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Introducing the Breaking Borders Awards
January 6, 2010
(Cross-posted from the
Public Policy Blog
)
Last year we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. When I visited Berlin last November to participate in a conference entitled
Breaking Borders
, politicians, policy makers, netizens and journalists all agreed on the importance of freedom of expression for a functioning democracy. The web is providing once unimaginable possibilities for political participation, free exchange of information and democratic movements around the world.
As part of the Berlin conference, we announced a plan to work with an NGO called
Global Voices
and with
Thomson Reuters
to establish the Breaking Borders Awards.
The awards will honor outstanding web projects by individuals or groups who have shown courage, energy and resourcefulness in using the Internet to promote freedom of expression, making us aware of diverse political viewpoints and standing up to those who censor information. The winners will be those who are making a real difference. We are delighted to
share further details about the awards and invite nominations
.
Closing date for submissions is February 15. Details on how to apply and the opportunities to join the award committee can be found on the website.
Posted by Rachel Whetstone, Vice President Global Communications and Public Affairs
Our new approach to buying a mobile phone
January 5, 2010
Android was developed with one simple idea: Open up mobile devices to enable greater innovation that will benefit users everywhere.
We first executed on this vision a little over a year ago, when we launched Android on one device with one operator in one country. Today, we have 20 devices with 59 operators in 48 countries and 19 languages. And because Android is free and open source, it continues to flourish. Android allows devices to be built faster, and at lower cost. And anyone can build anything on top of the platform. This ultimately benefits users.
To help adapt Android to the needs of consumers, we apply our engineering resources to selected projects with handset makers and operators. Together we have improved the rate and pace of innovation in mobile phones. The volume and variety of Android devices today has exceeded even our most optimistic expectations. And we believe we can accelerate the pace of innovation further. So we thought: What if we work even more closely with our partners to create devices which showcase some of the great software technology we've been working on? And what if we make those devices available for purchase through a new, simple online web store from Google?
Well, today we're pleased to announce a new way for consumers to purchase a mobile phone through a
Google hosted web store
. The goal of this new consumer channel is to provide an efficient way to connect Google's online users with selected Android devices. We also want to make the overall user experience simple: a simple purchasing process, simple service plans from operators, simple and worry-free delivery and start-up.
The first phone we'll be selling through this new web store is the Nexus One — a convergence point for mobile technology, apps and the Internet. Nexus One is an exemplar of what's possible on mobile devices through Android — when cool apps meet a fast, bright and connected computer that fits in your pocket. The Nexus One belongs in the emerging class of devices which we call "superphones." It's the first in what we expect to be a series of products which we will bring to market with our operator and hardware partners and sell through our online store.
Manufactured by HTC, the Nexus One features dynamic noise suppression from Audience, Inc., a large 3.7" OLED display for deep contrast and brilliant colors and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ chipset for blazing speeds. Running on Android 2.1, the newest version of Eclair, the software includes innovations like a voice-enabled keyboard so you can speak into any text field, fun Live Wallpapers, a 3D photo gallery for richer media experiences and lots more. Of course, it also comes with a host of popular Google applications, including Gmail, Google Voice and Google Maps Navigation.
Today, the web store allows you to purchase the Nexus One without operator service or with service from T-Mobile USA. We expect to add more operators, more devices and more countries in the future, including Verizon Wireless in the U.S. and Vodafone in Europe. To learn more about the Nexus One, and our new web store, we recommend checking it out for yourself by visiting
www.google.com/phone
. We look forward to seeing how our new program and the Nexus One contributes to accelerating innovation on mobile products for the benefit of users worldwide.
Posted by Mario Queiroz, VP of Product Management
Five years of Google blogging
December 31, 2009
It's time again for our annual wrap-up of blogging at Google. You may have noticed 2009 marked our fifth year here on the Official Google Blog — our
first post
was in April 2004 — and it was our busiest year yet. This is our 423rd post of 2009 — a 15 percent increase over
last year
. We're also pleased to note that a total of 14,493,472 readers stopped by this year, a 21 percent increase. You hail from all over: more than half of visitors are outside of the U.S. The other top countries are (in order) U.K., India, Canada, Germany and France.
What captured your attention this year? Here are the top 10 posts of 2009, by unique pageviews:
Introducing the Google Chrome OS
- 2,591,794 unique pageviews (more than 12 percent of the year's total). The announcement of our open source operating system received more than 4x the views of any other post.
Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave
- 639,225. Wave-mania struck after we introduced a new product for collaboration and communication at our Google I/O conference.
Here comes Google Voice
- 357,084. We released a preview of this application to help you better manage your voice communications.
"This site may harm your computer" on every search result?!?!
- 320,435. A short-lived error affecting Google search results led to confusion and concern; this post cleared it up.
Email in Indian languages
- 224,052. A transliteration feature in Gmail that makes it easier to type in Indian languages was a hit. More than one million readers of the blog in 2009 were from India — a 53 percent increase over 2008.
Releasing the Chromium OS open source project
- 217,424. A few months after announcing our operating system project, we open-sourced it as Chromium OS.
Now you see it, now you don't
- 165,329. We introduced a new, clean version of our classic homepage.
Google Apps is out of beta (yes, really)
- 164,319. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk all lost their beta tags (in Gmail's case, after five years!).
Now S-U-P-E-R-sized!
- 155,196. A "small" change increasing the size of the Google search box got a lot of attention.
Introducing Google Public DNS
- 143,122. We launched our public DNS resolver, which converts domain names into unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers.
We also developed a few different series of posts this year: one on the
power of measurement
, for people who want to improve the performance of their websites; a weekly series
focused on search
; and another on the latest in the
world of Google Apps
.
As always, we had some fun in 2009, with
grass-mowing goats
and a
panda-obsessed
Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity
(CADIE) on April Fools' Day. Our curiosity was piqued by
Atlantis (or not)
under the sea, constellations in
Google Sky Map
and a
fresnel lens
somewhere in between.
Finally, the Google Blog network continues to grow. This year, we welcomed blogs dedicated to
Google Wave
,
Google New Zealand
,
Data Liberation
,
Google Voice
,
Google Arabia
,
Google Thailand
,
European Public Policy
and
Google Chrome
— among others — to our
blogging family
.
Beyond the blogs, in February we jumped head-first into the Twitterverse, starting our
@google
account with a
geeky tweet
. Since then, we've tweeted more than 1,000 times, and are grateful to have gathered two million or so followers. That puts us in the company of
@algore
and
@ashsimpsonwentz
, and (today, at least) just 65,000 or so followers behind a certain
@ladygaga
(although we're pretty sure that gap is only going to grow — no way we can compete with her outfits). Around 75 other Google entities and teams have gotten into the Twitter act this year as well, so we built a
directory
to help you keep up with all the action. Twitter also was our biggest non-Google referrer to the blog in 2009, a clear sign of its rapid growth in popularity.
Thanks for sticking with us through all of our goings-on over the past 12 months. We look forward to having you back for more in 2010. In the meantime, happy New Year!
Posted by Emily Wood and Jordan Newman, Editors, Google Blog Team
Ordinary citizens, extraordinary videos
December 29, 2009
(Cross-posted from
Citizentube
and the
YouTube Blog
)
The images are grainy, often jerky and hard to follow (like most footage shot using hand-held cameras and cellphones), but the message is unmistakable: in the months since the disputed Iranian presidential election in June, the people of Iran have become fluent in the new language of citizen video reporting. What might have seemed an isolated moment immediately following the election, when we watched videos of Iranians
marching
,
battling
and even
dying
on the streets of Tehran, appears to have become an essential part of their struggle.
At YouTube, we have been
watching
week after week as new videos have appeared on the site within hours of every single protest or similar event reported from Iran in the past six months. Thousands of uploads have brought the fear and tension of these protests to YouTube, inviting millions of views around the world. It is as if the revolts that are taking place could not do so outside the eye of the camera.
Unlike traditional news footage from foreign correspondents (currently prohibited in Iran), these videos are the voice of the people —
unfiltered
,
unedited
and with a single, sometimes
disturbing
point of view. No professional film could capture the one-to-one feeling of watching an ordinary citizen's images of unrest in his or her own country.
We are constantly amazed by the videos our community uploads, whether from their own backyards or the streets of a faraway land. Armed with only a camera and a means to reach the Internet, anyone can ask another to bear witness to their lives. Given the nature of the YouTube videos from Iran, we may want to turn away from some of the images we see, but we keep watching, knowing that we are seeing through the eyes of a people who have discovered the power of information — despite the often extreme measures their government is using to try to stop them.
We will continue to provide the platform for you to see what they see, hear their voices and learn about their struggles. And we encourage you to join the global conversation. Leave a comment, upload your own response video or share a moving moment with someone else.
Posted by Olivia Ma, YouTube News and Politics
This week in search 12/25/09
December 25, 2009
This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label
This week in search
and subscribe to the series. - Ed.
Googlers are all about the holidays, and we're always delighted to bring some extra holiday cheer to the web. Here are some of this year's festive digital offerings for you.
Holiday Google doodles
As you likely noticed, the Google homepage has been adorned with a fun series of holiday postcards this week. From snowmen to festive palm trees, each doodle depicts a postcard with a fun seasonal scene. Did you miss any of them? Check out all five days at our
holiday logo gallery
.
NORAD tracks Santa
This week, in partnership with
NORAD
, we helped share the excitement of following Santa Claus's travels with Google Maps and the Google Earth plugin. At the NORAD Santa site, children have been following the jolly journey from chimney to chimney across the globe. Don't miss the fun YouTube video of Santa's trip last year, as well as some great holiday games to play, at
NORADSanta.org
.
From all of us at Google, have a safe and happy holiday season. We'll see you back here next year!
Posted by Andrew Schulte, Associate Product Marketing Manager
Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Track Santa and his sleigh with NORAD
December 23, 2009
Sipping warm cider, watching the snow fall, unwrapping gifts — these holiday traditions always seem to produce many of the year's sweetest memories. Several years ago, we added another holiday tradition to our list — helping NORAD keep tabs on Santa every Christmas Eve.
NORAD's Santa-tracking
dates back to 1955
, when a Sears and Roebuck magazine ad in Colorado Springs accidentally directed readers to call NORAD instead of the "Talk-to-Santa" hotline they were advertising. Embracing the holiday spirit, the folks at NORAD provided callers with Santa's location
according to their radar
and have tracked his journey ever since. Many years later, in 2004, the same holiday spirit inspired us to use Google Earth — it was called "Keyhole Earth Viewer" back then — to display Santa's voyage around the world on Christmas Eve. We hosted the entire tracker on a single machine and were excited to have an audience of 25,000 following St. Nick's flight with us that night.
Our scrappy Santa tracker has come a long way since 2004. We added
"Santa-cam" videos
for select locations around the world, 3D
SketchUp
models of Santa's sleigh and his North Pole home, the official feed of Santa's location from NORAD headquarters and several other improvements. With more technical resources to support this richer experience, and the wonderful efforts of our Santa-tracking team, 2008 was the biggest year ever for NORAD Tracks Santa — more than eight million people tuned in to track Santa last Christmas Eve.
As soon as he returned to North Pole last year, Santa and his elves began planning for his 2009 flight — and we were no different. We thought hard about the different ways we could improve the Santa tracker and after a year of planning, we think this year's will be the best one yet. As usual, we'll display Santa's location, according to NORAD, in Google Maps and Google Earth at
www.noradsanta.org
. But we've made a few improvements to make tracking Santa even easier. Namely, we'll display Santa's journey with the
Google Earth plug-in
, directly on the
NORAD Tracks Santa site
, instead of using the Google Earth client. As a result, you'll be able to follow Santa in Google Earth's immersive, 3D environment directly within your web browser. For more information about the plugin and why we chose to use this tool to track Santa, have a look at our post on the
Google Geo Developers Blog
.
We're also excited about the many different ways you can keep track of Santa's location this Christmas Eve. Like last year, Santa will be trackable by visiting
m.noradsanta.org
on a mobile device, or searching for "Santa" on Google Maps for Mobile, available for
most mobile phones
(read more on the
Google Mobile Blog
). Santa's location will also be updated on Twitter with
@noradsanta
and you can keep up with news about Santa's flight with our
real-time search feature
.
To track Santa, visit
www.noradsanta.org
starting at 2am ET on Christmas Eve. There, you'll see a Google Map that will display Santa's location over the course of the day. To visualize Santa in Google Earth, just click
"Track Santa in Google Earth"
and you'll see St. Nick flying through Google Earth in your browser. If you don't have the Earth plug-in,
click here
— it will be installed automatically when you download Google Earth 5.1.
We hope you enjoy tracking Santa with us this year. And on behalf of everyone at Google — happy holidays and have a happy new year!
Posted by Brian McClendon, VP Engineering and Bruno Bowden, Senior Software Engineer
Unofficial tech support returns home for the holidays
December 22, 2009
Whenever I go home to visit my parents, I always assume a handful of new roles — I become the after-dinner dishwasher, the family chauffeur, and appropriately, my parents' personal tech support. As I go home for the holidays this week, I'll likely be asked to help fix the webcam that "used to be there" or make the font size "so I can see it again." I'll also perform a few regular maintenance tasks that my parents don't even know to ask about, such as running a virus scan, uninstalling unused applications and upgrading their software to the latest versions.
I know this phenomenon isn't unique to just my family. If you're unofficial tech support for family this holiday season like I am, one of the things you'll want to consider is checking that your family is using the latest version of their
browser
. Why? For me, an up-to-date browser makes a huge difference: not only so that my parents can get to what they need when they're on the web, quickly and easily — whether they're writing email, viewing photo albums online, reading cross-stitching blogs or checking the
weather in Chicago
— but also so that I can rest assured that they'll be browsing the web more safely and securely with the latest version of the browser with security updates. (More selfishly, a new or up-to-date browser would also make their computer notably faster when I'm visiting home and using their machine!)
Most browsers have released major updates over the past year, and to ensure your family is getting the most speed and security out of their web experience, you can help your family upgrade to the latest version of
Google Chrome
,
Firefox 3.5
,
Opera 10
,
Safari 4
, or
Internet Explorer 8
— just to name a few modern browsers. Moreover, teaching your family
what a web browser is
and how to update it can help your family keep themselves up-to-date throughout the year. The browser is perhaps the most important piece of software on our computers, as we depend on it to get to the websites and web applications we use every day.
You can also check out
Google Pack
, a collection of free Google and third-party software that's ready to use in just a few clicks. From anti-virus software to keep a computer more secure and voice applications like Skype to help you keep in touch once you leave, to Google applications like Google Earth (where you can
track Santa
over Christmas), Google Pack's applications help your family get the most out of their computer.
Happy holidays, one and all — and happy trails on the web!
Posted by Jeffrey Chang, Associate Product Manager, Google Chrome Team
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