Google Account History

Google's Account Settings page has a new section called "Account History". The section shows some links that let you manage Google search history, Google location history, YouTube search history and watch history (the videos you've watched).

Google also includes "pause" buttons for all the 4 data streams. When you click "pause", Google shows black-and-white pictures and tells you what you'll be missing.

"Pausing Google Search History may limit or disable features such as Google Now, more accurate search results and predictions, and saved searches on mobile devices. Pausing Google Location History will limit the functionality of some Google products over time, such as Google Maps and Google Now. Pausing YouTube Search History does not delete existing history. To view your history, remove individual items, or clear your entire history, go to your YouTube Search History page."

Here's what happens when you pause Google search history, Google location history, YouTube search history and watch history: the colorful images are converted to black and white.

YouTube's watch history is really useful because it shows all the videos you've watched from any device, as long as you are logged in. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't provide a search feature, so you have scroll until you find the right video. YouTube's watch history is the most important source for YouTube's recommendations, so you should delete some of the videos if you see unpleasant recommendations. Google also uses video history to improve ads, but you can opt out of interest-based Google ads.

YouTube's search history is used to show search suggestions and to improve recommendations. The first two suggestions from the screenshot below are from my search history:

Google search history is used to show search suggestions, to restrict results to pages you've visited, to personalize search results, to improve ads and to provide data for some Google Now cards. There's an important distinction between YouTube search history and Google search history: YouTube only saves your queries and the watch history is saved separately, while Google search history includes both your queries and the search results you've clicked on.

Location History started as a Google Latitude feature, but it's still available, even if Google Latitude was discontinued. To understand Location History, you need to know what Location Reporting is.

"Location Reporting allows Google to periodically store and use your device's most recent location data in connection with your Google Account. Location History allows Google to store a history of your location data from all devices where you are logged into your Google Account and have enabled Location Reporting."

Both features are related to mobile devices and they're used by Android/iOS apps like Google Maps, Google Search and Google+. Location History requires Location Reporting, but you can use Location Reporting while disabling Location History. Google uses your data to improve Google Maps search results based on the places that you've been, to show some Google Now cards and to show your data on a map. Here are some ways to disable Location History and Location Reporting from an Android device.

{ Thanks, Herin Maru. }

Google Home IQ

Christopher Bettig, Art Director at Google, posted some images from a Google mobile app called Google Home IQ.

"These are some illustrations and some screens of exploratory UI for a mobile app for Android and iOS, which is now a deprecated project. The app was to control a smart thermostat and had a very visual UI which needed to account and meet accessibility standards while also illustrating four main states and varying weather conditions outside the home. Each state was given a unique shape and a corresponding unique shaped UI icon for use in the app. Each of the four states (awake, away, home, and sleep) is illustrated with all the variable weather conditions."

Google now owns Nest, so that's probably one of the reasons why this app wasn't released. EnergySense was rumored to be the name of a Google service that lets you monitor and adjust energy use.

{ Thanks, Francisco Marujo. }

New Google Apps Mobile Management features for Android

The Device Policy mobile app for Android has been updated to provide several new features to assist organizations with meeting the challenge of both helping employees be more productive and protecting corporate data.

The new features include inactive account wipe, support for EAP-based WiFi networks, compromised device detection, and additional reporting fields to help admins better understand the devices their employees use and to troubleshoot issues.

Release Track:

Rapid release and Scheduled release

For more information:

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2014/05/new-google-apps-mobile-management.html

https://support.google.com/a/answer/1734200

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Mobile Interface for Chrome Web Store

One of the most annoying things about Chrome Web Store was that it didn't work if you used a mobile phone or a tablet. Google only displayed a message that allowed you to send a reminder to download the app or extension from the desktop Chrome.

Chrome Web Store now has a mobile interface, but only for individual apps and extensions. The homepage, category pages and the search feature still aren't available. If you find a link to a Chrome app or extension, you can now open it in your favorite mobile browsers, read the description, check the screenshots and some other details. You can't read or write reviews, install extensions remotely, find related extensions, go to the homepage or to a category.

{ via François Beaufort }

Google's Voice Command for Playing Music

Google's voice search feature still has a long way to go. If you say "play music" or "play some music" in the Google Search app for Android, Google starts the Play Music app and opens the "I'm Feeling Lucky" radio, which is based on your listening history. I think it makes more sense to continue playing your music and use the current queue instead of creating a new playlist.

Google still doesn't support basic voice actions like "next song", "skip", "pause" or "stop the music". If you say "next song", Google only shows the search results and a list of songs from Next, an American R&B musical group.

You can say "play Alicia Keys" and Google will shuffle Alicia's songs:

You can also say "play blues" and Google will start the Blues radio. If you say "play hip hop", Google Play Music will show a list of search results for "hip hop".

That's what happens if Play Music is the default app that handles music voice actions. You can change it by saying "play Coldplay" or something similar, quickly tapping the icon next to the app's name, picking one of the music apps and tapping the selected app (I could choose between Google Play, Google Play Music, TuneIn Radio and Poweramp, but your list will be different, depending on the apps you've installed). The next time when you use a music-related voice action, the app you've picked will handle it. Most apps will show a list of search results or start playing music.

{ via +Google }

YouTube Tests New Mobile Site UI

YouTube tests a new interface of the mobile site. It's closer to the mobile app UI, it shows the description and the number of likes and dislikes, a red "subscribe" button and action buttons are placed below the video.

There are other changes: the new YouTube logo, the "hamburger" menu, bigger thumbnails, new font, gray background.

{ Thanks, Nedas. }

Chrome's Data Compression, Now For Everyone

Chrome's data compression feature is now available for all Android and iOS users. The latest releases of Chrome for Android and iOS add this feature, which was previously limited to Chrome Beta for Android and some randomly picked users.

"When enabled, Chrome's data compression and bandwidth management can reduce data usage by up to 50% while browsing the web on Chrome for Android and iOS. This feature also enables Chrome's Safe Browsing technology which helps protect you from malicious webpages," informs Google.

This feature uses a Google proxy to compress all the pages you visit, except for HTTPS pages and the sites you visit in Chrome's incognito mode.

"When the Data Compression Proxy feature is enabled, Chrome Mobile opens a connection between your phone and one of the optimization servers running in Google's datacenters and relays all non-encrypted HTTP requests over this connection. (...) The browser-to-proxy connection runs over SSL, meaning that your browsing session is encrypted between your device and Google's servers. The proxy also performs intelligent compression and minification of HTML, JavaScript and CSS resources, which removes unnecessary whitespace, comments, and other metadata which are not essential to render the page. These optimizations, combined with mandatory gzip compression for all resources, can result in substantial bandwidth savings," informs Google. DNS lookups are performed by the proxy, while the images are converted to WebP and the resulting images are up to 80% smaller.

Chrome for iOS also adds the page translation feature, which was previously limited to Chrome for Android and desktop, while Chrome for Android lets you add to the homescreen shortcuts to any page or web app.

As usually, "these updates will be rolling out over the next few days", so don't expect to get the latest version of Mobile Chrome right away.

More Holiday Decorations in Google Search

Google's mobile search interface shows some special decorations when you search for [Christmas], [Kwanzaa] or some queries that include them.

They're not animated like the desktop decorations, but they fill the entire search results page.

Google had a lot of festive decorations and Easter Eggs this holiday seasons: Hanukkah and Festivus, Christmas, Karaoke player for carols, Google Maps costume.

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Android and Google's Shifting Priorities

I've been reading Fred Vogelstein's book "Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution" (Amazon, Google Play) and realized that Android wasn't that important for Google until 2009-2010, when Motorola Droid and Nexus One were launched. It was an operating system designed to compete with Microsoft's Windows Mobile that ended up competing with Apple's iOS. Back in 2007 and 2008, Google's partnership with Apple was more important than Android, a project that was understaffed. Android only became important when Google realized that Apple's dominance in the mobile space could spell trouble for Google.

Here are some quotes:

1. "Gundotra was putting the Android team on the spot. “I said, 'Convince me that this [Android] is something we [Google] should believe in,' and I know they had never had anyone ask those questions, and it was tough for them. 'Who are you to ask these questions again?' they wondered.” A former senior member of the Android team echoed this feeling: “In the early days, Google Mobile [the team working with Apple on the iPhone] hated us. I mean, they thought we were the biggest pain in the ass in the world. I know Vic Gundotra [who now runs Google's competitor to Facebook, Google Plus] has come around and been a great advocate of Android, but he really hated it at first. He thought [Android] would be a distraction that would upset his relationship with Steve Jobs. There was a lot of butting of heads and arguments internally about strategy and things like that."

2. "The Jobs meeting was particularly difficult for Rubin, friends say. He was indeed as furious as Jobs described, and he almost quit Google over it. He understood what his bosses were saying intellectually. But Jobs had bullied him in front of his bosses, and they hadn't backed him up. For a while thereafter he had a sign on his office whiteboard that read STEVE JOBS STOLE MY LUNCH MONEY."

3. "Schmidt says today that not only had he and Jobs talked about Android, he'd made it clear to Jobs that in terms of Google priorities, iPhone came first. 'I think maybe Andy [Rubin] understood the importance of Android back then, but certainly the rest of Google did not. We were busy doing other things,' Schmidt said to me in 2011."

4. Eric Schmidt in 2011: "Larry and Sergey and I understood the strategic value of Android, but none of us I think foresaw how strategic it would become. Every once in a while a perfect storm occurs. Your competitors make some mistakes. You end up with the right product at the right time. There are really no other good choices of products. It all sort of happens in a moment. That's what happened with Android."

Google's Christmas Carols Easter Egg

Google has a new Easter Egg for Christmas, but this time it's only for mobile devices. Search for [let's go caroling] using an Android or iOS device or use voice search and say "let's go caroling" and you'll see a list of 5 carols you can play: "Jingle Bells", "Up on the House Top", "Deck the Halls", "O Christmas Tree" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". Tap one of the carols and Google will start playing the karaoke version of the carol, while also displaying the lyrics.

Maybe this Easter Egg will actually be useful.

10 New Chromecast Apps

The number of apps that support Chromecast has increased: there are 10 new apps and most of them are free. Here's the list:

* VEVO (Android, iOS) - music videos app, available in a few countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, UK and US.

* Red Bull.TV (Android, iOS) - videos and shows

* Songza (Android) - music streaming, online radio (there's an iOS app, but it doesn't support Chromecast yet)

* PostTV (Android) - news from Washington Post

* Viki (Android, iOS) - "Korean dramas, Taiwanese, Chinese and Filipino dramas, Telenovelas, Japanese dramas and anime, American cartoons, NBC Universal, History Channel, A&E, E! TV shows, as well as movies from Indonesia, Hong Kong"

* Revision3 (Android, iOS) - shows

* BeyondPod (Android) - podcast manager

* Plex (Android) - media player, Chromecast support only for videos, the app costs $5 (there's an iOS app, but it doesn't support Chromecast yet)

* Avia (Android) - media player, Chromecast support for local videos, music and photos, requires an in-app purchase that costs $3. I tried the app and it works well for local files, but the Google Cast API supports a small number of file formats

* RealPlayer Cloud (Android, iOS) - movie player that stores your videos online, US and Canada only

"There's no need to huddle around small screens when you can share your own photos and videos using your phone, tablet, or laptop," mentions Google.

From what I tried, the most interesting apps seem to be Songza (for playing online music) and Avia (for playing local files).

Google's Mobile Image Search Adds Menu

Google updated the mobile interface for Image Search launched in October. I've only noticed the change in Chrome and Safari for iPhone, but it doesn't seem to be an experiment.

Google now shows a three-dot menu with options like "visit page", "view image", "send feedback" and "search by image", instead of using links. You can still swipe to go to the next or previous image result and tapping the image sends you to the most relevant page that includes it.

Chromecast Game

If you have a Chromecast and you want to try a new app that supports Google's dongle, install TicTacToe for Android or for iOS. It's a very simple game that requires 2 players and displays the results on your TV. You can install it on an Android phone or tablet, on an iPhone or iPad, but you need 2 devices to play the game.

While the game is pretty basic, it shows that Chromecast isn't just for streaming music and video. Once the Google Cast API is out of beta, you'll find a lot more interesting apps. TicTacToe is based on this sample app.

{ via Reddit }

Bringing hobbits, dwarves and dragons to screens everywhere

You don’t need to be besties with a Wizard to share an adventure in Middle-earth—just point your favorite browser to goo.gl/TheHobbit on your laptop, phone or tablet to check out “Journey through Middle-earth,” the latest Chrome Experiment.

Inspired by the upcoming motion picture "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” “Journey through Middle-earth” brings the locations and characters from the movie trilogy to life with a mix of modern web technologies. It was developed by North Kingdom in collaboration with Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures.

Your adventure starts on a beautiful, interactive map of Middle-earth. Zoom in to explore Trollshaw Forest, Rivendell and Dol Guldur (with more locations to come in the next few weeks). Click on each one to learn its history and meet the characters who inhabit it, or dive further to test your wits on a unique survival challenge.

The immersive 3D graphics in “Journey through Middle-earth” were built with CSS3 and WebGL, which you might recognize from previous Chrome Experiments. But “Journey through Middle-earth” is the first Chrome Experiment designed to bring this beautiful, 3D experience to mobile, thanks to support for WebGL in Chrome for Android on devices with high-end graphics cards.

The rich audio effects and sound manipulation are delivered through the Web Audio API, which is now supported on both Chrome for Android and Chrome for iPhone and iPad. Although WebGL isn’t supported on iOS, Chrome users can still experience most of “Journey through Middle-earth” on their iPhones and iPads. We can’t wait to see what sort of rich experiences developers will build as modern web technologies become available on more types of devices.

Circle +Google Chrome to stay updated as more Middle-earth locations get released in the coming weeks. You can also check out the Chromium Blog and read the team’s technical case study if you feel like geeking out a bit more.

Adventure is a click away. Just watch out for the trolls!

Posted by Posted by Christos Apartoglou, Product Marketing Manager & Part-time Dragon-slayer

Mobile First

A few years ago, many people complained that mobile sites and mobile apps are too limited. They couldn't include all the features from their desktop counterparts and some thought that was a bad thing.

Fast forward today and you'll notice that Google's desktop sites look more and more like Google's mobile apps. Most Google redesigns are all about taking mobile interfaces and adding them to the desktop. That's one of the reasons why many Google services drop advanced features and opt for simplified interfaces. This way, everything looks consistent and users can quickly switch from the mobile apps to the desktop apps.

Here are some examples:

1. The Google Maps redesign started with the iPhone app, continued with the desktop site and then the Android app.

2. The app launcher from the Google navigation bar was first available in the Google Search app for iOS.

3. Google Play's desktop interface had a lot of advanced features that were removed when Google updated the site to make it look more like the Android app.

4. The Google+ photo editor and Chrome Office editor are based on mobile apps that were ported to Native Client. You're now using the desktop to run mobile apps (only in Chrome).

5. Google Keep for Android has a lot more features than Google Keep for desktop. For example, you can't reorder notes or add more than one image in Google Keep for desktop.

Somehow, the most innovative and most interesting apps are now in the mobile space. That's where the users are moving and where things are constantly changing. Mobile is a flourishing testbed for new ideas.

New Gmail Interface for iPad

Google updated the Gmail app for iOS and added a new interface for iPad. The sidebar that lets you go to a label or a different mail account is now persistent in the landscape mode and it's a lot smaller. It only shows your inbox tabs and the number of unread messages from each tab, but you can tap the arrow icon to find your labels. Unfortunately, you can't select some labels that are always displayed, like you can do in the desktop Gmail.

The sidebar that displays the messages from the current view is now hidden in the portrait mode, so you can better read your mail. You need to tap the three dot icon to see the list of messages, but you can also swipe from the left edge. The built-in mail client from iOS also hides the messages list in portrait mode.

There's also a full-screen compose box, so you get more room to write your messages.

Google mentions some other improvements: a better scrolling experience and some iOS7 features like the new keyboard.

The new Gmail for iPad has a lot in common with the updated Google Drive app for iPad. Google spends a lot of resources to make its UIs more consistent, so I wouldn't be surprised to see these interfaces added to the desktop.

{ via Gmail Blog }

Background Color Experiment in Google Mobile Search

Google experiments with a slightly different mobile search interface that has a different background color to emphasize the cards. "In this experiment, they've made the background darker in colour to add more contrast and make the cards stand out more," says Lee Jarratt, who noticed the new interface.

Here's the regular interface:

{ Thanks, Lee. }

New Google Image Search for Mobile

Google's image search engine has a new interface for smartphones and tablets. The new UI looks just like the desktop UI, but you can use swipes to navigate between the image results.

Here are some screenshots from my Nexus 7. When you tap an image result, a black box with a bigger version of the image will open. You can also find some additional information about the image.

Swipe left to see the next image result, swipe right to go to the previous result. Gestures work just like the left/right keyboard shortcuts in the desktop interface. Tap an image to open the page that includes it.

A similar interface is available for smartphones. Here's a screenshot from an iPhone running iOS7:

Google will probably say that it changed the interface to make it more consistent and provide an unified interface for both desktop and mobile devices. There are some other advantages: you can scroll down to see more results, you can scroll up and quickly change the query or switch to web search.

I find the old interface more intuitive and better suited for mobile devices. It made it more obvious that you can use gestures by showing the previous and the next image result, search results didn't move around and you could find more information about the images. The new smartphone interface only displays the domain name and it no longer shows the title of the page and the image size (the tablet interface still shows them). Here's a screenshot of the old UI:

Google Mobile Image Search Regression

Google has a great mobile interface for image search. It was launched in 2010 and improved multiple times since then. You can use swipes to go to the next image result or to the previous one. It looks like Google changed the image search UI for smartphones and tablets and now sends you to a landing page that shows the image and loads the corresponding page in the background. Intuitive gestures are gone and now you have to use the back button.

This seems to be limited to iPhones and iPads running iOS 7, so it's probably a bug. A lot of people complain about this in the Google Search Forum.

There are many reasons why the new interface is strange: loading the associated page uses more bandwidth and that's not a good idea for mobile devices, it's more difficult to check multiple search results, thumbnails are smaller and even the desktop interface shows a bigger image instead of sending users to a new page.

Card-Style Interface for Google Mobile Search

As previously anticipated, Google's mobile site has a new layout that uses cards, just like Google Now, Google Maps, Google+ and an increasingly long list of Google services and apps.

"A new look and feel for Google Search and ads on your phones and tablets. It's cleaner and simpler, optimized for touch, with results clustered on cards so you can focus on the answers you're looking for," informs Google's search blog.

Ads stand out a lot more and, depending on your phone's resolution and screen size, you might not even see a regular search result without scrolling down. Google shows up to 2 ads at the top of the page and no longer uses a different background color. There's just a small "Ad" label next to the URL.

Sections are clearly separated and there's more white space, so the information density is lower.

Pagination has been simplified and you can only go to the previous or the next page of results and to the first results page.