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Accelerating diversity outreach to businesses in local communities
May 10, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Google Small Business Blog
)
This is the latest post in our
series
profiling entrepreneurial Googlers working on products across the company and around the world. Here, business development manager Chris Genteel tells how Googlers across the U.S. are diversifying our marketing and sales outreach efforts to help communities of minority-owned small businesses around the country build an online presence. - Ed.
In May 2009, a team of Googlers and I attended the
Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference
near our office in Ann Arbor, Mich., where we talked with dozens of small business owners. These folks were true entrepreneurs and clearly not afraid to try new things, yet many were unaware of Google’s products and services, such as
AdWords
and
Apps for Enterprise
. In fact, many of them didn’t even have an online presence.
The following Monday, two women Googlers who were new to the team and passionate about Google’s diversity initiatives busted into my office already on a mission—to help educate small businesses on Google tools in order to help them better connect with their target audience. They had attended the conference as well and decided to start a 20 percent project to increase awareness of and engagement with small, minority-owned businesses. Two months later, we proposed a business plan to Bonita Stewart, vice president of sales, to start reaching out to businesses. She approved our proposal and gave us the go-ahead to lead the initiative; it was our responsibility to find people who wanted to help.
We found our first volunteer when an intern on the team decided to make our initiative her 20 percent project, and, throughout that summer, more people were inspired to contribute their expertise part-time as well. Before we knew it, we had more than 40 Googlers working on what eventually became
Accelerate with Google
—a program to help minority-owned small businesses grow their online presence by working with organizations and partners who encourage the adoption of web tools within their local communities.
Throughout 2010, we traveled across the country to places like Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, Chicago and New York to learn more about the minority-owned, small business community. Along the way, we built partnerships with leading business organizations, such as the
National Minority Supplier Development Council
, which already have respect and support from these communities. Our original goal was to build partnerships with minority community organizations nationwide, but that quickly developed into a larger mission to not only help small businesses move online, but empower them to be the web tools educators in their communities as well.
This May, we’re excited to be part of the
Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council
annual conference; they’ve been our chief partner and recipient of a grant for $175,000 to support the development of our program within its business community. We’ve trained Council representatives to be experts in Google tools like AdWords, and in turn they’ve led workshops for small business owners on how to build an online presence. We’ve built a similar partnership with the
Louisiana Council
by funding a $100,000 initiative to build outreach to small businesses in the area through programs such as
Google Certified Partners and Trainers
, which help people certify and demonstrate their proficiency in our ads tools.
All of this is just the beginning. This month marks the two-year anniversary of the initial inspiration for this project, and our team will once again be attending the
Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference
, this time with a very different perspective. A project that began as a side job has now become a full-time role for myself and one of the project founders, with our ad hoc group of Googler volunteers still helping out part-time. We’ve seen measurable shifts in online engagement with the communities we’re working with—adding more than 100 minority-owned businesses in 2010 alone—and I’m excited to keep pushing this initiative out to business owners everywhere.
Posted by Chris Genteel, Business Development Manager, Global Diversity Programs
Android: momentum, mobile and more at Google I/O
May 10, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Google Code Blog
)
This morning at
Google I/O
, the Android team shared some updates. It’s hard to believe a little more than two and a half years ago, we were just one device, launching in one country, on one carrier. Thanks to the ecosystem of manufacturers, developers and carriers, the platform has grown exponentially. There are now:
100 million activated Android devices
400,000 new Android devices activated every day
200,000 free and paid applications available in Android Market
4.5 billion applications installed from Android Market
Mobile—one OS everywhere
Over the past two and a half years, we’ve shipped eight releases of Android and there are now more than 310 Android devices around the world, of all shapes and sizes. This morning we talked about our next version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich. Our goal with Ice Cream Sandwich is to deliver one operating system that works everywhere, regardless of device. Ice Cream Sandwich will bring everything you love about
Honeycomb
on your tablet to your phone, including the holographic user interface, more multitasking, the new launcher and richer widgets.
We also launched
Music Beta by Google
, a new service that lets you upload your personal music collection to the cloud for streaming to your computer and Android devices. With the new service, your music and playlists are automatically kept in sync, so if you create a new playlist on your phone, it’s instantly available on your computer or tablet. You can use a feature called Instant Mix to create a playlist of songs that go well together. You can even listen to music when you’re offline: we automatically store your most recently played music on your Android device and you can choose to make specific albums or playlists available when you’re not connected. The service is launching in beta today to U.S. users and is available by invitation.
We’ve also added Movies for rent to
Android Market
. You can choose to rent from thousands of movies starting at $1.99 and have them available across your Android devices—rent a movie on your home computer, and it’ll be available for viewing on your tablet or phone. You can rent from Android Market on the web today, and we’ll be rolling out an update to Verizon XOOM customers beginning today. We’ll start rolling out the update to Android 2.2 and above devices in the coming weeks.
The Android ecosystem has been moving really fast over the last two and a half years and rapid iteration on new and highly-requested features has been a driving force behind Android’s success. But of course that innovation only matters if it reaches consumers. So today we’re announcing that a founding team of industry leaders, including many from the Open Handset Alliance, are working together to adopt guidelines for how quickly devices are updated after a new platform release, and also for how long they will continue to be updated. The founding partners are Verizon, HTC, Samsung, Sprint, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Motorola and AT&T, and we welcome others to join us. To start, we're jointly announcing that new devices from participating partners will receive the latest Android platform upgrades for 18 months after the device is first released, as long as the hardware allows...and that's just the beginning. Stay tuned for more details.
More—extending the platform beyond mobile
From the beginning, Android was designed to extend beyond the mobile phone. With that in mind, we’ve developed Android Open Accessory to help developers start building new hardware accessories that will work across all Android devices. We previewed an initiative called Android@Home, which allows Android apps to discover, connect and communicate with appliances and devices in your home. We also showed a preview of Project Tungsten, an Android device for Music Beta to give you more control over music playback within the Android@Home network.
You can watch the entire Android keynote from Google I/O on our
Google Developer YouTube Channel
shortly. On behalf of the team, we want to thank the entire Android community of developers, OEMs and carriers who are pushing the platform into new areas and building great experiences for consumers. Without you, the Android platform wouldn’t have grown so large in the past two and a half years. We look forward to seeing where you take it next.
Update
May 11
: The video from the keynote is now available:
Posted by Hugo Barra, Product Management Director, Android
Welcome to the future of video. Please stay a while.
May 9, 2011
(Cross-posted from the
YouTube Blog
)
It’s a Saturday and you want to watch your
favorite YouTube star’s show
, a
big Hollywood movie
, a clip of your friend’s weekend in Austin, a
newly-released music video
, a
global sporting event
, a
live concert
and
breaking news from Japan
. Six years ago, when YouTube first arrived, you’d have to go from TV to laptop, desk to couch, or platform to platform, to do all this. Six years ago, there were two types of video: video you watched on your TV, and video you watched on your laptop. Today there’s increasingly just video, and it’s available everywhere: on a phone, a tablet, a laptop or a television screen, in your office, on your couch, in a cab.
YouTube isn’t about one type of device or one type of video. Content from traditional media partners, made-for-web and personal videos all co-exist on the site. Like surfing? You can watch pros shoot barrels, rent your favorite surf movie and check out your friend’s upload of his morning session at your favorite local spot. News junkie? YouTube has breaking news uploads from citizen journalists alongside anchored reports and live streams from news partners.
You’re finding more and more of the content you love on YouTube, which is now available on 350 million devices. We know this because you’re watching videos to the tune of 2 billion views a day. But you’re spending just 15 minutes a day on YouTube, and spending five hours a day watching TV. As the lines between online and offline continue to blur, we think that’s going to change.
Today, we’re adding around 3,000 new
movie titles for rent
available to users in the U.S. (more on this in a post later today) that will be accompanied by reviews and behind-the-scenes movie extras. Whether it’s short movie trailers, funny movie parodies or full-length blockbuster films, we encourage you to sit back and settle in to the YouTube movies experience.
In addition to expanding our movie offerings, we’re also bolstering our investment in the content that’s already being viewed by hundred of millions of people on YouTube. Our 20,000+ partners—folks like
Machinima
,
Annoying Orange
and
Ryan Higa
—are producing original content for the web and commanding TV-size audiences for their own brand of programming. Through
YouTube Next
, we’re helping fuel the creation of this type of content with initiatives like the
YouTube Creator Institute
and
YouTube NextUp
, following past initiatives like
Partner Grants
(which brought us Key of Awesome, creators of one of
2010’s most-watched videos
) and $1,000
B&H Photo credits
. In the coming year, we’ll bring even more content to YouTube. Building on the success of Partner Grants and YouTube NextUp, we’ll help catalyze the creation of content by devoting even more resources to creators who you’ll know from TV or Hollywood, and to existing YouTube partners who have already built loyal audiences on the site. Look out for more details on this in the coming months.
While six years ago you had to move device, room and platform to get all the video that matters most to you, today you can find it all on YouTube. By expanding our content partnerships worldwide and stimulating the success of budding filmmakers, artists and entrepreneurs, we’ll ensure that YouTube remains the best place for the world to see and discover rich talent. So stay tuned—there’s much more to come.
Posted by Salar Kamangar, Head of YouTube
From Alaska: Old Harbor Books, the 250th indie bookseller of Google eBooks
May 9, 2011
(Cross-posted from the
Google Books Blog
)
From time to time we invite guests to post about topics of interest and we’re pleased to have Don Muller join us from Old Harbor Books. Don is a co-founder of Old Harbor Books, an independent bookstore where he has worked for 35 years in Sitka, Alaska. Through our partnership with the
American Booksellers Association
and its
IndieCommerce
e-commerce platform for booksellers, Old Harbor Books is now able to sell
Google eBooks
from its
website
. In this post, Don talks about the significance of this milestone to his bookstore and—most importantly—his customers. - Ed.
Based in
Sitka, Alaska
,
Old Harbor Books
was opened 35 years ago last week by a group of devoted book lovers including myself. Old Harbor is an independent bookstore specializing in
Alaskana
, Native American and Alaska Native, children's, ecology, travel, natural history, philosophy and, of course, nautical books. And starting today, we also sell Google eBooks on
our website
. In fact, we’re the 250th
independent bookseller
to start selling Google eBooks since the service launched
last December
.
In a town with a population of less than 9,000, we’re proud to provide personal service to the readers and explorers who visit our store. We wanted to give our customers a way to buy books from us in whatever format they want—including ebooks. So whether you want to read books on your computer, tablet, smartphone or e-reader, you can now choose from hundreds of thousands of Google eBooks titles we offer.
Some of my current favorites are are
Freedom
by Jonathan Franzen,
A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan and
Confession of a Buddhist Atheist
by Stephen Batchelor. Searching by title, subject or author in our online ebookstore, you can find just about anything you’re looking for—and you can buy from us no matter where in the U.S. you are.
Old Harbor Books customer and manager with me in the middle
We hope you’ll shop for Google eBooks in our newly expanded online bookstore—the 250th of its kind. If you do happen to live near Sitka, the first 40 visitors to Old Harbor Books at 201 Lincoln Street today get free Google eBooks T-shirts. We’ll also show you how to sign up for an online account and get started with ebook shopping. If you can’t make it to the store,
this funny video
made by fellow independent bookstore Green Apple Books in San Francisco, Calif. does a great job explaining how to buy Google eBooks from the independent bookseller of your choice and read them on gadgets you already own.
We’re deeply grateful to Google eBooks and the American Booksellers Association for making this possible by connecting our IndieCommerce-powered website to the Google eBooks platform that lets us focus on merchandising books, rather than building the technology on our own.
Posted by Don Muller, Co-founder, Old Harbor Books
Vote for the Einsteins of the future
May 9, 2011
The results are in for the inaugural
Google Science Fair
: Since we first
announced
this competition, we’ve received more than 7,500 science projects from more than 10,000 students in more than 90 countries—making this the biggest science competition in the world. Out of this outstanding group of submissions we’ve selected the 60 best entries and now it’s your turn to help us select a People’s Choice winner.
There were thousands of impressive entries on a wide range of topics—from cancer treatment to renewable oceanic energy to aeronautic auto-pilot algorithms—and it was no easy task to select just 60 semi-finalists. With a team of teachers around the world, we worked diligently to evaluate the creativity, scientific merit and global relevance of each submission and we’d like to congratulate all of our semi-finalists, whose names you can see here on our official Google Science Fair
blog
.
From today until Friday, May 20, you can
vote
for your favorite project in each age category (13-14, 15-16, 17-18) to help us select our People’s Choice winner, who will take home a $10,000 scholarship. On May 23, we’ll announce the winner as well as our top 15 finalist projects. The finalists will be flown out to Google’s headquarters in California for the final round of judging conducted by our panel of renowned scientist and innovator
judges
, as well as a celebration event.
Thanks to all of the students around the world who submitted projects to the Google Science Fair, and congratulations again to all the young scientists who made it to the semi-finalist round. And if you missed registration this year,
sign up
to receive a notification when registration opens for the Google Science Fair 2012.
Posted by Cristin Frodella, Google Education
Google I/O: countdown to the keynote kickoff
May 9, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Code Blog
)
In less than 24 hours, we’ll be kicking off
Google I/O 2011
, our annual developer conference here in San Francisco. With more than 5,000 participants from 60 countries, including
110 sessions
, 261 speakers and
152 Sandbox partners
, this year’s I/O will be the biggest one yet.
This year’s keynote presentations will highlight the biggest opportunities for developers and feature two of our most popular and important developer platforms: Android and Chrome. Google engineers from Andy Rubin and Sundar Pichai’s teams will unveil new features, preview upcoming updates, and provide new insights into the growing momentum behind these platforms.
Plus, for the first time in Google I/O history, you’ll be able to join us throughout the two days at
I/O Live
. We’ll live stream the two keynote presentations, two full days of Android and Chrome technical sessions, and the After Hours party. Recorded videos from all sessions across eight product tracks will be available within 24 hours after the conference. Whether you’ll be joining us in San Francisco or from the farthest corner of the world, bookmark
www.google.com/io
and check back on May 10 at 9:00 a.m. PDT for a fun treat as we count down to 00:00:00:00.
From left to right: Andy Rubin, Vic Gundotra, Sundar Pichai
If you’re attending the conference this year, we can’t wait to meet with you and share our vision for the future of web and mobile development. If you aren’t able to make it this year, you can continue to follow us on the
Google Code Blog
and on Twitter (#io2011) over the next two days as we share photos, videos, news and recaps of the event. It’s going to be an exciting 48 hours!
Posted by Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Engineering
Sort by subject in Google Images
May 9, 2011
When you’re searching for images, sometimes it can be hard to come up with exactly the right words to describe what you have in mind. For example, when you think of London, you might picture the iconic clock tower or the big Ferris wheel. You may not always remember the names of those landmarks, but you can visualize them in your mind. To make it easier for you to find images in situations like these, you can now use
Google Images with sorting
.
When you search for [london], by default you’ll see image results ranked by relevance. Click on “Sort by subject” in the left-hand panel and you’ll see images organized into categories that will narrow down your search and help you find the exact image of London that you want.
Sorting by subject shows that some of the most popular images associated with London are the London Eye, Big Ben, Tower Bridge and the city at night. This organized view helps you find the images you were visualizing more quickly, so you might realize, “Ah, that big clock tower is called Big Ben, that’s what I was looking for.” You can then can click on the Big Ben group to find the best image within that subject group.
You can also use this feature to explore categories of a general topic that may be easier to learn about visually, like
flower varieties
or
dog breeds
. For example, if you want to get flowers for someone but you only know what their favorite kind looks like, not the name of it, you can sort by subject to learn different flower types and discover the name of the type you’re looking for. Watch this video to learn more about how sorting can help you find the image you’re seeking:
Sorting by subject uses algorithms that identify relationships among images found on the web and presents those images in visual groups, expanding on the technology developed for
Google Similar Images
and
Google Image Swirl
. By looking at multiple sources of similarities, such as pixel values and semantic relationships, and by mining massive amounts of data, we can make meaningful connections and groupings among images.
Sorting will be rolling out globally to nearly every domain and language over the next week. Whether you have a particular image in mind or you’re just exploring a general topic, sort by subject can help you find the image you need—even if you don’t have the exact words to describe it.
Posted by Donald Tanguay, Google Images team
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