Hey—we've moved. Visit
The Keyword
for all the latest news and stories from Google
Official Blog
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
5 years of Gmail
April 2, 2009
It was five years ago yesterday that
Gmail launched
by giving out a gig. Back then, a typical webmail account could only store about five megabytes of mail. It's hard to remember what those days were like, considering that today, you can send a single 20 megabyte attachment, four times the size of an entire webmail account from 2004. A gigabyte of online storage may have been what got a lot of people to give Gmail a try, but changes to the email experience — like search, labels, conversation view, and strong spam protection — seem to be what kept people around.
The engineers who created Gmail were frustrated with the existing email solutions, and wanted to build a better tool for people who got a lot of mail, which meant rethinking everything from the ground up. They built an architecture that was a combination of HTML and JavaScript (this later became known as
AJAX
), which offered a smoother, faster interface. And they designed Gmail with the most demanding users in mind — Googlers who got hundreds of messages each day and power users with broadband connections, back when 56k modems were still the norm.
The last 5 years have brought about a lot of change, and Gmail is now more than just mail. We added
chat
, and then
video chat
. We've invested in
under-the-hood changes
that allow for the rapid development that's been happening lately in Gmail Labs — 43 experimental features in 43 weeks including
tasks
,
offline
,
undo send
, and even some
silly stuff
. What started as internal email for Google employees is now used by more than a million companies and tens of millions of people in 52 languages. And one gigabyte doesn't feel like very much space anymore.
Today's email problems are different than the problems people had five years ago, and Gmail's most demanding users continue to push it to its limits. We're getting more mail and communicating in more ways than ever before. Web browsers are getting faster and offering functionality that people could only dream of in 2004. We expect the changes over the next five years to be even more radical than those of the past five. We're already getting excited about some new stuff we're testing internally, and we'll keep you updated on our progress on the
Gmail Blog
.
Posted by Todd Jackson, Gmail Product Manager
ARIA for Google Calendar, Finance and News: In praise of timely information access
April 2, 2009
From time to time, our own
T.V. Raman
shares his tips on how to use Google from his perspective as a technologist who cannot see -- tips that sighted people, among others, may also find useful.
In our continued efforts to make Google applications more accessible, we have launched ARIA support for
several Google applications
over the last few months.
W3C ARIA
is a set of HTML DOM properties that enables adaptive technologies like screenreaders to work better with dynamic web applications. As with previous ARIA-enabled Google solutions, screenreader users can now switch on ARIA support in the following applications by activating an invisible Enable Screenreader Support link. Alternatively, simply browse to the links in this blog with a supporting screenreader and Firefox 3.0 to experience the interface enhancements. If you do not have a screenreader installed, but are curious to experience what eyes-free interaction with these applications feels like, we recommend the freely downloadable Firefox enhancement
Fire Vox by Charles Chen
.
Google Calendar
: The ARIA-enhanced Google Calendar enables speech-enabled access to the day view in Google Calendar. You can use the keyboard to move through events, move through the days of the week, as well as to cycle through your various calendars. As you work with the calendar, the application raises appropriate DOM events through W3C ARIA to invoke the relevant spoken feedback through the screenreader.
Google Finance
: The Finance page can be viewed as a set of logical panes, with related content appearing as items in each pane. The ARIA-enhanced version of Google Finance enables you to switch panes, and navigate the current pane with the arrow keys. Navigation produces spoken feedback through the screenreader. In addition, Google Finance provides several power user tools, including a stock screener, all of which are speech-enabled through ARIA. These power user tools provide interesting examples for Web developers experimenting with ARIA. (ARIA support for Finance was developed by intern Svetoslav Ganov as his starter project.)
Google News
: Finally, we have added ARIA support to enable rapid eyes-free access to Google News. These enhancements follow the same pattern as seen earlier for Google Finance, and the ability to navigate between the different views provided by Google News, (e.g., World News vs Sports enables rapid access to the large volume of news that is accessible via the Google News interface).
As with all of our ARIA-enhanced services, you can obtain additional help by pressing the
?
key to hear the available list of shortcuts. If you're interested in discussing these enhancements, visit the
Google Group for accessibility
.
Posted by T. V. Raman, Research Scientist, and Charles L. Chen, Software Engineer
CADIE awakens
April 1, 2009
We do lots of research here at Google, and we release lots of products. And we always hope that the research we do and the products that result will change the world.
CADIE, we're fairly certain,
is one of those that will
. We won't pretend to know the future of the world's first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity, but we're eager to learn what we can, and to watch and study while CADIE learns what she can. So you can expect to see her influence crop up in a number of Google products in the months to come. That will happen slowly and carefully, though, and we ask for your patience as we work through a few initial bugs. It seems CADIE has a mind of her own...
Posted by Michael Krantz, Team CADIE
Local flavor for Google Suggest
March 31, 2009
Since the launch of Google Suggest
last August
, you may already be used to the magic feeling of getting real-time suggestions just after typing a few keystrokes — that is, if you're searching on Google.com. But what if you're doing a search on Google in the U.K., India, Ireland or Australia?
Today we're happy to announce the international launch of Google Suggest. We've localized our suggestions to account for various cultural and local factors to offer suggestions that look familiar to our users. For example, English users in different countries will get suggestions that feel natural:
If you type [liver] in the
U.K.
, you're probably a Liverpool fan (but in the
U.S.
you'll get more suggestions about liver diseases):
In
Australia
, typing [kan] will offer suggestions about Australia's most famous animal:
In
India
, where the mobile phone market is exploding, it's no wonder that typing [no] leads to:
In
Ireland
, there are [pubs] everywhere:
While in the
Maldives
, typing [ato] leads to:
Google Suggest now covers 155 domains in 51 languages. Special thanks go to the Suggest team in Israel for their hard work in making this a reality.
So go ahead and start using Google Suggest wherever you are, and enjoy the special flavor of local suggestions.
Posted by David Kadouch, Product Manager
Analytics in Latin America
March 31, 2009
If you run an e-commerce site or use AdWords to direct traffic to your business' webpage, chances are you're interested in knowing what visitors to your site are clicking on, what content interests these potential customers and what avenues brought them there. The more you know about how people engage with your site, the better you are able to design successful advertising campaigns to help grow your business.
In Latin America, online advertising is growing as more and more small businesses initiate an online presence and publicize their efforts through search and display advertising. But less than 5% of web properties throughout Latin America rely on analysis tools to improve their website's performance. Last week, our offices throughout the region hosted several Analytics-themed events to give agencies and other clients a better look at several Google measurement tools that provide people with the means to analyze their site's flow of data, interest and readership in order to build a better advertising campaign.
In Mexico City, advertisers got together to learn about
Insights for Search
,
Ad Planner
,
YouTube Insights
,
Analytics
,
Sitemaps
and
Website Optimizer
, as well as
DoubleClick
tools. Presentations were designed to give companies an in-depth look at the Google tools that can be helpful for planning their marketing budgets during an economic downturn. Being able to measure data on what content interests people and where consumers are searching for information can help advertisers be more selective about how they invest ad budget. Since the great majority of consumers go online for information before making a purchase, the goal of the seminar was to familiarize advertisers with tools that can increase the reach of their campaigns, while giving them a better idea of what works and what people are searching for.
Meanwhile, our Analytics guru Avinash Kaushik visited São Paulo and Buenos Aires to speak to clients about web analytics and how to make the most of online marketing through analyzing metrics (check out his recent post on
bounce rate
for related information). Avinash made web analytics fun and accessible with colloquial comparisons (referring sites as 'BFFs'), and demonstrated how to
optimize a website's performance
with changes in color and layout, among other things. He was accompanied by Google's Latin America managing director Alexandre Hohagen, Brazil's country manager Alex Dias, and Argentina's country manager Adriana Noreña at a succession of events revolving around web metrics and website optimization.
The response and interest from customers and agencies to all of these events was indicative of the huge need for metrics and the ability to track ROI for their marketing investments, especially during these difficult times. For more information on Google Analytics tools, check out the
Google Analytics Blog
, the
Website Optimizer Blog
and the
Conversion Room blog
.
Posted by Alfonso Luna, Marketing Director, Latin America
Google's newest venture
March 30, 2009
Today we're excited to announce
Google Ventures
, Google's new venture capital fund. This is Google's effort to take advantage of our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies. By borrowing the best practices of top-tier, financially focused venture capital firms and bringing to bear Google's unique technical expertise and brand, we think we can find young companies with truly awesome potential and encourage their development into successful businesses.
At its core, Google Ventures is charged with finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups. We'll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven't thought of yet. Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.
Economically, times are tough, but great ideas come when they will. If anything, we think the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the "next big thing," and we'll be working hard to find them. If you think you have the next big idea, or if you just want to to learn more, please see our website at
www.google.com/ventures
.
Posted by Rich Miner and Bill Maris, Managing Partners, Google Ventures
Email in Indian languages
March 30, 2009
It's hard for me to imagine going without email for a day. It's such an easy and convenient way to communicate with my friends and family. However, there was one limitation that bothered me: my family members and friends who prefer to communicate in Hindi did not have an easy way to type and send email in their language of choice. I am extremely happy to announce the launch of a new feature in Gmail that makes it easy to type email in Indian languages.
When you compose a new mail in Gmail, you should now see an icon with an Indian character, as the screenshot below shows. This feature is enabled by default for Gmail users in India. If you do not see this function enabled by default, you will need to go the "Settings" page and enable this option in the "Language" section.
When you click the Indian languages icon, you can type words the way they sound in English and Gmail will automatically convert the word to its Indian local language equivalent. For example, if a Hindi speaker types "namaste" we will transliterate this to "नमस्ते." Similarly, "vanakkam" in Tamil will become "வணக்கம்." We currently support five Indian languages -- Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam -- and you can select the language of your choice from the drop-down list next to the icon.
We built this new feature using Google's transliteration technology, which is also available on
Google India Labs
,
Orkut
,
Blogger
and
iGoogle
. I hope you find this feature useful to communicate with those of your friends and family who prefer to write in their native language, and it will be available soon to businesses and schools using Google Apps. Now back to replying to all those Hindi emails I got from my family and friends today!
Posted by Chandramouli Mahadevan, Software Engineer
Labels
accessibility
41
acquisition
26
ads
131
Africa
19
Android
59
apps
419
April 1
4
Asia
39
books + book search
48
commerce
12
computing history
7
crisis response
33
culture
12
developers
120
diversity
35
doodles
68
education and research
144
entrepreneurs at Google
14
Europe
46
faster web
16
free expression
61
google.org
73
googleplus
50
googlers and culture
202
green
102
Latin America
18
maps and earth
194
mobile
125
online safety
19
open source
19
photos
39
policy and issues
139
politics
71
privacy
66
recruiting and hiring
32
scholarships
31
search
505
search quality
24
search trends
118
security
36
small business
31
user experience and usability
41
youtube and video
140
Archive
2016
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2006
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2005
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2004
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Feed
Google
on
Follow @google
Follow
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.
Follow
