125 posts filed under this category.
Google updated its webmaster recommendations for smartphone-optimized websites. You may need to change your site HTML and server headers to help Google’s various crawlers find your smartphone content and better associate the same pages optimized for various screen sizes.
Chrome 15 and above supports mapping input fields to specific types of data to improve the accuracy of autofill tools. The new WHATWG autocompletetype attribute proposal from Ilya Sherman of Google proposes 36 mapped tokens and two sections for autofill agents entering name, address, contact, credit card, business, or birthday data in a web browser.
Google’s mobile search engine crawler now uses an updated User-Agent string designed to trigger iPhone-specific renderings of web pages.
Google released Chrome 13 into its stable channel this morning with over 5200 revisions including Instant Pages. If your webpages are not already differentiating between attended and unattended pageviews using the Page Visibility API for site analytics (and other functions assuming live eyeballs and the opportunity for interaction with page elements) your pageview numbers are now likely inflated.
Google search result pages now trigger a prefetch of top search result links in an effort to make navigating search results as easy as changing channels on your television. If Google’s search algorithms determine there is a significant probability of user click-through on particular result they will instruct supporting browsers to preload the entire destination page including images, JavaScript, advertisements, and analytics. Update your web pages to be aware of the current page visibility state and track interactions, not background tasks.
Google will roll out a change to its search results pages later this week designed to better capture outbound clicks. Google search result pages will link to a gateway URL before delivering the visitor to his final destination. These gateway URLs will replace search result URLs exposed via the Referer HTTP header.
Google released its second web browser yesterday afternoon, adding additional headroom for web applications stretching the limits of what it’s possible to accomplish within a web browser. The Google Chrome team assembled domain experts in various fields over the past six years, both through direct hires and acquisitions, to create a new browser and its critical components from scratch. GMail and Google Maps pushed the Web to its limits, taking advantage of browser technologies invented in Redmond but left dormant for far too long. Contributing to Firefox’s core, writing browser extensions, and championing HTML could only take the $150 billion company so far: they needed to own the full browser to push their Web efforts forward at full speed.
On June 30 Adobe announced a partnership with Google and Yahoo! to better index SWF content on the Web. Search engines can now look inside the binary SWF format to extract text, links, and possible actions. In this post I will take a deeper look at search engine Flash interpreters and provide a few tips for successful indexing.
Google App Engine lets any Python developer execute CGI-driven Web applications, store its results, and serve static content from a fault-tolerant geo-distributed computing grid built exclusively for modern Web applications. In this post I will summarize Google App Engine from a developer’s point of view, outline its major features, and examine pitfalls for developers and startups interested in deploying web applications on Google’s servers.
Google released a new version of its Google Analytics tracking code last month. In this post you will learn about the new features available to webmasters and how to move away from the deprecated libraries.
Google is currently processing over 20 petabytes of data per day through an average of 100,000 MapReduce jobs spread across its computing clusters.
Google Desktop widgets can now be embedded in your iGoogle personal start page. This new functionality adds OS-level functionality such as CPU utilization, currently playing tracks in iTunes, or a battery indicator inside a Web interface. Google Desktop 5.5 is now available in a widget-only version to bridge these two worlds.
Google introduced a new advertising unit tonight: Google Gadgets. This new form of rich content is available everywhere AdWords image ads are currently served, and includes a completely new widget analytics system.
In this post I’ll outline different ways you can take advantage of Google’s architecture to serve your widget content to the world. I’ll cover various depths of integration and their branding and licensing issues.
Google is directly investing in small companies to expand the popularity of its iGoogle product. Google Gadget Ventures grants popular Google gadgets $5,000 for further development. Popular widget businesses are eligible for $100,000 in seed capital with Google taking an equity stake in each company. Google expects to invest $700,000 or more in third-party widget development over the next year. About 9% of Google’s gadget directory would be eligible for the grant consideration based on the Google Gadget pageview analysis I last conducted in April. How it works A gadget must have at least 250,000 gadget views per week to…
Google’s search result ranking algorithm received a major upgrade yesterday, incorporating its vertical search properties directly in the main search result page. The new design, Universal Search, integrates results from specialized Google verticals such as blogs, images, news, maps, and video. Results we’ve previously expected to find inside of a OneBox now appear anywhere in the users’ result listings thanks to rewritten ranking and content examination algorithms. Examining vertical search Google and other large search engines crawl the worldwide web for new information every minute of every day. The modern web consists of billions of documents expressed in multiple formats…
Webmasters will soon be able to auction off widget space on their sites and blogs managed and marketed by advertising powerhouse Google. Advertisers will produce a Google Gadget in standard IAB unit sizes for distribution across the Google network at CPC or CPM billing rates. Google will bolster its current Google Analytics package to support better tracking paid and free widget campaigns in this sub-page and asynchronous pageload environment. The Google Gadget advertising beta program was publicly announced during a marketing summit for the automotive industry according to Online Media Daily. By the end of 2007 Google will offer its…
Google Reader finally has its first official API. Any developer in the world can request the entire history of a web feed from Google’s geo-distributed server cloud in a normalized response for inclusion in their websites or products. I’ve been hoping for such an API since I first deconstructed the Google Reader backend in December 2005. Most users will likely interact with the Google AJAX Feed API through a JavaScript library included on their site or a pre-configured badge generated on the Google site. The Feed API wrapper is part of a larger effort by Google to extend its search…
Gadget platforms have many levels of integration and customization beyond a metadata wrapper and some markup. Beginners and tinkerers might stick to the basics, but some gadget authors go beyond the plain essentials and add support for multiple languages, tabbed views, and specify any requirements a gadget may expect. In yesterday’s post I provided an overview of the Google Gadgets ecosystem, detailing the types of content and authors producing Google universal gadgets. Today I’ll dive into developer features and observed implementations. Language support Content types Gadget height Top built-in libraries Gadgets produced by Google Extra requirements Summary Language support Google…
Last week the Google Gadgets team released page view numbers for gadgets in its directory, giving outsiders their glimpse of gadget activity across Google Personalized Homepage, Google Desktop, and syndicated throughout the web through Google Gadgets For Your Page. Over the weekend I crawled the entire Google Gadget directory, collecting information about every listed gadget to create a better and more complete understanding of a widget/gadget ecosystem including its level of health, geographic diversity of authors and supported users, popular categories, and some of the most popular gadget programming methods (just to name a few). In this post I’ll share…
Google will host a conference this summer focused on building scalable websites. The one-day conference takes place on Saturday, June 23, at the Google offices in Seattle, home to Google Webmaster Tools, Google Talk, and a few other teams. The conference organizers are currently accepting applications for 45-minute talks, and hopefully we’ll be able to learn a little more about concepts behind MapReduce, Bigtable and some large-scale data management issues from the Google staff. Registration is not yet open, and it’s unclear whether the conference will be held in the downtown sales office or the engineering office in Kirkland, so…
If you walk into any of Google’s 500 bathroom stalls you might notice some Python on the walls. Google places tips for its developers above every urinal and bathroom stall to help expounding the virtues of well-tested code, helping a Google engineer stay productive even when nature calls. Google is releasing its “Testing on the Toilet” series on a new testing blog under a Creative Commons license, so now anyone can decorate their bathroom walls to look just like Google. No, it’s not a April Fools joke, Google really does promote 100% coverage in its bathroom stalls….
A few more details about Google’s possible analysis of page text is now available thanks to a recently published patent application by Googler Anna Patterson from June 2006. The application details how a search engine like Google might analyze text phrases, date-based topics, and associate a web page with related topics, even if the specific topic does not appear in the document itself. The 22-page document further emphasizes Google’s current work on “shingle” analysis to discover important phrases and concepts. (via Search Engine Land) Highly ranked websites are more likely to receive in-depth analysis through multiple index passes and phrase…
Guido van Rossum unveiled his first Google project, Mondrian, tonight during a Python tech talk at the Google campus in Mountain View. Mondrian is a web-based code review system built on top of a Perforce and BigTable backend with a Python-powered front-end. Mondrian is a pretty impressive system and is currently in use across Google. Shared Development Environment Google uses a company-wide Perforce depot with almost no developer branches. Each developer has their own NFS workspace readable by anyone in the company, including automated processes. An administrative process takes snapshots of each developer workspace including local development environments accessed…
Users of Google Apps for Your Domain can now add a homepage with a custom set of configured gadgets for their users. The new feature lets companies configure mail messages, calendar data, specialized web feeds, and more as their employees’ portal to the web. The group customization feature was previously only available to large partnerships such as Dell and Gateway. The Apps for Your Domain program launched in August and includes custom branded and custom addressable access to Google Mail, Talk, Calendar, webpage creation, and now your own start page to bring it all together. The Google search box…
Google’s moves into application bundles and collaboration software are setting it up for a bigger enterprise play, taking on Microsoft in an area that consistently feeds their R&D. Maybe you read about the JotSpot acquisition this morning on the Google enterprise blog. We look forward to putting those wikis to work. Google currently searches the enterprise through its search appliance, a brightly colored box you place in your rack and configure to crawl behind the firewall. Just one application on this box seems like a waste of space and could perhaps open up some more applications for small to…
Google Alerts now supports blog search content. If you subscribe to a Google News alert for your brand or topic of interest you can now receive the same style alerts for content in the Google Blog Search index. Google Alerts tracks news, blogs, Usenet groups, and Google Groups discussions using the same search syntax found on their respective website. The new blog search e-mail notification will be an easy extension of vertical search for existing users. Advanced users can setup an advanced search, or choose to receive general updates via web feeds and critical updates via e-mail. I expect Google…
Google has added new features to its tools for webmasters, allowing us to request Google index our site faster and more thoroughly than before. Crank it up! Control Googlebot crawl rate You can now control how frequently Googlebot crawls your site over the next 90 days. Webmasters can ask Googlebot to slow down or speed up for the next 90 days. Your choice may affect your total bandwidth usage but the tradeoff is possibly more frequent visits from Google’s discovery and indexing tools. Enhanced image search Webmasters can now opt-in to Google enhanced image search. If you opt-in Google may…
Google shocked the online world this weekend with its acquisition of leading video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock. YouTube will maintain its brand and site, and move into its new San Bruno offices this week as planned. Hitwise estimates YouTube’s market share in September at 46%, an even stronger share in Europe. Google Video had an estimated market share of 11% in the same period. The $1.65 billion acquisition places YouTube at about the same purchase price adjusted for inflation as eBay’s acquisition of PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion. I’m sure the similarities are not lost…
Google Blog Search is now accepting pings and republishing the updates it observes. You can submit an update using XML-RPC or REST, similar to other blog services and easily added to your weblog’s ping configuration. RPC endpoint: http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 Google publishes the last 5 minutes of ping activity in its changes.xml file. It is possible to receive pings of different recency by adding the last parameter to your request with a number of seconds between 1 and 300. The new service is a change in Google’s view of the web, accepting the value of fresh index content within minutes instead…
Google has a new search product focused on source code. It peeks inside tarballs and other recognized formats, allowing you to search the index by regex, license, or language. It’s pretty easy to see how many projects are using a given library (such as feedparser or magpie) and keep inventing new ways to explore software. You can access the code search engine through a GData Atom feed for easy integration wherever you choose. I find Google Code Search is easier to use than Koders, and may come in handy when looking for different ways of approaching a particular programming…
Google “Universal” Gadgets are now available for blogs and pages around the web. A single Google gadget can now be deployed on Google Personalized Homepage, Google Desktop, Google Page Creator, or via a JavaScript embed on any editable webpage. You can add PacMan to your blog sidebar or display photos uploaded to Picassa on your MySpace page, or add a Google Reader viewer anywhere. Google’s support for webpage embeds brings the Google Reader story full circle. The team originally envisioned an RSS widget available on a blog sidebar and the project grew into much more. You can now access the…
iGoogle users can now add a Google Gadget to their homepage showing recommended searches, pages, and gadgets based on behavior across Google search properties. The new service builds on top of Google’s search history trends data by adding recommended destination pages and new homepage gadgets. The widget was written by “Beverly Y.” in Google’s New York office. I found the recommendations useful with some expected content and a few surprises thrown in as well. “Burning Man” might be geo-targetted since I live in San Francisco, but three RSS recommendations in the top 5 is right on. I was researching…
Google CEO Eric Schmidt is now an Apple Computer board member. He joins Fred Anderson of Elevation Partners, Bill Campbell of Intuit, Millard Drexler of J. Crew, Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson, politician Al Gore, and Jerry York of Harwinton Capital. The group was already interconnected outside of the Apple boardroom. Al Gore is a Google advisor and Google invested in Current TV, Gore’s television station. Bill Campbell was an early management advisor to Larry Page and Sergey Brin and helped hire Eric Schmidt. Arthur Levinson is on Google’s Board of Directors. Are closer times ahead for these two powerful brands?…
Jason Goldman, product manager of Google Blog Search and Blogger, is leaving Google at the end of this week. No more commutes from San Francisco, but he’ll instead be on a jet plane traveling the world for a bit before starting somewhere a bit smaller. I could have taken time off or switched to a different project, but I feel that after I’m finished doing the nothing I’ve got planned, I’m going to want to do something somewhere small. And, to be honest, I can’t really imagine being at Google but not being involved in Blogger. Jason’s departure comes shortly…
Google switched on its public WiFi network in Mountain View less than an hour ago, its first experiment in location-based services covering 11-miles of tech-saavy real estate in the heart of Silicon Valley. Each WiFi user must have a Google Account and Google can pinpoint your location on the network based on your current access point. Every Google account is GTalk enabled, including the just announced new GTalk client with free file transfer and voicemail. Every resident of Mountain View can now have free Internet access, email, voicemail, and much more. Google also announced its first killer app for location-based…
Google will power search and advertising across Fox Interactive’s online properties for the next three years. The deal includes guaranteed minimum revenue share payments from Google of $900 million based on Fox Interactive Media meeting its traffic numbers and “other commitments.” Fox Interactive Media includes social network MySpace, news sites Fox News and Fox Sports, gaming network IGN as well as content distribution and advertising on local TV stations owned by Fox Broadcasting. The agreement calls for Google to power web, vertical and site specific search for MySpace.com and the majority of Fox Interactive Media properties. Google will be the…
Google has just launched project hosting inside of its Google Code effort. The Google Code Project Hosting center allows any developer to create and host a new project powered by Google management and hosting tools. The new service features a reworked backend for Subversion built on top of Google’s Big Table file system. The robustness of Google’s backend will power the code repository. The site features a new issue-tracking system utilizing AJAX techniques for quick and responsive feedback for its users. The issue-tracking interface is similar to Gmail’s table layout, and allows customization through open tag fields. Developers on…
Saul Hansell of The New York Times examines Google’s current product offerings and feature gaps and comes away a bit puzzled. According to quotes in the article Google goes for the wow factor with stand-alone products that do not integrate well with the work of others. Marissa Mayer says it’s a lot easier to get engineers to spend time developing new features than fill in a feature gap. Sergey Brin says he is now encouraging engineers to develop their ideas as add-ons for existing Google products instead of as stand-alone products. Former Yahoo! executive Toni Schneider is quoted saying Yahoo!…
According to comScore Media Metrix numbers cited by the San Francisco Chronicle Google Blog Search had 94,000 unique visitors in May versus 3.3 million unique visitors for Technorati in the same period. Google Blog Search has less than 3% of the number of users as Technorati under those metrics. Either that’s a typo or Google is not very competitive in both blog search or shopping comparison verticals….
If your site currently generates an Atom feed for use as a Google Sitemap you may want to hold back upgrading your feed to Atom 1.0. Google Sitemaps currently accepts Atom 0.3 only and will throw errors when it encounters the Atom 1.0 feed….
I’ve always wondered why the offices of Google employees are fabric tents. Metropolis Magazine recently published an in-depth look at the design of the Google headquarters and the use of colors, lighting, and shared room locations to encourage focused creativity and interaction. (via 37signals) Wilkinson’s group designed an ingenious system of tented glass offices that allows daylight to stream through the window-side offices and into the center of the floor while preserving acoustic integrity. The white canopies are made of an acrylic-coated polyester, quilted together with polyester-fiber fill. They help reflect light into the rest of the office and…
Vic Gundotra, Scoble’s (former) boss’ boss, is leaving Microsoft to join Google. Vic is taking a year off to allow his non-compete to elapse without legal issue. Vic is a general manager for platform evangelism and helped build Channel 9, 10, and other general developer evangelism efforts within Microsoft….
Access to Mountain View’s upcoming Google-powered WiFi network will require a Google account when it launches later this year. Users of the public WiFi network will land on a specially configured Google homepage for the city of Mountain View upon successful login with local modules such as weather, news, Chamber of Commerce, and school information. Requiring an account for every user means almost every person in Mountain View will have a GTalk account. Not only will you be able to likely connect instantly to people you know, but it will also be possible to browse users on nearby nodes if…
The New York Times estimates Google currently has over 450,000 servers spread over at least 25 locations around the world.
Google is releasing a payments and certification service named GBuy on June 28 according to a report on Forbes.com. Merchants enrolled in the program would receive free payment processing during the beta period and, according to RBC analyst Jordan Rohan, 1.5% to 2% after the beta period expires. GBuy will reportedly process orders on Google’s domain, similar to PayPal processing, and hand the user back over to the requesting site once the transaction has completed. The new service would give Google a more complete view of commerce search conversions, ultimately allowing the company to charge higher or lower rates to…
The Wall Street Journal reports Google will release a web-based spreadsheet application tomorrow on a limited test basis. Combined with Writely and Google Base it gives Google a mini office suite in what might be compared to Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and Access offerings. Is there room for an online PowerPoint (Google Pages + S5 perhaps) to complete the suite?…
AdSense has a new API, allowing users to create and manage AdSense accounts programmatically using SOAP. Sounds ideal for all the spam bots creating new scraper pages for asbestos and cancer news. If your bot creates a new bot account and earns over $100, you get $100 too! Yes, there are more serious uses such as a reputable blog provider creating an AdSense ID for its members, put I just see the piles of web spam getting worse….
Google Reader Mobile is now available on your mobile phone. The pages are served using XHTML 1.0 for mobile, including access keys for each list item. The mobile reader is a good blend of what you would like to configure on your desktop but still access on a more limited input device such as a mobile phone. The mobile interface is purposefully barebones but utilizes features made possible by the full desktop experience such as browsing tagged posts….
Nokia announced an upgrade to the 770 Internet tablet operating system and bundled hardware this morning at the VON Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. The new operating system, now named Internet Tablet OS 2006, features Google search and IM functionality built-in, including prominent display on the homepage and task bar. Nokia 770 owners can now chat with friends using text and voice from their Internet tablets. Nokia developed the IM and VoIP based on XMPP and Google’s libjingle extensions. The voice and text screens are branded with the Google Talk logo, including the beta designation. The Gizmo Project will…
Google introduced three new products today during its press day in Mountain View. The new product launches are part of Google’s refocus on its search and advertising business after an internal audit showed an overcommitment of resources to auxiliary products such as Blogger and Gmail. Google Co-op introduces social recommendations and tagging to the search process. You can “subscribe” to a friend or data provider’s content to receive a special OneBox with information from these companies or individuals. It’s similar to Google’s Enterprise OneBox and its partner experience combined with personal subscriptions. Users can also can add tags to…
Google’s GData format is a” new protocol based on Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0.” It also includes OpenSearch elements. It’s too late in the day for me to dig into the format right now, but you might enjoy having a look….
The latest version of Google’s Firefox toolbar adds support for feed subscriptions to online aggregators with just one click. Users are able to choose from a list of five popular online aggregators as well as Firefox’s own Live Bookmarks option. The icon was located right below the address bar feed icon in my Firefox window and seems like the least confusing place for the button even though it’s odd to see two options. I was able to choose between Bloglines, Google Personalized homepage, My Yahoo!, NewsGator Online, and Pluck. It would be nice to provide advanced users with the…
Google just signed an exclusive deal with Clear Channel to provide its search services across all of the radio conglomerate’s web sites. Clear Channel is the dominant radio network in the United States. The partnership is for text-only ads at the moment but Google has been interested in extending its advertising reach to radio and print media. Google currently advertises its jobs site on NPR stations….
Verizon’s SuperPages.com has partnered with Google to turn the phone company’s yellow page advertisers into sponsored listings within Google Local. It’s a huge development in a fragmented local search advertising space. Verizon will act as an authorized Google AdWords reseller using its 3,000 local sales people and existing small business portal to connect merchants to a larger audience….
In this week’s episode of Om and Niall PodSessions Om and I talk about Google Finance, the latest piece of the search company’s portal play. According to Hitwise, 10% of Google UK’s visitors clicked out to Business and Finance sites last week. Yahoo! Finance received .02% of those clicks. Is Google in denial about its move towards a portal service? I liked the new Google Finance, especially the chart overlays and integration with other Google products. Om found the new product lacking a few of his favorite features from Yahoo! Finance such as institutional holdings and insider trading. A search…
Google just unveiled Google Finance aimed at private investors. The new service correlates stock quotes, trading volume, executive bios and information, top news, blog posts, and Google-hosted moderated message boards. Check out the information page for GOOG for example. The site uses Flash technology to create interactive graphs. You can hover over any data point on the graph for more information and adjust a date-range slider beyond the default 3-day view. Blog data from Google Blog Search appears above message board content for selected blog. Given the frequent posts about a given company it makes sense to filter the…
Google built a feed platform that is freely available for any user with a Google account. The first implementation of the Google feed platform is the Google Reader lens, already used by thousands of Google users. The Google feed platform is web-based and therefore works with any operating system. It can be used as a pass-through for one feed at a time for small implementations or a full aggregator backend. It’s running on the Google’s expansive (and expensive) back-end hardware and network, creating fast response times and high reliability. Atom 1.0 output The Google Reader platform outputs all data in…
Sony Ericsson announced a new lineup of mobile phones today with Google integrated as a blogging and search platform. Sony Ericsson’s new K800 and K790 phone models include a 3.2 megapixel camera with a xenon flash and the ability to upload photos and text to Google’s Blogger service. Google will become the default search engine on all Internet-enabled phones from Sony Ericsson. A Google search bar will appear as a part of the default browser but hopefully won’t take up much space on the small 2″ screen. Tags: sonyericsson…
I was walking around Google tonight after a party and noticed Udi Manber, formerly of A9, working late. A few offices down from Udi was Andy Hertzfeld. That’s just one hallway in Building 43 but I’m sure there are seriously smart people all over the place. I kept an eye out for Guido but no luck….
Google employees confirmed in person today plans for local advertisements within Google Maps, including their Web APIs. Google will overlay blue markers on the map to highlight local business advertisements directly within the graphical search result. A corporate logo and advertising message will be displayed inside of marker info windows complete with a paid link. API developers will have the option to display the ads or to signup for a commercial relationship with Google. Combining local search targeting with graphical ads should yield extremely high payouts for Google. Google is currently paying data fees for maps used in a…
I had lunch today with the Google Reader team and learned a bit more about the group, their success and challenges, and how new projects at Google are sometimes formed. This is the story of how a side-project intended for someone’s blog became a feed aggregator integrated into one of the largest Web properties in the world. It all started with a love of blogging. Jason Shellen and Chris Wetherell were both members of the Blogger team and working on different ways to trick out their personal blogs. Jason kept various blogs including a link blog and wanted a way…
Google Toolbar version 4 allows developers to create custom buttons using a custom XML descriptor and extended functionality using RDF, RSS, and Atom feeds. The Google toolbar button API can be used to display the latest entry titles from a feed, execute a keyword or URL search, or continuously communicate data at a glance. I created custom buttons for this blog and Technorati. The Google Toolbar can now serve as a feed reader for any feed with a custom Google Toolbar icon. You can even specify in your button file a different icon you would like to display when new…
Google just introduced version 4 of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer including support for centralized bookmark tagging and notation from multiple computers. The new feature allows any toolbar user with a Google account to store bookmarks within their Google search history for synchronization and editing. Google bookmarks can also be added and edited via a web interface. You can add a new Google bookmark anywhere on the web when logged in by passing Google a few URL-encoded values. http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark title the title of the bookmark bkmk the bookmark URL labels comma separated labels or tags annotation A note or…
Google co-founder Larry Page is a keynote speaker at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. The Los Angeles Times reports that Google has been in talks with large retail stores such as Wal-Mart to carry a computing device called the “Google Cube” running a Google customized operating system and applications. Page was a late addition to the keynote roster, so Google might actually be ready to announce something. This week will be full of announcements for sure. Update 1/03: News.com reports both Google and Wal-Mart denied the rumor. Google issued a statement saying “we see no need to…
John Battelle had conversation with Google’s Marissa Mayer this morning about the affect of the deal between Google and AOL on Google’s search results. John posted a loose transcript of the conversation, but what interested me most was the discussion around OneBox results on Google’s search result pages. What we normally do on the OneBox, like on our stocks page or travel, where we have links to a few providers, we look at Media Metrix or PageRank data, and generally they agree and corroborate themselves (as to) who are the top three or five providers. And those are who we…
Google plans to offer a feed reader API to allow third-party developers to build new views of feed data on top of Google’s backend. The new APIs will include synchronization, feed-level and item-level tagging, per-item read and unread status, as well as rich media enclosure and metadata handling. Google Reader PM Jason Shellen and engineer Chris Wetherell both confirmed Google’s plans after I posted my reverse-engineering analysis of the Google Reader backend. The new APIs will allow aggregator developers to build new views and interactions on top of Google’s data. Google currently has at least two additional Google Reader views…
Documentation of the unreleased Google Reader API for feed syndication proxies and account access.
Matt Cutts wrote a quick primer explaining Google search to librarians. He walks readers through how Google discovers pages, indexes, and later analyzes a user’s query across a network of analytics servers. For each search that someone types in, over 500 computers may work together to find the best documents, and it all happens in under half a second….
I may have a Technorati version of the Blogger Web Comments Firefox extension running on my machine right now. Google directs users through a terms of service for the extension that asks users to agree to not modify the code, so I can can’t confirm my hacking… You can download the Blogger Web Comments Firefox extension directly without passing through the terms of service if you would like. Under part 4 of Google’s Firefox tools terms of service, proprietary rights, they claim full ownership over all released plugins and prohibit all modifications and derivative works. Except as expressly authorized…
Google just introduced an extension for Firefox that allows you to see the latest blog post linking to any page as it’s viewed. The extension brings up a small window in the bottom right-hand corner of the browser window with the most recent reference to the page. You can click on the box to extend it to the last 6 posts or view the entire result set on Google Blog Search. Users can also add their own comment about the page by clicking a special “Add Comment” button linked to their Blogger account. The Google FAQ mentions they hope…
Yesterday Google announced an API to add content to the Google personalized homepage using a custom XML file. Last night I coded my first Google homepage widget to display a Technorati Mini on my personalized homepage with a pre-populated value of my blog URL. Here’s how you can check it out: Go to the Google personalized homepage and sign-in. Click on “Add Content” in the top-left corner. Create a developer section by adding a feed URL of “developer.xml.” You will now see a new “My Modules” section. Add a module by entering with http://www.niallkennedy.com/gmodule.xml in the URL field. You…
Google has decorated its advertising sidebar with a strip of peppermint candy cane for certain holiday searchers. Try a search for Christmas, peppermint, or candy cane to see the modified search results page. Tags: easteregg…
Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Berkeley professor Hal Varian wrote an article in the latest issue of Newsweek about Google’s approach to managing the knowledge worker. Google’s extensive perks program is their way of removing things that may get in the way of their employees. Schmidt admits Google’s problems of “techno-arrogance” and “the not invented here syndrome.” The company also needs to adjust to a workforce of varying ages and motivations as it looks towards long-term growth. One of our not-so-secret weapons is our ideas mailing list: a companywide suggestion box where people can post ideas ranging from parking procedures…
Google is gathering as much information as possible about our online activities in the interest of serving up more targeted ads across more and more locations. Google continues to introduce new services limited only by what can have an advertisement placed alongside the content. Future products might include data gathering and targeting as a primary business goal with the intent of collecting higher advertising revenues elsewhere on the network on a future visit. Yahoo! just announced they will serve advertisements based on surfing behavior. Where does Google stand in its behavioral targeting? Google is already well on its way to…
Google’s shopping comparison service Froogle will now contain inventory information from local brick-and-mortar retailers like Best Buy, Circuit City, Home Depot, Bombay and CompUSA. Google will also populate the database with local merchant information from Google Base in addition to Google’s existing merchant feeds. Users searching for a product will be shown a map with local an overlay of local stores carrying the item. Google is in a unique position to offer the service because unlike traditional shopping comparison engines that make most of their money when a user leaves the site, local search does not provide easy lead and…
Google Base launched last Tuesday as a new repository of information for distribution across Google’s network of sites including Google search, Froogle, and Google Local. You can add your existing content to the Google Base for broad distribution with only a few easy steps. I’ll show you how. You need a Google account associated with Google Base to submit items. Sign-in to Google Base to get started. Complete your extended profile. Market yourself with your full name or the name of your site, a description up to 400 characters in length, your URL, location and contact information. Create a…
Google added some new features this week to allow webmasters to learn more about what Google knows about their sites. Once you verify ownership of your weblog you can view the top Google search queries displaying your site as well as the top terms generating click-throughs. You can also few statistics such as PageRank distribution across your pages, the amount of content on your site in various formats such as podcasts versus text, and errors encountered by Google’s search crawler when accessing your site. Check out my Movable Type Sitemap entry if you would like to provide Google with an…
Photo service Riya has been acquired was being acquired by Google for close to $40 million according to sources involved with the company. Riya uses face recognition technology to identify people in photos. The system can also recognize text such as street signs. Google likes using algorithms to solve complex problems, so the acquisition seems like a good fit. Om Malik has done some additional digging on the deal’s details. Riya has approximately 12 employees in Redwood City and an additional 10 employees in India. Riya is set to launch this week with a party in Atherton this Friday. Update…
The Google Maps team just launched a blog to talk directly to developers using Google’s APIs. I had no idea the API changed weekly, but it’s good that the team will be communicating those changes and highlighting implementations of their APIs. Tags: googlemaps…
In-Q-Tel, the venture capital of the CIA, recently announced a planned sale of 5,636 shares of Google stock worth over $2.2 million. The stock was most likely a result of In-Q-Tel’s investment in Keyhole, a earth visualization software company acquired by Google in October 2004. In-Q-Tel is also invested in search companies Intelliseek and piXlogic, and Verity. Tags: inqtel…
Google provides a full suite of services for the entry-level blog spammer. There are plenty of legitimate uses for all of these Google services, but Google’s market-leading position in search creates a spam ecosystem that inflates corporate revenues, index size, and user data. Google’s blog hosting service, Blog*Spot, received a lot of attention this week as blogosphere neighbors threw up their arms in protest of the host, which is like the seedy motel at the edge of town that rents by the-hour. It’s cheap and inviting to those who know no better, but those in the know don’t want anything…
Google just released their web-based feed reader named Google Reader. Users can login using their Google account and track web feeds in a two-column layout with a default sort of “relevance.” Google is not currently pulling from its archive of past blog entries and only displays the items currently present in the feed. The first column displays a list of subscribed feeds and switches to a list of posts when you click an item. Posts are displayed in the sidebar drawer using title and publication date only. The complete entry display contains the entry title, author, publication date, link, and…
Today I visited Google to talk about web spam. I had never been on the Google campus so although I was busy I did make a point to note many details. Just about every meeting room I saw was video enabled. The spam summit met in a medium-sized room with array microphones hanging from the ceiling tiles, three video cameras in the back of the room, and one video camera in the front of the room for crowd shots. Smaller meeting rooms had phones with eye-level cameras. Lunch was really good. I had a chicken breast pesto panini with roasted…
I have been reading through some of the posts about Google Blog Search and have some new thoughts on possible infrastructure although nothing has been officially stated by Google. I’ve read about how fast Google’s results come back. I would hope so, their entire index covers only about 90 days. Powered by Google Fusion? We already know that Google Blog Search is indexing only feeds, and the index does appear to separate from the main Google index. We also know that Google’s feed search index only contains posts since June 2005. We also know that Google plans to add a…
Google Blog Search is now live. I spent some time clicking around and searching for terms and phrases where I expected a certain result. Some early thoughts: Query time is very fast, at around half a second for most queries. The database only goes back two months, so a quick response is to be expected. The related blogs search for “George Bush” suggests “George Bush doesn’t care about ugly hoes” which cracks me up. No advertisements. Is this another “mistake” like Google claimed for Google News? I don’t think so. Google exposes results as RSS and Atom feeds in…
Google is launching a feed-specific search interface tonight for both all feed producers as well as a search interface specific to Blogger. It’s important to note that from what I have read on Search Engine Watch and others Google is specifically restricting its search to feeds, and not using the HTML of the blog. Why? Googlebot is designed to swallow a page whole and not break the page up into individual entries or items. Feeds come prepackaged as individual items or entries allowing for easy digestion by parsers and indexers. Google would need to overhaul its indexer or design a…
Vint Cerf will join Google starting October 3 as their Chief Internet Evangelist. Vint already posted to the Google blog to let us know he is “committed to the vision of Google’s criticality to the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people.” Vint Cerf is currently working on the Interplanetary Protocol and may be working with Google to create the first Earth node at the top of the often rumored Google space elevator. :) Tags: vintcerf…
The Onion posted an article on Wednesday about Google’s plans for world domination. In the Onion’s satirical account Google will index all of the world’s information by destroying anything it cannot index. The Onion also speculates about Google Sound, a global network of microphones to index the world’s emitted sounds, and Google’s vast army of laser-equipped robots that will scan the DNA of every living organism. (via Doc Searls) Tags: theonion…
The Google Talk application is now available on Google for Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It features voice and text messaging and loads all of your contacts from Gmail. The application is only 900 KB in size. Google Talk supports voice codecs PCMA, PCMU, G.723, iLBC, ISAC, IPCMWB, EG711U, and EG711A. They are evaluating the Speex codec. They currently use XMPP-based signaling but plan to support SIP signaling in the near future. Google is currently working with EathLink’s Vling product as well as Sipphone’s Gizmo Project for integration with Google Talk. Google also has a page listing Jabber/XMPP clients…
Want to chat with your friends using Google’s instant messaging platform? Do you have an instant messaging client that supports Jabber messaging and a Google ID? Here’s what you need to do: Open a client supporting Jabber (AdiumX, Gaim, etc.) Your server name is talk.google.com Your username is the same as your Google ID. Example: user@gmail.com Your password is the same as you use to login to Gmail or other Google login locations. That’s it! You can add your friends using their full ID and encrypt your messages to be safe. I am sure Google will introduce a nice UI…
The New York Times reports Google plans to introduce a new version of Google Desktop on Monday and a “communications tool” on Wednesday. The new Google Desktop will feature live content panels allowing developers to write their own widgets associated with Google Desktop. A beta version of Google Desktop version 2 is now available on the Google Desktop site. What communications tool will Google introduce on Wednesday? Google mobile? Google IM? We have a few days to speculate. Tags: googledesktop…
I was searching Google this morning and I noticed some new links under the top search result. I was searching for FTP software Transmit and I noticed four screenshots immediately below the search result for transmit. How interesting! People searching for Transmit can immediately view screenshots of the application. A search for Technorati reveals a few chosen links within Technorati’s many web pages as well. So what’s going on? My guess is Google is experimenting with ways of surfacing multiple results within the same domain. We currently see this exposure of up to four links for the top search result…
It’s pretty easy to make an XML Sitemap of your blog for easy parsing by Google or other search engines. Just create a new index template and copy the code below. Choose an output file that is easy to remember such as sitemap.xml. Save and rebuild your new template file once you paste the code. 1.0 Now you need to let Google know where to find your sitemap. Open up your web browser and enter http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap= + the URL-encoded location…
Google today unveiled Google Sitemaps, a way for webmasters to let Google know about the files on their site as they are published. Webmasters can create a XML file describing the files available on their site and ping Google or simply ping with the location of a RSS or Atom file with each update. You can sign in to your Google account to add and track sitemaps. Update: User-Agent seems to be new: “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)” coming from 66.249.66.1….
Google employees are now eligible for quarterly awards of restricted Google stock worth $12 million vested over four years awarded to teams but distributed based on individual contribution. More details will be available after Google’s conference call with investors later today. The new plan is a way for Google to provide incentives for new employees with a $190 strike price….
Ben Goodger, lead engineer for Mozilla Firefox, just announced he started a new job at Google. He will still be “devoted full-time to the advancement of Firefox, the Mozilla platform and web browsing in general” and work out of the Mozilla Foundation offices regularly. Interesting move and it’s good to see Google giving back to the open-source community….
Marissa Mayer of Google spoke at PARC on Tuesday night. Marissa is product manager for Google.com and formerly the technical lead for the user-interface team. Alan Williamson provides a good summary of the event. Some interesting bits of information: The Google copyright statement was added to the bottom of the home page as an end of page marker after users expected more page content to load. If at least 20% of people use a feature Google will include it in the full site. At least 5% of users need to use an advanced feature before it is included in Google’s…
Google has an archive of Usenet postings since 1981. Google has a page full of memorable moments from twenty years of postings. First mention of the term “search engine” was in March 1988. Linus Torvalds’ Linux announcement First post from an AOL account was in May 1992, almost three years after the first mention of AOL. Yahoo! and Lycos mentioned in December 1994. Altavista announced in December 1995. Lots of interesting reading and a reminder I have not yet been to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I plan to attend the Steve Case and Walt Mossberg event on…
CBS News will air a segment about Google on this Sunday’s 60 Minutes. John Battelle is a featured commentator….
I just finished reading David Pogue’s review of Google Desktop when I noticed a video box on the sidebar. Video supplement and The New York Times? Interesting. David Pogue compares Windows XP’s built-in search to Google desktop complete with a picture of a girl plugging her nose and David dancing to Who Let the Dogs Out by Baha Men….
Google Labs released Google Desktop Search beta this morning. Google Desktop Search allows users Windows 2000 and Windows XP to search their e-mail, AOL instant message sessions, Internet Explorer browser history, as well as text and Microsoft Office documents. Google Desktop Search uses your Web browser as its management interface. Connect to 127.0.0.1:4664 and you are greeted by a familiar Google search layout with a Desktop addition. I am able to access the Web interface using Intenet Explorer and Firefox but I am greeted with an incompatible browser message when using Opera. You have the option of including secure…
Evan Williams is leaving Google. Evan is the founder of Pyra Labs and creator of Blogger, which was sold to Google in 2003. Whatever Evan ends up doing it should be interesting. Good luck! I have enjoyed your pictures lately and I intend to stay tuned in many formats….
NY Post: “Based on the half-dozen hires in recent weeks, Google appears to be planning to launch its own Web browser and other software products to challenge Microsoft.”…
Google now offers shuttle service from San Francisco to Mountain View every day. The shuttle averages 155 employees a day and has wireless Internet access onboard. Sweet! Makes all the city folk want work at Google even more than before….
Google is looking to hire persons as an Executive Protection Specialist. Trained in protective driving and knowledge of surveillance, counter-surveillance and technical surveillance countermeasures. I am sure this is common practice among Fortune 500 companies but the times are changing for Google….
The September 2004 issue of Playboy features a seven-page interview with Larry Lage and Sergey Brin. The interview occurred on April 22-a week before Google filed its registration statement. The interview may violate Google’s quiet period and result in a cooling off period imposed by the SEC….
Google’s IPO site is now live. You can access the prospectus, watch the management presentation (27 minutes 6 seconds), and request a bidder ID….
Google filed a S1/A with the SEC this morning. Among the changes are a list of subsidiaries (exhibit 21.01). Applied Semantics, Kaltix, Neotonic, and Orkut are listed as subsidiaries….
Google updated their Gmail program policies as of June 28, 2004. Users may not “sell, trade, resell or otherwise exploit for any unauthorized commercial purpose or transfer any Gmail account.”…
Randall Stross of The New York Times takes a look at the hiring practices of Microsoft and Google, specifically focusing on their approach to PhDs. Working in Google’s favor is its practice of putting new Ph.D.’s to work immediately in the exact areas where they have been trained – in systems, architecture and artificial intelligence. Google, the company, may falter, but Google, the human resources experiment, is unlikely to be the cause. Microsoft has yet to disavow old templates for hiring. Its chief college recruiter, Ms. Roby, says that among computer science Ph.D.’s, “it’s less likely to find someone with…
Google is reportedly preparing to release desktop search software: project Puffin. CNET News.com analyzes Google’s move to the desktop, similar attempts by other companies past and present, and why Google needs to make this move well before Longhorn ships….
John Markoff of The New York Times writes about Puffin, Google’s consumer local search application expected any day now. Will it be ad free?…
A search for Gmail on eBay shows there are currently 47 auctions selling free e-mail accounts for Google’s new mail service currently in beta testing. News.com reports $61 bids on some of these listings. Nelson Minar was kind enough to hook me up with a Gmail account a few weeks ago, but I have not been a heavy user. I have two invitations available, probably the same for these eBay users. There is nothing in the Gmail terms of use or Gmail program policies against selling these invitations. If this practice bothers you, the only e-mail address listed for feedback…
Google filed with the SEC today for an initial public offering. Some quotes from the Letter from the Founders, apparently written by Larry Page: “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” “We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google.” “As a public company, we believe a dual class voting structure will enable us to retain many of the positive aspects of being private.” “We provide many unusual benefits for our employees, including meals free of charge, doctors…
News.com reports Google has launched a test of its new mail service, Gmail, and invited 1000 guests to participate. Hotmail presently offers 2MB of free e-mail storage. Yahoo offers 4MB. Gmail will dwarf those offerings with a 1GB storage limit. Update: Gmail has an About Gmail page, including a form field for signups….
Robert Scoble would like to be the top result for Microsoft tech blogger. Don Park is a phishing researcher. I have not given it much thought, but I will set up a Feedster ego feed now….
How would you redo the Google interface? Artists Joshua Davis, Jenny Holzer, Shepard Fairey, and Ideo all gave Wired Magazine their thoughts and drawings. I like Fairey’s the best….
Steven Johnson writes in this month’s Wired Magazine about the battle over content spam in weblogs. “[S]pammers weren’t trying to win the attention of the bloggers or their readerships. They were trying to win the attention of Google, like the high school bully beating up the class nerd to impress the homecoming queen. The nerd feels violated, but the truth is that it isn’t really about him at all.”…
Google’s Search By Location service provides a quick way to find WiFi access points near your zip code. Yes, there are more comprehensive lists out there, but a quick Google search is a good way to find more authoritative lists for your specific area….
Datawhorehouse put together an Orkut Member density map by crawling Orkut’s member database. Map of the Bay Area is pretty interesting….
Google released its Zeitgeist for 2003….
Orkut Buyukkokten, a UI designer at Google, quietly put online today a social networking site named Orkut.com. According to News.com this social software was Orkut’s personal project at Google, one day a week, but remains the property of Google. Membership is currently invite only….
Tom McNichol of The NY Times covers the growing practice of Google bombing: engineering search results to your whim….
Google is building its own searchable book library with pointers to publisher maintained sites instead of an internal source like Amazon’s solution….