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Opening the doors to the world-famous Abbey Road Studios
April 14, 2015
On a leafy street in north London, next to a
popular zebra crossing
, is one of the world’s most celebrated music landmarks: Abbey Road Studios.
Most people probably associate Abbey Road with the Beatles album of the same name. In fact, the studios have played a role in music history: if you can hum the theme to "Star Wars," "Harry Potter" or "Indiana Jones," or you’ve sung along to tracks by Pink Floyd or Oasis, or even if you own a pair of stereo headphones, then you’ve been impacted by the work of Abbey Road. Since opening in 1931, the studios have pushed the boundaries of music and sound, reinventing the recording process at every step. But until now, the famous crossing was as close as most of us could get to the studios.
Now, for the first time, the doors at Abbey Road are open to everyone. In partnership with Abbey Road Studios, we’ve created
Inside Abbey Road
, an experience that lets fans around the world step inside the studios and explore this renowned institution.
Accessible via desktop, tablet and phone, you can explore every nook and cranny of Abbey Road with more than 150 different 360-degree panoramic images. As you walk through the studios, you’ll see YouTube videos and archival images from Abbey Road’s history—right where they originally happened. You can also play with pioneering equipment in specially designed interactive gadgets, such as the J37 4-track recorder that was used to record the Beatles’
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Throughout the studios you’ll find more than 30 stories, full of anecdotes and facts about the studios, like the story of Abbey Road engineer Alan Blumlein. Alan was annoyed after a trip to the movies, because the sound in early cinemas only came from one side of the screen. He went on to invent the concept of stereo audio—and sound and screen have matched ever since. Or, if you feel like being guided around the studios, there's an audio tour you can join in every studio. Narrated by producer Giles Martin, engineer and Head of Audio Products Mirek Stiles, and broadcaster Lauren Laverne, the audio tours let you see the studios through their eyes. Think of it as your own personal tour.
Inside Abbey Road is part of our broader effort to help people experience worldwide culture and places from wherever they are, whether it’s visiting the Pyramids of Giza in Google Maps or getting up close to the brush strokes of Van Gogh in the Google Art Project. Now, we’re taking you behind the doors of one of the most famous music studios in the world. Take a step
Inside Abbey Road
and see for yourself.
Posted by Tom Seymour, Creative Lead and audiophile, Google Creative Lab London
Through the Google lens: Search trends April 3-9
April 10, 2015
If you’ve ever searched Google for the lyrics to Don McLean’s “American Pie,” this was your lucky week. The manuscript of the classic song
sold for $1.2 million this week
, prompting its writer to speak publicly for the first time ever about what it all meant—giving searchers some new answers. There was plenty else to search for this week, though, with drama taking place on the diamond, in the courtroom, and on TV screens.
Take me out to the ballgame
When one door closes, another opens. The same could be said of sporting seasons. March Madness came to a nail-biting close on Monday with a
Duke victory over Wisconsin
, and on Tuesday UConn took their third win in a row in the
women’s tournament
. But while the Blue Devils and Huskies were celebrating, the focus shifted to
Major League Baseball
, which kicked off its new season on Sunday. As bats cracked across the country, people searched for their favorite teams, players, and game schedules.
If baseball’s not for you, maybe the grass is greener on the golf course? This year’s Masters Golf Tournament is now in full swing in Augusta, Ga. There were
more than a million searches
for the “tradition unlike any other” on Wednesday alone—and search interest in [hole in one] increased by more than 1,000 percent after six-time Masters champ Jack Nicklaus
scored an ace
at the tournament’s par-3 contest.
Crime and punishment
A white police officer in South Carolina was charged with the murder of an unarmed 50-year old black man this week. The officer, Michael T. Slager, claimed that he fired at Walter Scott because he feared for his safety, but a bystander’s video of the shooting showed Slager fire eight shots at Scott’s back as the man ran away. The video reignited debates about the use of lethal force by police, particularly against black men—a topic that has been in the news for months following the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York. Search interest in police brutality increased by 150 percent, and there were more than half a million searches for
Walter Scott
as people turned to the web to ask questions about how and why the event unfolded:
On Wednesday, a jury found
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
guilty on all 30 charges for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. People turned to search to learn more about the trial and what’s next for Tsarnaev, who could face the death penalty. Between the trial and the upcoming 2015 Boston Marathon, it’s no surprise the term “Boston Strong” is trending on search as well.
Drama on demand
It was a good week for TV fans. On Sunday, “
Mad Men
” returned for its final season, bringing people to search for the show’s history, cast and more. Then, on Tuesday, cord cutters rejoiced—and searched—when HBO introduced its long-awaited standalone streaming app
HBO Now
just in time for the fifth season of “Game of Thrones.” Plus, trailers dropped for the upcoming seasons of both “
True Detective
” and “
Orange is the New Black
.” And finally, when news broke that David Lynch won’t be part of Showtime’s “Twin Peaks” reboot, the cast
protested with a video campaign
that just happened to overlap with
the 25th anniversary of the show’s premiere
. Whew. Now you just have to find time to watch all that.
Tip of the week
“Ok Google, when do the Nationals play?” Stay up to date with upcoming games and scores for all your favorite teams this baseball season with the
Google app
.
Posted by Emily Wood, Managing Editor, who searched this week for [brian krakow mad men] and [vhs covers modern movies]
Through the Google lens: Search trends March 27 - April 2
April 3, 2015
From political drama to the mobile resurrection of Pac-Man, here’s what trended on search this week.
If you can't stand the heat...
This week, the hammer came down on the state of
Indiana
after Governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would have allowed businesses to refuse service to individuals based on their sexual orientation. The law quickly drew a firestorm of criticism from the public— Apple CEO
Tim Cook
and the
NCAA
condemned it, while
Walmart
spoke out against similar legislation in Arkansas. Amidst outcry against the law, searches for [indiana law] passed 200,000+ and left state officials squirming. Eventually, the attention forced Pence to pass a “
fix
” to the bill that would prohibit businesses from using the law as a justification to deny people services based on race, disability, religion and sexual orientation.
Over in California, an ongoing four-year drought is pushing the state into a near-crisis. This week, Governor Jerry Brown signed an executive order calling for water supply agencies across the state to reduce their use by 25 percent—a first in California history. News of the mandate is drawing interest online with the term [california drought]
spiking
on the web after the announcement. People are also looking for alternative methods to get through the dry spell—searches for drought-resistant plants spiked three times in the past seven days.
The joke’s on you
The Internet is normally a funny place, but on
April Fools’ day
it takes the gags and laughs to a whole new level. Searches for the best pranks and jokes topped out at more than 200,000,
with Petco’s dog selfie stick and Cottonelle’s toilet paper for the left-handed earning
top honors
from the media. Even our own “
PAC-Maps
” got the web chomping—searches for the game soared to 2 million.
This week was no joke for comedian
Trevor Noah
, who was introduced as the new host of The Daily Show on Monday. The Twitterverse criticized the decision after discovering several old distasteful jokes the comedian had made on Twitter. Calling the tweets anti-semitic and sexist, some are already threatening to boycott the show. But not everyone is pulling out their pitchforks just yet: The network is
standing by their choice
while others are labeling the tweets a case of
bad jokes
. Either way, searches for the comedian hit an
all-time high
.
Mark your calendars
As Easter and Passover begin this weekend, people turned to the web to look for desserts, recipes and activities to celebrate the holidays. Searches for Easter-related topics like egg hunts, the Easter bunny and Easter brunch trended across the U.S. And people wore their lightest blue this past Thursday to mark
Autism Awareness Day
—which made it to the top 10 on the search charts that day.
Tip of the week
Struggling with your Easter egg decorations? Tell Google to, “Show me picture of Easter eggs,” to find a little design inspiration.
Posted by Jenise Araujo, Communications Associate, who searched this week for [new host new problems] and [pranksters]
Smartbox by Inbox: the mailbox of tomorrow, today
March 31, 2015
Mail is a wondrous thing. From the early days of the
homing pigeon
to the herculean efforts of the
Pony Express
, mail has connected us for generations. The advent of email brought the world even closer together. And yet, despite this leap forward, physical mail still just sits there. In a box. All day.
So today we’re excited to introduce Smartbox—a better, smarter mailbox that fuses physical mail with everything you love about the electronic kind:
Smartbox is currently in field trial—stuck in the ground, in a field—for
Inbox by Gmail
customers. If you’re not yet using Inbox, simply email
inbox@google.com
anytime before April 2 to be invited, and to reserve your spot on the Smartbox waitlist.
Posted by Merrill Anovick, Project Manager
(Cross-posted from the
Gmail Blog
)
Through the Google lens: Search trends March 20-26
March 27, 2015
Searches for March Madness are
still
surviving
and
advancing
, but this week brought with it a host of other stories to spur your search questions. Here’s a look at what people were searching for this week:
Germanwings Flight 9525
On Tuesday, Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed in the French Alps, killing all 150 people who were onboard. In the wake of the tragedy, people around the world have turned to search to learn more about the
crash
and
subsequent investigation
. Early searches included questions about Lufthansa, Germanwings’ parent company, and about the type of plane that had crashed; search interest in the Airbus A320 family spiked 100x in the first four hours. But after investigations revealed that co-pilot
Andreas Lubitz
appears to have deliberately locked himself in the cockpit and flown the plane into a mountain, the questions got more specific. People asked questions like “How do you access the plane’s cockpit?” and worried: “Is it safe to fly after the Germanwings crash?” and “Is flying becoming more dangerous?”
Presidential politics
Election Day 2016 is more than a year-and-a-half away, but the presidential race is already underway. On Monday, Senator Ted Cruz announced his candidacy. The Texas Republican is known for his fervent opposition to the Affordable Care Act, in particular a 21-hour filibuster-style speech on the floor of the Senate in 2013 (at one point, he read aloud from Dr. Seuss’
Green Eggs and Ham
). Searchers turned to the web to answer all kinds of questions about Cruz and his beliefs, sending searches for [cruz liberty], [cruz obamacare] and [cruz wiki] to spike
more than a thousand percent
in the last 30 days. The top questions, though, were around whether Cruz is eligible to become President because he was born in Canada. (The answer is yes, BTW.)
Pop culture mania
This week Zayn Malik confirmed he is leaving boy band One Direction, sending
teens
worldwide into a
tailspin
as they asked (and searched): “Why is Zayn leaving One Direction?” The British star said that he is leaving to “be a normal 22-year-old...out of the spotlight,” which may be tough given there were more than
a million searches for him
on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the rest of the band will go on without him—in fact, search interest in One Direction tours spiked 5x in the U.S. the day of the announcement.
If freaking out about Zayn isn’t your thing, maybe freaking out about “A” is? The mysterious villain of the ABC Family show
Pretty Little Liars
was revealed—sorta—on Tuesday night, leading to
hundreds of thousands of searches
for the show. We won’t spoil it here, even though it was frankly a little hard to miss amidst the outcry. Let’s just say,
the truth is out there
. ;)
Finally, it’s barely spring but it’s already time to start thinking about your summer festival agenda. The line-ups of both San Francisco’s
Outside Lands
and Chicago’s
Lollapalooza
music festivals were announced this week. The top festival searched in each state breaks down almost exclusively along geographic lines and leaves us wondering: Are Massachusetts residents big
Elton John
fans?
Taking charge of your health
In a New York Times op-ed, Angelina Jolie revealed that she had undergone surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes to prevent cancer. This was the second preventative surgery for Jolie (she wrote about her double mastectomy in 2013), who made this decision because she carries a mutation in her BRCA1 gene, putting her at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer. There were more than 100,000 searches for
Angelina Jolie
on Tuesday, and people turned to the web to ask related questions about women’s health and cancer prevention.
Tip of the week
Who says
National Puppy Day
has to be just once a year? When you’re need of a furry pick-me-up, just ask the
Google app
“Ok Google, show me pictures of puppies.” Smiles are practically guaranteed.
Posted by Emily Wood, Managing Editor, who searched this week for [rural studio] and [izombie]
It's time to put America’s small businesses on the map
March 25, 2015
If you searched for “Dependable Care near Garland, TX” a few months ago, you would have seen a lot of search results—but not the one that mattered to Marieshia Hicks. Marieshia runs
Dependable Care Health Service
in Garland, and it was her business that was missing. But that all changed last month when she attended a workshop at the Garland Chamber of Commerce called Let’s Put Garland on the Map.
The workshop, run by our Get Your Business Online team, showed her how to use Google My Business—a tool that allows business owners to control the info listed about their business on Google Search and Maps—to help more people find Dependable. Marieshia added an updated phone number, hours of operation, and a description to her business listing. Within a few months, she had more customers come through the door and referrals from doctors who could reach her. This one simple adjustment made a difference. In Marieshia’s words: “It’s huge.”
Huge might be an understatement.
Four out of five people
use search engines to find local information, like business hours and addresses, and research shows that businesses with complete listings are t
wice as likely
(PDF) to be considered reputable by customers. Consumers are
38 percent more likely to visit and 29 percent more likely to consider purchasing
from businesses with complete listings. Yet
only 37 percent of businesses
(PDF) have claimed a local business listing on a search engine. That’s a lot of missed opportunities for small businesses.
With this in mind, our Get Your Business Online team set out in 2011 to help businesses like Marieshia’s get found online. We’ve gone to every state in the U.S. and worked with thousands of business owners to create free websites and update their Google Search and Maps listings. But there’s a lot more work to do to help businesses take advantage of the vast opportunities yielded by the web. So today, we’re introducing
Let’s Put Our Cities on the Map
, a new program to help 30,000 cities get their local businesses online.
If we want to help every business in the U.S., we need to reach businesses where they are. So this tailor-made program provides each city with a custom website where local businesses can find helpful resources, including a new diagnostic tool that shows businesses how they appear on Search and Maps, a step-by-step guide for getting online with Google My Business, and a free website and domain name for one year with our partner, Startlogic.
We’re also forming partnerships with local organizations—like chambers and small business development centers—and equipping them with free trainings and customized city materials to run workshops just like the one Marieshia attended in Garland. These local partners know the challenges for local businesses more than anyone—and they recognize the value of getting businesses online. After all, getting Dependable’s information online not only means the world for Marieshia, it means even more for the city of Garland. Complete business info can help generate economic value
up to $300,000 a year for a small city or up to $7 million for a large one
(PDF). So when our local businesses are online, our local economies benefit.
If you have a favorite local business—a day care, a dentist, a dry cleaner—show your support by helping them get their info online and on the map. Visit your city’s website at
www.gybo.com
to find out how you can get involved.
Let’s put our cities on the map!
Posted by Soo Young Kim, Head of Marketing, Get Your Business Online
Through the Google lens: Search trends March 13-19
March 20, 2015
Whether you’re glued to the small screen or you’ve got your eyes on the sky this week, search is there to answer your questions. Here’s a look at this week in search:
TV gold
FOX’s “
Empire
” has
built a kingdom of fans
during its first season on the air. This week’s finale not only brought the TV show its highest number of viewers—it also had its largest spike in search interest to date with 200,000+ searches Wednesday night. The two-hour finale delivered a king-sized serving of soap opera-esque surprises, ending in a cliffhanger that had fans eager for more (“When does ‘Empire’ season 2 air?” was trending question this week). And “Empire” is making waves in the real-life music industry too: its soundtrack
debuted at number one
on Billboard’s Top 200 list this week. Here’s a look at the top searched songs:
Moving from TV fiction to fact, news broke last Saturday that real estate scion
Robert Durst
had been arrested in connection to several unsolved murders. Durst was the subject of “The Jinx,” the HBO documentary that aired its final episode Sunday night—in which Durst appears to confess to the crimes. Needless to say, though the police said
the arrest was not connected to the show
, the timing was
great
for HBO. Search interest in Robert Durst increased by 1,700 percent in the U.S.
Spring fever
March Madness
tipped off this week, with fans across the nation rushing to fill out their brackets and come up with excuses to be out of the office. Ten of the top 20 searches yesterday were related to college basketball, and people are turning to search to ask important questions like “Who can beat Kentucky?” (They’re undefeated this season.) And everyone wants to know who President Obama is rooting for: his is the
most searched celebrity bracket
so far.
If your bracket is already busted, you’ve got something else to be happy about: today marks the first day of spring, and the vernal equinox. Even though it’s still cold or even snowy in some spots today, the arrival of spring has people very excited. There were more than 2 million searches for [
vernal equinox
] yesterday—even more than searches for [march madness live].
Still, the sun’s position over the Equator isn’t the only celestial event that’s got people searching. On Friday, we’ll see both a Supermoon as well as the only total solar eclipse of the year—the first since 2013. Searches for [
solar eclipse glasses
] are up more than 2,000 percent as people figure out how to catch a glimpse. And an intense solar storm brought the aurora borealis south on Tuesday night, making the Northern Lights visible as far south as Oregon and as far out as
outer space
. The green lights lit up search as well as the skies: search interest went up more than 1,250 percent this week!
Good eats
Who says it needs to be hot out to eat ice cream?
Dairy Queen
kicked off its 75th anniversary celebrations on Monday by treating everyone to a free cone, and more than 200,000 searches followed. And it turns out that when it comes to comfort food, ice cream was a better choice this week than the good ol’ blue box. Kraft announced a recall of more than 6 million boxes its classic macaroni and cheese after metal was found in some boxes. There were more than 100,000+ searches for [
kraft mac and cheese recall
] as people tried to determine whether their pantries were affected.
Tip of the week
Keep up with the
NCAA tournament with the Google app
. Just say “Ok Google, show me the latest on March Madness” to get real-time scores, in-game and recap videos, and live streams for each game.
Posted by Emily Wood, Managing Editor, who searched this week for [heisler beer tv] and [little women reboot]
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