks.

Google Japan developed a special version of Google Voice Search for animals. Unfortunately, Google Translate is not very helpful:

"For this animal, the dog still, cats, pigeons are just the future, cows and horses, hamsters, frogs, and plans to expand into. Voice Search a variety of potential animal, you try all means, exchange'd appreciate help with animals. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful to the people around the world. You are also feeling the animal to be able to access, will continue to continue research, and Nakajima are saying."



There's also Google Translate for Animals, a new Android application that "allows you to record animals sounds and have the sounds analyzed and translated by Google Translate into any of the 52 supported languages".


Google Australia is now able to "Optimise for Colloquial Cultural Articulation (OCCA) - which means our products can now be tailored specifically for the typical Strayan user. (...) OCCA greatly reduces the latency between a user's thought and ability to pinpoint information; a boon for local users who'd have Buckleys makin' sense of American English."


Google Street View is now available in 3D, but you need to click on an icon to go 3D:


Google decided to change its name to Topeka, the US city that intends to change its name to Google.


Google's search results pages use some interesting units of measurements to estimate how long it took Google to obtain the results: Plunk, gigawatts, warp, centibeats, skidoo, femtogalactic years, velocity of an unladen swallow.



YouTube has a new text-only mode: TEXTp. "It's great news that there are 24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, we support 1080p and HD uploads are rising quickly, but that's also meant increasing bandwidth costs cutting into our bottom line. (...) TEXTp is the result of months of intense transcoding efforts by our engineers, who toiled for weeks to ensure that a large chunk of videos on the platform could be reduced to their most basic elements. By replacing the images in the video with a series of letters and numbers, the videos are far less taxing on our system -- and have the added benefit of promoting literacy!"

You can try the new mode by appending &textp=fool to YouTube URLs (like this).



Google Docs lets you store ANYTHING. "Ever wish you could CTRL+F your keys? Store your keys and other objects you commonly lose with Google and you'll never have to worry about finding them again. We're testing a new mail courier network integrated with our Street View fleet. We'll show up within 3 hours to pick up anything you choose to store in Google Docs, guaranteed. At $0.10 per kg, you can store a grand piano for the price of lunch."

Google Voice added a standard voicemail mode.

Standard Voicemail Mode brings your voicemail back to something reminiscent of 1997, with features like:

* Automatic voicemail deletion: messages will be deleted automatically after 14 days
* Numeric keypad access: access to voicemail will only be available via your phone
* Beeper interoperability: your beeper will be paged every time a voicemail is left
* Message maximums: store a maximum of 10 messages at any given time
* Numeric page: people leaving you voicemails will be given the option to send a numeric page

Google Mobile Search found a way to return better results for queries like "where am I". Try this query on your mobile phone and you'll find a lot of interesting results:



Gmail's login page no longer uses vowels and greets users with a short message: "Wlcm t Gml".

Google Feedback Extension

Google developed an extension for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer that lets you send feedback about Google services. For now, the extension can only be used if you get an invitation from Google and it's limited to Gmail.

Google Feedback lets you highlight the parts of the page corresponding to your feedback, hide personal information, describe the issue and send your feedback. The extension is useful because you can send Google an annotated screenshot that illustrates your problem without using an image editing software.




To get an invitation, go to this page and enter your Gmail address.

{ Merci, François. }

Introducing Google Ad Innovations

The principle behind the advertising products we build at Google is simple: ads are information. But the type of information that ads provide is getting more varied and inventive all the time, and as a result ads are getting more interesting, social and useful.

As advertising evolves, we want to build the tools that make it possible for marketers to connect with customers in meaningful, creative ways. We’ve found that the best way to do that is to focus on the user, test new approaches regularly and listen closely to the feedback of the advertisers using our products. To work closely with advertisers on what comes next, today we’ve launched Google Ad Innovations, where we’ll show you some of our latest ideas around advertising technologies and get your feedback.

One of the new features we’re showcasing is a set of AdWords reports, launched last week, called Search Funnels. These reports can help an advertiser understand whether there are keywords in her account that are helping to drive sales at a later date. At Google Ad Innovations, you can read more about this feature, watch a video walking you through how it works and send us your ideas on how to improve it.

If you’re interested in the future of advertising with Google, pay Ad Innovations a visit — we’ll regularly add tools and features to the site, and we hope you’ll check them out!

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Vice President, Product Management

Gmail Adds Support for OAuth Authentication

Google Code blog announced that Gmail started to support OAuth authentication for IMAP and SMTP. What this means is that developers will be able to create applications that use Gmail data without requiring to enter your password.

"In addition to making it easier for users to export their data, we also enable them to authorize third party (non-Google developed) applications and websites to access their data at Google. While it is possible for a user to authorize this access by disclosing their Google Account password to the third party app, it is more secure for the app developer to use the industry standard protocol called OAuth which enables the user to give their consent for specific access without sharing their password," explains Google.

Gmail Drive is a popular application that uses your Gmail account to store files. After installing the application, it asks your username and password to send data to your Gmail account. If you don't trust the application, it's not a good idea to enter the password of your Google account.


When applications like Gmail Drive switch to OAuth authentication, you'll no longer have to enter your credentials. Instead, the application will open a Google web page and you'll only have to authorize the request.

An example of application that already uses OAuth authentication is SmartPush, an iPhone app that lets you filter email notifications.

Google Search Shows IMDb Ratings

Here's a feature I've been expecting ever since Google started to test rich snippets for pages that include reviews: showing movie ratings in IMDb's snippets.

Now you can see the ratings without having to click on the search results, which is useful if you browse the web using a mobile phone or you want to check the ratings for a lot of movies.


"Google tries to present users with the most useful and informative search results. The more information a search result snippet can provide, the easier it is for users to decide whether that page is relevant to their search. With rich snippets, webmasters with sites containing structured content—for example, review sites or business listings—can label their content to make it clear that each labeled piece of text represents a certain type of data: for example, a restaurant name, an address, or a rating," explains Google.

To quickly see the IMDb ratings for a list of movies, you can start with an empty Google Square, add the column "IMDb rating" and start entering movie titles.

Our stand for digital due process

The year was 1986. A gallon of gas cost 89 cents, Paul Simon’s Graceland won the Grammy for album of the year, and the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which governs how law enforcement can access electronic data, was signed into law.

A lot has changed since 1986. Gas is now measured in dollars and Taylor Swift (born 1989) won album of the year. All the while, technology has moved at record pace. But ECPA has stayed the same. Originally designed to protect us from unwarranted government intrusion while ensuring that law enforcement had the tools necessary to protect public safety, it was written long before most people had heard of email, cell phones or the “cloud” — the term used for programs helping people store personal data like photos and documents online. As a result, ECPA has become outdated.

This is why we’re proud to help establish Digital Due Process, a coalition of technology companies, civil rights organizations and academics seeking to update ECPA to provide privacy protections to new and emerging technologies.

Specifically, we want to modernize ECPA in four ways:

• Better protect your data stored online: The government must first get a search warrant before obtaining any private communications or documents stored online;
• Better protect your location privacy: The government must first get a search warrant before it can track the location of your cell phone or other mobile communications device;
• Better protect against monitoring of when and with whom you communicate: The government must demonstrate to a court that the data it seeks is relevant and material to a criminal investigation before monitoring when and with whom you communicate using email, instant messaging, text messaging, the telephone, etc.; and
• Better protect against bulk data requests: The government must demonstrate to a court that the information it seeks is needed for a criminal investigation before it can obtain data about an entire class of users.

We also created this video to help explain ECPA and why it needs updating:



You can read more about our proposal at our coalition website. In the coming months, we’ll meet with lawmakers, law enforcement officials and others to help build support for modernizing the law.

1986 was a good year, but it’s time our laws catch up with how we live our lives today.

Posted by Richard Salgado, Senior Counsel, Law Enforcement and Information Security

Around the world in 25 iGoogle themes...

One way we love to help you make iGoogle your own is with our artist and designer themes — ranging from food and fashion to games and comics. Today, we’re excited to announce a set of new themes, tailored to the world traveler in all of us. These new themes, focused on destinations all over the globe, allow you to experience beautiful landscapes, historic monuments, stunning beaches, iconic cities and other picturesque sites — right from your homepage.

To bring you this imagery, we've partnered with a few leading organizations including National Geographic Society and LIFE, who photograph some of the most breathtaking destinations on earth. Lonely Planet, UNESCO and visiteurope.com have also shared a selection of incredible images.

Here’s a quick preview of some of what you’ll find:

• The World Passport Sampler theme, which brings together many of the great destinations.
• India, Greece and Egypt, all captured spectacularly by National Geographic.
• Classic beach destinations from LIFE.com, including Monte Carlo, Waikiki Beach, and the French Riviera.
• Incredible vistas from Spain, Italy, Thailand and Japan, captured by Lonely Planet.
• The opportunity to view World Heritage sites, such as the Sydney Opera House and the Old City of Dubrovnik in Croatia, provided by UNESCO.

Hopefully, you’re as eager to try out these new themes as we are. Whether these themes remind you of one of your favorite places or allow you to experience a global destination on your homepage, we hope you enjoy them. Bon voyage!

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

Google Chrome to Bundle Plug-ins for Flash and PDF

CNet reports that "Google is planning to bundle its Chrome browser and/or operating system with Adobe Systems' Flash in a deeper partnership" that is expected to be announced today.

The latest updates to Chromium, Google's open-source browser, show that Chrome will use internal plug-ins for Flash and PDF, which are likely to be bundled with the browser. Chrome has implemented some NPAPI extensions for "2D, 3D, and mouse/keyboard events" using Mozilla Pepper, a platform-independent framework for browser plug-ins. There are already switches for enabling the internal PDF and Flash plug-ins, but they don't work yet.

"Over the past few months a number of us have also been discussing some of the issues facing NPAPI as a platform independent browser plugin framework. First, we feel there are some changes needed to NPAPI to keep up with recent developments in browser technology, such as out of process plugin execution. Second, while NPAPI provides an extensive framework for writing plugins, many end up relying on operating system or browser platform specific features. This is especially true of windowed plugins that implement 2D or 3D graphics, where almost the entirety of the plugin may consist of operating system specific graphics or event APIs," explains Mozilla's wiki page.

Chrome OS could take advantage of the new plug-ins because users no longer have to install them and they'll be more stable.

In other news, a recent Chromium build added a new internal page (chrome://plugins) that lets you disable individual plug-ins.



Update: Chromium's blog has more information. Google says it has "begun collaborating with Adobe to improve the Flash Player experience in Google Chrome. Today, we're making available an initial integration of Flash Player with Chrome in the developer channel. When users download Chrome, they will also receive the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. Users will automatically receive updates related to Flash Player using Google Chrome’s auto-update mechanism."

To use the built-in Flash plug-in in the latest dev build, you need to edit Chrome's shortcut and add a flag: --enable-internal-flash to the target value. When you open Google Chrome, you're prompted to accept the license agreement:


Google Chrome includes Adobe Flash 10.1.51.95, a beta version of a runtime that will work on "a broad range of mobile devices, including smartphones, netbooks, smartbooks and other Internet-connected devices".

If you don't like Flash, there are many ways to disable it in Google Chrome: there's a new option that lets you disable individual plug-ins and you can use extensions like FlashBlock.

Google's goal is to improve the plug-in model and to make it "as fast, stable, and secure as the browser's HTML and JavaScript engines". That's a good news, even if you're not a fan of Flash or the Adobe PDF plug-in.

Bookmarklet for Google Reader Play

Mihai Parparita wrote a bookmarklet that loads the feed for the current site in Google Reader Play. Mihai suggests to use the bookmarklet for web pages that have a lot of photos, like Flickr profiles or comic feeds.


Google Reader Play creates a slideshow from any feed or collection of feeds, but I don't think it's useful as a standalone app. Google Reader could detect photo feeds and integrate Reader Play as a new view.

Send Files in Google Chat

One of the few features that are available in Google Talk's desktop client, but couldn't be used in the web-based gadgets from Gmail, iGoogle and orkut, is file sharing. The missing feature is now available in iGoogle and orkut, but not yet in Gmail.

"Starting today, you can share photos, documents, and other files while chatting in iGoogle and orkut. To give it a try, just click Send a file... in the Actions menu while chatting with a friend (no download required). This feature is also compatible with the file transfer functionality in the Google Talk downloadable software, so you can share files directly from the web with folks who use the desktop version," explains Google.

You can send multiple files at the same time, but you can't select multiple files from the file picker dialog. Google Chat doesn't support transferring files larger than 100 MB.


Google Talk's desktop client is no longer updated, as Google focused on improving the chat feature from Gmail and adding similar features to iGoogle and orkut. Google Talk's homepage still links to the Windows client, but the first option is a plug-in for video chat.

{ Thanks, Niranjan. }

Improved chat for iGoogle and orkut

Have you ever wanted to quickly send a file to a friend who's online? Now you can share pictures, documents and other files directly with your friends while chatting in iGoogle and orkut, without having to switch to email to send the file as an attachment. File transfer works directly in the browser so you don't need to install anything. Just start a conversation with a friend and click “Send a file...” in the “Actions” menu. After you select a file, your friend will be asked if they want to accept the transfer. You can learn more on the Google Talkabout Blog.


You might have noticed that we recently gave iGoogle and orkut chat a face lift. Several tools now have a new home at the top of the chat window. From the new toolbar, you can click the blue camera and phone icons to start video and voice chats with your friends or the group chat icon to add additional friends to a text chat. If you've never used video or voice chat before, all you need is a webcam and microphone attached to your computer and a small plugin application available for free at www.google.com/chat/video.

We're working to bring file transfer and the new toolbar to Gmail too. In the meantime, you can continue to access voice, video and group chat in Gmail from the “Video and More” menu in a chat window.

Posted by Bruce Leban, software engineer

This week in search 3/26/10

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.

This week we're highlighting a few recent internationalization projects, as well as some improvements to the way you conduct your searches. Here's a summary.

Improved Google Suggest interface & internationalization
In 2008, we launched Google Suggest to help you formulate queries, reduce spelling errors and save keystrokes. Since then, we've made a number of visual changes to Suggest for English-speaking users of google.com, including:

• Boldface search suggestions to make it faster to scan the list of suggestions and find what you're looking for
• Adding the "Google Search" and "I'm Feeling Lucky" buttons to the box so they're still accessible even when the Suggest box is open
• Removing the result counts, which previewed the number of results for each search, to simplify your experience

Given the popularity of these changes, we've just rolled them out in 50 languages across all 170 domains where Google Suggest is available. No matter where you are, we hope you find that Suggest is now faster and easier to use.

Real-time search in more languages
As you've probably noticed, our search results page for Google.com in English now includes a dynamic stream of real-time content from popular sites like Facebook, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca, MySpace and Twitter. Since we launched real-time search, we've continued to make significant improvements in the relevance technology. As of today, real-time search is available in 40 languages. Now when you're visiting family in Puerto Rico, or if you speak German and live in Switzerland, you'll be able to see live updates from people on these popular sites as well as news headlines and blog posts published just seconds before.

Refinements for local searches
Whether you're looking for info close to home or while you're traveling, it's now easier to find things to do in the cities you're searching for on Google. Now when you search for a city name, we'll show you popular query refinements for places in those cities. We've found that people like to explore several places during a trip, so when we show one point of interest, we'll also show you related points of interest. For instance, if you're looking for food or a place to stay, you'll also see some of the top category and neighborhood refinements to help you choose a place. This new feature will be rolling out over the next couple days for 200 U.S. cities, and in the coming weeks we'll expand coverage to more cities internationally.

Example searches: [maui], [pikes place market] and [restaurants berkeley california]


Lists in Bookmarks
This week we introduced lists in Google Bookmarks, an experimental feature that helps you easily share sites with friends. With lists, you can sort and categorize your Google Bookmarks or starred search results. Once you've created a list, you can share it with specific friends or make it publicly visible and searchable (lists are private by default). Based on the content of your list, we'll also generate suggestions for related links, so you can discover more helpful info related to a list you're already building. We’re launching lists as an experimental feature, and it is available at www.google.com/bookmarks or by clicking the "Starred results" link on your search results page. From there, select the links you want to share and click “Copy to list.”

Example lists: [welcome to lists] and [seattle sites]


Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more search improvements next week.

Posted by Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer

Tomorrow night, turn off your lights!

Tomorrow from 8:30 to 9:30pm local time, hundreds of millions of people around the world will switch off their lights and participate in Earth Hour, the largest climate awareness event ever held. As climate change will effect people on every continent, we think a united, global call for action to address the problem is needed.



At Google we’re working hard to be part of the solution for the climate crisis. A first step was pledging to be a carbon neutral company. Our web-based services run in some of the world’s most efficient data centers, we deploy renewable energy where viable, and we buy high-quality carbon offsets to address the emissions we can’t otherwise eliminate.

Even with these efforts, however, there remains an urgent need for clean, affordable electricity. To that end we have a team of engineers working to develop technology breakthroughs that will help make carbon-free electricity an economically viable alternative to electricity from coal.

We’re also putting our experience with organizing information to work, so we can enable others to do projects in the sustainable space. We recently announced, for example, Earth Engine, a computational platform that enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the Earth’s forests. And we’re working with our peers through Climate Savers Computing to cut the power used by computers in half.

We also want to help you achieve your personal energy reduction targets. Most people don’t know their own direct energy footprint, so we launched Google PowerMeter to give detailed, near real-time information about home energy usage. We also like to encourage everyone to set their computer’s power management to avoid wasting electricity when it’s not being used.

It’s tools like Google PowerMeter that my parents wish they had years ago when I was a teenager and living under their roof. They were often exasperated to find the lights on in rooms I’d just left, and it took years for them to convince me that I could choose something to eat without standing in front of the fridge with the door wide open. The point is, I had to learn to become a steward of the environment. We can help many more people take steps toward better care of the environment, and make that learning curve easier to climb.

Turning off the lights won’t solve the climate crisis, but it’s a start. Earth Hour gives individuals a simple, meaningful way to participate in a global call for change. As U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated, “Earth Hour is a way for the citizens of the world to send a clear message — they want action on climate change.”

So I hope you’ll gather your friends and family and join me, and hundreds of millions of others, in turning off the lights. And please include the light in the fridge.

Posted by Erik Teetzel, Google GreenKeeper

Google Apps highlights — 3/26/2010

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.

We've been busy over the last couple weeks launching updates to make Google Apps more useful, whether you use Google Apps at work, at school or at home.

Smart Rescheduler Lab in Google Calendar
If you’ve ever tried to schedule time with a group of people who have packed agendas, you know how hard it can be to find a good meeting time that works for everyone. With the Smart Rescheduler, Google Calendar can sift through the details for you. When you need to reschedule an appointment, Smart Rescheduler quickly compares people’s calendars and ranks potential meeting times based on criteria like attendees, schedule complexity, conference rooms, and time zones. You can enable Smart Rescheduler by going to “Labs” under “Settings” in Google Calendar.


Suspicious account activity alerts
To help keep Gmail users and the data in their accounts safer, on Wednesday we launched a new security feature to alert you if our systems detect suspicious activity in your account. When something unusual is identified, you’ll see a warning notification near the top of your inbox. You can choose to view a log of recent activity, and if it looks like your account has been compromised, you can change your password immediately. (And while we’re on the topic of security, we encourage you to brush up on our tips to keep your account safer.) We know that security is also a top priority for businesses and schools, and we plan to bring this feature to Google Apps customers once we have gathered and incorporated their feedback.


Contact delegation
Businesses using Google Apps can use a feature called email delegation, which lets employees appoint delegates who are allowed to read, send and manage email on their behalf. For example, this allows executive assistants to handle email for their managers. As of last Monday, delegates can also access and manage contacts. Now, a delegate can pick contacts from the manager’s contact list when composing a message on behalf of the manager, and keep the manager’s contacts up-to-date.

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft® Exchange
Millions of companies and schools have switched to Google Apps, and we hope to help millions more “go Google” in the near future. To make the transition as smooth as possible, we’ve released Google Apps Migration for Microsoft® Exchange, a server-to-server migration utility that brings email, contacts and calendar data from a legacy Microsoft® Exchange system to Google Apps. This makes the transition more seamless for employees, faculty and students. When they sign in to Google Apps, they’ll see the messages, contact information and calendar appointments from the old system right in Gmail and Google Calendar.

Who’s gone Google?
The number of businesses and other organizations using Google Apps continues to shoot up, and we hit another big milestone by crossing the 25 million user mark. Among those are the 7,000 employees at Konica Minolta, who are using Google Apps to help the company move fast and be more productive.

We’re excited to welcome another string of schools and universities too, including the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the College of William and Mary. Marshall University has a particularly great story: their technology group challenged themselves to deploy Google Apps to over 50,000 students in less than 24 hours – quite a feat when it typically takes large organizations months or even years to make major technology changes. We hope Marshall’s nimble approach inspires others to make the switch!

I hope you're enjoying the latest round of new features, whether you're using Google Apps with friends and family, with colleagues or with classmates. And don’t forget, you can always check the Google Apps Blog for more details and the latest news in this area.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Next steps for our experimental fiber network

Since we announced our plans to build experimental, ultra high-speed broadband networks, the response from communities and individuals has been tremendous and creative. With just a few hours left before our submission deadline, we've received more than 600 community responses to our request for information (RFI), and more than 190,000 responses from individuals (we'll post an update with the final numbers later tonight). We've seen cities rename themselves, great YouTube videos, public rallies and hundreds of grassroots Facebook groups come to life, all with the goal of bringing ultra high-speed broadband to their communities.


We're thrilled to see this kind of excitement, and we want to humbly thank each and every community and individual for taking the time to participate. This enthusiasm is much bigger than Google and our experimental network. If one message has come through loud and clear, it's this: people across the country are hungry for better and faster Internet access.

So what's next? Over the coming months, we'll be reviewing the responses to determine where to build. As we narrow down our choices, we'll be conducting site visits, meeting with local officials and consulting with third-party organizations. Based on a rigorous review of the data, we will announce our target community or communities by the end of the year.

Of course, we're not going to be able to build in every interested community — our plan is to reach a total of at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people with this experiment. Wherever we decide to build, we hope to learn lessons that will help improve Internet access everywhere. After all, you shouldn't have to jump into frozen lakes and shark tanks to get ultra high-speed broadband.

Thanks again to all the communities and citizens that submitted a response. We feel the love, and we're honored by your interest.

Update at 5:26pm: The response deadline has now passed. We've received more than 1,100 community responses and more than 194,000 responses from individuals. This map displays where the responses were concentrated as of 1:30pm PT. Each small dot represents a government response, and each large dot represents locations where more than 1,000 residents submitted a nomination. We plan to share a complete list of government responses and an updated map soon.


Update April 15: We've had a chance to parse the list of government response to eliminate additional spam and redundancy. You can find the complete list of government responses on our request for information website. We have also updated the map to reflect the complete list of submissions.

Posted by James Kelly, Product Manager

Tips for exploring the Buzz layer in Google Maps for mobile

We’ve previously given you a few tips on using Google Buzz for mobile, and today we’re focusing on the Buzz layer in Google Maps for mobile. As many of you have found out, location puts a different spin on Google Buzz, adding context to posts and letting anyone find relevant public posts in a natural way -- on a map! We wanted to share some tips on a few creative ways we’ve seen you using the Google Buzz layer.

Explore the world around you
Are you curious if there’s anything interesting going on nearby? Enable the Buzz layer in Google Maps, then select any icon from the map or open the list view to see all the posts from the map area you’re viewing. We’ve found patients chatting from different hospital rooms, neighbors discussing a power outage, and even some public flirting. Here are a few more awesome examples we’ve stumbled upon:

• A father hearing his baby’s first heartbeats at the hospital
• Status updates of a rooftop fire being put out in San Francisco
• Shooting of the TV show “Trauma” on location
• Photos of the stadiums being built for the World Cup in South Africa

Ask questions and get answers
If you’re exploring a new area and looking for tips, post a question, and someone browsing Buzz in the area may be able to provide a quick answer. A few weeks ago on President’s Day, I was hanging out in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. Rather than take my chances, I posted a question asking what the parking rules were. A friendly local soon informed me that I’d be free of parking stress -- meters were enforced but permit parking was not.

Share a picture worth a thousand words
Even if you could type 100 words a minute from your phone, sometimes a picture tells a different story than words could ever describe. Google Maps for mobile or the Android Buzz widget lets anyone share a picture of their favorite dish or the funny street sign they’ve found. Just attach a photo to your post or take a new one before posting. We’ve found great cases of citizen photo journalism on the public Google Buzz layer, such as traffic accidents blocking roads and location-tagged Picasa Web Albums showing the earthquake recovery in Haiti.

Give tips or learn about places
Google Buzz posts you create in Maps will always include your location (i.e. “My Location”) by default, but you can easily change the approximate location to a specific place, such as a restaurant. For example, change the post’s location and select the restaurant from the suggestions list before posting to give a recommendation or tip. Alternatively, you can search for the restaurant in Maps and select the Google Buzz option from the search results page (the post’s location will automatically be the restaurant). Now, people reading your post will know that your recommendation is about that exact restaurant, and your recommendation will be available for anyone browsing that restaurant’s search results page.

...and one reminder
Because we built Google Buzz in Maps for mobile to let you share information about places with the world, posts from Maps are always public to the web and include a location, either your approximate one or a specific place you choose.

To get started, install the latest version of Google Maps 4.0+ on your Android 1.6+, Windows Mobile, or Symbian S60 phone (BlackBerry coming soon; see availability details) by visiting m.google.com/maps on your phone and going to Layers > Buzz from the Maps main menu. From Android, iPhone, and iPod touch devices, you can also use the buzz.google.com Nearby view and map just like the Maps layer.

Visit our Help Center to learn more or tell us your feedback and questions in our Help Forum. Give us suggestions and vote on other people’s on the Mobile Product Ideas page!

Posted by Chris Nguyen, Product Marketing, Google Mobile Team

Google Mobile App now available for BlackBerry Storm

If you have a BlackBerry Storm or Storm2, and have been wondering when you'd have access to Google Mobile App and features like search by voice, then we hope you'll be happy with today's news. We're launching a new version of Google Mobile App for BlackBerry Storm and Storm2.

This version contains all of the useful features of Google Mobile App, but is tailored for BlackBerry touchscreen devices. You can search using your voice instead of typing your query. Just hold the green button and speak your query in English, Mandarin Chinese, or Japanese. You can also use Google Mobile App to search your BlackBerry's email and contacts. To find an email, you can search for the name of the person who sent you an email, or a phrase from the body of the message. If you'd rather Google Mobile App not search your email and contacts, you can turn off Phone Search in the options screen. Information about your contacts and content from your emails is accessible only on your device; Google Mobile App does not send this data to Google.

The weather OneBox

hold the green key to start search by voice

Google Mobile App also includes a few other conveniences to make searching easy, such as Google Suggest and search history. Google Mobile App also links to other Google services, such as Google Maps and Gmail, so you can access them quickly.

Google Mobile App is available in seven languages in more than twenty countries.

To download Google Mobile App to your BlackBerry, visit m.google.com in your BlackBerry's browser. If you have any questions or comments, or if you want to learn more, please visit our help center.

Posted by Mark Brophy, Software Engineer

More Relevant Communication

Yaakov Sabal writes:

Today, we have a binary definition of spam. [A message is either spam or not spam.] But it is not this way. Beside the die hard spam, there is a huge amount of irrelevant email I get on a daily basis, which is nice but not needed - not now, not in this context.

For some reason, Gmail didn't invest into relevancy of messages based on contacts. I have work contacts, I have close team contacts, I have friends, family, enemies etc. My contacts are just a reflection of my life, the society I am in contact with and I am not willing to communicate with the whole society at once. (...)

Buzz is the same: if I buzz about the last concert in town, why should people that I know and follow me - BUT don't live in the same town - should care about it? If I buzz about science, why people that don't like science should care about it? (...)

People should not need to have a black belt in Inbox Zero to [communicate efficiently] - instead Google should provide a cool way to deal with irrelevant bulk things from people.

Yaakov suggests that Google should rank email messages, Buzz messages based on their relevance. Messages from contacts you frequently communicate with are more important than newsletters, Buzz messages related to your interests are more relevant than random blurbs.

Last month, Google acquired Aardvark, a service that connects questions with people that are likely to answer them. A similar technology could rank the messages from your inbox, Buzz messages or Google Reader items.

Display advertising: towards creativity without limits

This is the second post in our series on the future of display advertising. Today, Neal Mohan looks at how new technology can power creativity in the years ahead - Ed.

Imagine you own a popular coffee chain in Denver that you want to promote. On Monday afternoon, it’s warm and 80 degrees in the city. You run a display ad campaign online that offers Denverites a discount coupon for an iced cold latte, with a searchable map embedded in the ad to show local branches, and a real-time feed from people who have tweeted publicly about your newest flavor. That evening, a cold front rolls over the Rockies. Your ad automatically and dynamically adjusts to present a photo of a hot, steaming cup of hot chocolate in front of a warm fireplace, together with a home delivery number and an offer of free marshmallows.

Creative? Absolutely. Impossible? Hardly. You can do this today using technology from Teracent that we’re working to roll out for our clients who advertise on the Google Content Network or who use DoubleClick Rich Media.

There’s no doubt that advertisers today are increasingly seeking to run campaigns that are highly measurable and relevant to users. That’s one of the benefits of advertising on the Internet. But great ad campaigns are about more than clicks or numbers. The best campaigns are so memorable and effective because they make an emotional bond with us. The very best can engage us, move us and make us feel a connection with the brand that’s being promoted. That’s the real creative genius of advertising.

We traditionally think of TV as the most creative advertising media. But display advertising has the promise of a couple of things that even TV doesn't have — the ability to dynamically customize ads in infinite ways and the opportunity to enable a true two-way interaction and dialogue with users.

Here are some examples of how creative ads have been used to drive engagement and deliver great results:

• An award-winning rich media ad that was created by Euro RSCG for the new Volvo XC60. In addition to an interactive game, photos and gallery, it incorporated a Twitter feed from the New York Auto show. In just three days, the campaign garnered 170 million impressions, 50,000 clicks and 17,000 hours of brand engagement. No other type of advertising format could have come close in driving this type of conversation with a brand's potential customers.
• A great campaign for Harley Davidson, created by the agency Overdrive. This ad functions almost like a website — with interactive video, Twitter and Facebook Share functionality, as it invites people to send a "Tribute to the Troops" for Veteran's Day. Over 280,000 people clicked to watch the video embedded in the ads and more than 18,000 Tributes were sent to troops from this campaign.

Some in our industry have asked why we aren’t seeing more creative display ad campaigns like these. In our view, it’s definitely not because of a lack of creativity or an unwillingness to experiment. The problem to date has been the lack of tools and technologies necessary to do this at scale across the Internet.

It takes hard work to create, serve and measure the impact of these ads. Under the hood, there’s a lot of technology that needs to come together for them to work seamlessly. Take the Harley Davidson ad: It contains dozens of complex creative elements, integrations with various technologies like Flash, numerous APIs, Twitter and Facebook, and multiple parties involved in its creation and delivery — from the creative agency, to teams at Google, through to the ad operations teams at the publisher. You could spend hundreds or thousands of hours building out creative concepts and ads like this, but ultimately only run them on a few sites because the customization takes so much time to implement across the web.

We believe that technology, by streamlining and eliminating some of the hard work involved, and by offering new creative possibilities, can be a great enabler of more creative ads.

What if it were seamless to serve and run highly creative ad units — not just on one site, but on thousands of sites, and also in videos and on mobile phones? What if it were simpler to incorporate social features in the ad creative itself — such as letting people endorse and spread particular ads or campaigns to their friends? What if you could serve video ads that included simple tools in the ad creative itself that allowed users to easily make their own mashups of your ad, and post and share them with friends?

And what if you could make a few different creative elements for an ad, and then have them dynamically chosen, depending on factors like where the ad’s shown, product availability, time of day and any other variable you choose — just like the coffee ad I mentioned at the start? That way, agencies and advertisers would be able to spend their time building out their creative concepts and ads, and technology can multiply the impact by running it on thousands of sites with millions of variations for every website and user.

Technology is evolving rapidly and will help facilitate all of this in the months and years ahead. What about imagining what might be possible on your phone in a few years? Let’s say you're walking down the street, using an augmented reality app on your mobile phone to see what's interesting around you. In your viewfinder, you see a billboard for a great product — basketball shoes. Using image recognition, the app could recognize that it's a billboard for a particular shoe brand, show an expandable ad for that brand, let you choose to watch a video of one of their shoes in action, display all the nearest stores on an accompanying map, and include a way for you to order a shoe and pick it up on your way home from work.

That’s just one example of what one day will be possible in the world of display advertising. It’s the goal of our display advertising efforts to produce the tools and technologies to allow for this type of unbridled creativity at a grand scale.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management

Dynamic Search Results Refinements

Search Engine Land spotted a new Google search feature. If you click on a search result from a forum and then go back to the search results page, Google adds a link that restricts the results to forum pages: "get more discussion results". The same feature is also available if you click on "show options" and select "discussions", but it's more difficult to find.


It's the first time when Google changes the search results page after clicking on a result. Google could add other related features: for example, it could show a list of similar pages.

When you click on a search result, Google tracks the click and uses it to adjust the order of search results. An interesting approach to personalize search results is to use the clicks to disambiguate the query and dynamically adjust the results. Surf Canyon is an extension that customizes your search results based on the results you've selected and shows recommendations when you click on a search result.

Collaborative bookmarking with lists

Earlier this month we added stars in search so that you can easily mark and rediscover your favorite websites. Today we’re debuting lists in Google Bookmarks, an experimental new feature that helps you easily share those sites with friends.

Bookmarks are a great way to keep track of your favorite content across the web and we want to help you share them with your friends. To use lists, visit Google Bookmarks at google.com/bookmarks or by clicking “Manage all” in your Google Toolbar. From there, select the links you want to share and click “Copy to list.” Lists are private by default, but once you’ve created one you can share it with specific friends or even publish it to the web. For example, if a friend of yours is visiting Seattle for the first time and you have some local attractions bookmarked, you might want to create a new list for “Seattle attractions” and share it with your friend.


Sharing lists can help you collaborate with your friends on common interests or activities. Let’s say you’re planning a group trip to Paris. With a list, everyone can contribute useful links and resources, such as packing lists, hotel links, flight information and attractions. You could also create lists for your favorite hobbies, and then share them with friends who share your interests. Lists dynamically generate previews for many pages so you can get a sense of the site before clicking.

Lists also help you discover new web content. For example, once you’ve created your list of favorite Seattle attractions, Google will algorithmically analyze your list to identify other potentially relevant links, such as the Seattle Aquarium. Similarly, when we detect that a list is relevant to a specific region, we provide a map of those places and relevant info for each place, such as addresses, hours and reviews.


We’re launching lists as an experimental feature so that we can quickly test it out and get feedback. Visit Google Bookmarks on google.com in English to try it out and let us know what you think. You can also learn more about lists in our Help Center.

Posted by Christina Chen, Product Manager

Google Bookmarks Lists

Google tests a new interface for Google Bookmarks that lets you share your bookmarks.


You can now create bookmark lists and share them with other people. Google says that "lists make it easy to organize and share stuff you find on the web", but the new feature adds what was already available in Google Notebook, a great service that allowed you to create collections of interesting content from the web. Google stopped developing the service, but Google Notebook is still available for the existing users.

"We're working hard to improve Bookmarks and make saving and sharing stuff on the web easier than ever. That's why we've created lists. Like labels, lists let you organize your stuff into categories. But they can do so much more! For example, lists have the smarts to pull the most important information (like maps and reviews) from the sites you care about, and put it in a single place. You can easily see when a site in your list has been updated. Sharing and collaboration is easy, making lists an ideal way to plan a trip, research a purchase, or organize an event," suggests Google.



Here's an example of a public list that shows useful web pages related to Google Bookmarks lists and here's a list of web pages related to Seattle. You can follow a list to be notified by email when the list changes.



The nice thing about Google Bookmarks lists is that you can convert labels to lists. It's easy to add new web pages to a list thanks to the integration with Google Search, Google adds relevant thumbnails and monitors web pages for new content. And if you invite other people to your list, they can add new web pages, reorder the list, add comments and more.

{ via Google Blogoscoped }

European Court of Justice rules in Google’s favour

Google aims to provide as much information as possible to users so that they can make informed decisions. For this reason, we have been awaiting a series of decisions by the European Court of Justice that explore the extent to which trade mark rights can be used to restrict information available to users. The first of those decisions was delivered today.

The question before the court was whether advertisers should be allowed to choose keywords freely when reaching out to users on the Internet. In other words, if advertisers are allowed to show advertisements when another company's brand name is entered as a search query.

Trade marks are part of our daily life and culture, helping us to identify the products and services that we may be looking for. They are key for companies to market and advertise their products and services. But trade mark rights are not absolute.

We believe that user interest is best served by maximizing the choice of keywords, ensuring relevant and informative advertising for a wide variety of different contexts. For instance, if a user is searching for information about a particular car, he or she will want more than just that car’s website. They might be looking for different dealers that sell that car, second hand cars, reviews about the car or looking for information about other cars in the same category.

And, contrary to what some are intimating, this case is not about us arguing for a right to advertise counterfeit goods. We have strict policies that forbid the advertising of counterfeit goods; it's a bad user experience. We work collaboratively with brand owners to better identify and deal with counterfeiters.

Some companies want to limit choice for users by extending trade mark law to encompass the use of keywords in online advertising. Ultimately they want to be able to exercise greater control over the infomation available to users by preventing other companies from advertising when a user enters their trade mark as a search query. In other words, controlling and restricting the amount of information that users may see in response to their searches.

Today, the Court confirmed that Google has not infringed trade mark law by allowing advertisers to bid for keywords corresponding to their competitors’ trade marks. It also confirmed that European law that protects internet hosting services applies to Google’s AdWords advertising system. This is important because it is a fundamental principle behind the free flow of information over the internet.

Our guiding principle has always been that advertising should benefit users, and our aim is to ensure that ads are relevant and useful. We will study the decision as we move forward in order to make sure that we continue to deliver advertising that is perceived as both valuable and relevant by our users.

Posted by Dr. Harjinder S. Obhi, Senior Litigation Counsel, EMEA

Google Shuts Down the Chinese Search Engine

As promised, Google will no longer censor search results in China. Google's solution is to redirect users to Google Hong Kong, which shows uncensored results. Google Blog explains this interesting decision:

"Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. (...) We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced—it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China."

It's obvious that Google Hong Kong will be blocked in China and this workaround is only temporary. Google wanted to continue operating in China without censoring search results: "In terms of Google's wider business operations, we intend to continue R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk."

Google agreed to censor search results in China four years ago because it hoped that things will get better over time. Here's an excerpt from a Google blog post written in 2006:

"We aren't happy about what we had to do this week, and we hope that over time everyone in the world will come to enjoy full access to information. But how is that full access most likely to be achieved? We are convinced that the Internet, and its continued development through the efforts of companies like Google, will effectively contribute to openness and prosperity in the world. Our continued engagement with China is the best (perhaps only) way for Google to help bring the tremendous benefits of universal information access to all our users there."

Unfortunately, Google's optimism was misplaced: "Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China" and there were many "attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger".

Google China's homepage until today:


Google Chine's new homepage:

A new approach to China: an update

On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger—had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn.

So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over.

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced—it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.

In terms of Google's wider business operations, we intend to continue R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk. Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

Google search now supports Haitian Kreyòl

Last week we added Haitian Kreyòl as a language to Google search. Visitors to our Haitian homepage can now use search in English, French and Kreyòl.

Haitian Kreyòl is spoken by more than 10 million people in Haiti and in the Haitian diaspora in the Bahamas, Canada, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic, France, French Guiana, Puerto Rico and the United States.

The massive earthquake that recently stuck Haiti took a heavy toll on communication infrastructure (including TV, radio and newspapers). In the weeks following the earthquake, the Internet has become an important tool for Haitians to search for news and information. We previously added support for Haitian Kreyòl to Google Translate and we are happy that Google search can now be used the Haitian people in their native language.

We would like to thank the Haitian volunteers who heard our call for volunteer translators and generously shared their time and knowledge to improve the search experience for all Haitians.



Posted by Christine Multidor, Engineering Recruiting Coordinator, on behalf of the Internationalization Team