Goodbye, Google Friends!

Google Friends is Google's monthly newsletter that included the latest announcements and product releases. 13 years after the first newsletter issue, Google announced that Google Friends will be retired.

It's hard to believe, but this monthly missive is now 13 years old. We hope you've enjoyed reading it over time, and wanted you to know that we are retiring it in its current form.

As you may know, the Google Friends Newsletter was created by Larry Page in April 1998, when Google was still on Stanford servers. In the early days, the Friends notes offered newsy details like "We are gearing up to do another crawl. We should start within a few weeks" and tips on tweaking your search queries.

Obviously a lot has happened since then, including changes in how we communicate updates to all of you. So this will be our last Google Friends Newsletter. We started the Official Google Blog in 2004 and joined Twitter in 2009, and we've seen dramatic growth on those channels. Meanwhile, the number of subscribers to this newsletter has remained flat, so we've concluded that this format is no longer the best way for us to get the word out about new Google products and services.

Google Friends started as an eGroups mailing list, then it became a Yahoo Group and was later moved to Google Groups. "We used the company eGroups to mass-mail our Google Friends newsletter to users, because Larry's brother, Carl, was one of eGroups founders. Larry had done the configuration for the original eGroups server himself, and for a while the company's computational heart has lived under his desk. The same week we announced our deal with Yahoo, Yahoo announced they were buying eGroups for $428 million (Yahoo has been very kind to the Page family)," remembers the former Google marketing director Douglas Edwards.

The early issues of the newsletter include a geek-friendly changelog of Google's search engine. You'll find about the long-gone operator flink: (forward links), the PageRank bar displayed next to each search result and Google's plans to "have a much bigger index than our current 24 million pages".

"After combining our web server and search engine for better performance, we have been experiencing intermittent problems with our system being down for short amounts of time fairly frequently. If you have trouble getting to the system, try back in a minute or two, and it should be back up." (July 1998)

This is a paragraph you'll never find in a Google blog post, Twitter message or a recent Google Friends issue.

{ Thanks, Tomi. }

Templates for Google Contacts

Gmail added a new feature that makes it easier to add a new contact: templates. If you click "More actions" when you create a contact or edit an existing one, you can select the business template to quickly add fields for the job title, company name, mobile phone and work phone.


The default template is more generic:


Google Contacts lets you add or delete fields, but you can't delete the fields from a template. Hopefully, Google will allow users to create custom templates and import some of the data from Google Profiles.

{ Thanks, Herin. }

Google Related

Google Toolbar 7.1 for Internet Explorer has a new feature that shows Web pages, news articles, places, images and videos related to the current page. The feature is called Google Related and it's a bar displayed at the bottom of the page.

"Google Related is a browsing assistant that offers interesting and useful content while you are browsing the web. For instance, if you're browsing a page about a restaurant in San Francisco, Google Related will assist you by displaying useful information about this restaurant such as the location of the restaurant on a map, user reviews, related restaurants in the area, and other webpages related to San Francisco restaurants - all in one place," explains Google.


If you go to the Wikipedia article about Adele, Google Related shows 5 YouTube videos, 5 articles from Google News and 5 pages from Google Search.


Google Related is another feature that requires sending the list of all the pages you visit to Google's servers. To find related pages, Google needs to know the URL of the page you're visiting. The so-called "enhanced features" (PageRank, SideWiki, Google Related) send Google a lot of useful data. One of the most interesting ways to use the data is a feature that shows if a site is slow. Like all the other Google Toolbar "enhanced features", Google Related can be disabled from the "Options" dialog by clicking the "Privacy" tab.


Apparently, Google Related only works if you've configured the toolbar's search site to be Google.com (United States of America - .com), so you may need to change this setting to enable Google Related.

Microsoft's Gmail Man Ad

Mary-Jo Foley found a Microsoft ad that tries to convince businesses to choose Office 365 instead of Google Apps because Gmail shows targeted ads. Microsoft created a character called Gmail Man, a postman that doesn't care about people's privacy and reads their messages to find related ads.

The irony is that the paid version of Google Apps doesn't show ads, even though administrators can choose to enable them. I thought that the whole "Gmail reads my mail" myth was debunked back in 2004 and people realized that online email services already used algorithms to index messages and to find spam.

"It was a fascinating angle in 2005 while Gmail was still new and under all kinds of scrutiny, but today, who cares that your emails are automatically scanned, really? Even before Gmail, ISP's already had the ability to read all your emails, but it has never really stopped anyone from using the email service of their choice," thinks Cédric Beust, a former Googler.

{ via Daring Fireball }

New Interface for Google Books

Google Books is the latest Google service with an updated interface that's cleaner and more consistent. Unfortunately, this means there's more white space and less space for books. For example, on a 800x600 resolution almost two thirds of the screen are used for navigation elements. Even if you click the "full screen" button, Google still displays the navigation bar, the search box and the toolbar buttons, while hiding the sidebar and the book's title.




It's clear that the new Google+ interface is not suitable for all Google services and consistency sometimes makes Google's tools less useful. Displaying the navigation bar and the search box takes away valuable space and this is especially noticeable if you use a netbook. The new interface is not flexible or elastic, like Google intended. "The new design will soon allow you to seamlessly transition from one device to another and have a consistent visual experience. We aim to bring you this flexibility without sacrificing style or usefulness," explained Google. It seems that the new design sacrifices usefulness for the sake of consistency.

{ Thanks, Kon Young. }

Gone fishin’—piloting community supported fisheries at Google

(Cross-posted on the Google Green Blog)

I've always loved the ocean—I was born in Shanghai, which means "upon the sea.” And as a chef, I'm always drawn to food that claims a spirit of place. After moving to California, near Half Moon Bay, I began visiting the docks to buy seafood, and got to know the fishermen.

Over time, it became evident to me that this part of our food supply is broken: many consumers purchase stale, unsustainably-raised fish from chain grocers. Meanwhile, fishermen often sell their diminishing catch to wholesalers at a very low profit, meaning their livelihoods are no longer sustained by their catch. There’s also the environmental factor to consider: Overfishing and illegal practices cause worldwide decline in ocean wildlife populations and wreak havoc on underwater habitats—not to mention the carbon footprint of transporting seafood far from its origin.

Google’s chefs have long been committed to sourcing food for our cafes as locally, seasonally and organically as possible. And in our Mountain View headquarters, many employees cook with the same ingredients at home thanks to on-site Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs. When I joined the team as an executive chef in Mountain View, I wanted to make a difference in our purchasing program for seafood. For the five years leading up to then, I wrote a column for the San Francisco Chronicle called “Seafood by the Season,” and I knew it could be done. In early 2010, we began a push to apply the most rigorous standards to our seafood-buying practices, and respond to the in-the-moment fluctuations of the catch from small, independent fishermen.

Things took off from there. My colleague Quentin Topping dreamed of providing the same high-quality seafood we serve in our cafes for Googlers to take home to their families. That idea became the Google Community Supported Fishery (CSF), which we launched in May 2011. In this program, Googlers sign up to purchase a weekly supply of local, sustainable seafood, supplied through a partnership with the Half Moon Bay (HMB) Fisherman’s Association.

The Google Culinary team on a visit with fishermen in Half Moon Bay, Calif.—Quentin and I are the second and third from the left, in black.

We tend to think on a massive scale at Google—whether it’s how to deliver instant search results around the globe or help thousands of small businesses get online—but when it comes to feeding our employees at work and at home, it really comes down to a local touch. Knowing where our seafood, meat and produce come from, as well as knowing how they’re raised, farmed or harvested, makes all the difference in the on-the-ground work of sustainability. We see many bright spots ahead for our Community Supported Agriculture and Fishery programs, such as expansion to other offices and adding a grass-fed beef and pasture-raised poultry program. It’s exciting to work someplace where we can think big and local.

We know of two CSFs in the Bay Area. The Half Moon Bay Fishermen’s Association supplies only Google at the moment, but will soon add public drop-off sites—keep posted by visiting Farmigo.com. The other is CSea out of Bodega Bay. If you live elsewhere, we hope you’ll consider stepping up to create one in your area.

And even if you don’t live near the ocean or have direct access to fresh-caught seafood, the choices you make about what fish to purchase or order in restaurants can make a real difference. You may want to consider following the guidelines that we used for our Google Green Seafood policy: Whenever possible, purchase species caught locally and in-season, by small, independent fisher-families, using environmentally-responsible methods. We think it’s important to be responsive to the fluctuations of catch too, and source from fisheries that enforce catch limits or are guided by ecosystem-based management programs. As for us, we’ll continue to research and source responsibly managed farmed seafood, and always keep transparency and Googler health at the center of our program.



Posted by Liv Wu, Executive Chef

New Google Search experience for tablets

(Cross-posted on the Inside Search blog)

As part of our effort to evolve the Google design and experience, we’ve improved the www.google.com search experience on tablets. We’ve simplified the layout of search results pages and increased the size of page contents like text, buttons and other touch targets to make it faster and easier to browse and interact with search results in portrait or landscape view.

The search button located below the search box provides quick access to specific types of results like Images, Videos, Places, Shopping and more. Just tap to open the search menu and select an option to see results in one category.

For image results, we focused on improvements that enhance the viewing experience such as enlarged image previews, continuous scroll, and faster loading of image thumbnails.

This improved search experience is rolling out in the coming days to iPad and Android 3.1+ tablets across 36 languages. Give it a try by going to www.google.com in your tablet’s browser.

Posted by Xiaorui Gan, Software Engineer

Gmail's Auto-Forwarding Notice

Google decided to show a pink bar which informs Gmail users that their messages are automatically forwarded to another email address. The annoying "you are forwarding your email to ..." is displayed for about 3 minutes every time you open Gmail this week.


The explanation for this temporary annoyance is that some malicious software or other people who gain access to your account can setup auto-forwarding. "For about a week, this notice will appear for a few minutes each time you sign in to your account. Displaying the notification in this way helps ensure that you have a chance to see the notice, rather than someone who might try to gain unauthorized access to your account and use this setting improperly. The notice will disappear immediately if you choose to disable the forwarding setting, but that decision is up to you," mentions Google.

So that's the reason why there's no "dismiss" link and you're forced to see the pink bar again and again. Maybe it would be more useful to show this message for one week after auto-forwarding has been setup.

If you no longer want to see the message, temporarily disable auto-forwarding, switch to the simplified HTML interface or pin the Gmail tab if you use Chrome, Firefox or Opera. Another option is to add this filter in AdBlock Plus: mail.google.com##.fVKDI (the extension is available for Firefox and Chrome).

Google's Tablet-Optimized Interface

Google's services don't usually have interfaces optimized for tablets. They either use the desktop version (Google Search) or use the mobile version (Google Calendar, Google Docs). An important exception is Gmail, which started to test a tablet UI shortly after iPad's launch.

Google tests a new homepage and a new search interface for tablets. Unlike the standard desktop version, the new UI places the navigation menu and the search options sidebar at the top of the page, so that the search results take up most of the space.



Amit Agarwal, who first spotted the experimental design, says that it's cleaner. "The new Google design uses a single column layout, while the old sidebar options appear between the search box and the search results. There's plenty of whitespace between search results and links to the Cached version of pages have been removed in the new design."

The new layout is more readable and it's also used for specialized search engines like Google Image Search and Google News. Google Image Search for iPad now uses infinite scrolling and shows a lot more results. Unfortunately, the list of missing feature is impressive: no Google Instant or Google Suggest, no links to the cached pages or to the mobile transcoder, no link to the advanced search page.

I've only seen the experimental UI in iPad's mobile Safari, but I'm sure that it should also be available for Android tablets like Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 or Asus Eee Pad Transformer. Clearing browser's cookies might help.

Update: Google Mobile blog informs that the new UI "is rolling out in the coming days to iPad and Android 3.1+ tablets across 36 languages."

{ Thanks, Mushaf. }

Google Hotel Finder

Google launched an experimental service that would've been perfect for Google Labs: Hotel Finder. The service lets you find a hotel in US and it has a few clever features that make it stand out.

You can add shapes to the map to restrict the list of results to your favorite areas. Google highlights the most popular areas to help you. By default, Google creates a shape based on the most popular places.

Using shapes to filter results is not an original feature, but it's useful and it's surprising to see that Google Maps didn't add it.


After selecting the location, Google lets you pick the check in and check out dates, choose a price range, a hotel class and restrict the results to hotels that have great user ratings.


Another cool feature is that the results can be expanded inline so you don't have to open a new page to see some photos and read the reviews. Add the hotels you like to a "shortlist" to quickly compare them.


Google Hotel Finder is also useful to find great deals. The "compared to typical" section offers some information that's not easy to find by comparing the current prices with the historical averages.

Unfortunately, you can't book hotels using Google's service, at least not directly. Google Hotel Finder sends you to sites like Booking.com, Priceline, Expedia, Travelocity.

For now, Google Hotel Finder only works for US hotels, but it's a surprisingly strong offering. While there are many features that need to be added to compete with Bing Travel, Google's service is really promising. It's fast, easy to enough and offers helpful information that's not available elsewhere.

2-step verification: stay safe around the world in 40 languages

(Cross-posted on the Online Security Blog)

Earlier this year, we introduced a security feature called 2-step verification that helps protect your Google Account from threats like password compromise and identity theft. By entering a one-time verification code from your phone after you type your password, you can make it much tougher for an unauthorized person to gain access to your account.

People have told us how much they like the feature, which is why we're thrilled to offer 2-step verification in 40 languages and in more than 150 countries. There’s never been a better time to set it up: Examples in the news of password theft and data breaches constantly remind us to stay on our toes and take advantage of tools to properly secure our valuable online information. Email, social networking and other online accounts still get compromised today, but 2-step verification cuts those risks significantly.

We recommend investing some time in keeping your information safe by watching our 2-step verification video to learn how to quickly increase your Google Account’s resistance to common problems like reused passwords and malware and phishing scams. Wherever you are in the world, sign up for 2-step verification and help keep yourself one step ahead of the bad guys.

To learn more about online safety tips and resources, visit our ongoing security blog series, and review a couple of simple tips and tricks for online security. Also, watch our video about five easy ways to help you stay safe and secure as you browse.

Update on 12/1/11: We recently made 2-step verification available for users in even more places, including Iran, Japan, Liberia, Myanmar (Burma), Sudan and Syria. This enhanced security feature for Google Accounts is now available in more than 175 countries.

Posted by Nishit Shah, Product Manager, Google Security

Catch the London Underground with Google Maps

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long Blog)

Starting today, you can get public transport directions for London within Google Maps. One of Europe’s largest metropolitan areas, London is a major destination for both business travelers and tourists. More than 1 billion passengers are serviced by Transport for London (TfL) every year across over 18,000 bus stops and over 250 Underground stations.

Let’s say you’re at Trafalgar Square, and you want to visit Madame Tussauds. With a simple directions search, you’ll see all the possible public transport connections. In Maps, click “Get directions” in the left-hand panel, and then the train icon to see public transport directions. Enter your departure location next to A, and your destination next to B. These can be either street addresses or names of popular places, businesses or restaurants. When you’re done, click the “Get directions” button and suggestions for your trip will appear below.

Public transport directions are available on both Google Maps and Google Maps for mobile, so you always have access to a trip planner. When you’re on mobile, Maps even uses your current location to determine the best trip to your destination. Just search for your destination location, select it on the map and choose the “Directions” option. The suggested trips will be based on your location by default, and provide you multiple alternatives whenever possible.

If you’re using an Android-powered device, you can also get public transport directions with Transit Navigation (Beta) in Google Maps. With this new feature, which we launched earlier this month, you’ll get alerts when it’s time to get off the bus or train at your destination or to make a transfer. Transit Navigation is available in all regions where public transport directions are available, including London.

TfL is among the first agencies in a major European city to make its timetable information publicly available through the London Datastore. We’re strong supporters of open data and bringing information out into the open, and believe that making information publicly accessible can be an enormous engine of economic growth and innovation. ITO World has been a great partner in this launch by ensuring TfL’s data was adapted correctly and ready for our use.

Public transport directions are available for all Underground, bus, tram and Docklands Light Railway (DLR) lines, and we’ll include more public transport information as soon as it’s available. Whether you use public transport every day or infrequently, as a commuter, on a business trip or as a tourist, we hope that public transport directions in London make planning your trips more convenient!

Posted by Thijs van As, Associate Product Manager, Transit Directions

Catch the London Underground with Google Maps

Today, Google Maps added public transport directions for London within Google Maps, including Google Maps for mobile on iOS, Blackberry, and Android-powered devices. Now, whether you live in London or are just visiting, you can get public transport directions on your mobile device.


Public transport directions in Google Maps for Android

Google Maps for mobile uses your current location to determine the best trip to your destination. Just search for your destination location, select it on the map and choose the “Directions” option. The suggested trips will be based on your location by default, and provide you multiple alternatives whenever possible.

If you’re using an Android-powered device, you can also get public transport directions with Transit Navigation (Beta) in Google Maps. With this feature, you’ll get alerts when it’s time to get off the bus or train at your destination or to make a transfer. We hope that public transport directions in London make getting around town more convenient!

Posted by Thijs van As, Associate Product Manager, Transit Directions

Save your friends from outdated email—help them switch to Gmail

(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog)

I switched to Gmail the first month it came out, mere seconds after receiving an invitation from a friend and two years before joining Google. Since then, I’ve invited hundreds of people, most of whom have happily made the switch to Gmail and never looked back.

But I have one friend, Andy, who’s the straggler in the group. A couple months ago, I sent out an email about a barbecue I was having. On the “To:” line, there were 15 Gmail addresses and then Andy. He stuck out like a sore thumb. Shortly thereafter, Andy was complaining to us about how much spam he got. That was the last straw.

My friends and I sat Andy down and talked him through how to import his contacts. We answered his questions, guilt-tripped him a little, and a few painless minutes later we were done. Andy had Gmail.

We all have a story like this. On the Gmail team, we affectionately refer to them as “email interventions.” We hear about them all the time: the cousin who finally switched from an embarassing address like hottie6elliot1977 to a more professional elliot.d.smith@gmail.com, a co-worker who helped his dentist switch after he heard her grumble about having to pay for IMAP access, etc.

It’s for these folks we created emailintervention.com, a site that makes it easier than ever to help your friends and family make the switch.



Staging an intervention is simple:

1. Visit emailintervention.com
   
2. Sign in and automatically identify who from your contacts has yet to make the switch, or just enter a friend’s email address manually
   
3. Choose from one of three intervention message templates (“straightforward”, “concerned” or “ embarrassed”), and add your own intervention video if you’d like
   
4. Send a customized email and follow up as needed

Your loved ones are counting on you. Even if they don't know it yet.

Posted by Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager

Congratulations Russia, the National Geographic World Champions

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long and Student Blogs)

This island has a population of about 57,000 people, with the most settlements concentrated on the west coast. Very little of this island is suitable for agriculture.

After eight rounds of questions from none other than quiz king Alex Trebek himself, the team from Russia was crowned the National Geographic World Champions today at our Mountain View, Calif. headquarters after answering this final question correctly.

(By the way, the answer is Greenland.)

The National Geographic World Champions from Russia (photo courtesy of National Geographic)

Students from 17 regions around the world competed in the 2011 National Geographic World Championship. Today’s final round included answering a series of challenging questions like the one above. The students also interpreted maps and museum artifacts from the University of California Berkeley and fielded questions about live animals from the San Francisco Zoo during the earlier rounds of the competition.

Congratulations to the Russian team and to all of the students who participated. We look forward to seeing where your explorations and knowledge take you.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Earth

Google Maps 5.8 for Android adds photo uploads, My Places, and more

Today, Google Maps 5.8 for Android improves Places and Latitude with:

• Upload photos for a Place
• My Places as a simple way to manage the Places you’ve starred and recently viewed
• Descriptive terms for Places in search results
• Add a new Place on-the-go when checking in

Photo upload for a Place

When deciding on a place to go, people often want to know what a place looks like in addition to seeing ratings and reviews. You can now contribute photos to help others get a sense of places. You can now attach your photos to Places, and yours may even become the profile picture for that page. If you want to view or delete any photos you’ve contributed to Places, you can manage uploaded photos in the “Photos for Google Maps” album on your Picasa account.

Left: Uploading pictures to a place. Right: Photos in Android Gallery
My Places and descriptive terms for mobile

In June we announced descriptive terms and ‘My Places’ for the desktop. Both these features are now in Google Maps for mobile. Descriptive terms appear in search results for Places to inform you what businesses are ‘known for,’ such as their ‘eggs benedict’ or being ‘worth the wait.’

Also, My Places for mobile provides quick access to starred and recent Place pages you’ve looked at. You can access My Places by pressing your phone’s menu button while in Google Maps.

Descriptive terms and My Places in Google Maps for mobile
Add a new Place ‘on-the-go’ for check-ins

If you’re out and about and want to check in, we want to make sure you can quickly add a new Place to check into if one isn’t available. This might happen for new businesses or those that haven’t set up a Place page yet. For example, let’s say you’re at Xoogle Xtreme Sports, a new sports shop in your neighborhood. You go to check in but don’t see Xoogle in the list of places to check into and when you do a search still nothing comes up.

Add a Place when checking in, if needed
To solve this, you’ll now see an “Add place” option at the bottom of suggested places. Select that option, and you’ll be prompted to confirm the name and location of the new place. Then a brand new place is added (and you’re checked in). This place will be available for you and others to check into from Latitude, but will not appear as a search result in Google Maps or Google Places.

We’ve also added ‘Bigger text’ to our experimental Labs features and ‘Download map area’ has been renamed ‘Pre-cache map area.’

To start using Google Maps 5.8 for Android, download the update here. This update requires an Android OS 2.1+ device and can be used anywhere Google Maps is currently available. Learn more in our help center.

Posted by Benjamin Grol, Product Manager

Scheduled Release track features update 7/27/11

The following features are now available to these domains:
- No new features

The following features are intended for release to these domains on August 2nd:
Gmail:
- Inbox Styles
- Multiple calls using ‘Call phone’ feature

Calendar:
- New interface option for Calendar users

Release track:
Scheduled*

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

For more information:
Inbox Styles: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-pick-your-favorite-inbox-style.html
Multiple calls: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/make-multiple-calls-in-gmail.html
New Calendar interface: http://whatsnew.googleapps.com/new-look

*Scheduled Release track: Domains with ‘Enable scheduled releases’ checkbox enabled in the administrator control panel. Learn more

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OK Go play with Chrome

(Cross-posted on the Google Chrome Blog)

We all have a song or a personal soundtrack that speaks to us. But it doesn’t always say exactly what we want it to say.

In All is Not Lost — an HTML5 music collaboration between the band OK Go, the dance troupe and choreographers Pilobolus, and Google—you can embed your message in a music video and have the band dance it out. The band and Pilobolus dancers are filmed through a clear floor, making increasingly complex shapes and eventually words—and messages you can write yourself.

All is Not Lost is built in HTML5 with the browser Google Chrome in mind. Different shots are rendered in different browser windows that move, re-size and re-align throughout the piece. With HTML5’s canvas technology, these videos are drawn in perfect timing with the music.

OK Go are well-known for their delightfully creative music videos, including Here It Goes Again, their first work featuring half a dozen treadmills, and This Too Shall Pass, based around an extraordinary Rube Goldberg machine—both of which have become extraordinarily popular on YouTube. We’re excited to collaborate with them on another project that finds its natural home on the web.

This project also has a special significance for the team here at Google Japan, who worked on this collaboration alongside OK Go. In the wake of the devastating Tōhoku earthquake, the band suggested using All is Not Lost as a message of support to the Japanese people during this difficult time.

All is Not Lost is best experienced in Chrome at allisnotlo.st. For web developers curious about how the experience was created, you can read more on the Google Code Blog.

Posted by Keiko Hirayama, Senior Marketing Manager, Google Tokyo

National Geographic World Championship comes to Google

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long and Google Student blogs)

It’s summer vacation for many kids, but 51 students from 17 different regions have been spending their time off polishing and fine-tuning their geographic skills to prepare for this year’s National Geographic World Championship, a biennial geography competition hosted by the National Geographic Society.

This year, Google is the proud sponsor and on Wednesday, July 27, we’ll host the three final teams from Canada, Chinese Taipei and Russia at our campus in Mountain View, California. The preliminary rounds included a written exam on Sunday and activities at the San Francisco Zoo on Monday morning. Teams ventured to various zoo exhibits and were asked to identify climate maps and geographic locations associated with 10 different animal habitats housed throughout the zoo.

Teams from Canada, Chinese Taipei and Russia will move on to the National Geographic World Championship

Since most of you can’t be here to witness the action in person, we’re going to live stream the finale, hosted by Alex Trebek of the game show JEOPARDY!. Tune into the National Geographic YouTube Channel Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. PDT to cheer on these young competitors from wherever you are in the world.

Through this competition, we aim to inspire the future generation of leaders and innovators to become more geographically literate and have a deeper understanding about the world they live in. We hope you are as excited as we are to see such enthusiasm and passion around geographic education.

Please join us in wishing all of these young geographic experts the best of luck!

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP, Google Earth and Maps

Updated Code for Google +1 Buttons

As reported last month, the code for Google +1 buttons could be improved so that the buttons load faster and stop blocking other resources. Google updated the code and recommends publishers to generate a new code.

"We're introducing a new asynchronous snippet, allowing you to make the +1 experience even faster. The async snippet allows your web page to continue loading while your browser downloads the +1 JavaScript. By loading these elements in parallel, we're ensuring the HTTP request to get the +1 button JavaScript doesn't lead to an increase in your page load time," explains Google.


Google also optimized the existing code so that the button renders up to 3 times faster. Even if you don't update the code, you'll still benefit from these changes.

The code generator is easy to use and I've noticed that a lot of sites added a +1 button next to Facebook's "Like" button. It's unfortunate that Google didn't optimize the code when it was released.

Celebrating the creativity of YouTube’s Partners

(Cross-posted on the Public Policy and YouTube blogs)

College friends make trick basketball shots into a career. A small blender company gets international attention by blending glow sticks and iPads. A musician goes from bagging groceries to beatboxing around the world. One of the most inspiring things about YouTube is the way people across the U.S. and around the world use it as a way to express their passions—and to turn those passions into careers.

There are more than 20,000 people in the YouTube Partner Program, and numerous other companies and organizations use YouTube to draw attention to their causes and promote their businesses. Hundreds of people are making six-figure incomes on the site, enabling them to hire editors and producers and create even more original content. We’re helping our Partners grow their careers by running programs like YouTube NextUp and Creator Institute, and working to make the site a better and better place for people to grow businesses and build audiences.

To shine a light on the many inspiring things happening on YouTube, we’ve put together a report sharing the stories of 20 YouTube Partners who are changing lives, businesses and in some cases, history. You can download a PDF version of “YouTube: Celebrating the next generation of creative video” or visit it online at youtube.com/awesomeytpartners. YouTube is a very special place because of the passion of our Partners and the positivity they bring, and we hope you’ll find these stories as uplifting as we do.

Posted by Tom Pickett, Director of Content Operations and Online Creators, YouTube

HTML signatures support in Email Settings API

The Google Apps Email Settings API lets you set the default signature for users in your apps domain. The API now supports HTML-encoded strings in the Email Signature field as well.

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

For more information:
http://code.google.com/googleapps/domain/email_settings/developers_guide_protocol.html#GA_email_signature_main

New look on the way for Google and Google Apps. Find out more at http://whatsnew.googleapps.com/new-look

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Design Refresh for Google Web History

Google Web History is a service enabled by default when you create a Google account. It saves all your searches and the search results you click so you can quickly find them later and to help Google personalize results. It's called "Web History" instead of "Search History" because Google Toolbar has a feature that lets you send Google your browsing history.

Google updated the Web History interface to make it more consistent and easier to use. The new interface seems to be optimized for removing searches, not for browsing your history. There's a huge checkbox button at the top of the page and a button for removing "all Web History". While it's nice to see that Google doesn't hide the button for deleting search/browsing history, using a button for such a rare and destructive action feels wrong. It's like placing a button labeled "Delete all your messages" in Gmail's toolbar.

The previous interface included a special mode for removing items. When you clicked "remove items", Google added checkboxes next to the items and a "remove" button. The standard interface included star icons so you can quickly bookmark pages. Now the stars are a lot smaller and more difficult to see. It's likely that most people who visit Google Web History want to remove items or clear the entire history, not to search Web History or to bookmark pages.


{ Thanks, Louis. }

Find nearby deals with Google Shopper 1.5 for iPhone

(Cross-posted on the Google Commerce Blog)

We’ve recently made a few new changes to Google Shopper for iPhone that makes it easy to find nearby deals when you’re on-the-go.

In the latest version of Google Shopper, in addition to the ‘Shop’ tab, you’ll now see two new tabs at the bottom of the app: Offers and My Offers. The Offers tab displays a list, or map view, of nearby offers which businesses have submitted through Google Places - from restaurant and movie theater deals to discounts on tennis lessons or a round of golf.

Let's say you come across an offer for free dessert at a nearby restaurant, but you won't have time to use it until the weekend. You can save the offer for future use, then later view and redeem it from the My Offers tab.

Additionally, if Google Offers are available in your city, you’ll be able to view and redeem your purchased offers on the My Offers tab. Google Offers are currently available in Portland, Oregon, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York, with other cities to follow.


Google Shopper 1.5 is currently available for iPhone users in the US and UK with iOS 4.0 and higher. If you’re a current Google Shopper user, you’ll automatically receive an update. Download Google Shopper 1.5 by visiting the App Store. To download Google Shopper for Android, visit Android Market.

Posted by Richard Hung, Product Manager, Google Shopper Team

Making local online advertising easy with Google AdWords Express

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long, Inside AdWords and Small Business blogs)

Today, we're officially introducing AdWords Express, a faster and simpler way to start advertising online in under five minutes. We first launched this product as Google Boost last October for a small number of local businesses. Since then, we’ve continued to improve the product and enabled all U.S. businesses new to online advertising to reach customers with ease. AdWords Express is designed to help local businesses that aren't already AdWords advertisers create effective campaigns—watch the video below to see how you can create and run an online campaign from start to finish in just a few clicks:



AdWords Express helps potential customers find your website or Place page, and gives you a quick and straightforward way to connect with them and grow your business. You simply provide some basic business information, create your ad, and your campaign is ready to go.


After you sign up, the campaign will be automatically managed for you. AdWords Express will figure out which searches should trigger your ad to appear and displays it when these searches happen. Your ad will be shown in the Ads section of search results pages—on the top or right hand side—and in Google Maps with a distinctive blue pin. Customers can see your ad whether they’re searching on laptops or mobile phones.


As with all our ad products, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad. To make things even easier, AdWords Express optimizes your ads to get the most out of your advertising campaign and budget.

Many businesses are already finding success through AdWords, but we know many of you are looking for an easier way to begin advertising online. Visit www.google.com/awexpress to sign up or learn more about how it works.

Posted by Kiley McEvoy, Product Manager, AdWords Express

Think Quarterly: new insights and perspectives for our partners

We use research, analysis and insights—from inside and outside Google—to inform our decision-making and our products. We've spoken to a lot of our partners about how to help them access the same insights and conversations that inform our strategies, and today we're announcing a thought experiment for our clients called Think Quarterly. It’s intended to be a snapshot of what Google and other industry leaders are thinking about and inspired by today.

The first edition focuses on the broad concept of “innovation” and provides some perspectives on how it's possible to simultaneously lead and change the direction of an industry. We’ve included content from Macy’s CMO Peter Sachse on the future of mobile retail marketing, Ogilvy & Mather’s Russell Davies on the “Internet of Things,” and our very own Amit Singhal on how science fiction is becoming a reality in search.

Our aim with Think Quarterly is to regularly tap our homegrown visionaries, as well as heads of industry, innovators and experts from around the world, to lend their insights and analyses to our partners who are seeking to navigate the ever-changing digital world. We hope you enjoy (and +1) it at ThinkWithGoogle.com/quarterly.

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Senior Vice President of Advertising

Customer Service in the Early Days of Google

Many people complain that Google doesn't offer customer support for most of its services and it's really difficult to receive an email from Google that actually answers your questions. Here's a story from the book "I'm Feeling Lucky", written by the former Google employee Douglas Edwards. Back in 2000, Max Erdstein was Google's sole customer service rep and he could only use a laptop and a copy of Microsoft Outlook.

Max never envisioned customer service becoming an omnivorous blob consuming all his time, but soon he found himself responding robotically to more than a thousand emails a day from users around the world. Crushed under the load, he could do little than succinctly reply, "Thanks! Keep on Googling!" Non-English emails presented the biggest problem. We had no idea if people wanted to praise us or harangue us. We tried using off-the-web translation software, but it left us more confused than when we began.

Meanwhile, there were rumblings from sales VP Omid that supporting advertisers and search-services customers should be a higher priority. Could Max help with that, too? After all, unlike users, these people were actually paying us. Max was emptying an ocean with a teaspoon. As the backlog of unanswered emails began to swell, Sergey offered a useful perspective. "Why do you need to answer user email anyway?" he wanted to know.

To Sergey's thinking, responding to user questions was inefficient. If they wrote us about problems with Google, that was useful information to have. We should note the problems and fix them. That would make the users happier than if we wasted time explaining to them that we were working on the bugs. If users sent us compliments, we didn't need to write back because they already liked us. So really, wouldn't it be better not to respond at all? Or at best, maybe write some code to generate random replies that would be fine in most cases?

Google Image Search Shows More Information About Photos

Google's image search engine started to show additional information about photos after clicking the results. The landing page's sidebar includes EXIF data: camera, settings, focal length, flash usage and exposure bias.

"Additional details are found from within the image file, often saved there by the digital camera that took the picture or the application that generated the image. This data can also be manually added or changed after the image has been created. Google doesn't create or change this data in images created by others. The data is saved using the Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) specification and can include details about the type of camera that took the image, the camera settings (like aperture, focal length, exposure length, and flash settings), and the copyright and usage rights associated with the image by the person who created or edited the image," explains Google.

Another change is that you can click "more sizes" for other versions of the image and "similar images" for visually related images. The sidebar also includes the search result's snippet.


The sidebar can also include a list of related searches, which offer a lot of information about the image and help you find similar images:


Google should also add links to the previous and the next search result so that you don't have to go back to the list of results.

Google Maps Removes Third-Party Reviews

Google Places pages have been updated to use the new Google+ interface, but the biggest change is that Google dropped the reviews from third-party sites like Yelp, Menupages or Booking.com, while only relying on the reviews from Google users. "Based on careful thought about the future direction of Place pages, and feedback we've heard over the past few months, review snippets from other web sources have now been removed from Place pages. Rating and review counts reflect only those that've been written by fellow Google users, and as part of our continued commitment to helping you find what you want on the web, we're continuing to provide links to other review sites so you can get a comprehensive view of locations across the globe," explains Google.

To encourage users to share their feedback and improve place pages, Google added a button for uploading photos and made the button for writing reviews more prominent. It's clear that Google Maps will become even more social and will integrate with Google+, so the reviews from your social circles will be more relevant and will help you find a nice restaurant or a fancy hotel.


While Google Hotpot added a lot of new reviews from Google users, there are still many local business that don't have reviews. What's more, the reviews from Google users are usually short, superficial and often they only include a rating.


Search Engine Roundtable speculates that Google removed third-party reviews because of Yelp's complaints. "We are unhappy with the way Google uses our users' review on its Places page. However, there is no solution to the problem… Google's position is that we can take ourselves out of its search index if we don't want them to use our reviews on Places," said Yelp's CEO. After an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Yelp, Google launched Places, Hotpot and made Google Maps results more prominent in the list of Web search results. Yelp felt that its reviews improved a competing service and asked Google to remove Yelp reviews from Google Places. Google decided that it's a good idea to blackmail Yelp and tie the Web search index with the Places reviews (Google News has a different policy and the same goes for Product Search). A such a terrible practice made Google look like a huge company that used its power to crush rising startups.

TechCrunch found that "Yelp made a presentation to a roomful of state attorneys general at the Conference of Western Attorneys General about regulatory issues in search. On that panel was Vince Sollitto, VP of Giverment Affairs for Yelp, along with Dana Wagner, a Google lawyer, and well-known antitrust attorney Gary Reback. Yelp's presentation was titled 'Google Places: A Threat To Innovation and Competition.' The basic argument was that Google strong-armed review websites into providing their content for free, and then gave their own Places product preferential treatment in search."

Instead of removing the reviews from Yelp, Google yanked all third-party reviews and made Google Places less useful. There are still links to other review sites and there's still a small excerpt from a review in the list of search results, but Google Maps is no longer a comprehensive source of reviews, while Bing Maps looks more attractive. Google Maps ratings no longer use data from third-party reviews, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that Google still uses these reviews to rank results.

Google Apps highlights – 7/22/2011

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 added more than a dozen new features to Google Apps so far in July. Read on to learn about a few of our favorites: a new look for Gmail and Google Calendar, ways we’ve made Gmail safer and easier to use, a couple new mobile capabilities and more.

Preview new looks for Gmail and Google Calendar
A couple weeks ago we began rolling out a visual refresh to Gmail and Google Calendar, which is consistent with design changes happening across many other Google products. The idea is to make the interfaces even more focused, elastic and effortless. If you’d like to see the new look, you can try it out in Gmail and Google Calendar now.

Pick your favorite inbox style
In addition to Gmail’s new look, we added new options to let you choose an inbox layout that best suits your email habits. You can decide between Priority Inbox, important messages first, starred messages first or unread messages first—or stick with a classic inbox style.

Make multiple calls in Gmail
A while back we added the ability to place phone calls to land lines and mobile phones from your Gmail browser window for free or at greatly reduced calling rates. On Wednesday we made this feature better by allowing multiple simultaneous calls. You can place a second call by putting your first call on hold, or put your first call on hold to pick up another incoming phone call.


View ZIP and RAR contents from Gmail attachments
Before last week, when you received a ZIP or RAR attachment you had to download the file and extract its contents to view what someone sent you. Now you can simply view the contents of ZIP and RAR in your browser without the hassle of downloading and extracting. This is a faster, safer and more affordable way of viewing attachments than opening potentially harmful files with software on your computer.

Phishing detection
Gmail has also started keeping you safer by displaying more information about the origin of certain messages. Email coming from senders who aren’t in your contact list will display the sender’s full email address. We’ll also show you when messages come from an email-sending service (like a news site’s article sharing system) and display a warning when it looks like the sender may have spoofed a Gmail address.

Read receipts for business and government customers
Many organizations that use Gmail have asked for a way to tell if important sent email has been opened, and since Tuesday, Google Apps for Business and Government administrators can activate read receipts from the control panel. Administrators can control which users can request or return read receipts, and whether receipts are issued automatically or manually by recipients.

New spreadsheet keyboard shortcut menu and PPTX support
In Google Docs, this week we added a handy keyboard shortcut cheat sheet to help you work more quickly in spreadsheets. Just hit Ctrl+/ (or Cmd+/ on a Mac) to bring up the keyboard shortcut guide. We also launched support for PPTX conversions, so now you can bring all those PowerPoint files from your desktop into Google Docs, and edit them with your classmates and colleagues from the browser.


More options for videos in Google Docs
Recently we made it easier to work with videos that you upload Google Docs. Now you can embed Google Docs videos into Google Sites pages, embed them on other webpages and even add text captions to your videos.

Share files from the Google Docs Android app
In April we introduced the Google Docs app for Android devices, making it easier to find and open Google Docs files on your phone or tablet. A couple weeks ago we added the ability to share files right from the Google Docs app, so now you’re covered when you need to give others access to a document, spreadsheet, presentation or any other type of a file when you’re on the move.


Five new mobile site templates
The Google Sites mobile experience also got an upgrade. We added five new mobile site templates to make it easy to build and launch a site that looks great on the small screen. This video explains how:



Who’s gone Google?
It’s been another banner few weeks for new customers. A hearty welcome goes out to Aperam, Nexteer, Premier Salons, Quality Distribution and tens of thousands of other businesses that moved to Google Apps since our last update. We also welcome our new education and government customers, including the University of Connecticut and the City of Pittsburgh!

I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Improved sharing and more with Google Docs for Mobile

We recently updated the look of Google Docs for mobile browsers and added the ability to sort, narrow, and share multiple docs in your mobile docs list.

Release track:
Rapid & Scheduled

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:
All languages support by Google Docs for Mobile

How to access what's new:
- Go to docs.google.com from your supported device’s browser.
- Press ‘Sort’ to organize the list of docs visible in the mobile browser, or press ‘Narrow by’ to specify the subset of docs you’d like to see.
- To share from your mobile docs list, select one or more documents, press the Share button, and select ‘Share’, ‘Get the link to share’ for public or unlisted docs, or ‘Email as attachment’.

For more information:
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/07/share-your-docs-on-go-with-improved.html

New look on the way for Google and Google Apps. Find out more at http://whatsnew.googleapps.com/new-look

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Make multiple calls in Gmail

Users with the ‘Call phone’ functionality in Gmail can make or receive multiple calls. Up to now this was limited to one call at a time.

Release track:
Rapid*

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:
US English Only

For more information:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/make-multiple-calls-in-gmail.html

*Rapid Release track: Domains with ‘Enable scheduled releases’ checkbox disabled in the administrator control panel. Learn more

New look on the way for Google and Google Apps. Find out more at http://whatsnew.googleapps.com/new-look

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Improvements to Google Spreadsheets: PPTX import and shortcuts menu

Users can now convert PPTX files to Google presentations by either uploading the file from your desktop or converting the file from your documents list. Just follow the same simple steps as you normally would when converting files to Google Docs formats.

We have added a shortcuts menu to spreadsheets to make them easier to find. Hit Ctrl+/ (or Cmd+/ on a Mac) to pull up the list of shortcuts and learn new ways to speed up your workflow.

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/07/this-week-in-docs-and-sites.html

New look on the way for Google and Google Apps. Find out more at http://whatsnew.googleapps.com/new-look

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