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Google Express: more cities, more stores and a new name
October 13, 2014
One year ago, the first Google Shopping Express order was delivered—a box of granola. Our idea was to make shopping your favorite local stores as easy and fast as shopping online, and to help you get what you need delivered the same day. Since then, you’ve told us how we helped you restock diapers in the nick of time, made sure you had Bananagrams for family game night, and even made you feel connected to the outside world when you were home sick. Along the way, we've expanded to new locations, brought on more merchants, and offered more products. And now, we’re adding to the program you love.
More cities, more stores and more products
Starting today, we’re expanding to three new cities: Chicago, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Across all our cities, more than 7 million people can now access our same-day delivery service, and in Northern California almost 12 million can use our next-day service.
We’re also adding more merchants: 16 in total over the last couple of months. We’ve added national brands including 1-800-Flowers, Barnes & Noble, Nine West, PetSmart, Vitamin Shoppe and Sports Authority, and regional merchants such as Paragon Sports in New York and Vicente Foods in Los Angeles. In our new markets, we’ve added regional brands including Stop & Shop in Boston; Giant Food in D.C.; and Lux Roses, TigerDirect, Treasure Island Foods and Wrigleyville Sports in Chicago.
Additionally, customers in the Bay Area who are 21 and over can now order alcohol. Cheers (and please drink responsibly)!
Express membership
Starting today, shoppers who decide to become Google Express members will enjoy:
Free same-day or overnight delivery on eligible orders over $15.*
First dibs on delivery windows
Shared membership with a household member
Membership costs $95/year or $10/month. Or you can choose to pay as you go, at $4.99 per eligible order.
Learn more on our Help Center
. Either way, we don’t add any hidden markups, so you pay the same price for your stuff on Google Express as you would in-store.
New shoppers can try the
first three months of membership for free
. You can cancel it at any time, so it’s easy to test it out and decide if you like it.
A shorter name
We've also noticed people referring to us as "Google Express"—and we love it. So as of today, we've simplified our name. Plus, we've added a punch of color to our parachute:
With more cities, more merchants, and more of your favorite items, Google Express is on its way toward making your life easier by helping you get even more errands out of the way. We hope to give you more free time—and we can’t wait to hear about all the things you do with it.
Posted by Brian Elliott, Head of Partnerships, Google Shopping
*Free delivery means no
shipping & service fees
. Same day or overnight depends on availability of delivery windows. Eligible orders are $15+ before taxes/fees in select
delivery areas
and exclude
restricted
items. Service fees apply to ineligible orders. Pricing may change. Requires active membership subject to
terms & conditions
.
Through the Google lens: search trends October 3-9
October 10, 2014
The Royals are in the playoffs, Carlton’s doing the Carlton and a
Cosby Show
star is in the news… what decade is this anyway? Here’s a look at a week of search trends so weird, it’s almost a
Twin Peaks
experience:
Play ball
The National League and American League division series thrilled fans of October baseball this week. KC fans gave their brooms a workout as the
Royals
swept the Angels. They’re in the playoffs for the first time in almost 30 years and at an
all-time high in search
as a result. And after the Cardinals beat the
Dodgers
to make it to their fourth straight NLCS, the only Midwest team that’s not happy is the Tigers, who lost to the
Orioles
(also a sweep). Meanwhile, the
Giants
beat the
Nationals
in a four-game series that was really almost like five games, since Game 2 went an epic 18 innings. The next round starts today.
Flashbacks
Fans of 90s TV shows were breaking out some celebratory dance moves this week, starting, of course, with The Carlton. This week
Alfonso Ribeiro
—former
Fresh Prince of Bel Air
actor and current Dancing with the Stars contestant—did what we’ve all been hoping for and broke out his famous Carlton dance moves on the show. Not only was Ribeiro wearing a Carltonesque sweater and bowtie, the show’s set was decorated to look like the sitcom.
News also broke that cult classic
Twin Peaks
is coming back to the screen. Creators David Lynch and Mark Frost will write nine episodes of the murder mystery for a limited run on Showtime. If you’re one of those people who’s like, “Laura Palmer, who?” don’t fret—the new episodes won’t be on the air until 2016, so you have plenty of time to catch up with Agent Dale Cooper between now and then.
Finally, former
Cosby Show
and Disney channel star
Raven Symone
was top of mind this week after an interview with Oprah in which she discussed personal identity and labels. Oprah told the actress not to “set up the Twitter on fire,” but it didn’t do much good as people took to the web to read more about the actress’ declaration that she is “not African-American.”
Wings, shmings
For nearly two decades, “Red Bull gives you wings” has been the energy drink company’s slogan. This week,
Red Bull
agreed to pay more than $13 million after settling a U.S. lawsuit accusing the drink maker of false advertising claims. The plaintiffs argued that Red Bull’s ad campaigns claim the drink gives people special energy benefits. Scientific reports, however, show it offers about the same benefits as a cup of coffee and does not, in fact, give you any wings at all. Searchers looked to find out more about the settlement, which may entitle them to $10, or alternatively, $15 worth of free Red Bull.
Tip of the week
Next time you’re on vacation and looking for a nice place for dinner,
let Google be your concierge
. Open the Google app and say “Ok Google, show me restaurants near my hotel” to see a variety of options. When you find the one you like, you can say “Ok Google, make a reservation there for 7 p.m.” If the restaurant is on OpenTable, you’ll see a reservations screen pop up with the details already filled out—no need to waste time on the phone when you could be enjoying your time off!
Posted by Emily Wood, Managing Editor, who searched this week for [attendance hardly strictly bluegrass] and [matilda musical]
Campus, coming to a tech community near you
October 6, 2014
When entrepreneurs are empowered to dream big and take action, they’re capable of tackling significant problems—and they can be an important pillar of a thriving economy. As a former startup ourselves, entrepreneurship is still part of Google's DNA. That’s why two and a half years ago we opened our first
Campus
in London, a space designed to help entrepreneurs learn, connect, and build companies.
Campus is a hub for the startup community, where entrepreneurs can fuel up on caffeine at the Campus Cafe, gather in our free event space, rent coworking space, and connect with mentors, accelerators and Google teams. So far, we’ve seen great results at our first locations,
Campus London
and
Campus Tel Aviv
. In 2013, startups at Campus London raised more than $54 million in funding and created more than 570 jobs. They’ve also created great products and services that are reaching consumers and customers. For example,
Borrow My Doggy
, which began at a
Startup Weekend
in London and also received funding from Seedcamp, one of our partners, lets dog owners with limited time for walking share their pooches with city dwellers who can't have their own.
Eyetease
, which created a HD digital taxitop and high-speed WiFi system for taxis, has been a resident at Campus since their launch and have grown their revenue 100X during that time. In Tel Aviv, local community groups have hosted more than 1,000 events at Campus (and consumed 6,000+ slices of free pizza!).
Building on the success of these spaces, this year we've announced new Campuses in Warsaw, Poland, São Paulo, Brazil, and Seoul, South Korea. And today, we’re welcoming another new member to the Campus family:
Campus Madrid
. We’re excited to open doors in all these new locations in 2015. Each of these cities has a growing startup community, as well as a Google office so our teams can get directly involved with supporting Campus. We hosted more than 1,000 Google mentoring sessions through our Campus Office Hours Program in London, and are planning similar efforts at our other locations.
We’re also trying out new programs at all our locations to help even more aspiring entrepreneurs succeed. For example,
Campus for Moms
is a baby-friendly startup school for new moms on maternity leave.
CampusEDU
offers courses for founders both in person and streamed for free online, like this Friday’s session,
Hiring Rockstars and Keeping Them
.
As with all our
Google for Entrepreneurs
programs, we hope Campus will provide a home for entrepreneurs and startup founders, and put resources at their fingertips to help them build transformative products and companies around the world.
Posted by Mary Grove, Director of Google for Entrepreneurs
Through the Google lens: search trends September 26 - October 2
October 3, 2014
Diseases, protests and DUIs? Search wasn’t a pretty place this week.
Somebody call a doctor
This week, searchers went into a frenzy following news that someone had been diagnosed with
Ebola
on U.S soil—causing a
surge
in interest for the deadly disease. While this hopefully will remain an isolated case in the U.S., the virus is taking its toll on the people in West Africa. The region is experiencing its worst outbreak in history, with more than
3,000 people
dying from the illness.
An indefinite break
It was a bad day at the office for several prominent figures this week as they were asked to step down from their positions. After a couple of bizarre security breaches like allowing the President to share an elevator with
an armed man
or when a person literally jumped the
White House fence
and walked inside the building (knife in tow), Secret Service director
Julia Pierson
handed in her resignation.
American Olympian and swimming icon
Michael Phelps
was arrested on charges of a DUI after he was pulled over for going 84 mph in a 45 mph zone. Amidst a
firestorm of bad behavior
from athletes, some are calling for USA Swimming to suspend Phelps, who had a previous DUI in 2004, for at least a year. Across the Pacific, students in
Hong Kong
staged massive demonstrations against the country’s Chief Executive, C.Y. Leung, seeking to oust him from office. The government has proposed talks with the students in order to calm the chaos, but so far Leung has refused to quit.
Crossovers
Searchers were saying “what the?” this week as we were hit with a couple of crossovers on TV and in music. First up, two classic American cartoons came together for one night to give viewers double the laughter. The famed Simpsons
appeared
in an episode of Family Guy. Unfortunately, the laugh track was off this time around and the show received
negative reviews
, perhaps thanks to an awkward
seven-minute fight scene
between Peter and Homer (d’oh!). And we heard a new take on a popular tune as “The Queen of Soul” Aretha Franklin made a
breathtaking cover
of pop-soul star Adele’s song "Rolling in the Deep." Listen to it and prepare to have your mind blown.
Who’s got game?
The MLB playoffs are in full, um, swing. The
Kansas City Royals
and their fans had something to cheer about as team made the playoffs for the first time in 29 years, ending the longest postseason drought in North American
sports history
—and then eliminating Oakland in an extra-inning thriller. And, after an 8-0 stomping of the Pittsburgh Pirates behind ace Madison Bumgarner, the
San Francisco Giants
are hoping to keep their every-other-year World Series streak alive.
Tip of the week
It’s beginning to look a lot like winter. Before you head out, make sure to check the weather by saying, “Ok Google, what’s the weather like outside?” and you’ll be ready to go—mittens or umbrella in hand.
Posted by Jenise Araujo, Communications Associate, who searched for [hypochondriac] and [one day you're in, the next day you're out].
Through the Google lens: search trends September 19-25
September 26, 2014
Spoiler alert! Those of you not caught up with
Scandal
might want to skim this one.
-Ed.
This week, searchers learned how to get away with murder—and how not to get away with public criticism of prominent figures with important business relationships with your employer.
Shonda, Shonda, Shonda
TV fans, rejoice! This week brought premiere episodes for old favorite shows as well as hotly anticipated new ones. Top returning shows on search include CBS’s
The Big Bang Theory
(natch), and NBC’s
The Blacklist
and
Chicago Fire
. New shows that shot up the search ratings include Batman prequel
Gotham
and new family comedy
black-ish
.
But premieres week really came to a head on Thursday night, which we prefer to call the Night of Shonda. Producer Shonda Rimes has got ABC’s lineup locked up with
Scandal
,
Grey’s Anatomy
(in its final season this year) and the new
How To Get Away With Murder
, starring Academy Award-nominee Viola Davis. All three shows were in the top 10 hot searches the day of their premiere. True to form,
Scandal
’s season 4
debut left people with more questions than answers. Here's a sampling (spoiler alert!) of what searchers were asking during the show:
The end of an era
Derek Jeter
first took the field as a New York Yankee in May 1995. Five World Series, more than 3,000 hits and nearly 20 years later, this weekend he will take to the diamond for a final game at Fenway against his archrivals, the Boston Red Sox. Though neither the Yankees nor the Sox made this season’s playoffs, anticipation for Jeter’s farewell at-bat was already high. But last night, after giving baseball fans so many memorable moments over the years, he gave us one more. In his final game at Yankee Stadium, Jeter’s ninth-inning walk-off single gave the Yankees a win over the Orioles, provided the world another excuse to search for the star shortstop, and was a fitting ending to Jeter’s fairy-tale career.
Over on the political field, Attorney General
Eric Holder
announced on Thursday that he is stepping down. Holder will leave behind a large and sometimes complicated legacy on issues including same-sex marriage, voting rights, criminal justice, national security and government secrecy. He’ll go down in history as the fourth longest-serving and first black AG.
NFL in the news
The NFL continues to be in the news for more than just its games. First, NFL commissioner
Roger Goodell
gave a press conference on Friday addressing the league’s issues with domestic violence. Then, on Monday, prominent sportswriter
Bill Simmons
was suspended for three weeks by ESPN after he called Goodell a liar in his podcast “The B.S. Report.” Simmons is prohibited from tweeting or other public communications until October 15, but Sports Guy supporters took to the web on his behalf, fighting to #FreeSimmons. Finally, this week’s season premiere of
South Park
featured a malfunctioning “GoodellBot” and a plotline about the controversy over Washington’s team name.
Happy 5775
Shana Tova
! That’s what a lot of people were saying (and searching) as people worldwide dipped apples in honey and celebrated
Rosh Hashanah
, the Jewish New Year. The holiday was the fourth hottest search trend on Wednesday.
Tip of the week
Google can help you get a good deal on your next airplane ticket. When the price drops on a flight you’ve been researching on
Flight Search
, you may see a Now card letting you know. Just tap the card to quickly and easily book your trip. This works on the latest version of the
Google app
on Android in the U.S.
Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog Editor, who searched this week for [where do kiwis grow] and [reign season 2]
You don’t know what you don’t know: How our unconscious minds undermine the workplace
September 25, 2014
When YouTube launched their video upload app for iOS, between 5 and 10 percent of videos uploaded by users were upside-down. Were people shooting videos incorrectly? No. Our early design was the problem. It was designed for right-handed users, but phones are usually rotated 180 degrees when held in left hands. Without realizing it, we’d created an app that worked best for our almost exclusively right-handed developer team.
This is just one example of how unconscious biases influence our actions every day, even when—by definition—we don’t notice them. These biases are shaped by our experiences and by cultural norms, and allow us to filter information and make quick decisions. We’ve evolved to trust our guts. But sometimes these mental shortcuts can lead us astray, especially when they cause us to misjudge people. In the workplace, for example, the
halo effect
can cause us to inflate performance ratings or
in-group bias
can lead us to overlook great talent.
Combatting our unconscious biases is hard, because they don’t feel wrong; they feel right. But it’s necessary to fight against bias in order to create a work environment that supports and encourages diverse perspectives and people. Not only is that the right thing to do, but without a diverse workforce, there’s a pretty good chance that our products—just like that early YouTube app—won’t work for everyone. That means we need to make the unconscious, conscious.
The first step is education; we need to help people identify and understand their biases so that they can start to combat them. So we developed a workshop,
Unconscious Bias @ Work
, in which more than 26,000 Googlers have taken part. And it’s made an impact: Participants were significantly more aware, had greater understanding, and were more motivated to overcome bias.
In addition to our workshop, we’re partnering with organizations like the
Clayman Institute
and the
Ada Initiative
to further research and awareness. We’re also taking action to ensure that the decisions we make at work—from promoting employees to marketing products—are objective and fair. Here are four ways we're working to reduce the influence of bias:
Gather facts.
It’s hard to know you’re improving if you’re not measuring. We collect data on things like gender representation
in our doodles
and
at our conferences
.
Create a structure for making decisions.
Define clear criteria to evaluate the merits of each option, and use them consistently. Using the same standards to evaluate all options can reduce bias. This is why we use
structured interviews
in hiring, applying the same selection and evaluation methods for all.
Be mindful of subtle cues.
Who’s included and who’s excluded? In 2013, Googlers pointed out that of the dozens of conference rooms named after famous scientists, only a few were female. Was this our vision for the future? No. So we changed Ferdinand von Zeppelin to Florence Nightingale—along with many others—to create more balanced representation. Seemingly small changes can have big effects.
Foster awareness. Hold yourself—and your colleagues—accountable.
We’re encouraging Googlers to call out bias. For example, we share a “bias busting checklist” at performance reviews, encouraging managers to examine their own biases and call out those of others.
As we
shared
back in May, we’re not where we should be when it comes to diversity. But in order to get there, we need to have this conversation. We have to figure out where our biases lie, and we have to combat them. Tackling unconscious bias at work is just one piece of making Google a diverse workplace, but it’s absolutely essential if we’re going to live up to our promise to build technology that makes life better for as many people as possible.
Posted by Laszlo Bock, SVP of People Operations, and Brian Welle, Ph.D., Director of People Analytics
For those who dream big: Announcing the winners of the 2014 Google Science Fair
September 22, 2014
Ciara Judge, Émer Hickey and Sophie Healy-Thow became interested in addressing the global food crisis after learning about the Horn of Africa famine in 2011. When a gardening project went awry, they discovered a naturally occurring bacteria in soil called Diazotroph. The girls determined that the bacteria could be used to speed up the the germination process of certain crops, like barley and oats, by 50 percent, potentially helping fulfill the rising demand for food worldwide. Oh—and they’re 16 years old.
Today, Ciara, Émer and Sophie were named the Grand Prize Winner and the 15-16 age category winners of our fourth annual
Google Science Fair
. They are some of thousands of students ages 13-18 who
dared to ask tough questions like
: How can we stop cyberbullying? How can I help my grandfather who has Alzheimer's from wandering out of bed at night? How can we protect the environment? And then they actually went out and answered them.
From thousands of submissions from 90+ countries, our
panel of esteemed judges
selected 18 finalists representing nine countries—Australia, Canada, France, India, Russia, U.K., Ukraine and the U.S.—who spent today impressing Googlers and local school students at our Mountain View, Calif. headquarters. In addition to our Grand Prize Winners, the winners of the 2014 Google Science Fair are:
13-14 age category: Mihir Garimella (Pennsylvania, USA)
for his project
FlyBot: Mimicking Fruit Fly Response Patterns for Threat Evasion
. Like many boys his age, Mihir is fascinated with robots. But he took it to the next level and actually built a flying robot, much like the ones used in search and rescue missions, that was inspired by the way fruit flies detect and respond to threats. Mihir is also the winner of the very first Computer Science award, sponsored by Google.
17-18 age category: Hayley Todesco (Alberta, Canada)
for her project
Waste to Water: Biodegrading Naphthenic Acids using Novel Sand Bioreactors
. Hayley became deeply interested in the environment after watching Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Her project uses a sustainable and efficient method to break down pollutant substances and toxins found in
tailing
ponds water in her hometown, a hub of the oil sands industry.
The Scientific American
Science in Action award
: Kenneth Shinozuka (Brooklyn, New York)
for his wearable sensors project. Kenneth was inspired by his grandfather and hopes to help others around the world dealing with Alzheimer's. The
Scientific American
award is given to a project that addresses a health, resource or environmental challenge.
Voter’s Choice award: Arsh Dilbagi (India)
for his project
Talk
, which enables people with speech difficulties to communicate by simply exhaling.
Hayley, Mihir, Kenneth, Ciara, Sophie and Émer
As the Grand Prize winners, Ciara, Émer and Sophie
receive
a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands provided by
National Geographic
, a $50,000 scholarship from Google, a personalized LEGO prize provided by
LEGO Education
and the chance to participate in astronaut training at the
Virgin Galactic
Spaceport in the Mojave desert.
Thanks to all of our young finalists and to everyone who participated in this year’s Google Science Fair. We started the Science Fair to inspire scientific exploration among young people and celebrate the next generation of scientist and engineers. And every year we end up amazed by how much you inspire us. So, keep dreaming, creating and asking questions. We look forward to hearing the answers.
Posted by Clare Conway, on behalf of the Google Science Fair team
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