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
Real-time traffic graphs for the Transparency Report
April 5, 2011
When we
introduced
the
Transparency Report
last year, we promised to keep looking for new and useful ways to display data about traffic to our services. In response to your requests, today we’re adding graphs for each region that show traffic patterns for all products in aggregate. These graphs will show data with a five-minute delay.
In
this graph
, for example, you’ll see that all of our services in Egypt were down from January 27 to February 1:
Starting today, you won’t have to sift through every single product graph to figure out if one or more services are inaccessible. You’ll get a snapshot up front. We’ve also added annotations for historical anomalies that we’ve seen in the traffic to our services. To see the graph for each cited incident, just click on the corresponding link.
As the Transparency Engineering team lead, part of my job is to ensure that we find, uncover and visualize datasets within Google that can help inform research and analysis on important topics. We believe that providing the facts can spark useful debate about the scope and authority of policy decisions around the globe.
We’ll continue to iterate, and we hope that the Report will help shed light on the accessibility and patterns of traffic to our services around the world.
Posted by Matt Braithwaite, Transparency Engineering Team Lead
There’s no place like home for math education
April 5, 2011
Last month,
we mobilized a small but enthusiastic band of Google engineers
to visit schools across the county as part of
National Engineers Week
. Googlers talked to kids about their career experiences and how they became engineers. The school visits also provided Googlers with an opportunity to get away from their desks and connect with a classroom of students. One group traveled right down the road from our headquarters to visit our local schools in
Mountain View, Calif
.
This volunteering program is part of our broader effort to help develop and inspire the next generation of engineers and computer scientists. And we want to make sure we’re helping that happen not only around the world, but also in our own neighborhood.
In that spirit, we’re awarding a $1 million grant to the
Mountain View Whisman School District
(K-8) to help improve math achievement for its students. Math education is critical not only to computer science and engineering careers, but to academic success overall.
My daughter and I have a bedtime routine where we read a story and also make up mathematical word problems that we solve together. I believe it’s important to teach her math and problem-solving skills that she can apply broadly. And developing these skills early on is crucial. In fact,
a recent education report
noted that understanding math concepts in early school years may be a more important predictor of future achievement than reading skills. We want to help level the playing field and ensure all students in our community are getting a strong foundation in math, so this grant will help deliver resources and strategies to support students who are struggling in the subject.
As a Googler and the proud parent of a child in the Mountain View Whisman School District, I’m thrilled about this news. Mountain View has been a great home for Google and we’re pleased to be able to support our hometown.
Posted by Roni Zeiger, Chief Health Strategist and parent
Free phone support for AdWords advertisers
April 5, 2011
We’ve worked hard to keep in touch with our
AdWords
customers and we’re always looking for new ways to support you. Currently we offer email and online support, and today we’re introducing free phone support for all of our U.S.- and Canada-based AdWords customers. When you have a question about your account or advertising campaigns, you can now call an AdWords specialist if you prefer.
We’re adding phone support for a simple reason: you asked for it! You told us that while you appreciate online resources like our
AdWords Help Center
, you also want the option to get live, expert support when you need it. We heard you, and got to work assembling a team of AdWords experts to answer your calls.
The new phone option is one of many tools that can help you succeed with AdWords—and (most importantly!) find even more customers. You can also email us, or learn from other advertisers in the
AdWords Help Forum
. Our
AdWords Online Classroom
offers free online courses on a wide variety of AdWords topics, from the basics to great tips to take your account to the next level.
To speak to one of our specialists, give us a call at 1-866-2Google between Monday-Friday, 9am-8pm Eastern Time. This number is for current AdWords advertisers only, so please make sure you have your
customer ID
ready. We look forward to speaking to you and learning more about your business.
We'll roll phone support out to advertisers in other countries in the coming months.
Posted by Francoise Brougher, VP, Global Advertising and Product Operations
Google Crisis Response: a small team tackling big problems
April 4, 2011
This is the latest post in our
series
profiling entrepreneurial Googlers working on products across the company and around the world. Speed in execution is important for any Google product team, but as we learned after the recent earthquakes in both Japan and New Zealand, it’s even more critical in crisis response. This post is an inside look at the efforts of our year-old Crisis Response team, and what they’re doing to make preparedness tools available to anyone at the click of a button. - Ed.
The Google
Crisis Response Team
came together in 2010 after a few engineers and I realized that we needed a scalable way to make disaster-related information immediately available and useful in a crisis. Until a little over a year ago, we responded to crises with scattered
20 percent time
projects, but after the Haiti earthquake in January 2010 we saw the opportunity to create a full-time team that would make critical information more accessible during disaster situations.
For us to help during a crisis, it’s vital to get things done really quickly, and we’ve been able to do that as a small team within Google. Working from a standard already developed by one of the Google engineers, Person Finder was built and launched in 72 hours after the Haitian earthquake, and it launched within three hours after the New Zealand earthquake in February. Unfortunately, there have been an unusually high number of disasters over the last year, forcing us to learn and get even faster.
Within minutes of hearing about the 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan in March, Googlers around the world—from engineers to webmasters to product managers—immediately started organizing a Google Crisis Response
resource page
with disaster-related information such as maps and satellite imagery, Person Finder and news updates and citizen videos on YouTube. In Japan,
Person Finder
went live within an hour of the earthquake. More than 600,000 contact entries have been made since then—more than all other disasters combined—and there have been
several
reports
of people finding their loved ones safe. I was inspired by my colleagues’ ability to launch tools about an hour after the earthquake struck; the Tokyo office, in particular, has really been helping to drive the rapid response and provided real-time information to teams across the globe, even while aftershocks were rocking the city and buildings were still swaying.
But we’re eager to find other ways of helping. In addition to these efforts focused on specific situations, we’ve worked hard this past year to more broadly organize the information most helpful during crisis situations and make it possible for people to use that data in near real-time. If people are asking for information, then in our view, it’s already too late. In these situations, it’s incredibly important that things happen fast.
So in addition to building products, we collaborate with many incredible organizations to make technology useful for responding to a crisis. For example,
Random Hacks of Kindness
is a collaboration between technology companies and government organizations which encourages teams around the world to create software solutions to problems that arise during a crisis. Recent “RHoKstars” have created all sorts of useful tools—from
HeightCatcher
, which helps identify malnourishment of children in relief camps by accurately assessing height and weight through a mobile device, to new features for
Person Finder
, such as email notifications, automatic translation and phonetic name matching—which have all been extremely useful in Japan. These projects present a real opportunity to improve lives by employing crowd-sourcing technology and real-time data during a crisis.
The sheer number of major natural disasters in 2010 and early 2011 demonstrates just how important it is for those involved in relief efforts to have real-time access to information no matter where they are. The Google Crisis Response team has worked over the past year to develop open source initiatives that encourage collaboration with larger crisis response efforts, including relief organizations, NGOs and individual volunteers. And although we’re a small team and still relatively new to the crisis response ecosystem, we hope the resources and support we receive from Google and our community partners around the world will make a difference in preparedness efforts.
Posted by Prem Ramaswami, Product Manager, Google Crisis Response Team
Patents and innovation
April 4, 2011
The tech world has recently seen an explosion in patent litigation, often involving low-quality software patents, which threatens to stifle innovation. Some of these lawsuits have been filed by people or companies that have never actually created anything; others are motivated by a desire to block competing products or profit from the success of a rival’s new technology. The patent system should reward those who create the most useful innovations for society, not those who stake bogus claims or file dubious lawsuits. It's for these reasons that Google has
long argued
in favor of real patent reform, which we believe will benefit users and the U.S. economy as a whole.
But as things stand today, one of a company’s best defenses against this kind of litigation is (ironically) to have a formidable patent portfolio, as this helps maintain your freedom to develop new products and services. Google is a relatively young company, and although we have a growing number of patents, many of our competitors have larger portfolios given their longer histories.
So after a lot of thought, we’ve decided to bid for Nortel’s patent portfolio in the company’s bankruptcy auction. Today, Nortel selected our bid as the “stalking-horse bid," which is the starting point against which others will bid prior to the auction. If successful, we hope this portfolio will not only create a disincentive for others to sue Google, but also help us, our partners and the open source community—which is integrally involved in projects like Android and Chrome—continue to innovate. In the absence of meaningful reform, we believe it's the best long-term solution for Google, our users and our partners.
Posted by Kent Walker, Senior Vice President & General Counsel
This week in search 4/1/11
April 1, 2011
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.
This week we made a few updates to help people around the world access relevant information. We introduced a new +1 button to help you and your friends find the right results at the right time, enhanced financial search results on your mobile phone, added local domains in new countries and introduced Voice Search in new languages.
+1 to share your recommendations with the world
The
+1 button
is a new, quick way in Google search to say “this is something you should check out.” Click the +1 button to publicly give a search result or an ad your stamp of approval, sharing your recommendation with your friends and contacts so they’ll find it right when they want it. For example, if you recently stayed at a ski lodge that you loved, you can +1 that webpage and your friend will see your +1 when it matters most to him—when he’s searching for a place to stay in Lake Tahoe.
+1’s are slowing rolling out alongside search results and ads in English on Google.com, and in the future they’ll appear in many more places (including other Google products and sites across the web). You can try the +1 button now by opting in at
http://www.google.com/experimental
.
New financial search results on mobile
When you’re checking on the latest in the stock market, you may be interested in seeing more than just stock quotes. This week we
updated the search result format for financial results
on iPhone and Android-powered devices. You can now interact with the results in new ways to see a company’s performance over various date ranges, and if you swipe the screen from right to left you can see recent financial news for the company, glance at a market overview and check how the stocks in your portfolio are doing. If you currently have your language preference set to English, just go to google.com and search for a stock ticker symbol to see the new format.
Example searches: [
TSLA
] [
F
] [
NFLX
]
Click different date ranges to change the chart and see a company’s performance over time
Finding similar images
When you’re searching for a picture and find a result that’s close to what you want but not exactly right, you can use "Similar images" to find images that are visually similar to a particular result, so you can get to that perfect result. We’ve updated the index of similar images, so now you’ll find more recent and comprehensive results. Now you can even find similar images for a recent news event, like when
Google went Gaga
. Try it yourself by hovering over an image search result and clicking the “Similar” link.
Examples:
[
swallowtail caterpillar
]
[
passion flower
]
[
google goes gaga
]
New Google domains in Iraq and Tunisia
Yesterday we added
two new regional domains
in the Middle East: google.iq for Iraq and google.tn for Tunisia. The new domains make it easier for people to access Google in their preferred language and also to find locally relevant information. This brings the number of local Google search domains worldwide to 184, with 15 domains in Arab countries.
Google Iraq homepage in Arabic
Voice Search in new languages
This week we introduced
Voice Search in Indonesian, Malaysian and Latin American Spanish
. With the help of local people in the region, we were able to capture regional accents and conversational speech to more accurately resemble everyday use of the languages. We also made sure to pay attention to languages with different accents, so we could build a version of Voice Search that, for example, could work across the whole of Latin America. With these new additions,
Voice Search
is now available in over two dozen languages and accents since it
first launched
in November 2008.
We’re hiring Autocompleters!
On the search team, we’re always looking for
new talent
. Today, we’re making a big push to expand hiring for
Autocompleters
. If you happen to be in the market for a new job and have psychic tendencies, we encourage you to consider applying. Watch this video to hear from a real Google Autocompleter.
Posted by Mike Cassidy, Director of Product Management
Gmail is moving, fingers are fitter, YouTube goes centennial
April 1, 2011
With the help of
Gmail Motion
, we’ve been working faster than ever this week to build new products and celebrate a few existing ones. Here’s a roundup of our most recent efforts:
Chromercise
helps you increase your hands’ strength and dexterity while browsing the web
YouTube celebrates its 100th anniversary
with a flashback to its original homepage and a blog post by President Taft
Body Browser
lets you explore new anatomical terrain
Look who’s going Google
!
Google Maps
now features strange sightings around the world
Docs Motion
follows Gmail Motion into new gestural terrain
Meow Me Now helps you find
kittens near you
We announce an
exciting acquisition
Seriously great typists may apply to be
autocompleters
gBlimps
: the inevitable new ad platform
New sessions added to Google I/O
Fans of Mail Goggles should like the
Voice-alyzer function in Google Voice
New display advertising
formats take marketers back to the good old days
It was only a matter of time before Voice Search became available in
this language
ChromeLite
is an even faster version of our browser you know and love
After extensive user testing, we’ll soon be making Comic Sans the
default font
for all Google properties—get a preview on the
search results page
Travel through time and space to discover things from “then and now” with
Google Teleport Search
(in Chinese only)
Tired of life on Earth?
Learn more about a Moon loan
Use
Earkut
to receive notifications when someone visits your Orkut profile
A new
look
for our webmaster team members
It’s been a busy—and frankly, odd—day at Google, but with our finger sweatbands in place and our savvy email-writing moves, we’ll work faster than ever on new and exciting projects.
Update
4:06PM
: Updated with additional announcements. -
Ed.
Posted by Michael Krantz, Project Manager, Google Creative Lab
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
